Page 36 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

Raven had hugged her and the baby both, and Cass had realized she couldn’t remember the last time she and her sister had embraced.

Once they were seated, Cass in the rocker with the baby, and Raven in an elegant, cross-legged heap on the rug, Raven had smiled and said, “So there’s a boy from school, is there?”

God. Not this again.

“Oh. Well,” she’d hedged.

But Raven had been grinning, delighted to have something positive to discuss.

“Is he an artist? What am I saying: of course he is.” Her eyes had widened.

“You should bring him by the office so I can outfit him for the Met. My treat, of course. We’ll find him something that compliments what you’re wearing. ”

Cass’s face had felt wrong when she smiled back. “Actually…I’ve only just started seeing him. I’m not sure we’re Gala official yet.”

“Oh.” Raven’s expression had dimmed. “That’s alright, you can—”

“What if I took Shep?”

Raven had blinked. And then burst out laughing. She’d even clutched at her chest, breathless with the force of it. “Oh my God! Could you imagine?”

She’d thought Cass was joking. The idea of dressing Shep up, of taking him to the Met as her date, had been a joke to Raven, too insane and hilarious to be considered seriously for even a second.

She hadn’t wanted to go home, after. Had wanted to play pretend a little while: that she was this gorgeous, desirable woman Shep wanted to pick up in a bar, and not his live-in art student.

She’d wanted some sort of—some sort of external, public validation that they were right together, believable.

That he wasn’t just humoring her and sleeping with her and professing his love for her out of some misplaced protectiveness and the loneliness that came with being an outcast amongst your own club.

But that had backfired spectacularly.

Shep unlocked the door to the club flat and pushed it in so she could precede him inside.

When she flipped the lights, she was struck by all the ways it no longer looked like the “club flat.” Throw blankets draped the back of the couch, and bodega flowers she’d grabbed on a whim three days ago wilted slowly in a glass on the counter.

The window nook had become her makeshift studio, full of easels, half-finished canvases, and all her paints and oil pastels.

Though she couldn’t see them, she knew her cosmetics cluttered the bathroom counter, and Shep had humored the fairy lights she’d wanted to string up along the headboard in the bedroom.

And then there was the sad little pile of presents on the coffee table from this morning. The Garfield balloon hung a little lower in the air, its sides slackening.

The door closed softly, and the lock clicked into place.

When she turned, she found Shep watching her with a pained expression. Did he pity her? Think she’d lost her mind? She couldn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dashing at her eyes.

“I wasn’t trying to—to make you uncomfortable at the bar.

I didn’t…” She took a deep, unsteady breath, and her belly filled with the sickening dread that an end had been reached.

That they’d had a month of fun, a wonderful month, in which she’d allowed herself to dream of a future…

but now their inevitable demise had come.

“I asked Raven if I could take you to the Met Gala, and she laughed at me. She thought I was joking . She didn’t even consider that I…

that I could…” She pressed her lips together, and then pressed her hand over her mouth for good measure, desperate to hold in the ugly noise building in the back of her throat.

Shep closed the gap between them, took her by the elbows, and gently steered her backward. “Cassie. Sit.” He pressed her down into the recliner, and her knees were too watery to protest.

He stepped back, and shrugged out of his cut, and then his jacket. Let them both fall.

Cass wiped her damp cheeks and croaked, “What are you doing?” If he was going to try and fuck her happy, it wasn’t going to work.

“Giving you your present,” he said, but he wasn’t trying to look seductive; wasn’t smirking or hamming it up as he tugged off his hoodie. His expression had tightened further; it wasn’t pity shining in his eyes, but uncertainty. Nerves.

Under his hoodie, he still wore the stretched-out wifebeater he’d had on this morning, the collar low enough to reveal a white square bandage over his heart.

“Oh,” she said, blinking her eyes clear, scrubbing the last tears from her cheeks. “That’s right. You got new ink.”

“Yeah.” His voice was rough. He breathed open-mouthed, unsteadily.

Cass scooted forward, so she sat on the very edge of the chair, anticipation prickling through her. Whatever lay beneath the bandage, it was important to him, and he was anxious about her reaction.

He reached over his head to grab the back of his wifebeater and dragged it over his head one-handed, a move that always popped his biceps and drove her wild.

Now, though, she could only concentrate on the pristine white bandage, and the way his chest heaved under it as his breathing accelerated further.

“I don’t…” he started, and then exhaled, long and slow. “If you hate it, just tell me. It won’t…it won’t, like, hurt my feelings or some stupid shit.”

Except it would, she could tell. It would cut him to the bone if she didn’t like it.

She’d never been more curious in her life. “Okay. Show me.”

He hesitated another moment, chewing at the inside of his cheek, and then carefully picked the tape loose.

She’d thought he might just fold it back, but he pulled the whole thing off and dropped it to the floor, too. They would have to redress it, she thought, absently. He no doubt had plenty of supplies in his med kit. They would…

Her eyes landed on the ink, fresh, deep black against needle-reddened skin, and all extraneous thoughts vaporized.

It was familiar: script plus a small drawing, the whole of it no bigger than his palm. But it took her a full five seconds to comprehend just what she was looking at.

Then she gasped.

“Oh my God. Oh my God .”

It was her signature. The mark she put in the corner of every sketch, and every painting.

The one that graced each canvas over in the window.

A big, bold C, and small, spidery lowercase letters, another bold series of strokes for the G.

And then, beneath, a part of her signature since she was fourteen, a little cartoon Lean Dog, pointy-eared but non-threatening. An homage to her family.

Shep had paid an artist to tattoo her signature over his heart.

“I, uh,” he started, when the silence stretched, “took a photo with my phone.” He gestured over his shoulder at her studio space.

“I told Anthony he had to get the lettering exact, and I think—I think he did a pretty good job.” He ducked his head, and looked up at her from under arched brows. “Do you hate it?”

Fresh tears welled and spilled, too-hot against her suddenly-cold cheeks. She ignored them, and reached for him with both hands. “ Frank .”

He knelt down on the floor at her feet, and rested his forearms on her thighs. Up close, the tattoo was shiny with ointment; it looked like she’d taken a Sharpie and signed him herself.

“Cass.” His voice was hoarse with emotion, but steady; his eyes were dry, but big and puppy-dog sad with devotion.

“I’m forty-six, and nobody’s ever loved me before.

The guys in the club don’t even like me.

” His hands found her hips, thumbs pressing into the grooves where hip met thigh, warm even through the fabric of her jeans.

His head tilted, imploring. “It’s like you said before, yeah?

” One corner of his mouth hitched upward.

“You’re my best friend. I’ve never felt this way about another person, not in my whole life. ”

A sob formed in her throat, and she swallowed it down with difficulty.

“I don’t need you to be some chick at a bar, or an art student, or a fashion designer, or anything but what you want to be.

I’ll be here. I wanted you to know—” he caught one of her hands and brought it to his chest. When she tried to pull back, he murmured, “It’s okay,” and pressed her palm over the new tattoo.

His skin flickered, sensitive, but his expression stayed soft and steady.

“I wanted you to know that I’d crawl through glass for you, baby.

That I’m yours, for however long you’ll have me. ”

“Oh my God.” She sniffed hard, and pulled her hand off his tattoo—his eyes widened with dismay—but only so she could grip him by the ears and press her wet face into his, shuddering and crying. “You stupid man,” she whimpered. “How could I ever want anyone but you?”

He let out a big, hitching breath, and tilted his face so he could kiss her cheek, the side of her nose. “You like it?”

“I love it. I love you .”

His arms slid around her waist, and he hugged her tight a moment before he stood, and hoisted her up into his arms to carry her to bed.

~*~

Later, he walked naked out to the living room to retrieve her presents and dumped them on top of the covers before he hitched himself back up on the mattress to sit beside her.

“Open ‘em.” He was glowing, pink-faced, messy-haired, and loose-limbed.

Very satisfied and very pleased with his performance.

She was pleased with that, too.

“It’s not my birthday anymore,” she said, reaching for the largest. She could tell it was a book, and a heavy, hardbound one at that.

“You better open ‘em. I spent two hours wrapping the damn things.”

She lifted an already-loose flap of paper. “I can tell.”

“Shit,” he accused, and kissed the side of her head.

The book turned out to be a massive omnibus of Daredevil comics, which she paged through slowly, in awe.

“I was for sure the only guy in that whole shop who’d gotten laid in a year,” Shep said. “Buncha nerds.” Then his tone veered toward self-conscious. “The guy at the counter said this is where all the best Punisher stories are.”

She nodded.

“You know: since your main kink is guys named Frank or some shit.”

She elbowed him, lightly, then tipped her head back for a readily given kiss. “Thank you for braving the comic book store for me.”

He sighed, and feigned trauma. “You’re welcome,” he said, solemnly, and then cracked up when she grinned.

Next was a thick, insulated leather riding jacket with a hood, banded cuffs, and a button throatlatch. She knew it hadn’t been cheap.

“That night I picked you up, you might as well have been wearing a paper jacket for all the good it did.”

She owned warm coats, puffers, and parkas, and all manner of belted numbers Raven had pressed upon her. But this was a jacket for riding, for sitting behind him on the bike on cold nights, and she hugged it to her chest and breathed the clean, new smell of leather off the collar.

The last was the least expected, and the one that made her eyes sting. She pulled the lid off a small, flat white box that rattled strangely, and found Shep’s dog tags. The dented, tarnished tags he’d worn as an Army Ranger.

“Oh,” she murmured, and smoothed her thumb over the letters.

SHEPHERD,

FRANCIS T.

1194732291

A POS

CATHOLIC

“I’m not any good at picking out jewelry,” he said. “Otherwise I would have…but you asked about these, a while back, and—”

He stopped talking when she slipped the chain over her head and turned to kiss him.