Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

"No, mate. Like the bloody fucking mutt he is."

Neva frowned at the man between her legs, unconscionably glad to hear him speak, though wondering at the Aussie vernacular that didn't come with the Aussie accent. She gave him a bit of an encouraging smile. "Tell me. Is that sense of humor supposed to be wicked or warped?"

"Both," he said, and then reminded her what she was supposed to be doing. "Water."

"Oh, hell. Right. Sorry." She moved to kneel at his shoulders, slipped a hand beneath his neck, cupped the base of his skull, and lifted his head, fingers crossed that she wasn't doing him any more damage. Heat seemed to roll from his body—she prayed it was the blanket and the sun and not a spike in temperature—as he formed his lips to drink, pressed them to the bottle.

She watched his mouth work, watched his throat, saw the relief in his eyes before he closed them, and she lowered him again to lay flat. She wanted to clean his face, the dust and dirt in his eyebrows and beard, the lines of sweat streaking his cheeks. She wanted him to feel cool water on his skin, parched by the sun.

She wanted Ed to get him into the clinic and take a look at the damage to his arm and everything else on his body. FM could wait. "Ed? Could we worry about the dog later and get him inside?"

"Mick."

She glanced away from the doctor and down. "Mick? Your name is Mick?"

Eyes still closed, he nodded. "Savin. Mick Savin."

It fit him, as did the timbre of his voice, a rich and resonant bass. "Hi, Mick. This is Ed Hill, who happens to do double duty as our local vet and GP."

Mick gave an eyes-closed and painful-looking nod. "F took a hit to the jaw."

"A hit?" Neva glance at the dog, her back teeth aching. "What, with a car?"

"A boot." He grimaced. "Seems we worked our way onto a piece of property where the owner wasn't kidding when he posted his 'no trespassing' signs."

Dear Lord. Was he serious? Her heart thudded hard. "Someone did this to you for trespassing?"

"It's not as bad as it looks." His lashes fluttered as his eyes came open. They were a silvery shade of hazel. "Bumps and bruises. Shoulder's dislocated, couple of ribs cracked, but that's about it."

"I'll be the judge of that," the doctor put in. "The dog needs stitches, antibiotics, and fluids. X rays and blood work will tell me more." Ed gave FM a last scratch for good measure, then turned to Mick. "I'll use the blanket to slide you onto the gurney, Mick, so hang on. Neva, you grab his legs."

"Okay." She moved from Mick's head to his feet, pulling away the blanket completely and feeling his gaze following her movements as she exposed the length of his legs. She re-fused to look up. She didn't want to catch him watching her, or have him catch her studying him. He left her uneasy in a way she didn't like and couldn't describe. She simply wanted to finish her Good Samaritan duty and leave him in Ed's capable hands.

And she was minutes away from doing just that when she discovered the knife and the gun.

The first she was only marginally worried about; she didn't know anyone who didn't carry a knife in the course of their work day even if this one was as illegal to possess as cocaine. But the second . . . Her hand stilled there above his ankle, and her gaze crawled the length of his body to make reluctant contact with his. The shake of his head was almost imperceptible, but the favor he was asking her couldn't have been more clear. Oh, dear. Oh, my.

Oh, hell.

Her heart beat so loudly in her ears it was the only thing she could hear. She looked quickly, briefly in Ed's direction. Then, while he positioned the gurney and snapped a lead onto the dog's collar, Neva slid the handgun from its holster, reached back, and shoved it between two of the boxes destined for Candy's studio.

That done, she pulled Mick's pants leg down around the top of his boot and took hold of both ankles. "Ready when you are, Doc," she lied.

She wasn't sure she would ever be ready for what the man beneath her was all about. In fact, she was quite sure she wasn't prepared in the least.

Three

Her name was Nevada. And if she wasn't sleeping with the good doctor now, she had been. That much had been easy to figure based on the other man's tension as he'd worked with the woman to move Mick into the clinic from the t ruck.

He'd regained full consciousness earlier in the day to the roar of the ocean in his ears. He'd tried once, twice to open his eyes, finally looking up and straight into the sun. Turning his head then, he'd found himself squinting into a pair of wide brown eyes beneath ears with the tips flopping over.

FM's chin had come up just as Mick realized they were in the bed of a pickup, he was trussed like a Thanksgiving turkey, flames were licking the right half of his torso, and his ass cheeks burned like hell on wheels. Groaning hadn't been so easy. His tongue had been—and still was—the size, feel, and taste of a moldy summer sausage. Yeah. Damn disgusting.

It was after he'd made where he was that he'd remembered the woman. Her truck. Her trussing. She'd done a damn good job getting him off the ground and up that ramp like she had. She obviously wasn't connected to the Spectra thugs who'd tried to dismember him or she wouldn't have hauled his banged-up butt to the doc.

And bloody hell but his banged-up butt ached. Bounced like chum through water behind those ATVs for who knew how far. Another day or two, he'd