Can't Touch This (Can't Touch This #1)

So why does it suddenly feel way too claustrophobic in here?

My heart hammered as my skin prickled in annoyance.

Yes, annoyance.

Not attraction or desire.

Not desire.

Definitely not desire.

“Will he be okay?” He moved closer to the table, placing his hands on the towel and smiling at the long skinny excuse of a dog. How anything like this survived evolution was beyond me.

Ryder’s dark brown hair was messy and wild as if he’d run his hand too many times through the strands. His jaw held a five o’clock shadow that looked hard earned rather than a fashion statement, and his body gave off an aggressive but possessive aura that somehow frightened me and intoxicated me at the same time.

This man had hard edges and soft and the soft was only visible when he looked at hurting dogs and placed his trust in me to fix it.

His eyes burned a scorching hole through me as he waited for my reply.

I dropped my gaze. “He should be.”Giving false hope was too easy in this business. As humans, we wanted to be the ones to offer hope and promises of being able to repair things. But in reality, sometimes we didn’t have that power. I did my best not to make it sound like I could heal everything when sometimes that promise never came true.

That was the hardest part of this job.

Saying goodbye to a little soul who just wasn’t saveable.

Grabbing my stethoscope, I held the wiggling body as he did his best to snuggle into my waist and listened to his heart.

The flurry was fast. I had to close my eyes to cut out the distraction of Ryder Carson and concentrate. Once I had the beats per minute, I finished listening and unhooked the stethoscope from my ears. “He’s running fast, but that’s probably the adrenaline from being around people—especially if he’s been abandoned and dumped into new sensations.”

Ryder didn’t comment; merely nodded and let me run my hands over Pikachu’s breakable bones and palpate an empty stomach. “He doesn’t feel hot or swollen anywhere, so I don’t think he’s hurt himself while on his own, but the lack of suppleness in his skin and dullness of his coat has me worried about his hydration.”

“You already said.”

My hackles went up. “Excuse me for repeating myself.” I smiled coyly. “After all, you are a man. Just being kind in case you didn’t listen to me the first time.”

He scowled, making his handsome face freaking drop dead gorgeous. With his messy hair flopping over his forehead and the three-day scruff, he looked like any fuckable but perfectly acceptable bring-home-to-meet-the-family boyfriend material.

There was something about him that wasn’t common in today’s dating world. His green and brown swirled eyes didn’t fit the persona of a playboy. I’d caught him checking out my boobs and even my ass, but he didn’t give off that snaky, slimy vibe of wanting to get into my knickers just for the sake of tiddling his lizard in my kiddie pool.

He was intrigued by me but he wasn’t going to lie about who he was to screw me.

Clearing his throat, he grinned. “You didn’t hear a word I just said, did you?” He chuckled. “Wow, pot calling kettle black and all that.”

My shoulders tensed. “What does that even mean?”

“The kettle thing?”

I scratched Pikachu as an excuse to look away. I hadn’t been paying attention. My damn uterus had stolen my brain function.

Stupid oestrogen.

Ryder smiled smugly. “I think it means, don’t be hypocritical.”

My gaze shot up. “Did you just call me a hypocrite? You really are on a roll today.”

“Yep.”

“I’m not a hypocrite. That’s a—”