Chapter Fifteen

The next couple of weeks passed in a flurry of activity for Marshall. Boats came and went ferrying small groups of rabbits, about a half dozen or so at a time, to the mainland where they were transported to the Denver shelter. The Bunnyguards came and went, too. Some left with bunnies and came back the same day or the next day or a few days later. Some didn’t return at all, having already given what time they could spare. Being a voluntary workforce, only a few of the Bunnyguards had been able to sign up for the entire four-week operation.

Caring for the bunnies dominated the long, hot days, with Gus teaching every opportunity she got to a very receptive crowd. The nights were all about bonfires on the beach, eating fresh-caught fish from the lake, and roasting marshmallows. Camaraderie blossomed as everyone enjoyed the nightly relief from the heat and their time under the stars.

Charades were played. Guitars were strummed. Ghost stories were told.

And other things went down, too, after the fires had been doused. Nocturnal activities that saw a lot of smiles on a lot of faces in the mornings.

Those bunny geeks were a horny bunch.

Marshall settled into a routine, his days split between managing his business over the phone and mastering social media. The ABL had been more than happy to let him take over their Twitter and Instagram accounts and Gus had dropped her objections once she’d seen the organic engagement figures he’d been achieving through his posts and by teaming images of the bunnies and the island with great hashtags like: #bunnyisland and #hiphoponHitchkin.

He and Gus settled into a routine, too. Of sorts. An avoidance routine. Not talking about the elephant in the room. She was obviously determined to prove she could stick to the contract—the spirit of it as well as the actuality of it—and Marshall was just as determined to prove he was equally capable.

Nothing was stopping him claiming his incentive at the end.

Thankfully, despite living under the same roof, it wasn’t too difficult to also avoid being alone. Gus was mainly outside and Marshall mostly worked from inside the cabin. She usually went to bed before him at night and he waited deliberately for her to go before he finally tiptoed to the couch for another night of self-control.

It worked for the most part. And blue balls never killed anybody.

By the end of the third week, Marshall was counting down the days. Seven days until the four weeks were up. Seven days until the project would be over and the ABL would be leaving the island. Seven goddamn, fucking, lousy days until he could kiss Goldilocks into next week.

“You know what I mean, don’t you, Thumper?” Marshall said as he knelt down next to the bunny’s cage. Thumper twitched his nose and half hopped, half walked over to sniff Marshall’s hand. “You must be getting pretty antsy, cut off from all those chick bunnies, huh?”

Does. Not chick bunnies, as Gus constantly corrected him. She didn’t care for the term chick bunny. Which only made him want to say it more.

Marshall opened the top of the cage and lifted the gland-challenged bunny out. He’d become quite adept at handling rabbits the last few weeks. Prior to this project, he’d never picked up a bunny in his life. Now? If his business ever went under, he’d be able to set up his own bunny photography shop.

“C’mon, dude, let see if we’ve had any nibbles on your profile.” So far he’d had no success in finding Thumper a home, but he had a good feeling that today was the day.

Crossing to the table, Marshall sat, cuddling the giant furball in one arm while he manipulated the mouse with the other. There was the usual amount of comments beneath the picture of Thumper. People suggesting a variety of conditions that could be causing Thumper’s heavy frame and his other unfortunate impediments. Comments ranging from the ridiculous to the insensitive.

It seemed Paula was right. People only wanted cute bunnies.

Three little dots appeared in a blank comment box and Marshall waited for the comment to appear. Someone called Chad had left a rather unnecessary suggestion.

Dude, that bunny needs to go on a diet.

Marshall shook his head. He hovered the mouse over the asshole’s profile picture. Talk about people in glass houses…

“Don’t you listen to them, buddy,” Marshall said, stroking the fur on Thumper’s belly. “Plenty of ladies like the chunky dudes. Barry White got laid all the time.”

He typed back a comment, because screw that guy. Nobody insulted Thumper.

Here at the ABL, we prefer the term large-boned or plus-size.

He hit the enter key then scrolled on. Their third to last batch of bunnies had already been snapped up by adopters, and Marshall had done his due diligence checking them out as appropriate people to own a pet.

To own one of his Hitchkin rabbits.

Oh Jesus. Since when did he come to think about them as his? Since when did he start feeling responsible for them?

And since when he did start feeling so attached to Hitchkin? When had it started to feel like part of his DNA, when had it settled into his marrow?

Voices outside alerted Marshall to imminent visitors, and his gaze flicked to the doorway just as Gus and two Bunnyguards stepped inside, talking about the rabbit genome.

“Oh hey,” Gus said, faltering a little when she realized he was in the kitchen. She’d seen him leave earlier but obviously not seen him return. “Jill and Ray are just going to listen to Zara’s lungs, if that’s okay.”

Zara had been in the sick bay for a couple of days. She’d been off her food and Gus had quarantined her for some TLC. She often used the rabbits that ended up in the sick bay as a teaching tool because one bunny in a cage was a lot easier to handle than trying to pluck one out of a corral with several other animals running around.

But she certainly didn’t need his permission.

Marshall nodded. “Sure.”

“Hey,” Ray said with his trademark flirty smile.

He was wearing a Bunnyguard T-shirt in rainbow colors and a red neckerchief, which had been tied at a jaunty angle, the tails dramatically splayed. Ray had come to the island in the second week. He was a third-year vet student, great with animals, hilarious company, and gay as a room full of pixies.

Jill, also a vet student, smiled at Marshall with a shit-ton of flirt in her gaze, too. She greeted him with an enthusiastic, “Good morning.”

Marshall smiled at both, peripherally aware of their interest but eyes only for the one person in the room not happy to see him.

“Still have no takers for Thumper?” Jill asked.

“Nope. People apparently are assholes.” They both laughed. “Think I’m going to have to try a different tack.”

He’d switched Thumper’s image out three times now. The first one, he’d made an eye patch and printed out a Jolly Roger flag. The second, he’d perched a pair of sunglasses on the bunny’s nose and planted a plastic palm tree by his paw. The third, he’d propped him in a sitting position and posed him spread-eagle with the caption how you doin’.

The Facebook shares had gone nuts with that one. But nobody had offered to adopt. Just insults and diet advice.

Assholes.

Maybe he could borrow Ray’s neckerchief and do a French-themed Thumper.

“Well, I have a suggestion,” Jill said. “It’s not very…PC.”

Marshall sat up a little. “I’m willing to go with anything.”

“Someone could take a picture of you holding him. That’d work.”

It was so preposterous he laughed. But all three sets of eyes were suddenly regarding him like he was in the swimsuit phase of the Miss America pageant. Gus was positively ogling him. And didn’t he feel that all the way to his groin.

“Only one thing cuter than a bunny is a sexy man holding a bunny,” Jill said.

Ray nodded. “Amen to that.”

Marshall frowned at him. “What happened to solidarity, dude?”

He shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with working your God-given attributes. There’s a whole Instagram account dedicated to hot dudes with rabbits. Live a little.”

Jill turned to Gus. “Sex sells.”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “I could see how that would work.”

For the first time since he’d set eyes on her, Gus was looking at him with a frankness that was disturbing.

Good disturbing.

Jill shrugged. “If he took his shirt off, it’d be even better.”

Marshall blinked. This had taken an unexpected turn. But he was a sucker for the close appraisal of those blue-gray eyes sweeping over him like he was…on the menu.

Heat bloomed in his belly, and he tensed his abs in some dumb-ass attempt at vanity. “I think that’s called objectification.” He tried and failed to look insulted. “How would it look if I asked you to take off your shirt, Dr. North, and pose with the bunny?”

“It would be pretty despicable,” she agreed, nodding her head slowly as her gaze swept across the breadth of his shoulders.

“Right.” Marshall nodded. But hell if he didn’t want to strip off all his fucking clothes right now and drag her into the bedroom.

“Also counter-productive,” Jill added, “what with ninety-one percent of bunny adopters being women.”

From the anecdotal evidence of the last few weeks, Marshall would have put that percentage higher.

“We can’t…make you do anything,” Gus said with a note of regret.

Yeah. But did she want him to do it? Did she want him to strip off his shirt? Did she want to take pictures of him with Thumper cuddled up to his naked chest? Because she sure looked like she did and that was an entirely different story.

His groin was already on fire at the delicious anticipation of it, and frankly, at this stage in their hot, depressingly asexual relationship, he’d pretty much do anything to keep her eyes on him like that.

“But you could do it for the cause,” Ray suggested casually, his eyes twinkling. “You know, take one for the team?”

Marshall had taken worse things for the team. He’d once let Piggy Frankston punch him in the stomach as recompense for a perceived slight, even though Jeremy had been responsible for the transgression. Cuddling a bunny half naked while Augusta North looked at him like he was smeared in chocolate-chip ice cream?

That was a walk in the fucking park.

“I reckon it could work,” Gus agreed.

“Yep,” Jill agreed. “Women will go nuts for it.”

“Gay men are going to love it as well,” Ray added for good measure.

“Well hell, Ray, why didn’t you say that from the start?” Marshall grinned at him. “I’ve always wanted to be a gay icon.”

He placed Thumper on the table, whipped his shirt off over his head then tossed it on the floor. Three jaws dropped to the floor.

“Lordy, lordy,” Ray whispered and fanned himself.

Marshall tracked the bob of Gus’s throat and the way her gaze fixed on the button of his shorts like she was waiting for more. Thank Christ Thumper was so chunky. Marshall may just need him for cover if she was going to keep on staring.

Preemptively, he picked up the bunny. “Shall we get started?” Smiling to himself, he turned on his heel and headed to his makeshift studio. “My phone is just near the laptop,” he called. “Grab it for me, will you?”

By the time Marshall had settled himself against the royal-blue velour of the makeshift studio wall, the trio of apparent advertising gurus had joined him. Gus, who had his cell in her hand, was doing that staring thing again, and Marshall stared right back.

“I’m not that great with a camera,” she said.

“I’ll do it,” Ray said, whipping the cell out of Gus’s hands in the blink of an eye.

Marshall didn’t care if she took the photos or not, just that she was here watching with her gaze glued to his body like a sticky note. “How do you want me?” he asked Ray, while looking directly at Gus.

“Oh honey.” Ray opened the camera. “Let me count the ways.”

Marshall laughed, finally dragging his eyes off Gus to concentrate on some direction from Ray and Jill. Over the next ten minutes, they suggested different poses, which made him laugh and cringe a little, but it was all a bit of fun, so why not? Thumper, the quintessential snuggle bunny, didn’t object one little bit.

And Gus? Well…she wasn’t objecting, either.

Hell no. She just stood and stared. Her gaze like a laser beam on his chest and his abs causing tightness in his throat, tension in his belly, and thickness in his pants.

She was completely and utterly objectifying him. And he fucking loved it. Of course, his nuts felt like two fat, juicy grapefruits, but he’d put up with gonads the size of watermelons if she wanted to keep objectifying him.

“Okay, I reckon we have enough now,” Ray said as he stopped, and he and Jill perused the album. Gus joined them, following the scroll of images without a word. Marshall stood and peered over Ray’s shoulder.

“These are all so good,” Ray said. “We have enough for an entire calendar. Now there’s an idea.” He glanced over his shoulder at Marshall. “I could sell two hundred at my gym alone. We could donate all profits to the ABL.”

Marshall laughed but shook his head and said, “Absolutely not.”

“Spoil sport,” Ray tutted as he turned his attention back to the cell.

“This one.”

Gus pointed to an image of Marshall laughing at something either Jill or Ray had said, his mouth open, his head back a little, making his hair look longer, his eyes crinkling. Thumper had his ass anchored in Marshall’s lap, his head against one firm pec, like some kind of furry slinky. With a shit-load of junk in its trunk. Half of his chest was on display, one of his nipples bared to view.

Marshall didn’t really know or care which was the better out of the hundred or so snaps Ray had taken, but the way Gus was staring so lasciviously at this one was as potent as if she’d slid her hot mouth all the way down his dick. His cock was about ready to explode and if he didn’t take the pressure down soon there was going to be some kind of penile incident that might not bode well for his future fathering capabilities.

“Oh yeah…” Ray’s voice was laden with male appreciation. “Fucking A, boss.”

Three sets of eyes took a moment or two to appreciate Gus’s suggestion, which left Marshall free to stare at Gus’s softly parted lips. Christ, the things he wanted to do with those lips. Kiss them, suck them, lick them. Taste them. Bite them. Feel them soft and pliant under his, opening for him. Or hard and unyielding as she lead the charge and insisted he keep up.

Seven. More. Days. Fuck. It felt like a millennium.

Suddenly, her hot and hazy gaze lifted and met his, and for a second, she looked like seven more days felt like a millennium to her, too.

But as quickly as the desire had flared and smoldered, it was gone.

“Well…” Gus reached out and took Thumper off him. “This isn’t getting the picture posted.”

She stalked toward the cage and lowered Thumper in, making sure to latch it properly before striding into the kitchen and grabbing his T-shirt. She stalked back to where he was standing and tossed it at his chest, her meaning clear.

“We should get Zara examined.”

Marshall caught the shirt as Gus turned away again and headed for where Zara was quietly watching the proceedings.

“You could leave it off,” Ray suggested quietly as Gus made a production of grabbing her stethoscope and hauling the sick bunny out of the cage. Marshall cocked an eyebrow and Ray shrugged, a twinkle in his eye.

“Just sayin’. I doubt anyone on the island would object.”

“Except maybe for her.” Marshall tipped his chin at Gus.

“Oh I don’t know,” Ray said. “Methinks she doth protest too much.”

“Ray?” Gus turned a frown on both the men. “Are you interested in learning or you want to flirt?”

The question was terse but also clearly rhetorical as she turned her back again, not waiting for an answer. Ray grinned, clearly not perturbed by Gus’s uncharacteristic behavior.

“Told you,” he said to Marshall sotto voce before he smiled at Gus’s back and said, “Oh, I’m all about the learning, boss.”

Marshall watched Ray amble toward the two women hunched over the rabbit. Gus’s snippiness had been a surprise—in three weeks she’d been the bastion of patience with her volunteers, and he knew how much she valued their help and expertise. Her jaw was tight, and he’d bet his last dollar she was mentally beating herself up over her rudeness.

He understood why she was so tense, of course. But did she?

Sexual frustration—sexual denial—was a potent irritant. It itched under the skin, buzzed through muscles and throbbed through the blood. It wrapped tentacles around resistance, choking it half to death. It coursed as strong and steady as the tide and just as impossible to stop. It eroded patience and frayed self-restraint. It made the mind restless and the feet twitchy and the hands jittery.

It overtook rational thought until all a person could think about was the one thing they shouldn’t be thinking about. It made them cranky and irritable and prickly. It made them snippy.

Yeah…Marshall understood perfectly. He was wrapped up in that web, too.

And Gus was playing chicken with the cure.

With a sigh and yet another hard-on that threatened imminent strangulation, he pulled the shirt over his head and headed back to his laptop.

…

Gus was so damn horny she didn’t know what to do with herself as she entered the bedroom later that afternoon, shutting the door behind her to keep Rambo inside. She had to pull herself together. If she didn’t, she’d jump Marshall for sure, and she’d be damned if she was going to be the one to break the terms of the contract.

Such as it was.

The erotic—because that’s what it’d been, whether intentional or not—photo shoot had played like some movie reel through her head all day.

A porn movie reel.

Marshall had been hot as fuck, and there hadn’t been a second she hadn’t thought about it. Hell, she was wet she’d been thinking about it so damn much.

It had seemed an intriguing idea—totally preposterous and absolutely unPC—and not one she’d been sold on, what with all the potential legal ramifications of such blatant objectification running through her head. And then he’d taken his shirt off and everything had gone haywire. She hadn’t been able to drag her eyes off him. She’d just stood there and stared through her estrogen-fogged glasses, with her tongue practically hanging out.

Hell, if the man had been a lollipop, she’d have licked him. The CEO of the ABL could have threatened to have her thrown in jail for sexual harassment and still she’d have stared.

Sure, strictly speaking, Marshall was not an employee. Or even an official volunteer. And he’d been clearly up for it. But that was no excuse for not being able to stop staring.

The annoying part was, she’d already seen him with his shirt off plenty. She’d seen him buck-freaking-naked. But the sight of his chest had ignited some kind of…fever in her blood. As if the cumulative effects of seeing so much of his skin so much of the time had crescendoed into some kind of calamitous effect on her ovaries.

And her brain.

Who’d have thought a half-naked guy cuddling a rabbit could be so…so…so damn stimulating? She’d had to grind her feet into the ebony floorboards to stop herself from sashaying toward him and rubbing herself against him like an animal in heat.

Being on an island full of rabbits was really screwing with her decorum.

What she needed was a cold shower. Like, arctic cold. Blizzard cold. But first, she had to look—just one more time.

It was that or quickly take care of business for herself, and she refused to go there. Feeding the howling, snarling she-demon within would be a big mistake. Gus already knew she’d be a demanding tyrant, and the only way to not end up in her bed with pressure sores and a permanent case of carpal tunnel was to starve that bitch out.

Just as soon as she took one more peek.

Sitting on the far edge of the bed, her back to the door and avoiding Rambo’s gaze altogether, she slid her phone out of her pocket and navigated quickly to the screen shot she’d taken of Marshall’s Facebook post. His picture laughed out at her from the screen and her breath caught. He was so damn…charismatic.

No wonder three women had agreed to be Mrs. Marshall Dyson.

And it wasn’t anything to do with his physical attributes. If he’d just been hot, she could have chalked it up to animal attraction and walked away. The truth was someone with her body and looks could have her pick of hot men who always vied for her attention.

But she wanted more.

Looks and physical attraction weren’t everything. They faded and changed—as would hers—and were, too often, a means of disguise for men whose intentions sucked. Who only cared about the physical and not other, more important things.

Things she admired in Marshall.

Like the easy way he laughed and the protective way he held Thumper and how he got along with people and rabbits and how his manhood wasn’t threatened by a gay man finding him attractive.

Like his sense of humor and his willingness to get involved, his quick intelligence and his complete lack of douchery when it came to her running the show and calling the shots on his island.

Both with the bunnies and with that stupid contract.

There was something exceedingly sexy about a man so utterly secure in his masculinity. A man who could fly a woman to heaven without hope or expectation of a quid pro quo. Who went down without expecting a medal, a standing ovation, or a mariachi band.

A man who looked at her like she had more to offer than tits and ass. A man who valued and appreciated what she had between her ears as much as what was between her legs.

And if Rick hadn’t done such a number on her head and her heart wasn’t a big mushy bruise inside her chest, she could probably have fallen for Marshall. But she was too gun-shy and Marshall’s track record sucked.

Gus ran a finger down the column of his throat. God…she’d wanted to press her nose to the hard ridge of his trachea earlier. She’d wanted to lick her tongue straight up.

Actually, she wanted to lick him all over.

Then snuggle up with him in bed afterward and talk to him for hours just to hear the low rumble of his voice.

Rambo, who’d been hopping around her feet, looked at her with judgment in his eyes. “I know, I know,” Gus murmured. “I’ll delete it. Soon.”

The door opened abruptly and Rambo scurried under the bed as Gus launched to her feet like she’d been hit with a cattle prod. Her pulse rocketing, she turned to glare at Marshall, dropping her cell phone on the bed as if it had suddenly grown scalding hot.

It looked guilty as fuck. Like she’d been caught looking at naked men by her mother.

Which wasn’t that far from the truth…