Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
Posted to SmutLib 9/4/2026
Chapter 1
I still couldn’t believe the house was mine.
One bedroom, one bath, twenty-seven years old, and sitting under the southern flight path half a mile from the local regional airport, but it was mine. Paid for with the bulk of the money I’d managed to scrape together after five years of residency and the board exams I’d just crushed. Thrall and Khuntz Urology Center had offered me the associate position two months ago, which I had accepted.
In Ocala. Full circle.
Right back where I grew up.
I dropped my keys on the little table by the door and kicked off my shoes. The manicure still looked perfect—soft nude with a high shine. I’d treated myself. First real day that belonged only to me in years.
That was when I remembered the redweld expanding file folder sitting on the passenger seat. I’d almost forgotten. Someone had dropped it in the parking lot next to my Tesla.
Scratched to hell and gone, one corner dented hard. I’d tossed it in without thinking.
Going out to the driveway and retrieving it, I carried it out back to the patio with a glass of wine and sat down, intending to flip through it later.
The backyard was bigger than I’d expected. Privacy fenced, with the south wall adjoining a neighbor whom I still hadn’t met.
That was when I first saw him.
A massive black dog was methodically marking territory along the base of my fence, dousing every post like he owned the place.
In my yard. On my side of the fence.
Shoulder easily to my waist if I’d been standing next to him. Paws the size of coffee saucers. Short, dense coat. Stub of a tail that wagged once, slow and deliberate, when he finished and looked up at me.
My heart slammed so hard I felt it in my throat.
He held my eyes for what felt like ten full seconds. Then he woofed, deep, resonant, almost conversational, but evoking a primal response I didn’t want to name. Then he shouldered two loose planks aside like they were nothing, and disappeared into the yard next door.
I stood there with the wine glass trembling in my hand, heat flooding places that hadn’t known heat in five years. Something familiar and unthinkable had moved through me when that sound hit my chest. I shoved it down hard, went inside, and poured a second glass.