Heart of the Storm (Triple Diamond Book 4)

by Gemma Snow

  “I want you.” It was the only thing that she could manage, the only truth that mattered in those moments, and she focused on it, on getting the rest of their clothing off so that he could fill her body like his eyes and lips kept promising he was going to do.

  But still, Sawyer kept his slow, relentlessly controlled pace and it was almost something to marvel at, that this hulking, handsome brute of a man was so very gentle and very soft, and Hollie was sure there was something behind it, the calming of the beast, but she was far too wrapped up in wanting more of his touch to dive into psych 101 at the moment.

  “Please, Sawyer.”

  It must have been the please that did it, because his movements quickened and he started on the button of her jeans, then made quick work of the zipper and pulling her pants and panties down her legs, pausing to squeeze her ass in a rough, delicious movement that made Hollie suck in a breath. She slipped out of her boots and Sawyer pulled her jeans and socks off until she stood in the Wolf Creek Firehouse bunker wearing only her bra.

  And the heat of Sawyer’s gaze upon her.

  He placed one thick hand on the wall above her head and leaned down to growl in her ear.

  “I want to take you slow and long,” he said. “But fuck, if I can’t wait to have you, Hollie.”

  Her chest was rising and falling rapidly now and Hollie could barely control her thoughts, let alone her actions.

  “Have me,” she said, “God, please have me.”

  He unzipped his own jeans and let them fall to the floor then quickly pulled his thick, hard cock free of his briefs. God, he was big. The other night he had been big in her mouth, but now Hollie ached for him to fill her, to stretch her body like she had never felt before.

  He pulled a condom from his back pocket and she was so relieved that he’d thought to prepare that she didn’t even comment on his expectation of needing one at hand. In another moment, his throbbing cock was sheathed and he was at her entrance, pressing that hardness into her wet heat and making Hollie suck in a breath. She wanted him. God, she wanted him with the kind of intensity she barely understood. She couldn’t think, but she could act and she moved on instinct to wrap her legs around him so it was just Sawyer’s powerful muscles holding her against the wall. Then slowly—God, it felt so fucking slow—he began to lower her down onto his cock.

  Hollie sucked in a tight breath. He was big and beautiful and each inch filled her more, forced her body to blissfully accommodate his size. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a blistering kiss, loving the scrape of his beard against her skin and each extra inch he plunged into her.

  “Fuck, Hol.” His voice was practically animalistic. “You feel so fucking good, baby.” She couldn’t think to respond, merely wrapped his long hair in her hand and pulled, scraping her nails up and down his neck, demanding and promising without words.

  He sank the last bit of himself into her and Hollie bit down on his neck to keep from screaming loud enough for the whole town to hear. Distantly, she remembered that they were in an open bunker, that his team could come back at any moment and get quite the show, but she didn’t actually care. All she cared about was the slide of his cock in and out of her pussy, how safe she felt with his body wrapped around hers, the delicious press of his strong, muscled legs against her ass as he supported and filled her.

  Sawyer had always supported her. He had been a place she could turn to growing up when no one else would understand. Cade had been her coming home. Sawyer had been her quest for adventure. The two of them, separately but at the same time, had been all she had needed to realize her true self, and she was finding this out far, far too late.

  Or rather, she was giving in to it far too late, with every rough thrust and gentle slide, and her pulse began to rachet up, especially when he brought one hand down to where their bodies connected and stroked her clit, making her arch up into him and allowing his cock even deeper into her pussy.

  “Sawyer.” She managed to moan his name, guttural and unrecognizable as her own voice.

  “That’s right, baby,” he murmured. “Come for me, Hollie. Come all over my cock. I wanna feel your pussy tighten around me.” He had every capacity to be gentle, just as he had every capacity to be rough and domineering, and Hollie couldn’t say for certain which version she liked more.

  Then he pinched her clit.

  She hadn’t been expecting it and the explosion of pain and pleasure sent her careening toward the edge of the cliff, falling hard and fast over the side into an abyss of beautiful, delicious sensation. She rocked against him hard, once, twice, once more, riding out the releases until her breath was coming in rough pants and her whole body was alive with electricity and need.

  “Again, Hollie.”

  Hollie barely registered the words, but after a moment she looked up at him, up at those dark, rough eyes promising oh so much more pleasure if she could just trust him. Her instinct kicked in and she wrapped him back up in her arms and pulled him as close to her body as she could, scraping his bare skin with her nails, pulling his hair in rough tugs and demanding with everything she had that he come with her this time, that he fall right off the edge by her side into shared wildness and freedom.

  Sawyer was beginning to lose control too. She could feel it, so took the lead, giving as much to Sawyer as he gave to her, until her own release seemed impossible to ignore and she felt the intensity taking over her body until one, two, three more thrusts and she was losing the ground beneath her and the wall against her back, until she was releasing a string of curses and praises and his name. He surged and pumped hard, giving over to her as she had done to him until they were both riding their waves of beautiful, overwhelming pleasure.

  Slowly, Sawyer released her legs and let her back down to the ground. He pulled the condom off and disappeared for a moment, returned with a soft, warm cloth which he used to gently clean her skin. It was almost difficult to reconcile this enormous, powerful, fearless man with such kind and gentle caresses, but there something so innate about it, as if the whole universe came together when he brushed her skin with featherlight touches.

  After all they had just shared, after all the wounds they’d opened upon her arrival home and her arrival at the fire station, Hollie didn’t like the silence stretching between them. She wanted more, wanted more of the conversation—damning as it had been for her—wanted more of the confessions and the intimacy they had once shared. She wanted it all back.

  But not just with Sawyer.

  Which left her in exactly the same place she had been the day she’d packed up and left Wolf Creek on the night of their graduation.

  “Sawyer,” she said quietly. He looked up and met her gaze and goodness, those dark green eyes were expressive and beautiful—even more so than she had remembered them to be. “Is there ever a chance you’ll forgive me for leaving?” Hollie hadn’t realized that was the question she was planning on asking until it was out of her mouth, but here she was and there was no going back.

  Sawyer’s expression was sad and Hollie knew she would do just about anything to make him smile, to put that rough, happy grin back on his face, rare as it was. He was a brute on the outside, there was no denying that, a self-built shell to keep out so much of what life had already thrown at him, but he had let her in once—and it gave her hope.

  “You hurt me, Hollie,” he said. “Not by leaving. I wish you hadn’t left, but I know you and I know that you had to go. But come on.” He shook his head and those soft, beautiful red curls practically danced across his shoulders. “You didn’t say a word. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me anything before you left. What was I supposed to think?”

  “I…I wouldn’t have gone,” she said, in a tone so low it could only be called a confession. “If I had stayed and told either of you that I was leaving…I wouldn’t have left.”

  Sawyer did smile this time, but it almost broke her heart.

  “What would have been so awful about that?”r />
  Chapter Twelve

  There was absolutely no denying that Cam and Savannah were making a concerted effort not to look at each other. Hollie knew that because she was watching the two of them while she made her own concerted effort not to look at either Cade or Sawyer, or even Lily or Maddy Hollis, since both women seemed to have her number and she was pretty sure they had filled in all the missing pieces, which really managed to freak her out.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t so much that they knew that was making Hollie freak out. It was that there was anything to know. She had been assigned to do a job in this ridiculous memory box of a town and all she had managed was the one thing she had promised herself she wouldn’t. Rather, the two things.

  But it wasn’t just about sex. It hadn’t been just about sex the night she had fled town and it certainly wasn’t just about sex now. Hell, it would have been so much easier if it were just about sex, and not the way Cade and Sawyer both made her feel like she was living in high definition, like she was taking the greatest adventure of her life but a comfy, cozy home would always be warm and waiting for her when she returned. And what the hell and damnation was she supposed to do about that? Because her fear of falling for both these men had driven her away in the first place and she had come back to find that there was a pretty obvious reason she hadn’t found love in the years since.

  Love.

  No one was talking about love.

  “All I’m saying, Chief, is that if your men had been on the ground…”

  She had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t even realized Cade and Sawyer were bickering at the far end of the table and, by the looks of it, things were intensifying by the moment. Undoubtedly, her presence and subsequent behavior here had only made the relationship between the two men all more the challenging.

  “Aye.” This from Christian, who had just walked through the door with Ryder on his heels. “I don’t give a shit if you’re the sheriff, fire captain or the Queen of England,” he said. “We have an emergency situation about to bite us in the ass and if you two can’t get your shit together, we’ll figure it out without you.”

  It was the most amount of words she’d heard Christian Harlow say in maybe ever, but Hollie had to give him credit for using them when it mattered.

  “Thank you, Christian,” she said, standing up at the head of the table and walking to the front of the room. “Now, wind speeds are expected to increase tonight, so we can anticipate losing more trees and pretty much assume the power will be out for the next week. The broadcasts have been effective, the town is stocked up on water and food, and we’ve shared our emergency preparations lists. So far, we’re not issuing a mandatory evacuation notice, but we’ve seen some movement near the bridge, so it looks like residents are leaving of their own accord. Revised maps show zones two, four and five are in the direct path of the flooding. Protecting the reservoir and keeping the bridge clear in those areas are our main focuses.”

  They finalized their plans, marking iPads and notebooks. The tone of the room grew more tense with every passing moment. Weather reports were often wrong—hell, if anyone knew that, it was Hollie. In her field, expecting something to be wrong came with the territory. But the storms had been coming harder and faster all week and there was little doubt in her mind or anyone else’s that whatever flooding was expected would arrive shortly.

  She chanced a look out of the window of the lounge at the Black Reef Mountains in the near distance. They were topped with white and great, dark stone and trees peeking out from snowcaps that were promising to melt and careen down the mountain in, supposedly, the next twelve to twenty-four hours.

  “Are your homes all secure for the storm?” she asked those at the table, glancing to Dec, Micah and Lily, Maddy, Camilla and finally, Cade and Sawyer, who, inexplicably, were still sitting next to each other, as if it were preferable to poke at each other rather than to remove themselves from the situation.

  “Cabin’s at the ridgeline,” Dec explained. “We’ll probably get tree damage, but we won’t get flooding.” As it was, he and Micah were two of the most capable survival experts in the country and she would likely need their advice before this was all over.

  “We’ve got the B&B boarded and the cabins secured,” Maddy said, “Yours and Savannah’s have both been sandbagged and I’ve placed emergency kits inside too.” She gave a slight smile. “Not that I’m expecting either of you are going to be resting anytime in the near future.”

  Hollie smiled in return. Maddy was the kind of person who’d just integrated herself into her life without the messy getting-to-know-you. In fact, Hollie felt a little as though she had known both Hollis sisters for years, which was particularly laughable, given that she’d hardly known anyone for years except for a handful of the people in this room.

  “Cam,” she asked, turning her attention back to the matter at hand, “is your house secured for flooding?”

  Camilla nodded. “We’ve got the sump pump in the yard and the windows covered.”

  Before she could get to either Cade or Sawyer, Cade spoke up.

  “Hollie, we’re all fine. You’ve prepared the whole town for a worst-case scenario and we’re ready because of you, okay?”

  God, but his voice made her feel like it was all going to be okay, like she didn’t have thousands of people relying on her to keep them safe, like so much couldn’t possibly go wrong. Cade had that uncanny ability to give her the strength she needed to not hold up the world all on her own, and it wasn’t just because he was a dominant, capable man. In fact, the dominance was a side effect of who he was at his core, rather than the other way around.

  Before she could respond, however, her phone went off, and Hollie excused herself and ducked outside to take Debra Lewitt’s call.

  “T-minus 12 hours,” Hollie said. “I’ve got sandbag barriers, sump pumps and evacuation plans ready to go.”

  “Good, Callihan,” Debra replied. “Not that I doubted your ability.” Hollie went off a quick rundown of the preparations and promised to be in touch when the flooding began, with regular updates on damage control and resources. With questions answered and plans finalized, Lewitt hung up and Hollie slid the phone into the pocket of her windbreaker.

  She glanced out to the mountains and spied a small bench at the edge of the path. A few more minutes in the cool quiet air might be what she needed to prepare her mind, body and soul for the day ahead. And it promised to be quite a day—or week—ahead of them.

  And yet, for all her professionalism and capability, for all that she loved her job and wanted to do the very best she could, there was that niggling sense of something unresolved, of incomplete business between her and Cade and Sawyer that Hollie couldn’t stop thinking about, and their behavior today had only increased her concern. The storms would come and they would go, and when the water receded, she would go too.

  Because she had to, right? Because she had to return to the life she had carved for herself, because there was nothing here for her in Wolf Creek, not in the long run.

  And yet, how could Hollie deny the beauty of the Black Reef Mountain Range stretching out before her? How could she pretend the fresh air didn’t call to something base and memorable, days spent by the lakes, nights under the stars, camping, hiking, climbing? These open woods and mountain ranges had raised her just as surely as her gram had, and there was something truly bittersweet about being back here.

  And the men who still called it home.

  She felt like a dog chasing her tail. This was the same conversation she’d had with herself years ago, as the truth of her feelings had become more dangerous and difficult to ignore. And she’d broken the one rule she had set out for herself upon returning to this town. But honestly, what had she expected? These things weren’t supposed to last.

  “Hollie…”

  She been so wrapped up in her own thoughts that Hollie hadn’t even realized Dec was sitting next to her until he gave her a shove with his elbow. He was just like
Wes in that, loving and affectionate and around when she needed him. Well, Wes hadn’t been around in a good long time, but it wasn’t as though Hollie had needed him…

  “You seemed distracted this morning,” he said, his voice dropping into a not-quite-whisper, even though they were quite alone on the mountain top outside of the dining hall and the wind was already starting to pick up. “Is everything okay?”

  Dec McCormick played a good game, he always had. He’d tried his charms on her a time or two, but though he was incredibly handsome, there had never been that spark. She was grateful for it. Not succumbing to Dec’s charms meant she had gotten to know the man underneath, and he was kind, open and willing to go to battle for those he loved.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hollie replied, because though he was a good man, she didn’t need to bring Dec or Micah or Lily or any of them into this complicated mess of things.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” he replied. “But since you weren’t distracted, perhaps you might have some insight into why the chief and the sheriff nearly came to blows this morning.”

  Hollie turned to him and raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m not certain I like your implication, Deckard,” she said. He shot her the same look Wes had a thousand times when she had called him Westland.

  “Fine then,” he replied. “I’ll be blunter. Those two have been sniping for years, but when you came to town, things got even worse.” The look on his face said he wasn’t asking questions he already knew the answers to. “You’ve been distracted, more so than I’ve ever seen you on a job, and you’re not making eye contact with anyone who might have some idea how you’re feeling.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in for a side hug.

  “Now, Hollie, I may not be a smart man…” She made to protest, but he continued, “but I have to say that seems rather foolish, considering there are plenty of folks in a twenty-foot radius who happen to have a good idea of what you’re going through and some concept of what to do next.”