Fire Me Up

by Kimberly Kincaid

“Lonnie sent someone to the bar tonight.”

  “What?” Teagan dropped the plate back to the pine tabletop with a graceless clunk, fear catapulting through her veins. “Oh my God, we have to tell Brennan. He and Jesse—”

  “I told Jesse before we left, and he called your father to make sure he was safe. But it doesn’t matter. The guy didn’t come in to start any trouble. Not tonight, anyway.”

  Anger tangled with the fear in Teagan’s belly, pushing hard at her seams. “I don’t understand. Why would Lonnie send someone, then?”

  “For me.”

  Oh God. “But Lonnie doesn’t know who you are.”

  Adrian exhaled, his jaw tightening as if his words were strung with shards of glass. “He does now. And my parole officer threatened Carly. It’s not going to take much for Big Ed to put two and two together if any of this goes south.”

  “It won’t,” Teagan said, the promise welling all the way up from her toes. “We’re going to pay Lonnie back the fifteen thousand and make him go away, just like you said. I’m not going to let that knuckle-dragging bag of filth touch my father, and I’m sure as hell not going to let him touch you, either.”

  Adrian hesitated. “You don’t know what you’re up against, Red. If you don’t come up with that money—”

  “No.” She leaned forward, her fingers impulsive on Adrian’s mouth. “I will come up with the money. I said I would take care of this, and I meant it. I don’t care what it takes.”

  For a second, Adrian moved nothing but his eyes, and oh God, they were so full of churning emotions that Teagan felt more of his stare than she saw. But then he reached up, clasping his strong, calloused hand around her fingers and said, “Did you just shush me so you could say your piece?”

  Powerless against the instinctive, unbidden smile springing to her lips, she simply nodded. “I guess I did.”

  “Mmm.” Adrian pulled her in close, surrounding her with the spicy, forbidden scent of cinnamon. “I suppose I had that coming.”

  “I know what’s on the line for you, Adrian.” Her chest constricted over all the emotions flying around her rib cage, but she forced herself to give them a voice. Money or no money, he could still lose everything by staying to help her at the Double Shot, especially if Lonnie knew he was on parole. “I meant what I said about paying Lonnie back. But if you need to leave now, I understand.”

  Every muscle in his body went rigid under her hands, and he pulled back to look at her. “I can’t . . . I mean, I don’t . . .” Adrian broke off with a low oath, and Teagan parked herself in the chair across from him.

  “It’s okay,” she said, although she’d never felt further from the word in her life. “I can take care of the restaurant.”

  “It’s not about the restaurant.” Adrian looked down at the plate in front of him, pulling in a breath before returning his gaze to her face. “Five years ago, I lost everything I had on an impulsive mistake. I can’t do that again.”

  Teagan’s head snapped up. “When you went to jail.”

  He nodded, his voice sinking to match the quiet of her cozy kitchen. “It started before that, but yes. About a year after I finished culinary school, my nonna had a stroke. One minute, we were standing in the kitchen making amaretti, the next, she’d collapsed in front of the oven.”

  The memory of her father getting dizzy behind the bar only a few weeks ago echoed through Teagan’s mind, and it tore at her heart to think of Adrian going through something so much worse. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “I am, too,” he said, raw honesty filling the words. “She was conscious when I called nine-one-one, but kind of altered. She just kept saying I’d find where I belonged, and that I needed to live my life, really live it, with no regrets. I think she knew something was really wrong, and I didn’t want her to get worked up, so I swore to her that I would.”

  “I’m sure she felt comforted that you were there with her, Adrian.”

  His stare glittered, darkening under the soft kitchen light cutting through the night shadows. “By the time the paramedics got there, she’d lost consciousness. She never woke up after that, and she died twenty minutes later. Best I can tell, that promise was the last thing she ever heard.”

  Tears shot to Teagan’s eyes, and even though she fought them with every tool in the shed, she knew it was a losing battle.

  Adrian drew a rough inhale, but continued, as if the story had been shaken up and uncorked and needed a place to go. “After that, I threw myself into work. The kitchen was where I belonged, and I’d sworn to my nonna that I’d be there a hundred percent, with no regrets. Carly and I had been close in culinary school, and she got a gig as a sous-chef at this place in the city. The owner brought me on as a line cook, mostly for grunt work, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be around the food. I wanted to be where I belonged.”

  “But something happened.” Teagan’s reply was a statement, and Adrian confirmed the words with a tight nod.

  “Working in a professional kitchen, especially one in a cutthroat city like New York, doesn’t bring a whole lot of sanity. The work’s exhausting, the schedule’s worse, and days off are about as foreign as little green men. Carly was married to her first husband by then, and it had only been a few months since my nonna had passed. I was cool being in the kitchen, but in the odd hours I wasn’t . . .”

  “You were lonely,” Teagan finished, knowing all too well how those odd hours felt. How many nights had she curled up after finishing a tour at the station or a shift at the Double Shot, pretending the ache in her chest was heartburn and not heartache?

  “Yeah.” Adrian shifted, his chair scraping against the hardwood floor. “I started seeing another line cook, and for a while, everything was great. Carly got promoted and made me her sous-chef, and even though I fell for Becca pretty fast, I thought I’d found someone who really got me outside of the kitchen. It was impulsive, but I loved her. For that little scrap of time, I thought everything was great.”

  “You thought,” Teagan repeated, her heart starting to patter with foreboding.

  “Becca was married.”

  Teagan jerked back in shock, her shoulders clapping against the wooden backrest of her chair. “Married?”

  “To a cop,” Adrian added, tugging a hand through his hair. “She told me they were separated and getting divorced, but she conveniently forgot to tell him that. He found out we’d been having an affair, and they had a huge argument.”

  Teagan could barely eke out a nod over the surprise thrumming through her, but he continued to pour the story out.

  “Becca came to the restaurant, shaken and crying. She said her husband had hit her, and I just snapped. I tore out of the restaurant in the middle of a shift without thinking, and I didn’t stop until I’d found the guy and beaten the hell out of him.”

  “It sounds like he deserved it,” Teagan managed, but Adrian cut the sentiment short.

  “He might’ve, if he’d actually laid a finger on her.”

  Anger bloomed, fresh and hot in Teagan’s veins. “She lied to you?”

  “Of course, I didn’t find out until after I’d already been peeled off her husband by three very pissed-off cops, one of whom just happened to be all buddy-buddy with the guy and all of whom decided my shoulder would look nicer outside the socket than in.”

  “Oh God, your scar tissue.” She’d assumed his previous injury had been accidental. But now the whole thing made perfect sense.

  Perfect, heartbreaking, horrible sense.

  Adrian nodded. “Becca changed her story to save face with her husband, tried to make it look like I was unhinged and just attacked the guy, and with the other cops’ statements, the DA bought it without a second thought. Becca and her husband reconciled, and they both testified that I’d assaulted him without provocation.”

  Teagan’s mind spun on its axis, and her knowledge of the system caught up with Adrian’s story in a gut-sinking rush. “Assaulting a police officer is a B felony.” God, no
wonder he’d done time on a first offense.

  “All it took was one good, impulsive shove out of line, and I lost everything. Becca’s husband’s attorney threw the book at me, and the judge let it stick. The only thing that saved me from doing more time was Carly’s testimony, both at my trial and when I made parole.”

  “She sounds like a good friend. One who believes in you,” Teagan said.

  “That’s just the point,” he shot back. “The minute I got sprung from Rikers, I swore I’d live up to what she’d said, that I’d do right by her word and what my nonna wanted for me. I swore I’d never lose everything on a crazy, impulsive risk again, not for anything.”

  Adrian broke off, his voice turning to gravel and his stare to pure steel. “All I’ve wanted for the last five years was to keep my head down and live my life in the kitchen where I belong. But then I wrecked my bike, and I spent all this time with you, and I didn’t mean to, but . . . damn it, I just . . . I can’t . . .”

  Teagan’s heart slammed behind her breastbone. “You can’t stay.”

  “No. Don’t you get it? I can’t not stay.” The words burst from Adrian’s mouth, knocking the breath straight out of her lungs. “As insane as it sounds with everything tumbling down around me right now, being with you is the only thing that makes me feel like I’m really living with no regrets. The risk, the food, none of it matters. There’s only you. You’re the only thing that makes sense.”

  “But . . . you just said—”

  He halted her words with a slash of his hand. “I know what I said, but I also know what I feel. It would be bullshit for me to tell you that I have all the answers. Hell, I don’t have the first clue how to handle the mountain of risks outside that door. But it would be even bigger bullshit for me to tell you I want to do anything other than stay.”

  Adrian stood, laying waste to the space between them in a single, breath-stopping rush. His big, capable hand reached up to cup her face, a gentle brush of skin on skin, and his touch vibrated all the way through her.

  “Please, Red. I want you with no regrets. Let me stay.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Teagan arced up toward his body without hesitation, and Christ above, Adrian wanted nothing more than to drown in the absolute heat of her red, ripe mouth. Everything about her—from her sassy, dare me attitude to the quiet, understanding nature that had made her listen as he’d aired out every stitch of his dirty laundry—it was all so gorgeous and stubborn and just so fucking perfect, Adrian didn’t care what he was up against.

  The only risk that mattered was the risk of not being with this woman.

  “This is insane,” Teagan murmured, clutching the sleeves of his T-shirt with hot, needy fists, and he wrapped his unhurt arm around her back to lock them together from shoulder to hip.

  “I don’t care.” Adrian parted her lips with his own in one fluid stroke, stealing the deep-seated sigh coming up from her chest before breaking off to kiss the soft skin of her neck. “I meant everything I said. I want you. Just you.”

  “Oh God, I want you, too.” Teagan pulled back, her cheeks flushed with desire, and her liquid copper stare hit him right in the sternum.

  “I want you to stay.”

  Her mouth found his in a flawless combination of eager and sweet, and he dove in without thought. Tracing the extravagant curve of her lower lip with his tongue, Adrian tasted and teased, and although the dark impulse shooting through his blood screamed at him to rip Teagan’s clothes off without lingering pleasantries, the certainty filling his mind kept him steady.

  The more he kissed her, the more he wanted, to the point that his only option was to take Teagan so hot and slow, there’d be nothing left of him when they were done.

  “Adrian, please.” Her husky, sex-soaked whisper bordered on begging, and the sound shot straight to his cock. “Take me to bed.”

  “No.” He cupped the hollow where her neck dipped into her shoulder blades, breathing in the combination of rosemary and total want pouring off her skin. She froze in his grasp, but before she could put the nonverbal protest to words, he slanted his mouth over her ear.

  “I belong in the kitchen, remember?”

  Teagan’s sharp inhale acquiesced as Adrian slid his tongue from her ear to her collarbone, feathering his lips over the delicate yet pounding pulse point at the base of her throat. Lowering his hand to the back of her rib cage, he swung her from the café table to the narrow pantry door, giving in to the hurry-up urge just once as he pressed her up against the wooden surface with an agonizing thrust of his hips.

  Teagan’s stare glittered with need, pinning him into place while she slid her hand up the length of his thigh, and the suggestive move deleted once from his vocabulary.

  “God, you are so hot right now.” Adrian rocked against the tight cradle of her hips, his knees nearly giving out at the delicious friction of rough denim under her soft fingers.

  “You didn’t think I’d let you have all the fun, did you?” She made another up and down pass over his button fly, but his hand shot out to snap up her wrist and pin it directly over her head.

  “Yes.”

  With one deft scoop of his free fingers, Adrian hooked the hem of Teagan’s T-shirt and yanked it upward, exposing creamy skin bound by white lace. The blush that still covered her face trailed over the swell of her breasts, shading the tight buds of her nipples a dark, sexy-as-sin pink beneath the thin layer of material barely covering them.

  He wanted to taste her until she screamed.

  Angling himself against her for better access, Adrian lowered his face to the deep V between Teagan’s breasts, edging the lacy border of her bra with a sweep of his tongue. He nudged the fabric aside, tasting every inch of the smooth curve of her breast before closing his lips over her bare nipple with a groan.

  “Don’t stop.”

  Teagan’s voice broke from her throat on a tremble, her unencumbered hand knotting in his hair with just enough pressure to sting sweetly as she strained against his mouth. Powerless to do anything but oblige, Adrian dropped the hand over her head, removing both her T-shirt and the lacy fabric under it with brisk motions. He returned his attention to her now completely bare breasts, slipping his arm around Teagan’s back to splay his palm and fingers over the center line of her rib cage, guiding her right back to his hungry mouth. So slowly he thought it might kill him outright, Adrian drew her back to his greedy lips, swirling, sucking and tasting until he’d coaxed her into everything from a whisper to a scream.

  “Oh God,” Teagan said, the oath breaking over a cresting moan. “Don’t you dare . . . stop.”

  “That’s it,” he breathed, sending a heavy exhale over the damp peak of her nipple. “Let me take care of you. Come for me, Red.”

  He lowered his mouth back to her body, anchoring her to the door with his frame as he laved her harder and faster with his tongue. On a final, keening sigh, Teagan’s spine went bowstring taut, arching beneath his mouth as she shuddered out his name. Adrian scaled back his touch in slow sweeps, pressing soft kisses to the curve of her shoulder and dropping his arm around her waist to hold her close.

  “You are so beautiful. Christ, I can’t take my eyes off you.”

  But in an instant, she’d curled her fingertips over his biceps, gaining just enough momentum to switch their positions by swinging him against the pantry door.

  “Good. Then you can watch while I return the favor.”

  In the space of time it took Adrian to relearn how to breathe, Teagan had dropped to her knees, springing the top two buttons on his jeans with nimble fingers. A few flame-colored strands fell loose from her ponytail, framing her wicked smile as she peered up to meet his stare. Without breaking eye contact, she skimmed both hands up his legs, working the rest of the buttons on his jeans to free him from the constraints of the denim.

  “Wait,” Adrian warned, but his traitorous cock jerked at the enticing stroke of Teagan’s hands diving beneath the waistband of his boxer briefs, and
oh, hell, he was going to die from raw, hard want, right here in her kitchen.

  “Not this time.” Teagan lowered the black cotton and denim just enough to expose him from his hips to the tops of his thighs, and Adrian ground out one last-ditch effort at control.

  “You can’t . . . ah, God.”

  Every last one of his thoughts short-circuited and spun out as the movement of her hands was replaced by the mind-altering glide of her mouth.

  Caught in an erotic trance at the sight of Teagan kneeling between his thighs, Adrian sucked in a lungful of air that got exactly nowhere. With one hand pressed against his hip for leverage and the other wrapped firmly around his rock-hard erection, she turned the tables on him with one long slide of her tongue. The pure, wet heat of her mouth followed over and over again, and the flawless sensation coupled with the pressure from her hand had him fighting for control. Her fingers uncurled against the bare skin on his hip, guiding him into a rhythmic tilt against her mouth. On a groan, Adrian’s hand fluttered to the silky crown of her head, and the touch had her lifting her gaze to lock eyes with him without slowing her movements.

  She had to stop. Right. Now.

  Dropping to hook his arms beneath hers, Adrian pulled Teagan to her feet, righting his clothes with a well-placed yank before drawing her close.

  “You make me lose my mind,” he said, slanting his mouth over hers in a punishing kiss she returned with matching need.

  “Do you trust me?” Teagan murmured, trailing a line of barely there kisses over his jaw.

  “Yes.” His answer flew from his mouth on a breath of surprise, but it was the truth. “I trust you.”

  “Then go ahead and lose your mind. I promise I’ll take care of you.”

  She threaded her fingers through his to lead the way down the darkened stretch of hallway on the opposite side of the kitchen from the foyer, not stopping until they’d crossed the shadow-lined threshold of her bedroom. Just enough moonlight spilled past the curtains to reveal the curve of Teagan’s form as she pressed a kiss to his mouth. Adrian’s T-shirt rasped over her naked shoulders, and even though his need to feel her skin to skin bordered on desperate, he didn’t rush. Instead, he ran his fingers over Teagan’s body in slow strokes, tracing the length of her neck, memorizing the slope of her belly, drinking in the flare of her hips.