SmokingHot

by Anne Marsh

  “You’ve got incoming,” he growled, dropping a knee on the bed. The mattress squeaked and gave beneath his weight.

  “Oooh. Sexy talk.” She scooted over, making room for him. It was his bed after all.

  He snaked an arm around her waist, dropped and rolled. She ended up sprawled on top and, who would have thought? They almost fit on his bed. Mostly. Enough. Her legs hugged his hips as she braced her hands on his shoulders.

  So good. She pressed closer, wanting him everywhere at once and he obliged,

  his hands moving over her, rough-gentle as he kissed her. Not enough, she decided, leaning down into his kiss. Their tongues stroked, tangled. She could have kissed him for hours and yet she also wanted to get to the really good parts.

  The really, really good parts.

  She slid her hand down those washboard abs of his, drinking in the sudden tension in his body. Wrapping her palm around him, she fisted him. Slick and hard, he strained against her fingers. She rubbed the tip where he was silky smooth, then dragged her palm down again.

  His fingers were on the move as well, parting her where she was slick and wet for him in a sweet invasion. She tightened her legs around his hips, her heels digging in as they touched and teased.

  He rolled her beneath him, breaking away briefly to yank open the bedside table drawer.

  “Condom,” he managed.

  Not necessary. “I’m on the Nuvaring.”

  He hesitated. “You sure? I’ve always been careful but—”

  Her little burst of happiness had nothing to do with the sex, not really. “We’re good.” She cupped his ass with her hands, urging him forward.

  His dark eyes watched her, assessing. He didn’t move, but the tip of him teased her entrance. “If you’re sure.”

  “I am.” And then some, she thought, right before he slid deep and sure inside her, banishing rational thought. She pushed up and he met her, more than halfway. They were on the same wavelength, just this once. She had no idea if this happy state of agreement would last, or if they’d get out of bed—because, at some point, that had to happen—and then they’d go back to fighting for control of their relationship but right now... right now, they were perfect.

  Together.

  Then she lost her train of thought again, got lost in the in and out, the delicious friction of Tye moving in her and on her.

  “You’re a shrieker,” he said long minutes later and the satisfaction filling his voice had her slapping at his shoulders.

  “Shut up. Move more,” she groaned—or possibly yelled—and then, sure enough, he did something that felt impossibly good and she was yelling his name as he took them both over the edge.

  ***

  Tye was fairly certain they’d rocked the camper.

  Literally.

  He collapsed on the bed, rolling onto his back and pulling Katie against his chest. She grunted, but came sliding over his skin. Boneless, he decided, knowing he probably had a big, sappy grin stretching his face. He slanted a glance down at Katie. Her eyes were closed, but she wore a matching grin. Mission accomplished.

  Outside, someone slapped the side of the camper and hollered a cheerful admonishment. Tye was fairly certain the words included lucky and dog. That was the truth, and the guys outside didn’t even know who he had in here.

  “Were we that loud?” Katie didn’t move.

  He considered lying to her, but she’d figure it out the minute she left the camper and half the jump team was staring at her. “Yeah. You were.”

  “All your fault,” she mumbled and the grin on his face got wider.

  “You could probably knock that ménage off your list now,” he whispered into her ear. “I think that was a volunteer.”

  She opened her eyes and grinned at him. “I’ve got my hands pretty full.”

  “Maybe you’d like to try again,” he suggested. “In French this time. Just so we can check something off the bucket list.”

  “Oui,” she said and that was all he needed to hear.

  Chapter Ten

  The next few weeks, Tye came and went, heading out on his smoke jumping missions or training missions. The practice wasn’t the problem; it was the real deal that had her chewing her fingernails to the quick. When the plane took off on those days, Tye’s jump and the lightning storms were the icing on the cake. She knew from listening to Kade that what seemed like a simple, no-bad-news strike could actually be the start of a killer fire. A few sparks smoldered in an old tree and then—poof—seemingly out of nowhere, dry wood exploded into fire.

  On high alert, the spotters in the national parks watched for those first betraying twists of smoke on the horizon. Catch the baby fire soon enough and a hotshot team might have time, if they got in there fast, to knock down the fire before it grew out of control. If it was too late, if the fire was too remote or too out of control, Tye’s team went. The boys in the plane got there faster.

  She levered up on an elbow and stared at Tye, lying on his stomach, face buried in his arm. He’d slipped into her room late last night. She’d given him a key after a thumbs-up from Laura. After two days out in the field, he still smelled faintly of smoke with a hint of pine and fresh air, although his hair was damp from a recent shower. If he were anything like Kade, he’d sleep for a month of Sundays.

  Don’t think about Kade. Not here. She ran a hand lightly down Tye’s back, savoring the hard press of muscles, the heat of him beneath the cotton T-shirt. Kade had been her friend with benefits and a fiancé of convenience. If what she’d felt for him hadn’t been a passion worthy of romance novel territory, the feelings had still been something special. She could have happily spent the rest of her life with him if he hadn’t decided it was time for them both to move on and find something more.

  Her something more snored softly in her bed.

  Tye Callahan.

  Tye was hers temporarily, no more permanent or real, relationship-wise, than Kade had been. She was fairly certain they were friends too. She liked him.

  Too much.

  He wasn’t a keeper and he wouldn’t be sticking around in Strong much past the end of fire season. She knew how the jump team worked. The Donovan brothers might have taken up permanent residence in Strong at the end of last summer, but that had been part miracle, part accident. Those bad boys of summer had fallen in love, met their match in three strong women, and the rest was history. They’d chosen to make their firefighting lifestyle work.

  Tye hadn’t. Heck, she wasn’t even sure he realized that there was a choice waiting to be made. He’d be like the rest of the guys on the Donovan team, moving on when the summer wrapped up and the fires died down. The other jumpers would fan out, working various part-time gigs or enjoying the downtime, while Tye would... well, she didn’t know what he’d do, but her money was on re-upping. Will had mentioned to Abbie—who had oh-so-conveniently let it drop, a concerned look in her eyes—that Jack Donovan had offered to hire Tye on permanently. And Tye had turned the job down.

  So that was that. He had no intention of sticking. He shifted in the bed, dragging the pillow over his head. He was also definitely hunkered down for the next couple of hours. Since there was no getting back to sleep now, she got out of bed and padded across the floor to her desk by the window. Sketches of shoes covered the surface. Yay for shoes and having a secret, guilty passion that didn’t involve the man on the bed.

  ***

  Tye swam up through layers of sleep. His muscles protested as he stretched, because forty-eight hours in the field had done a number on him. His eyes felt gritty, a sure sign his body wanted more sleep. Hell. He tightened his fingers on the pillow he’d apparently decided to use as a sunshield. Cracked an eye and got a full on view of white cotton with girl eyelet trim. Yeah. He wasn’t in his bed.

  He was in Katie’s.

  He patted a hand around the bed, but, nope, she was unaccounted for. The sheets on her side were empty—and cool. She’d been up for some time. Wha
t kind of a boyfriend did that make him? And wait, when had this become dating? They had a shared interest (thank you bucket list). And they had sex (an even better shared interest from his point of view). It wasn’t anything more than that. Couldn’t be. Sure, he’d thought about staying put in Strong. He didn’t have to re-up with Uncle Sam. He’d done three tours of duty after and, as a Navy SEAL, he made a difference. Or, he had.

  He’d let his team down. He hadn’t had Kade’s back that night in Khost and, as a result, Kade hadn’t gotten to come home. Kade was dead, the kind of screw-up Tye couldn’t fix. Ever.

  He knocked the pillow back and… bingo.

  Katie perched on a stool by her desk, working intently on something. She muttered under her breath as she tilted the form and, he grinned, those curse words sure didn’t sound like French to him. He’d tease her about that later.

  She’d piled her hair up on top of her head in one of those gravity- and logic-defying messy up-dos women liked. He liked it too. Her soft curls were pretty, but the style also exposed the curve of her neck as she bent over her desk. Huh. She was working on a shoe.

  She’d told him she made shoes, but he hadn’t grasped exactly what that meant. The smell of leather and glue floated his way, almost as familiar as the look of intense concentration on her face as she stacked small circles of wood together. She got that same little crinkle between her eyes right before she came. He didn’t know the first thing about shoes—and, really, if he was honest, he didn’t know anything—but the pair she was working on were beautiful.

  Abso-fucking-lutely beautiful.

  She was soft. Not in a bad way, it was just that—life hadn’t given her hard edges, hadn’t forced her to suit up in emotional armor. He touched her and she gave. Jesus. He was clearly no fucking poet, but he knew one thing. He liked Katie Lawson.

  Far too much.

  He also liked—loved—having sex with her.

  He sat up in the bed, silently shoving the sheet back. Lost in her own world, she didn’t notice the movement behind her. Plus, Uncle Sam had taught him a thing or two about stealth movements. He went in fast and silent. Waited until she set the baby shoe down—he wasn’t stupid enough to mess up her work—and then slid onto the stool behind her, wrapping his arms around her.

  He leaned in to examine the shoe. “You’re good.”

  ***

  The hard, male presence behind her was a surprise, but a good one. Lost in her work, she hadn’t seen him coming, but he felt right. She leaned back into him, tipping her head up so she could see his face.

  “I know.”

  The words sounded complacent but it was... true. She made beautiful shoes.

  “What do you do with them?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  “Nothing.” She shrugged. “Sometimes, I wear them.”

  When she looked at the shoe taking shape on her desk, her heart squeezed. The shoe was gorgeous, a sunshine-yellow pump with black laces and a kitten heel that made her want to smile just looking at all that happy color. Never mind that she had no place to wear it, no one to share it with. Laura shared Tye’s obsession with practical footwear, but Abbie was always good for a raid on the Macy’s shoe department. Katie had made the most delicious pair of ballet flats to go with Abbie’s wedding dress, slippers that looked like flower petals—white daisies with diamante centers and a small blue ribbon on the heel for something blue—wrapping around her friend’s arches.

  “Nothing?” Tye plucked the shoe out of her fingers.

  “Hey—” She reached, but he held the shoe just out of her reach. “Don’t mess up my heel.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said solemnly. “So you’re not planning on doing anything with this shoe?”

  She twisted on the stool, trying to see his face. “No. Of course not. It’s just for fun.”

  “There’s no of course about it. A shoe like this deserves a future.” He grinned down at her.

  “It’s just a shoe.” It killed her a little bit to say that, but it was the truth. The shoe was a shoe, made for standing on, for tramping here and there. Or, she eyed the delicate heel critically, for waltzing around a ballroom, conquering a boardroom, or resting its deceptively strong and very graceful self on a manly heart somewhere. Or not. Because who was she kidding? None of those things had ever happened to her, regardless of what she had on her feet.

  Tye set the shoe back on her desk and wrapped his arms around her.

  “I hate to disagree,” he said softly and she bit back a snort. Tye loved disagreeing. Especially with her. “That’s not just a shoe. It’s—”

  “What?” she prompted. How far would he take this? “Are you volunteering to be my fit model and try it on?”

  “As if. That’s a damned pretty shoe. It’s art.”

  “Shoes aren’t art.”

  “Why not?” He nuzzled the side of her neck.

  “Have you ever seen a shoe in an art gallery?” Tye’s kisses made logical arguments difficult, she thought muzzily.

  His lips left her skin—darn it—and he nodded at her shoe. “Have you tried? Evan’s fiancée runs that gallery here in town. You should ask her.”

  God. She was in trouble here. This thing she felt was so much more than attraction or even liking. Nope. Tye might be big and gruff on the outside, but he was marshmallow sweet on the inside. He said the nicest things without even realizing it, because that was just the way he was made. She had a problem. He fixed it. Things were simple in Tye’s world.

  She was the one who made them complicated.

  She had a bucket list to knock off, so the hot sex was simply an added bonus. Unfortunately, while her head was on board with that sentiment, her heart was making plans of its own.

  “Katie?” Tye prompted when she didn’t answer. “You should try it. Do something for you.”

  Yep. Her heart was headed straight into the danger zone.

  “I—” She didn’t know what to say.

  “Just show her the shoes,” he suggested. “Let her know you’d be open to exhibiting.”

  “Let me show you what I’d be open to,” she said throatily and pointed towards the bed.

  ***

  Katie had no idea how she’d ended up standing on the sidewalk in front of Faye Duncan’s art gallery, clutching a banker’s box of shoes. She needed her head examined. Or an escape hatch.

  Merde.

  She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The gallery was a welcome cool spot, the air conditioning refreshing after the warmth outside. Natural light flooded the wide, open space, and Faye clearly liked her firefighters. Photographs of the firehouse and the jump team were everywhere Katie looked, entire walls of gorgeous, hard-bodied men. Faye had selected fun scenes, like the guys hosing down the fire trucks, but added darker pictures too. In one shot, the guys were headed back from the field, faces ash-streaked and grim.

  “They lost that one.” Faye came up behind her. “The fire gobbled up fifteen-thousand acres and thirty homes. It came down out of the hills and devoured a housing development.”

  Faye Duncan was in her middle twenties and radiated happiness and laughter. Being around her was almost enough to counteract the butterflies in Katie’s stomach. Of average height, with an expensive-but-growing-out shoulder-length haircut, she wore a filmy pink skirt and a white tank. She also needed a shoe intervention, because she sported a pair of dusty white rubber flip-flops.

  Poor shoe choices aside, Faye was a talented photographer. The firehouse shots were easy money to shoot, but the fire scene? She had a hard time imagining the sprite-like woman standing out there surrounded by smoke and flames. And yet that was clearly what Faye had done, gone out into the thick of the disaster to capture the images.

  She and Faye were acquaintances. They’d done the potluck and Sunday brunch thing, plus the other woman was a frequent visitor at the fire camp because her fiancé had grown up here in Strong. None of that made pitching a new exhibit any
easier. Her shoes couldn’t compete with the firefighters in the smoking hot department.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said. Faint praise, but she didn’t know what to say. Faye had captured the jump team perfectly. Serious, playful, determined.

  Faye grinned and a big-ass diamond ring winked on her left hand as she gestured towards the photos. “In more ways than one. God was kind to Strong. I’d love to shoot your guy.”

  “Kade would—”

  “Not Kade.” Faye’s face softened. “Tye. Your new guy, right?”

  Right. She hesitated, not sure what to say.

  “Shoot.” Faye made a face. “Did I put my foot in it? I just assumed you guys were together.”

  “Why?” she asked, curious. What had Faye seen?

  “You just look—” Faye smiled. “Like you belong together. The way he touches you, looks at you. There’s a connection there. Plus, he’s gorgeous and Kade wouldn’t want you to sit on the dating sidelines for the rest of your life. So why would you look and not touch?”

  “Yes,” she said and it sounded good. So she said it again. “Yes, he’s mine. But I don’t think I can loan him to you for a photo shoot.”

  Just the thought of Tye stripping down and facing Faye’s lens had her heating up—and wanting to smile at the same time. Tye was intensely private. Starring front and center in a gallery exhibit would be hell for him.

  “Bummer.” Faye bumped her shoulder gently. “Work on him for me, okay?”

  She sucked up her admittedly low supply of courage. “I had a question for you.”

  “Shoot.” Faye grinned at her. “I’m all ears.”

  This was crazy.

  Crazy stupid, crazy good, somewhere in between... she didn’t know which.

  “I design shoes and I was wondering if you’d consider exhibiting some of my work.” The words came out too fast and she ran out of breath at the end, but the words were out.

  Faye’s eyes dipped to the box Katie clutched. “Did you bring show-and-tell? Fantastic,” she added when Katie nodded.