Tasting Fire

by Kelsey Browning

  “How can we possibly—”

  “Because the world doesn’t stop every time something is screwed up in life. If it did, we’d be at a permanent standstill.”

  “I’m not sure we can actually do anything else on my list.”

  “Haven’t you added to it?”

  “I’ve been a little busy and preoccupied.”

  “Fine. I’ll surprise you.”

  Half an hour later when Cash parked his truck near an unoccupied area of Deadman’s Creek, Emmy smiled. It was perfect. Sunshine, water, and Cash. “Soooo, you’re taking me fishing?”

  “Nope,” Cash said, his grin stretching wide. “Skinny-dipping.”

  “Uh-uh. You’re out of your mind. It’s not even April yet.” And besides, naked?

  “And that’s exactly what makes it fun.”

  He got out of the truck, walked to the front and thumped the hood with his palm. “If we lay our clothes out here, they’ll stay warm in the sunshine.”

  Which also meant Emmy would have to walk bare-assed to the water and then back to the truck. Yikes.

  But as she beheld Cash pulling his T-shirt over his head and revealing the abs she had an obsession with, Emmy started to see the appeal of this plan.

  He watched her watching him, and his goading smile never wavered. “You gonna sit in there all day?”

  Emmy kicked back and propped her feet on the dash in a relaxed pose. But it was just a pose. “I want to make sure the goods are worth me getting out for.”

  “You already know what the goods look like.”

  “I have short-term memory issues.”

  “You’re a bad girl.”

  If only.

  Cash Kingston, however, was the very best bad boy she’d ever seen. Instead of kicking off his pants, he smoothed a hand over his chest, then slowly eased it down his stomach. His nipples had gone tight at his own touch, making Emmy want to take a nip of nip.

  Although his hand was on his fly, he made no move to unzip. Just did a slo-mo exploration of what was beneath.

  The man was actually treating her to a striptease. Emmy laughed, delighted. “I’m adding this to my list, too.”

  “I expected that.”

  He spent about a decade thumbing open the top button of his pants.

  Emmy wanted to chant “Down, down, down!” to encourage him to get naked. But at the same time, she didn’t want to rush this. She squeezed her inner thighs together in anticipation of his full monty.

  “Hands behind your head,” he called out.

  “What? Why?”

  “I want to see what you’re doing with them.”

  As if she would get busy touching herself while he was out there…

  Wait a damn minute. Now that he’d mentioned it, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  She huffed and linked her hands behind her head. Her compliance obviously pleased Cash because he lowered his zipper, revealing that he wasn’t unaffected by his own actions.

  Maybe she could talk him back into the truck.

  His hand disappeared into his boxer briefs, much like the day she’d caught him on her couch. Only this time, he didn’t look the least bit embarrassed. In fact, his eyelids lowered to half-mast and he let his head drop back and he stroked himself.

  Emmy’s nipples went high-beam and the spot between her legs caught fire.

  “Drop them,” she whispered to herself.

  “What was that?” Cash asked. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  Emmy unlaced her hands to push open the truck door and hurried out. She climbed up on the front bumper and turned to sit on the hood and pointed at Cash. “Take them off. Now.”

  “The boss is back.”

  When Cash stepped out of his shoes and kicked off his pants and underwear, his penis was fully hard and pointed due north.

  He was… delicious. And Emmy was suddenly starving. Maybe if she took off her clothes, they might not ever make it to the creek.

  She reached for the hem of her shirt, but Cash said, “Nope. Not yet.”

  “Excuse me? I thought we were skinny-dipping. And last I recall the definition of skinny-dipping includes being naked.”

  “Not until I’m in the water, because I know your game. And as much as I’m down for doing you on the hood of my truck, we have other business to attend to first.”

  Emmy had plenty of pressing business happening in the region between her legs, but he didn’t seem to care.

  Cash encircled his cock with his fist, and she forgot all about her business to focus on his business.

  “You never told me you liked to be entertained with a show,” he said.

  “You keep that up, and I’ll settle in with a bucket of popcorn, a king-size package of Twizzlers, and the fastest vibrator in my drawer.”

  His eyebrows lifted with interest. “You have more than one?”

  “A woman has different moods.”

  “I want to see this drawer,” he growled. Unfortunately, he also released his grip on the body part Emmy most wanted a double feature of right now. With a smile at her, he turned and walked toward the water, his ass cheeks flexing with every step.

  Art. Complete living, walking, breathing art.

  No longer caring about being out in the open, Emmy slid off the hood and quickly shimmied out of her clothes. A light mountain breeze skimmed across her skin, raising goose bumps on her arms and teasing her already hard nipples.

  When she made it to the water’s edge, Cash was wading into the middle of the creek with long, slow strides. His spectacular backside was now submerged, which meant his muscled back could command all of her attention. Trim waist, straight spine, and shoulders strong enough to hold the weight of her baggage.

  She entered the water and was up to her knees before the temperature registered in her brain. “Holy shit!”

  “Keep moving,” Cash said over his shoulder. “It gets better the wetter you get.”

  No way he meant that as some kind of sly sexual reference because surely the water’s chill had deflated his Twizzler-worthy hard-on and sent his testicles into deep hiding.

  Emmy wrapped her arms around herself, but continued to splash forward until she was behind Cash.

  “This is as deep as it goes,” he said. “Grab on to me.”

  She immediately hugged him around the chest, hoping for some warmth. But as soon as she had a grip on him, Cash lowered them both shoulder deep.

  “Eeee!” Emmy couldn’t keep from squealing as she plastered herself to Cash’s back, trying to keep the water from inching up between them. She looped her legs around his waist and her heel brushed his penis, proving that although his main sail wasn’t full mast, it hadn’t completely lowered either. “How is that possible?”

  “I’m just that hot for you.” Grabbing her beneath the thighs, he hiked her up, bumping all her business against his spine.

  Uh, yeah. Maybe she understood. Even the water temp couldn’t lessen the tingle in her clitoris. Still… “We are not having sex in this water.”

  “Who said we were?” His wily fingers brushed her between her spread legs.

  “I mean it. There’s no telling what kind of microbes are in here.”

  He twisted her around his waist so they were face-to-face and kissed her nose. Her very cold nose. “If I put my mind—and hands—to it, I could change your mind.”

  “How I ever thought you lacked ambition, I will never know.”

  The easy vibe flowing between them severed as if someone had sliced it with a scalpel. “Cash, I—”

  “Don’t apologize. You thought what you thought. Hell, what you may still think.”

  She held his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her gaze. “I think you’re the most generous, most caring, most selfless man I know. And I also think I lo—”

  A sudden chirp-chirp-chirp came from the hood of Cash’s truck. God, had she just been saved or screwed? “That’s my text tone for the hospital. It could be the lab.”

  Cash relea
sed his grip on her butt, allowing Emmy to unwrap from around his body and splash toward the bank.

  “There’s a towel in the toolbox. Left side,” he called out.

  Emmy scooped her phone off the hood and checked the screen as she rounded the truck to rummage in the toolbox. Towel was a bit optimistic. The piece of cloth she pulled out was a chamois the size of a washcloth.

  The text said: Results in. Come to lab to discuss.

  Cash strolled up beside her, took the scrap of fabric, and proceeded to pat them both completely dry.

  “Lab results are back,” she told him.

  Without comment, he grabbed their clothes and handed Emmy’s share to her.

  Once they were in the truck pulling away from the creek, Emmy said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For understanding that I need to know. For doing this with me.”

  His hand covered hers. “Em, you never have to do anything alone that you don’t want to. Being alone doesn’t make you strong.”

  Cash’s phone rang and he answered it with a button on his steering wheel. “Kingston.”

  “Hey, it’s Jonah. Have you seen today’s Steele Ridge News?”

  “No,” Cash said. “Why?”

  “I thought you’d want to know. You might want to take a look at the online version’s op-ed before you talk to Emmy—”

  “Dude, we’re both in the truck, and you’re on speakerphone.”

  “Well, shit.”

  Emmy scrabbled for her own phone and brought up the paper’s website.

  Cash pulled to the side of the county road and hit the end call button on the steering wheel, hanging up on his cousin.

  “That was rude,” she told him.

  “So was his plan to keep whatever this is off your radar. You got it yet?”

  She clicked into the editorials and it didn’t take a single finger of scrolling to find what had Jonah concerned. The title was “Miss Hyde or Doctor Jekyll?”

  It effectively outlined all the crappy things that had happened around town since Emmy moved back and somehow laid all the blame directly at her door. Even Mr. Felder’s kitchen fire.

  “What does it say?”

  “Basically that I used my charms and wily nature to entice Jonah and the hospital into hiring me. And that what neither of them realized was that I was actually some kind of medical Trojan Horse. According to this person, I had plans all along to infiltrate Steele Ridge and wreak all kinds of havoc. They claim I’m harboring a grudge toward my hometown.”

  “What the fuck?”

  She passed him her phone. “Here. You can read it for yourself.” She’d gotten the gist of the piece just by skimming it.

  Cash’s eyes went back and forth as he read and scrolled. “This is complete bullshit. And the author is Koncerned Sitizen.”

  Emmy dropped her head onto the seat back and closed her eyes. Tight. Because damn if she would let a single tear escape. They wanted her gone? Then maybe she should just cut her losses and go.

  “Don’t,” Cash said softly.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Think about whatever is putting that wounded expression on your face.” She felt his big warm hand cup the side of her face, and one of those traitor tears almost made it out of the prison she’d kept them in for years. When his thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, a sob made a break for it.

  Cash unclipped her seatbelt and hauled her over the console and onto his lap. Her hip was wedged against the steering wheel, but the feel of Cash’s solid arms around her made up for the mild discomfort.

  She turned her face into his shoulder. “I thought I was making the right decision. My family is here. My past is here. You’re h—”

  “Did I have anything to do with your decision to come back to Steele Ridge?”

  “I don’t know.” No, that wasn’t fair. Not to Cash, and not to her. Emmy made herself return to her seat, and Cash pulled back onto the road. “Yes. But I didn’t know what I planned to do about it. You could’ve been involved with someone.”

  “But I wasn’t.” He glanced at her. “And since then, I’ve realized you were always the one. But we’ve still got something big standing between us, Em.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you said out at the creek, it made me understand that you don’t know a lot of things about me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  He held out his hand to stop her words as he turned in to St. Elizabeth’s parking lot. “Let’s drop it for now. But after we leave here, I want to show you something.”

  “Okay. It shouldn’t take long to get in and out of the lab.”

  But when they drew close to the emergency room entrance, Emmy spotted people crowded around the door, pushing forward and shouting. Some of them were carrying pieces of poster board. “What in the world?”

  That was when she caught sight of the message carefully printed on one sign. Hasn’t Dr. Jekyll killed enough?

  * * *

  Fuck. Emmy just could not catch a break, Cash thought as he jammed his truck into reverse. Unfortunately, his quick maneuvering caught the attention of the folks on the fringe of the protesters, and people began to turn and look at the truck.

  Protesters! Who did that anymore?

  “Have you checked your Facebook lately?” he asked Emmy. “Or the hospital’s?”

  “It hasn’t exactly been a priority the past few days. Do you think this is related to that op-ed piece?”

  “The Jekyll thing clinched it for me. Someone is stirring the shit.”

  Unbelievably, people chased Cash as he backed up, beating their signs against the hood of his truck. Emmy rolled down her window and yelled, “Stop! You’re damaging personal property.”

  That only made them beat harder, the wood handles scratching his nice paint job.

  One guy reached inside Emmy’s open window and tried to grab at her shirt, but Cash hit the up button, almost pinning the asshole’s arm.

  “Cash!” Emmy gasped.

  “I’ll cut the fucking thing off if someone comes at you like that again.”

  “See if you can pull into the ambulance bay,” she instructed. “Maybe they’ll have sense enough to keep out of there.”

  Wishful thinking. The horde stayed right on the truck, almost surrounding it as Cash switched into drive and inched toward the bay. He parked, but the idiots with signs were swarming like ants on a picnic. “Stay inside until I get them handled. When I knock on the truck, get out and run like hell for the ER door.”

  “But—”

  “They won’t do a damn thing to me,” he said, and gave her a hard kiss on the mouth. “Let me handle this.”

  “Meet me inside?”

  “As soon as I can.” He slid out and hit the lock button to keep people out of the truck. “Back up, everyone,” he yelled at the crowd.

  Where the hell was hospital security?

  “I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing, but you do not want to hurt anyone.”

  “Cash Kingston,” hollered a lady he recognized as a regular at the Triple B, “are you dating a killer? You used to be such a nice young man. I bet when your mama and daddy find out—”

  “Please keep my parents out of this. Now back away from the truck, or I’m calling the sheriff. Do any of you really want to spend the night in one of Maggie’s jail cells?”

  “That Dr. McKay is the one who should be in a cell. Murdering bit—”

  Cash caught the foul-mouthed window-breacher by the shirt collar. “You don’t want to finish that word, sir. The surgeon general guarantees that it will be harmful to your health.”

  “Are you threatening me?” The man shook his phone in Cash’s face. “I’ll call the sheriff myself and—”

  With just a tad too much force, Cash grabbed the man’s hand and squeezed it around the phone until his face twisted. “Back. Off. Sir.”

  The man was thirty years his senior and twenty pounds his l
esser. He finally dropped his defiant and rabid gaze and took a step back, and thankfully the crowd followed his lead. Cash kept herding them backward until they were several feet from his tailgate. Only then did he step back and tap his knuckles against the back quarter panel.

  Emmy was out of the truck and through the automatic doors like a track star.

  At the sight of her, the crowd tried to push forward again. Cash stretched out his arms as if he could hold them all back himself.

  Finally, two security guards came around from the front of the hospital just as Maggie’s cop car and two others pulled in perpendicular to Cash’s truck.

  When she stepped out of her car, Maggie had her hand on the baton in her utility belt. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a slow Southern drawl edged with the sharpness of an icepick, “you will break this up right now. You are on private property and the owner is requesting that you disband and depart.”

  “This here’s a county hospital,” someone protested.

  “Not since Jonah Steele started throwing all his dirty cash around,” someone else said. “Everyone in the Steele family thinks they don’t have to play by nobody else’s rules.”

  Although most folks in the area had been appreciative of Jonah’s cash infusion into the local economy, some would—as his granny used to say—bitch if they were hung with a new rope.

  “I’m giving every one of you sixty seconds to head for your vehicles,” Maggie said. “Anyone left in this area after that time will be escorted away in hand restraints.”

  There was plenty of grumbling and a few choice words, but they all shuffled away while Maggie pointedly checked her watch. When the last person slammed his car door, Maggie gave a satisfied nod. “Fifty-three seconds.”

  Only then did Cash realize his hands were curled into fists and his legs were braced in a fighting stance. His heartbeat and respiration had both sped up in response to the threat against Emmy.

  “What the hell was that?” Maggie asked him as she leaned down to scoop up an abandoned sign. It said: Go home, Dr. McBitch.