by Nicole Helm
Who is still running away from his big sister.
Ace gritted his teeth. Jess was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about right now. Of course, that probably meant she was the one thing he should be thinking about right now, considering Jess and Lina knew each other.
No, not just knew each other. Lina’s family had taken Jess in as a teen. They’d treated her like one of their own, and it had been the thing Ace had needed to hightail it out of Marietta without any guilt.
Okay, mostly any guilt.
His nerves danced and itched in a way he was wholly unaccustomed to. But he didn’t turn back. He didn’t make an excuse to leave. He followed Lina’s certain strides up the staircase of her apartment complex, and then down the hall. He waited patiently behind her while she unlocked her apartment door. He continued to have no rightly clue what he was doing, but Lina was leading and he wanted to follow where she led.
“So, this is my place.” She dropped her purse onto a little end table and immediately clasped her hands together. She was obviously nervous, too, and that should probably also mean he should turn around and leave.
But she’d been very firm in asking him to come up here, and, well, he wanted to be here. He wanted to see her place, another facet of her.
The apartment was neat and obviously very ordered. Meticulous. There was a certain sparseness to it, which surprised him. She was not a woman of knickknacks or bright colors. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but everyone he’d ever known had more stuff than he did. He’d grown up being tossed from his parents’ house to a foster home to his dad’s apartment to here, there, and everywhere. He’d learned very quickly as a kid not to take anything with him, not to form an attachment with anything. No shirt, pair of shoes, not even a picture. He had been a nomad for all of his life and he’d learned very quickly and easily to live like that.
The things he had even now when he was in charge of his own life held no personal meaning. They were just necessary.
He didn’t understand why Lina McArthur of all people would live the same way.
“It’s not much. I hate clutter.”
She kept twisting her hands nervously and he didn’t want her to be nervous anymore. He wanted her to feel like she had when she’d decided to invite him in. Lina wasn’t someone who seemed like she ever abided by ‘had to’. So, he had to believe she wanted him here, she just wasn’t quite sure what to do about it now that he was.
So, he stepped forward and covered her twisting hands with his own. She smiled up at him and that was all the invitation he needed to lower his mouth to hers. After all, that was what they were here for. Because there was some inexplicable attraction that could not be denied, and neither one of them wanted to ignore.
Without any coaxing, she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck. She made a humming noise against his mouth and he fixed his hands on her hips, squeezing so she remained in place, so she couldn’t push against him any more than she already was. Because she was already killing him. He really didn’t need her rubbing up against adding to it.
He slid his hands up her back, not at all surprised to find how strong and sturdy it felt. No, that wasn’t a surprise in the least.
Her fingers brushed the back of his neck and what was a surprise was how the simplest of touches from her could do what even the most erotic of touches from other women couldn’t or hadn’t done. No one had ever been so gentle and yet so electric. She was this thing, and he didn’t know how she’d come into his life or why, but he thought it best not to worry about that right now.
He managed to maneuver her to the couch, walking her backwards until the backs of her legs were pressed against the edge. “Sit,” he murmured against her mouth.
She made another sound in the back of her throat that shot through him like some kind of wildfire. The way they could blaze out of control in five seconds flat. That was Lina’s effect on him.
And just like those fires he fought for a living, her kiss was a fascinating phenomenon, exhilarating. He wanted to understand why. He wanted to find the source of that fire. He wanted the challenge of battling back the heat, breathing through the smoke. It was a struggle. It was a challenge. And yet it was the most wonderful, amazing experience he had ever had.
He gave her a nudge so she fell onto the couch with a little oomph. She blinked up at him as though she was surprised to find they were no longer attached at the mouth, and then she gave him a soft smile, so sweet he couldn’t help the urge to kneel at her feet.
Who was this woman?
“Wh-what are you doing?” she stuttered as he tugged on her foot.
He grinned at the slight hint of nerves in her voice. “I’m going to take off your shoe.”
She huffed out what sounded like a laugh “You’re going to what?”
He gave the first little boot she had on a tug and, since it only went up to her ankle, he managed to pull it easily off her foot. “I am going to take off your shoes,” he repeated, slowly, enunciating each word as though they were complex multisyllabic things she might not understand.
She narrowed her eyes, but then he pulled off the other boot and everything in her expression softened. He wrapped his fingers around her narrow ankle and was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath. He liked touching her in all these strange, nonerotic places because she seemed to be constantly surprised and off-balance. Maybe, just maybe, off-balance was exactly what the contained, inexperienced woman needed.
“You have very skinny ankles.”
She tried to pull her leg out of his grasp. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he replied, not loosening his grasp. “I’m just commenting.”
“But when you comment on something, it sounds as though you’re judging it.”
“Ah, Lina, that’s not at all what I’m doing.” He gave her ankle a squeeze, wondering what self-conscious pieces she hid behind her straightforward bravado. “There is nothing about you that I could judge. I’m just learning you.”
Her cheeks flushed pink and he had to tamp down the urge to immediately get to his feet and lay over her on the couch and take her mouth. Take her.
But he was going to be careful and he was going to be gentle because of her admission she was not a particularly experienced woman. So, he wouldn’t push. He wouldn’t take too many liberties. But he would enjoy and he would give her some enjoyment.
He had the sneaking suspicion she could use it as much as he could. She was just as knocked flat by this attraction as he was.
She was wearing skintight jeans all the women who came into the bar lately seemed to wear and he skimmed his fingers over the outline of her calf, up the length of it, then he circled the edge of her kneecap before resting his palms on the tops of her thighs.
Though she was not tall by any means, she had long limbs. Lean and graceful. No, that wasn’t the right word, because Lina wasn’t exactly graceful. But…there was a sort of efficiency about her straightforwardness that gave the illusion of a certain kind of grace. Not elaborate, not delicate, but that didn’t make it any less intriguing. It certainly didn’t make him want to touch her any less. No, all he could do was want more and more and more.
Tentatively, her hands reached out and rested on his shoulders and then she turned them so her palms cupped his neck, and it was her turn to explore as her fingertips followed the path of his jaw, down to the cleft in his chin. She pushed her finger there before dragging it up and tracing the outline of his mouth. Each gentle caress a layer to the urging need that thrummed through him and he was determined to dial back.
He had been with his fair share of women. He wasn’t going to deny that. But none had touched him with her intense and concentrated gentleness. Maybe it was because he never fostered relationships, but he was felled by how much she seemed to take interest in the shape of him. Not just the obvious, but to all parts. His face, his shoulders, just as he’d been interested in her legs and her ankles.
“W
ould you take off your shirt without reading too much into the request?”
He laughed, not sure whether he wanted to mess with her or immediately give into whatever request she made. In the end, he figured it would be best to go along with whatever she asked. So, he reached behind him and pulled the T-shirt over his head before placing it neatly on the couch cushion next to her.
Again her tongue came out of her mouth and pressed to the corner, but this time she met his gaze as she did it. Then, very purposely, dragged her tongue across her top lip.
When he groaned, she grinned.
“You’re very…fit.”
Again, he laughed. The things she said. He really had heard no one talk like her. “Well, I do work out. It’s kind of part of my job.”
“Obviously, in my medical opinion, that’s very important.”
“What about in your nonmedical opinion?”
She pretended to ponder this. “It works very well in my nonmedical opinion, too.”
“Kiss me, Lina.”
Her eyes widened at his command, but he had done all the instigating and he wanted something from her. Something to be hers. He wasn’t sure how to explain it. He only knew instead of always being the one reaching out for her, he wanted to be the one she reached out for.
Her grasp on his shoulders tightened and she licked her lips again, though this time it was unconsciously, not thinking about what he’d said about it being erotic earlier. No, he could tell this time she was thinking of nothing else except how exactly she was going to initiate the kiss.
He had the brief thought he should be concerned about her lack of experience, but it disappeared the minute she leaned toward him. Her lips pressed against his, featherlight. He thought that would be all she would give him. Although he didn’t know her very well, he should’ve known better. Because she came back, kissing him again and again, lingering a little bit longer each time, slowly building up to drawing her tongue across his closed mouth. It ratcheted through him, a hard crank against his determination to let her initiate.
But he kept himself still, he let her explore and ignored the heady pulse beating in his neck.
It didn’t take him nearly as long as it had taken her to get the hint to open his mouth, to allow her tongue entrance, to touch it with his.
Then he forgot who was leading who in the heat of her mouth, in the velvet press of her tongue. He forgot all about what he meant to do, because the demanding ache of want had taken over.
He got farther up on his knees and grabbed the back of her neck in a tight grasp. He angled her head and levered himself even farther up. He tasted her, deeper and deeper, and she moaned against his mouth in response.
After what felt like hours of hot torment, she finally loosened her grasp on his shoulders and her fingers drifted down his chest. He remembered vividly the efficient, controlled, and disconnected way she’d touched him in the emergency room. It had been nothing but an examination. Nothing but work.
This was not that. Her touch explored and it learned. She somehow touched him deeper. He’d never been one for fanciful thoughts like souls or hearts. His life had been too hard and too rough, completely devoid of all of those things.
But, somehow, in an evening, Lina McArthur made him believe in it all.
Chapter Six
Lina felt like she was drowning. But instead of the scary kind of drowning, this was a different kind of drowning she had never even begun to understand or experience. It was a marvelous kind of drowning. It was exquisite. It was a hundred foolish words she had never in her life used to describe human interaction.
This was like drowning and then resurfacing as someone else. Resurfacing as a completely altered person, who believed in something completely different than she ever had before.
It was beyond foolishness—this whole thing—and yet it made her giddy. In all the years she’d spent decrying foolishness and irrational thoughts and feeling, this near-stranger was making it seem as though her reasonable science-based view of life was the foolish thing. The wrong thing. Because human connection didn’t have to be what she’d experienced with her family, it could be something right and altering.
Ace’s mouth left hers and she whimpered against the loss. She couldn’t bring herself to care that she was whimpering, that she was desperate. Couldn’t begin to give a flip that she was needy and she wanted.
This morning she hadn’t understood what it was to want something like this, and suddenly now she did.
But instead of leaving her completely, Ace’s mouth streaked down her neck, pulling the high collar of her turtleneck with it. He tugged at the tight fabric with impatient fingers and pressed hot openmouthed kisses to her skin there.
This was getting…out of control. And she craved the loss of control like she’d never craved anything in her life.
“It’s your turn to take off your shirt,” he said, his voice raw.
It sent twin shivers of excitement and… not exactly fear, but concern. Concern she didn’t know what she thought she was getting herself into.
He seemed to read her hesitation, her concern. “Just remember, this stops wherever you want it to,” he murmured.
Yes. She was in charge. She didn’t need him to tell her she was in charge. With shaking hands and not any kind of certainty, she pawed for the hem of her shirt. In a quick, jerky movement, she pulled it up, over her head, and off her body.
Since no one of the opposite sex had ever seen her underwear before, she’d never been particularly concerned about the design or the color, but the boring, tan cotton she was wearing seemed out of place, considering she was having the most exciting night of her life.
Ace’s intense, heated gaze didn’t change, so she had to assume he had no opinion about it. His hand dropped from her neck to her abdomen. He spread his fingers along the short distance between her waist and her breasts.
“This is insane,” he breathed.
Honestly, something about him thinking this was as crazy as she did was comforting. They didn’t even know each other and she knew this sort of thing happened to other people. People who were not her. “Yes, it is.” Because she couldn’t possibly disagree.
His blue eyes blazed into hers. “Does that mean you want to stop?”
Stop? She’d never been insane in her life, she was going to relish in it. “I’ll tell you if I want to stop.”
He grinned. “You have no idea how much I’m appreciating that ‘if’ right now.”
“Just kiss me again,” she said, breathless and desperate and nearly giddy with both of those non-Lina-like things.
“Oh, I’m going to kiss you,” he said, his grin arrogant, his tone certain. He dropped his mouth—not to hers, but to the skin right above her belly button.
She made a sound, but she couldn’t even describe it. It was certainly not a sound she’d ever made before. No man had ever kissed her mouth let alone her belly button. No man had touched her bare waist before, let alone drawn his tongue in lazy circles up the length of her stomach.
She had certainly been missing out.
When he reached the curve of her breast, his fingers were suddenly at her back and unclasping her bra. She had the fleeting thought to stop him. Because how could she let him see her breasts? How could she let this stranger touch her this way? Except she was. And she was enjoying it. So if she was enjoying it, why was she going to stop?
She felt her clasp undo and slowly Ace pulled the straps from her shoulders. How had she gone from the nervous, little girl, afraid to step into a smokejumper bar, to a woman, shirtless on her own couch with a man she barely knew shirtless at her feet?
At her feet. As though she was worth some kind of worship.
This was all some kind of amazing dream. It had to be.
His rough hands touched her everywhere she was bare. It was almost unbearable how gentle, how meaningful it seemed to feel.
“Damn, Lina. What…” He let out a strange kind of laugh. “I don’t know what you�
��re doing to me.”
“What I’m doing to you?” she repeated, confused that he’d stopped, confused by his words.
His blue eyes slowly rose to hers. There was a seriousness in them that scared her. More than the prospect of sleeping with a stranger, more than the prospect of just about anything of this evening, the intensity on his face scared the living shit out of her.
She started to squirm and look away, but his mouth closed over her breast and the sharp burst of pleasure, the surprising heat as he glided his tongue against her nipple eradicated whatever fear or concern had been building.
This was too much to be afraid of, too good. Something was building inside of her, and she had a bad feeling it was desire. The kind of desire that could only be assuaged by an orgasm. She wasn’t so repressed she’d never given herself one of those. But giving herself one, and someone else giving her one, seemed very, very, very different.
“I should go,” he all but growled against the valley between her breasts.
“What?” she squeaked. Go? He was just getting started! Or in the middle or something. How could he want to go?
“Lina, this is…this is… Hell, this is too much. This is…” He laughed, his mouth now nowhere near hers, his fingers raking through his dark hair, though he still kneeled in front of her. “I’ve never felt like this.”
“That sounds like a line,” she managed to say, though she’d never felt like it either. But she was a virgin. He was a hot, arrogant smokejumper who looked like a model. Surely he’d…done all this before.
His gaze met hers and again there was an intensity that caused her to shiver in fear and lust and something else she didn’t know how to analyze. And she always knew how to analyze.
“I know it sounds like one, but I… This…” He shook his head. “Too much,” he muttered, like he was just as confused and torn as she was. “It’s too much and you… You said that you’re inexperienced.” He handed over her shirt and she scowled at it.
