Burning Flame: Californian Wildfire Fighters Book Three

by North, Leslie

  But she had used up all her bravery already in the span of a single sentence. She dropped her eyes and moved to pull away from Hank.

  He hung on. "Can I walk you home?"

  Lana's heart jumped, and she looked at him as if she hadn't heard right. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him to repeat his question, but the intensity in his gaze told her she already knew the truth. She had heard Hank's offer correctly.

  She nodded. His hand found her shoulder, and he guided her back toward the house so she could grab her purse.

  She locked eyes with Sookie on their way out. Hank's sister stared, mouth agape, and didn't appear to notice that the beer she was pouring into a red Solo cup was waterfalling down the side.

  Lana nodded to let her know that everything was okay; she knew what she was doing. It was just a harmless walk home.

  Totally harmless.

  They strolled together down Cedar Springs' main street in mutual silence. There was so much to be said—and so much that remained unsaid—between them, Lana wasn't sure where to begin.

  She wasn't even sure there could be a beginning for them. They had already missed it, hadn't they? They’d had their shot.

  Still, her heart couldn't help but hope.

  They arrived at her house, and Lana took the first step up onto the front porch alone.

  She turned and found Hank still standing in the driveway. Though the step gave her extra inches, she still stood shorter than he did. He was a towering shadow on her lawn, the phantom of her past, made manifest before her.

  She wasn't ready for the evening to end, she realized. Not yet. But what more was there to say, besides—everything?

  "Do you . . . want to come inside?"

  "I'd like that," Hank said quietly.

  Lana gave a small, shy smile in response. She turned back to the door and fished around for her keys, which took longer than she would have liked. Her brain, her fingers, weren't working properly . . . and the warm gust of Hank's breath on the back of her neck made finding the dratted keys practically impossible. She wasn't sure how close he was standing, and she didn't dare turn to look. She finally located her house key, pulled it out with a jangle from the rest of the keys on the ring, and unlocked the door.

  She hadn't thought to leave the light on. She could feel herself listing sideways in the dark as she tried to toe off her heels and hit the light switch.

  She failed at both and couldn't help the giggle that escaped her. Her laugh escalated to the point that she thought she might actually fall down in her own foyer.

  A pair of steadying hands caught her before gravity won the fight. "Look at you." Hank's own laugh was shaky. "How did you make it all the way home in this state?"

  "Because of you!" Lana planted her hands against his chest—but it would have taken more force to shove him away. The man was a rock.

  Her hands suddenly seemed to gain a mind of their own; they stayed cemented to him, then dragged lower—lightly, tentatively. His abs felt like iron beneath his shirt. There were no soft, pliable spots, no give. His body was as unyielding as the man himself.

  She remembered, then, who this was. This was Hank Logan, the man who had left her ten years ago without a backward glance. And she was Lana Sweet, the spurned first love.

  It wasn't right to touch him—not anymore. She removed her hands from him.

  Or at least, she tried to.

  Hank's fingers circled her wrists. She glanced up, mouth parted in a half-gasp of surprise. His face hovered above her. She closed her eyes, willing it to be closer. Willing him to be closer.

  And she felt it. The brush of Hank's lips against her own. It wasn't just her imagination, this time. The firm, warm press of his mouth was solid and real. It grounded her. For a split second, it gave Lana gravity and balance. She realized, with perfect clarity, that Hank was kissing her. The hands on her waist moved to her back as he wrapped her in his arms.

  She pressed forward, suddenly, with an aggression she hadn't known she was capable of. She knew it surprised Hank, too, because he staggered a step back, and she heard his shoulder hit the door.

  He didn't seem to mind, however, or even notice the collision. His arms tightened around her. His strength was incredible. To think this was the same boy she’d loved so fiercely . . .

  In that moment, she could believe in Hank's sudden ferocity. He shoved his mouth against hers, and Lana found herself on the defensive once more. His hot tongue tangled with her own, and his hands—her hands—were everywhere. They pulled at hair, caught in clothes, and occasionally struck out to catch their bodies against the wall or shove an obstacle aside as they fumbled toward the bedroom.

  No cautionary thoughts entered her mind. She knew she should force them both to stop, to take a pause to breathe—but there was no breath left in her. Hank stole it with every kiss.

  A whirlwind of shed clothing heralded their arrival on her bed. He pulled her dress up over her body. Lana gasped at how quickly he worked. The speed of all that was happening was completely disorienting. She wanted to hold onto every second—but if she held too hard, would the moment disperse like a fistful of feathers in a hurricane?

  If so, she wanted the hurricane.

  Hank's square, sturdy fingers were surprisingly nimble as they unfastened the clasp of her bra. If it had been up to Lana in that moment, she would have wrenched it off herself . . . and she usually took such care with the things that were hers!

  Clothes had suddenly become the last barrier between them, and with every other wall stripped away, she needed them gone.

  She gasped as Hank lowered her in one swift movement. His chest collided with hers, and the hot plane of his naked skin was a revelation against her newly-bared breasts. It had been so long since she’d felt another's weight settle atop her own.

  There was nothing gentle or hesitant about the way Hank pressed himself against her now. It was as if he was reclaiming his rightful place as the person in her bed. Lana, at least, felt that this was true with all her being.

  And the way Hank took charge of the proceedings, it was clear he felt the same. Lana moaned and wriggled beneath him as he trailed kisses down her neck. He made a necklace of them around her clavicle, licking and nipping her sensitive skin until she thought she would come undone. How wonderful—and how impossibly unfair—that all the little tricks he had learned on her years ago were completely at his disposal now. He deserved to work more for it, didn't he? After what he had done to her . . .

  But Lana was more immediately concerned with what he was doing to her now. His fingers flared along her waist, more intimately exploring her womanly swells. So there was a learning curve, after all, and maybe it was a literal one.

  Her own hands explored the clenched muscles of his chest, trailing across his wide pectorals and spilling touches down toward his abs. A trail of curls led her curious fingers lower, lower, until she found what she was looking for.

  Considering its size, it wasn't hard to find at all.

  "Lana." Hank moaned her name.

  And there it came again: that sinking in her stomach, that sudden alarm that all this might end with a single word.

  Like hell she was going to let it be her own name. Lana squeezed, and his cock pulsed in response. Her hips collided with his, and he thrust his need between them, breathing raggedly. Her fingers worked him. There was no more time to be shy. She needed this, now, and her yearning was as all-consuming as his own.

  He grabbed her waist and positioned her beneath him. Lana writhed, making faint, keening noises. His fingers pressed her to stillness again. She flung her right leg over his hip and curled it around the small of his back, braced herself on the pillars of his arms, and felt his biceps clench.

  He slid an inch into her, and she cried out. She threw her head back and blinked her astonishment in rapid Morse code. It had been so long, she had almost forgotten what it was like—

  "Lana." He crooned her name again and touched her hair. He buried his face
in the pillow beside her and surged forward.

  "Hank!" she cried out. Every muscle in her body tensed at once, but he was already inside her, filling her, making her his own once more. She let out a shaky breath and relaxed back into the pillow. Her heart slammed against her ribcage as she fought to control her breathing.

  In, out. In, out.

  She moaned as Hank, impossibly, seemed to match her mental marching orders to herself. It was as if he understood as well as she did that their time together was stolen, and that there was no possible way to slow things now. He thrust himself between her legs, burying his full length inside her, and thrust again. The pace he dictated was as unrelenting as his hard-muscled body.

  Lana rocked beneath him, digging her heel in harder to keep her position. She wanted to wrap both legs around his waist, but she couldn't seem to coordinate the maneuver. Every time her thoughts seemed to form some semblance of coherency, Hank moved inside her, and a surge of pleasure rushed through her.

  "Hank," she moaned again.

  "Lana."

  It was as if, now reunited, they couldn't get enough of each other. Each sigh caressed the other's name; each kiss took away the air the other breathed.

  She felt the intensity start to build inside her, trying in vain to fight it back. She wanted this moment with Hank to last forever, but there was no hope for it. Every forceful push of his hips rocked her harder, faster, closer.

  When she orgasmed, she forgot how to breathe. She forgot her own name.

  She shouted his, instead.

  Hank groaned explosively. He gave a last push, and Lana felt his seed spill freely inside her. It seeped between her legs as Hank rolled off and collapsed beside her. He gathered her up in his arms and held her close enough to crush her.

  Lana breathed. The moment had passed, but she hadn't lost it. They had grabbed hold of it, together, and damn the consequences.

  Damn the consequences, she thought as she snuggled in close to the only man she had ever loved. I'll face them tomorrow morning, whatever they may be. But for tonight . . .

  For tonight, Hank Logan was hers again.

  3

  HANK

  Red, watery sunlight filtered in through the curtains drawn across the window. Hank stirred. He peeled his eyes open and winced. The back of his skull pounded, and his thoughts were sluggish. All he could immediately assess of his situation upon waking was the hangover, and the dry, sour taste of old beer in his mouth.

  He glanced down and saw that, beneath an unfamiliar set of soft white sheets, he was naked. The revelation shouldn't have come as a surprise. He was a man who generally slept in the nude, even back home in Alaska. These past months, though, he had taken to sleeping in boxers and a T-shirt out of consideration for the men who shared his cramped quarters. He knew without needing to hear them gripe that seeing their chief shoot out of bed to answer a late-night emergency call naked wasn't exactly good for morale.

  The pink curtains softened the harsh morning light of the Cedar Springs sun. He had gotten so used to looking out and seeing the angry red pendulum in the sky that he could scarcely remember what a healthy yellow sun was supposed to look like anymore.

  Pink curtains . . . soft sheets . . .

  Hank sat up and clutched his head. When the pounding receded to a bearable degree, he turned—and found a naked Lana Sweet sleeping beside him.

  Looking at her . . . It was as if a fist clenched around his heart as he looked at her. Her auburn hair swept across her face, her eyelashes lay dark against her flushed cheeks. Her lips were parted in sleep, and she breathed evenly, quietly, beside the dip of his waist. A pale hand rested on his thigh as if, even in sleep, she didn't trust him to remain without a physical link to assure her of his presence.

  Hank swallowed. He took Lana's hand, but rather than remove it so he could slide out of bed undetected, he raised it to his mouth and kissed her fingertips. He didn't know where the impulse came from.

  He regretted it the next instant when he looked down and saw that Lana's eyes had opened. She stared at him as if he had just struck her.

  "Morning." The greeting was rough in his throat. He dropped her hand as she sat up beside him. The bedsheet slipped down past her waist, exposing her bare breasts. Hank glanced away quickly, as if privacy was something that could—and ought to—still be maintained between them.

  "Good morning." Her voice was husky, sleep-roughened. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Lana pull the sheet back up to cover herself. "What time is it?"

  "Past nine."

  The air between them was tense, but not the same way it had been last night. This tension didn't beg to be defused by any means necessary. This was awkward. It must have been the beer that muddied his thinking and fuzzed the edges of things.

  It must have been the beer that fooled him into thinking they could pick up exactly where he’d left things all those years ago.

  Nothing was the same between them. They hadn't resolved anything. They had stepped over everything. Their explosive physical connection wasn't a substitute for a real conversation—or a real explanation.

  Hank turned and let himself take in the sight of Lana covering herself. Hadn't he spent years of his life preparing for this moment? Summoning the words, again and again, that would make things right for her?

  More than awkwardness weighed the air. The bedroom felt suddenly heavy with expectation. Lana gazed at him, but she asked for nothing. Hank knew she wouldn't press him.

  And he was a coward for taking the easy out she was opening to him.

  "Well, guess I should head into town. Got things to attend to down at the station."

  "Of course." Lana nodded, maybe too exuberantly, because she winced the next instant and touched her forehead.

  He felt instant sympathy for her. His own hangover was a beast he didn't hold a hope of vanquishing. It had been a long time since he’d gone into work like this—all he had to do was make it through the day.

  But all she said was, "I've got to get going, too. I've already overslept longer than I like to."

  They slid out of opposite sides of the bed and hunted the room for their clothes. A few wordless exchanges of clothing items later, and they were both dressed to get on with their days. Hank wondered if anyone down at the station would notice he was wearing the same clothes he had worn as he left the party. His wardrobe didn't vary much from day-to-day.

  They stood awkwardly together at the center of the room. Lana tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stared intently at some spot of interest in the carpet that Hank couldn't discern. He raised his arms for a hug and then aborted the move. The gears in his head ground together painfully as he tried to churn out the right thing to do in this situation.

  Thankfully, Lana spared him by acting first. She rose up on her tiptoes and placed her hands on his shoulders. She moved to kiss him on the cheek—but Hank's body misread the cues before his brain could catch up with her intent.

  Her hands, her nearing lips, triggered a response in him, and he turned into her. Their lips met.

  An electric shock coursed through him, and he knew he wasn't the only conduit. Lana jerked back and blinked rapidly.

  "Sorry." He breathed the apology, suspecting that he didn't sound sorry at all.

  "No, it's . . ." She stared at him a moment longer, then averted her eyes. He wanted to cup her chin and guide her back to him, but he let her go. He knew he had forfeited the right to ask anything of her, years ago. "It's good to see you, Hank. Be safe out there."

  "Yeah. You, too."

  He left Lana's little house and walked back into town. As if the excruciating pain in his head wasn't punishment enough, he couldn't stop from mentally kicking himself, again and again and again, for last night's royal slipup.

  Lana Sweet, naked and writhing beneath him . . . Lana Sweet's delectable lips fitted against his own as easily and addictively as they always had . . .

  Hank couldn't shake the impression that he had just ma
de a terrible fucking mistake.

  4

  LANA

  Her passionate night spent in Hank's arms was followed by three weeks of torture.

  If it had seemed to her like she ran into him at every inopportune moment before, her new post-sex reality was far, far worse. Hank Logan haunted her memories and her thoughts, lurking around every corner of Cedar Springs.

  And now, hardly a day passed that she didn't cross paths with him.

  Conversation between them was stilted. They were getting good at commencing with, and sticking to, formalities. There were moments when Lana thought she detected something in his eyes—a spark, maybe, that she felt certain would lead to an invitation in the next instant—but they would almost always be interrupted. Hank would get called away to work, or a Cedar Springs local would hail them and increase the awkwardness. Tenfold.

  Lana had taken to keeping her own invitation balanced on the tip of her tongue. Sleeping with Hank had done the opposite of bringing her closure. He was in her system now more than ever. The memory of his burning kisses, his possessive touches, raced through her veins like wildfire. She feared it would consume her—and leave nothing of her behind but a wisp of smoke—a drifting, twisting memory of a woman who had never learned to move on from her lost love.

  Hank Logan had shattered her world ten years ago. His reappearance now might very well be the thing that destroyed her.

  It would have been poetic, if it wasn't so utterly pathetic. Lana hated feeling as if she had no control over her own tragedy.

  She hated it more that she had grown to expect to run into him.

  Hank was not at the diner today, which came as both a relief and a disappointment. Lana frowned as she seated herself at the breakfast bar. Dyna bustled over and efficiently turned over the cup in front of her, filling it with steaming coffee, but then another customer called her away, which left Lana a moment to puzzle over her confused feelings as she took her first sip of the inky beverage. What did she really have to look forward to when it came to running into Hank? It was obvious by now that he thought their night together had been a mistake.