Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  “Next time I’m dumb enough to turn down a woman as amazing as you, just kick my ass for me right off rather than leaving me to stew on it. Okay?”

  “Sure, Cal. Glad to kick your ass anytime. I just dare you to fall asleep on the ground again.”

  He leaned in and kissed her so lightly that it was more caress than kiss, then stepped back and closed her door before backing away.

  She cycled up the engines, finished her checklist, and headed aloft.

  Cal stood just beyond the rotor tips and watched her the whole time. Again the self-consciousness was overwhelming, but this time it steadied her hands on the controls. Her cheek still tingled where they had brushed skin to skin.

  His skin had surprised her. That beautiful, muscled male chest and the back so scarred that it really did look as if he’d been dragged across the Outback. A part of her wondered what could possibly have caused such marks. Another part of her wondered at the contrast. The man radiated light as if he were fire himself. The warmth of his smile, the heat of his embrace, and the out-and-out scorch of his kiss.

  Maybe that darkness she had noted before was tied into the scarring. What was his past, so carefully hidden? Or was it? They’d barely started to know each other, and here she was worrying about his past as she flew back to the fire.

  Jeannie had only meant to offer sex. It had been way too long since she’d taken someone to her bed, and there was no denying the physical attraction between them. But she was intrigued by far more than his body, which was totally unexpected. And what she really hadn’t counted on was Cal being so goddamned nice that she might want to keep him around for a while.

  She hadn’t counted on that at all.

  ***

  Jeannie didn’t see Cal when she landed at the end of the day. Nor was he at dinner. He couldn’t have meant he really was turning her down. Not after that kiss. That one had kept her thoughts and her body firing hotter and hotter as the Grindstone Canyon Fire cooled and burned less and less inside the ring of a hundred percent containment.

  She was past frustrated and well down the road to peeved when she finally gave up the hunt and headed to her tent.

  Jeannie didn’t bother with a flashlight as she unzipped the mozzie net and ducked down and through the front flap. Then she face-planted into her double air-mattress when she stumbled over a pack just inside the entrance. Groping around, she found the tent light dangling from the peak and snapped it on.

  There, sprawled like a slain man, lay Cal, passed out so deeply that her arrival hadn’t disturbed him for a second. He must really be exhausted. Of course, he’d fought the fire straight through last night while she’d slept beneath the stars. He still wore his T-shirt and pants, though he’d managed to remove his shoes before lying down on top of the covers.

  Horribly self-conscious, far more than she would be if he were awake, she shut off the light and turned her back on him while she changed into the long T-shirt and shorts she usually slept in. She even debated keeping on the bra, but it was too uncomfortable for her to be quite that stupid. She slid down under the covers, turned her back on him, and spent a long time listening to his breathing before she managed to find sleep for herself.

  ***

  The night was pitch-dark when Jeannie woke. Not even the lights from the food truck or the service teams working over the choppers filtered through the thin fabric of the tent. The camp was all shut down for the night.

  She went to roll over and discovered she couldn’t. In his sleep, Cal had wrapped an arm around her waist, pinning her beneath the covers. Well, it was certainly a comfortable place to be, even if he was unconscious.

  Then his arm tightened about her waist and pulled her back against him. In the cool night, the man was cozily warm, even though he lay atop the covers and she beneath them.

  Cal nuzzled his face into her hair and breathed in deeply. “You smell wonderful.” His voice was still thick and slow, filled with sleep.

  She managed to extract an arm from beneath the covers and laid it over his arm around her waist. He slid his other arm so that her head rested on his arm rather than her pillow. He wrapped it around, but rather than landing his hand on her breast, he reached across her body to her shoulder and simply held her against him.

  “You feel downright spiffy.” She wiggled back tight until they were spooned together. It was dreamy to simply be held like that.

  Jeannie wanted to correct herself, but couldn’t. She didn’t get dreamy; it wasn’t her style. But she was. Probably something to do with it being the middle of the night after an exhausting day. Well, if she was going to change her mind, she’d better do it fast.

  The hand that had been around her waist began to travel, stroking down over her hip and thigh and then traveling back up to her waist and rib cage, and back down. To hell with common sense and changing her mind. She was exactly where she wanted to be.

  “Cal?”

  “Hmm?” he hummed sleepily in her ear.

  “Whatever you’re doing, don’t stop? ’Kay?”

  She allowed her hand and arm to ride on his as he stroked up and down her body. She used her fingers resting over the back of his to turn his path, to guide him where she wanted him to go: across her belly, up between her breasts, down her hip. Through the fabric, he traced down the front of her thigh and came up the back of it. When he hesitated at her waist, she coaxed him up to her rib cage and eventually to her breast.

  Jeannie moved to brush the sheet aside, the blanket long gone, but he blocked her movement and continued his gentle exploration through the thin material. She may have groaned as he toyed with her. The various tents weren’t all that far apart, so she bit her lower lip to keep it to herself, but he felt so good. Made her feel so good.

  He brushed his hand down between her legs, but traveled back to her hip before she could open to him.

  She managed to huff out a soft, “Good on ya,” the next time his sure hand stroked over her.

  Jeannie liked to make love the way she flew—in total command. If that didn’t scare guys off, eventually it pissed them off. Either way, they were gone. For now she was content to lie in the dark inside Cal’s embrace and let him tease her body to life. Let him trace and follow her curves until she burned for more.

  Still holding her shoulders tight against his chest, he at last gave her the caress she’d wanted. She had to raise both hands to clamp onto his forearm and just hold on as her body writhed, shuddered, and finally exploded beneath his stroking investigation. It was so intimate, so personal, yet she didn’t feel at all exposed. She simply felt wonderful.

  When at last the fire’s roar inside her had settled back enough for her to think, maybe to thirty percent containment of the blaze that still scorched along her nerves, she finally managed a whisper. “Damn, Hotshot.”

  “Damn yourself, Magic Lady. You’re amazing.”

  This time when she tried to roll over in his arms to face him, he let her. His hand landed on exactly the same spot on her behind as it had this morning. She’d been able to feel the palm print all day, stunned by the strength that held her so easily in place, but didn’t make her feel trapped at all.

  She’d never been with a man who was interested in making her feel more splendid than himself. Of course, Cal had never struck her as stupid, except for being caught on a cliff edge. And maybe throwing his camera case aboard before jumping aboard himself. Or walking away from her chopper back into the fire. Or initially turning down her invitation to her tent… Okay, maybe she could make a goodly list of dumb moves even though she’d only known him a couple of days.

  But she’d wager that while Cal paying such attention to her was a kindness, it was backed by the knowledge that she was now in a mood to be especially nice to him. And he was right—she was. Her body felt hot and loose. And his body felt hard and wonderful.

  She started with such a long,
slow kiss, that she completely lost herself. His mouth was like the rest of him: skilled, strong, but holding back as if there were secrets to plumb, a hidden layer just begging to be discovered.

  Well, she was the gal to do it. She worked down to that wonderful chest. When she went to work his T-shirt off, he moved to assist her. She wanted to rub herself all over that beautiful chest, but she kept the sheet between their bodies as she researched the terrain laid out before her. Jeannie let her lips do the traverses as she investigated the sloping terrain of his pecs, circling in tighter and tighter orbits until he hissed when she finally took his nipple in her teeth. There was a long valley down from his sternum.

  Through the soft sheet and his pants, she studied the shape and hardness of him until he groaned in suspended anguish. His legs were no less well-formed than his butt. Damn, but she’d enjoyed watching every time he’d walked away from her during the last two days—it was amazing. She freed her hand from the covers and ran it up onto his back.

  She could feel the long, thin white scars. They were raised, as if…

  He went to roll onto his back, but she hooked a hand on his pants pocket and kept him lying on his side facing her. Very slowly, she returned her hand to his back. He didn’t want to talk about it, fine. But he wasn’t going to shy away from her, not if they were going to be lovers. She snuggled her face back into the center of his chest and ran her hand up and down his back. Her palm and fingers felt cool in contrast to his heated skin. Jeannie continued her gentle, brushing investigation until he calmed and relaxed.

  It was enthralling, as if it was in her power to tame the beast. This man who stared down wildfire, hiked easily over brutal hills to rejoin his team, and could take photos that still made her want to weep with their power. He moaned and twitched with each of her touches. He repeatedly resisted then succumbed, as if tortured by her cooling touch until she made him flare up once more.

  She removed his pants and spent some time admiring him with her fingers, the tip of her tongue, and doing her damnedest to drive him totally crazy. He began cursing as she let her hair hang down and dragged it slowly along his body like a long, long fall of cooling water, which drove his heat toward blazing until he throbbed in her hand.

  Digging out some protection, she sheathed him carefully, not wanting to push him over the edge, not yet. He didn’t get to go there before he had filled her so full that she could think of nothing but how they burned together in the night.

  And he did. She straddled him, her hair brushing the top of the dark tent. He filled her until she flamed with desire, with desperate need, and finally they both flashed over. Their releases had them shuddering against each other as they fought for breath in the midst of the firestorm.

  Chapter 6

  Cal wasn’t sure what he’d signed up for. Sometime in the night, perhaps even as Jeannie was forever altering his definition of incredible sex, Mount Hood Aviation had been released from the Grindstone Canyon Fire. The California Department of Forestry had decided they could handle it from here.

  By dawn, MHA was in motion. Breakfast was a hurried affair. Tents were packed; pallets of camping and smokejumper gear were slid into cargo bays. Service trucks were closed up, and the roar of diesel engines filled the field by sunrise as retardant and fuel trucks departed the helibase. Four boxes of gear were moved from Steve’s drone control truck into the back of Beale’s chopper, and the launcher trailer was hung from a load line beneath. Someone showed up and drove the truck away. With Jeannie’s chopper, they picked Denise’s loaded service box off the back of the flatbed. It had all of the tools and spares she and her crew were likely to need to field service the choppers.

  Cal liked that these guys were geared to be on the move. He’d chosen a no-roots lifestyle at sixteen and hadn’t felt the lack of a more stable existence at all. He’d left nothing of real value in the pack in the hotshots’ truck, just a couple changes of clothes. At their base, he’d left a pack with winter gear that he certainly wouldn’t be needing in Australia during their summer and a small locked suitcase of his past. He’d never quite had the heart to just throw it out, nor had he opened it in years. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if it sat in their storage locker for a season.

  By the time the five MHA choppers lifted off an hour after sunrise, the farmer’s field was once again empty except for compacted squares in the hay stubble that would be eradicated by the winter plowing. No sign remained of the battle fought from here and won on the nearby hills over the last week. No loss of life. The only real injuries were a couple of broken arms and a broken leg when a wildfire engine tumbled down an embankment. They’d been blinded by a sudden cloud of smoke on a narrow curve. Seventy-three homes were the insurance company’s problem. When it came down to the wrangling, no one except the firefighters would remember how close that number had come to being seven hundred and thirty.

  He and Jeannie gazed east as soon as they’d reached their cruising altitude of five thousand feet. The smoke had thinned to small spot fires. They were high enough to see the black. Eighty thousand acres of park, forest land, and homes gone. But it would be back. One thing Mother Nature always did well was bring back life where you couldn’t imagine it. Then they turned and headed west to the coast.

  Cal simply enjoyed the ride as they flew high over Santa Barbara, the Pacific Ocean stretching out to fill the horizon as they approached it. Jeannie had left him feeling immensely mellow. He’d never been with anyone who responded to him with such heat, nor offered it right back. And usually heat left him simply greedy for more. Jeannie doused the fires in him just as effectively as she did with her chopper, as if she’d somehow washed his insides clean as well.

  Tell her, you idiot.

  “You’re an incredible woman, Jeannie Clark of the dark-red hair.” He watched her as she checked something on her instrument panel, then adjusted their heading, such a tiny shift that he knew it was a delaying tactic. That was okay, he could wait. There were only the two of them and a breathtaking morning light aboard Jeannie’s Firehawk.

  “Why?”

  Not the response he’d expected. No empty rituals of compliments shared before the subject was dropped—not with this woman.

  “Why are you incredible? Let me count the ways.”

  “No. I—”

  He cut her off. “This should be fun. Don’t interrupt.” He ignored her glare and waited while she acknowledged a direction change from Henderson that had them turning north along the coast. It was just another beautiful early November afternoon a couple thousand feet above the California beaches.

  “Let’s see. Chronological or order of importance?”

  “Crap, Cal.”

  “Told you to shush. I’m considering serious matters here.”

  “Give me a break, Hotshot.”

  “Not a chance, Helitack. I could start by enumerating your womanly curves and just how much I enjoyed them last night.”

  “And this morning.”

  “Shush. Though I’ll accept the correction. Chronologic, I think. Better yet, reverse chronologic. We’ve already covered last night.”

  She sputtered and turned to glare at him.

  “Watch your heading, Helitack,” he ordered her, though she hadn’t wiggled off her flight path in the slightest.

  She continued to glare for a long moment before abruptly laughing and turning back forward.

  Damn! Why were both of his cameras in the bag? That laugh had lit her up brighter than the morning sun. It was the first time he’d heard it up close rather than across half a camp, and it transformed her from merely incredible to downright magnificent. What in the hell was he doing presuming to even be aboard this woman’s chopper? He had no more qualifications to be here than… Cut it out, Cal. She invited you. That’s enough. Enough for now, anyway. Where had he been before that laugh? And what would he have to do to elicit its return?

  �
�I thought you were busy making lists,” Jeannie poked at his silence.

  “Uh, right.” Could he sound stupider? Probably. “So last night and this morning, we had positively incredible sex that I can’t wait to try out again at the soonest opportunity.”

  “Roger that, Hotshot.”

  “Don’t interrupt. I could easily waste a lot of time on how good you look, feel, smell, taste, but that’s all pointless at the moment because it would just make me want to jump you again right now. I’m guessing that isn’t my best option while you’re trying to fly a helicopter that my life depends on at the moment.”

  She kept her silence this time, perhaps thinking some of the same thoughts he was. Definitely time for a subject change.

  “The way you fly. I didn’t really appreciate it at first, don’t know much about choppers, but I’m learning. I can now see that Beale is incredible. I wouldn’t expect less from SOAR.”

  “I heard she was one of their best.”

  “Okay, that’s even more humbling. But you’re not far behind, Helitack. I’ve had a lot of time to watch you these last days, from both in the air and on the ground. You really get it done. And what you do with it against fire is something I haven’t seen much of in the ten years I’ve been hotshotting. So, as much as you’re humbled by Beale, I’m finding the same thing with you. That’s what I meant about you freaking me out.”

  This time she didn’t try to respond, and he was glad of it. He knew he had her up on a totally ridiculous pedestal. The problem was that the more he learned about her, the taller the damn pedestal grew. He was used to women who started with those perfect stars in their eyes and bodies that didn’t quit, who looked amazing through a two- or three-beer haze. Often fun, but never sustainable.

  He was definitely not used to women who flew twenty-million-dollar machines like they were a second skin and looked at him with a frankness that he couldn’t escape, as if she could see right through him. She could do that, yet she hadn’t cast him aside. Quite the opposite. And he didn’t know what to do with that, either. Continue his list.