That was fine by him.
He leaned against the bar, the hard wood digging into his back like it was cutting him, but he didn’t fucking care at all, because there was nothing that mattered right now more than Megan, and the way she dropped to her knees, pulled down his briefs, and brought him to her lips.
He was so used to being in control, but he didn’t want control right now. He wanted to let go. He never took his eyes off her, watching her gorgeous face and her delicious lips as she teased him at first, trailing her tongue from the head to the base, then back up again.
He groaned and grabbed her hair, twining his fingers through those beautiful brown strands as she dived back in, licking him like he was a piece of candy, and fuck if that wasn’t the hottest thing in the whole damn world. She cupped his balls in her palm and teased her tongue along his dick. An incinerating heat ricocheted through his bones, to his blood, into every cell in his body. He wanted to thrust into her mouth. But he let her lead, let her set the pace. Didn’t matter. She could have him all the way in, or just blaze those succulent trails with her wicked tongue, and he’d come just the same.
She pulled back, kissing the head, then looked up at him. “You taste good.” She sounded as if she were buzzed, her voice all heady with desire as she rubbed the tip of his cock against her lips. Heat blasted through his body as he watched her sinful mouth caress his erection, her tongue darting out to lick and kiss him. “Just like I’ve imagined.”
“You’ve imagined this?” he rasped out, but she could only nod an answer because she’d stopped teasing now, and she was swirling her tongue up and down his shaft. He couldn’t see straight. He couldn’t think straight. Hell, he didn’t want to think ever again. He only wanted this. Her mouth was warm and wet and soft, and her hands were quick and nimble, and all the sensations at once threatened to annihilate him.
And that’s exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be lost in her, lost in pleasure, lost in feelings. He threaded his fingers farther into her hair, pulling her close.
“You look so hot, and you feel so fucking good, I can barely take it,” he groaned, gripping her head harder, as if he had to hold on to her.
She made some kind of moaning sound as her tongue worked him over. She grabbed tight at the base of his shaft with her hand, and the twin sensations did him in. His spine crackled, and he could feel the build starting. He leaned his head back, curse words falling from his mouth with abandon as her lips raced up and down his cock.
She was killing him, and he wanted it, he wanted to be obliterated by this, to be undone by her as he started to come, his half-formed words making her grip him even tighter with those perfect fucking lips. She kept going, licking and sucking until there was nothing left, and he was spent. Wrung dry, and he felt like he could sleep peacefully for days now with the kind of voodoo magic her lips had worked on him.
He knelt down with her, giving her a sweet, hot kiss on the forehead. He pulled up his boxers and jeans, then wrapped her into his arms and declared, “Now I can die a happy man.”
“Don’t die,” she said, and there was real fear in her voice. She wasn’t playing around.
“I won’t. I promise,” he said, and it felt true. Everything with her felt true, especially the rapid beat of her heart. He could feel it against his chest.
“You can’t promise that,” she whispered in a thin voice.
“I know. But I want to,” he said, wrapping his arms tightly around her, holding her there on the floor of his bar where no one could see them. Then he gently placed a hand on her chin, making her look at him. Her brown eyes were so pure and deep, but there was so much sadness in them. “When you told me you’re not in the place for a relationship. Was that the truth?”
“Yes. And no,” she said, and he could tell it was hard for her to admit that much.
“Yes, you’re not in the place for a relationship? Or not with me?” He motioned from her to him.
“You said the same thing about yourself,” she pointed out, her tone edging toward defensive.
“I know,” he whispered, then leaned in to kiss her forehead again, then her cheek, then her lips, giving the softest kiss he’d ever given her. “But things changed.”
She laughed. “Because of that super-awesome, amazing blow job I gave you?”
He laughed, too, but then let it fade. He needed to make it clear to her that this wasn’t because she’d given him the blow job of a lifetime. He was going to have to make it patently clear that there was so much more going on than the way their bodies collided into each other like magnets. He hadn’t reached out to her today as he’d promised, because he’d spent the time thinking about how it would feel not to see her again. The answer was simple—awful. And now it was time to let her know.
“No. Because of how I feel when I’m with you.”
She drew in a quick breath. “How do you feel when you’re with me?”
Now it was his turn to inhale, steeling himself for what he was going to say. “Like I’m living in the present. Not the past.” The admission didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would. It felt freeing.
She placed a gentle hand over his cheek. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “Can you tell me what happened in Chicago? Because I think it’s a big part of what’s going on in here,” she said, tracing a line across his forehead.
He felt a stabbing pain in his chest, as if his organs were constricting and seizing up, but when she ran her hand over his jawline, the soft pads of her fingers tracing him, that tightening went away.
He pushed his hand through his hair. “You know when you asked me about the family here? The kids and that fire a few weeks back?”
She nodded, listening intently.
“The reason I didn’t want to talk about it is because of why I came here in the first place. I love it here now, and that’s partly because it’s everything Chicago wasn’t for me anymore. Because everywhere I went I couldn’t escape the memories of this one fire where I lost two of my men,” he said, and his voice threatened to break, and hell, he didn’t want to lose it in front of her or anyone. But then she reached for his hand, squeezing tight, and that gave him the strength to keep going, to tell her the full story.
“It was a cold night in February. Someone left candles in a condo when they went out to the movies. It was one of those things—you’re rushing to leave, to make it to the theater in time, and you forget. Ladder 10 got the call when it started, and the fire was raging in minutes. Pretty soon, the whole top floor was consumed,” he said, steeling himself as the images threatened to choke him.
“I was on one of the lower floors with the chief and my buddy Sawyer, fighting the blaze. We did everything right. Did it by the books. We were safe, we took precautions, and we were just trying to fight the beast. Then a wall collapsed.” He lowered his hand sharply, like a drawbridge closing, to demonstrate the speed. “The chief saw it coming. As soon as it started to fall, he pushed Sawyer and me to try to get us out of the way,” he said, giving voice for the first time to the reel that played behind his eyes. The story hurt in the way that thick sobs do when you try to hold back, but not quite in the suffocating way it had felt inside his head all these days. Maybe just telling it was what he’d needed, coupled with the caring way Megan watched and listened as he spoke.
“I was the lucky one,” he said with a small scoff. “Or so they all said after, because all I suffered were shoulder injuries. Trust me, I sure as hell didn’t think about how much my body ached at the funeral a few days later when the chief and Sawyer were laid to rest. All I thought about was what happened. Sometimes it’s still all I think about. I replay it, I study it. I try to figure out if there was something, anything, I could have done differently. I tried to tell myself that Sawyer’s death was the equivalent of a friend being hit in the crosswalk by a car that ran the light.”
“It was the same,” she said, threading her fingers more tightly through his. Her touch warmed him all over, loosen
ing another layer of pain he’d wrapped himself in.
He shrugged helplessly. “Maybe I could have grabbed Sawyer harder when the wall was falling. I don’t know, Megan,” he said, looking her in the eyes. Hers were rimmed with sadness, like his, he was sure. Only there was a certainty in her gaze that he didn’t possess, but wanted to. “I don’t know anymore. I will never know.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “So that’s what happened in Chicago.”
He’d done it. He’d told the story he rarely told. He’d managed to get through it without his chest caving in or his soul dying a little more. He’d survived once more.
Now that he was finished, she petted his hair with her other hand, and he was dangerously close to letting go of all the walls he’d built up, because of this. Because of her, nestled in the corner of his bar with him, in this small town that had somehow become his new home. Listening, touching, soothing.
“And you feel guilty because you’re alive,” she said softly.
He nodded, looking at his hands as he talked. “And because I didn’t save them.”
“But you couldn’t,” she said, in a strong, clear voice. “Because there was nothing you could have done differently. You did everything you could. You were safe, you took precautions, you did your job, and even so it still happened.”
He looked up at her, her hands still running through his hair. He didn’t want her to stop touching his hair. It felt too good, especially now, especially with this.
“There was nothing you could have done differently. Things just happen,” she said again. “It’s the risk you take in your job. It’s the chance you take. That sometimes you save, and sometimes you don’t. But a wall comes crumbling down in a five-alarm fire, and you’re lucky to be alive, Becker. That’s all that separates you from Sawyer and the chief. It’s not anything more than luck. It could just as easily have been Sawyer standing where you were. But it wasn’t, and for no reason other than luck. It’s not anyone’s fault that you’re still standing and they’re not. It’s random. It’s chaos. It’s the absolute unpredictability of life and circumstances and fate.”
She was so certain in her words, but so caring, and it was as if a rigid piece of his heart cracked a tiny bit, and in that space, he wanted to let her all the way in. “How can you be so wise? Because of your dad?”
She swallowed and nodded. Her eyes were wide and edged with tears, but her voice cut through the sadness. “I never even knew him. And it sucked, but I had no choice except to figure things out and keep on moving. Keep on living. My mom wasn’t the same then, Becker. She was a wreck, and Travis and I had to learn to make it through the day all on our own. That’s why we’re so close.”
“Do you miss your dad?”
“I miss the idea of him. But I also feel like he’s with me, the best parts of him,” she said, rubbing her hand against her tattoo.
His heart lurched toward her, and he immediately pressed his lips against her shoulder, lightly dusting her ink, then looked at her. “You’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I saw an owl a few nights ago when I couldn’t sleep.”
She furrowed her brow at him. “Where was the owl?”
“On a branch in a tree in the backyard. I looked out the kitchen window and there it was. I don’t know why. And maybe this is crazy, but it made me think of you. But then, I was already thinking of you.”
“It’s the same for me. About you.”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, Megan. Not since that first night you came back to my house. Not since that time at the station. Not since we ran together. Not since you painted your body. Not since you walked into my life and showed up on the back porch of my bar. I can’t get you out of my head, and you’re the only thing that makes me feel like a fucking human being again, and not like some ghost stuck in the past.”
“The damage you’ve seen doesn’t have to define you, Becker,” she said, and he dipped his forehead to hers.
“I could say the same about you. Because I think that’s the real reason you don’t want to pursue anything serious with me. It’s not because of your brother. And it’s not because of your ex. It’s not even because you’re leaving town. It’s because of what I do, isn’t it?”
“I’ve always had a terrible fear of bar owners,” she teased.
“Yeah, I thought so.”
Then she turned serious, and whispered, “I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want to get close to you and then lose you.”
Her voice was haunted and full of so much pain, but longing, too. He felt that longing and didn’t want to fight it. He only wanted to give in to it. To her. To how he felt with her. Her touch was some kind of magic. The way she talked to him like a massage. He was finally starting to say good-bye to the twisted, torn-up way he replayed and rewound and revisited his past, and it was because of her. Here, nestled together, he was keenly aware that she was the start of something. He didn’t want to wait any longer for her. He didn’t want to hold back any more.
“I don’t want to get lost. Except in you. I want to know you, Megan. I want to have more nights like this. Even if our time is limited, even though you’re leaving for Portland in a week, I want as much of you as I can have right now. I hope to God you want the same.”
…
When he said things like that, she felt stripped bare. As if her heart were beating outside her body. It scared the living daylights out of her, but she was so drawn to him, like he was air or breath. She couldn’t deny she wanted the same thing. She didn’t know how to reconcile these opposing forces in her—self-preservation versus taking a leap. But maybe he was right. You only live once, and anything can happen to anyone. Hell, she’d chosen a safe man before—an internet start-up guy—and look where that had landed. Then, if a guy like Craig—who had the safest job in the world selling books to happy people in a tourist town—could break his leg trying to save a kid and almost die, did her rules even apply? Maybe they’d been useful at one point, but perhaps she’d outrun them.
Maybe she’d been holding on to her fears when she’d actually outgrown them a while ago. She’d survived the loss of her father, she’d handled her mom’s depression, she’d extricated herself from a damaging relationship before it went too far. She’d moved on and through and past, and here she was on the other side.
There were a million ways to lose someone, and sometimes you lost them before they even left this earth. It was time to move on. To split from her past. To step forward, even in this small way, for this brief moment in time.
“Me, too,” she said, surprised at the strength of her declaration. “Where do we go from here? I’m only here for another week. I want the same thing, but I’m leaving soon.”
“We make the most of the time you have. It’s as simple as that. But we need to do right by Travis going forward. I’m seeing him at the firehouse tomorrow morning. We need to tell him. I need to be the one to do it, okay?”
She nodded. She understood the man code. She knew how these firefighters were and that wanting to date someone’s sister had to be discussed man-to-man first. “He’s in Monterey for that executive game and coming back late tonight. We have one of the final shoots for the calendar tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll talk to him then.”
She nodded, but nerves whisked through her. She fidgeted with the bracelet on her wrist, and that caught his attention. He gently lifted her chin so she was facing him.
“Hey,” he said softly, brushing his thumb along her jaw. “You worried about what he’ll say?”
“I just don’t want to let him down when he finds out I lied to him.”
Becker’s eyes were somber as he nodded. “I know what you mean. Trust me, I know what you mean. But I’m just going to tell him that this is real. This thing between you and me.”
“It is real,” she said insistently, placing her hand on top of his. The clock was ticking loudly; time was winding down, marching to the end of her stay here. Whatever w
as happening between them felt like falling for a city when you’re on a vacation. Wonderful, but short-lived, with the ending in sight before they began. “And since it is, we should make the most of it while I’m here,” she said, trying to keep the sadness that would come with good-bye far away from them.
“We should,” he said quietly as he reached for her hand. “And who knows what’s next. You’re leaving, and I can’t make promises, but no matter how hard we try we can’t stay away. So let’s see what happens while you’re here, and we’ll deal with you leaving when it gets here.”
She nodded crisply. That sounded realistic, and possible.
He leaned in to dust a soft kiss on her forehead, her nose, ever so briefly on her lips. “And now, I’d really like to spend this time you have in town with you instead of resisting you,” he said, and threaded his fingers through her hair. She shivered at his touch, sparks skipping over her skin at his words. “I want to take you out to dinner, and get to know you even better, and I want to hold your hand, and kiss you across the table, before I take you back to my house and get reacquainted with your exquisite body.”
“Becker.” She shuddered, desperate for him to touch her. “I can barely think when you talk like that.”
“Good. I don’t want you thinking. I want you feeling, because if you’re thinking then I’m not doing it right.”
He reached for her hand and lifted her to her feet.
“Hey. Do you remember when we first met and how you wanted me to draw a raccoon?” she asked.
“No, Megan. I forgot everything about the night I met the woman who makes me feel human again,” he said in a dry voice.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, ha ha.” She reached into her purse for her sketchbook and flipped to the page with the raccoon she’d drawn for him. The tattoo she’d told him about by the river. She held her breath as he appraised the image, so different from the silly one she’d drawn that first night, but similar in many ways, too. The raccoon was painstakingly detailed, down to the tufts of fur on his ringed tail, but he had the cartoonish look that marked her favorite style. The best part was how she’d dressed him. She’d given him a pair of bunker pants, suspenders, and a fire helmet. Her skin prickled with anxiety, hoping he liked it.
Melt For Him Page 13
