Red Hot
Page 17
He dropped his arm from beneath her legs so that her feet touched the floor. And he steadied her outside a door. “Here’s the women’s locker room.”
“Are there women on your team?” she asked.
He nodded. “A couple.”
“Are they gone, too?”
“Everyone’s gone,” he said.
“Then I’ll shower with you…”
He groaned and closed his eyes, as if just the thought alone turned him on.
He turned her on. She wanted him. She needed him. She pressed her body against his and linked her arms around his neck. Pulling his head down for her kiss, she found his mouth with hers. And she kissed him deeply, pressing her lips to his.
He groaned again. But he pulled back. With a shuddery sigh, he leaned his forehead against hers and said, “Fiona, we need to talk…”
“You talk too much,” she told him playfully, teasingly.
But he was all serious. No glint of humor in his blue eyes at all. Just redness from the smoke and exhaustion. The last thing he needed was talk now. But he persisted.
“You never let me talk enough,” he said. “I tried to tell you that you didn’t need to worry about Matt. I knew he wouldn’t get on to the team.”
She remembered a few times that he had tried to talk about it, and she’d stopped him. Because, like now, she wanted to make love with him instead. If she’d let him assure her that Matthew wouldn’t make the team, she would have had no excuse to sleep with him—to fall for him.
She tentatively admitted, “You did try…”
He sighed. “I know. I should have tried harder,” he said, as if she’d criticized his efforts. “I should have made it clearer…”
Guilt tugged at her, and she admitted, “I wasn’t exactly honest with you, either. I was trying to seduce you into helping me talk Matthew out of becoming a firefighter.”
He chuckled. “You’re not exactly Mata Hari. I knew what you were up to. I should have done the honorable thing. But I wanted you too damn much…”
She understood because that want—that need—overwhelmed her. She had never felt such passion before, such desire. Over his shoulder she noticed the door for the men’s locker room. She grasped his hand and tugged him across the hall and through that door.
“Fiona…”
“You smell like smoke,” she reminded him. But he didn’t just smell like it. Soot streaked his handsome face—darker even than the stubble on his jaw. She tugged up his T-shirt and found that the soot had penetrated his gear and his shirt to streak across his skin. She tossed the shirt aside and ran her palms over his chest and down the washboard muscles of his stomach. Her skin came away black, too.
“You’re going to get dirty showering with me,” he warned her as he kicked off his boots beside the locker emblazoned with his name. But he took her hand now and led her past the lockers to the stark white painted cement walls of the shower area. He turned on a faucet that had water flowing from all the showerheads.
She squealed as the not-yet-warmed water blasted her face and hair. It heated quickly, though—especially when Wyatt kicked off his jeans and boxers and stood before her gloriously naked and aroused.
She probably didn’t look too desirable with her smoke-permeated hair hanging wetly around her face and her clothes soaked with water and soot. She hurriedly discarded them so, like him, she could feel the water sluicing over her bare skin.
But then it wasn’t just water. His hands caressed her, sliding over her shoulders, down along her waist and hips. A gasp of desire escaped her lips. She wanted to touch him, too. But she soaped her hands first, then glided them over his skin, washing away the soot. The water turned black as it ran down their legs and across the white tile floor to the drains.
Even when, finally, the water ran clear, she didn’t stop soaping his skin. She didn’t stop caressing him. She ran her hands all over his body—his chest, his back, his butt, his stomach and lower…
Until she wrapped her fingers around him. She used both hands, gliding them up and down his shaft.
He groaned. And, lowering his head, he kissed her. Deeply. Passionately.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted more than his kiss. She wanted all of him. He kept kissing her, but he touched her, too. His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs stroking over her nipples.
She cried out as pleasure overwhelmed her. She’d been afraid that they were over—forever. That she would never be this close to him again. She wasn’t close enough yet, though. She needed more. She kept stroking him. And she was apparently driving him as crazy as he was driving her because he pushed her back against the wall of the shower. While the floor was tile, the wall was concrete—cold and hard. But she barely noticed it. She was focused fully on him and the way he made her feel. So much…
He moved his hands from her breasts, skimming them around her hips and over her butt. He cupped her cheeks and lifted her against the wall. And as he lifted her, his fingers slid inside her.
She cried out again at the delicious sensation. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. The pressure building inside her demanded more.
“Wyatt, please,” she implored him, her fingertips stroking over the pulsing tip of his erection.
He groaned. Then he entered her fully in one thrust.
She moaned as he filled her. It wasn’t enough. She wanted him deeper—wanted him to reach even farther inside. Despite the hardness of the wall at her back, she wriggled and arched, taking him as deep as she was able. She wrapped her legs around his waist and gripped his shoulders. And she rode him—sliding up and down his shaft.
She moaned again at the pleasure, at the sweet sensation of him moving within her. “You feel so good,” she murmured. So perfect…
Muscles rippled in his shoulders and bulged in his arms. A cord stood out on the side of his neck as he struggled for control. “You’re killing me, woman…”
But she was the one who screamed as pleasure shattered her, an orgasm shuddering through her. He didn’t stop, though; he kept pulsing in and out, kept kissing her, exploring her mouth with his tongue as his cock thrust inside her. And as he kissed her, he teased her with his caresses. Then his fingers slid toward her clit. He stroked over it—back and forth. And she came again. This time she didn’t just scream, she cried out, “I love you!”
He tensed. And first she thought she’d horrified him with her admission. But his hands gripped her hips. He thrust deep and came, filling her. He shouted at the release. But he made no admission of his own. Except for the sound of the water running, the room had gone eerily silent.
Her face heated with embarrassment and she wriggled free of his body. Her feet nearly slipped on the tiles. She grabbed a towel from a bench near the door to the locker room. But as she wrapped it around herself, she realized it was all she would have to wear. Her clothes lay soaked on the bathroom floor.
Then even the sound of water stopped as Wyatt turned off the faucet. His big hands cupped her shoulders, and he tried to spin her back toward him.
She resisted, but he was too strong. When she faced him, she closed her eyes, unwilling to see the pity in his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that’s not what this is.” Because she couldn’t help herself, she reached out and moved her hands over his wet chest. “It’s just sex…”
And that was all it would ever be to him.
*
“BULLSHIT,” HE SAID—with so much force that she gasped and stared up at him in surprise. “It’s not just sex, and you damn well know it.”
Hope brightened her eyes. “I know what it is to me,” she said. “But I don’t know what it is to you…”
“Everything,” he admitted. Wonderful. Overwhelming. Impossible. “It’s everything. I love you, too.” But he was stuck on the impossible, and the hopelessness and frustration made his voice gruff.
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” she said. And now her temper was back, flashing in her green eyes.
He loved her enough to let her go. “It’s because I love you that I can’t ask you to be with me.”
She snorted. “I’m not looking for a marriage proposal.”
“Not yet,” he said. She was too cautious for that. But she was too cautious to be with him, as well. “But someday you would. And from now on, I’m going to be completely open and honest with you.”
“You’re not the marrying kind,” she said. “I get that. You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“Do you know why?”
She shrugged, and her towel slipped down. Her breasts jiggled free, distracting him. And hardening him. He wanted her all over again.
She pulled the towel back up and tucked one end of it between her breasts. “Because you can’t tie yourself to one woman.”
“I can,” he said, “if that woman’s you.”
Her lips parted on a soft gasp, and her eyes softened. He’d heard her love—when she’d shouted it as she came. Now he saw it—warming her eyes.
And his heart.
But he reminded himself that it was impossible, because it would never be fair to either of them.
“But I can’t ask you to tie yourself to me.” He closed his eyes as he remembered the expression on her face when he’d walked into that tent, that look of fear, before she’d seen him. “I can’t put you through again what you went through today.” He forced himself to release her—to step away.
He reached for a towel and, with shaking hands, wrapped it around his waist. “I know what I should do—that I should just give up the job.”
“No!” She shouted the word with all the gravitas of an epitaph.
He tensed and turned back around, surprised at the vehemence of her tone. It was on her face, too—which was suddenly tense. He had thought she would instantly agree. “You matter more to me than it does.”
She shook her head, and water spattered from the ends of her wet hair. She was so resolute and so beautiful. “It would kill you to give up the Hotshot team,” she said. “And it would kill me if I caused you to give it up.”
Water from her hair dripped down her shoulders. A bead of it trickled over the slope of her breast to disappear beneath the towel. He wanted to tug it off her. He wanted her. And not just again but always.
“Maybe I could do it,” he said as he considered the idea. He would consider anything for her. “Maybe I could walk away…for you…with you…”
“You can’t,” she insisted. “You have to stay on the team. You’re needed. All those families…” Her voice cracked with emotion. As he’d kept seeing that crippling fear on her face, she must have kept seeing it on theirs. She shuddered from the overwhelming emotion of it.
“Those parents needed you to save their kids,” she said. “And you did. If something like that happened again…”
He had a horrible feeling that it would if they didn’t catch the arsonist.
“And,” she continued, “if you weren’t there because of my fears, because of me…” She shook her head and shuddered again as the ramifications of that occurred to her.
“Those kids would have died,” he admitted without arrogance. He’d been closer to the campsite than Cody and Dawson. He’d already gotten the campers farther from the fire when the others had found them.
“No.” She uttered it again with such vehemence.
“What are you saying?”
“That I love you too much to ask you to give up what you love,” she said.
His breath shuddered out with relief. But he still didn’t know what it meant…for them. Could they have a future when they both wanted different things? Unfortunately he knew the answer.
“And I love you too much to ask you to live with your fears…” His relief left, sliding away like the water had down the drain—along with his hope. “You were right about what I do. It makes loving me too great a risk.”
Especially for someone like her who knew all the mortality rates of every profession. His was more dangerous than most; today had proved that for her.
But she smiled. “You survived that fire,” she said. “And you’ll survive the next one and the one after that. There is no risk in loving you.”
“You do love me,” he murmured in awe of her sudden optimism and confidence. He’d known she was strong; she’d already proven her strength went deeper than he’d fathomed. But now he considered that it might be endless.
Her fears had nearly been realized; he could have died in that fire—that damn fire someone had set. But she loved him anyway.
She smiled, her face aglow, and told him just as vehemently as she’d told him no, “I am so in love with you…”
He reached for her towel, tugging it and her up against him. “And I am so in love with you.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her with a tenderness that must have surprised her, because she gasped. His name escaped on a sigh between her parted lips.
He took advantage of her sigh to deepen the kiss. He moved his mouth over hers and then his tongue. She moaned and locked her arms around his neck.
Her towel dropped away. And he let his go, too. They were both naked again. She pressed against him, burrowing into his arms as if she couldn’t get close enough.
His legs slightly shaky with exhaustion and awe in her love, he carried her only as far as the bench that held the towels. And he laid her down onto the softness of them. Then he covered her body with his. She lifted her legs, taking him deep as he entered her—joining them. They were as close as they could be, as if she were an extension of him—as much a part of him as his madly pounding heart. Their love and understanding and passion would bind them forever.
Tension gripped his body, almost making him shake before it broke. They came together—crying out simultaneously as ecstasy overwhelmed them. He had never felt so complete. Or so loved…
So fortunate.
He’d felt lucky when he’d made it out of that fire without losing a kid. But he hadn’t known what good fortune was until now.
Fiona didn’t just love him. She understood him—on a level no one else ever had. Wyatt had been wrong about her. So wrong. She wasn’t one of those women—the ones who had used ultimatums to manipulate his former team members into quitting, into giving up what they loved. Maybe it hadn’t been the women, though. Maybe his former teammates had made the decisions themselves—to not put their wives or families through what he’d put Fiona through today. He was so in love with her that he had been willing to give up the job for her. But she had refused. Fiona knew why he had become a Hotshot, and because she knew, she would never ask him to leave the team.
Instead she had become part of his team—the most important part to him. She was his heart and his incentive for surviving every fire. Because she would always be there when he came home.
*
Keep reading for an excerpt from PLEASING HER SEAL by Anne Marsh.
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Pleasing Her SEAL
by Anne Marsh
1
Ladies, it’s Saturday and I’m surrounded by honeymooners. This is one step up from my usual weekend wedding gig, where my people options are usually the geriatric crowd, the toddler dancing crowd ( always good for a much-needed cardio burst and the cutest, stickiest kisses), or the drunken groomsman crowd (good for equally enthusi
astic but much damper kisses—eww). I counted not one, not two, but three couples wrapped around each other by the pool. I have dubbed them the Octopi because they seem to have eight hands each and at least seven of them are engaged in activities best left to the bedroom or a soft porn channel. Go, Octopi! Speaking of that, watching the Octopi procreate underscores my own single state. You’ve found The One and you’re hearing wedding bells, or you wouldn’t be visiting this blog. Any tips for where to look for a good guy? Because this wedding blogger is feeling lonely in paradise.
—MADDIE, Kiss and Tulle
“HOOYAH, HOOYAH, HOOYAH, HEY.” US Navy SEAL Mason Black fist-bumped his knuckles with Levi Brandon’s. He didn’t have far to reach since both men were currently sharing the same palm tree backrest and catching their breaths after completing their mission.
“Today’s gonna be another easy day.” Levi automatically finished the chant. The words took Mason back to BUD/S training when making the SEALs team had still been seven weeks of hell away. Operating on four hours of sleep or less a night, he’d worked with his teammates to carry their Zodiac over their heads through the pounding surf, crawled through mud flats and made best friends with a three-hundred-pound log that was their instructors’ idea of exercise equipment. Good times.
Levi grinned as if he hadn’t just been embroiled in a firefight. “I’m hoping there’s a beer in my future.”
The current op wasn’t so bad and beat the hell out of completing the O course at BUD/S. Not only had the rain finally stopped, which went in the plus column, but one hell of a tropical sunrise lit up the horizon. Since he was waiting for the Zodiacs from the US Navy cruiser anchored just offshore, Mason had every reason to stare at the horizon. His team was minutes away from successfully finishing their undercover op on Fantasy Island.
One more checkmark in the “mission complete” column.
If he’d been a paperwork-and-spreadsheet kind of guy. Which he wasn’t.
Nope, he mused to himself as he went to work with a SIG Sauer and a sniper rifle. Rather than riding the commuter train, he’d be extracted from the island by Black Hawk and flown to the nearest US military base to debrief. And instead of writing quarterly reports or coding software, he’d helped lead the hostile extraction of a South American drug lord who’d made the mistake of booking a luxury vacation for himself and his new girlfriend on Fantasy Island.