HEAT: A steamy firefighter romance boxed set

by Mia Madison

  The doorbell chimes. Is this him coming to see me? My heart thuds at the idea he’s changed his mind. My eyes light up as I open the door, but it’s not him. It’s Jed.

  *

  I expect to feel something seeing Jed again, but now he’s standing in front of me, I it’s no more than I might feel for any friend from high school I haven’t seen for a while. I don’t resent him or anything. I don’t care one way or another. He’s brown, tanned from the European sun and his hair is lighter. There’s a roughness about him, too, from a few hard weeks traveling that suits him. He looks hotter than he did before he left, but I still don’t want him.

  “How was Europe?” I ask politely.

  “Awesome,” he says. “I saw so much—the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, The Acropolis in Athens, Amsterdam, Brussels, Big Ben and the Tower of London, too much to mention.”

  “Sounds good,” I say. “I saw you on Facebook.” I don’t mention that the next day, the day after he dumped me and I was nearly killed in the fire, that I saw he swiftly changed his status from being “in a relationship.” And I don’t mention all the women he had selfies with around Europe.

  “I thought we might hang out again some time, you know for old time’s sake, before I go to college. I hear Holly and Ben are an item. We could double date.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “Thanks all the same.”

  “Don’t be like that. You’re just sore, because I didn’t want to make you wait for me while I was away.”

  “That’s crap, and you know it, Jed. You didn’t do anything on my account, you just didn’t want to be tied down yourself. Well off you go; you’re still not tied.”

  “I missed you,” he says.

  “It didn’t look like it to me.”

  “Well, I did.” He tries to get hold of me and pull me to him, but I’m not having any of that.

  “No, Jed. I’m not interested.”

  But he’s still trying, smashing his lips on mine. I push him away, but before I can give him a really good shove, he’s being pulled off me and he’s lying on the ground.

  Luke! “The lady said ‘No’,” he says.

  Jed picks himself up. “Fuck! Who’s he? I only came to see you.”

  “Well it doesn’t look like she wants to see you as much as you want to see her. So I suggest you find someone else to see,” Luke says.

  Jed beats a hasty retreat, gets in his car and roars away.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I say. “I had it all in hand.”

  “I didn’t like the look of him. He needs a haircut and a wash. He could have been anyone.”

  “He’s my ex, Jed.”

  “Still ex?”

  “Yes. He went to Europe, had a good time. Now he wants a good time with me before he goes to college.”

  “Sorry I split up the party then.”

  “I’m not. Have you been avoiding me again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why aren’t you avoiding me today?”

  “I couldn’t stand to see him kissing you when I want to kiss you so much myself.”

  I look at him. I want him to kiss me too, but he doesn’t.

  “I wanted to show you my new paintings. I’ve had a lot of time to think and a lot of time on my hands to paint.”

  *

  “Wow!” he says when he sees them. “These are something else. I love them all but the kingfisher in the city is my favorite. Is that the kingfisher you sketched at Oak Ridge?”

  “Yes, but now he’s you, standing out from all the colorless crap out there in the city and here at home.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I couldn’t paint you naked, so I painted what you mean to me.”

  “Oh, Olivia.” He kisses me then, a slow hot kiss, his hands in my hair and mine creeping inside his t-shirt feeling the smooth skin of his back and the muscles beneath. I’ve been aching to touch him so long without being able to get close to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, kissing the tip of my nose as if he can’t stop kissing me even when he has something to say. “I’ve been miserable trying to stay away from you. I can’t do it. I care too much to let things stand as they are. Let me think. There must be some way to work this out.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Luke

  I’m taking Olivia back to Oak Ridge but not just to visit Beatrice this time. I want to show Beatrice the canvases Olivia just completed and get another opinion of them. I love the paintings, but I don’t know if that’s just me.

  When I called up Beatrice to arrange the visit, I tried to explain. “When we saw you last time, Olivia sketched a kingfisher by the lake. And now she’s put him in a series of paintings. I’d like to know what you think of them.”

  “Landscapes are ten a penny. They are popular with general art buyers who just want something pretty to hang on the wall, but there’s not much recognition for landscapes in the art world unless they have a very individual style. Have you seen anything like Olivia’s paintings before?”

  “Nothing like these. They aren’t landscapes, but I haven’t got much of a clue about art. I’d like to let you see them.”

  “Bring them up. I’d love to meet her properly anyway.”

  I tell Olivia she has to square it with her parents.

  “They’ll kick up a fuss, but I don’t care, I’m going anyway. I will tell them though. No sneaking behind their backs.”

  “Hopefully they’ll respect that if they can see you’re being straight with them.”

  *

  When she gets in the car to go to see Beatrice a few days later, I ask her, “What did your parents say?”

  “They said, ‘Do what you like, you always do anyway.’” She rolls her eyes.

  “At least they didn’t forbid you to go. I might have had to go alone.”

  “You and your conscience,” she says. “I’ll have to help you forget to be good, same as you help me forget to behave myself.”

  “You seemed to like misbehaving a lot.”

  “Likewise.” She laughs. “Or you like me misbehaving, one of the two.”

  It’s good to have her laughing and sitting beside me in the car again going to Oak Ridge. She’s wearing a little blue dress I haven’t seen before. It’s demure, but not matronly. Blue suits her, but she could wear a sack today, even that horrible dress of her mother’s, and she’d look beautiful because she’s sitting beside me. I remember the last time going to Oak Ridge. Everything feels so different.

  The paintings are safely stashed in the back. Olivia has brought her earlier work too. There’s a real progression there that even I can see, and I know nothing.

  When we arrive, Beatrice has me bring all the paintings in, and Olivia arranges them in the order she painted them around the white painted walls of Beatrice’s sun room.

  “These show real promise,” Beatrice says, her face beaming. “I hope you don’t mind. I invited a friend to take tea with us. I’m a bit out of the art world these days. But Alistair owns a gallery in Stanhope, and he’ll know. Even if they are not quite for him, I think you should keep painting. You have a gift.”

  Olivia seems happy just showing and talking about her work like she is starved of talking to anyone about it.

  Alistair Stuart, Beatrice’s friend, goes slowly around the display when he arrives. He doesn’t say much. I hope he encourages Olivia to continue with her art work, even if he doesn’t rate the paintings, otherwise I’ll blame myself for bringing her here, only to have her dream quashed.

  “Mmh,” he says eventually. “I’m just thinking about the best place for these. I’d like to give you a show of your own for the Kingfisher series, but we might get more eyeballs on them by showing them alongside a known artist seeing as you only have a few.”

  By the time the arrangements are made, it’s quite late, but Olivia can’t stop smiling. We hug and kiss Beatrice goodbye, and then we are back in the car.

  “Phone your parents. Tell them you’ll be home in a few
hours in case they worry.”

  “Mom says she’s got a late meeting in town, and Dad is away on business.”

  “In that case, I’m taking you to dinner at a place I know.” But really, I just want to spend more time with her. I don’t want to take her home.

  “This doesn’t look like a restaurant,” she says as I stop the car on the edge of the forest, a few miles from Beatrice’s house.

  “There’s something I want to do before dinner.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Olivia

  Luke gets out of the car and opens the door for me, helping me out.

  “This is something I’ve wanted to do all day,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Fuck you, hard.”

  My heart starts thudding. “Here?”

  “Yes, out here, in the forest.”

  “Anyone might be here. There are hiking trails all over.”

  “I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t notice if the Queen of Sheba wanders past.” And then he adds, “If you want me to.”

  “Oh, I want.” I’ve been wanting for so long, I forgot what it was like not to want him.

  He takes my hand, and we walk through the forest a little way until we are hidden from the road.

  “This is perfect.” He’s stopped in a little clearing. I lean against a gnarled bark of an old tree, and he kisses me so tenderly I think he’s forgotten about the hard fucking he promised.

  “When you’re not with me, this is where I imagine you, out here in nature. Wild and free-spirited. It’s how I fell in love with you when I saw you sketching the kingfisher. I just didn’t know it then. Being without you sucks.”

  “For me too.”

  His kisses become more insistent, and I respond. I never want them to stop. I don’t want to be anywhere else but with him. Here. Now. In this forest. Against this tree.

  But I feel the hardness of him against me, digging into me, and I want that too. I reach for the buckle of his belt and fumble to open it. He helps me out. And he’s there in my hands, his cock, the solid weight of him in my fingers. I imagine him inside me and my breath catches at the thought, remembering how that felt the first and only time.

  But that is for later. I push him against the tree where I was standing and drop to my knees on the forest floor, taking him in my mouth, and he groans.

  “Fuck, Olivia. You’re going to kill me with your hot dirty mouth.”

  But I don’t want to stop. I want to pleasure him with my lips, with my tongue, with my mouth, worship him with my whole mouth.

  He thrusts into me, careful not to overwhelm me with his size, holding my hair in his hands, controlling his movements, a low growl from his throat. But I don’t want him to be careful. I want all of him as deep as I can take him.

  I suck and lick like a woman possessed, swirling my tongue around, holding onto his thighs, feeling his muscles against my hands. His thrusts get faster, and I feel his control slipping, his thighs trembling and my power over him as I pleasure him with my mouth. But then he groans and pulls out from between my lips, lifting me up off my knees.

  I look at him. Crap! Why did he do that? Am I no good at this?

  But he says, “If you carry on like that it’s going to be the end of me—I’ll come in your mouth, but I want to come buried deep inside you where I belong.”

  He kisses me against the tree—a powerful, deep kiss—as he lifts up my dress, running his hands over my bottom, and then he tugs at my panties and yanks them down. He gets a packet out of his pocket and tears it with his teeth. I trust him to take care of me, of that.

  In the blink of an eye, he’s at my entrance pushing inside me, deep where he wanted to be, and I laugh at how good it feels to be impaled on him out in the forest in the fresh air with the birds going crazy. I could sing with them.

  “Happy?” he asks. “And ready?”

  “Yes. So ready.”

  He powers into me. The force of his thrusts send me hard against the tree, and I grab an overhead branch to steady myself. He pulls my dress open and my breasts out of my bra and buries his face in them.

  Then looking deep into my eyes, he thrusts again even harder, filling every part of me, stretching me, driving my thighs wide around him, and I feel like a queen of the forest being fucked in the open.

  He gathers my legs up around his waist and drives in deeper, his body ramming against mine, pumping into me like he can’t stop, the man scent of him mingled with the natural scents of the forest, the scent of sex, the scent of me, and I groan from the sheer animal pleasure of it, of being taken so hard by this man who means so much to me.

  I know I’m losing it. I can’t help it. My body arches, and I shudder and call out into the soft dappled air beneath that tree as if I’m one of the animals.

  “Fuck! Olivia!” he calls out and bucks against me, jerking spurt after spurt deep inside me as he comes with me.

  When we regain our breath, we just look at each other. And I know. I know we are meant to be together whatever my parents or anyone else thinks. Age is only a number.

  “We can’t stop this, can we, whatever your parents do? They can’t keep us apart. Not when something feels so right. We have to be together, Olivia. You know that. I know that. We just have to make them see it.”

  “I’m not sure they ever will. But it doesn’t matter. As long as you don’t listen to them.”

  “They’ll come around in the end. They’re not terrible people. They can’t help the way they are. But once they see how happy we are and how I’m not going to get in the way of what they want for you, they’ll feel better about us.”

  “Maybe they’ll end up accepting you, maybe not, but does it matter what they think?”

  “It might matter to you in the future. I don’t know. I don’t want to rush you. This has all happened so fast. Why not make them happy? Go to college. Do whatever you have to do to make them proud, live your life and if you still want me then, you’ll come back, and we’ll be together for the rest of our lives.”

  “I’ll always want you. I just want to be with you.”

  “You don’t know that,” he says. “You think that now, but you might change your mind when you get to college. Maybe you’ll have such a good time, you’ll forget all about me.”

  “I won’t, but I’ll go to college if they make me, and if you’ll wait for me. I’ll not go far away. Never far away. I’ll be with you as often as I can. I’ll study like you wouldn’t believe when I’m not with you, so I can spend all my free time with you. And then I’ll come back to you, so we can always be together.”

  He kisses me then, and I think my heart will bleed with the tenderness of that kiss and then we dress and go back to his car, hand in hand, not saying a word.

  EPILOGUE

  Olivia

  Alistair Stuart is showing nine of my paintings along with an exhibition by Nancy Hofferson. I just have one corner of the gallery, but I love it, my own space. I did one more painting before the exhibition—one of trees, their branches intermingling into a multitude of hearts. The gallery owner calls it exquisite.

  I’m not sure I can part with any of my paintings, especially that one, but I know I had better get used to letting them go if I’m to be a commercial artist. I have to put my work out there and sell it.

  But first I take photos of everything. Good photos so I can always look at them and know I painted these beautiful images that represent my feelings for Luke and everything happening in my life.

  I’m working hard at the community college and doing well, a lot better than I did in high school. I’m determined to make the best of it. My parents are “pleasantly surprised at my change in attitude,” and I know they are wondering whether their letting go about Luke has been the cause of it.

  I want them to think that. In any case, it’s almost true. It’s because I’m so happy, and I want to begin my life with him as quickly as possible. And Luke has helped me see that a business course can’t do me any harm if I
’m going to sell my paintings. I’m studying marketing and web design that can only help in the future.

  *

  On the opening night of the exhibition, Luke picks me up and I feel like a million dollars in my jade silk dress. I wanted to invite my parents. We have been getting along much better, but they were going to a work function organized long ago. Mom bought my dress, though. She wanted me to look my best, and she wished me luck, and Dad even gave me a hug as I left.

  “Nervous?” Luke asks.

  “A bit.”

  “There’s no need. You’ll be a knock out. Your paintings aren’t bad either,” he teases.

  The traffic is heavier than we expected, and there’s already a crowd when we go in. There are little sold dots against three of my paintings already—wow! These things are selling for over a thousand dollars each.

  “I think I’d better buy one before they all go,” Luke says, and he grabs the sales woman and secures one. “I love the kingfisher painting, but this one’s my favorite now,” he says. “I wanted to make sure your paintings were selling, and if that was the only one someone wanted at the gallery, I didn’t want to get in the way of a sale, but now they are going like hot cakes, I’m having it.”

  “I could have painted you another.”

  “I wanted this one, because I know you painted it as soon as you got home after we decided to be together in the future.”

  It’s the trees and hearts one.

  “It won’t mean anything to anyone else. I’m pleased you’ve got it.”

  We are so busy that night. All kinds of people want to talk to me. Nancy Hofferson is well-known locally and on the cusp of national success, but she takes time to congratulate me. “I love your work,” she says. “Never stop painting.”

  And Beatrice is there too and gives me a hug. She’s almost as excited as me. Holly sent her congratulations. She’s away at college and wishes she could be here. She and Ben split up, but she seems to be having a good time anyway.

  And then when there’s a lull after we’ve been there an hour or so, I look up, and Mom and Dad are coming in out of the rain.