Wildfire at Dawn Read online

  Afternoon sunlight filtered in and lit the stout plank flooring and throw rugs. Two bedrooms toward the back with a bathroom between.

  He slowed her down. He wasn’t about to ask if she was sure again; he wasn’t a total idiot. Gorgeous brunette drags you into her house, you don’t complain. But she was being a little manic, a little too intense—even for him. And he’d been with some pretty wild and wound up ladies.

  “Whoa for a second, Space Ace. Just whoa.”

  Still not speaking, she tugged on his hand again as he came to a stop.

  He used that grasp to pull her back toward him. Her eyes were too wide, her breathing too fast. She was going shocky, now, an hour or more after it was all said and done. How tightly wound was her control?

  Unsure what to do about it, he slowly pulled her up against him, then wrapped his hands around her back and simply held her.

  At first she tried to turn it into something more. His libido was getting majorly upset with his ignoring her actions, but he forced himself to just hold her, nothing more. Hold her and wait.

  Sure enough, the shakes set in. He usually didn’t hang around for this kind of shit, but to see Laura’s strength cracking under the strain was so wrong. Still at a loss, he waited.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her face down on his shoulder. Her breathing got worse before it got better.

  “Oh god. I almost lost them. I came that close. If you hadn’t been there—”

  “You’d have found a way, Space Ace. You were magnificent.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Mr. Hoity Masterson might have gotten a bit more bunged up, nothing less that he deserved, but he only had a few more feet to fall. Tiffany and her dad dug in the same time we did. You’d have managed fine.”

  After a moment more, she nodded against his shoulder. She didn’t let go, but the shakes began to recede.

  It took a good and experienced person to assess what had happened, learn the lesson, and acknowledge that. That she did it as fast as any firefighter was pretty damn impressive. And he had to admit, his body was convinced it was a serious turn on. That, and how she melted against him as the shakes went away.

  “Now, about that shower…” Because if he didn’t get this woman naked soon he was going to whimper or do something else equally lame.

  She nodded, but clung on a while longer. He didn’t complain then, or later when she led him into the bathroom.

  # # #

  Laura had never brought anyone here to the cabin; she’d finished building it post-Elgin. She’d certainly never stripped in her bathroom with a man only inches away. Nor ever been so intensely aware of the man in question.

  She couldn’t stop herself from turning her back as she pulled her shirt off over her head.

  At his sharp hiss, she looked over her shoulder at him.

  He was looking down at her waist. His touch was light, but it stung where he slid a fingertip over her skin. He turned her slowly around, looking at her belly, not her sports bra. She looked down as well. The line above her hip bones was abraded a bright, road-rash red.

  It took her a moment to figure it out. “The harness. Mr. Jerk was heavy.”

  “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  She flexed her shoulders, which weren’t bad, just incredibly sore. And one of her knees had been kind of sticking to her jeans in a pretty uncomfortable fashion.

  “Uh,” she felt old, weary, and banged up. “I’m a mess.” He was going to beg off. She could tell. He was too decent a guy and he’d beg off. Or he was a jerk who didn’t want to deal with a damaged woman. Either way, he was about to be gone.

  She didn’t want him to go. Not after the way it felt when he’d held her. She’d never felt so safe before, not even when they’d been up on the mountain and he’d been clipped in beside her. And definitely not after the way he’d kissed her this morning.

  Perhaps reading her mood, he stepped back enough to pull off his own shirt then gave her an up and down look complete with an overdone leer.

  “If you look this good when you’re a mess, Space Ace, I can’t wait to see you when you aren’t.”

  “Stick around, Fire Boy.”

  “I just might do that, Space Ace.”

  Then they finished undressing each other.

  Laura had seen her fair share of fit men, but Johnny Akbar Jepps really was the Great. His chest and arms were well-muscled, not like a weight-lifter, but like a top athlete. And his legs, no wonder he’d been able to run the way he had. They looked piston strong. He wasn’t merely fit, he was practically carved. Muscles shifted in ripples beneath smooth skin. He actually took her breath away.

  They didn’t make love in the shower. But they learned a lot about each other’s bodies. The soap was a good excuse for that. More than once she forgot how to breathe as he did miraculous things with a washcloth. She’d never been with a man who felt so good. And when he kissed her, with the water sluicing down over them, they could have been standing under a hot springs waterfall for how romantic it felt. Not once did he grab and squeeze, or forget and rub his hands too hard over where the harness had abraded her.

  Having someone towel her off like he was buffing the final sheen into a marble statue left her skin tingling and alive. She wanted to drag him straight into the bedroom.

  Instead, leaving their clothes on the floor, he led her back out onto the porch. She protested at the door, but he dragged her stumbling across the threshold and out into the open air. The late afternoon sunlight slanted warmly onto porch. The to-go containers still sat on the small table.

  “I need clothes,” she once again tried to go inside, but he closed the front door.

  “You don’t get to cover one inch of that glorious skin. It’s just begging to be admired.”

  He conducted her to her chair as if he were a maître d’hôtel, and she wasn’t buck naked and bruised. Of course your average maître d’ probably didn’t serve with manners befitting a better than decent restaurant while sporting an impressive arousal. He dished out skewers of organic beef with peppers, mushrooms, and caramelized onions over wild rice onto paper plates.

  Succumbing to self consciousness and a need to cover herself, she placed a napkin over her lap and did her best to stomp down on a desire to giggle at the ridiculous situation. But Akbar didn’t stare at her breasts, well, not much. Just enough to make her think they might be very pleasing to his eye. Mostly he looked at her face and her nerves settled slowly.

  “So,” she had to say something. “Tell me about Fire Boy.”

  “I’d rather know about Judy Jenson.”

  “Nope. You already got enough of that from my mom.” Had she really just mentioned her mom while sitting naked on her front porch?

  “No I didn’t.”

  She crossed her arms over her bare breasts, making it clear he wasn’t going to get to look at them again until he answered.

  He slapped a hand to his chest as if mortally wounded. “Okay, you win.”

  “That was way too easy,” she complained.

  “No. Your breasts are that magnificent. I have no power against them.”

  “Yet we’re out here eating instead of curled up in bed together, which was my idea.”

  Foregoing his fork, Akbar ate a piece of the beef right off his skewer, taking the meat neatly between his teeth and then pulled the skewer out to the side. “I’m a practical guy. I think we need fuel for stamina.”

  “Are you feeling weak, oh Johnny the Great?”

  “Only when I look at you.”

  “Far too corny,” she declared and folded her arms over her breasts again. And once more he slapped his hand to his heart as if slain.

  “Okay, I give. I give.” He sat back in the chair, holding his plate and crossing his ankle over his knee. He appeared so comfortable in his own skin.

  She wanted to ask how he did that. She leaned back against the chair, but the wood felt cool and bumpy against her back. It made her wan
t to shiver even though the sun was warm against her front.

  “Little Johnny Jepps always wanted to be an astronaut.”

  “What went wrong? Afraid of heights?”

  He rolled his eyes at her, then offered a knowing wink.

  Oh right, he jumped out of airplanes for a living.

  “Then he wanted to fly jets. For a brief while he considered being a pioneer in a covered wagon, but he kept getting cast as the Indian.” He made pretend feathers behind his head. “Wrong kind of Indian.”

  She served herself another skewer. A deer wandered into the clearing and stared at her nakedness. She squinched her nose at it and it looked away, but took its time crossing the grassy yard past her fenced garden as if it was window shopping.

  “Mahatma Gandhi was ancient history, so not much to aspire to in the world-changing department. Besides, I grew up in Seattle where the oppression has mainly to do with parental curfews and finishing my meals. Mom was pretty big on table manners as well. Dad teaches English at University of Washington and writes odd bits of literary tales that do exactly what odd bits of literary tales are supposed to do, go forth and not sell. Mom always hoped I’d follow in Dad’s footsteps.”

  “A writer?”

  “Not that. Dad was five-eleven and married a very nice Indian girl who was five-foot two. I took after her side of the family which is a crime I only forgive her at Christmas and holidays because it cheers her up, poor thing. All her life, stuck with a tall husband, a short son, and a very nice little Indian restaurant of her own right outside the University District.”

  “You’ve practiced this line, haven’t you?” Laura realized that she was sitting back and rather enjoying herself. The food was good, the deer was amusing as it finished its first lap around the garden fence and found little to pillage except for a few dahlias that had foolishly stuck their heads out through the wire, and the man was as charming as he was handsome.

  “Does it show?” He made an elaborate pout at being caught.

  “Storytelling father is sure showing.”

  “Wait until you meet Mom,” then he blanched. He looked right at her, then his eyes slid aside; not down, as in to her chest. Aside.“Sorry, that was way too forward. Don’t know what I was thinking. But she’d like you. And not just because you’re a knockout.”

  “Not dreaming of some pretty Indian girl for you?” Some part of him, even if it shocked Akbar himself, had imagined taking her home on approval. That was totally absurd on a first date, and they both knew it. But it had been there and she couldn’t ignore that compliment either.

  “Mom will be happy if I ever settle down. But you two would get along big time. She also loves to laugh.”

  Laura had never seen herself that way. She lived alone. Saw her parents a couple times a week, and most of her closest friends were horses. Not a lot of laughing opportunity.

  Then Akbar rose slowly to his feet and came to stand in front of her. Keeping his eyes on hers as he held out a hand actually sent a shiver rippling over the rest of her skin.

  He ended up being the one who led her into the bedroom.

  # # #

  “Oh God! Don’t stop!” Laura’s moan was driving Akbar wild. His pulse had anchored between his legs; he could feel it pounding there.

  But she’d been so awkward and stiff when she lay down on the bed, that he’d rolled her onto her stomach and started a massage. He’d begun at her scalp, scrubbing his fingers through the thick masses of chestnut hair so soft he’d leaned down and rubbed his face in it. Then he worked her neck and shoulders and along her spine. Only copping a feel of the ever-so-soft skin on the sides of her breasts a few times.

  She had about the nicest behind he’d ever gotten his hands on. Between the running, the horseback riding, and the hiking, it was quite amazing. He dug into and loosened up the gluts, driving her pelvis down into the mattress as he did so which was eliciting her current moans of pleasure.

  He shifted down to her feet and traveled up each of those long legs, feeling each muscle group let go in turn, working the blood back up toward her heart. When he ran his teeth over her insole, she actually cried out. He’d been with women who responded, and others who not so much. But he’d never been with one who lost all semblance of control and didn’t seem to care about it.

  Laura rolled onto her back and gasped out, “Don’t you dare stop.”

  It had almost killed him to sit outdoors with her not wearing a stitch of clothing. But he’d had to do it. Had to see her out in nature. The naked Amazonian woman with the trees soaring behind her, completely in her element. Every inch of that long, lean frame of hers dappled by the sunlight. She was mesmerizing.

  He did as he’d dreamed of doing as she sat so at ease in her chair, that perfectly upright horsewoman posture of hers absolutely slaying him as she asked him about his childhood for crying out loud. That there was enough blood in his brain for him to speak at all was amazing. He’d thought of nothing but starting at the tips of her unpainted toes and discovering every glorious inch of her.

  Now fingers stroked, hair brushed on skin to tease, mouth tasted. She opened to him as he progressed upward, digging her fingers into his hair to hold him in place between her legs as she lit like a fire until she was burning so brightly it blinded his senses.

  Except for a few times on the fire line, he’d never seen a woman face danger the way she had that morning. Definitely not a civilian. Laura may have been on ice and snow rather than char and flame, but she’d fought for her life and that of those around her and she’d won. He did everything he could think to show her how magnificent she truly was.

  She dug protection out of the bedside table and flapped it at him. Unable to stand it any longer, he sheathed himself and drove into her. Her heat scorched. Her fists beat against his chest even as her mouth pulled his down to lie upon her.

  The fire that burned in him roared out of control, burned, flared, and was ultimately doused. But still it did not abate. It was merely, finally, at long last quenched—for the moment. With Laura Jenson, the fire of his need for her felt endless.

  # # #

  Laura cracked one eye open. The cabin was lit by only the faintest hint of dawn in the sky. In the Pacific Northwest, summer dawns were a lazy, drawn out affair, casually strolling across the sky, stopping here and there to smell the flowers.

  A shadow passed before the window. On this side of the glass. She didn’t need to think to remember. Every blazing second of their lovemaking was crystalline clear. As he had mounted her, later she had mounted him. Not just once either. She could feel herself blushing in the dark. They’d done things she’d never done before. Most men did what they wanted, and that’s the way it went. With Akbar, even the slightest hint or gentlest pressure had him navigating whole new vistas that were the ones she’d wanted explored.

  Calling him “The Great” sounded too remote, too foolish.

  “Johnny?” It looked as if he was pulling on a shirt.

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  She felt the breath catch in her throat. Well, what did she expect, bedding the man on their first date together. She’d known what he was when she’d seen him in the restaurant. It had been a long and wild day—and night…and now he was sneaking out. She was torn between saying something sharp and biting or something pitiful like, “Thank you.”

  When he moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside her, she still couldn’t speak. His hip brushed against her arm and she could tell that a shirt was all he’d found of his clothes so far.

  “I’m on call today. I have to check on my team, make sure they’re okay and that the plane is all set in case there’s another fire. I need to be on base by dawn, otherwise no way would I be leaving your bed.”

  Okay, she was glad she hadn’t said the biting thing. Or the pitiful one.

  “I’d love a rematch, Space Ace. Because I’ve certainly never been with a woman like you.”

  “Been with a lot of women have you?”
she managed a tease in the tone.

  “Too many. But none like you.”

  “And how many times have you said that before?”

  She could make out the outline of his shrug. “Might have said it a few times. Never meant it before. I seem to this time though.”

  Laura liked that he didn’t hide who he was. Again, that comfort in his own skin thing. They’d definitely need to talk about that some more.

  “How long until dawn?” She knew perfectly well.

  She could see his head turn to inspect the uncurtained window.

  “Long enough,” he declared and fell on her.

  Laura welcomed him with open arms and held onto him for every second she could.

  # # #

  Two-Tall tried razzing Akbar for not being in his bunk last night. For leaving the morning before without rousting Tim from his rack.

  When neither worked, Tim looked at him strangely. “Is Victoria back in town?”

  “Not that I know of.” They’d had a couple of good nights together before the New Tillamook Burn had set in. He’d jumped into the fire and she’d caught her flight back to a Boston banker’s job. Couple of nice texts back and forth, but that was long since done.

  “You didn’t go back and get my little blond, did you?” Two-Tall’s little blond had been taller than Akbar, though not as tall as Laura.

  “Nope!” This was getting fun. Clearly Tim had blocked out the woman at the Doghouse that Akbar had declared a “washout.” Well, if that was a washout, bring it on.

  He kept Tim going for almost an hour. At first it was impressive just how many different women he came up with from Akbar’s past. Then it started to get a little depressing. He sounded even more shallow than, well, he was.

  Then Jeannie came by and asked if he’d passed on her hello to his new girlfriend. It was enough to trigger some synapse in Tim’s brain.

  “No! It can’t be. The hot brunette?”

  “Thanks a lot,” he mouthed at Jeannie.

  She tugged on the bill of her LA Dodgers hat as if tipping it to say he was welcome, and headed off whistling Take Me Out to the Ball Game.