How to Tame a Wild Fireman (24 page)

“I want you so bad, Lara Nelson. I’ve never felt this way, and it’s kind of flipping me out, but I don’t give a crap right now. I just want to be inside you before I lose my mind. That all right with you?”

She answered with a slow undulation of her body—­showing worked so much better than telling. She grabbed his hand and guided it back to her sex, where he’d been doing such delicious things a few moments ago. His muscled arm came under her; she pressed against his wrist in an agony of need.

“Hang on, sweetheart. Gotta do this right.” His hand disappeared for a moment while he put on a condom. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted time to freeze just where it was, with Patrick’s harsh pants and fumbled movements filling the silence. If only she could live in this moment, right here, right now, forever.

Then he was back, his hot hand cupping her sex, his hard body settling over her, his knee parting her legs from behind. Slowly, he pushed his erection—­a velvety soft, insistently rigid shaft—­into the give of her passage. Inch by inch he penetrated her. He seemed so much more enormous at this angle. She lifted her hips to accommodate him, and felt his hand grasp her with even more firmness. His palm moved against her sex in a deceptively slow-­motion grind. White-­hot need jackhammered through her.

“Holy mother of . . .” She gasped. “Don’t . . . frickin’ . . . stop . . .”

“Hell no.” His hot breath against her neck fueled the feeling of madness. She felt impaled, spread open, helpless and yet intensely powerful. “But I don’t think I can last long.”

“This isn’t a damn marathon,” she snapped, nearly out of her mind with desire. He gave a strained laugh and canted his hips forward, sliding all the way inside her, taking up all the space—­no room for restraint, for doubt, for fear.

“Now,” he growled, and the world exploded into bright colliding shapes and colors. She flew high, so high, twirling and spinning as giddy ecstasy racked her body and soul. Again and again, as if tumbled by an upsurging fountain, she soared skyward, leaving gravity far behind.

If only she never had to go back.

Chapter Twenty-Three

P
atrick eased himself off Lara’s still-­trembling body. He felt gutted, as if someone had reached inside him and turned everything upside down. He lay on his back, one hand settled on Lara’s hip. She curled into the shape of an unfurling fern, her body a lovely arc.

How had she become so important to him, in such a short amount of time? Now that he thought about it, maybe she’d always been important to him. She was Liam’s only real friend. The only other person he trusted to treat Liam right.

And he’d taken her in the back of the Hulk without a second thought.

Slinging one arm over his eyes, he fought a confusing onslaught of emotions. He shouldn’t have done it.
But it had been phenomenal—­for both of them
. It wasn’t fair to Liam.
What did Liam have to do with it?
He should talk to Liam before he went any further with Lara.
But how would he avoid her until then?
Was he such a beast that he couldn’t control himself around a woman?

Not just any woman. Lara.

And a terrifying revelation dawned.
It was Lara
. Whatever he felt about Lara, he’d never felt it before. He didn’t know what the next step was, he didn’t know where it was going, what he should say or do; he didn’t know shit.

Except that she’d somehow become completely integral to his existence.

“You look like your puppy just got diagnosed with kidney stones. Or maybe your llama.” Lara’s husky voice interrupted his flow of panicked thoughts. “You okay?”

“Peachy.” He was afraid to look at her, afraid of what the sight of her, soft and pliant from sex, would do to the storm going on inside him. “Are you okay? I didn’t get too intense, did I?”

“Hmm. Well, I don’t know for sure. I guess we could try it again so I can judge properly.”

A quick look in her direction confirmed all his fears. Her dark honey eyes, bright as new planets, teased him from her nest of forest-­green fleece. Her bared skin glowed with a subtle sheen, as if some sculptor had added a thin layer of gold leaf over his masterpiece. His mouth actually watered, his tongue longed to be lapping at her bounty. A sense of weakness seized his limbs, his breathing hitched, his lungs fluttered.

What the hell was Lara doing to him?

“In case you haven’t figured it out, it was Big Dog that got me so upset that last day in Loveless. I shouldn’t have left like that.” Her gracefully etched eyebrows drew together in a frown.

“I figured that’s what happened.” He smoothed one thumb over the fine hairs. When had he ever cared about anyone’s eyebrows before now? Lara had a way of owning up to her faults that he found incredibly endearing. And at the moment, he couldn’t see that she had any faults at all, not really.

But he couldn’t very well tell Lara that something had changed, in some confusing way that he didn’t even understand yet. He couldn’t very well tell her that he was beginning to wonder, in some freaked-­out corner of his mind, if this was what “being in love” felt like.

He took a long, steadying breath. No need to go overboard here. No need to rappel off the helicopter until he had all his gear properly fastened and safety-­checked.

Instead, he changed the subject. “I hope we don’t scare the crap out of Liam by showing up out of the blue. He doesn’t do well with surprises.”

She sat up, pulling the fleece blanket around her. The wild tumble of her hair made his heart hurt. “Well, I texted to warn him, but he doesn’t always get his texts. Cell ser­vice comes and goes down there. But I think it’ll be okay. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think so.”

He nodded, trying like hell to look serious rather than consumed with adoration. “I appreciate it.” Unable to help himself, he reached for a tendril of her hair and wrapped it around his finger. A smile ghosted across her luxuriously curved lips. Another of those unsettling pangs roiled his gut.

He decided to blame it on plain old hunger.

“Let’s hit the road and see if we can find some
huevos rancheros
.”

“Sounds good, especially since I missed my ‘purple feast’ last night.”

He released her hair and sat bolt upright, nearly bonking his head on the roof of the Hulk. “About that guy.”

“That guy? You mean Adam, my chief resident and friend?”

He liked the fact that she used the word “friend.” That was a good sign, although “gay friend” would have been even better. “So you haven’t slept with him?”

“Why is everyone asking me who I’m having sex with?”

“Excuse me.” He pulled her close, feeling a growl build in his chest. “Since we
are
having sex, I think I have a right to know.”

She blinked up at him. “
Having
sex?”

“Yeah, having sex. We had sex, are having sex, will have sex. You’re not the only one who can parse verbs. Want me to conjugate it some more? Would have had sex, should have had sex, will have had sex, will be having sex as soon as possible . . .”

“Okay, okay, Prince­ton. Are you having sex with anyone else?”

He gave her an appalled look. “Of course not.”

“Of
course
not?”

With a sense of shock, he snapped his mouth shut. In the past, he hadn’t given much thought to exclusivity in sex. As long as both partners were protected and willing—­and on the same page—­what was the big deal? But once Lara had entered his life, the idea of sex with another woman seemed . . . unthinkable.

What was going on
?

“Well, I’m not either.”

Her words slowly penetrated the buzzing in his ears. He gave her a distracted look and a brisk nod. “All right, then.” For a long, strange moment they locked gazes. Crammed into such a small space, surrounded by duffel bags and rumpled bedding, a slight smell of gas and stale coffee hovering around them, Patrick suddenly had the disorienting sense that nothing else existed outside this moment. He cleared his throat. “We should get going.”

As they drove
south, the sun climbed above the horizon like a particularly festive, bright orange piñata. Lara watched it in quick glimpses. Risking retinal damage seemed more appealing than watching Patrick’s impassive face.

Something was going on behind those restless blue eyes, but the hell if she could figure out what. It seemed to her that things had been going along nicely. They’d both declared they weren’t sleeping with anyone else. They’d agreed—­well, he’d declared, and she hadn’t denied it—­that they would have sex again in the future. This was all good, right? No heavy commitment or anything like that. Just pure, straightforward sexual satisfaction. The Goddesses would be so proud of her.

Or would they?

A quote from Annabella’s workshop on Ten Ways to Deepen Your Soul Connection drifted through her mind. “Emotional harmony is the basis for a truly satisfactory sex life. To achieve this, you must be prepared to expose your flaws and cultivate humility.”

Well, maybe Annabella didn’t know everything. Lara had never felt so satisfied, but she hadn’t exposed any flaws. Then again, Patrick already knew her flaws. He knew about her awkward years, her embarrassing Haven history, her rebellious, sarcastic side. She’d never even bothered to hide any of that from him, the way she had from Adam.

They passed a sombrero-­wearing farmer hunched over a motor scooter, putt-­putting along the side of the highway. Patrick raised a hand in greeting, and he waved back.

“Have you been to Mexico before?” she asked.

­“Couple times.” He lapsed back into silence.

So much for that topic of conversation. Lara turned back to the panorama of sunrise-­tinted canyonlands unfurling out the window. If Patrick didn’t want to talk, so be it. This wasn’t a “date.” She didn’t have to entertain him. She could go back to thinking about the delicious experiences she’d shared so far with him.

Maybe she could rewrite Annabella’s workshop for her now that she had a little more practical experience. She’d include a special section on sex in unconventional locations.
Make sure you always bring a clean blanket with you for those moments of spontaneous lust.

Smiling to herself, she caught Patrick’s puzzled glance, then realized he’d just said something to her. “Sorry, what?”

“If it’s too personal a question, you don’t have to answer.”

“No, I just . . . missed it. What was the question?”

“Your parents. What happened to them? Why did you grow up at the Haven?”

“Liam never told you?” The death of her parents had been such a crucial part of her life it seemed impossible that he didn’t know about it.

“No. It never came up, I guess.”

“Well. They were killed.” She felt, more than saw, his shock. “In a car accident on the way home from a dinner party.”

“Where? When?”

“We lived in Houston, Texas, back then. ­People have been known to drive too fast there.” Was it her imagination, or did Patrick ease his foot off the gas pedal just a hair? “My father was a notorious speed demon. He was training to be an astronaut, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

Of course he didn’t. How would he know that? She never talked about that time. The earth had cratered under her feet one humid night, and nothing was ever the same again. “I was eleven when it happened. At first I stayed with my father’s parents in Texas, but that was a disaster. I was a wreck, and they were old. They had no idea what to do with me. Then my grandmother got sick, and they just couldn’t keep me anymore. Aunt Tam showed up out of the blue with a letter my father had sent her years ago, saying he wanted her to be my guardian if anything should ever happen. Next thing I knew, I was living in a brothel in Loveless, Nevada.”

Patrick made a
tsking
sound. “It’s not a brothel. Everyone in town knows that.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “You know, in some ways it would have been easier if it
was
still a brothel. ­People understand brothels. But a Center for Sexual and Spiritual Healing? I was doomed to freakhood before I even stepped onto school grounds.”

“That’s when you met Liam?”

“Yep. We were outcasts together. Although he didn’t mind being a misfit the way I did.”

“He didn’t mind once you came along. At least he had a friend. It made all the difference.”

“For me, too. I would have been miserable if we hadn’t become friends. We bonded during science class. I think it was the unit on mealworms. He couldn’t bear to touch them, so I had to do all the icky work.”

Patrick laughed as he passed a rattletrap truck loaded with crates of avocadoes. “He was a lucky guy. I never had any girl friends in school.”

She pulled a face. “You had girls coming out of your ears, the way I remember it.”

“But none of them were
friends
. Did you ever think Liam might have a crush on you?”

“What?” Her mouth fell open. “No way. It was never like that.”

“Maybe it was but he didn’t ever tell you.”

She shifted uncomfortably on the seat. She’d never been interested in Liam that way. Wouldn’t he have said something? What if she had hurt his feelings, completely unintentionally? She didn’t like that thought one bit. “Did he ever mention anything like that?”

“No, no. I just wonder.” She continued to stare at him, until he added, “How could he have spent so much time with you and not have a crush on you?” He said it casually, as if wondering how Liam could have stayed out in the sun and not gotten sunburned.

A slow wave of heat crawled up her cheeks. “That’s a pretty sweet thing to say.”

“Yeah, I’m such a sweet-­talker. All the guys at the firehouse say so.”

She smiled, then pointed to a sign up ahead. “We’re supposed to take that road, then go another sixty miles.”

“
Muy bueno
.”

When they reached the first town of any size, they stopped at a
panadería
that had just opened its doors for the morning. The heavenly scent of freshly baked pastries poured from the steamy glass storefront. An old woman with twinkling eyes gave them a smiling, bowing
buenas dias
. They bought sugarcoated twists of dough and thick, dark coffee served in paper cups. Lara laughed at the way Patrick downed his doughnuts in quick succession, like popping M&M’s down his throat as they walked back to the Hulk.

“I guess you don’t worry much about calories.”

“I’m a guy. If there’s food, I eat it. Anyway, I make up for it.” He told her about his addiction to triathlons, rock-­climbing, and other feats of extreme sports. Then there were his other skills, the kind that enabled him to hurtle into fires and come out alive.

Back in the truck, Patrick placed his coffee cup in the rickety cup holder, which he’d rigged with a foam sleeve to keep his drinks warm. Lara imagined lots of sleepless nights and moonlit road trips. The thought made her shiver.

“So do you like being a firefighter?” she asked when they were back on the road. “It’s not something you ever mentioned in high school. Not that I remember, anyway.”

“Love it. To tell you the truth, I’d probably be in jail by now if I hadn’t gotten a job on the force. All that pissed-­off young maleness—­I didn’t know what to do with myself. I did all kinds of crazy shit, but my bro’s at the firehouse kept me from getting too out of line. I’m really good at firefighting. I studied my ass off for that exam—­scored at the top of my class. They couldn’t throw enough training at me. I always wanted more. I built myself up, got really strong and fast and smart. Stupid sometimes too, I’ll admit. But nothing too serious. I didn’t want to get kicked out, or screw up at a fire.” He maneuvered his coffee cup out of the sleeve and took a deep swallow. “Turns out, if you save enough lives, you start thinking maybe your existence is worth something after all.”

She glanced at him sharply. “You doubted?”

“After the accident? What do you think?”

She went quiet. Truth to tell, she hadn’t spared a thought for what Patrick might have gone through. She’d been too worried about Liam. “You know what, Patrick?”

“Hm,” he said, through another sip of coffee.