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Authors: Jessie Evans

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #sexy, #small town, #Contemporary, #novella, #steamy, #firefighter, #Jessie Evans

Saving You (6 page)

BOOK: Saving You
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Why’s that?” Faith’s
breath rushed out as Mick’s hands molded to her ribs before
slipping around to cup her breasts.


It’s the shirt you were
wearing the night I started to fall in love with you,” he said,
thumbs brushing across her nipples, sending waves of desire
coursing between her legs.


The night I vomited on
that guy’s shoes?” Faith’s fingers threaded through Mick’s thick
black curls, holding tight as he intensified his efforts at her
breasts, teasing her tightened tips between his fingers and thumbs
until she moaned.


The same,” he said,
abandoning her swollen flesh to strip her tank top over her head, a
soft curse escaping his lips as his gaze swept up and down—from her
wild hair, to her bare breasts, to where her thighs spread on
either side of his hips and back again. “You are so beautiful like
this.”


Sweaty, with my makeup
running down my face?” Faith asked, leaning down to capture his
lips.


Yes,” Mick said, kissing
her with the word. “Does that make me a dirty bastard?”


No,” she said, biting her
lip as his hands returned to her breasts. “You’d be a dirty bastard
if you wanted to pull my hair while you took me from
behind.”

Mick cursed again before he pulled away to
gaze up at her, a hooded look in his eyes that made the knot of
longing low in Faith’s body twist tighter. “Is that what you’re in
the mood for?”

Faith reached down between them, popping the
top button on his jeans before reaching lower, caressing his
erection through the thick fabric. “If you’re up for it.”


I’m up for anything as
long as it involves being buried inside you in the next two
minutes,” Mick said, surging to his feet, holding her in his arms
with her legs wrapped tight around his waist as he headed for the
bedroom.

Moments later, the rest of Faith’s clothes
were off and Mick’s hand was fisted in her hair and his cock was
filling her, stretching her, driving inside of her until there was
nothing but Mick and the sounds of their bodies coming together and
the way he made the pleasure building inside of her swell until she
was blind with it, until she had no choice but to let go, bucking
back into Mick’s thrusts as he joined her release with a rough
cry.


I am never going to get
tired of this,” Mick said, rolling them over, fitting her against
his chest.


Having really great sex?”
Faith nuzzled closer to his skin, feeling she might start purring
with satisfaction.


Having really great sex
with my best friend,” Mick clarified before kissing the top of her
head, sending a warm, loved feeling flooding through Faith,
followed closely by a familiar wave of disbelief.

Sometimes it was hard to believe this was
her life, that she’d really found a man who loved her with the
perfect blend of heart, humor, and bravery, who never let her down,
always had her back, and made her the happiest she’d been in her
entire life. After growing up with a mom addicted to bad
relationships, the notion of happily ever after had left a sour
taste in Faith’s mouth. It seemed crazy that in eight short days
she would be saying her “I do’s” and marrying the man of her
dreams.

But it was really happening, and so far, she
and Mick seemed to be living under a blessed star. Faith had been
worried when Naomi decided to adopt Mick’s ex-girlfriend’s
baby—concerned that Mick’s ex might want an open adoption and to
remain in the picture—but Bridget had chosen a closed adoption and
left town without trying to contact Mick, bound for some expensive
inpatient clinic in Northern Arizona.

Since then, there hadn’t been a single bump
in the relationship road. She and Mick rarely fought, and when they
did it was about something silly and usually ended in a wrestling
match, which led to sex, which led to them both forgetting what
they’d been bickering about in the first place. They agreed on
their five-year plan—from when they would take off work to climb
Kilimanjaro, to when they hoped to buy their first home, to when
they’d start talking about babies, if Faith decided she wanted
children.

Mick had even been understanding about
Faith’s anxiety about starting a family. He wanted kids someday,
but had sworn he wouldn’t be upset if Faith decided motherhood
wasn’t for her. He promised he would never regret marrying her, and
that she was all he needed to be repulsively happy.

He was perfect.
They
were perfect.
Everything was perfect.

Too perfect.

Faith should have known that her lousy luck
wouldn’t let all that perfection continue unabated without throwing
a wrench into the mix, but she was so blissed out by the time she
went to sleep that she didn’t think to worry about it.

Even when she got a call from Jamison at
eight the next morning, asking her to come into work a day early to
help assist in emergency rescues over at a subdivision that had
unexpectedly flooded overnight when part of the levy collapsed,
Faith didn’t let the news stress her out.

Helping avert disaster—and saving lives in
the process—was one of the reasons she loved her job so much. Sure,
she had only gotten six hours of sleep and was still foggy from
drinking a few too many Lady Slippers the night before, but that
was nothing a shower and a big breakfast couldn’t cure.

She showered and dressed in record time and
swung into the kitchen just as Mick was scooping scrambled eggs
with cheddar cheese onto her plate and plopping two biscuits down
beside it.


Thank you, baby,” Faith
said, kissing Mick’s cheek as she claimed her plate and carried it
over to the table. “You going to head into work today,
too?”

They’d planned to spend the
day on the couch binge-watching
Buying
Hawaii
together and hiding out from the
rain. But Faith knew Mick had been jonesing to finish up the dry
wall in the extra room Mick had helped Jake add on to his place in
preparation for baby number two, a little boy he and Naomi were
hoping to adopt in the fall.

Mick shook his head. “I think it’s going to
be too damp to hang drywall. Even with the dehumidifier going, it
will take the compound forever to dry. I’ll probably work on that
app Jung-Su and I have been tossing back and forth. He’s got a
buyer interested and if we can each clear twenty grand on the job,
you and I can start looking for houses when we get back from the
honeymoon.”

Faith smiled at him over the rim of her
coffee mug, grateful for the fog-clearing effects of caffeine.
“Sweet. But if it doesn’t work out, that’s fine too. I seriously
don’t mind staying here longer. I think it’s better to keep some
money in savings than dump everything on a house.”


I agree,” Mick said,
settling across from her at the table. “But I like the idea of
house hunting with you.”


Assuming there are any
houses in our price range that haven’t been flood-damaged by the
time we’re ready to start looking,” Faith said, shoveling her last
forkful of eggs into her mouth. “This weather is crazy.”

Mick made a considering sound. “Be careful
today, okay? I was listening to the news while you showered. The
water is rising fast in some places, and they had a sinkhole open
up north of town and swallow half a house.”

Faith nodded as she stood to take her plate
to the sink. “I will. Don’t worry. We haven’t had to do any flood
evacuations since I joined the department, but I know the protocol
and I’m good with a boat.” She breezed back past the dining table
to the front door, grabbing her rain slicker from the coat tree and
shrugging it on. “I’ll see you at family dinner tonight, okay?
Bring the frozen rolls in the freezer if you remember.”

And she believed she would
see Mick at dinner. Flooding wasn’t something to be taken lightly,
but it wasn’t anything compared to
primary
interior search on a working fire, or cutting roof holes for smoke
evacuation
. She expected to log a long,
hard, wet day, rescue the stranded, and be back to the firehouse by
supper, ready to dry off and eat her weight in ribs as a reward for
a job well done.

It wasn’t until she was waist deep in cold
water, slogging through a brutal current with nothing but a rope
linked to the harness on her suit to tether her to the motorboat
idling in the deeper water behind her, with an uprooted tree
bearing down on her as she tried to reach a golden retriever
shivering on top of a dog house, that she began to worry.

And by then it was too late.

The tree rushed closer. The men behind her
started to tow her back toward the boat, but Faith knew they
wouldn’t be able to get her free of the tree’s path in time. And if
they held on, she’d be forced under the water as the tree passed
over her head, get trapped in the branches, and potentially drown
before she could find her way out.

Trusting her gut, Faith reached back and
unhooked the rope from her harness, lifting her legs and allowing
herself to be carried away by the current just feet ahead of the
uprooted tree. On her way by the doghouse, the golden retriever
barked and launched itself into the water, swimming hard toward her
as they were both swept away down Lost Oak Lane.

Chapter Six

At ten after two, Mick got a cold, miserable
feeling in his gut way too intense to be a hunger pain, especially
after the massive breakfast and lunch he’d eaten. At a quarter
after two, he shut down his computer and went to turn on the police
scanner—deciding that stalking the emergency crews’ radio signals
would ease his stress about what was going on with the rescue
effort—but his cell rang before he could flip the switch.

The second he saw Jake’s number, the hair on
Mick’s neck prickled. He and Jake were close, but not
talking-on-the-phone close, and Jake didn’t make social calls while
he was on duty. There were only a few reasons his
brother-in-law-to-be would be calling him, and none of them were
good.


Tell me Faith’s okay,”
Mick said, putting the phone to his ear and bracing one hand on the
back of the couch, pretty sure his legs were going to give out if
Jake replied with anything but “she’s fine.”


We don’t know,” Jake said,
the misery in his voice making it clear how worried he was. “Her
team lost sight of her five minutes ago.”

Five minutes ago. Ten after two.

Mick’s eyes squeezed shut as he fought a
wave of panic. Ten after two, it was like some part of him had
fucking known.


She was trying to rescue a
stranded dog when an uprooted tree came rushing through the flood
water out of nowhere,” Jake continued. “The team said they tried to
pull her in, but the current was too strong. Faith ended up
unlatching her tether to get out of the way before the tree ran her
over.”


But she was okay,” Mick
said, fighting to get the words out past the vice gripping his
throat. “She was conscious, right? Her head was above
water?”


She was conscious,” Jake
confirmed. “And she’s a strong swimmer, but that current is deadly
and the debris in the water even more so. The ground’s so damp from
all the rain the past week, trees are falling left and
right.”


So what are you doing to
find her?” Mick asked, anger rising inside of him. This wasn’t the
time to talk about how much danger Faith was in, it was time to
figure out how to get her out of it. “If her cell’s working, we can
track her location, right? Or her beeper? Don’t you have some kind
of—”


She left her cell in the
boat when she went in after the dog, and she wasn’t wearing her
beeper,” Jake said. “But I sent her team to search in the direction
she disappeared. And as soon as my other boats deliver the people
they’ve got on board, I’ll send them back out to assist in the
search. All the residents have been evacuated, but Faith’s team
volunteered to go back and rescue as many pets as they
could.”

Of course they had, of
course
Faith
had,
because she had a huge heart and knew how much an animal could mean
to their owner. Mick knew that, like he knew that risking her life
to save others was a part of Faith’s job. But right now he couldn’t
think logically or even be proud of her, all he could think about
was that he might never see her smile again, never hold her, never
get to promise his life to her, and it felt like he was being
shredded from the inside.


I know how you must be
feeling,” Jake said softly when Mick stayed quiet for too long. “If
you want to come down to the firehouse you can. We’ll get you a cup
of coffee, find you a place to hang out, and you’ll be the first to
know if there are any developments. We’ve already evacuated the
west end of Main because of rising water, but sandbags are in place
up and down Market Street. We’re pretty sure we won’t have to
evacuate the firehouse, and if we do it won’t be until late
tonight. The weather people are promising this shit is going to
stop by five o’clock.”

Mick ran a shaking hand through his hair.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

He hung up and launched into motion,
hurrying down the hall to the bedroom to snag a pair of running
pants and a quick-drying shirt he wore when he worked out, trying
to dress as appropriately as he could for spending hours in the
rain.

Jake was crazy if he thought Mick was going
to sit in a corner and sip coffee while everyone else searched for
the woman he loved. He was going with them, and he refused to take
no for an answer.

BOOK: Saving You
7.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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