The Last of The Red Hot Firefighters (Red Hot Reunions Book 1) (13 page)

Jake squeezed her hand, hesitating to ask the question hovering on his lips. But then he remembered the promises they’d made last night. They weren’t keeping secrets, and for him that promise included asking questions he might not like the answers to.

“Do you ever think you’ll go back?” he asked. “Start doing the show again?”

Naomi shook her head. “I usually never say never, but…it feels like that part of my life is over. It was great fun and I loved it, but it was also exhausting. It felt like there wasn’t enough time for real life and I like real life. A lot.” She looked up at him, the peaceful expression on her face making him believe her as much as her words. “And I don’t miss it. I’m ready for something new, a fresh start with the focus on my family and hopefully a new baby sometime soon.”

“Have you ever thought of having a child of your own? Instead of adopting?” Jake asked in an even tone, careful not to let on that he knew about the baby she’d lost. Naomi wouldn’t like it that her brother had revealed her private business, no matter how innocently.

Naomi shrugged and turned to look out across the field again. “I’m already thirty-three. I think I’m too old for that kind of motherhood.”

“You’re not too old,” Jake said. “You still look like you’re eighteen.”

Naomi laughed. “I do not, but thank you.” She stopped, lifting a finger to point to the edge of the field, obviously ready to put an end to talk of babies. “Is that your dad’s place?”

“It is,” Jake said, ignoring the disappointment that flashed through his chest.

Naomi would tell him about her loss when she was ready. She wasn’t breaking the promise she’d made; she was managing her grief the way that seemed best to her. If anyone could understand not wanting to talk about the person you’ve lost, it was Jake, so he didn’t push her. He just simply held her hand a little tighter and aimed them toward his father’s back yard.

“I thought we could swing by and check up on the place while we were out here,” he said. “Dad’s spending a year in Alaska hunting with an old Navy buddy, so Jamison and I take turns making sure the house is holding up.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t realize where we were,” Naomi said, twisting to get a look at the entire field. “But this used to be fenced in for horses, right?”

“Uncle Bill had his horses here,” Jake confirmed as they reached the edge of his dad’s property. “But he sold them about four years back. Since then, Aunt Clare’s been planting winter wheat here.”

Naomi hummed beneath her breath. “Aunt Clare is the one with the glass eye and the shotgun collection, right?”

“Yep.” Jake held the gate open, waiting while Naomi passed beneath his arm.

“Is she going to take a switch to us when she finds out we picnicked on her crop?” Naomi asked, making Jake laugh.

“No, seriously,” she continued, eyebrows drawing together. “There are people I wouldn’t mind crossing, people I wouldn’t cross with a gun to my back, and then there’s Aunt Clare.”

Jake chuckled as he recaptured Naomi’s hand, grateful that he didn’t have to resist the urge to touch her. “We didn’t hurt anything, and Jamison and I run the combine for her come harvest. Aunt Clare will have no idea we were ever here.”

“Oh, good,” Naomi said with a relieved sigh.

“Want to come inside?” Jake asked, jabbing a thumb toward the house. “You’re welcome to, but I’ll warn you that Dad’s housekeeping has gotten even worse since me and Jamison moved out.”

Naomi wrinkled her nose. “I’ll wait here. No offense, but your dad’s housekeeping was bad enough back in the day. Remember that time we found an onion tree in his pantry?”

“I do. He made me and Jamison eat the damned thing in a nasty soup he cooked up a few days later.” He leaned down, pressing a quick kiss to Naomi’s cheek. “I’ll be back in ten.”

“I’ll be here,” Naomi said, her voice breathy, making Jake think he wasn’t the only one affected by the chemistry between them. Even kissing her cheek was enough to make his blood pump faster and his chest tighten.

He completed his walkthrough of the house in record time—bumping up the thermostat to make sure the pipes wouldn’t freeze as the nights grew colder, and checking to make sure Jamison had taken out the trash after his friend from Atlanta used the house last weekend—and was back outside in five minutes, but Naomi was nowhere to be seen.

Jake paused, spinning in a slow circle to survey the backyard. He was about to call her name when her voice sounded from up in the trees—

“I’m up here,” she said. “In the tree house. It looks almost exactly the same!”

Jake tilted his head back to see Naomi hanging out the window they’d installed together, back when they’d spent the summer between their junior and senior year of high school transforming the tree house into their own private hideaway. They’d added a room, run electric from the house, and made a bed out of foam and an old feather mattress that they’d covered with plastic sheeting when it wasn’t in use. It had eventually gotten moldy and had to be thrown out, but not before they’d made some memories on the thing.

As Jake climbed up the wooden ladder, those memories flashed on his mental screen.

Memories of Naomi in nothing but a bikini top and cut off shorts, swaying back and forth in the hammock while she read their summer reading assignment aloud and Jake puttered with his carving knife, whittling a piece in the chess set he was making her for her birthday. Memories of picnics and evenings spent telling ghost stories and nights spent in the bed they’d made, making love until eleven minutes to midnight, leaving themselves two minutes to get dressed, one to get down the tree to Jake’s truck, and seven to scoot across town to the Whitehouse’s place by Naomi’s curfew.

They were some of his best memories, he realized, and some of the most wonderful moments in his life. For the first time in years, it felt okay to admit that and—when he reached the top of the ladder, meeting Naomi’s gaze across the refuge from the world they had made when they were kids—he knew she felt the same way.

Years had passed, and they had both suffered and celebrated and changed from the people they’d once been, but in each other’s arms they would always be home.

They crossed the room and came together without a word, mouths meeting with enough heat to melt something inside of Jake. As their tongues danced and Naomi’s hands gripped his shoulders as he eased her to the leaf-strewn floorboards, Jake felt all his good intentions fading away.

It might be smarter to wait to be with Naomi, but right now he didn’t care about smart, he only cared that the woman he was falling in love with all over again was in his arms, hooking her leg around his waist as he fisted her skirt in his hand, slowly drawing the silky fabric up to bare her even softer thigh.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Naomi

This is right. So right
. Naomi sighed at the thought and pulled Jake closer.

This
was
right—Jake’s mouth devouring hers, Jake’s heat surrounding her, Jake’s hands pulling up her dress to hook his fingers around the top of her white cotton panties.

This man was the reason she’d come home. He was the answer to every question, the balm to every hurt, and being with Jake, by his side, in his life, able to share every innocent and not-so-innocent pleasure with him, to love him every moment of every day was all she wanted. It was all that mattered—the rest was just background noise.

As Jake stripped her panties down her legs and tossed them onto the tree house floor before settling on top of her, his mouth finding hers and his hand cupping her breast through the thin fabric of her dress, Naomi felt the certainty settle inside of her like an oak tree putting down roots.

This new love growing between her and Jake—building on all the sweet, shared moments of their past, and reaching into their future—was all that mattered. It was something to be treasured and protected, not poked and prodded until it was full of holes.

Telling Jake about what had happened between her and Jamison fifteen years ago might ease her guilty feelings, but it would serve no purpose other than to hurt him and put their budding relationship in jeopardy. It was eons in the past. It had been a dumb mistake made by two dumb, confused kids, and it would never
ever
happen again. When Naomi looked at Jamison, she felt nothing but anxiety and the urge to mend an old friendship gone awry, and she sensed Jamison felt the same way. It was best to let the past stay in the past, and embrace the future with all her heart.

And so she did, threading her fingers through Jake’s hair, cradling his head in her hands as he pulled the top of her dress down, baring her breasts to the warm air. A moment later his mouth closed around her nipple, pulling her inside his mouth to tease her pebbled flesh against the roof of his mouth and Naomi let go of every thought, every worry. There was nothing but Jake’s mouth, Jake’s hands, Jake’s arousal hard against her thigh.

“Your turn,” she said, her breath coming faster as she fisted the bottom of his shirt in her hand. “I want you naked.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, voice husky as he pulled away to strip off his white undershirt, revealing the magnificence of his chest.

Naomi’s breath caught in appreciation. Jake was even sexier up close than he had been at the auction—all muscle and golden skin and a dusting of light brown hair that led her gaze from his gently rounded pecs and down his flat stomach before disappearing into his jeans.

His jeans, which needed to join his shirt on the floor. Right. Now.

Taking matters into her own hands, Naomi sat up, reaching for the button on his jeans, pulling it open before drawing his zipper down. His erection pressed through the opening she’d made, straining the fabric of his black boxer briefs, obviously as ready to be free as Naomi was to free it.

“Off. All off,” she said, curling her fingers around the top of Jake’s jeans and boxers and tugging them down over his hips, freeing the long, lovely length of him.

“I love the way you talk like a cavewoman when you want me,” Jake said.

“Less talk. More naked,” Naomi said, making Jake laugh even as he shifted, pulling his jeans and boxers down his legs and adding them to the pile of clothing on the tree house floor.

As he stripped down, Naomi let herself stare, drinking in the sight of him. His cock was still the loveliest one she’d ever seen—long and thick, with an even thicker base like the root of the manliest tree ever grown, and a plump tip as round and flushed and delicious-looking as exotic fruit. If the forbidden fruit had looked like Jake’s cock, Naomi would have fallen even faster than Eve. She couldn’t resist the urge to bring her mouth to the tip of him, and run her tongue around that burning hot, velvet-soft skin.

Jake groaned her name as Naomi let her tongue swirl and taste and tease, her head spinning from the earthy Jake smell of him, the perfect Jake taste of him. A drop of fluid appeared at his tip and she licked it away, moaning as she closed her lips around his shaft and suckled him inside her mouth.

As a rule, Naomi didn’t enjoy giving blowjobs, but it had always been different with Jake. When she was between his legs with her mouth on him, she had always felt adored. She knew that he appreciated everything she did for him, and that it wouldn’t be long before he returned the favor…

This time, he barely let her set a rhythm before he was pulling her mouth gently away and easing her back onto the boards.

“I didn’t finish,” she protested, wanting more time to smell the intimate smell of him, to feel his hands shaking as he pushed her hair from her face so he could watch.

“I can’t wait,” Jake said, urging her thighs apart as he lowered himself between them. “I have to taste you.”

Naomi shivered, the need in Jake’s voice sending a current of desire pulsing through her body even before his palms spread her legs wide and his mouth found what he was looking for. Her head fell back with a ragged cry as Jake’s tongue swirled around the top of her, teasing with a perfect, light, torturous pressure before he dipped lower, driving his tongue inside where she ached.

“You taste even better than you used to,” Jake murmured against her thigh, interspersing the words with kisses. “God, Naomi, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” she said, her words ending in a gasp as Jake returned to the task at hand.

Within moments, she was near the edge of release, her body trembling all over as Jake’s tongue teased and stroked her swollen flesh, building the tension inside her to the breaking point. But instead of letting herself cross over, Naomi held back, fighting the orgasm building within her.

“Please,” she begged, tugging at Jake’s arm. “Inside me. Please.”

Without a word, Jake surged up over her, claiming her mouth, giving Naomi a taste of her own salty heat as he positioned himself and drove inside where she needed him so desperately.

Naomi cried out, fingers digging into Jake’s bare shoulders as her body stretched to accommodate his thickness. It had been months since she’d made love to anyone, and years since she’d made love to Jake, but it was as if the memory of how to adjust to this man was programmed into her DNA. She shifted her hips and lifted her knees and instantly there was no discomfort, only pleasure, blinding pleasure that swelled inside of her, taking her higher, higher, until there was no air to breathe and no more ground to hold onto and she had no choice but to fall.