by Tawna Fenske
“For fuck’s sake.” Grady growled the words out loud as he dished up the Spam.
“Talking to yourself again?” Tony gave him a knowing look as he accepted his plate.
“Shut up.”
It was ridiculous thinking about the future. Any future, but especially one involving Willa. He had autonomy. He had the here and the now, and that’s all he’d ever wanted, dammit.
So why couldn’t he shake the stupid, achy emptiness in the pit of his stomach? He shoveled in a heaping bite of Spam, hoping that might do the trick.
It didn’t. Not even close.
…
On the morning of their last day on duty, Grady shouldered his pack to start the eight-mile trudge out to the pickup point. He’d never been so eager to get home, to climb in a warm shower and let the water sluice down his body while his hands trailed down someone else’s. Willa’s, specifically. How had that happened? How had his fantasies gone from a rolling slideshow featuring a dozen different women to a replaying GIF showing only one?
“Cheeseburger.”
Ethan’s voice jolted him out of his thoughts. Adjusting his pack, Grady picked up the thread of their usual banter about what they were most eager to get their hands on when they got back to civilization.
“Notorious IPA from Boneyard Beer,” Grady said. He actually craved wine more than that, but the guys would give him shit for naming something too highbrow.
“A hot shower that lasts twenty minutes,” added Bobby.
God, that sounded nice. Only in Grady’s mind, Willa was there with him, her breasts dappled in droplets and her hair slicked back—
“Yo, Grady.” Tony grinned. “You’ve got that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one that says what you’re most looking forward to has green eyes and won’t go out with you more than twice.”
Busted. “I’m going straight to her house as soon as I get home,” he admitted.
“Going out?” Ethan asked.
“Nope.”
“Because that would be a date,” Tony supplied.
The guys snorted and guffawed as they kept right on trudging.
“We’re staying in and ordering takeout Thai,” he said.
Tony snorted. “Is that what the kids call it now?”
The other guys laughed, though Ethan gave a pained groan. “Pad Thai. Or no, pizza. That’s what I want.”
Grady glanced at his watch, counting down the hours until he could get to the one thing he wanted most.
By the time they reached the pickup point, they were all exhausted. Dusk was falling, turning the sky purplish black. While the other guys made small talk with the volunteer driver, Grady checked his watch and wondered how late Willa would be up. He should go home and shower first, maybe get a good night’s sleep before turning up on her porch.
But when the truck pulled into town, he knew he couldn’t wait that long. He had to see her.
It was ten p.m. when he trudged up the driveway to Willa’s doorstep, dirty and bedraggled and so exhausted, he could barely stand. But the thought of seeing her again burned like an ember in his chest.
Her front door flew open before he even knocked. “You’re back.” She blinked at him in the porch light, green eyes luminescent as her hair fell loose around her shoulders.
“I’m back.” He reached up and fingered the dainty little strap on her blue and white sundress. She was wearing the silver star necklace but maybe no bra. Fatigue gave way to something more primal as she moved aside to let Grady slip past her into the house.
“I missed you,” he said as his arms went around her.
“I missed you, too.”
Stevie sniffed the leg of his jump suit and backed away, but Willa grabbed Grady by the lapels and pulled him to her. The kiss was fierce and hungry and left them both gasping as they backed down the hall together. Somehow they made it to the bathroom, crashing into walls and knocking a hairbrush off her counter with a clatter.
“Strip,” he ordered, though he was already doing it for her as she leaned down to turn on the water. The pretty cotton sundress went first as he tugged it over her head and tossed it on the bathroom counter. He was right about no bra, and her panties went next as he hooked his fingers under the lace and dragged them down her thighs.
Since he was down there on the ground in front of her, he wrapped his arms around the backs of her legs and nuzzled the warmth at her center.
“Grady.” She gripped the top of his head, swaying as he licked into her. “Oh my God.”
“This,” he murmured, slipping his tongue inside her. “This is what I’ve been craving.”
Not pizza or wine or any other comforts of home. Just Willa, slick and sweet on his tongue, gripping his fingers as he slid them inside her. Her hips moved in a slow arc as she fucked his hand, his face. Tongue buried inside her, he peered up to see her head thrown back in ecstasy, her breasts quivering with every panted breath.
“Holy shit,” she gasped as she clutched his hair and came hard around his fingers.
He palmed her ass, bringing her down slowly. He could do this all night. Every last ounce of his fatigue had fallen away, and he stood up and reached for her hand.
“Shower,” he said, hand under the spray as he bent to adjust the temperature. “Please tell me you’ve got condoms and I don’t have to run out to my truck.”
She grinned and pulled back the shower curtain. “Right there in the soap dish. I was ready for you.”
“Thank God,” he said and pulled her under the spray.
He knew he should take it slow, that he owed it to her to get familiar with him again. They’d been apart for two weeks, and besides that, they weren’t officially together. But as he pressed her up against the wall of the shower and rolled a condom on with one hand, he couldn’t think about anything but being inside her.
“Grady, hurry,” she gasped as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
He drove into her in one slick stroke, making them both gasp. Then he held still, waiting until her eyes opened and she looked deep into his.
“This isn’t a date,” he said as he began to move slowly, in, out, with languid strokes that made her groan. “But someday you’ll give me that second date. And then a third and a fourth and do you know why?”
Christ, why was he talking like this? About future plans, something he avoided like the fucking plague.
Willa’s response was a strangled gasp, not a word at all. Grady tilted his hips, hitting that spot he knew would drive her mad.
“This is too good for just a handful of dates,” he growled. “Too good not to last longer.”
She cried out, and Grady drove in again, pounding until she screamed and dragged her nails down his slick back.
He let go, too, shutting his eyes as the water sluiced down their bodies and his legs quivered with exhaustion and his heart nearly exploded.
It crossed his mind to tell her then. To say he wasn’t talking about sex, that that wasn’t what this was about.
But as she came down and smiled at him, he forgot everything including his own name.
Chapter Fourteen
Willa woke early the next morning, restless and brimming with pent-up energy. It took her a moment to figure out what was different.
She was naked, for one thing. And so was the big, muscular guy sharing her bed.
That was definitely different.
So was what he’d said in the shower.
This is too good for just a handful of dates. Too good not to last longer.
Had he meant it? Or was it just the heat of the moment?
It wasn’t the first time a guy had suggested pushing past her two-date rule. But it was the first time she’d actually considered it.
She stretched, feeling deliciously warm and luxurious as sh
e touched the edge of the bed with her toes. Then she curled on her side and lay there looking at him. Just looking, not touching, though her fingers twitched with eager energy.
Grady’s dark hair was in dire need of a trim and mussed from going straight from the shower to bed. Willa smiled at the pleasure of it, breathing in the scent of campfire that still clung to his skin. It was always there, just the faintest hint of it, even though they’d scrubbed each other forever with sudsy vanilla bodywash.
Marshmallows.
That’s what he smelled like. Campfire marshmallows.
A flood of memory rushed through her, catching her by surprise. A camping trip, one of the last times she remembered it being the three of them—her mother, her father, and her.
They bought a bundle of firewood at the grocery store, along with a ninety-nine-cent bag of Jet-Puffed marshmallows that left her mouth watering all the way to the campground. She wanted those s’mores.
Her father had whittled a stick to a sharp point, and her mother taught her to thread the end with a pair of pillowy marshmallows. She’d held the gooey white globs over the embers, giggling as they turned brown and toasty.
We were so happy then.
Years later, she’d learned they weren’t camping for fun. They were camping because her father had lost his job again, and they were two months behind on their rent. They were camping because they had to, but right then, clustered around the campfire, it hadn’t felt scary at all.
Grady stirred, and Willa stroked a hand over his chest. Part of her hoped he’d wake up and make love to her again, but that was selfish. He needed to sleep. He’d only been out for four hours, and she knew he needed to catch up.
She snuggled against him, burrowing into his heat. It felt nice, but she was too restless, too edgy to be comfortable.
God, Willa. You can’t even snuggle right.
Yet another sign she wasn’t cut out for intimacy.
She glanced at the clock and watched the numbers flip from 5:29 to 5:30 a.m. Kayla would be up. She was always up by five, and usually jonesing for someone to run with.
Willa picked up her phone and fired off a text.
Willa: Want company on your run?
A few seconds later, a reply popped up.
Kayla: Who are you and why do you have Willa’s phone?
She smiled and typed a reply.
Willa: Need to get up and move. See you at the end of my driveway in ten?
Then she got up and quickly dressed in a sports bra and running shorts. “Come on, Stevie,” she whispered. “This morning you’re earning your breakfast.”
Barrow and Earmuff were still dozing on the bed, too enraptured by Grady’s heat to bother asking for breakfast. They had the warm curve of his knee and the deliciously toasty spot against his chest, and those trumped kibble any day of the week.
Willa could relate.
Could she learn to be more like her cats? Able to switch off and relax, to lose herself in the pleasure of another body’s heat for more than an hour or two?
She sighed and headed for the foyer, pausing to clip Stevie’s extra-short leash in place. His tail wagged and he followed her out the door, trusting as ever.
The sun was painting the sky a bright amber gold as she walked to the end of her driveway. Kayla jogged up to join her.
“Hey, girl.” Kayla flipped her dark ponytail back, then frowned as her gaze skimmed over Grady’s truck. “Tell me you don’t have a hot, naked smokejumper in your bed.”
“I don’t have a hot, naked smokejumper in my bed,” Willa recited.
“Are you lying?”
“You told me to.”
Kayla sighed. “You’re hopeless. Come on.”
She set out at a brisk pace, her bright-yellow running pants and orange top giving Willa a sunshiny beacon. Willa fell into step beside her, wishing she’d taken time to stretch. Maybe she should have suggested brunch instead of this.
“Same route as last time?” Kayla asked.
“Thanks,” Willa huffed. “Familiar is best for Stevie.”
Stevie’s ears pricked as he recognized his name, and he gave a soft little oof. He was content to trot along between them, trusting they wouldn’t run him into any tree branches or boulders.
After only a couple of minutes, Willa wheezed, already regretting her life choices. “Maybe we could slow down a little?”
Kayla laughed but kicked it down a notch. “So,” she said, not winded at all. “When did Grady get back?”
“Last night,” Willa huffed. “Late.”
“He stayed the night again. Whatever you did to him must have knocked him on his ass.”
“I think that was the forest fire,” she said. “But I’ll take credit.”
Smiling way too cheerfully for so early in the morning, Kayla rounded the corner at the end of the block and started toward the park. “Seems kinda serious,” she said. “If he’s coming straight to your place instead of going home. Sleeping over instead of having you usher him out the door the second he rolls off you.”
“I’ve never been that bad,” Willa grumbled, deliberately avoiding the question of whether this was getting serious.
But Kayla didn’t let it drop. “So it is turning into something more.”
“More than what?”
“More than your usual two-dates-and-drop-’em ritual,” she said. “This one seems to have sticking power.”
“I didn’t say that,” Willa panted. “He just wanted to get laid.”
“If he only wanted sex, he would have made sure to get some before he left.”
Willa grimaced, partly from the pain of running but mostly because she wished she hadn’t told Kayla about that. She’d been lonely those first couple of nights after he left and had shared more than she usually did. “You made my point,” she said. “Can’t be serious if he’s picky about the timing of booty calls.”
“That’s your choice,” Kayla said, not unkindly. “You’re the one sticking with the dumb two-date rule.”
“It’s not dumb.” She should probably add more, but she didn’t have a good defense.
“Sure it is. What’s your next date that’s not a date?”
“Game night,” she managed.
“Game night?” Kayla peered at her with renewed interest. “You invited him to game night?”
“Why is that a big deal?”
“Because it’s been our tradition for almost ten years. Seems significant.”
Willa gritted her teeth. How was Kayla not winded? She could manage words like “tradition” and “significant” while Willa just wheezed and tried not to die.
But yes, she had invited Grady to game night. She’d asked him weeks ago, just after the mini golf non-date when he wanted to know when he could see her again. He’d plugged it into his phone, making a big show of flagging it as an “appointment” because it obviously wasn’t a date if their friends would be there.
“It’s just game night,” she panted as Kayla rounded a corner and kept on running. “You’re bringing Tony, right?”
“Yeah, but we’re actually dating,” she said. “Not according to some schedule, not with a giant rule book, dating. You should try it sometime.”
Willa wanted to ask how serious things were getting with Tony, but she didn’t have the lung capacity. Besides, she could see from her friend’s glowing looks every time she mentioned the burly crew captain that Kayla was really digging Tony. But how did Tony feel?
The bigger question—and Willa knew because she was avoiding it—was how did she herself feel? Not about Tony and Kayla but about what Grady had proposed.
Could she really date him? Could he date her?
“So seriously, game night?” Kayla’s words poked through Willa’s thoughts and yanked her back to the present. “I don’t remember you ever inviti
ng a guy before. Not a guy you were sleeping with, anyway.”
“Point?”
Kayla approached an intersection and looked both ways before dashing through the crosswalk. Willa followed, struggling to keep her feet moving in the right direction, trying to keep Stevie pointed straight ahead.
“Don’t you think that’s significant?” Kayla asked.
“Nope.”
“Well, I do,” Kayla said. “It’s the first time I’ve known you to feel that way about a guy,” she said. “You went to his house for dinner, for crying out loud. You met his family.”
Willa said nothing, though her brain bubbled around thoughts of the text messages she’d swapped with Grady’s mom over the last two weeks. They’d started simply enough with Willa texting to say thanks for the dinner. Before she knew it, she and Sheryl were trading texts throughout the day about everything from welding to Grady’s schedule.
She knew she should stop it—no sense getting attached to parents if this wasn’t a long-term thing—but it was just friendly chatter, right? She’d stayed friends with plenty of guys she’d gone out with a couple of times. Connecting with Grady’s mom didn’t mean anything.
“Wills, I’m happy for you.” Kayla slowed her pace another smidgen, probably noticing Willa was about to die. “I’m badgering you because I love you, and because I like giving you crap, but I’m serious. Grady’s great for you. I think there’s real potential there.”
Willa swallowed hard, tasting iron in the back of her throat. If she died, maybe she wouldn’t have to have this conversation.
But she knew Kayla well enough to realize that she’d never let this go, so she settled for redirecting the conversation.
“Got a new client yesterday,” Willa huffed. “Hart Valley Cheesemakers. Want to bid the photos for their site?”
Kayla glanced over and issued a dramatic eye roll. “And she changes the subject yet again.”
Willa resisted the urge to flip her the bird.
“It’s a good project,” Willa said. “Good money, plus free product.”
“Cheese,” Kayla said with a reverence that bordered on sensual. “I’ll definitely bid on that. Email me the deets?”