A Firefighter in Her Stocking

by Janice Lynn

  Sarah glanced around the kitchen, surprised at how quickly they’d gotten everything cleared. Surprised at how amazingly stocked and spacious his kitchen was. She liked the granite countertops, the workstation island, and the stainless-steel appliances.

  What she didn’t like was that now there was nothing to occupy her hands, more awkwardness was setting in.

  “You want another glass of wine?”

  Looking at him in relief, she exclaimed, “Yes!”

  He must think her a total slush and she rarely drank. She’d just been grateful for something to do with her hands to ward off her own mental demons. She should leave before the awkwardness and inadequacy set in, reminding that she had nothing in common with him.

  He poured her another glass, then one for himself. “Let’s sit on the sofa and look out at the city. It’s my favorite way to end a stressful day.”

  So maybe they did have a few things in common. Besides chemistry.

  Sarah sat, but couldn’t relax to enjoy the view as she had earlier because Jude sat down beside her. His body wasn’t touching hers, but he was closer than he should be since they were the only two people on his large sofa.

  Why had he sat so close? If she took a deep breath, she’d probably brush up against his arm.

  She finished off her glass of wine in record time, set the glass on an end table coaster, and stood. Enough was enough. She’d had a mostly enjoyable night with him and wasn’t going to ruin it by staying longer.

  “Thank you for the delicious meal, for turning off my smoke detector, and for letting me enjoy your view.”

  First placing his glass next to hers on the table, he stood, stared down at her. “You are very welcome, Sarah, but I should be thanking you.”

  The intensity in his blue eyes about had her almost sitting back down because of wobbly legs. “For what?”

  “Providing excellent dinner company and turning my night into something memorable.”

  She hadn’t done that. Wasn’t going to do that. Was that what he thought she was there to do?

  “I’d best be going,” she ventured, not breaking eye contact with him but taking a step back.

  His eyes twinkled. “In a rush?”

  “It’s been a long day. I look forward to going to sleep.” Yes, she had put emphasis on the word “sleep”. “I’m sure you feel the same.”

  One side of his mouth crooked upward. “Then I guess I have no choice but to say good night.”

  Sarah barely held back her sigh of relief. Which was just as well, because Jude did the unthinkable.

  He kissed her.

  Just a short peck on her mouth with his warm lips, but one she felt ricochet all the way to her toes and bring every nerve cell to life along the way. The power of Zeus, she thought again, knowing she’d been struck by lightning.

  “Goodnight, Sarah,” he said, his lips still so close she could feel his warm breath caress her sensitized mouth. He looked straight into her eyes, his full of what she could only describe as desire.

  Desire. For her.

  No doubt hers shone the same way.

  Because she felt desire. For him.

  His lips touched hers again, this time slower, exploring her mouth with his soft, tender touch. He stared into her eyes, searching them as surely as his mouth explored her lips.

  She shouldn’t be kissing him. He was a scoundrel, a good-for-nothing womanizer who used women.

  Only, deep down, he wasn’t.

  She shouldn’t be kissing him. He wasn’t her type.

  Only, deep down, he was.

  She shouldn’t be kissing him. She wasn’t his type.

  Only he was looking at her, kissing her, as if she was.

  His kiss was so sweet, so addictive, so electrifying, that she didn’t want him to stop.

  So she kissed him back.

  Kissed him with the same exploration of his lips, his mouth, that he had kissed her with. At some point her hands found their way to his shoulders, to his neck, to his soft dark hair that she now threaded her fingers through, toying with the silky strands.

  Never had she experienced a kiss like this.

  Never had she felt a man’s body like his.

  Strong, hard, capable of amazing things, focused completely on her every movement, her every response, her every breath.

  She didn’t stop him when he cupped her face to kiss her more fully, when his hands worked their way down her shoulders, to her back to settle low and pull her against him.

  Oh.

  He was long and lean and hard. All man, the kind who rushed into burning buildings to save little girls. The kind who could sweep a woman off her feet without having to catch his breath. The kind whose eyes seduced with just a glimpse.

  The kind whose body made a woman want to explore every inch, feel every inch, claim every inch as her own.

  That’s how she kissed him, not bothering to hold anything back. What was the point? The moment was some anomaly in time that would never happen again. She’d worry about regrets and recriminations later. Much later.

  Jude kissed with a passion she found addictive and she gave in to how she craved him.

  His hands shifted to her shoulders, and to her surprise he pulled back, stared into her eyes with ones that appeared as dazed as she felt.

  Which was saying a lot. Her legs had all the strength of melted butter. Which was a pretty accurate description of how the rest of her felt, too.

  “That was some goodnight kiss, Doc.”

  She wasn’t sure how to take his comment. Was he making fun of how she’d kissed him after claiming he wasn’t her type?

  “Um, y-yeah, it w-was,” she stammered. “Nothing like any I’ve encountered, for sure.”

  “Really?”

  He seemed intrigued by her comment and Sarah regretted her wine-induced confession. At least, she was blaming her blurting out that she’d never been kissed like that before on the wine.

  Honestly, she could just as easily blame it on his kiss because the man’s mouth had outright intoxicated her.

  Squaring up her shoulders and trying to achieve a look of nonchalance, she nodded. “Don’t act like it’s a big deal because I’m sure you get that a lot.”

  “Get what a lot?”

  Oh, the things she could respond with, but, even though she should be blaring a reminder over and over in her head, the last thing she wanted to do at the moment was think about him with other women.

  “The reaction that you are a way above average kisser.”

  Looking more than a little pleased at her answer, he chuckled. “Way above average?”

  His pleasure in her response, that he was looking at her with affection rather than mockery, freed Sarah of her embarrassment at her confession.

  Or maybe it was the wine freeing her of her inhibitions. Yep, she was going to keep blaming the wine. Nasty inhibition-lowering stuff.

  “Okay,” she admitted with a little roll of her eyes and a smile of her own. “You’re phenomenal and make my previous kissing experiences seem like they were conducted by preschoolers.”

  He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Preschoolers?”

  “They weren’t,” she assured him, thinking she should quit talking any moment now. “I have been kissed since preschool.”

  His thumb made a circular caress over her cheekbone and her brain went a little fuzzy for a moment. For a moment? Ha, her brain had been fuzzy all evening. Looking at him made her brain fuzzy. Kissing him had completely fuzzed her.

  “I wasn’t actually kissed in preschool,” she clarified. “Not even once, although this little boy named Johnny chased me around saying he was going to kiss me when he caught me, but I never let him catch me.” She should shut up, because why was she telling him
about Johnny from preschool? “I have been kissed. By grown men. Good, decent men who were my type.”

  At least, she’d thought they were her type. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “But they didn’t kiss like you.” Yeah, she really should quit talking.

  The color of Jude’s eyes deepened, darkening with an emotion Sarah couldn’t label. Instinctively, she liked his warm expression, though. She liked it a lot.

  “How did I kiss, Sarah?”

  He cupped her face now, stared into her eyes, and his voice had a husky tone to it that made her want to listen to him say her name over and over.

  All night long.

  Wine, stop it.

  “Like you could set my body on fire and make me happy to go up in flames.”

  Oops. That had slipped out. Maybe she needed to zip her lips.

  Zip her lips?

  She was reverting to preschool.

  Or maybe the way Jude was looking at her, touching her, had her intelligence on hold.

  He quirked a brow. “You know my job is to put out fires, right?”

  “My guess is that you’ve started more than a few, too.” She swallowed, half expecting him to sweep her off her feet and carry her to his bedroom all Rhett Butler style.

  Would she stop him?

  Or would she give in to the curiosity of how good Jude Davenport could make her feel? Because she knew being the focus of this man’s attention in bed would be unlike anything she’d ever imagined possible.

  Before that moment, that was, because right now her imagination was endless.

  Jude stared into her eyes for long moments. “What are you doing tomorrow evening, Sarah Grayson?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CONFUSED, SARAH BLINKED. Tomorrow evening? Shouldn’t he be worried about what she was doing right then? At that moment? In the next fifteen minutes? No, Jude wouldn’t be a fifteen-minute man. He’d be hours and hours.

  There went her imagination again. Endless.

  “Working,” she answered, thinking he couldn’t really have just asked if she was busy, because she didn’t expect him to want more than just a rumble between his sheets.

  Or was that his normal routine? Make the woman think he was interested in more than just one night before luring her into his bed?

  Hadn’t he already figured out that she needed no further luring? She was curious and purring for more.

  “How about Friday evening?” he asked, his thumb sliding across her cheek. “Are you working then?”

  Her forehead scrunched. “No, but—”

  “Plans?”

  “No, but—” She was going to tell him she didn’t want idle promises of seeing him again. If she agreed. And she would. Why not let a man like Jude introduce her to what all the sex hype was about? Sexual Orgasm for Beginners?

  Ha! She’d bet anything he’d move straight into an advanced course. Maybe Advanced Multiple Wows, or something along those lines.

  “Would you give me the privilege of taking you to your first Broadway show on Friday evening?”

  Their minds clearly on two different subjects, Sarah’s head spun and she frowned at him in bewilderment. “Why would you want to do that?”

  Why was he talking about Friday evening when they were in the here and now and his bedroom was only a few feet away?

  “I’d like to take you to watch Phantom of the Opera.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I’d like to fulfill that desire of yours.”

  Which was where her brain had been, not on watching a play. But he meant...he was saying...asking...

  “As a...” she’d been going to say “friend”, but, whatever they were, they weren’t friends “...neighbor?”

  He chuckled. “As someone who’d like to kiss you goodnight again. Soon.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lower lip. Part of her wanted to throw caution to the wind and say yes, and to please just go ahead and kiss her again right now, like she’d thought he was going to do. Would that be soon enough? But she wasn’t a throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of girl. She was a logical girl who avoided men like him because they used women. She knew he used women. She saw the parade of usees leaving his apartment the morning after.

  She was not a usee. She’d been thinking about becoming one, had even been thinking of using him to give her the pleasure wielded at his fingertips, which would make her a user, too. What she hadn’t been thinking of was going on a date with Jude Davenport.

  That terrified her much more than the thought of having sex with him.

  Sex was nothing to Jude. Maybe dates weren’t either. But to her, at that moment, dragging him into his bedroom and stripping him naked felt safer than agreeing to a date.

  No.

  She would not set herself up for that particular disappointment again.

  “I can tell you are way over-thinking this,” he pointed out, lifting her chin to where she was looking into his eyes again. “It’s just a date, Sarah.”

  Just a date. She hadn’t misread what he’d been offering. Jude wanted to take her on a date. A real date.

  “I’m not your type,” she reminded him, positive that agreeing to go with him would be a bad idea, that to do so would be setting herself up for disappointment the way Kenny had never come close to.

  What if she grew emotionally attached?

  No, she knew better than to do that with a man like Jude. If they went out, it would be because he was tired tonight, but was interested in pursuing the sexual chemistry between them at a later time. On Friday night. Taking her to watch a Broadway show was no big deal to Jude, merely a form of foreplay.

  She needed to be careful not to make his offer into more than what it was.

  “And I’m not your type,” he countered her response, his eyes full of delicious promise. “So how about you say you’ll go to dinner and to see Phantom of the Opera with me? We will have a good time. I’ll be on my best behavior and give you a night you’ll never forget. I give my word.”

  The man could sell sand in the middle of the desert.

  “And then what?” she ventured, trying to play out in her mind what would happen after their “date”. “You expect me to sleep with you and then me to sneak out of your apartment the next morning?”

  His expression didn’t waver. “I would never ask you to sneak out of my apartment, Sarah.”

  Right. He’d just kiss her goodbye, while standing in his doorway with only a towel covering his lean hips, while she craved more of whatever he’d done the night before.

  If she wasn’t careful, she’d be the one with no pride, offering to do whatever he wanted for just a little bit more of his delicious body.

  She had to put a stop to this. Her sexual need had ebbed a little and she felt stronger, more able to walk away, and that’s exactly what she was going to do.

  She went to turn from him, but he stopped her.

  “I like you, Sarah,” he told her, his voice clear, sincere, imploring. “I’ve enjoyed tonight more than I’ve enjoyed talking with a woman in a long time. Stop judging me on what you think you know. Pretend you met me for the first time at the hospital today and listen to what your heart is saying right now.”

  If she’d met him at the hospital and not had preconceived ideas she might think he was wonderful and not at all like the men her mother had warned her about.

  “My heart isn’t saying anything right now.” Okay, so it was beating fast, and a little erratically, but that wasn’t speech.

  He put his palm over her heart, as if interpreting an unspoken language.

  Beating a lot erratically, she corrected, wondering why his hand on her chest made breathing so difficult.

  “Maybe you just aren’t listening closely enough, because I think it is.”


  “Don’t use lines on me, Jude Davenport,” she warned, reminding herself not to get caught up in what he was saying. The man was a practiced womanizer. “I’m not one of your women.”

  Looking frustrated, he sighed. “How about we go to dinner and the show Friday evening and then just have some fun between now and Christmas? You get to decide how much, or how little, happens between us physically.”

  No doubt shock registered in her eyes because his question floored her. That a lot would happen between them physically wasn’t in question. If she spent time with him, she would end up in his bed. She didn’t fool herself otherwise. She didn’t even deny to herself that a big part of her wanted to be in his bed, to know what it felt like to have him give her body pleasure.

  “Christmas?” she finally croaked. “Christmas is weeks away. Wouldn’t Thanksgiving make more sense?”

  Which almost sounded as if she was considering his outrageous suggestion. She wasn’t, was she?

  He shrugged. “Why not Christmas? Thanksgiving is only a few weeks from now. We’ve already admitted that we’re dreading the holidays. Why not spend them together so maybe they won’t be so bad?”

  Sarah mentally shook her head. Jude was asking her to date him through Christmas?

  Had she passed out in her kitchen from smoke fumes and only dreamed he’d come to rescue her?

  That made more sense.

  Reality was that she was unconscious, suffering from smoke intoxication, and having one heck of a hallucination.

  Either that, or Jude must have enjoyed their kiss.

  She had enjoyed their kiss.

  Had truly never been kissed that way, had never felt so much passion bubbling within her.

  Yep, she must be hallucinating.

  She bit the inside of her lip. Ouch. The pain was real. Which meant this was real. That Jude was searching her eyes, looking for an answer.

  The truth was that she wanted to know him better, too.

  If she said no, she’d only be denying herself. But there was that thing she didn’t really want to think about. Before she could consider agreeing to any of this, she had to address it or else it would be a constant thorn.

  “What about the other women?”