Californian Wildfire Fighters: The Complete Series

by North, Leslie

  He didn't seem to mind, however, or even notice the collision. His arms tightened around her. His strength was incredible. To think this was the same boy she’d loved so fiercely . . .

  In that moment, she could believe in Hank's sudden ferocity. He shoved his mouth against hers, and Lana found herself on the defensive once more. His hot tongue tangled with her own, and his hands—her hands—were everywhere. They pulled at hair, caught in clothes, and occasionally struck out to catch their bodies against the wall or shove an obstacle aside as they fumbled toward the bedroom.

  No cautionary thoughts entered her mind. She knew she should force them both to stop, to take a pause to breathe—but there was no breath left in her. Hank stole it with every kiss.

  A whirlwind of shed clothing heralded their arrival on her bed. He pulled her dress up over her body. Lana gasped at how quickly he worked. The speed of all that was happening was completely disorienting. She wanted to hold onto every second—but if she held too hard, would the moment disperse like a fistful of feathers in a hurricane?

  If so, she wanted the hurricane.

  Hank's square, sturdy fingers were surprisingly nimble as they unfastened the clasp of her bra. If it had been up to Lana in that moment, she would have wrenched it off herself . . . and she usually took such care with the things that were hers!

  Clothes had suddenly become the last barrier between them, and with every other wall stripped away, she needed them gone.

  She gasped as Hank lowered her in one swift movement. His chest collided with hers, and the hot plane of his naked skin was a revelation against her newly-bared breasts. It had been so long since she’d felt another's weight settle atop her own.

  There was nothing gentle or hesitant about the way Hank pressed himself against her now. It was as if he was reclaiming his rightful place as the person in her bed. Lana, at least, felt that this was true with all her being.

  And the way Hank took charge of the proceedings, it was clear he felt the same. Lana moaned and wriggled beneath him as he trailed kisses down her neck. He made a necklace of them around her clavicle, licking and nipping her sensitive skin until she thought she would come undone. How wonderful—and how impossibly unfair—that all the little tricks he had learned on her years ago were completely at his disposal now. He deserved to work more for it, didn't he? After what he had done to her . . .

  But Lana was more immediately concerned with what he was doing to her now. His fingers flared along her waist, more intimately exploring her womanly swells. So there was a learning curve, after all, and maybe it was a literal one.

  Her own hands explored the clenched muscles of his chest, trailing across his wide pectorals and spilling touches down toward his abs. A trail of curls led her curious fingers lower, lower, until she found what she was looking for.

  Considering its size, it wasn't hard to find at all.

  "Lana." Hank moaned her name.

  And there it came again: that sinking in her stomach, that sudden alarm that all this might end with a single word.

  Like hell she was going to let it be her own name. Lana squeezed, and his cock pulsed in response. Her hips collided with his, and he thrust his need between them, breathing raggedly. Her fingers worked him. There was no more time to be shy. She needed this, now, and her yearning was as all-consuming as his own.

  He grabbed her waist and positioned her beneath him. Lana writhed, making faint, keening noises. His fingers pressed her to stillness again. She flung her right leg over his hip and curled it around the small of his back, braced herself on the pillars of his arms, and felt his biceps clench.

  He slid an inch into her, and she cried out. She threw her head back and blinked her astonishment in rapid Morse code. It had been so long, she had almost forgotten what it was like—

  "Lana." He crooned her name again and touched her hair. He buried his face in the pillow beside her and surged forward.

  "Hank!" she cried out. Every muscle in her body tensed at once, but he was already inside her, filling her, making her his own once more. She let out a shaky breath and relaxed back into the pillow. Her heart slammed against her ribcage as she fought to control her breathing.

  In, out. In, out.

  She moaned as Hank, impossibly, seemed to match her mental marching orders to herself. It was as if he understood as well as she did that their time together was stolen, and that there was no possible way to slow things now. He thrust himself between her legs, burying his full length inside her, and thrust again. The pace he dictated was as unrelenting as his hard-muscled body.

  Lana rocked beneath him, digging her heel in harder to keep her position. She wanted to wrap both legs around his waist, but she couldn't seem to coordinate the maneuver. Every time her thoughts seemed to form some semblance of coherency, Hank moved inside her, and a surge of pleasure rushed through her.

  "Hank," she moaned again.

  "Lana."

  It was as if, now reunited, they couldn't get enough of each other. Each sigh caressed the other's name; each kiss took away the air the other breathed.

  She felt the intensity start to build inside her, trying in vain to fight it back. She wanted this moment with Hank to last forever, but there was no hope for it. Every forceful push of his hips rocked her harder, faster, closer.

  When she orgasmed, she forgot how to breathe. She forgot her own name.

  She shouted his, instead.

  Hank groaned explosively. He gave a last push, and Lana felt his seed spill freely inside her. It seeped between her legs as Hank rolled off and collapsed beside her. He gathered her up in his arms and held her close enough to crush her.

  Lana breathed. The moment had passed, but she hadn't lost it. They had grabbed hold of it, together, and damn the consequences.

  Damn the consequences, she thought as she snuggled in close to the only man she had ever loved. I'll face them tomorrow morning, whatever they may be. But for tonight . . .

  For tonight, Hank Logan was hers again.

  3

  HANK

  Red, watery sunlight filtered in through the curtains drawn across the window. Hank stirred. He peeled his eyes open and winced. The back of his skull pounded, and his thoughts were sluggish. All he could immediately assess of his situation upon waking was the hangover, and the dry, sour taste of old beer in his mouth.

  He glanced down and saw that, beneath an unfamiliar set of soft white sheets, he was naked. The revelation shouldn't have come as a surprise. He was a man who generally slept in the nude, even back home in Alaska. These past months, though, he had taken to sleeping in boxers and a T-shirt out of consideration for the men who shared his cramped quarters. He knew without needing to hear them gripe that seeing their chief shoot out of bed to answer a late-night emergency call naked wasn't exactly good for morale.

  The pink curtains softened the harsh morning light of the Cedar Springs sun. He had gotten so used to looking out and seeing the angry red pendulum in the sky that he could scarcely remember what a healthy yellow sun was supposed to look like anymore.

  Pink curtains . . . soft sheets . . .

  Hank sat up and clutched his head. When the pounding receded to a bearable degree, he turned—and found a naked Lana Sweet sleeping beside him.

  Looking at her . . . It was as if a fist clenched around his heart as he looked at her. Her auburn hair swept across her face, her eyelashes lay dark against her flushed cheeks. Her lips were parted in sleep, and she breathed evenly, quietly, beside the dip of his waist. A pale hand rested on his thigh as if, even in sleep, she didn't trust him to remain without a physical link to assure her of his presence.

  Hank swallowed. He took Lana's hand, but rather than remove it so he could slide out of bed undetected, he raised it to his mouth and kissed her fingertips. He didn't know where the impulse came from.

  He regretted it the next instant when he looked down and saw that Lana's eyes had opened. She stared at him as if he had just struck her.

  "Mor
ning." The greeting was rough in his throat. He dropped her hand as she sat up beside him. The bedsheet slipped down past her waist, exposing her bare breasts. Hank glanced away quickly, as if privacy was something that could—and ought to—still be maintained between them.

  "Good morning." Her voice was husky, sleep-roughened. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Lana pull the sheet back up to cover herself. "What time is it?"

  "Past nine."

  The air between them was tense, but not the same way it had been last night. This tension didn't beg to be defused by any means necessary. This was awkward. It must have been the beer that muddied his thinking and fuzzed the edges of things.

  It must have been the beer that fooled him into thinking they could pick up exactly where he’d left things all those years ago.

  Nothing was the same between them. They hadn't resolved anything. They had stepped over everything. Their explosive physical connection wasn't a substitute for a real conversation—or a real explanation.

  Hank turned and let himself take in the sight of Lana covering herself. Hadn't he spent years of his life preparing for this moment? Summoning the words, again and again, that would make things right for her?

  More than awkwardness weighed the air. The bedroom felt suddenly heavy with expectation. Lana gazed at him, but she asked for nothing. Hank knew she wouldn't press him.

  And he was a coward for taking the easy out she was opening to him.

  "Well, guess I should head into town. Got things to attend to down at the station."

  "Of course." Lana nodded, maybe too exuberantly, because she winced the next instant and touched her forehead.

  He felt instant sympathy for her. His own hangover was a beast he didn't hold a hope of vanquishing. It had been a long time since he’d gone into work like this—all he had to do was make it through the day.

  But all she said was, "I've got to get going, too. I've already overslept longer than I like to."

  They slid out of opposite sides of the bed and hunted the room for their clothes. A few wordless exchanges of clothing items later, and they were both dressed to get on with their days. Hank wondered if anyone down at the station would notice he was wearing the same clothes he had worn as he left the party. His wardrobe didn't vary much from day-to-day.

  They stood awkwardly together at the center of the room. Lana tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stared intently at some spot of interest in the carpet that Hank couldn't discern. He raised his arms for a hug and then aborted the move. The gears in his head ground together painfully as he tried to churn out the right thing to do in this situation.

  Thankfully, Lana spared him by acting first. She rose up on her tiptoes and placed her hands on his shoulders. She moved to kiss him on the cheek—but Hank's body misread the cues before his brain could catch up with her intent.

  Her hands, her nearing lips, triggered a response in him, and he turned into her. Their lips met.

  An electric shock coursed through him, and he knew he wasn't the only conduit. Lana jerked back and blinked rapidly.

  "Sorry." He breathed the apology, suspecting that he didn't sound sorry at all.

  "No, it's . . ." She stared at him a moment longer, then averted her eyes. He wanted to cup her chin and guide her back to him, but he let her go. He knew he had forfeited the right to ask anything of her, years ago. "It's good to see you, Hank. Be safe out there."

  "Yeah. You, too."

  He left Lana's little house and walked back into town. As if the excruciating pain in his head wasn't punishment enough, he couldn't stop from mentally kicking himself, again and again and again, for last night's royal slipup.

  Lana Sweet, naked and writhing beneath him . . . Lana Sweet's delectable lips fitted against his own as easily and addictively as they always had . . .

  Hank couldn't shake the impression that he had just made a terrible fucking mistake.

  4

  LANA

  Her passionate night spent in Hank's arms was followed by three weeks of torture.

  If it had seemed to her like she ran into him at every inopportune moment before, her new post-sex reality was far, far worse. Hank Logan haunted her memories and her thoughts, lurking around every corner of Cedar Springs.

  And now, hardly a day passed that she didn't cross paths with him.

  Conversation between them was stilted. They were getting good at commencing with, and sticking to, formalities. There were moments when Lana thought she detected something in his eyes—a spark, maybe, that she felt certain would lead to an invitation in the next instant—but they would almost always be interrupted. Hank would get called away to work, or a Cedar Springs local would hail them and increase the awkwardness. Tenfold.

  Lana had taken to keeping her own invitation balanced on the tip of her tongue. Sleeping with Hank had done the opposite of bringing her closure. He was in her system now more than ever. The memory of his burning kisses, his possessive touches, raced through her veins like wildfire. She feared it would consume her—and leave nothing of her behind but a wisp of smoke—a drifting, twisting memory of a woman who had never learned to move on from her lost love.

  Hank Logan had shattered her world ten years ago. His reappearance now might very well be the thing that destroyed her.

  It would have been poetic, if it wasn't so utterly pathetic. Lana hated feeling as if she had no control over her own tragedy.

  She hated it more that she had grown to expect to run into him.

  Hank was not at the diner today, which came as both a relief and a disappointment. Lana frowned as she seated herself at the breakfast bar. Dyna bustled over and efficiently turned over the cup in front of her, filling it with steaming coffee, but then another customer called her away, which left Lana a moment to puzzle over her confused feelings as she took her first sip of the inky beverage. What did she really have to look forward to when it came to running into Hank? It was obvious by now that he thought their night together had been a mistake.

  Lana just wished she knew what she thought about it.

  "Storm's comin'," Dyna paused in front of her with the carafe of coffee and a hand on her expansive hip.

  Jerked out of her thoughts, Lana blinked, lifted her head, and turned to look out the windows of the diner.

  The sky looked the same as it ever did, lately: hazy. She hadn't detected any change in the air on her morning walk to the diner—but then, almost all of her attention was turned inward these days.

  "How do you know?"

  "Trust me. When you get older, you just start to feel these things." Now Dyna was looking at Lana like there was something to puzzle out in her expression. "You feel a lot of things before they get confirmed. More coffee, hon?"

  Lana shook her head. She felt guilty already for having barely touched what Dyna had put in front of her. "Actually, I was wondering if I could trouble you for a milkshake, today."

  "A milkshake?" Dyna's eyebrow rose, the arch matching the angle of the hand on her hip.

  Lana laughed self-consciously. "Yes. Strawberry, if you have it. It just . . . sounds perfect right about now."

  "Anything to eat with that?" There was a half-amused innuendo in her tone that Lana couldn't begin to translate. It was almost as if Dyna was fishing for something besides her order.

  "I already had breakfast this morning," Lana lied. She had spent a good twenty minutes revisiting her pantry and refrigerator again and again, but none of her usual groceries had looked at all appetizing to her. Her cravings had led her directly to Dyna's. "This is going to sound weird, but if you have any of those little sandwich pickles, I wouldn't say no to a few."

  "Happy to oblige." The older woman’s brow furrowed, and she tilted her head to regard Lana out of the corner of one eye. The strange look didn't escape Lana's notice, even as Dyna turned away to fill the bizarre order.

  Hearing her lunch preferences stated out loud worried Lana, too. This wasn't normal, even for someone who didn't share her bird-lik
e appetite.

  Milkshakes and pickles? That was decidedly not a cuisine that even the most creative of Dyna's younger clientele would come up with.

  "Dyna? Do you mind if I get all that to go? I just remembered I have an errand to run."

  "Not at all, sweetie."

  Dyna packed up her order without charging her for the pickles. Lana tipped extra for the milkshake and departed with an abrupt goodbye. A part of her worried that she was coming off as strange—but she felt strange.

  She stopped by the store on her way home.

  Half an hour later, milkshake drained, pickles devoured, Lana had nothing else to distract her as she paced up and down the length of her kitchen. Her eyes kept shooting to the little pink box she had purchased from the store as if she expected it to leap off the counter and bite her. She couldn't bring herself to open it . . . not yet.

  First Response, the label read. Even the brand name reminded her of Hank Logan.

  Lana had never taken a pregnancy test before. That's not to say she didn't know how it worked. She passed the box again, side-eyed it, then swept it off the counter, keeping her expression neutral, even disinterested. No one was watching her, yet all the world seemed to be holding its breath and waiting to see what would happen next.

  She walked purposefully toward the bathroom, where she opened the package, shimmied out of her pants, and followed the instructions carefully. Afterward, she dutifully waited five minutes for the test to develop.

  Then, hands trembling, she picked up the little stick and stared at the results.

  5

  HANK

  "Three weeks under control," the Cedar Springs fire chief reported.

  Beside him, the liaison from the governor's office adjusted his glasses. He was the smallest man in the room, and clearly conscious of the fact.