She paused. They looked at the shot that accompanied the post. It was a black-and-white, documentary-style photo that showed the Jupiter Point crew in tight formation, heads together. Their expressions—seen only from profile or in snatches—were serious, even grim. Sean’s eyebrows were drawn together, Rollo’s mouth unsmiling, an unfamiliar dark-haired man’s handsome head bent.
“Wow,” said Brianna softly. “Did he write that? It’s kind of powerful. I thought he just joked around all the time.”
“There’s a lot more to him than that,” Suzanne told her, slamming shut the laptop.
“Oh really? Do tell…” Brianna grinned. “Wasn’t it you…yes, I’m totally sure it was you…who said you never went for the sweaty types?”
Suzanne drew herself into her most dignified posture. “Everyone sweats. It’s called sweat glands.”
“I know everyone sweats. I’ve been pro-sweating for years. I’m just glad you’re finally onboard with the concept. Seriously, you and Josh? What gives?”
“He’s staying with me while he recovers from his broken leg, that’s all.”
When Brianna just waited, obviously expecting more of an explanation, she gave in. Why not, after all? Brianna could keep a secret. She might be tactless, but she wasn’t a gossip.
“Okay, we might be doing our best to enjoy ourselves while he’s laid up.”
Brianna dissolved into a half-laughing, half-coughing fit. “Are you telling me he’s getting laid while he’s laid up?”
“Ha. Ha.” Suzanne pounded her on the back as she tried to recover. “You’re hilarious.” And then she caught sight of the woman who’d just pulled up a camp chair next to them. Mrs. Murphy plopped into it. It must be children’s story hour, because she wore a Shrek-inspired green face mask and wig. Suzanne wondered if she’d ever get that image out of her head.
“That’s old news, Brianna,” Mrs. Murphy announced. “Some of us saw this coming way back in the spring, when they first came to town. How’s Josh doing, Suzanne? I talked to Tim Peavy’s wife, and she just can’t say enough good things about what Josh did. She’s wondering if…well…you know. She has a few single friends. I said I’d ask you.”
“Why me?”
“Well, he’s staying with you, and you were looking at houses together. Some are saying you have a secret engagement. I thought it best to check.
Suzanne slid her laptop into her bag and planted her feet on the floor. “Josh and I aren’t engaged.”
Mrs. Murphy made a sympathetic noise. “Another broken engagement? Oh dear.”
“No, no…we never were, that was just a rumor.”
One she’d started, and was now fueling by hosting him at her condo. And if people knew they were now sleeping in her bed and getting very little sleep…
“Just…let Rosario know that he’s still recovering from his injuries. He’s in no shape to date anyone.”
“Thanks for clearing that up, Suz,” Brianna said. “We’ll let the waiting list know.”
“The waiting list?” When she realized Bri was joking, she made a face and headed for the door. Those other girls could just keep on waiting. She was nowhere near ready to walk away from Josh yet. Not even close.
21
When she got back to her apartment, Josh was standing on his crutches, glaring at his laptop, which was propped on a pile of books on one of her high stools. He wore a dark blue Dallas Cowboys t-shirt and his shoulders looked about half a mile wide. Snowball was curled on the floor next to his cast. At the sight of Suzanne, she heaved herself up and trotted to greet her. She bent down to rub between the dog’s ears.
“Hi.” For a moment, she felt almost awkward. It was one thing to have a temporary roommate, another to have wild uninhibited sex with him. Did that make them roommates with benefits?
“Hi.” He closed his laptop.
She wondered if she should mention that she’d seen his Tumblr. But she had something more important on her mind. “I should warn you that we’re the talk of the town. Sorry about that.”
His gaze flashed to hers, their slate-gray color darker than normal. “So?” He shrugged. “Talkers gonna talk.”
“You don’t mind being the subject of gossip?” She came farther into the living room, dropped her bag on the floor and flopped onto the couch. He crutched over to her.
“Depends on what they’re saying, I guess. How did it go with the Realtor?”
She’d nearly forgotten about that meeting. It felt like ancient history now that she and the girls were taking things into their own hands. “No go.” She rolled her shoulders, just now realizing her muscles were bunched with tension. “He’s going forward with his plans. Nothing we can do.”
“I bet there’s something I can do. Take off your jacket.”
The husky tone in his voice made her body immediately respond. She slid off her blazer, pleasant fantasies of afternoon sex skittering through her brain. But instead he put his warm hands on her shoulders and pressed his thumbs between her shoulder blades. It felt so good, she moaned out loud.
“Josh, you are a prince among firemen.”
“So that’s the way to your heart? A shoulder rub?”
“Mmmm.” Pleasure flooded her body. “What do you mean, the way to my heart?” she murmured. “Aren’t you more concerned about the way into my pants?”
He paused, and she immediately regretted the flippant comment. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Resuming the magical thing he was doing with his thumbs, he spoke again. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about something. About you. About us.”
“Us?” His unusually serious tone gave her a thrill. “How do you mean?”
“I…” He ran his thumbs along her spine, forcing it to unfurl from its hunched position. “I like this. I like being with you. I like what we have going on here.”
The words dripped into her consciousness like honey. So sweet, so honest. So…non-specific. “I do too. I have no idea what it is, but I like it.”
“Right?” He chuckled. “Do we have to know? Can’t it just be what it is? Same old story you’ve heard a million times. Boy meets girl. Boy pretends to be engaged to girl so girl can buy house. Girl rescues boy from crazy parents. Girl allows boy to stay in her house while they fuck each other senseless.”
“And boy gives girl amazing back rubs,” she added dreamily.
“And girl gives boy amazing blow—”
“Hey, don’t ruin the mood,” she interrupted, laughing.
“If blow jobs are wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
He smoothed his thumbs along the tendons between her neck and her shoulders. Every movement of his big hands was divine. “I’m so glad we’re on the same page with all of this.”
“All of this?”
“Our…relationship. Or non-relationship. Whatever you want to call it.”
Did his hands hesitate just a tiny bit? Maybe. “Yup, same page,” he murmured. “And it’s a good page.”
“Yes, it has all the sex and none of the expectations that get brutally crushed at the end.”
“Right. Speaking of sex…” His hands left her shoulders and slid down her front, inside her blouse. He unbuttoned it enough to expose her bra. She arched her back, feeling herself slide effortlessly into the sensual haze she always felt with Josh.
The pads of his fingers skimmed across her skin. Her breath kept pace with his movements, speeding up as he slipped his hands under her bra, to her nipples. She jumped as he reached the tender, tightening skin of her areola. Amazing how she kept getting more and more responsive to Josh’s touch. Or maybe her period was going to start soon…often she got more sensitive then. When was her last period, come to think of it?
She tried to calculate, but Josh’s fingers were now closing around the tips of her breasts and her entire body was arching off the couch. “How do you do that?” she moaned.
“We’re on the same page, right?” He lightly squeezed her nipple until she ga
sped. “The page where you strip all your clothes off?”
“This isn’t Penthouse,” she gasped. “I’m not stripping unless you do.”
“No problem. Except I’m on crutches and you’re going to have to help. Come over here. And don’t button your blouse up. Leave it how it is.”
The I’m-in-charge note in his voice made her shiver. Funny how she normally didn’t like anyone telling her what to do. With Josh, it was different, because it always ended in a mind-altering orgasm. She got to her feet, noticing that she was already a little unsteady on her legs. She came around to the other side of the couch, Josh tracking her every move. He scanned her up and down with hot appreciation and whistled.
“Woman, you make my heart sing,” he said in a low growl. “Now undo my pants.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m injured thanks to risking my life in a fire. Is it so much to ask?” He raised one eyebrow as if daring her to disagree.
“You’re not helpless. Weren’t you just rubbing my back two minutes ago?”
“Yes, which is another reason you should be nice to me. Come on. Unzip me. You can go ahead and do it on your knees if that makes it easier.”
She burst out laughing; he was so outrageous. And the way he was devouring her with his eyes made her feel beautiful and sexy and powerful. So she did drop to her knees, and she did unzip his pants and close her lips around the big, beautiful erection that greeted her. She closed her eyes as she took him into her mouth, losing herself in the deep sensuality of the moment.
No more words after that, just the harsh rasps of his breath, the soft suckling of her lips around his shaft, the distant ticking of the kitchen clock. Then he stopped her with a trembling hand.
“You forgot to strip,” he told her in a voice so deep and dark he could have been a blues singer.
Still kneeling, she took off her blouse and bra. “Happy now?” God, her voice sounded just as breathless as his did.
“I will be.” Balancing on his crutches, he used one hand to draw her closer, bent his head to her breasts and swirled his tongue across her nipples. “The second I get inside you.”
Her sex clenched with hot excitement. He turned her so she faced the back of the couch, then put his hand on her back. “Grab the back of the couch, honey.”
She loved it when he called her honey, especially when passion edged his voice. She bent at the waist and put her hands on the frame of the couch. “Like that?”
“Just like that.” His crutches clattered to the floor as he planted his hands on her hips. “Perfect.”
She felt her skirt being drawn up the back of her thighs, felt cool air brush her sex as he brought her panties down. She was already wet, just from his voice and his commands and the time she’d spent with her mouth on him. He dragged his fingers through her folds, lingering on the swollen nub of her clit. A sharp jolt of pleasure ripped through her. She tried to chase his hand with her hips, wanting more friction from those long, skilled fingers. But he refused to give her control. He kept teasing and taunting, fingering and massaging, until she thought she might lose her mind.
Then his hand vanished, and she heard the sound of a plastic package ripping open. A condom.
It occurred to her that she and Josh had used a condom every single time they’d had sex, whereas she and Logan had stopped once they’d gotten engaged.
She wanted to feel Josh inside her in his raw, unshielded state. Someday. Maybe. If they were still doing this non-relationship whatever-it-was.
In the meantime, she’d take this. She’d take the slow slide of his thickness pushing against her inner walls. His hard palm against her clit, the way he pinned her between his hips and his hand, the way he thrust deep and pinched just right, the way he stoked the fire inside her until it burned so bright, the entire world went white and she cried out in perfect ecstasy.
She came down in slow stages. First she became conscious of the ripples of his orgasm, the grind of his body between her thighs. Then she realized she was hanging on to her couch frame as if she might fly off into the atmosphere. Finally she became aware of a sensation of lightness, as if she was swimming in bliss, floating in a feeling of endless safety and happiness.
Her happy place. She never would have guessed her happy place would be sex with a hotshot.
22
Something was changing between him and Suzanne. Josh knew it, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Usually, at this point in his involvement with a woman, he’d be itching for the exit. He kept waiting for that moment to come—the moment when he started making travel plans, or booking tickets, or writing the “it’s been fun, but…” speech.
It didn’t come. He didn’t want to say goodbye to Suzanne—the opposite. He wanted to spend more time with her. More, and more, and more. It wasn’t just the wildly intense sexual connection between them, or the fun they had just talking and hanging out. The suspicion was growing inside him that this was something completely different from anything else he’d ever shared with a woman. Sure, they’d both agreed they were “on the same page”—a page that didn’t mention emotions.
But that really wasn’t how it felt. He missed her when she was gone at work. Missed her like crazy.
And she inspired him with her persistence over the shelter idea. She was all fired up about it, always dragging out her laptop, researching and emailing and networking.
Partly to pass the time before he could go back to the base, partly because of Suzanne’s example, he hauled out his own laptop and read through some of his Tumblr posts and the comments and shares. To his surprise, some had gotten a lot of attention. He remembered when he’d first started the blog, right after the burnover. That experience had been so intense. It had burned away a lot of the silly crap in his head. It was like a big fiery wakeup call. You don’t have forever. You might not even have tomorrow.
So he’d gone through some of the many hours of footage he’d been taking from all the fires he’d been on. Not just the fires themselves, but the fire line operations, the Incident Command Centers, the choppers, the medic tents, the catering trucks. Footage, photos, whatever. And he’d started writing. He didn’t have a lot of time between fire assignments, so he liked the shorter format of the micro-blog. Once the off-season started, he fleshed it out even more. He’d even written longer pieces. They probably weren’t very good. But maybe they were. He’d always been pretty good in English class. He hadn’t had the patience for college, but he’d audited several writing classes in the off-season.
He loved fighting wildfires. He loved being a hotshot. He never wanted to stop. But he also wanted something else. He wanted a voice.
Maybe a documentary. Maybe articles for a newspaper. He wasn’t sure exactly how he wanted to do it. But it was a desire that had been growing in him for a long time.
On impulse, he called Finn Abrams, whose father was a Hollywood producer who was making a movie about the burnover. Finn was the one guy who hadn’t stayed with the crew during the flash. He’d panicked and run, but luckily he’d made it to a gravel stream bed, where he’d waited out the fire, which roared on all sides. He hadn’t returned to the crew; word had it he’d suffered pretty substantial burns, but no one had yet seen him.
“Dude,” he said as soon as Finn came on the line. “What’s shaking?”
“Josh? Hey, man, how are you? I heard about Yellowstone. You still laid up?” Every time Josh had spoken to Finn since the burnover, he’d noticed the change in his voice. He sounded older, less of the wild-eyed cocky rookie, more like a survivor.
“On crutches for a few more weeks. That’s it. Could have been a lot worse. So anyway, I’m lying around here with a lot of time on my hands and nothing to do. I started going through some of my old footage. You know how I always used to shoot anything anyone let me? I’ve been thinking I should do something with it.”
“Like what?”
“Not sure. I was hoping you might have some ideas. You’re the Hollywood guy.”
“That’s me, huh? The Hollywood guy.” The faint bitterness in his tone made Josh regret the phrase. “Tell you what. You come up with something—anything. A script. A rough cut. A proposal. Anything. I’ll look at it and see what I can do. But just for the record, my father’s the Hollywood guy. I’m the firefighting guy. At least I was.” He abruptly ended the call, leaving Josh feeling like an ass.
Finn hadn’t always been this touchy, had he?
But still, the guy had a point. He needed to come up with something to show Finn. This was on him, no one else. He lay back on the couch and settled his cast on a pillow. Propping his laptop on his belly, he pulled up his library of footage.
What would Suzanne do? She’d roll up her sleeves. She’d come up with Plan A. And Plan B. She’d make a damn PowerPoint. Whatever that was.
He opened up a file to take notes in, and started scanning through footage.
When Suzanne came back after work, a delicious fragrance filtered through her apartment. Tomato sauce, garlic, a hint of oregano. She found Josh propped on his crutches over the stove. He was bobbing his head in time to whatever was on his headphones. His t-shirt strained over his wide shoulders, and his cotton sweats clung to the muscles of his rear end. His shaggy blond hair swung down to his jaw, maybe even a little farther. He probably hadn’t cut it in a while. With a long wooden spoon, he stirred the sauce to the same rhythm that must be pumping through his headphones.
Honestly, she was surprised her panties didn’t just drop off her body at the mere sight of him. Whoever was in charge of handing out sexy had gone completely overboard when it came to Josh Marshall.
For a moment, she stood blinking in the doorway, just taking him in. Finally he looked over his shoulder and gave her a wink, a quick flash of gray that sent a shiver over her skin. “Honey, you’re home,” he teased, slipping the headphones off his ears.
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