Burning Up

by Susan Andersen

  He went around, climbed in the rig and started it up. Then he just sat there. He knew he should get Macy back to Lenore and Bud. Fearing her aunt and uncle might already have heard something through the town’s always swift grapevine, she’d called them after the clinic staff finished examining her to assure them she was all right. But having watched their relationship with Macy, he knew the older couple were probably chomping at the bit to check their chick over for themselves.

  The trouble was, he wasn’t ready to take her back, to watch her getting sucked into the maelstrom of everyone’s concern. Why that was so, he’d just as soon not study too closely.

  This wasn’t about him, though, and he put the SUV in gear.

  They were silent as he pulled out onto the highway and remained so as they cruised slowly through town. As they neared the cutoff to the boardinghouse, however, Macy twisted in her seat to look at him.

  “Could we not go there yet?” she asked quietly. “Could we—I don’t know—just keep driving?”

  Oh, yeah. He kept his sudden jubilation out of his expression, however, and casually rolled his shoulders as he glanced at her. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere. Let’s just…cruise.” Sticking out her lower lip, she blew a breath that fluttered her drying bangs. “The thing is…I don’t think I can stand being fussed over right now. And I damn sure don’t feel up to having to keep explaining what happened when I can’t wrap my own mind around it.” She peered at him. “Is that selfish of me?”

  “Hell, no. You’ve been through an ordeal. Sometimes it helps to talk about it. But sometimes it doesn’t.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Exactly. This is one of those ‘it doesn’t’ times.”

  She turned back to stare at the wheat fields rolling into the distance outside the passenger window and Gabe went back to brooding over the same issue he’d been gnawing on ever since he, Johnson and Solberg had put out the Kilimner fire and he’d squatted down to examine its origin site.

  If the candle residue he’d found in the rubble of the back porch was any indication—and it damn sure was—this fire, too, had been deliberately set, just like the ones at the Bailey and Driscoll places. And what he’d wondered then, what he had wondered in the clinic waiting room when the nurse wouldn’t let him back in the examining room with Macy, and what he damn well wanted to know now was: had the arsonist known the farmhouse was occupied and started the fire anyhow? Or was it just freaking bad luck on Macy’s part that she’d gone into a place where an incendiary device was burning down to a heap of tinder on that back porch?

  “Can we go to your place?”

  “What?” He whipped his head around to stare at her.

  “Your house? Could we go there for a bit? I’d like to see what it looks like on the inside.”

  Oh, man, that was so not a good idea. He was on edge and he’d already had to fight his instincts to a standstill to keep from stripping her down and checking her over inch by inch to see for himself that she was okay. Her close call made him want to stake a claim, to celebrate that matters hadn’t turned out as badly as they could have, to commemorate the fact she was alive. And the way he’d celebrate, given half a chance, was to bury himself inside her and fuck her to a screaming climax. So a secluded, if unfinished, house with just the two of them? That was the last place he needed to take her. Because she was in a pretty fragile state right now and he doubted she’d appreciate being slammed up against a wall the minute they cleared the door and having him go at her like a vampire scenting fresh blood. “Uh…”

  “Never mind, forget I asked.” She turned her head to look out the window.

  But not before he saw the mortification that crossed her face. This from Miss Never-Let-the-Suckers-See-They’re-Getting-to-You. “Listen—”

  “No, really,” she said. “I’m expecting a lot here. You’ve probably got things to do—like investigate that fire. You certainly don’t have to babysit me.” She turned back to him with that insouciant smile he’d seen her use time and again. “I’m sorry, sugar. I shouldn’t have taken up so much of your time. Take me back to the boardinghouse.”

  Shit. “This—” he snarled, stabbing a finger in her direction then jerking his thumb back at his own chest, “—is not babysitting. You wanna see my house? I’ll show you my house.” Okay, that was less than gracious, but he was really struggling here to keep his paws to himself.

  Then he took a deep breath and eased it out. Hell, what was he, a high school kid? Those no-control days were damn near two decades behind him. He was a grown man who could do any damn thing—resist any damn thing—he set his mind to.

  “No, really, Gabriel,” she said softly, and from the corner of his eye he saw her fingers twisting and untwisting the hem of her tank top. “It’s not necessary.”

  Like the slight quaver in her voice when she’d sent him off to fight the fire even though she’d clearly not wanted to be left alone, the trace of embarrassment he heard now got to him. So did her nervous fiddling. It made him ashamed of his surliness, and gentling his voice he said, “Actually I’d like to show it to you. The joint really is coming along. I’ve done a good part of the work myself and I’m pretty proud of it.”

  Her hands stilled and she flashed him a smile so open and sweet, he felt as though a fist had reached inside his chest, gripped his heart and squeezed. Making a U-turn, he pointed the hood of his rig back toward his place.

  They didn’t talk much in the ten minutes it took to reach the road to his property, but as they entered the wooded draw that left the high prairie to flow down a series of steep hills, she blew out a quiet breath.

  He glanced over to see her still looking out the window. As if she felt his gaze, she turned to look at him. “This is where kids used to come to party in high school.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Those ball players you told me you hit back then with your aunt’s car. It happened down the road a bit, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” For a moment her eyes got a haunted look. “In Buzzard Canyon.” She sat a little straighter in her seat. “Everyone assumed I ran them down on purpose because of the way they’d trashed my reputation, but it wasn’t true. There was a lot of drinking going on that night and it was pitch-dark once you got away from the bonfire. Janna and I were sitting in the car getting ready to leave, arguing about—” Cutting herself off, she waved a hand. “Well, it doesn’t matter what. The point is, the engine was on and the car was in gear. But the lights were off when my foot slipped off the brake. We didn’t even see the boys staggering out of the woods.” She met his gaze levelly, her chin jutting up. “It was an accident.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he agreed and turned his attention back to the road. But catching her startled movement from the corner of his eye, he added, “From what I’ve gathered, the gossip that you lived to put out originated with Mayfield. So I imagine if you were going to run anyone down it would’ve been him.”

  A bubble of laughter escaped her and he smiled to himself. Then he turned his head to catch her eye again. “Plus, not even your worst enemies deny you stepped right up to accept the blame. Not every eighteen-year-old kid would do that. It makes me think if you’d done it on purpose you’d have led with that stubborn chin of yours and owned up to that, too.”

  She flashed him another sweet smile, and he had a quick glimpse of what she must have looked like as a little girl.

  “Thanks,” she said. “It’s…nice…having someone not assume the worst.”

  A couple of minutes later they pulled into the clearing surrounding his house and she gazed at his Craftsman-style bungalow and sighed. It sat in a clearing surrounded by evergreens, two-story-tall boulders topped with more trees rising behind it. “This really is a beautiful spot. And your house is very cool. It’s a nice size. I like that you didn’t build one of those five-thousand-square-feet places.”

  He snorted. “What would I need with all that room?”

  “What do ha
lf the people who build big need?” she countered, essaying a facial shrug. “It seems to be the trend, anyhow. You must be getting anxious to move in.”

  Not as much as he had been before she’d come back to Sugarville, he silently admitted. But he merely nodded and opened his door. “C’mon. I’ll give you the nickel tour.”

  They climbed the steps to the covered front porch that ran the width of the house and he fished a key off his ring.

  Macy slapped his arm. “Get out! You’re in Sugarville, Donovan—no one locks their houses here.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been here eight months. I spent the other thirty-three years in Detroit. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t lock up there.”

  “Old habits do die hard,” she agreed as he opened the door. “I had a heck of a time remembering not everywhere is as low-crime as Sugarville when I first moved away. Oh! This is nice. I thought it might still be in the bare-studs-hard-to-tell-what-everything’s-going-to-be stage, but it has walls and everything.”

  He nodded, looking around in satisfaction, the tension he’d felt upon closing the door behind them easing beneath her curiosity. The great room flowed from the door they’d entered to the granite breakfast bar that separated the kitchen area at the other end. In the middle of the front wall was the fireplace and a bank of windows that looked out onto the ever greens encircling his place. “I just got the last of the drywall up on this floor last week with some help from a couple of my crew. It’s only taped—I haven’t had time to mud yet.”

  “But you can tell what the rooms are going to look like. I like the open concept and I love that fireplace!”

  “I like its openness, too. I was going to go with the classic bungalow interior, but I like this better.”

  She strode over to the fireplace and stroked the rocks that comprised it. “Did you do all this stone-work yourself?”

  He made a rude noise. “I was a big-city boy, O’James. We don’t know from masonry. I had it done.”

  “It’s gorgeous.” Unabashedly nosy, Macy opened the door across from the kitchen and poked her head in. “A bathroom,” she said, taking in the plumbing sticking out of wall and floor, then opened the door next to it. She glanced at him over her shoulder.

  “Bedroom or study?”

  “I’m thinking office. There’s going to be two bedrooms upstairs but that is still in the studs stage.” He reached around her to open another door. “The walls for the rooms in the basement are done, though, if you wanna see that.”

  “Absolutely.” The windows down in the partial-daylight basement admitted plenty of light to guide the way, and she preceded him down the stairs in response to his after you gesture.

  The stairway culminated in a large area that was anchored at one end by a fireplace matching the one upstairs, and Macy turned to him with raised brows. “Big space. Media room?”

  He made a rude noise. “I have damn little time to watch TV, although I did leave space to mount one over this fireplace. I’m thinking more rec room, though.”

  She nodded approvingly. “What colors do you envision for the walls?”

  “Huh?” He looked at her blankly. “I don’t know. White?”

  “Noooooo. This place cries out for earth tones. White.” She shook her head in disgust as she crossed to open another door. “How boring is that? Hello!” She craned her head around to grin at him. “Your den of iniquity?”

  Crap. He looked past her at the air bed on the floor all made up with high-thread-count sheets and down-filled pillows. He’d forgotten about this or he never would have brought her down here. He’d arranged it with some vague intention of seducing Grace before acknowledging that would be too much like luring his sister into bed.

  But he met Macy’s gaze. “Nah,” he lied with cool authority. “I put in a couple of late nights working here and thought it would be nice to have a place to crash. But when it came down to it I was always so dirty by the time I finished that all I wanted was a shower.”

  “So, it’s never been used?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.” She yanked him into the room, kicked the door shut and reached out to grip his T-shirt in both fists. He sucked in a breath when she rose onto her toes and plastered her curves against his angles.

  She nipped his lower lip between sharp white teeth, then slowly pulled away, scraping over his sensitive flesh until it slid free. She looked up at him with an expression that sent his last good intention up in smoke.

  He was firmly with the program even before she said in a throaty voice, “Let’s break it in.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FOR MAYBE TWENTY SECONDS Macy felt bold and in charge. Then Gabe took over. One minute she was leading this seduction, the next she was backed against the door with an aroused male pressing her into its wooden panels. His mouth, so hot, so damp, so commanding yet soft-lipped, ravaged her senses, and her only thought was an incoherent, desperately needy more. Wrapping herself around him, she gave back as good as she got.

  The hard muscles of his chest flexed against her breasts as he reached up to untwine her arms from around his neck. Lacing their fingers together, he pinned her hands to the door beside her head. His thighs spreading, he bent his knees until his erection nudged the rapidly dampening notch between her legs. Swiveling his hips, he executed a slow grind.

  Unprompted, her body performed the do-me dance in response, her breasts rubbing against the solid wall of his chest, her stomach stroking his tight abs, her sex arching into the stiff thrust of his where he’d positioned it to hit her just right.

  Breath exploding from his lungs, he ripped his mouth free and stared down at her blindly for a heartbeat as he rocked and rocked and rocked between her thighs.

  Then his eyes regained a modicum of focus and with a groan, he stepped back.

  “Nooo,” she protested.

  “Gotta stop or I’ll go off like a thirteen-year-old kid with his first Maxim magazine.”

  She stalked his retreat. “Don’t wanna stop.”

  He stared at her with hot, frustrated eyes. “You’ve been through the wringer today, and the last thing you need is me going at you like an orangutan on Spanish fly because I’m too horny to be gentle.”

  Ooh. She loved the idea of pushing him over the edge, of making him lose that ironclad control of his. She didn’t need gentle or considerate or restrained right now. She wanted Gabriel wanting her as much as she wanted him. “The doctors said I’m fine, so don’t treat me like some fragile flower. Let’s finish what we started. Now!”

  He reached her in one giant stride. “Don’t say I didn’t give sensitivity a shot,” he growled, pressing her back against the wall. Big hands slapping down on either side of her head, he leaned into his forearms, caging her in and clamping his mouth over hers in a kiss that was short on gentleness and long on heat-lightning–hot desire.

  Macy instantly ignited. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she strained against him, rubbing against his solid, massive body as she tried to get close, closer.

  He raised his head, his eyes burning down at her. “God, I want you—wanna be deep inside you feeling you come all over me.” Catching her bottom lip between his teeth, he tugged, then slowly let it slide free. He bent his knees at the same time as he shoved her scrubs top up to bunch above the thrust of her breasts, then closed his mouth over a pebbled nipple and sucked hard.

  She gasped, arching her back. Her fingers spearing into his dark hair, she held him to her even as she panted, “Feels good, feels so good. But I don’t need foreplay. Want you in me now. God, please, Gabriel. Now.”

  He reached between them and loosened the drawstring on her pants, then unzipped and pushed down his own jeans as she kicked free of her borrowed hospital bottoms. Wrapping his hands around her hips he lifted her up against the wall and stepped between her legs. Macy locked her legs around his hips as she felt the head of his penis, hot and broad, press against her slick opening.

  “Condom?” she panted.

>   “Shit!” Gabe pressed his forehead against hers for a moment. What the hell was he thinking? With a low groan, he set her on her feet. “Don’t move!” he ordered and took a long-legged stride to the air bed. He squatted in front of the little chest next to it and in a second was back, spitting out the top of the condom package he’d ripped off with his teeth. He rolled the protection on.

  He picked her up again and muscled her legs apart, lined up his dick and pushed, hissing through clenched teeth as the head of his cock eased past the muscular ring protecting her entrance. She was tight. Jesus, so incredibly tight. Pressing deeper with cautious slowness, he grit his teeth as he felt himself sink inch by hanging-by-his-fingernails inch into a hot, wet satin vise that slowly parted against the steady pressure only to clamp around him like a lubricious second skin that had shrunk a size too small. He wanted nothing more than to pound into her but was afraid of going too fast, and it seemed like dog years before he was finally in her as deep as a man could go.

  He dropped his head. “God, you feel good,” he said and kissed her. He swiveled his hips, then pulled back.

  “You, too,” she whispered against his lips as he started pumping in and out of her with gentle, shallow thrusts. Slowly, the almost uncomfortably tight sheath grasping him relaxed slightly and her breath began to hitch. His thrusts promptly grew more emphatic until he was drawing almost all the way out of her before slamming back in. Drawing back and slamming in.

  “Oh, God, Gabriel,” she said hoarsely, staring up at him, all slumberous eyes and glowing, flushed skin. Using the grip of her strong legs on his hips to move, she angled her pelvis to meet each thrust. “I feel, oh, God, you make me feel so…” Her words trailed into a moan.

  He watched the need flicker across her face as she moved in concert with him, then hunched to lightly bite one nipple. Raising his head, he demanded, “How? How do I make you feel?” Hands grasping her butt, he jerked her to him and ground in slow oscillations, wanting to stamp his ownership all over her.