“Are you kidding, lady? Does King Midas think about gold?”
“Yes, and so he hoards it. Why don’t you go for your gold?”
“Maybe I’m not sure how to get it,” he said. “I did meet one woman I considered settling down for, maybe taking a teaching job, starting a family, all that. But I guess I stalled too long making up my mind, and she got sick and tired of dreading the evening news during fire seasons. Not to mention hardly seeing her boyfriend from spring until fall.” His jaw hardened. “Can’t say I really blame her. No one else in my life has managed to stick around long.”
A silence wedged itself between them.
Nick suddenly seemed distant and cold, very much unlike the man who’d been pursuing her.
She wanted to say something to somehow bring him out of himself, but she stumbled on her words.
“My—my mother always called me a mouse. She never thought I was vivacious enough or popular enough—and the truth is, I wasn’t. Not for her, anyway. But I realized one thing after Ned. It takes a lot of guts to be alone. My mother will never have the courage to do that.”
Nick stared at her for a long moment. Then, as if compelled, he raised his hand and ran his knuckles gently down her cheek.
He leaned to kiss her once more, and she felt the starry night swirling all around her like the whirlpools on the river. She sensed his hunger, and it deepened her own.
When she tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let her go.
Her heart raced, and a giddy, nervous tightness filled her chest. She was pretty sure she knew what he planned on doing during his time with her tonight, and while she was against it in theory, with the moonlight and the soft bed of pine needles on her feet, theories were useless.
If she was truthful, a part of her longed for the warmth of physical contact and the ease of her loneliness, but another part of her sent up a red flag.
Now’s your chance to back out, Jo lectured herself. You rushed things with Ned, too, and look how it turned out. You had to pick your heart up from his heels.
But all that was just sand in the wind. Nick’s kiss still burned on her lips, and like a moth to a flame, she only wanted more of the fire.
“Why don’t you forget about being courageous for the night?” Nick whispered.
She took his kiss, trembling with anticipation.
She said nothing more.
Eleven
Jo knew it was madness, craziness to lie with Nick on the soft carpet of pine needles, but she realized, as he pulled her down onto his spread-out jacket, that her need was an open invitation, an invitation that came from the core of her physical and emotional being.
He would not simply lie down with her and tease her like a kid in high school. Nick was a man and he would make love to her like a man, fully and deeply.
His intensity should have triggered more red flags, for she had surrendered once before to passion and lived to regret it. Instead of “once burned, twice shy,” she seemed to be seeking the flame again like an addict, immersing herself in her destruction.
But Nick was different, she assured herself. Their talk tonight, just as Hazel had insisted, had shown how wrong both of them were about each other. It left Jo greatly relieved and yet feeling guilty for the insults and barbs. Her physical need seemed to converge with her emotional need to feel close to him, to make up for the wrong she’d done him.
“You cold?” he murmured as he kissed the sensitive skin on the side of her neck, tasting and smelling her, his breathing quickening when he pulled her closer.
“I think you’re taking care of that,” Jo teased.
She squirmed her hips invitingly and thrilled at the feel of his very noticeable arousal, opening her legs wider so he could press even closer against her.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice husky, “and you just turned my thermostat way up.”
“What’s the matter, Hotshot, can’t take the heat?”
“I’ll be brave,” he resolved, unbuttoning her shirt. “I have to warn you, I’ve been up in these mountains fighting fires a long time now. Once I get started, I may not want to quit. I hope you’re feeling as greedy as I am.”
She moaned as his hands slid inside her shirt. Before she knew it, he’d reached behind her and unfastened her bra. She felt her nipples stiffen instantly when he cupped her breasts and began rubbing his palms in little circles on the hardened nipples, sending electric shivers through her entire body.
She fumbled at unbuttoning his shirt, her hands trembling with the pent-up hunger now being released.
She shuddered at the indescribable, intimate pleasure of pressing her naked flesh against his. Her hands traced the hard ridges of muscle cording his back, chest and shoulders. His stomach was flat and hard, and a mat of silky chest hair grew between rock-hard pecs.
He raised his face to kiss her mouth, and Jo looked up at him in the luminous moonlight, knowing she would never forget how handsome and desirable he looked in that moment. Like an exquisite bust combining the strength of Mars and the looks of Adonis.
And above him, the star-shot dome of a beautiful Montana night sky, with the pines soughing softly in the cool breeze. The chill against her bare skin was offset by the heat burning within her, and she knew that she could let this man take her naked in a snow-drift and she’d never notice the cold until it was too late.
This time they kissed for countless minutes, tongues probing greedily as they pressed more and more urgently together, as if he was already inside her.
Jo fumbled his belt loose while he, in turn, unbuttoned her jeans and tugged them over her hips.
“At this point,” he said reluctantly, “isn’t one of us supposed to bring up birth control?”
“Surely,” she teased, “the babe slayer has several condoms in his wallet?”
Guilt stabbed her briefly when she realized she sounded like Kayla.
“See, I only bring a dozen with me on each job,” he teased right back, “and I’m fresh out. Guess I need to order by the gross.”
“Not to worry,” she assured him. “I’m on the pill.”
She hardly felt like explaining right then that she was only on the pill since meeting Ned, or that she meant to stop taking them once her current prescription ran out. All that would have to wait.
In fact, she was incapable of even thinking clearly as his hand glided under the elastic waistband of her panties and down to the damp center of her need.
She opened her legs wider, gasping with pleasure when his fingers teased her soft folds open like petals to the sun. He lowered his mouth over one of her nipples, sucking and teasing it as his fingers moved more and more urgently between her legs, making her hard nubbin swell.
“Nick…Nick.” She whispered his name over and over like a chant.
An intense climax suddenly crashed down on her, the pleasure bending her almost double and immediately making her hungry for more, even as she gasped for breath.
He slid his briefs down and placed her hand on his rock hard length to feel his need throbbing. He was powerful in her hand, saber-curved, excitingly hard.
She was so anxious for him it chilled her. She opened her legs wide in the night air, and a moment later all she knew was incomparable pleasure as he slid into her, no teasing, but going in deeply the way she wanted, filling her with nothing but man.
He moved against her, his breath hard and fast, as if he was holding himself back. His hard body rubbed along her soft chest, creating a frisson of eroticism that had nothing to do with her loins.
Taking her mouth in a last heated kiss, his pumping became increasingly faster and furious. She jockeyed along to wherever he went, her own pleasure coming in waves that seemed to never end.
Unable to take it much more, she cried out at the pleasure, moving her hands to his hard-flexing gluteus muscles, and encouraging him to keep driving deep and hard.
She had no idea how many times she climaxed before he spent himself in several final, hard plunges, crying ou
t her name and then spasming violently in the powerful aftermath of his orgasm, as if his body circuits were overloaded.
She herself had never climaxed so quickly and repeatedly with any man, and yet, feeling greedy as he’d wanted her to, she secretly wished he would not stop even after his release.
He seemed to understand her muscles holding him in, silently asking him not to slide out of her, and suddenly her need excited him to full arousal again. Almost without any pause, he began the pleasure rhythm again, hard and ready.
She lost all track of time after that, rising again and again to peaks of almost unbearable pleasure, then almost blacking out in a daze before one of them would start all over again.
It was literally pure, mindless pleasure. The two of them were one, and nothing else existed.
But at the back of her mind, like the tag end of some pop tune, she kept hearing a warning voice. All she could understand, however, was its urgent tone, for the words themselves were lost in the pounding of her heart.
“I don’t believe it.”
Nick’s voice sounded thick with sleep, almost drugged.
“It’s 3 a.m.,” he told her, kissing her eyelids open. “We’ve been here almost six hours.”
Six hours, Jo thought with little reaction at first. A moment later, however, she sat up, buttoning her shirt and shivering in the damp chill.
“Six hours,” she repeated, suddenly feeling like a teenager who had missed curfew. “I guess we…lost track of time.”
They both laughed self-consciously at her silly understatement, and he kissed her. Instantly, despite the mild ache between her legs, she wanted him again. But the thought of what possibly waited up at the cabins cooled her ardor.
Shivering even more as nervousness was added to the cold, she took his extended hand and rose to her feet, quickly straightening and buttoning her clothing.
He must have read her thoughts, judging from his next remark. “They’re probably all asleep, you know. Which doesn’t mean you won’t get razzed tomorrow. I know I will. The guys in my crew don’t miss a thing.”
“You’re right,” Jo decided, feeling brave. “I’m sure Hazel would tell them I was with you, anyway, so I’ll just sneak quietly into bed and face the music tomorrow.”
They set off hand in hand, following the switch-backing blacktop road that wound its way up to Bridger’s Summit.
“You sorry?” he asked.
“Abject with remorse,” she deadpanned, and they both laughed again, stopping to kiss.
In truth she felt that her feet weren’t even touching the ground. She’d made love with him for hours and the world went away. The hurting went away. She wanted to do it again and again until…
She noticed he’d turned quiet. Gently he led her along the road to the cabin.
His silence began to rattle her.
All sorts of demons appeared in her mind. The worst demon of all was the fear of tomorrow. Of never seeing him again, of realizing she’d just been had for a one-night stand.
She watched him, their breaths forming faint wraiths in the waning moonlight.
They were near the summit now, and she could make out the faint outlines of the two cabins through the cluster of pines ahead. Beyond them she could see the faint glimmer in the east known as false dawn.
“I think we best say good-night out here in the road,” Jo suggested. “I don’t want to get caught with you. I’ll have to fess up soon enough, but I’ll need some sleep first.”
The first pang of remorse tightened her heart. Staring at him, she felt cold reality seep in. The question circled silently overhead like a vulture.
When am I going to see you again?
She’d behaved impetuously, and imprudent acts were usually paid for in a pound of flesh. She hardly knew him. They’d fallen together in the moonlight, in the heat of loneliness.
Right now she wondered if what they’d shared had even been real, let alone if it was something with substance, something that would last.
Is this going to be it? she wondered, a chill overtaking her.
Or would they just keep meeting when they could, maybe have a wild little fling in the boonies until it was time for her to go back to Mystery?
Would the whole experience be chalked up to good times, and they’d never see each other again?
Perhaps she was ready to revise her opinion about men. Maybe it was enough to have just the best sex in the world and nothing else. After Ned, maybe that was all she needed. No heart involved. Just free-wheeling physical pleasure, no strings. That might be best. Low emotional expectations but high-power orgasms, to avoid the heartache.
Acting far more bravely than she felt, she finally summoned the courage to speak the dreaded question. “So when I am going to—”
“Look,” he said, cutting her off, “I have to tell you my schedule up here is pretty mercurial. I can’t plan any kind of date until the fires are all out. But I’d still like to see you if I can.”
Pain shot through her heart like a thunderbolt. She knew what he was saying. If she was convenient, he’d come around again. But there were no plans. There was really nothing between them but sex.
So maybe she should be relieved, instead of hurt, she scolded herself. It was easier this way. More direct, less messy. Minimum involvement, maximum fun.
“We’ll see how it goes, then,” she said evenly, not showing a trace of her wounded feelings.
He paused as if he had something on his mind that he was burning to let out. Finally he said, “I know Hazel keeps you busy, but there’s a good café in Stony Rapids. We’ve got a van I can use, parked at the ranger station. How ’bout lunch tomorrow? I don’t go on duty until six down in the canyon.”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, not sure if she could keep the act up. “Maybe that would work. We’ve got a break tomorrow because Hazel and her cronies are going into town to buy…uh, Neat’s-foot oil and a few other weird things like that.”
“Neat’s-foot oil isn’t weird, townie. You use it to waterproof leather. I rub it on my boots all the time.”
“I know,” Jo said, nervousness tickling her stomach as she thought about the Chute. “We’ll be waterproofing ours, too, for the river rafting.”
“Piece of cake,” he assured her. Then he smiled. “So maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Looks like it, Mr. Fireman.” She studied him, wondering if his plans for lunch involved a stop at the hourly motel. The tawdriness of it crippled her heart even more. She wasn’t sure she could go through with it.
Minimum involvement, maximum fun needed a stone-cold heart. And so far, from the hurt she felt inside, hers still had a bit of warmth in it.
“Between ten and ten-thirty, okay?”
“Sure. Sweet dreams.” She made to walk away, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her to him. He kissed her. She wanted the willpower to cut it short, but instead, her need grew for more. He seemed to trigger her like some wild animal in heat.
“See you at ten.” He finally pulled away and retreated down the road.
She turned toward the cabins and again felt the knife through her heart. There was no denying her passion for him, but she was vulnerable, especially now. She was bound to make the wrong choices, and going to town with him for a quickie didn’t seem like the right choice.
But when he showed up at ten, she would go with him, she knew it. He would kiss her, and she would want him. And for an hour, he would make the hurt go away, until it fired anew with a vengeance.
Nonetheless, she couldn’t help feeling the irony of the situation. Hazel had lectured Kayla and the others on the “true purpose” of this trip into the wilderness; now her main protégée was slinking home in the dark, guilty as sin, man scent still clinging to her.
They’re all asleep, she assured herself as she approached her cabin.
But somehow she knew explaining herself wouldn’t be that easy. Because even she didn’t understand what she had done.
Twelve
Jo, shivery with cold and nervousness, seemed to step on every loud, snapping stick on the way to the cabin. Although the girls had been told they would be allowed to sleep a little later than usual in the morning, there were still only a few hours’ rest remaining. She knew she’d pay for her tryst with tiredness and achy muscles, but right now she was wide awake.
Recurring memories and images made her pulse race.
She knew she desired more erotic pleasure with him. Just thinking about how he felt, his hard length moving inside her, made her want to turn around and go sneak into his sleeping bag.
But his catch-you-when-I-can attitude was heart-rending. Indeed, he did shoulder heavy responsibilities as a firefighter. She knew their relationship would have to take a back seat to disaster. But the forest fires couldn’t last forever. At some point the noncommittal attitude would either deepen into commitment and a real relationship, or she would know she was just another notch on the bedpost and not get her hopes up.
Deep inside, she wasn’t sure she could endure being another notch. She wanted to be more important to Nick than just a fading memory of a lusty night under the stars. Yet at the moment, she had only two choices. She either had to cut and run now or risk falling more deeply into the quagmire of lust and love.
Unfortunately, as she faced the closed door of her cabin, her instincts raged for salvation. As she’d learned from Ned, she couldn’t predict him or his feelings, and she could only control her own. Certainly it would be far easier to control them—and halt them—now if she never saw him again.
Unable to decide, she pushed open the door. It was silly, yet she couldn’t help feeling self-conscious. There could be no question whatsoever, if anyone saw her now, about where she’d been, or with whom, or what they’d been up to. She might as well have a sign taped to her: I’VE BEEN DOING IT.
The door sounded like the meow of a cat as she nudged it closed, rusted hinges protesting. Moonlight flooded the interior through both uncurtained windows, a pale, ghostly blue. It all seemed so peaceful and proper, pristine even, that she felt more guilt poke at her.
Plain Jane & The Hotshot Page 8