Burning Both Ends

by Sinclaire Jayne

  And she wasn’t going to cry now. Didn’t help, didn’t bring anyone back.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Look at me, baby.”

  She lifted her hands to his to push him away but, instead, she anchored him to her, surprised by the endearment, and the tenderness. Unwillingly she looked into his deep blue gaze. She’d always been a swimmer. Had loved the water. His eyes were like her beautiful Pacific back home. Did the Pacific look the same here?

  Damaged.

  He could not get that fucking word out of his head.

  “I’m sorry.” His thumbs drew small circles along her collarbone as he held her shoulders.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d said, or triggered, but her agitation and the pain that had flashed in her eyes had felt like a physical blow to him.

  Don’t touch. Not yours.

  He told himself that, but the words seemed wrong and meant for someone else. His hands were on her bare shoulders like she belonged to him. Like she wasn’t a firefighter assigned to his station.

  Damaged.

  She was so strong, and yet something about her made him want to protect her. She would laugh if she knew how caveman like his mind was around her. Before she left-hooked his jaw probably.

  “You want to change?” He asked, handing her a pair of ripped jeans and a navy blue singlet that Sarah, another firefighter had pulled from her kit.

  “Sure,” she said, taking the clothes. “Thanks.”

  She went back in the room, leaving the door open.

  “You’re not much for privacy,” Lock commented.

  Dare dropped the jacket. “You’re not much for turning away.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “Guilty as charged.” He closed the door behind him and waited in the hall. They were definitely not done with the debrief. Christ, she could not challenge him like that in front of the crew professionally, but personally it had made him hot as hell.

  Dare took only a couple of minutes to change. She came back into the corridor, her bunker suit over her arm. She looked like some photographer’s sexy fantasy of a firefighter holding her gear. Her hair was mussed. The singlet hugged her slim curves and the jeans cupped her ass like his hands wanted to. The large firefighting boots with regular clothes looked incongruous, but it was the trace of vulnerability in her eyes as well as the beginnings of a cocky smile that was apparently a deadly combination for him.

  “Sorry, I should have thought of shoes.”

  “I’m good,” she said. “Thank you for thinking of the clothes.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. He had to find a way to keep it together better around her or his crew would figure something was up if the tense jawed talk with Reese and Jess about taking Dare on a ride along hadn’t been clue enough.

  Reese had shrugged it off saying that they took civvies all the time on ride alongs.

  It had taken all of Lock’s self-control to not shout that civvies never jumped out of the truck, climbed trees, and hurtled themselves into a room that might or might not have been on fire and that had a compromised structural integrity from the blaze and Reese’s liberal dousing of water on the floor above. The apartment could have been a meth lab for all Dare had known. She’d had no back up. No oxygen. No radio. He hadn’t been there.

  Shit. He was not going to survive her three months in the field.

  They walked out of the hospital, Lock frowning when Dare said she wasn’t going to fill the prescriptions.

  “Fill them anyway. Humor me.”

  “You’re not funny. And you’re not my dad.”

  “I am your boss for the next three months.”

  “Did you order Mim to use a certain brand of breast pump?” She challenged.

  “What?” Lock stopped walking.

  “See, that’s my point. Just because we bounced in bed doesn’t give you any say over my choices about my life and my body, especially now that we’re working together.”

  His phone rang. He automatically glanced at the screen. Logan. He ignored the call.

  Dare held up one aggressive finger like she was shushing him, but he was still reeling from the word breast pump and probably couldn’t have spoken. “Yes, I know I will be under your command. And that you have certain rights over me professionally, and that you will be evaluating my performance, but you do need to know that I can’t stand around like a little kid when I can help somebody.”

  “It was dangerous, Dare.”

  He still couldn’t get the visual of her going up the tree and through the window. There’d been no hesitation. No fear.

  “Life’s dangerous. Firefighting is dangerous.” She shrugged and kept walking, spotting the SUV with the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Department logo emblazoned on the side.

  Lock kept pace. He admired her long fluid strides.

  “I know that. I’ve experienced that.” She whirled around to face him. “But I didn’t become a firefighter to play it safe.”

  “So you like to take risks?” He challenged.

  He expected her to shoot him some verbal shit right back. He felt like he was gearing for a fight. But she frowned. Clearly thoughtful.

  “I’m good with taking risks,” Dare said, measuring her words. “But I’m smart about it. I don’t have a death wish. There’s been so much death,” she whispered. “And I want to live. I just don’t play it safe by some people’s standards, but I don’t think I ever play it deliberately dangerous. I did run around the building looking for one of the crew. It’s not like climbing the tree was my first idea.”

  They reached the SUV, but he didn’t click the locks yet with the remote.

  “What happened in September in the Big Sur fire?” he demanded because if his mind asked the word “damaged” one more time without having any answers, he was going to lose it.

  Her expression went tight. Her eyes darkened. But no way in hell would he back off. He practically had her pinned against the door and he didn’t care. The heat radiated from the pavement and from the car and the sky, which made him feel like they were both about to combust. Matched his mood. Dare had scared him. He was responsible for her, and she hadn’t been in his station under his command for an hour before she’d risked her life and he’d been helpless, absolutely helpless to stop her. To get to her. He’d had to pull Daniel from the scene to enter the building. Again not part of the plan. Not what they’d trained for.

  “That’s the past,” she said. “I’ve moved on.”

  Her voice, normally low and alluringly husky, grated like she was spitting the words at him.

  “Bullshit. Doesn’t work that way.”

  “For me it does.”

  His palms pressed against the side of the door. His body only inches from hers.

  “Back off,” Dare said. “Mister upstanding I run a tight ship senior station officer. I thought you were going to be all professional with no more touching.” She hissed.

  “I am being professional,” he said, wanting her to know that sometimes she was going to hit a wall with him, and she’d smacked that wall with her aerial stunt, and the only way she’d peel herself off it was with an explanation about where her head was. “I have to know. We aren’t moving until you explain what happened in that forest fire.”

  “You can Google it, if you’re so damn curious.” She went to duck under his arm, but he’d anticipated the move. He caught her hip, his other palm spanned her throat, and his leg kicked between hers so one thigh pinned her to the work SUV. There was no give in his body.

  She was furious. And gorgeous. And he was so hard he ached, and there was no way she couldn’t notice. Trust Dare to not let his hard-on pass without comment.

  “Don’t think because we fucked you can boss me around or climb in my head or try to intimidate me.”

  “Making love to you has nothing to do with right now. I need to know who you are in the field,” he said. “I need to know you aren’t going to get killed or someone else killed because you go off script. So tell me now or you
will be spending the next three months at a desk.”

  They glared at each other. His erection felt like a steel spike against the button up fly of her jeans, and it was taking way too much concentration to not grind against him. She was angry and in pain and but still aroused by his fight move. Lock pushed back as hard as he got, and while part of her wanted to use sex to get him to back off, another part wanted him inside her again because the way he held her, his tenderness combined with his driving passion made her feel whole, totally connected to her body and the world in a way she hadn’t felt in... well, forever. His intensity and passion combined with his tenderness had undone her in a way she’d never experienced. And she craved him between her thighs as much as she craved to be held.

  But she couldn’t let herself feel that. Ever.

  “I could get out of your hold,” Dare coldly informed him. “I could knee you in the balls.”

  “Go ahead. Try.”

  She wanted to, just to see what he had planned next. So tempting, but she didn’t want to possibly hurt him, and the steady way he stared into her eyes, and his tight grip caused her to hesitate.

  “What. Happened.”

  Not a question. A demand. She tilted her chin at him. Not intimidated. His phone buzzed with a text and it was dangerously close to her crotch. Seriously? It went off again. And again, and still they stared at each other. Her face was starting to throb, but damn if she’d use pain or weakness to try to get out of something.

  “You’re popular.”

  “You don’t think I deserve to know?”

  Dare swallowed and broke eye contact. Did he?

  “You can read a report. There are dozens out there. I was interviewed three times with an internal review and then the state got involved.”

  “Your words. What happened. What you thought. What you did. How you felt during and after. How you dealt with the deaths of two of your team members.”

  His phone rang this time.

  “Damnit.” He reached his hand in his pocket and his knuckles brushed perilously near her vaginal lips.

  Dare sucked in a breath. She was not going to let herself react to him, although if he touched her, he’d know. God, the memory of how his fingers felt as he brought her to orgasm playing with her clit and then how they felt inside stroking her to another climax.

  Focus.

  “You hide your bad ass better than most,” she said.

  No response. Now she was the one biting off a swear word.

  “We’d been there five days.” She enunciated each word like a pissed off news reporter. “We were one of the first out of state crews rotated in. The fire was raging no containment. More crews were called but even with no breaks, we had maybe ten percent contained on the western side, but the wind shifted and we lost that.

  “We were then dropped north of the fire near a resort on a lake in the hopes we could build a big enough fire line to contain the fire on the northern front because there were small towns in its path. We wanted it to go south, but the weather and the wind were not cooperating. You know the rest. It was in the papers. On the news. My whole family in Brisbane knew every detail. I’m sure whoever sent me here told you they died and I didn’t.”

  Lock closed his eyes, and his forehead rested against hers. Dare wanted to push him off of her. Instead, her hands ended up on the side of his face, her fingers dancing in his hair. And she opened her eyes, scorched by the intensity of all that blazing blue. How did he do that? She wondered dizzily. How did he burn her with his eyes but also have the ability to soothe her right down to her tattered, barely held together heart.

  “Holding mercury in my hand would be easier than getting you to talk, baby, it really would.”

  She wanted him to kiss her. Make her forget shoving Cassie through that narrow opening of the flame and then jumping through herself, not turning back to make sure she was the last. She was supposed to be the end of the line. The last defense. It was her role.

  “Tell me all of it.”

  “There were ten of us. We’d been there three days clearing a line. We were supposed to meet up with another group, combine our fire breaks, but the wind shifted direction. The fire was jumping—skipping over sections of the forest almost like it had feet. We were good. Cutting, clearing, digging. We had a plane that was dumping fire retardant, two helicopters with water buckets, but then trees around us caught fire, and we got the order to evacuate. I wanted to head to the lake hoping we could still keep our position and line, but Adam, the team leader, said retreat. I still thought we had a chance but it wasn’t my call. I didn’t even argue all that much. For me.”

  He kissed her then. Not a sexual kiss, but a sweet, brush of his lips that she felt to her toes. Her fingers touched his cheeks. She loved the hint of stubble, remembered how it felt against her breasts and stomach and between her thighs. She opened her mouth, kissed him back, for a moment, passion flared.

  Then Lock pulled away. “Baby, you have to help me out with this.” He breathed against her mouth.

  She knew that. She was sorry. She trembled against him, trying to grab a cloak of restraint to wrap herself in, but she felt so needy. She wanted to be held. She hated that feeling. Needing. But his hands had gentled, soothed up and down her bare arms.

  Dare whispered the rest, holding on to him in the parking lot of the hospital. “We were still good, hurrying, but not in an emergency situation, but the heat was intense and the grass around us caught, and all of a sudden we were in danger of getting trapped. Fast. It was a flare. The whole field consumed.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Adam had wanted us to head north, away from the lake, but that became a wall of fire when we were halfway across, and we had to retreat back to the lake. I was the end of the line. I always hold the end. I was running and pushing Cassie, a rookie that summer. I gripped the back of her jacket and just pulled so hard as we ran. I just stared at the one break in the meadow. The grass was already smoldering, but there was still an opening heading towards the lake. We ran all out. It was like the whole world disappeared and there was only that gap, like it was a portal in a sci-fi movie. I was so focused on it. Never looked back. The coaches teach you that in swimming. Never look at the swimmers to the side or behind you. Always forward. Your stroke. Your breath. Utter focus on your goal.” Dare’s voice went soft, and when she heard the more pronounced southern lilt, she paused and gulped a breath for better control. “We made it. Barely. The gap closed. The whole field and forest behind us was consumed. We had to hit the ground because a helicopter dumped water on us. Then we counted off, and I realized then that there had been two people behind me. I don’t remember passing them. I was so focused on getting Cassie out that I didn’t realize Alicia and Diaz hadn’t made it. I tried to go back but it was a wall of flames. Adam radioed the helicopter and it dumped more buckets on the field hoping to help them as they sheltered, but....”

  “Jesus, Dare.” He pulled her into his arms, careful to tilt her injured side away from his broad, hard shoulder.

  She wanted to push him away. They were coworkers now. Boss and employee, and no way would she ever have an unequal relationship again, but somehow she found her arms around his neck and her face turned into his neck. She breathed in his warmth, his scent, and her heart, galloping as she remembered her terror and anger that she’d left Alicia and Diaz behind to roast like pigs on a spit, settled.

  “They deployed their fire shelters but didn’t have time to dig deep enough. And the heat from all that dry forest fuel was just too intense. We radioed for a chemical dump and more water, anything, and it came, but... Alicia was the closest friend I had since...” She could not go there. Not now. Lay all her ghosts out. “And Diaz was really good with the jokes, you know. The one who always rallied us when we were out on assignment that stretched into weeks. Getting tired and cranky. He had a really sweet wife, Theresa, and two sons.”

  Lock was quiet. Just his heartbeat and breathing, and his hands down her back.

  �
��Nightmares?” He finally asked.

  “Not so much.” She looked at him. “Why the hell are you asking me that? Did my new captain, who barely knows me after only one season, say I was a head case?”

  For the first time Lock didn’t meet her eyes.

  “No way are you shutting me out on that.” This time it was easy to shove him away from her, and he let her. “You wanted my junk on the table. Spill yours.”

  “I don’t have any solid information, Dare,” Lock said, his voice serious. “Only that your captain thought you needed a break.”

  She huffed at that. “Then why not a beach vacation? A break my ass. I didn’t ask to come to Australia. He was just asking me about my family. He’d been at a station where they’d had some Aussie’s rotate in a few times so then, shazam, he tosses my name in the ring for an exchange I didn’t want to do. Then my grandfather died. In one year, I lost my friend from the army, Lydia, to fucking cancer. Then Alicia and Diaz to fire. I should have been the last one out. I should have seen them. And if we’d gone to the lake like I wanted—” She cut that thought off. No win there. “Then my grandfather...” She gritted her jaw. “What the hell is up with your phone, it’s going to rub a hole in your pants and make me come.”

  Impatiently Lock pulled his phone out.

  “Damn.” He hissed. “Some break Australia is for you. I got twenty missed messages and texts from your family and two calls from the Melbourne Metropolitan. Your stunt this afternoon is apparently going viral.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You know,” Dare said as Lock pulled a U-turn away from his station after seeing a throng of people outside the fire station, including news vans, cameras and suits with microphones. “I don’t mind facing reporters. Going after Laney is a fleeting human interest story. I’ll say a few trite but sincere things, smile and pose for a few selfies and ta-daaa! It will blow over by tonight when some celebrity gets drunk and flashes their goods at a night club.”