Burning Both Ends

by Sinclaire Jayne

  Lock stared at her in disbelief. He still couldn’t quite get the visual of three news vans outside his small fire station. Reese, Jess, Mim, and Sarah had clearly been lapping up the attention while everyone waited for the main attraction, currently prognosticating in his work vehicle. The Yank with a supermodel face and body and a mouth that could... okay, he couldn’t think about her mouth and what it could do. But everyone else damn sure was now because part of the video that had been posted had been of him ripping off her bunker jacket and then her dropping the bunker pants leaving her standing there like a damn porn star fantasy firefighter.

  Christ! His luck! In his mind, the situation hadn’t seemed at all how it had appeared on the video, but try explaining that to Avis or Logan or her fucking father. He’d had calls from all of them and more. The headache that had been building since he’d seen her climb that tree now swelled to what seemed like aneurism proportions. And he could just imagine how it would look if he pulled up with her in the fire brigade SUV with her in a cropped singlet that hugged all her curves and worn jeans that hung low on her hips, with part of her tat visible.

  He should have stayed on the path of a fucking boring engineer.

  “All interviews have to go through the public relations department,” he said like the dullest bloke ever.

  Dare laughed, leaned back in the SUV seat, and kicked her feet, now bootless up on the dash. She wore zebra socks, which nearly charmed him out of his foul, sexually frustrated temper, which proved he was out of his depth. But he was going to keep swimming. He wasn’t going to let Avis shuffle her off to another station where who knew what the fuck could happen.

  “Scared I’ll tell them you rock in bed?”

  He was so startled he blew through a stop sign. “Shit!”

  Dare laughed again. “I was keeping a watch,” she said. Lock drove again, huffing out a frustrated breath. Still he found himself fighting a smile.

  She was...

  “Why so quiet?” She probed.

  “Trying to think of a word to describe you.” He spoke without thinking.

  “Ha, let me help you out. Aggravating. Uncensored. Cocky. Pain in the ass.”

  “That’s four.”

  “All of them true.”

  “I was thinking adorable. Sexy. Courageous. Honest. Intriguing.”

  “Lock.” She breathed and, just like that, the tension was back.

  Zinging between them. Sexual but the other thing. The longing for something he couldn’t have and that was as strong as the desire, stronger maybe because the desire was for all of her.

  “But aggravating did also come to mind.” His voice was so gravely, and his cock so hard it hurt to sit. It hurt to move.

  He drove and his mind raced with options. He already had to have a meeting with Avis and the metropolitan board. The last thing he needed was Dare chatting to the press. And the public. Already the public relations department was planning how they could package Dare and use her for God knew what. Money probably. Awareness. An instructional video of what not to do at a fire was what they should do. And then soon they’d dig up the story of Big Sur. Not her fault although clearly she felt she should have done something differently. Shoulda. Coulda. He knew that feeling personally. But he didn’t want her hurt. Again.

  Lock steered his SUV down Chapel Street for a few blocks, wincing as he saw Dare’s eyes widen as she looked at the obviously high-end window displays and women walking by. It wasn’t yet evening so the velvet ropes on a few of Melbourne’s more exclusive night clubs hadn’t yet been placed.

  “Never pictured you for a designer boy,” she said when he made a left and drove a few blocks closer to the Yarra River.

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “So what gives?” Dare demanded when he hit a remote for a wrought iron gate that opened onto a brick courtyard of a historic house.

  “This is a mansion,” Dare accused. “Firefighters must have a vastly different pay scale than in the US.” Dare whistled.

  “It was my grandparents’,” he said. “And then my parents.”

  “Oh.” Silence filled the car. She stared out the windscreen at the Victorian style mansion.

  “I live in an apartment over the garage that I’ve converted and remodeled.” He tried not to sound defensive but, like always, when someone from his work saw where he’d grown up, Lock felt self-conscious. It was stupid. It was genetic lottery. But he didn’t entertain here. It made him stand out. And he didn’t want women to think he was loaded, although technically he supposed he was. “My sister still lives in the house when she’s at school, but she’s doing a painting and restoration course series in Italy. She’ll be home in another month so it’s empty now.”

  “I’m sorry, Lock,” Dare’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Are they both gone, your parents?”

  The sympathy was absolute and he had to fight the urge touch her, hold her hand.

  “On my birthday when I turned twenty. I’ll show you the house.” He got out of the SUV and, without thinking, quickly walked around it and opened the door for Dare who’d watched his progress through the windscreen with a mystified look on her face.

  She climbed out, a frown marring her beautiful features. “Not sure where to go first with that Lock,” she said, standing eye to eye. “Leave it alone or clock you for opening my door like I’m a girl from a different decade.”

  The heaviness in his stomach whenever he thought about losing both his parents, the fact that they’d died on his birthday and the grief and chaos that had ensued, all faded when he looked into her unusual colored eyes, snapping fire at him.

  Jesus, I could stare and drown in those forever.

  The thought hit him like a truck. He tried to unthink it, but it squatted fat and ugly and mocking. She was leaving in three months. She was not looking for love and marriage and family. Dare didn’t want forever. She’d been quite clear about that.

  He remembered once, so long ago, talking to Logan Knight, Christ, Logan had been so young then, only nineteen, and he’d tried to describe meeting his girlfriend Arabella on a Contiki tour of all things. He remembered Logan’s grey eyes bright with love, his face so animated, shining with enthusiasm as he described how Arabella had gotten on the bus, and that was it. He’d looked at her and she at him, and he’d been done for. Head over heels in love. Crazy about each other.

  Lock hadn’t understood. Had been a bit embarrassed by Logan’s honesty and whole-hearted description of his emotions. He’d thought it was Logan’s age, but then he remembered he’d never once described meeting Melissa like that. He’d never felt the world turned around her. She’d just been on the globe with him along with everything else, his family, rowing, his studies, then his job. She’d made the relationship work, and when she’d stopped trying, their relationship had ended. It had taken him no more than a moment to realize that Logan was just a different breed.

  A man who could love with every atom of his body. Love against logic. Lock ran his hand through his hair, broke eye contact but like a damn magnet made it again. Maybe he wasn’t so different from Logan after all.

  This was a bad idea bringing Dare here.

  A really bad idea.

  He reached behind the passenger seat and pulled out her duffle and backpack and the other smaller bag.

  “Let me show you to your suite.”

  “That sounds formal.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  He walked up the five stone steps and through the portico to unlock the massive black door. He swung it open only to realize Dare stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You live here? For real?”

  He didn’t really know what to say. Maybe it was dumb clinging to the past, but he’d wanted his siblings to have something stable. He wanted them to always feel like they could come home.

  “That didn’t come out right.” Dare bounded up the stairs. “I guess I just pictured you in more of a warehouse loft flat. You know, worn out brick, exposed beams
. Not a massive Victorian.”

  “Not so massive,” he said. “But I came home from uni to raise my brothers and sister. I wanted them to stay in the house. Losing our parents was hard enough for them. Didn’t want another change. And they all lived here during uni and my sister graduates next year.”

  Lock hesitated. Hoping she wouldn’t ask what happened next because he didn’t know. There were so many memories here. His grandparents. His parents. The birthdays. The holidays. The friends. The times with his siblings and him playing big brother and dad. Ghosts.

  He stood on the threshold of the door. Bloody symbolic—him awkwardly straddling two worlds. Stuck or trapped depending on how he looked at it.

  “Never been in a place like this,” Dare said, walking up the stairs and brushing his hand with hers as she walked by. He savored her gentleness. “We had a cabin style house in the Smoky Mountains. All the sisters in an open loft upstairs with a bathroom, and my parents in the one bedroom on the main floor. This is huge.”

  Dare turned around probably noticing the details. The potted trees flanking the pillars at the entrance, the bright white trim that he and his brothers had actually repainted three weeks ago. The brass knocker of a lion’s head on the door. His mom had always wanted to change it to an elephant because she loved the Hindu god Ganesh and thought they brought good luck, but his father had insisted the house stay the same as how his parents had had it.

  Maybe Ganesh would have brought them luck.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to strike out on his own at University of Sydney instead of staying close to home and rowing for University of Melbourne.

  Maybe.

  “So...” She stood up close and personal. “Why am I at your house? You change your mind?” She stood on tiptoe and angled her mouth so close to his.

  Her stunning eyes darkened, pupils dilated, and her breath feathered against his.

  “You know I can’t.” His voice was tight when her breasts brushed his chest.

  “I know you can.”

  And just like that, what had started out as teasing became unbearably hot. All the oxygen was sucked out between them, leaving him feeling sucker-punched, dizzy, ears ringing from all the blood pumping through his body and pooling wickedly low. Damnit. She drew the word caaaaannnn out like it was pulled taffy.

  “Dare, we’re working together.” It sounded like the weakest excuse in the book. He must sound all kinds of an idiot, but he was trying to do the right thing, although it felt all kinds of wrong.

  “I wasn’t suggesting feeling you up at a meeting or pushing you up against one of the trucks after a call and tasting you all sweaty and smoky and—”

  “You are deliberately torturing me.”

  “And myself,” she said, “I got a little too descriptive. See?” She cupped her breasts through the thin material of her singlet, and he could see her nipples had beaded. “So I’ll behave if you want, Lock.”

  “I’ll show you your room.”

  “You don’t really expect me to stay here, do you?”

  “Yes. We don’t have an exchange program in Melbourne. Just Brisbane and Sydney. Not sure why, but there’s no apartment set aside and rents are high and no one would give you a three month lease.”

  “I can stay at the station.”

  “Not the whole time. No privacy and your days off would suck. I’m in the apartment in the back so you’ll have the house. And company when my sister comes home in a month or so. I’ve been making renovations over the past five years, turning each of the bedrooms into suites with a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom and kitchenette in case my sister or brothers want to live here eventually. It’s their home as much as mine, but we’re all adults now so we’ll need our own spaces. I’m rambling, huh?”

  “A little.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “But it’s cute, so you’re forgiven.”

  He’d closed the door behind her. And, still holding her bags and pocketing his keys, he led her down a wide hallway. Why the hell was he so nervous showing Dare his house?

  “So, this is what you do for fun, work on your house?”

  “It’s my family house, not mine, and I did study to be an engineer and thought about architecture. Also,” he added as she didn’t break his silence, “I like working with my hands.”

  “I have proof of that.”

  “Behave.”

  She turned around and walked down the wide hall backwards facing him. If he didn’t have her bags and his boss and about ten members of Dare’s family to call and explain that he’d been looking for burns or cuts when he’d stripped her, he would have dropped her bags and kissed her in the hall. Pressed her body against the ancient plaster and tasted her.

  “Here,” he said, trying to shake off his desire and keep too much pride from coloring his voice as he pushed open a set of paned, French doors. “I renovated this suite first.” He stepped back so Dare could walk in.

  He held his breath as much from trying not to react to her nearness as much as from anxiety about her opinion.

  And then there was the bed. Had it always been so dominant in the room? The spindled four-poster, the wood carved in an ivy leaf pattern along the base of it, the spindles carved like vines growing up. The mattress so plush? The doona so pristine white and silky? It just begged to be mussed.

  “This is the bedroom,” he said unnecessarily. “And through that door is a closet that leads to a toilet and a full bath, and through the door over there, is a sitting room and a kitchenette and a small courtyard with stairs that lead to an upper balcony so you can see the Yarra.”

  “The bedroom is bigger than my studio apartment.” Dare breathed. “And I’m going to have to take the world’s longest shower before I can climb in that bed.”

  Shower. Naked. The image of her shedding her clothes and stepping under the huge Kohler wide spray shower head he’d installed last year slapped across his visual cortex. He imagined her soaping herself and enjoying the massage action of the smaller jet spray jet that would hit her lower than waist level. Hot water would squirt her tight rounded ass, and then she would turn her face up to the spray, while water ran in silver rivulets down her small breasts that had felt like warm silk in his rough hands as he’d caressed them. He still remembered his fascination with her high, pert breasts, dusky nipples that had pebbled so tightly, pulling nearly all of her aerola into her arousal. He could nearly taste her again.

  And when the fuck did he get so visual?

  “Ahhh.” He struggled to rein in his brain to something mundane or at least not X rated. “There’s a kitchenette—toaster, hot plate if not a stove, fridge, coffeemaker, microwave, but you can use the main kitchen as well. Separate entrance. I’ll give you a key. There’s a pool in the back if you want to do laps.”

  “Seriously?” Dare stepped outside on the flagstone patio he’d showed her and walked around the corner, Lock in tow. Her breath caught when she saw the long narrow sparkling blue pool. “Laps,” she said reverently.

  She actually reached for the hem of her singlet, and as much as Lock’s brain shouted, yes, his hand stilled hers.

  “It’s a salt water pool so it will be easier on your skin, but the doctor said to keep your stitches dry for at least a week.” He reminded.

  Dare made a rude noise, clearly not impressed with what the doctor had said, and Lock fought a smile.

  “I swam all my life,” Dare said. “I swam on a team from the time I was seven and was going to swim for UCLA, but...”

  Her voice stuttered to a stop and her hands dropped.

  “I could do a modified breast stroke,” she said, “and not get my stitches wet.”

  The word ‘breast’ slapped his ears, and her excited expression cranked his heart. She looked so eager. Her body poised as if to run or jump, quivering with an energy he recognized as he’d felt it. The sizzle, the craving of the buzz of physical activity, the release of built up tension. She fairly hummed, and her unusual eyes sparkled.

 
“Do you have a suit with you?” he asked, but Dare had already stepped out of her jeans. She had on the hip skimming booty shorts, and she peeled off her singlet and he saw the sports bra underneath.

  “Join me?” She invited.

  The way the sun made her skin gleam made it damned hard to resist, but he was a big man. If he were to swim, he might splash her face.

  “Maybe I’ll swim later,” he said.

  Dare slid in the water, and began to glide the length of the pool. Down and back. Down and back. Her strokes were as fluid as the water. She was as graceful as a mermaid. And like everything else about her, powerful. Lock had meant to go to his apartment. Pull himself together. Make all the phone calls that had been blowing up his phone this afternoon. Then he had to figure out dinner and a game plan for how he was going to incorporate Dare onto his team while keeping his mind and hands off of her.

  Instead, he just watched. A voyeur. Shameless. Fascinated. Before he could even think about it, he’d kicked off his boots.

  “So you are going to join me.” Dare swam to the side, her eyes clearly assessing, and Lock’s body or at least part of it definitely responded to the challenge. She noticed, and the heat in her eyes lit a fire in him.

  Damnit, this was wrong. This was dumb. He stepped out of his pants and whipped off his shirt.

  Dare pushed off the side, backwards.

  “I was hoping for commando,” she said.

  He dove into the water slicing in with minimal splash and coming up near her. “You’re dangerous,” he said.

  “That from a man who abandoned engineering to wrestle fire. Play a little,” she challenged.

  He wanted to. He wanted to be inside her slick, welcoming heat more than he wanted to breathe.

  “We’re both adults.” She seemed like she had a list. “Both single. Both smart enough to know this is temporary.”

  Temporary was what he’d wanted for so long, but now he worried he didn’t.

  “It’s not right,” he said tightly. “We work together.”

  She treaded water right beside him. The sunlight behind her made her look like an angel.