Firebreak

by Anna Leonard

  She had never been the aggressor in any sexual contact. She enjoyed herself, but had never actually reached out and taken what she wanted, always waiting to be invited. Here, though, it didn’t feel aggressive so much as an equal act, as though not taking would be wrong, an insult to them both, to the hunger that had unexpectedly hit her in her gut, spreading throughout every inch of her body. She stopped worrying about whether it was real or not, or if she would survive intact, and pulled Paul in toward her, shifting her balance enough to hook one leg around his so that she could feel the entire length of him pressed against her, knees to chest. The unmistakable feel of his arousal rested against her belly. Whatever he was, or wasn’t, flesh or fire or imagination, he was definitely real in at least one respect.

  He paused in his exploration of her collarbone to exhale softly, a dry gust of air like a hot summer afternoon, and the sweat on her skin evaporated, making her shiver slightly in anticipation.

  “No!” the other Spark had somehow guessed what they were doing, or just didn’t like the fact that they were no longer paying attention to it. It slammed up against the barrier Paul had established, the flames scattering around them like the electric bolts in one of those novelty globes that were supposed to mimic an electrical storm. Jackie could feel the hair on her arms rise, but it could as easily have been from Paul’s touch as anything else.

  “I will destroy you both!” it hissed, the words almost disappearing into the crackling static. Angry—no, it was livid. The word was particularly apt, as the entire light in the room changed, the now almost familiar reds and oranges searing into a painful white light.

  “Ignore it,” Paul said, but he was sweating, his face drawn in lines of tension, his hands gripping her tightly enough to bruise. “Focus on me. Only on me, Jackie. There’s nothing else but me.”

  She had always been good at focusing on one thing. That was what made her good at her job, the ability to narrow in and blank out the noise, to follow from point A to point B…and that was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

  “Jackie.” His hand slid up underneath the hem of her camisole, his fingers spread out and warm against her belly. She felt the instinctive urge to draw in a breath, to flatten her stomach, but then he kissed her again, and the breath she was going to take in was stolen by the heat. Her knees buckled, and he caught her, lowering her to the ground. The wooden planks that were normally chilly this hour of the morning were warm from the heat being generated in the room, but still hard, and she maneuvered until he was on his back, and she was leaning over him, her hands on his shoulders as though to hold him down. His body was flushed with thicker red lines now, shifting and shading in a way that should have been disturbing, but made Jackie want to reach down and lick each one, to see if they were warmer, or more sensitive, or…

  “Do they go all the way around your body,” she asked, her voice husky and dry. He was scorching all the moisture out of her…or it was all flooding to one spot, leaving nothing for the rest of her. He just watched her, one hand on her hip, steadying her, the other moving again under her top, stroking the underside of her breasts with whisper-light touches of heat, making her nipples tighten and ache for him to reach them. She moved down a little, encouraging him, and gasped when his palm covered her left breast, rubbing the swollen nub just enough to increase the ache, not ease it.

  “Find out,” he said, a whispered challenge, inciting her to mischief. She took the challenge even as he investigated her right breast, then the sweat-sticky channel between them, sliding an increasingly warm hand back and forth. The pants were easy to untie. She barely had to touch the drawstrings before they fell open, and her own hand was sliding down, touching. Crisp, curled hair met her fingertips, coarser than the hair on his head, but just as thick. He groaned, deep in his throat, and her fingers closed around warm, dry flesh, pulsing against her palm in a way that was completely familiar, and totally human.

  The angle was awkward and she shifted, intent on getting a better grip, without dislodging his hand from where it was doing deliciously distracting things against her skin. She could feel the heat of the—what had Paul called it?—the Spark, glaring at them, slapping their protected space with crashing waves of heat, but nothing it did could match the heat she felt building inside. She wasn’t any kind of exhibitionist, but the thought of it watching, unable to stop them, gave the experience a weird additional thrill.

  She might be crazy but…she didn’t think so. It all felt too real, the panic and the fear and the anger and even this, the heavy almost painful desire she could feel growing as their bodies moved against each other. The comfort and confusion his touch had caused was something else now, giving her a strength, a fire in her gut, she realized, finally understanding the term. If she felt this way only touching him…how would it feel to have him inside her?

  The urgency she felt suddenly had nothing to do with the fire raging beyond their protected space and everything to do with the one burning in his eyes. They weren’t terrifying any longer but beautiful, coal-black and intense, the red pinpricks of fire like embers rising from a campfire, warming the chilled night air. She lifted herself slightly from the rough planks and, as though he read her mind, Paul’s hands left her breasts, skimming down the side of her body to help her out of her pj’s bottoms, hooking them over her feet and discarding them in an almost-but-not-quite fluid motion. She pulled her top off, tossing it aside as well. She glanced at them, the pink-and-white pattern against the dark-stained wooden floor, and then back at Paul, waiting for her.

  He looked almost human now, his flesh a coppery-red with darker lines of flame chasing under the skin. Her own skin seemed too delicate, too fragile next to him, and when she tugged his shirt up over his head and placed her hand, palm down and fingers spread, on his stomach, the contrast was almost beautiful.

  With a smile, she curved her fingers inward, dragging them down his stomach, watching as the firelines flared more intensely as she passed them, until her fingers caught at the band of his pants, and pulled them down over his hips, down to his knees, letting him kick them the rest of the way off.

  “You will destroy her yourself,” the Spark hissed, having finally figured out what they were doing. “Why not give her to me?”

  “Because I’m not anyone’s to give,” Jackie said, as much to herself as the flames dancing impatiently, trying to get at them. “I give and I take my own damn self. So shut the hell up.”

  “Spitfire,” Paul joked, as the Spark outside spluttered and spit its own sparks. “You’re going to do fine.” But his eyes were still worried, and she could tell he was holding back somehow, even as his flesh arched toward her, clearly eager and ready.

  Her skin felt itchy, too tight, as if it was shrinking around her bones, drying like clay in a kiln, centered not around the heat beyond her, but the one burning within. Her body ached, yearned, and she couldn’t resist any longer, bending down, her hair falling into her face, shading her actions if not her intent.

  The gasp that came from Paul’s throat as she engulfed him sent a stream of liquid fire through her veins. She hummed in appreciation, using her teeth to scrape lightly against his flesh, and she withdrew.

  He surged forward in a way that a human couldn’t have managed, his hands catching at her shoulders. “Spitfire, that was gorgeous, but not that way. It won’t work that way and we’re not going to get a second chance.”

  But as though to counter his words, his hands rose to her breasts, cupping them as his mouth returned to the tight, hard nubs, laving them back and forth with a warm, soft tongue as though trying to determine her exact flavor. The heat built up inside her, rising with each pass of his mouth, and she moved forward while he was distracted, knees on either side of his thighs, until she could feel the heat of his shaft, as though it was but another part of the fire burning her from within, and if they could just match them….

  With that thought, she slid one hand under his ass, lifting him toward h
er, even as her other hand slid around the base of his shaft, positioning herself to slide gently, firmly down over him in mimicry of her mouth a few minutes before. She wasn’t quite wet enough to slide that smoothly, the fire trying to engulf them consuming moisture as it formed, but his hands went to her waist, steadying her as she pushed down. He let her do it in her own time, the muscles in his legs underneath her tensing, his hands clenching a bit too tightly, leaving marks on her skin, but he waited until she was ready, their pubic bones pressed together, and all she could feel was the tight pressure inside her, where his hot flesh met hers. They paused there, face-to-face, her thighs straddling his, caught for just that instant outside of everything else. There was no fire raging around them, no crisis waiting for Jackie if she survived, no oblivion waiting for Paul…just this endless instant. Jackie would have been willing to stay like that forever, the anticipation more perfect that any completion could be, but Paul couldn’t wait any longer, sliding his hands down her backside, cupping her ass as he pushed up, thrusting deeper into her.

  “Hotter than any fire,” he said, his gaze intent on her. “Hotter than…”

  She leaned down to shut him up with her mouth, their lips too dry, tongues parched, yet somehow sweet and satisfying, making her forget where she was, what was at stake, how impossible any of this was…anything except the press of Paul’s hands on her skin, the whisper of his mouth against hers, the weight and heat of him inside her, stroking in and out at a steady, slow pace at utter odds with the urgency she could feel inside them both, making their muscles quiver with tension and need.

  “Had forgotten,” he was saying, his voice low and hot in her ear. “Had forgotten all this…”

  He pulled down hard on her hips, as he thrust upward, and Jackie tried to match him, sliding her hands under his ass and pulling him closer, further into her until she could barely breathe.

  “More,” she demanded, her fingers digging into his flesh, the only moisture left in the room concentrated between her thighs, muscles contracting tightly around him as they rocked back and forth, everything except the physical forgotten for the moment.

  “Was so lost,” he said, the words barely audible. “Flame but no fuel. Can’t last without something to burn. Found you…be your flame if you’ll be my fuel.”

  She had no idea what he was saying, but the sound of his voice, the heat of his words matching the heat ignited between them, and then he bit her, taking her jawline between his teeth the way a cat might, and the mindless, possessive gesture, combined with a final hard thrust, started the shaking, trembling sensation she’d been searching for.

  “So brave,” he whispered, his head falling back as the first wave of release hit him. “So brave. So very brave.”

  She felt brave. In his gaze, in his arms, she felt as though she could take on anything, any monster, any fear. She looked down, wanting to tell him that, and the breath was sucked out of her in a violent shock. His eyes, those glorious fire-streaked eyes, were dark, the pupils dilated and dull, staring at her as though she were the only light left in the room.

  “So brave, Jackie. Be brave, my heart….”

  He thrust once, urgently, and as she struggled with what she had seen, her body convulsed around him, her fingers clenching his shoulders hard enough to leave a mark. She fell into a searing rabbit hole, plummeting too fast, too hard to retain any control, wrapped in searing flames that should have consumed her….

  And did not.

  “Paul!” she screamed. “Paul!”

  “Easy there, miss,” a voice called to her. “Easy now, it’s all right, we’ve got you. Just relax, you’re safe.”

  And there were hands on her, hands that weren’t Paul’s, she could tell instinctively, and then someone put something over her face and she breathed in fresh oxygen, so different from the fire-tinged air she had been breathing. The world came into focus again.

  “Did you…the house?”

  “I’m sorry, miss,” one of them said, his voice professionally soothing. “There was nothing we could do but let it burn. But you’re safe, and that’s what’s important.”

  And the paramedics who took her away attributed the tears, which made her eyelashes sticky and spiked, to relief and fear, not sorrow.

  He wasn’t gone. She did not believe he was gone.

  “I’ll find you,” she whispered, a promise to the flames she could feel licking at the remains of the building, as they loaded her into the ambulance. “I will find you.”

  “If you can get to the end, I’ll buy you a toy.”

  “Fuck you.” He spit the words, more angry at himself than his tormenter. His arms ached, and his legs were still numb and useless, but he could feel the breath in his lungs and the sweat on his skin, damp and clammy, and that was supposed to be a good thing, right? He shivered, although the temperature of the rehab center was a comfortable sixty-nine degrees. He hadn’t been warm once since waking up in the hospital bed, scaring the holy hell out of the night nurse and breaking all kinds of medical records—and not a few side bets.

  He was supposed to be dead and gone. Instead, he was locked into a body that wouldn’t work right, that had been silent and lifeless for a decade, withering away even after the burns and injuries had healed.

  He was alive. He tried to make that mean something, but all he could do was wonder about Jackie. Had she made it? Had she found the courage to do what she needed to do? Or had all this been for nothing…worse, had he been the one hallucinating all this time, ten years locked in a coma, dreaming of fire and love?

  For the first time in his life, Paul Wintershins had been a coward. He couldn’t bear to ask, couldn’t bear to read the news, and find out if Bergkos had suffered a reversal in fortunes, if a woman named Jackie had died in a fire, or gone back to her life without saying a word.

  If it had all been a dream…and it must have been, right? He had hallucinated the Spark when the fire came down on him, had dreamed the rest after his buddies got him out, gotten him hooked up to the tubes and machines, and come, every week, for ten years, telling him stories of the firehouse, of the changes that had occurred, the things that had happened….

  All a dream.

  Jackie. A dream.

  “You did well today,” Mike said. Paul nodded, hauling himself back into the wheelchair the therapist had ready. They said he had made amazing progress in the three months since he startled everyone by opening his eyes, and being all there, mentally. Although they put it in more delicate, more scientific terms, hiding their confusion by hiding it under medical hand-waving. The fact that he was up and moving at all was far more than the doctors had predicted.

  He needed to get up, get his body working again. Not to go back to his old job. No matter how well he recovered, he would never fight fires again. But to spend the rest of his life in a bed, watching television or reading, left alone with his thoughts, his memories that might not be real? He would rather spend every day sweating against atrophied muscles than be left to that. And when he was working, sweating, struggling and swearing, Paul could almost pretend that he was warm again.

  Alone in his room, even filled as it was with flowers and cards from old friends who had never given up, even with the visitors who came by, awkward but heartfelt, to shake his hand and wish him luck…he was cold now, a cold that no number of hospital-issue blankets could cure.

  “Yeah, gonna be going for a marathon by November,” Paul said, grinning fiercely at his therapist as though to force those thoughts away.

  “Not this year, pal. But next…I’m not betting money against you, that’s for sure. Now go hit the showers, you reek.” Mike was a good guy, didn’t pull his punches, so praise really meant something. Paul smiled, turning the chair so he could wheel himself to the bathing room—and stopped.

  The far wall of the therapy room was glassed-in. It made for a fishbowl-like atmosphere, but once you got to working you mostly forgot the doctors and therapists who were watching, taking notes, judging
your progress, or the occasional family member, cheering someone on, biting their lip when someone fell or failed.

  Nobody stood and watched him. His parents were long dead. His sister had come once, when he woke up, but she had family, obligations, and was limited now to regular phone conversations, her image steady and teary-eyed on the laptop’s monitor, a towheaded child on her lap, eager to meet his mythical Uncle Paul. His former coworkers, friends…they cared, but they would not take the time to watch this, not when they knew it could have been them, stuck in this chair. And yet, there was something that drew him, today, to look.

  Tall and slender, her brown hair curled wildly around her head, eyes wide and blue, watching him as though she couldn’t bear to blink, as though if she looked away, he would disappear.

  Jackie.

  She was real. She had survived.

  Her eyes widened when she saw him looking at her, then one hand raised slowly, and the fingers that had once touched his flesh so intimately waggled a little in a shy hello, even as that generous mouth lifted in a smile that spread all the way into her eyes.

  I found you, she mouthed.

  And the warmth he thought had forsaken him forever, returned.

  Don’t miss the other spooky and sensual NOCTURNE BITES, available at www.ebooks.eharlequin.com and wherever eBooks are sold. Titles include:

  Dragon Warrior by Meagan Hatfield

  Halo Hunter by Michele Hauf

  Prisoner of Temptation by Zandria Munson

  Demon Kissed by Patti O’Shea

  Marked by Lydia Parks

  A Vampire’s Mistress by Theresa Meyers

  Hunter’s Surrender by Anna Hackett

  Vampire’s Tango by Anna Leonard

  Her Dark Lord by Mel Teshco

  Time Jumper by Connie Hall

  The Prophecy by Nina Croft

  Looking for more paranormal romance? The sizzling and spine-chilling books of Harlequin Nocturne are available at www.eHarlequin.com or your local bookstore.