Set the Night on Fire

by Jennifer Bernard

  Before she could think better of it, she unzipped his pants and touched the hot organ hiding behind his cotton boxer briefs.

  He groaned. “Oh Evie, I gotta warn you, there’s absolutely no chance that I can last long enough to make this good for you.”

  “This one’s not about me.” She pushed him back so he lay on the blanket.

  “Evie—”

  “Shhh.” She reached bare skin and stroked him gently. She savored the feel of his thick ridges, soft veins, the satiny glide of skin over hard muscle. He arched his hips into her touch. His arm muscles clenched as he dug his hands into the fleece blanket underneath them.

  Inspired, she bent down and touched her tongue to the hot tip of his penis.

  “Jesus, Evie.” His voice was thick with desire. “That feels fucking incredible.”

  She circled her tongue around the thick head and lapped up a tiny drop of liquid. It was all so new, so alluring. She loved the salty flavor of that firm flesh and his vulnerable position, sprawled under her. It made her feel powerful but also generous. She wanted him to enjoy himself. Wanted him to feel the kind of pleasure he’d given her. She wrapped her hand around his length again and moved it lightly up and down.

  And then—suddenly—it was over. He went rigid and arched his back. Warm liquid spilled into her hand then overflowed onto his stomach.

  And there it was—the hog sound.

  A deep, harsh, grunting bellow that would have frightened away the birds if it hadn’t been the middle of the night.

  She bit her lip to keep from laughing. That wouldn’t be polite, to laugh at the sound he made when he came. Would it? But it was so funny…

  Looking utterly spent, Sean splayed his arms wide and opened his eyes a crack. “It’s okay,” he said wryly. “You can laugh.”

  Even though she still didn’t want to, the laughter burst out of her in a cascade of giggles. “I’m sorry,” she gasped, trying to stop the flow with her hand.

  He rolled his eyes and grinned. “I told you to laugh. So laugh. Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s just…it was so…” She tried to imitate the sound, but it came out as more of a moo. That made her laugh even harder.

  “I do not moo after sex.” A smile quivered at the corners of his mouth.

  “I…I know you don’t…” On and on, the laughter came. She just couldn’t stop it.

  He fixed her with a stern gaze. “I oink. It’s different.”

  “Ahahahha!” A full-on gale of laughter racked her body. Tears streamed down her face. “You…don’t…oink.”

  The word “oink” was so hilarious suddenly. Oink. Who came up with the word “oink?” She laughed and laughed. It felt as if years of tension leached from her body. Even if she and Sean never did anything sexual again, even if they never got around to “penetration,” she’d gained something incredibly valuable. She’d learned that laughing after sex—maybe even during—made it that much more fun.

  Sean lay back and listened, watching her with a smile playing over his mouth.

  “It’s a really good thing I don’t have self-esteem issues,” he told her when her spasms of hilarity started to die down. “Also, it’s a good thing I heard your sex sound first. You have no grounds to ridicule me, woman.”

  “I know. And I’m not.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I promise I’m not.”

  “You know something?” He cupped her face, thumb brushing her chin. Although she couldn’t make out the color of his eyes without extra light, she could feel them on her. She could sense the smile in them. “If it makes you laugh like this, you can ridicule me all you want. I won’t mind.”

  The most amazing feeling of security settled deep inside her. Maybe they weren’t in a relationship. Maybe they never would be. But obviously Sean cared about her. Otherwise, why would he look at her like that? Now that he’d made her come, he knew things about her nobody else did. But she trusted him, because he honked like a hog when he came and didn’t even care. She could probably get up and do the chicken dance naked and he wouldn’t blink. She loved that about him.

  Not that she loved him. That would be a big mistake, and wasn’t going to happen.

  “Hang on a second,” she told him. “I have something in my pack to clean up with.” She rolled off him and dug in her backpack for the toilet paper she always brought with her for photo-expedition pee emergencies. She wiped her hand, then gave him the roll and watched as he wiped himself off. He showed no signs of embarrassment as he did so. Was it even possible to embarrass Sean Marcus?

  Why not ask? Why not take advantage of this feeling of freedom he inspired in her?

  “Do you ever get embarrassed?” she asked as she put her bra back on, then her top.

  He shot her a curious look as he finished up. “Are you thinking I should be?”

  “No, I’m just wondering.”

  He appeared to think about it as he zipped up his jeans. “My father used to go out of his way to embarrass me. He did all kinds of shit. He once showed up to a parent conference meeting wearing a fringe jacket, short-shorts and platform shoes, like some kind of hippie drag queen.”

  Evie laughed incredulously. “Were you mortified?”

  “I was pissed. He always had to grab the spotlight. He believed in free expression, of any fucking thing he wanted to express. When I was little, I thought he was the most fun kind of father you could have. When I got older, I hated being yanked out of school to go harvest algae, or hunt for morels. I hated moving and starting from scratch on every sports team.”

  Evie searched her memory, but couldn’t come up with an image of Jesse Marcus. “I don’t remember meeting him, but your mother came to our house a few times. She was always so sweet, kind of shy.”

  His shoulders hunched, the muscles flexing as he reached for his shirt. “Yeah. She was. Jesse cheated on her, but he never called it that. He called it “engaging.” People here thought he was a hippie, but that’s not fair to hippies. He didn’t believe in love and peace and all that. He just believed in self-gratification.”

  She watched him button his shirt. It was almost tragic to hide away all that magnificence. “He must have had good points too. I mean, look at you.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. He did. It turned out that he was pretty good with money. He could be fun. A risk-taker. He got his pilot’s license, then turned around and purchased a flightseeing service. Nothing scared him.”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A fun, fearless risk-taker. Hmm, where have I met someone like that before?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then jumped to his feet and tucked in his shirt. Had she offended him with that observation? She got to her feet as well and folded the fleece blanket into a tight square to cram it into her backpack. As soon as she fastened the buckle, he held out his hand for it.

  “I’ll take that,” he said tightly. “Hotshots and heavy packs, that’s what we’re all about.”

  She handed it over and he slung the straps over his shoulders, then headed for the path that wound up the hillside. He was moving so fast, she had to skip to catch up with him. His long legs ate up the trail in easy strides. She remembered that he’d told her running up mountains was his favorite form of exercise.

  It definitely wasn’t hers. “Sean. Why are you going so fast?”

  When he turned to look back at her, he had a remote expression she hadn’t seen before. “Sorry.” He reached his hand to her and helped her over a rocky spot in the path. “I should get back to the base. I can’t leave Josh alone out there for too long. He might throw a party and invite every girl in town.”

  When they reached the top of the trail, she saw that a few cars were parked in the main viewpoint lot. The big telescopes, the ones set into the concrete, were all in use. Her face colored as she thought about the sounds they’d made.

  “Do you think anyone heard us?” she whispered as they crossed the parking lot.
r />   “Nope. Even if they did, they probably figured there was a wounded hog and a weird ghost nearby.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  Even though he smiled faintly, his mood had shifted. All the playfulness was gone. And she had no idea what had triggered the change.

  19

  Usually after sex, Sean felt on top of the world. Clear-headed, carefree, ready to launch into the next thing. But driving back to Evie’s house, a whole different category of thoughts kept dive-bombing his brain.

  Why did he and Evie have to get onto the topic of his family? It always made him edgy. It brought up all kinds of weird feelings. Not grief, so much. That had faded with time.

  In Boulder, or any of the various hotshot or smoke-jumping bases where he’d worked, no one connected him with his family. The Marcus name meant nothing beyond what Sean gave to it. To his fellow firefighters, “Sean Marcus” meant skill, drive, intensity, good firefighter, smart risk-taker, reliable. To women, it meant short-term sex, hopefully good sex. It meant a fun time, some laughs, no strings, no expectations.

  Here, in Jupiter Point, “Sean Marcus” had some other layers that kept springing at him like ghosts. “Marcus” meant fuckup, weirdo, maybe even crazy. “Sean Marcus” meant bad boy, rebel, underage drinker, hothead.

  Those things didn’t seem to bother Evie. Maybe she liked them. Maybe that was why she’d picked him for her “mission.” Was he perfect for her “sexual reclaiming” because she didn’t have to take a member of the Marcus family seriously?

  Not that he wanted “serious” in terms of a relationship. But maybe he wanted to be a contender. Or at least a potential contender. He remembered how she used to pine after Brad White when she was a kid. He was just as good as that fucking guy.

  Speaking of Brad…he tuned back into Evie just as she was saying the dude’s name.

  “What about Brad?”

  Evie gave him a chiding look. “I was conveying the very important decision I just made, but if I had known you weren’t even listening…”

  “I’m listening now. Anything to do with Brad, I want to be in the loop.”

  “I don’t know if you’re going to like this.” She twisted her long hair back into a knot. “I realized that he just doesn’t matter to me at all.”

  “He doesn’t matter?” The jackass had assaulted her. Sean’s knuckles actually itched with the urge to knock him out again now that he knew the whole story. “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, I just feel different now that I’ve talked about it.” She aimed a sweet smile in his direction, but it didn’t work on him the way her smiles usually did. “I don’t have to hold on to any old grudges from the past. I can move on now. I’m free.”

  Sean frowned as he turned onto Constellation Way. The little downtown area was snugged up tight for the night. The low-lumen streetlights created a golden-orange glow around the tidy storefronts and hand-carved signs. They passed the Goodnight Moon Bed and Breakfast, with its little turret perched on top. Night jasmine flowed in soft clouds over the iron-work fence around the Orbit’s outside patio.

  Jupiter Point was a lovely little town, but that didn’t mean that everything or everyone in it was equally lovely.

  Brad White being the prime example of that.

  “So what are you saying? You’re going to endorse him?”

  She nodded decisively. “I am. I’m going to endorse him. It’s the best thing for the town. We don’t need any controversy. Tourists don’t come here for that. They come here to enjoy themselves. To pause for a moment and look up at the stars.”

  The infamous town motto; Sean hadn’t heard that in a while. “So you’re not going to mention anything about what happened that night?”

  “No. Why should I? It has nothing to do with his political agenda.” She must have sensed his disappointment, because she gave him a nervous glance. “The coalition decided to endorse him when the issue first came up, you know. I just couldn’t make myself say the words.”

  “And now you can?”

  “I think I can now. It no longer seems so important. I can let the past go, thanks to you.” She touched his thigh, not in a sexual way but in a “thank you” way. He shifted away from her hand.

  He didn’t want that “thanks.” Brad was going to get away with his heinous actions. He was getting everything he wanted from Evie—her silence about his deeds, her support for his campaign. None of this sat right with him.

  But it was her call, not his.

  He took Evie home and drove back to the base in a surprisingly foul mood, considering he’d come pretty damn close to having sex with Evie McGraw.

  When he got back to the base, he found it blazing with light but all the common areas empty. “Hello?” he called into the deserted space. The sound of crashing and swearing led him to the gear cache, the crew’s storage area.

  There, he found Josh rubbing his head and cursing at a box of extra-large fire-resistant gloves. “I bring you into the family,” Josh told the box in his best “Godfather” accent. “And this is how you betray me.”

  “Gloves, these days,” Sean said dryly. “You can’t turn your back on them for a second.”

  Still rubbing his head, Josh glanced up from his cross-legged position on the floor. “Hey, Casanova. How was your night?”

  Sean didn’t want to answer that question. “I thought you were planning to hit all the Jupiter Point hot spots tonight?”

  “I did. It was a very entertaining five minutes. Then I figured all this crap still needed organizing. We need to get our act together, Magneto. Did you know the snowpack is half what it usually is? Dry summer coming up.”

  “I know. We’re on track for May. That’s what we’re aiming for.” He looked closely at Josh, who seemed a little jittery. “So the Jupiter Point nightlife didn’t do much for you?”

  “Barstow’s isn’t bad. Pretty cool local hangout. A whiny alt-rock band was playing but I managed to tune that shit out. Had a couple of beers there. Then I stopped in at the Orbit. Connected with a few friends there.”

  “A few friends? Are you telling me you know people in Jupiter Point now?”

  “Of course I know people. What do you think I do when you’re wrapped up with your pretty princess? People are talking, by the way. The town sweetheart and the hotshot. The good girl and the rebel. It doesn’t make sense. People keep saying things like, ‘Remember when the Marcus family first came to town and held a party out at the airstrip? I think there was pot in those brownies they served.’”

  Sean snorted. “Jesse knew how to make a splash.”

  “Must be a Marcus family trait.”

  Sean startled. Evie had said something similar earlier, and he hadn’t liked it then either. “What are you talking about?”

  Josh rose to his feet and brushed dust off his cargo shorts. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a pink message slip. The note scrawled on it said, You’re in BIG TROUBLE. Chief Becker wants to see you. “The police chief called while you were out. He asked you to come into the station as soon as you can.”

  Sean stared at the ominous message. “I already talked to Becker. What else does he want?”

  “I tried to get him to say, but he wouldn’t. He just said it’s important. Oh, and he said that next time, you should listen to his advice.” Josh scratched his chin, pretending to search his memory. “Something…hmm…it’s starting to come back to me…something about ‘stay away from Evie McGraw’?”

  Sean crumpled up the message and tossed it in the trash.

  20

  Days passed before Evie saw Sean again. He sent her a text telling her he was interviewing the last candidates for the hotshot crew and would be busy until the end of the week.

  She understood. That was completely fine. He was busy, she was busy. No need to read anything into it, just because he’d seemed so distant at the end. Right?

  The Dean, a notorious hypochondriac, announced that he felt the flu coming on and asked Evie to stay over for a couple of da
ys. Life slowed to a crawl as Evie helped her mother with the daily tasks of life. Getting her dressed took a good half hour. Assisting her from the bedroom to her recliner was a journey of patience. Molly had to take three pills each morning, and each morning the process seemed to take longer.

  Even so, Evie basked in her mother’s presence, in the affection that still beamed from her face. She knew Hunter felt guilty that he hadn’t been around to help. But in Evie’s view, he was missing something even more important--this precious time with their mom.

  Besides, it was a relief to get a break from the gallery and all the town drama. On Friday, she’d attend the coalition meeting, announce her change of heart, and it would all be over.

  But her break from the controversy didn’t last long. Brianna stopped by with a basket filled with her first stalks of rhubarb and a complete report on everything Evie had missed.

  “I heard the Los Angeles Times is doing a story on Brad’s campaign.”

  “Is that unusual? He’s running for state representative, that’s news, right?”

  “Yes, but they don’t usually bother with hometowns and all that, unless there’s something of interest happening. Like his own business coalition refusing to endorse him.”

  Evie buried her face in the rhubarb, inhaling the fresh tart scent that always said spring to her. “They’re going to be disappointed, then. There’s no more story. It’s all going to be settled at the meeting tomorrow. I’ve already crafted my statement. I’ve even memorized it.”

  It was the right thing to do—at least, she thought it was. She’d been allowing her personal feelings to take over in the business arena. Personally, she still didn’t want anything to do with Brad. But she was the president of the coalition and she couldn’t think only of herself. She had a job to do.