Firefighter Christmas Complete Series Box Set (A Firefighter Holiday Romance Love Story)

by Nella Tyler

  “Let me say goodbye to Donny and then let’s go,” I said. “I want as much time as humanly possible with you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Autumn

  I could tell that Cade was even more upset than I’d thought he’d be at the fact that Titan had been texting me; and I could understand why he’d be upset that I was hiding it. In retrospect, all my fine and logical justifications for not telling him about the messages sounded as stupid to me as they probably sounded to him.

  As I pulled around behind my parents’ house to the guest house with Cade hot on my heels, I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I had known that I needed to make a gesture, that I needed to prove to him that I was into him and only him. By the time we were both getting out of our respective cars, it was dark out, and I could only hope that my parents weren’t paying too much attention to what was going on outside…and that Tuck wasn’t keeping watch to see if I was doing something I shouldn’t be.

  Before we’d left the festival, I’d told Cade how to park so that my parents would hopefully not see his car. We’d done the wider loop around the main house, and he had pulled around to the far side of the guest house, so I could hope that we were in the clear. I heard him walking over to me and had a panicked thought that I had somehow managed to forget or misplace my house key, but I found it in my purse, and my heart slowed just a little bit.

  He wrapped his arms around me in the darkness and I tilted my face up, looking for his eyes, hoping against hope that I’d done enough to show him that I truly wanted him, just by inviting him to my house instead of going to his. His lips brushed against mine, and I could feel the tension in his body, but it was familiar tension, the feeling of him wanting me.

  “I don’t want to rush you,” I whispered, pulling back just a little bit, “but every minute we’re out here is a minute someone could see us.”

  He chuckled. “That’s a good point,” he agreed. “Let’s go inside.”

  I felt weirdly even more nervous once I’d opened the front door to the house and let Cade come in behind me. It had been ages since I’d had a man in my space, and the last one who’d been in the house who wasn’t related to me had been Titan; at that, Titan had only been inside once, the day he’d told me that he was really and truly abandoning me to be with his new girlfriend.

  I felt exposed in a way I never had before, even though I’d been naked around Cade. I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my hands, what to do with my mouth. “Do you want something to drink?”

  He grinned at me as if he knew exactly what was going on in my mind and nodded. “Whatever you’ve got handy,” he suggested.

  I had water more than handy, but after the confusion of the day, I wanted something stronger than that. I opened the little pantry I’d made out of a closet next to the kitchen and took out a bottle of whiskey that one of my friends had gotten me once I’d started weaning Addie a few months before. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but the notion of drinking a little whiskey to calm my nerves before Cade or I made a move to the bedroom was comforting.

  I mixed us up both whiskey-cokes, and we went into the living room of the guest house. “This is a nice little place,” he said, looking around.

  “It’s a total mess, but it’s nice of you to say,” I told him, smiling wryly. Now that Adelyn was fully walking around, I could barely keep her in one room, and at that she managed to throw and scatter her toys everywhere, wherever she was. I could barely keep up with the cleaning just for her messy ways, much less everything else.

  “I’ve seen worse,” he told me with a little smile. “Don’t feel bad; Addie’s at that raging mess age—you’re doing good just to keep some clean clothes.”

  I laughed and sipped at my drink, and as we sat around on the couch together, talking about nothing at all, I started to feel more and more relaxed; warmth spread through me with the whiskey, and the tension from earlier in the day didn’t seem to matter much at all anymore.

  When Cade moved in to begin kissing me again, I didn’t hesitate for even a moment. I’d been—in the back of my mind—waiting for him to kiss me, waiting for the feeling of his lips on mine, the taste of his tongue. I could also taste the whiskey coating his mouth, but it made a warm, sharp counterpoint to his soft lips and rough tongue.

  His hands started to wander over my body slowly, and I leaned into his touches, feeling more and more turned on in a matter of moments. It was probably partly the alcohol, but I didn’t care. I had wanted to get some time alone with him even before Titan had texted me, and after the confrontation between the farmhand and me, I only wanted him all the more.

  When Cade pulled me onto his lap, any thought of the remainder of my drink just flowed right out of my mind. I kept kissing him, moving against his body, rubbing against him, loving the feeling of his hard muscles, the heat of him. He was everything I had ever wanted in a man, and I couldn’t believe that I’d fallen for such a fools’ gold compromise lover as Titan when I compared the best of what my ex had given me to the least that Cade had ever done.

  Cade’s hands became more and more urgent on my body, groping and touching me, not hesitating, but oddly respectful as we made out on my couch, letting the tension build up slowly but steadily. They slipped up underneath my blouse, and I shivered. I felt so weirdly ticklish, so sensitive to every little touch, every nerve in my body awake in a way that I’d only ever experienced with him.

  We broke away from each other’s lips to catch our breath for a moment, and I could feel how turned on I was. It was buzzing through my veins, making it hard to even think about thinking.

  The fact of Titan texting me—and Cade’s reaction to me hiding my ex’s attempts at contact—rose up in my mind as my heart started to slow just a little bit. I decided that whatever the risks, I wanted to be with Cade—right then and there in the guest house, even if my parents found out about us that way. I wanted to put Titan out of my mind for good, and make Cade understand that I really, truly wanted him; more than I had ever wanted any other man I’d been involved with.

  “Bedroom,” I said, still panting slightly, and Cade nodded. Instead of letting me get up, though, he reached down, looped his arms underneath the curve of my ass, and carefully stood. I let out a surprised yelp as he held me there without any sign of strain at all.

  “Where?”

  I pointed, and Cade shifted my body against his before heading towards the hallway that hid my bedroom. I kissed along the line of his neck, breathing in the smell of him, feeling the roughness of a little patch of stubble right at his jaw. My nipples ached in a way that they hadn’t since I’d weaned Addie, so hard I was sure that Cade could feel them through my bra and shirt and his altogether.

  He kicked open my half-closed door, and I stopped him just long enough to flip the light switch on; my room was a mess, but I didn’t even care. I didn’t just want to feel him, I wanted to see him—every inch of him.

  He dropped me carefully onto my messy, unmade bed, and then immediately he was on top of me. I could feel the hard ridge of his cock straining against the fly of his jeans as he pressed his hips against mine. He kissed me again and again, hands roaming over my body, and I realized that our clothes were falling away. One moment I was more or less fully clothed, and the next instant, I was down to my bra and panties.

  Cade’s hands moved up and cupped my breasts through the thin, lacy fabric of one of my few pretty bras, and I moaned at the heat of his hands against my sensitive nipples. I could feel through the fabric, and I wanted more.

  I managed to get his shirt off and the fly of his jeans open, and all at once we were both naked, touching each other everywhere, kissing each other over and over again until I was breathless and giddy.

  I could feel the heat and hardness of his cock pressed against my hip as we shifted and writhed together, our hands wandering. I could feel how soaking wet I was, how turned on I already was. I had no idea how long we had been building it up, but it felt somehow like it
had been mere minutes and hours all at the same time.

  I reached down between my body and Cade’s and found his erection by touch. I wanted it inside of me so badly I could almost taste it, but I wanted to touch him, to stroke him, at the same time. I rubbed up and down slowly, gripping him a little more tightly as I felt more and more confident. His groaned out, burying his face against my neck for a moment, and then I felt his fingers sliding along my labia, rubbing slowly, stroking up and down until he found my clit.

  We lay like that for a long time, just teasing each other, bringing each other to the edge of climax and then backing off, until I was so turned on that I was shaking. “Oh fuck, Cade,” I murmured, letting go of his cock, clinging to him as I tried to fight off the uncontrollable shivering that rippled through me. “I need you.”

  “Say no more,” he murmured, brushing his lips along my jaw to my ear.

  I felt his fingers leave me, but then they brushed against me again, and I shifted my hips down as he guided the tip of his cock up against my labia. My breath caught in my throat as he slid into me slowly, pushing past the reflex that made my inner muscles tighten, filling me up inch by inch. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pushed my hips down to meet his thrust, taking him deeper, moaning against his neck at the feeling of him inside of me.

  For a second, when his hips were perfectly flush against mine, we just laid like that, wrapped up in each other, trying to catch our breaths. The next moment, he began to move, sliding halfway out of me and then pushing deep inside once more. I shivered again at how good it felt: thick and hot and full inside of me, almost better than it had been the first time that Cade and I had had sex.

  We moved together, finding a rhythm almost right away, and I could feel the tension building up inside of me, somewhere deep down between my hips. I kissed everywhere I could reach with my mouth, I let my hands wander wherever they wanted on his body, and as I came closer and closer to climax, I felt the answering tension in him, the way his muscles rippled under his skin, the twitching of his cock inside of me.

  We both hit climax at almost the same moment—he may have been a few moments behind me—and as wave after wave after wave of pleasure washed through my body, I knew that no one would ever be as good as Cade was; I knew I couldn’t be satisfied with anyone else the way I was with him. We barely caught our breath before he began to touch me again, kissing me on the lips and along the column of my throat, turning me on for a repeat performance.

  I lost count of how many times I climaxed as we made love to each other again and again for what I thought had to have been hours. I wasn’t paying any attention at all to time, I was so wrapped up in the feeling of his body mingling with and pressing against mine. In fact, we might have ended up continuing to have sex all night, but in the midst of one of our breaks, while we were lying in bed together, catching our breaths and cuddling close, I heard the telltale sound of the alarm on my phone going off.

  “What’s that about?” Cade frowned in confusion at the noise. I groaned.

  “My alarm,” I told him. “I set it so that I could be on time to get Addie from my parents.”

  He laughed. “You forgot all about it?”

  I nodded, admitting it silently. He kissed me and slipped out of the bed, and there was a big part of me that wanted to tell him to stay anyway; but Addie had reached an age where she might just drop a comment that would give away a hint about what Cade and I were doing. I felt terrible that I had somehow managed to forget about my daughter altogether for even a few hours, but I pushed the feeling away.

  Cade and I got dressed quickly, and I turned off the alarm on my phone. “I’ll go ahead and sneak out before you head over,” he said, leaning in to kiss me on the forehead, and then on the lips. “That way Bob won’t be as likely to catch me here.”

  He kissed me again and I would have paid good money to be able to just keep him there, but I let him go and watched him walk around the perimeter of the guest house to get to his truck. I waited while he started it up and maneuvered out around my place, taking a back way to get to the road so my parents wouldn’t see him. I closed my eyes and smiled to myself, feeling the lingering soreness of so much sex, the wetness down between my thighs.

  I would have to put it all out of my head before I checked in with my parents, but I could at least give myself a little moment to enjoy the feeling.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Cade

  I never thought I would be more grateful for the coming of harvest time as I was when we first started pulling out the tractors to begin working the fields. It was the hottest part of the season, and while I was definitely working up a sweat riding on the harvester and sorting through what it picked up, it wasn’t nearly as brutal as it would have been to be walking the fields with sprayers for pesticides or fertilizer.

  But it did mean that I was busier than ever. There was a window for each of the sections of the field, when the ripe corn was perfect to be harvested, and all three of us—Tuck, Bob, and me—had to make sure that it got done during those windows, or the corn or soybeans wouldn’t be high enough quality and the price would take a hit. That was the last thing that I wanted to have happen. Whatever happened between Autumn and me, and whenever it came to light, I wanted to make sure that Bob Nelson had no reason at all to complain about me as an employee.

  I was working harder than ever.— The harvester mowed down the rows of corn, then the individual ears had to be cut off of the stalk, and then had to be put through another machine to shuck them and separate the kernels from the cob, clean them, and store them.

  The Nelsons’ machinery could handle 400 bushels at a time, but with the amount that the farm was producing, that still meant hours and hours of adjusting the machine, checking that everything was working correctly, plucking corn from stalks, and more. It was back-breaking labor, and I could definitely see why Bob had thought to hire someone to help him with it this season.

  With how busy I was, I had known that I wouldn’t be able to see Autumn as much as I wanted to. I was exhausted when I finished up for the day, and on top of that, the sheer volume of work out in the field meant that we couldn’t take as many breaks for as long while the three of us worked.

  Autumn had warned me that it would be the case, and I’d more or less believed her, but I still hadn’t been prepared for just how intense it was. I regretted that I couldn’t take more than a few minutes out of the day to chat with her, but I reminded myself that in light of Bob’s prohibition against me getting involved with his daughter while I was working for him, it was probably just as well.

  A few days into harvest, I got to the Nelson farm bright and early. I’d found out the day before purely by accident that the earlier I started, the easier it went for the day as I got to spend more time working when it was coolest and could take a longer break during the hottest part of the day without risking Bob thinking that I was slacking off.

  I pulled up to the farm and got my water bottle, my keys, and the other odds and ends that I always brought out into the field with me arranged the way I wanted them. I’d noticed the day before that Tuck looked tenser than usual, but I’d put that all down to the stress of the harvest itself and the heat of the lingering late summer blast.

  In a week or two, it would be fall, the temperatures would go down, and hopefully Tuck would have settled down for the season, while he and his father waited for the full tally of money to come to them for their corn and soy.

  Tuck was sitting on the front porch of the house, enjoying a cup of coffee, and I gave him a friendly smile as I walked up. “Feel like we’ve been at this half our lives,” I said, to try and open up a conversation with him.

  “I’ve been at this my whole life,” Tuck countered.

  I shrugged. “I just meant this particular harvest, but I see where you’re coming from.” I knew no good would come from getting into another bout with Tuck; even if I knew that Bob Nelson was fair, I had his sister to think of, and his rea
ction to her dating me. It wouldn’t be good either for my job prospects or my romantic life to be on her brother’s bad side.

  “Trying to look the part and get some extra brownie points?” Tuck gestured to my outfit, but I couldn’t imagine what he was actually referring to. I’d worn the same types of jeans and shirts to work for his father for the whole season.

  “Just wore what I always wear,” I replied blandly.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he told me, setting his coffee cup down. “You’re trying to weasel your way into a permanent job on the farm.”

  I stared at him. “I’d like to be hired again if your Dad decides he needs help again; of course I would. But I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest I’m doing.”

  “You’re trying to muscle me out,” he said. I continued to stare at him; I’d thought—I’d hoped—we’d put this fight behind us.

  “You’re Bob’s son. How am I going to muscle you out of anything?” I shook my head; Tuck’s accusation made no sense to me, at all.

  “Always showing me up,” he told me. “Always working that little bit harder than me, always trying to make me look bad, all so you can convince Dad that you’re the one he should sell to someday.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that; it was so beyond the pale that even as I tried to find a way to start explaining how wrong Tuck was about my motives, I came up against a brick wall of just how incomprehensible it was.

  “I’m tired of it,” he continued. He lunged at me and I stepped back. I didn’t want to do anything to him—I wasn’t sure that Bob would be willing to back me if things went as far as actual blows—but I wasn’t about to let Tuck beat the tar out of me just to keep my job.

  “Hey there!” Bob stepped out of the house and looked from me to Tuck. Tuck struggled to right himself. He’d nearly tumbled into the dirt and grass in his lunge to grab me. “What’s going on here?” I glanced from Bob to Tuck and back again.