Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3)

by Nicole Helm

  “I guess I should’ve known that you’d be completely and utterly impatient.” His eyes stayed glued to hers as he continued to trace those flittering, unknown patterns against her skin.

  “Guess you should have.”

  He pressed a kiss to the sensitive triangle of skin. “Well, Lina, love, I am going to be completely and utterly inflexible back.” He kissed the skin again, this time dragging his tongue over it.

  She nearly cried out at the insane wave of want that swept through her. She wanted him—now, fast, and he wanted to take it slow and be hideously, obnoxiously—

  “Oh,” she breathed. He was slowly unzipping her zipper, his tongue following the path it opened. Oh, indeed.

  He tugged her pants down slowly, following each exposure of skin with his mouth—kissing, licking, nibbling, and she could only lay there as the aching, restless feeling coiled inside of her deeper and darker. Hotter. More everything.

  Eventually his mouth left her skin as he pulled the jeans completely from her legs and dropped them on the floor. Through some sheer force of will she managed to find her voice. Her words were flippant, though her voice was anything but.

  “Don’t you dare get back on this bed unless you are pantsless.”

  He flashed a sharp, knowing grin and then his hands went to the button of his pants.

  Again, he took his sweet time and again she found herself getting impatient. He unzipped his pants and let them fall open, but he didn’t immediately push them down. The only view afforded to her was the tuft of dark hair. Lina was very curious where that might end.

  She grunted in frustration. “If I’d known you were going to be this slow…” She trailed off, unfortunately incapable of coming up with an end to that sentence. What would she have done? Found someone else. Not likely.

  When she met his gaze again, he looked so pleased with himself. “You would have what, sweetheart?

  “Oh, don’t call me sweetheart,” she said with a little sneer.

  He laughed and pushed the jeans down his lean hips, and then off, so he was standing in her bedroom in nothing but a pair of loose black boxer shorts.

  She had a man in nothing but boxer shorts in her bedroom. That was happening to her life right now. Her grin slowly spread wider and wider at the thought.

  “My, aren’t you pleased with yourself?” he said in a slightly mocking tone.

  “You have no idea.”

  This time when he crawled back up onto the bed, she didn’t mind that he took his time. Because his mouth took a lazy detour, his tongue dragging along her calf, his hand doing something unspeakably erotic to the back of her knee. She was starting to think each teasing touch might send her over the frantic edge, except it was never enough. Each gentle brush of his mouth to her knee, every rough touch of his fingertips to her inner thigh. It wasn’t enough and she didn’t know how to ask him for more. She wasn’t sure how to ask for much of anything.

  But Ace kept moving upward—a brush of fingers against the cotton of her underwear that made her squeak, an openmouthed kiss on the sensitive skin of her abdomen, until he was completely leveraged over her.

  His gaze, a fathomless dark blue, met hers. It was intimate and intense and her heart didn’t have the slightest bit of clue why it was behaving this way.

  Her entire life she had believed in science and reason to explain everything. She had adopted her father’s cold and calculated outlook on life from before she could even remember. She’d been so desperate for him to see her as worthy, and she had spent too long trying to reach those heights. It was only last year when all the family secrets had come out along with her father’s MS diagnosis that she had realized she’d been living for him.

  And he wasn’t really worth living for. He wasn’t an evil man, but he wasn’t a good or loving one, and she’d turned herself into much the same. Hard, exacting, not very lovable.

  She had been in her mid-twenties before she’d realized she’d made herself miserable trying to be that, and she didn’t want to be it anymore.

  It was why she’d moved to Kalispell. It was why she’d gone to a bar after this man. Maybe some of it had to do with Jess and her long-lost brother, but most of it was about Lina herself.

  All of this right here was because she wanted Ace, and it didn’t have anything to do with reason. It was unreasonable, but her heart seemed to understand his heart. Out of nowhere, she realized maybe she could understand why people believed in soul mates or true love or things like that.

  Her heart beat in her chest solely now, harder and harder as this beautiful man looked deep into her eyes.

  “You’re just gorgeous,” he said as though he meant it, as though it was some irrevocable fact.

  And she believed that. She believed his reverence. She believed he saw her that way. She believed here was where he wanted to be.

  So she curled her palms around the back of his neck and pulled him down. Not for a kiss filled with lust or desperation. She kissed him with a gentleness she wasn’t altogether sure she’d ever known she possessed. She kissed him with emotions that made her uncomfortable. She kissed him with the feeling that she had so prided herself on never being felled by. She kissed him openly and honestly in a way she’d never been with anyone else in her entire life.

  And he returned it.

  *

  Ace was having a hard time breathing. Lina’s gentle, heartfelt kiss was something he’d never in his entire life experienced. It was a gentleness and a sweetness he’d been waiting his whole life for—something he never would’ve admitted to himself even a few hours ago.

  But she touched him like he mattered and it touched the aching spot of loneliness he’d never been able to fill. Someone to look at him as though he wasn’t a burden or someone to look through, someone to despair over.

  Lina’s kiss was gentle and sweet and reverent. Lina’s kiss… He thought maybe it was changing him, though he couldn’t have explained how a kiss could change a person. Or why her kiss would change him. He only had that crazy thought in his head.

  So, he returned that sweetness. He poured his own into it. The sweetness he never would’ve thought existed inside of himself, but something about Lina made it seem necessary. Something about Lina made everything feel important.

  So, he kissed her and touched her as though she were some precious thing he’d been afforded. Gently, carefully, reverently.

  But Lina, being Lina, wasn’t quite so content with gentle. She arched against him, she gripped his shoulders, she begged with her mouth and her body and her arms for more.

  God, but he wanted to give her more.

  She pressed her small, capable hand against his chest, not as a stop, but almost as if she could calm the all-too-rapid beating of his heart with the gentle pressure. Her mouth brushed against his, almost reassuring, as if he were the one who needed to be reassured.

  Her gaze met his and her lips curved, this beautiful woman who’d somehow dug into him in a way he didn’t understand, didn’t know how to fight. He shouldn’t be here, not with all her connections to a life he’d fled, and yet…

  There was nowhere he was supposed to be, so what did it matter?

  Chapter Nine

  Lina could feel Ace’s heart thudding under her hand. There was something steadying about the rapid beat that matched hers. Something steadying about the look of uncertainty in his eyes.

  As much as some certainty might be calming, she had to think his uncertainty had to do with this wave of overwhelming feeling. He felt it, too, this too much, too big thing expanding her chest. And, no, she hadn’t exactly been with a man this way before, but she knew this was different than…

  It was more than just a physical thing. It had to do with emotions—those pesky things she’d spent most of her life pushing away, ignoring, trying to rise above. But Ace pulled them out of her before she had much chance to instinctually hide them.

  Or maybe she’d only needed a fresh start somewhere away from her family to be so
meone else. Someone truer. The self she’d always tried to pretend didn’t exist, but did under all the fear and all the trying.

  Plus, Ace was really, really, really good looking without his clothes on. His body was unfairly gorgeous, all carved, lean muscle and sun-burnished skin. She could see from every little scar, every involuntary flex of muscle, he was a man who’d fought his way through life.

  She was the opposite—so much handed to her, so many options. Life had been easy if a little lonely, and she wanted to give him some of her easy, take on some of his fight. She wanted to give as much as she wanted to take and she’d never been much of a fifty-fifty kind of girl before.

  A scary thing to want to meet in the middle. And yet, not so scary that she was going to back off. Certainly not when he lowered a kiss to her mouth and lowered his body onto hers. He was a hard wall of heat, and somehow being pressed into the mattress by that was as exhilarating as the way he shifted until the hard length of him was nestled between her thighs.

  She sighed against his mouth and she felt his lips curve. The sharp smile that made her want to melt into him. Which was easy to do with his hard body pressing against hers, heat and steel and…hers.

  For tonight, he was hers, and she would hold onto the thought. She filtered her fingers through his hair, down his neck, the strong curve of his back. She pressed her palms to his skin and learned the shape of him. All the while his mouth lazily explored hers. His tongue swept in, discovering places she hadn’t known existed, building the flame of want higher and higher.

  She hadn’t realized she was moving against him or he was moving against her until the long, hard length of him slid against her, exactly where he would enter if they weren’t wearing underwear.

  She didn’t want to be wearing underwear. She didn’t want to be separated. She wanted to know what it would feel like, not just to be filled—but to be filled by him.

  “Do you have a condom?” she breathed, because she was too much of a doctor not to need that, but apparently enough of a novice she hadn’t consider that beforehand.

  “Yes,” he murmured against her. “Still that impatient?”

  “Always.”

  He chuckled, his chest rumbling against hers, every move or sound or touch vibrating through her in a way that could only ever make her impatient. He kissed her neck, lingering at the curve when she shivered against the way the heat of his mouth shuddered through her.

  “Ace.”

  He laughed again, shaking his head as he rolled off of her and grabbed the pants he’d earlier discarded. He pulled a condom packet out of a pocket and very carefully placed it on the top edge of the bed. “There, it’s out, but we’re not quite that far yet.”

  When she scowled, he grinned and every impatient, worried, irritated piece of her just…withered away in the brightness of his smile. In the rightness of it, because maybe she’d never believed in fairytales, and she never would, but Ace made her believe in…something.

  Something bigger than herself, than what she would have chosen. Something about souls recognizing each other, like her grandfather had declared once upon a time.

  Love. She believed in love, even if she wasn’t sure she was in it yet, she believed in seeds that could grow.

  Then Ace was on the bed with her again, next to her instead of above her, but she could hardly tell because his hands roamed over her—so big and sure and encompassing she had to close her eyes to absorb it all.

  His fingers trailed over each breast, exploring, teasing, down her torso until it reached the hem of her underwear yet again. But this time he didn’t stop to draw patterns or to make her even more impatient.

  He pulled the underwear down, his fingers trails of heat even as she was now completely exposed to the air of the room. But the air had grown hot, too heavy, like another presence. Like magic around them.

  His fingers danced along her legs, an erratic, unpredictable beat that somehow drew everything inside of her tighter, edgier. And then his palms were spreading her thighs, and she had to look, she had to…

  When his blue gaze met hers, he slid his finger along her most delicate flesh. She gasped—an actual theater-esque gasp—because the intensity of his gaze and his fingers on her, and then slowly, slowly in her, was…

  Indescribable. It was a poetry she didn’t know, didn’t have the words for. But she arched into it as he entered her, finding ways to tease her, to drive her to a moan, a sigh. She gripped the sheets beneath her, all the while their gazes locked and his fingers stroked, slowly, delicate, with an interminable patience.

  Until his gaze dropped to where he touched her and she could find her voice, her irritation at taking everything so dang slow.

  “Ace. Please.” She would beg. She had never begged for a thing in her life, but she would do it now. Only for him and this.

  That precipice, the edge, it remained just out of her reach. She was shaking, hot all over, desperate for one last stroke that would give her the orgasm she so desperately craved, but he stopped, grabbing the condom and kneeling on the bed so he could open it.

  He rolled on the condom and she tried to focus on all those good riotous feelings, rather than the nerves, the uncertainty. Because she knew how this worked and it would be just fine.

  His rough, scarred hands slid up the length of her thighs, gentle teasing touches that didn’t exactly eradicate the nervous spin of her thoughts, but at least dulled them. It reminded her of how close she’d been, allowed her to think of how much bigger the pleasure might be when they were really, fully together.

  He nestled at her entrance, a teasing flex of his hips only giving her the slightest hint of what was to come. But then he was easing inside, deeper and fuller, and no matter that she thought this should be it, that he couldn’t possibly be closer or more, he kept going.

  “Lina,” he said, his voice a strained, feral thing.

  She forced her gaze to his, her pulse beating panicked overtime in her neck, her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest. Everything inside of her tensing and holding too tight to breathe.

  His mouth curved the slightest bit, the tiniest flash of a hook in the right corner. “You’ll survive, I promise.”

  She huffed out something—a breath, a laugh, she wasn’t quite sure what it was, all in all. She was still too…focused on the way he fit inside of her. But something about the gentleness in his voice refueled her determination to be fine, because she did not need to be told she’d survive.

  She knew. She was in charge of her own survival, and so despite the fact that it…well, not quite hurt, just wasn’t quite as easy or as comfortable as she might have preferred, she was going to find a way to make it what people so often lost their heads and careers and sometimes even lives over.

  She relaxed and he stroked his hand up and down her side, his mouth found her breast, his tongue teasing her nipple until she sighed and all but melted back into the bed.

  He moved, slightly, and some of that tension eased, loosened. She traced her fingers down his back and he scraped his teeth against her nipple, which caused her to squeak and arch against him.

  And that was…that was good. The arching, the movement, so she did it again, shifting against the hard length of him that had joined with the soft heat of her.

  He groaned, she could feel it vibrate through her and it…pleased her. That something she did could draw out such an involuntary noise from him. Him. So gorgeous and sure and… She held some power.

  So, she moved, and Ace let her. His hands held her hips, but he didn’t guide her. She was the one in charge, moving herself against him, finding the ways to move that made the discomfort ease and the pleasure spread again.

  She watched his jaw harden, watched his amazing blue eyes narrow, and found herself smiling when she moved a certain way and he closed his eyes briefly.

  “Ace,” she said, surprised it was her voice that was a breathy, thready thing in the air.

  He opened his eyes back up.

&
nbsp; “Participate,” she instructed.

  “I’m trying to be…” His jaw tensed even further, each tip of his finger digging just a little harder into her hips. “Gentle.”

  “Well, you can stop that now. I’m okay. It’s…” She was a doctor. She talked about intimate things with people all the time, and still she blushed. “Don’t be gentle. Be…” His fingers flexed into her hips again and, slowly, he eased out of her.

  Then thrust back in, hitting some spot that very nearly made her vision go white. Or bright light. Or something.

  “Yes, that,” she all but panted against him.

  His grin did things to her heart she’d rather not analyze. Luckily, his lazy movements inside of her did things that made it impossible to do much thinking.

  With each stroke, he lost some of his determined tension, he let go, he enjoyed, and as he moved faster, the climax brewing climbed higher. Everything in him seemed to match exactly where she needed him to, and when he bent down and drew her bottom lip between his teeth, she shattered against him.

  The pleasure came in waves, somehow bigger and deeper than anything she’d done for herself. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight through the blast of climax, the shudder of release, and the simply perfect moment of being his.

  *

  Ace held himself still against the pulsing heat of her climax, reveling in all he shouldn’t. That she was his and his alone, that she held onto him as though he were the center of everything.

  Her hands eventually lost their tight grip on him, sliding down his back. So, he moved, slowly, carefully. He knew she didn’t care for his patience or his gentleness, but somehow he knew she deserved it all the same.

  Care. He’d spent so many years trying to beat care out of himself, but she pulled it out of him so easily. Lina. Mine.

  He closed his eyes against the thought and moved, into her, with her. She dragged her fingers up his back then locked them together behind his neck.

  “Do it again,” she said with a smile.

  He laughed. She killed him, in the best possible ways. This woman so different than everyone he’d ever known.