“It is!” She may as well have stomped her foot.
“No way in Hell! I’m not jeopardizing you.”
“What, but everyone else can? They can all honor their fathers, their mothers by stepping up for this crew, but I can’t?”
“She has a point,” Ryker whispered.
“Shut the fuck up and imagine this is Harper,” I said, swinging my finger at him.
He threw his hands up and backed away.
Emerson’s eyes spat fire at me, her hands fisted on her hips, more than standing her ground, but mounting a defense I couldn’t beat. “There’s no difference between me and them, Bash.”
“Yes, there is.”
“And what is that?”
“I’m not in love with them!” Well, shit. That was not how I intended that to come out.
Chapter Eleven
Emerson
He loves me. It took me a full minute for that to sink in. “What?” Classy.
He swallowed, running his hand over his hair. My God, my always-in-control Bash was flustered. “I always have. I never stopped.”
“Hey guys,” Knox leaned over my shoulder, “as much as you guys are earning huge swoon points from the female population of Legacy, this might not be the right time.”
I blinked, finally pulling my attention from Bash to see that every eye in the room was on us. Well, as ratings of awkward go, this might be up there with the whole no-clothes-at-work nightmare.
“Sebastian Vargas,” Bash spoke into the podium’s microphone. “I’m the last name.”
No. No. No. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to stay here. Instead of securing Bash’s dream, I’d just destroyed it.
“Accepted,” Mayor Davis said, glancing at me, then back to the petition.
“You’re still one member off,” Mr. Henry announced.
“Bullshit!” Mom called out, on her feet at the end of the second row. She gave me a thumbs up and sat back down.
“You have nineteen members, therefore you are point-four off.”
“Would you like me to chop someone in half to meet your requirement?” Bash asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
I elbowed him in the side and took the podium. “Emerson Kendrick. I will serve as the crew’s manager under the superintendent…an assistant of sorts.” I looked down the row, and Spencer gave me a single nod, agreeing to the position I’d just pulled out of my ass. “I’m more than capable of passing any test to include a pack test for regulation purposes, and I’m a legacy. What more would you like?”
“You not on the damned crew,” Bash mumbled.
I glared in his direction. “I’m not going near a fire, now shut up and let me save you.”
He wisely shut up.
“Stop being obstinate, Davis,” Mr. Hartwell called from a few rows back. “They have the approval of this town, and when it comes down to it, you’re a servant of the people. An electable servant at that.”
Mayor Davis bristled at the principal calling him out, but pulled the council closer. They talked amongst themselves for a moment before he said, “We accept your crew, Mr. Vargas.”
The crowd roared their approval.
“We request nine months to be fully operational by next fire season,” Bash pushed.
“Granted,” Davis said, banging his stupid little gavel.
Bash scooped me off my feet and up against his massive frame, searing me with a kiss that was anything but made-for-public. I ignored the catcalls and kissed him back with every fiber of my being, knowing that nothing could be sweeter than this moment.
Until reality set in. “Put me down,” I said against his mouth.
With lowered eyebrows, he did as I asked. “What?—”
He was interrupted by the congratulations of our crew and the whole of the Legacy population that had made it into the meeting, which allowed me to sneak out the side door.
Once clear, I leaned against the brick building, gulping in huge breaths of cool air. I’d made him stay. I was forcing him into the one thing he didn’t want, all because he was too scared to let me near a fire.
And loving me? How the hell did that all fit into this?
“What are you doing?” Bash asked, coming through the side door.
“Avoiding you,” I answered honestly.
“Okay, take it from someone who expertly avoided you for years, it’s not possible in a town this small.” He blocked out the sun, hovering over me and tilting my chin to meet his eyes.
Maybe this wouldn’t hurt so badly if I didn’t love him so much.
“Then you should leave. That was always your plan, right? And I just…screwed it.”
“Yes, that was the plan.”
“And loving me? Was that just to get me to back off the team?”
He winced. “That was the truth. I have always loved you, Emerson. There has never been a moment since I recognized what that emotion meant that I didn’t equate it with you. As kids, as teens, as adults…you are it for me. My beginning, my end. My past, my present, and every day of my future, if you’ll just shut your pessimistic brain off long enough to believe me.”
“But you don’t want to stay here,” I argued, unwilling to even chance the belief that he really loved me. Me loving Bash was one thing, it simply was. But him loving me? That opened me to a world of hurt and destruction.
“I didn’t. I’d actually planned on asking you to come to California with me.”
“You did not.” I shook my head. “Don’t you dare play games with me.”
“Games? Fuck, woman. I take a chance on this—on us— ready to dive in and give it everything I have, and you accuse me of playing games?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time you fucked—”
“Don’t go there,” he shouted. “The pull between us? That fire that catches and burns us from the first touch? That’s not even a tenth of how deeply, dangerously, completely I love you.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer, just picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder as he headed down Main Street. Any argument I could have made would have been moot, he’d just keep going, so I kept my energy and gave sarcastic waves to the people who cheered us on as they left the town hall.
We passed his Rover. Now I was a little worried. Where the hell were we—
He opened the door to the Chatterbox and marched me straight through the crowd to the back wall. “I’m not in the mood for pancakes, Bash!”
“Good because we’re not eating,” he agreed, lowering me to slide along his body to the floor. “And for the dessert I’m craving, we’d need to be in private, and you’d need to be naked,” he whispered in my ear, sending rockets of pure lightning through my nervous system.
Yes, please.
“Now, look, so I can get you out of here and celebrate with that dessert.”
He tilted my head and pointed to a freshly carved section of the wall.
Sebastian loves Emerson.
There it was, etched into the very history of our town. He’d done it before the hearing, before I volunteered…because he truly loved me. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I tried unsuccessfully to blink them away.
“No crying,” Bash said softly, wiping the escapees away with his thumbs. “You’ll never cry because of me again, I swear it. Emmy, I knew that if you wouldn’t come with me, I’d have to stay. There was no way I’d be able to leave you behind. Not when you’re the air I breathe.”
“You’re giving up everything for me,” I whispered.
“I’m gaining everything because of you,” he argued, pressing a kiss to my mouth. “If Spencer can be here, can tolerate being near me after what I put him through, then I can handle the guilt of having done it. And if I can love you well enough to make up for leaving you, then I can be happy here. I can be happy anywhere as long as I know I’m coming home to you.”
I leaned up on my toes and kissed him, afraid that my heart my actually explode if I loved him any more at that moment. “You’ll always have me to com
e home to,” I promised against his mouth.
“It’s about damn time!” Agnes called out from behind the bar as Bash carried me out of the diner.
But it wasn’t overdue. Before, we had been too young, neither of us knowing what the world was going to shape us into. Now, we were ready, both realizing that while we’d grown, we still fit perfectly.
On our way out, Bash kicked the lowest hinge on the door, then yanked it back into position, still managing to hold me.
It closed with a perfect, high-pitched squeak.
Epilogue
Emerson
Nine months later
We needed more couches.
The Legacy Hotshot Crew, otherwise known as Team Yet-to-be-determined, consumed every available piece of furniture in the great room and then sat on the floor, all glancing around the room, taking stock of one another.
For some, like the members Bash had recruited from California, it was a new start, a fresh team in a different state. For the legacies, it was a homecoming almost eleven years in the making.
“I told you there weren’t enough seats,” I said to Bash, moving my fingers so the mini-blinds snapped closed, obscuring us from everyone outside his office.
“Order more couches,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind me.
“Don’t you—mmmm,” I moaned as he set his lips to my neck. “Sebastian Vargas, there are people out there.”
“Emerson Kendrick, the only person I’m concerned with is the one in here,” he murmured, setting his tongue to my skin. Need crashed through me.
“That’s not fair. You know that’s my trigger spot,” I whispered, arching so my ass rubbed against his already-hard erection.
He lifted the bottom of my blouse and spread his palm over my bare stomach. “All of you is my trigger spot, and you think that’s not fair?”
His fingers slid past the waistline of my shorts, popping the button on his way. “Oh God,” I moaned as they skimmed the band of my panties before plunging into my warmth, rubbing against my clit. “Bash…” I tried to concentrate, but his fingers…God, his fingers… “We have to…the meeting,” I gasped as he pinched me lightly, and then sent his other hand up my shirt to cup my breast under my bra, rolling and tweaking the nipple.
Damn it, the man knew exactly which buttons to push to swiftly bring me to the brink of an orgasm.
“We have fifteen minutes. Do you know what I can do with fifteen minutes?”
“Yes,” I answered as he stroked lower, slipping a finger, then two inside me, using his palm to keep the pressure on my clit.
“I like it when you say yes,” he growled in my ear, spinning us so I faced his desk.
“Bash,” I whimpered, reaching behind me to grasp his dick and squeezing gently. “I don’t think we can.” God, I wanted to. I always wanted to. You’d think after being together these last months that the crippling need we had for one another would fade a bit. It had only grown more intense.
“We can,” he said firmly, stroking my g-spot. My knees buckled, and he caught me, licking back up my neck and pinching my nipple. “But only if you want me, baby. Do you want me?”
My breath came in increasingly stuttered breaths as he worked his fingers inside me, pumping me, priming me. “I want…I want there to not be twenty people outside the door.”
“Do you want me inside you, Emerson? It’s a yes or no question.”
Another pump. Another rub. Pressure coiled inside me, ready to spring, and my body didn’t care that the crew was thirty feet away. “Do you want me?” I asked, turning the tables.
He pushed me against the desk, bending me over the width before pulling my shorts off my thighs to pool at my feet. “I always want you. I wake up hard for you, I eat my meals wishing it was you, I can hardly wait to get into bed so I can spend my night loving you.”
If I weren’t already a boneless heap, I would have melted into the desk. He dropped to his knees behind me, kissing each of the globes of my ass, then sliding my thong off to join my shorts. Then he spread me and set his mouth to the very spot I needed him, licking and sucking my clit, then fucking me with his tongue.
I bit my hand to keep from screaming.
“No, no,” he said, rising behind me, his shorts falling to the floor from the sound of it. “This office is soundproof, Emerson. I want to hear you scream my name.”
“Yes, please, Bash,” I begged, knowing he wanted the words. “Now.”
He lined us up and slammed home, sinking inside me with a perfection I still wondered at. “Bash!” his name ripped from my throat as he started to pound, hitting the very spots that drove me wild. Thank you, God, for birth control. We’d ditched the condoms so long ago that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be separated from him by a tiny layer of plastic.
“Fuck. Emerson. Baby, you’re so tight, so fucking amazing,” he said in time with his fierce thrusts.
“Please,” I keened, pushing my ass back against him with each push. He kept a steady, almost inhuman rhythm, but I knew from the catches in his breath just how difficult it was for him to hold back. “Bash, please!”
“Do you need me to finish you, baby?” His hand switched from the vice-grip he’d had on my hips to the inside of my thigh, close, but not quite there. “Where do you need me?’
“Touch me, damn it!” I ordered, not in the mood for his games. Not when he had me wound this tight, this desperate for release.
He laughed low and sexy, his scruff scraping my ear. “Anything for you,” he said, reaching between us to rub my clit as he pounded into me.
I tried to muffle my cries, but couldn’t, and when that wave finally crested, pulling me over with it, I screamed his name.
“Yes,” he hissed, then pulled out, spun me around and lifted me against him as he backed into the huge armchair he kept in the corner. Sitting, I straddled him, taking him back inside me with a gasp as he pushed through my hyper-sensitive folds. “I love you,” he swore, gripping my hair with one hand and my hip with the other.
“I love you,” I replied. My smile spread slowly, but I began to rise and fall quickly, giving him the speed I knew he needed. Both his hands dropped to my ass, using the incredible strength in his arms to guide my movements faster, harder.
I rode him until he came, watching his eyes burn green, the look of absolute contentment spreading across his features before he pulled my head to his shoulder so he could hold me. “You are a goddess,” he whispered.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I answered with a laugh.
“But seriously, Emerson. With all the crew out there? You couldn’t wait until tonight?” he joked.
I smacked his sculpted chest. “Get dressed and get out there!”
We tossed clothes at each other, scrambling to put ourselves back together. I tossed my hair into a make-shift bun, but there was no hiding the flush in my cheeks, or the beard-burn on my neck.
Once we were presentable, we walked into the great room, hand in hand. Spencer stood as we made it to the group. I looked at the faces, some we barely knew, and others we’d grown up with, mourned with, changed with. We’d been burned alive, decimated, rebuilt our town, our team and came back stronger.
“Welcome to the Legacy Hotshots. As for a team name—”
“Team Phoenix,” I blurted out. “We’re pretty good at rising from the ashes.”
The legacies glanced at one another and back to us, all nodding in agreement. Bash kissed me, uncaring that everyone watched. “Team Phoenix it is,” he announced loudly, then whispered in my ear, “We’re even better the second time around.”
He was right. We were. Damaged and whole, lust and love, and utterly, imperfectly perfect. He looked back to the crew and handed the floor to Spencer.
“Now let’s get to work.”
The End
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Acknowledgments
Thank you, my Heavenly Father, for bringing us through the hardest year of our lives and forging us stronger in that crucible.
Thank you to my love, Jason. This one was written in the fury of the storm, and you, as always were my safe harbor. I have no idea what I’ve ever done to deserve you, but man, you are truly spectacular as a husband, a father, and best friend. Thank you to our kids, Emily, Aaron, Aidan, Chase, Brody, and Audrey-Grace…you guys were rocks during these last couple of uncertain years, and never waivered from your one desire—to keep your little sister.
To all the industry peeps, the CP’s (here’s looking at you, editor Molly), the publicists (Melissa!!!!), the formatting, the indie authors who stood up and helped when I looked around and realized I had no idea what I was doing… you’re all amazing. Isabelle, Christine, Mia, Rose, Corinne, Lauren, Laura, Alessandra, Claire, thank you for guiding me!!! Winter, Katrina, everyone who pushed for the original anthology, thank you! Everyone else…well, you know who you are, and I’m keeping this one short on the industry side.
This novella was written in the three weeks that we learned our daughter would be freed for adoption from the Jefferson County, NY foster system. I wrote it while we packed our house, painted the walls, dealt with attorneys and planned our cross-country move. Once my desk was packed up, I wrote it on an ironing board. No, I’m not kidding. I finished it the night we adopted our daughter and turned it in the next morning as we closed up our house in NY and drove to Colorado, and therefore, these acknowledgments will be a wee bit different.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for the gift of our daughter. I will never take the blessing of this family for granted.
Thank you to the tireless worker of the Jefferson County DSS, especially Steve Barker and Erica Whitmore, for your incredible dedication to the kids of Watertown. Thank you to the court system who may have blanched, but still helped push through the fastest DSS adoption in the history of the county. Thank you to our attorney, Sue Sovie, for dropping everything for us, staying late and coming in early so our Little Miss could finally be a Yarros. The world misses your passion, your dedication, and your remarkable tenacity that I know is being put to good use in Heaven.
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