Melt For Him

by Lauren Blakely

  “Why don’t we see?”

  She took off, leading the way up the final switchback, then maintaining a steady speed down the other side of the hill. Running faster than usual, but not so much that she’d overdo it, she could see the river coming into closer view, and she was sure she’d be the first to the finish line. Her heart was pounding, her lungs were firing on all cylinders, and her calves were working overtime, but surely she could do it.

  In one swift motion, like the horse you didn’t see coming on the final turn, Becker flew past her, all six foot and then some of strong, broad, and muscled frame, beating her soundly as he tapped a big hand on the rock that marked the edge of the river.

  She finished a few seconds behind him, collapsing onto the rock and laughing.

  “Something funny?”

  But he was laughing, too. She wasn’t even sure why either of them found this so amusing. Maybe it was the incredulity of bumping into him, or maybe it was that they’d gone from bedtime companions, to photographer and subject, to temporary running partners. They could segue easily, it seemed, almost too easily, into these different roles.

  “Kind of random to run into you here,” she said.

  “Is it though? Or did you happen to mention you ran by the river in the mornings?”

  Tingles spread across her chest. “Did you come here looking for me?”

  He shrugged playfully. “Let’s just say I’m not disappointed to have run into you.”

  “It’s almost as if I dropped a hint in the hope that you might pick up on it.” she said, taking a step closer to him, wanting to close the distance even more.

  “Is that so? You’re a fine hint-dropper then, Megan, and I hope you don’t mind bumping into me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t mind it at all. Even though you beat me in our race. And you were letting me think the whole time that I might beat you, weren’t you?”

  He nodded proudly. “That was my MO.”

  “You are sneaky.” She smacked him on the chest. His very hard, very firm chest.

  “Now you’re playing dirty. I can’t smack you on your chest.”

  “I’m sure you could find ways to play dirty,” she said, and he tilted his head, watching her, waiting for her to make the next move even though they’d agreed on no moves. “But we’re not going to do that.”

  He shook his head. “We’re not going to do that at all,” he said, as he looked down at her hand still on his chest. A spark shot through her and desire took over. She spread her palm open against his T-shirt.

  A low rumble emanated from his throat. She quirked up the corner of her lips, her fingertips now dancing across his chest. Her hands had a mind of their own, as his chest became a playground. Her index finger traced the outline of his pecs, then darted down to those abs, sharply defined even through the T-shirt, like a ladder from his chest down to that terribly tempting waistband of his running shorts.

  That was the problem. He was so tantalizing to her. He was all man, all raw speed and strength. He could sling her over his shoulder and carry her for miles without breaking a sweat. Not that she wanted or needed to be carried, yet she found herself craving—intensely craving, deep in her gut—the shape of him, the size of him, the way he could overpower her in seconds.

  That combination of sheer power and utter control ratcheted up her hunger for him. She splayed her fingers across his abdomen, her pinkie inching close to his shorts, imagining what lay beneath. She wanted to feel him, to wrap her hand around him again, to take him all the way into her mouth.

  “Now you are playing dirty,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “And if you go any farther, I’m not going to want to stop.”

  “Me neither,” she whispered, then hung her head. Reluctantly, she moved her hand away, and the lack of contact felt like a sharp pain. Like a void that needed to be filled, but couldn’t because there were lines you cross and lines you don’t cross. She loved her brother more than anyone, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. Nor did she want to disappoint herself. Even though they weren’t on a path to a real future, she could already feel the first tugs of something with Becker, something more than the fling she’d envisioned the morning after they met. She pictured it playing out if they spent more time together, and she could sense how easily she could slide from wanting him to wanting all of him. Even if they returned to Plan A and simply enjoyed each other’s company while she was in town, she was sure she’d fall hard for him.

  With no safety net in sight.

  She’d vowed never to fall for a man with a dangerous job, because she had the blueprint of what she might become. She’d seen it in her own mother for years. A vacuum. A black hole of years missed.

  Images flickered by. A photo album of lost days and nights, with pictures of her mother leaving Megan and Travis to get themselves up every morning, make breakfast, pack lunch boxes, then find their own way home after school. They’d come home, make the dinner, do the laundry, help each other with homework, lean on each other more than her.

  Slowly, steadily her mom climbed her way out of the grief and the sorrow, and Megan found it hard to fault her for that kind of reaction to the love of your life dying. But she certainly didn’t want to chance that kind of life herself, no matter how much heat flared between her and Becker.

  She stared off at the river, slow-moving and meandering, moseying on down the riverbed, crossing rocks that jutted out of the mud. “I used to spend so much time here when I was a kid. I always ran off to the river when I was sad,” she said as she sank down on a rock. Maybe it was the river, maybe it was the memories, maybe it was him asking a simple yeah? that led her to keep talking as he joined her. “And then sometimes when I wasn’t sad. It just became my place, like a safe spot where I couldn’t get hurt. Travis started coming with me and we’d hang out by the river. I felt like this was the only place in the whole wide world that was immune to trouble.”

  “What’d you guys do here?”

  “We made mud pies. The best mud pies in the whole county. One time, we loaded them up in the crate attached to the back of my bike, and brought them back into town. We set up a little stand with a card table in the town square and tried to sell our mud pies.”

  He laughed softly. “Get any takers?”

  “Shockingly, no. But the local paper took our picture so we thought we were hot shit. Then we decided to bake brownies and sell those instead, and let me tell you—thanks to our mud pie picture in the paper we made a killing with our brownie stand. Called them Mud Pie Brownies.”

  “And no one was worried they were actually made with mud?”

  She gave him a sideways glance. “I was eight. Travis was twelve. We knew everyone. We weren’t trying to hoodwink the people of Hidden Oaks. But we did include extra dark chocolate and that’s why everyone loved them so much.”

  “You still make Mud Pie Brownies?”

  “Sometimes. I’m not that into cooking, but I’m damn good at baking.”

  “What else?”

  “What else do I bake?”

  He smiled lightly, then shook his head. “What else did you do at the river?”

  His voice had a soft quality to it, or maybe he was just relaxed, sitting here on a rock with her, enjoying her stories of how she’d grown up.

  “I can make an excellent dam. Don’t make a beaver joke,” she added quickly, fixing him with a serious stare.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “No beaver jokes, I swear.”

  “It’s all because of Travis. He taught me. We could spend hours laying twigs and stones and branches right over there.” She pointed to a bend in the river. “Doing everything we could to divert a little bit of water, and to see how long the dam would hold. He said it was, and I quote”—she began imitating her brother’s voice—“a vital skill for any sister of mine to have.”

  Becker nodded. “I can hear him saying that. It sounds like him.”

  Maybe talking about her brother wasn’t such a good id
ea, since he didn’t want anything to happen between them. Even so, she had such fond memories of her times with Travis here at the river, and sharing those stories with Becker simply felt right. This river was her place, the spot she’d run to, the place where she felt at peace with the world and all the terrible things that had happened to her family. The place she’d been when she decided to get her owl.

  She glanced over her shoulder at her owl. At its permanence on her skin. “The owl you asked about?”

  “Yes.” His eyes never strayed from her.

  “When I was younger, maybe seven or eight, there was an owl who showed up outside my house every night for several weeks. I swear this owl stood like a sentry by the peaked roof over the garage. I could see him from my second-floor bedroom window, and the owl seemed as if he was watching me with those unblinking eyes.”

  “Owls do that, don’t they?”

  His voice was calm and strong, and though she’d rarely shared her story before, she felt comfortable telling him. “I used to pretend the owl was an emissary for my father, guarding me, keeping me safe, watching over me. I’d grab my notebook and colored pencils, fling open the window, and stand at the windowsill to draw the creature,” she said, and she could hear the wistfulness in her own voice as she told the story that was so crystal clear in her memory. “And that’s why I have an owl on my shoulder.”

  “For your father,” he said, with something like reverence in his voice.

  “To keep him close to me. To remember him.”

  “That’s beautiful. Reminds me of soldiers who lose men on the battlefield and remember their fallen brothers with a tattoo,” he said, his dark eyes intensely serious.

  “Or cops. Or firefighters,” she offered, and he looked away briefly, and winced as if the mention was too much.

  She laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he turned his gaze back to her.

  “Thank you for sharing that story,” he said softly. “I’d have thought it was a symbol of wisdom or something. But this just shows that even symbols are personal.”

  “They are,” she said, and she was tempted to run her fingertips along his jawline, or gently finger a strand of the soft, thick hair that she’d loved holding on to the other night.

  “And is that one of the reasons why you want to open your own tattoo shop in Portland someday?”

  A grin broke across her face. “I never told you I wanted to open a shop,” she said, but she wasn’t annoyed. She was impressed that he’d figured it out.

  “I know,” he said, raising his eyebrows in playful acknowledgment. “But I put two and two together and figured that was your long-term goal with the job you’re taking.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I want to do. Don’t get me wrong—I like photography. But I think I could be happy for a long, long time doing tattoos. I love drawing, and I like that tattoos matter to the people who are getting them. I spent a week in San Diego last year, learning from this guy Trey who works at a shop there, and has all this beautiful art on his body for his family, and for his young daughter and his wife. It’s gorgeous work, and she has some designs on her body too. It’s this deep and meaningful expression of love and hope,” she said, and a part of her expected him to shut down from all this openness, all this talking. He was a man who’d admitted he liked barriers. But he didn’t start layering bricks around himself. He listened. He understood. She kept going. Being here made her feel adventurous, and she was eager to know more about this man. “What about you? How did you know you wanted to be a fireman?” she asked, tilting her head and looking at his beautiful face and his haunting brown eyes.

  He leaned forward, resting his hands on his thighs and meeting Megan’s inquisitive stare. “When I was nine I was out riding bikes with my brother. Griffin’s two years younger than me, but a sturdy kid who knew how to ride. Even so, he fell off his bike while turning onto a nearby street too sharply. Knocked into the curb and crashed. Broke his arm. A piece of the bone was sticking out,” Becker said, as he recounted.

  Megan winced at the image.

  “I ditched my bike on the sidewalk, picked him up, and carried him all the way home while he cried, making sure the arm didn’t move,” he continued. “My mom wasn’t home, so I found a scarf, turned it into a sling, and tied it at his neck, even though I’d never done it before.” He mimed the motions as he told the story. “Then I called her; she raced home and took him to the hospital to get it set.”

  “Wow,” Megan said, in awe. “It’s like you knew what to do on an instinctual, innate level. You knew how to make a sling, keep a bone immobile.”

  “Yeah, I think it just kind of fit. It was just something that I could do. So, honestly, this is what I’ve always known. Always done.”

  Megan felt a warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with admiration. His job was dangerous, but it was beautiful too, and the way he told the story made her see it ever so briefly in a different light. Maybe it was because he was a lover—a onetime lover—rather than a part of her family. That gave her enough distance for now to see the job through the prism of something other than her usual worry and fear.

  “I love that story.” He was calmness, he was patience, he was the person holding your hand while cutting you out of a car toppled over on the side of the road. “It’s like you were graced with the natural instinct to save.”

  Something dark passed over his eyes, and he clenched his fists as he looked away. “Don’t say that,” he muttered. “Don’t say stuff like that.”

  “Why?” she asked softly.

  He shook his head and didn’t answer her. Just scrubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw and exhaled hard.

  “Hey,” she said, softly placing a hand on his shoulder. He tensed but didn’t flinch. “You okay?”

  He nodded.

  She wanted to ask why he’d moved to Hidden Oaks, what he’d left behind in Chicago. She wanted to tell him she was amazed at how he’d rescued those kids a few weeks ago. Yet she knew none of those things were what he needed to hear right now. That now wasn’t the time for praise or for inquisition.

  “Where’s your brother now? Is he still in Chicago?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. He’s in L.A. Where you used to be.”

  She raised her eyebrows in curiosity. “Is he an actor? Screenwriter? Director? Model?” she asked, rattling off the most common professions.

  He laughed. “He’s an animator at a visual effects house. He does some amazing design work, and he emails a lot of it to me in advance, so I’m pretty lucky getting to see his work before anyone else. He’s the sensitive, artistic one,” he added playfully.

  “Don’t kid yourself. You’re sensitive, too.”

  He pretended to cringe.

  “You are,” she said insistently. “And I like it. Anyway, so you’re a fireman and he’s an animator,” she said, stretching her arms out wide to show the distance between the two jobs.

  “Don’t forget bar owner,” he added. “Though I believe I could say the same for you. Your brother’s a fireman and you’re a photographer who loves to draw, and would rather be inking designs on people’s skin.”

  A smile bloomed on her face. He understood her so well already. “Yes, that’s me. And that’s so cool that your brother’s an artist too. I’d love to see some of the movies he’s worked on.”

  “You’d like his stuff. He worked on an animated flick most recently, and was responsible for making sure the feathers on a talking bird looked realistic.”

  “Speaking of animals, the talking and non-talking variety, I’m working on your raccoon,” she offered in a light voice as she stood. He rose with her. She watched his profile, and the corner of his lips quirked up.

  “Are you now?”

  She nodded. “Yep. Someday you’re going to have a raccoon tattoo. I just know it.”

  “From your mouth to…” he trailed off as he turned to look at her, his eyes hooked on her mouth as he said those words. He reached to
ward her, running a finger across her lips. “Your beautiful, gorgeous mouth.”

  Time stopped for a moment as she took in his words, his gesture, and the thoroughly tender and completely seductive way he talked to her. The seconds started again when he leaned forward, lightly dusting her lips with his. Then he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. “Megan,” he said, his voice rough and full of need. “You make it so hard to resist you. I’m trying, I swear I’m trying. But I don’t know how to right now.”

  She ached all over for him, a sweet and agonizing ache, and all she wanted was to soothe it. “I don’t know how to, either.”

  Like falling snow that melts when it hits the ground, her reasons turned into nothing. Because this—the connection between them—this was something.

  She also didn’t want to resist him. So she kissed him back. She didn’t take her time. She didn’t move in slowly. Instead, she gripped his hair in her fingers and kissed him deep and hard.

  …

  He wouldn’t be getting any awards for self-control. He wouldn’t be receiving a plaque for honoring a buddy’s wish.

  At the moment, he didn’t have it in him to care.

  When her lips fused with his as if nothing else mattered in the world, he lost all sense of why he wasn’t supposed to touch her. He forgot Travis’s warning in the press of her body, in the taste of her breath, in the sweet smell of her hair.

  She was leading the kiss; her lips were crushing his, and she’d gone from curious and inquisitive to fevered and bursting with need. He liked both parts of her, maybe more than he should. He liked that she was open and caring, that she was fiery in the bedroom, and he liked the free spirit he saw in her. Right now though, what he liked most of all was how her touch made his body buzz, like his bones were humming. His mind went hazy, his dark thoughts slunk away, and all he was left with was the pure rush of the physical—the bolt of heat that tore through him, her sexy whimpers as they devoured each other in a frenzy of teeth and lips and tongue, her fingers speared through his hair, holding on for dear life, it seemed.