Red Hot

by Lisa Childs

  “You’re a mess,” he replied with brutal honesty. “You need to sober up.”

  Braden pointed to the wedding invitation. “That sobered me up. I’ll never get drunk again.”

  Wyatt picked up the half-empty bottle. “So why is most of this gone?”

  “I wasn’t talking about alcohol,” Braden said with a little chuckle and a hiccup. “I’ll never get drunk on love again.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Come on, you need some coffee and food.”

  Braden planted his hands on his desk to push himself out of his chair. He caught himself as he swayed.

  Wyatt came around the desk to help hold him up so that he wouldn’t fall.

  “You need a cold shower,” Wyatt said. Maybe he’d take one himself—so that he would stop aching for Fiona. So that he wouldn’t fall, either—for her.

  “I don’t expect you to know what I’m talking about,” Braden said as he unsteadily walked around his desk. Wyatt had hooked his arm beneath the captain’s to help guide him. “You’ve never been in love. You’ve never had that need to be with someone as much as you can.”

  “That’s not love,” Wyatt said. “That’s lust.”

  Braden uttered a sigh of pity. For Wyatt. “You keep telling yourself that…”

  The captain was drunk. He was making no sense. But Wyatt was cold before he ever stepped under the spray of icy water. He’d faced down some monster fires in his life. But he’d never been as scared as he was now.

  What if it was already too late for him? What if he was beginning to fall for Fiona?

  11

  FIONA ROLLED OVER in bed—alone—and reached for her phone again. She had checked it just a few minutes ago, so she wasn’t surprised to find that there were no new messages. Her hand shaking slightly, she scrolled through her old texts.

  I’m sorry. Her mother.

  She had already texted back: Me, too.

  She would have to find a better way to deal with her mother. Mandy meant well; it wasn’t her fault that they were so different. Fiona had thought that concern for Matthew might be the middle ground they needed to find, but it was clear they didn’t share that concern. Her mother didn’t even know where her son was living.

  Because he hadn’t answered her call, Fiona had sent a text to her brother: We need to talk.

  He hadn’t texted back—of course.

  There was another text from Howard: I’m sorry you weren’t aware that we weren’t exclusive. We need to talk.

  She hadn’t answered, just as she hadn’t answered any of his previous texts.

  Haven’t heard from you. Hope you’re busy getting busy with the firefighter. Tammy.

  Fiona would have texted her back, but she hadn’t heard from the firefighter tonight. And while she checked again, she found no texts from him.

  Was there a fire? Had his local fire crew or the Hotshots been called out?

  He’d mentioned that the captain had some sixth sense that told him a big fire was coming. She’d thought he was joking, as he usually was. But there had been none of the usual amusement twinkling in his blue eyes.

  “He’s never been wrong,” Wyatt had claimed.

  Her pulse quickened with fear. So what if that was where he was now? Fighting some dangerous fire.

  Maybe she should have texted him. But she hadn’t wanted to bother him. Or distract him…

  But she was distracted. Too distracted to sleep.

  Maybe she should give up trying and drive by his place. He could be there. She hadn’t checked earlier because lunch with her mother had unsettled her. She wasn’t in love with Wyatt.

  She knew better than to fall for a man like him. She would worry about him too much—like she was worrying now. Maybe needlessly—if he was home, probably sleeping soundly without a thought of her.

  That was fine.

  She was fine.

  Then the doorbell rang. Startled, she gasped and jumped. She tossed back her blankets, pulled on her robe and headed for the front door. Her bare feet slipped on the highly polished hardwood as she hurried across her living room. The floor was natural with only a thick layer of polyurethane to protect it. So the color was just a shade darker than the walls, and the couch and wing-back chairs.

  The motion light on the porch had come on, but she could only see a dark shadow through the sidelight beside the steel door.

  Maybe it was Matthew. To a twenty-year-old, midnight was early.

  Or maybe it was…

  The shadow moved, stepping away from the front door. Before he could leave, Fiona unlocked and jerked open the door. “Hello?”

  The dark shadow stopped at the top of the stairs leading down to her driveway. The porch light illuminated the back of his jacket, making the yellow glow like neon. Across the yellow, red letters spelled out Hotshots.

  “Wyatt?” She hoped it was him. It looked like him. But there were nineteen other guys on the team. It could have been one of them, bringing her bad news. Though she doubted that she was on Wyatt’s emergency call list. She wasn’t anything to him.

  The broad shoulders tensed. But he turned around, his handsome face more serious than she’d ever seen it.

  “It’s late,” Wyatt said. “I shouldn’t have come…”

  “You’re here,” she said. He wasn’t off fighting a fire; he wasn’t in danger. But she was still worried that she was losing him, which was weird because she’d never really had him. She held out her hand to him. “Don’t go…”

  In two long strides he closed the distance between them and wrapped his huge hand around her small one. His skin was cold, so cold that it surprised her.

  “Have you been outside very long?” she asked. Had he been standing on her porch before he’d rung the bell?

  “I took a cold shower earlier,” he said.

  She smiled. “You didn’t need to do that,” she told him as she led him inside the warmth of her house and shut the door behind them. “You could have just come over here sooner.”

  “I didn’t want to come over here.” He dropped her hand and shoved both of his into the pockets of his coat—as if to stop himself from reaching for her again.

  She blinked against a sudden stinging in her eyes. It wasn’t tears. She wouldn’t cry over Wyatt Andrews.

  “I didn’t ask you to come,” she said. And she was grateful now that she’d hadn’t texted him. He wouldn’t have appreciated her sounding desperate and needy—which was unfortunately how he’d made her feel.

  “After taking care of Braden, I intended to go right home,” he said. “But I couldn’t bring myself to drive past here without stopping…”

  “Taking care of Braden?” she asked. “Is he okay?”

  “No,” Wyatt said, his voice gruff with concern and anger.

  She ached for him again—for his worry over his friend. “What happened? Did he get hurt?” Maybe there had been a fire tonight.

  “He’s devastated,” Wyatt said. “The ex-wife he still loves sent him an invitation to her wedding.”

  Fiona understood his anger now, and feeling some of her own, she replied, “Bitch.”

  “Yeah…”

  She also understood why he hadn’t intended to come over tonight. “You should have stayed with him,” she said. “Made sure he’s okay.”

  “He was better once I sobered him up with a cold shower at the firehouse.”

  She already knew that the team took care of each other. “You think he’ll be okay alone?”

  “He’ll be better alone than with a woman like her,” he said.

  That wasn’t what she’d meant, but before she could clarify, he added, “Or a woman like you…”

  Now she tensed, and the anger she felt was for herself, not on behalf of anyone else. “A woman like me? I am not a bitch like Braden’s ex-wife.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, you’re not,” he quickly agreed. “It would be easier if you were…”

  Was he breaking up with her? But then they would actually ha
ve to be together to break up. And they weren’t together.

  “Easier?” she asked. “If you want to end this…”

  “What is this?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “I won’t fall in love with a woman like you,” he said, as if he were warning her.

  Breath caught in her lungs with a gasp, but she released it in a shuddery sigh. “That’s good,” she said. “I don’t want you to fall in love with me—because I would never fall in love with a man like you.”

  He released an unsteady breath of his own. “Because your statistics have all proven that I’m too great a risk?”

  Apparently he was well aware of what he was to her: too great a risk. But she had to ask, “What is a woman like me?”

  “A woman who would suck me in like so many of my friends have been,” he said. “She acts like she’s okay with his job—that she understands his calling. But then when he’s totally in love with her, she starts issuing ultimatums—starts manipulating him to quit the team.”

  “Because she loves him and doesn’t want to lose him,” Fiona said—in defense of women like her.

  “If she loved him, she would understand that the job—the team—is what makes him who he is,” Wyatt said. “If she loved him, really loved him, she would respect that. She would respect that his career is more than a job to him.”

  Playing devil’s advocate for women like her—women Wyatt apparently considered the devil—she said, “But if she doesn’t love him, why would she try to get him to give up his dangerous career? Wouldn’t she just let him keep it?”

  “She wants to control and change him,” Wyatt said with a bitterness she’d never heard from him before tonight.

  “Has a woman ever tried that with you?” she asked as she wondered about the depth of his bitterness.

  He shook his head. “I’ve never put myself in that position. I’ve never dated a woman like you before—for that very reason.”

  “We’re not actually dating,” she pointed out. “We haven’t gone out to dinner or a movie. We’ve only gone to the bedroom.”

  His head jerked up and down in a quick nod. “That’s right. This…isn’t dating.”

  “It’s just sex.” But even as she said it, she recognized it as a lie. Before she could figure out what this was, though, he was shrugging out of his jacket and reaching for her.

  “It’s just sex,” he agreed. But the tension had not eased from his handsome face. His jaw was still tense beneath the stubble.

  So she repeated the lie. “It’s just sex…”

  He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers—kissing her hungrily. He parted her lips and thrust his tongue inside.

  Desire overwhelmed her. She lifted her arms and locked them around his neck—which was good because he lifted her. She held on as he carried her to the bedroom.

  He glanced down at the slightly rumpled bed. “Were you sleeping?” he asked. “Did I wake you?”

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” she assured him and admitted, “I was thinking about you.” Worrying about him. But she kept that to herself. Instead, she pulled off his T-shirt and reached for the button of his jeans.

  His hand replaced hers. He undid the button and zipper and kicked off his jeans. Then his boxers followed, and he stood before her gloriously naked. He was so fit—so perfect. But his job demanded that he be; he had to carry heavy equipment. And sometimes he had to carry people—if his team had been sent in to rescue.

  That was why he carried her so easily.

  “I was thinking about this…” She pressed her lips to his heavily muscled chest. And she felt his heart beating, pounding hard beneath her mouth. She licked his flat nipple. She continued down his body, caressing and kissing his rock-hard abs, his thighs. Then she focused on his erection. He was so aroused that his cock pulsed and jumped as she circled him with her fingers.

  He groaned.

  Then she slid her lips around him.

  And he groaned again. His hands unsteady, he gripped her shoulders. “Fiona…”

  She took him deep in her mouth, stroking him with her lips—teasing him with her tongue. She had wanted to ease the tension that she’d noticed in him the moment she’d found him walking away from her front door.

  But he tensed more. Then his hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her up—to her feet. “I want you,” he said. “I need to be inside you.”

  He reached for his jeans and pulled out a condom. She took it from his hand, tore the packet open with her mouth and slid it over his cock. While she did, he untied the belt of her robe and pushed it from her shoulders. Discovering that she wore nothing beneath it, he breathed, “Damn, woman…”

  His hands moved, sliding gently over her body. He traced her curves, running his palms along her hips and thighs before he cupped her butt. Then he lifted her. As she wrapped her legs around him, he thrust inside her—joining their bodies.

  He was so strong that he easily supported her weight as she slid up and down, teasing him and herself, building the tension in both of them. Her breasts pushed against his chest, where the light hair covering his muscles rubbed her nipples.

  She moaned at all the sensations rippling through her, overwhelming her. And that tension she’d seen in him built in her now. She squirmed against him, trying to take him deeper. She gripped his shoulders and wound her legs tighter around his lean waist. Because she clung to him, he didn’t need to hold her any longer.

  And his hands moved over her. All over her…

  One hand stroked down her back, his fingers tracing her spine to her butt. Then he moved them between her legs—even as he continued to press inside her. His hands were so big, his fingers so long, that he was able to stroke her clit.

  And his other hand moved down the front of her body and over her breast. He cupped it in his palm, making her heart beat even faster. His hands were so strong, so rough from the hard work he did, that even his palm stimulated her nipple. He moved it back and forth, teasing her to madness. The tension was so unbearable that tears of frustration burned her eyes.

  Then the fingers stroking her clit lightly pinched it. She tensed, then shuddered as she came—the orgasm slamming through her. “Wyatt!” His name left her lips on a scream of pleasure.

  He uttered a guttural cry. And his body tensed before his cock pulsed inside her. His arms slid around her, holding her to him for a moment before he lifted her off and laid her on the bed. He disappeared into her bathroom a few minutes before returning. Even after sex, he still seemed as tense as he had earlier.

  Over the past week, she’d learned that he took very little time to recover before he wanted her again—before he was hard and ready for her. So she reached for his hand and pulled him into bed with her.

  She didn’t wait, though. She began to make love to him with her mouth. As soon as her lips closed around his cock, it hardened.

  His breath shuddered out and he murmured, “What are you doing to me?”

  She didn’t answer with words; she answered with actions. She continued to slide her lips up and down the length of him. Then she took him as deep in her mouth, as deep in her throat, as she could. And she sucked him. At the same time, she stroked his thighs and hips and grasped his butt in her hands. But then he moved her, pulling her body around and over him so that he could reach her. He thrust his finger inside her and lapped at her clit with his tongue.

  She shuddered as desire overwhelmed her. He sucked on her clit as he slid another finger in with the first. He stroked in and out of her. She tensed and then trembled as sensations raced through her again. As she came, she sucked him even deeper into her throat and slid her tongue around him.

  He tensed and shouted as he joined her in release. Then he gently moved her around until she was in his arms, her head going naturally into the cradle of his neck and shoulder. And he held her.

  This was so much more than sex. But she couldn’t admit what it was—not even to herself.

 
*

  INSTEAD OF EASING his tension, making love with Fiona had only added to it. It wasn’t just sex—not anymore—if it had ever been. Somehow, despite that stress, he had managed to fall asleep. And it hadn’t been for just minutes this time. When he woke he saw faint light creeping around her blinds; the sun would be rising soon. He had never stayed so long before. He slid out from beneath her and from between her satin sheets.

  He’d been surprised the first time he’d come to her house and found red satin sheets on her bed. Everything about her was red-hot. Her body. Her beautiful face. Even her bed.

  He hated to leave it. Hated to leave her. But he had already stayed too long. Hell, he probably shouldn’t have come last night. Because no matter what they’d said, this was more than sex.

  His heart hammering with fear over that realization, he dressed quickly. He needed to make a quick escape before he could change his mind, before he could give in to temptation and crawl back into bed with her and hold her until the sun rose fully.

  He picked up his shoes so the soles wouldn’t clunk against the hardwood floor. Carrying them, he hurried from the bedroom to cross the living room. Her house was very similar to his in the floor plan. But hers was tidier—nothing out of place. No clutter.

  She was a neat freak. A control freak. Everything he’d known she was and feared. She wasn’t the woman for him. And, as she’d already said, he wasn’t the man for her.

  Someday he might get an invitation in the mail as Braden had, asking him to her wedding to someone like the sleazy accountant. As Braden had, he’d probably get drunk and need one of the team to sober him up and talk him out of doing something stupid—like trying to stop the nuptials. Like trying to convince her that they could make it work.

  It would never work. With a sigh, he reached for the knob and pulled open the door. But his escape was blocked. Matt stood in the doorway.

  His eyes widened with horror as he took in Wyatt carrying his shoes. “What the hell—”

  Despite how Fiona saw her little brother, the guy was an adult. So Wyatt wouldn’t lie to him.

  But Matt called him on his earlier lie. “You said you’d never go for a woman like her! But now you’re sleeping with her!”