Reckless

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Gorgeous. God, you are . . .” Alex trailed off, his words shorted out by the sexy-sweet tilt of her hips. He reached around the flare of her hips, palming her ass to pull her flush against him as he thrust once, then twice, then quickly found a rhythm that made him want to shout even as he held her close.

  “Yours.”

  The single word from Zoe’s lips halted him, mid-stroke, and he met her eyes with a burning stare.

  “I’m yours, Alex.” She answered his unspoken question with a smile split between passion and vulnerability. “So take me. Give me the moment. Give me whatever you want.”

  His fingers tightened over her skin, digging in harder to the firm curve of her ass. Their bodies molded together from shoulder to belly to hips, and Alex anchored her in place as he filled her, again and again. Zoe wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pressing toward him even though there was no space to close. The friction of her nipples on his chest and her core gripping his cock dared him closer to the edge, and he ran toward his climax, full speed. Zoe’s hand knotted in his hair, tugging hard as she shuddered and moaned, and the bolt of pleasure-pain sent his orgasm slamming up from the base of his spine.

  Alex came so hard he forgot his name, even as he called out Zoe’s over and over. Keeping their bodies locked together, he rode out every wave, every breath, every mind-blowing sensation before cupping her face to brush his lips over hers.

  “Stay right here,” he whispered, punctuating the words with one last kiss as he slipped past the door leading to the lavatory. After quickly dealing with the condom, Alex returned to the en suite, grabbing another towel from the bar on the wall and wrapping it around Zoe’s shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her pretty, kiss-plumped smile sliding into confusion.

  But he led her over to the bathtub without hesitation. “You still want the moment, right?”

  “Yes.” Her amber-colored eyes gleamed, going wider when he reached down to twist the oiled bronze faucet handles in front of him. Alex waited until the water was a perfect hot-but-not-too-hot before pushing the stopper and guiding her into the tub, pulling her close on pure impulse.

  “Good. Because I just got started with you, Gorgeous. And I’ve got all damn day to finish.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Zoe clicked Save on the last document on her to-do list for the morning, pushing back against her desk chair with a weary grin. Her eyes burned from a combination of near-constant focus on the Collingsworth Grant proposal and an equally steady lack of sleep. But the last four days had been worth every ounce of effort she’d put into them. Between the abundance of able bodies in Hope House’s kitchen and the one-two punch of her planning and her father’s proficiency with paperwork, Zoe had been able to make more strides than she’d even thought possible. And the more she detailed the soup kitchen’s worthiness and strategized a bid outlining the ways she’d put that grant money to work, the more her hesitation turned into hope.

  Hope she wouldn’t have without Alex Donovan in her kitchen.

  A hard prickle spread over Zoe’s cheeks, and she swallowed the thought. Alex’s hearing with the battalion chief was a week and a half away, and he’d put in more than enough time and effort for his community service to be considered a success. Although he’d worked just as many hours at Hope House as she had this week—all without complaint—Zoe hadn’t missed the way Alex interacted so easily with everyone from Station Eight while they were here volunteering, or the levity that lit up his bright blue eyes whenever they were around. No matter how purely good she felt with him in her kitchen, he belonged at the firehouse, doing a job that meant taking risks on a daily basis.

  But what if really living means taking risks? What if all you have to do is trust?

  “Knock, knock.”

  Rachel’s voice whipped Zoe back to her office by way of a good, hard reality check, and she sucked in a breath to counterbalance her slamming heartbeat and the yes-yes-yes pumping hot and heavy through her veins.

  “Crap. I’m sorry,” Rachel said, shifting a telephone-book-sized stack of folders to her jeans-clad hip as she gestured to the door frame around her. “Your door was open, but I should’ve known you’d be up to your elbows in work. Didn’t mean to take you by surprise.”

  “No, no, you didn’t,” Zoe replied, and okay, fine. So the words were only true because her inner voice had tiptoed up and startled the crap out of her first. Good God in heaven, she needed a break. “Is everything okay out there? Do you need any help in the kitchen?”

  Rachel’s lips twitched into a smile. “Breakfast service went without a hitch, and I just walked by Alex, Cole, and Brennan unloading the produce delivery in nothing but their shirtsleeves and smiles. Everything’s coming up roses. Speaking of which . . .” She paused for a minute, flipping through her armload of file folders before plucking one from the pile to hand over. “Tina asked me to give this to you.”

  “Thanks.” Zoe held the folder, unopened, as she slid a glance at Rachel. “You know, Tina’s never had an assistant before. Your volunteering to be a liaison between me and her has helped a lot this week.”

  Rachel lifted one shoulder of her black T-shirt into a demi-shrug, but the warmth in her eyes totally called her no-big-deal bluff. “You’re right side up in the kitchen with all the guys helping, so I figured this was a good way to pitch in.” She pointed at the file she’d passed to Zoe. “Anyway, that’s the finalized list of organizations willing to act as drop-off points for the food drive. Tina said you’d want it ASAP.”

  “Oooh, not wrong,” Zoe said, flipping the folder open over her desk. She gave the list a quick visual, but wait. This couldn’t be right. “There are sixty-seven locations listed here.”

  “Ah.” Rachel reached out, motioning for Zoe to pass the list back over. “I forgot to add the bookstore over on Church Street. The owner owes me a big one for all the romance novels I buy in that place.”

  No way. “Are you serious?” Zoe breathed.

  Rachel just huffed out a laugh. “Have you seen the covers on some of those babies? Of course I’m serious. Anyway, not everyone can have a firefighter-slash-underwear-model-lookalike sending stares at her like she’s good enough to eat.”

  “Rachel!” Zoe’s cheeks went thermonuclear, but damn it, Rachel’s cat-in-cream smile was more contagious than the flu in a freshman dorm. Still, Zoe had to aim for a little dignity. “First of all, I meant are there seriously sixty-eight drop-off points for this food drive. Secondly, no one’s looking at me with quite that much enthusiasm.”

  “First of all,” Rachel said, playfully mimicking Zoe’s tone along with her words, “underneath her pretty exterior, Ava is a barracuda. Of course there are that many drop-off locations. Secondly”—she clucked her tongue, although her smile didn’t budge a millimeter—“I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. You can play Cleopatra, Queen of Denial, all you want, but I’m here to tell you, Donovan looks at you like you are all that.”

  “Really?” Zoe’s mouth formed the question without consulting her brain or her sense of self-preservation, and she shook her head in an effort to negate it. “I’m sure it’s just the sex.”

  Rachel’s brows disappeared beneath her auburn bangs. “So you and Donovan are more than just work partners, huh?”

  Well, shit. “Okay, yeah,” Zoe admitted, knowing when she’d been beat. Plus, the words felt unbelievably good coming out of her mouth. “I guess we are.”

  Rachel slipped past the threshold, shutting the office door behind her before perching herself in the spare kitchen chair across from Zoe’s desk. “Lord, girl. Look at that great-sex glow on your face. If I didn’t like you so much, I’d hate your guts.”

  “Sorry,” Zoe said, although yep. It was pretty much a giant freaking lie.

  “Ah, don’t be. It’s not your fault I haven’t gotten laid since Thanksgiving. Anyway, Alex is a pretty cool guy. He’s clearly into you. Better living through orgasms, I say.”

/>   Zoe’s laugh took a swipe at her nerves. “Yeah, well, I wish it was that cut and dried. It’s no raging secret that Alex’s motto is ‘risk first, ask questions later,’ and let’s just say I’m not usually on speaking terms with recklessness. Plus, when you add the whole my-overprotective-dad-is-totally-his-boss land mine . . . the odds of this not getting complicated are pretty anorexic.”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, although the certainty in her voice belied the words. “You seem pretty fierce for someone who’s anti-risk. I’m not trying to overstep my bounds or piss you off, but the whole proceed-with-caution thing doesn’t exactly suit. Professionally or personally.”

  “Playing it safe is the smartest call when it comes to protecting the things that are most important.” But as soon as the default statement fell from Zoe’s lips, she heard how lame it sounded. After all, she’d never have a shot at the Collingsworth Grant if she stuck solely to the sidewalk, and she sure as hell wouldn’t have spent any time with Alex without a risk or two. “Most of the time. Usually. Ugh, old habits die hard.”

  Rachel nodded. “Now that, I hear loud and flipping clear. I work in a firehouse. We’re all about protecting what’s important. But for what it’s worth, Alex really does seem to want to help you.” She paused to waggle her brows. “In both the kitchen and the bedroom.”

  “He is, um . . . pretty helpful,” Zoe conceded, unable to cage her idiot grin.

  “I see. And how helpful would that be, exactly?”

  “Let’s just say his quick tongue isn’t limited to fast-talking, and as far as his enthusiasm is concerned, there are no hard limits.”

  Whether it was the unfettered goodness welling up in her chest or the look of pure oh-no-you-didn’t shock dominating Rachel’s face, Zoe couldn’t be certain. But she let out a rare giggle, another one following on its heels, and pretty soon, she and Rachel were lost in a fit of laughter. Pressing her lips together so hard that they tingled, Zoe tried her best to take a deep breath and smooth herself back into seriousness, but then Rachel’s attempt to inhale became a snort, and another wave of giggles had them both clutching at their sides and gasping for air.

  Which was exactly how Alex found them when he knocked on the door to Zoe’s office thirty seconds later.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said, peering past the door frame with a look caught halfway between awe and primal fear.

  “Not at all,” Zoe sputtered. A fresh peal of laughter tickled behind her breastbone, but thankfully Rachel stepped in to save her bacon.

  “I should be going anyway. Let me know if you need any help coordinating the first round of pickups for the food drive. I’m happy to pitch in. Especially at the bookstore.” She gave Zoe a covert wink before squeezing past Alex to saunter from the office, and it took all of Zoe’s effort to keep a (mostly) straight face.

  “Do I even want to know what that was all about?” Alex asked, his blue eyes going for the full-on crinkle factor as he leaned against the door frame to smile at her.

  “Probably not.” Better to stick to the truths she could tell. Without blushing, anyway. “So what’s up in the kitchen? I heard you guys were on delivery duty.”

  Alex nodded, tipping his chin over one shoulder toward the kitchen. “Yeah, Cole and Brennan and I just inventoried and stored the last couple cartons of produce. We were going to head out to start delivering collection boxes for the food drive, but I didn’t see any volunteers on the schedule for lunch prep. Did you want us to stick around instead?”

  Zoe pushed up from her chair. “Nah. I’m glad to be making headway on this grant proposal, but if I don’t take a break from Paperwork Mountain, I’m going to lose my cookies.” The thought of getting hands-on with the food, even for something as simple and seamless as lunch prep, made her smile, and Zoe smoothed the hem of her red T-shirt into place over her jeans as she aimed herself at the door.

  Alex caught her by the elbow, the grab seemingly innocent even though she felt the tingle all the way up her arm. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around?” he asked, but she just laughed in reply.

  “Of course. That’s not to say I won’t miss you in the kitchen.” The corners of her mouth lifted along with her brows. “But I’m pretty sure I can handle lunch service on my own.”

  “Believe me,” Alex said, sending a ribbon of ooohhhhh yeah through her chest as his fingers glided up her arm to play softly at her shoulder. “I’m not asking because I think you can’t manage. I know how tough you are.”

  Zoe melted into his touch. “Then why are you asking?” she asked, chasing the question with way more sigh than sass. But his hands felt so good, suddenly holding her tight and cupping her face, that she blew past every last one of her caution sensors to let him pull her in.

  “Because.” He dropped his forehead to hers, his lips enticingly close. “I’ve got your back. That’s why.”

  “I know.”

  Alex’s eyes went wide, but Zoe erased his surprise with a slant of her mouth. Letting someone care for her was risky, she knew.

  But with the heat of his arms and the promise of his smile around her, trusting Alex to guard her kitchen felt too damn good for her to do anything other than let him.

  “I know,” Zoe repeated, pressing up to the toes of her kitchen clogs to kiss him one more time before turning toward the kitchen.

  Zoe leaned over the two deep-bellied pots perched over the front burners on the stove, stirring the vegetable stock in first one, then the other, before seasoning them both with her secret mix of dried herbs and spices. After spending the last few weeks with Alex right next to her at Hope House, the kitchen felt eerily quiet as she moved through the steps of prepping lunch all by herself. But he’d promised to be back by the end of the meal service, and Millie and Ellen would be arriving in less than an hour. Once she got new funding in place, Zoe would be able to hire a few more part-timers to help balance out the schedule, and they’d be able to fill the dining room to the rafters, seven days a week. Then quiet like this would probably become a hot commodity, she thought with a laugh. She should probably take advantage of the peace while she could.

  The more Zoe chopped and tasted and stirred, the more the food calmed her, smoothing out the exhaustion of the last week—hell, the last few months, really—and replacing it with something brighter. Something she’d not only been missing since she’d moved back to Fairview, but something she’d needed fundamentally for even longer than that.

  Hope.

  “Hey, sugar plum.” Tina’s voice tipped Zoe from her reverie, snagging her attention as her codirector pushed through the double doors leading in from the dining room. “I found this handsome gentleman out by the front desk, and thought you might be able to put him to work.”

  “Dad?” Shock wheeled through her from belly to breastbone. “What are you doing here?”

  Her father’s eyes took a split-second tour of the kitchen before landing on hers. “I’m not on shift today, and I know you’ve got a lot of work to do in only a little time. So I thought”—he paused, gesturing to the twin stockpots on the cooktop at her hip—“maybe you could use some help.”

  Zoe dropped her wooden spoon to the worktable with a clatter. “You came out here to help me cook?”

  While she and her father had hooked up at Scarlett’s this week for several marathon sessions to chip away at her proposal for the Collingsworth Grant, he’d stayed noticeably absent from Hope House itself. On one hand, his avoidance—especially when nearly every firefighter from Station Eight had showed up to help in the kitchen for at least a few hours this week—had stung. But on the other, Zoe wasn’t about to deny that she still feared for her father’s safety every time he strapped on his helmet. She couldn’t exactly fault the man for wanting her to be safe, or disapproving of the job that he felt kept her from being that way.

  “Ah, well . . .” Her father ran a hand over his military-precise gray-blond hair in a move Zoe had long since recognized as a nervous tell
, and her gut tightened out of habit. This crossroads between emotion and denial had been the sticking point for every one of their conversations since she’d come back home to Fairview.

  But rather than clamming up or stuffing his emotions away like he had for the last few months, her father shocked the hell out of her by saying, “The first thing I teach my firefighters when they walk through the door to Station Eight is to look out for one another, above all else. I know I’m just your old man.” His shoulders lifted on a shrug that was far from indifferent. “But if my firefighters are going to have your back, then the least I can do is come in here and show them how it’s done.”

  “Oh,” Zoe breathed, her smile welling up and taking over her face completely of its own accord. “Well, in that case, I guess you’ll need an apron.”

  “Thanks, kiddo.” A rare shot of raw emotion whisked through her father’s eyes, landing right in the center of Zoe’s chest.

  But she was his daughter, through and through. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said, lifting an apron from one of the nearby hooks and handing it over with a squeeze. “You weren’t wrong about there being a lot of work to do around here. If you want to help, we need to get cracking.”

  “Well, then, by all means. Put me to work, ma’am.”

  Their laughter lasted for just a minute before being interrupted by a loud sniffle, and Zoe pivoted on her heel toward the sound. Tina stood by the swinging doors, one hand pressed over the front of her blouse and the other swiping at her cheeks. With the sheer surprise of her father’s arrival in the kitchen, Zoe had totally forgotten Tina had escorted him in.

  Realizing that both Zoe and her father had turned their attention in her direction, Tina lifted her chin, waving one hand in pure nothing to see here fashion, and Zoe couldn’t help it. She cracked a grin.