“I wanted to crush this dress, rip it off you the first night,” he said against my lips. I shivered.
“I wanted you to,” I admitted. “When you unzipped it—” I broke off and he kissed me again and again.
He kissed my chin, my neck. I was arching into him and clutching his strong back in both my hands. He cupped my breast, stroked his thumb over my nipple, making it pebble hard in response. I whimpered as my breasts tightened and ached under his touch.
He could have me right there, against this counter, my dress pushed up and my legs wrapped around him. I wanted that, wanted the primal surge of him thrusting inside me. I gripped his hair in my fist as he grazed my neck with his tongue and teeth.
My phone rang, splitting the silence in the room and startling me. It was Kiera’s ringtone. I jolted away from him, guilty, flushed. I hurried to my phone and answered it so she could congratulate me on my loan.
12
Damon
It was probably for the best that her sister called just then, stopping us from making a big mistake. I liked having her around, but if we ever got together, she’d freak out and bolt. I was fairly sure of that. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
I went and hid in my room. That was the only word for it. I retreated and did a hundred pushups to try to clear my head. When that didn’t work and I could still hear the sound of her voice on the phone, I changed to my basketball shorts and went for a run. A long one. Until all I could hear was my pulse beating and all I could do was try to take the next breath. I ran until I had to stop and stretch and then run back at a slower pace. The time on my phone said I’d been gone two hours. I hoped she’d be asleep. But when I walked in the door, I heard the shower. I needed to get in the shower and blast cold water, wash off the sweat and the lust off of me. But she was in there, standing naked under the spray of hot water, torturing me.
I’d tasted her mouth, felt her passion rise and match my own. I’d held her in my arms. There was no place to go from here. I couldn’t pursue her. I wasn’t going to overstep our agreement again. Not when I’d married her as a favor and there was money involved. I didn’t want to be some creep who seemed like he expected sex in exchange for helping her get a loan. It made my skin crawl that she might think that of me. So we were on awkward, uneven footing where she felt obligated to me. That left me hamstrung when it came to taking our relationship to the next level. Beyond being just supportive roommates and tentative friends. When I wasn’t with her, I missed her. I wanted to spend more time with her. Including naked time, to be honest. I wanted the cheesy, rom-com montage of curling up on the couch and watching movies together with her in my lap or in my arms, us making breakfast together and laughing when we messed up the eggs or burned the bacon.
I wanted my wife to be mine for real, and there wasn’t any way to make that happen in a sticky situation that was more minefield than marriage.
At work, I walled off any thoughts about Trixie. I focused on my job, on keeping people safe, on taking care of grease fires and those idiots that burned drifts in their fields on a windy day. Some fool poured gasoline on his dad’s brush pile and set light to it last week. He deserved losing his eyebrows, maybe it’d teach him not to be so cavalier with accelerants. We got it put out, but he’d endangered his entire neighborhood. I gave his parents a talking-to about keeping any kind of accelerant locked up and away from him since he clearly wasn’t responsible. I also suggested some heavy chores to keep him busy since he was spending his teenage years acting like a careless dipshit. I may have left out the careless dipshit part, but I felt it.
Fall was a slower season for us. We did tours for the kindergarteners and let them climb on the trucks, did fire safety talks, that sort of thing. In winter, the space heaters and the clogged chimneys would keep us busy, but there was a lull in autumn for the most part. So we were surprised to get an urgent summons from the Overton FD right as my shift was ending.
A big warehouse on the waterfront there had caught fire and it was a bigger and hotter blaze than one fire department could handle alone. So the Rockford Falls Fire Department suited up and took off. We called in three men to take over the station while we were gone. We took the water truck and left the ladder engine behind in case it was needed.