“Oh yes, yes, please, Damon. Please fuck me!” I said, shameless and needy.
He slid a finger inside me, stretched me and pumped in and out as I writhed, desperate to be filled by more than one long finger. He caught my clit between his lips, laved it with his tongue and lapped at it, sucking, flicking it until I ground my crotch into his face, arching up on one tiptoe and clutching his hair, riding his face until everything splintered apart, and I screamed my climax. Weak, I sank to the floor, to my knees.
Damon pulled me across his knees and held me. “You are so sexy,” he said. I mumbled a sound that wasn’t even a word at all, and he chuckled. “Now that made me feel like a hero. I made you speechless.”
I let him cradle me against his chest right there in the floor beside our front door. I held on to his t-shirt, breathed him in, acrid smoke and all. I started to cry a little, and then I sat up, straddled his jean-clad lap and wrapped myself around him like a monkey and clung. His arms went around me and he held me close, synced up our breathing and stroked my hair.
“I’ve got you, baby. You didn’t lose me,” his words were meant to soothe me, but I shook my head, weepy and sweating, hectic.
“I could have. It could happen any day.”
“It could happen to any of us, at anytime. You could step off the curb—” he broke off, buried his face in my neck for a change. “I could lose you, too, you know.”
“If you hadn’t come out of that building. If a beam fell on you and trapped you, if you couldn’t escape, I would have died. I know it, Damon.”
He took my mouth then, no longer soothing me, no longer talking. He fondled my breasts through my t-shirt, his hands warm and rough, and I sparked to it, to the pinch of my nipple and the way it shot straight to my clit. Then he turned gentle, his touches feather-light, his mouth nipping at mine softly. He rubbed circles on my back and kissed the corner of my mouth.
“If you don’t want to go any farther… If you were just—”
“Are you kidding me? Jesus, Damon,” I said, exasperated.
“Are you saying you don’t wanna stop then?” he teased, his mouth crooking up at the corner.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
He surged to his feet, taking me with him, lifting me, carrying me to his big bed. I held on, awestruck, feeling like I was in a dream. My lifelong crush, hero firefighter Damon Vance, was taking me to bed to do naughty things to me all night. I wanted to pinch myself, but if this was just a vivid dream, I didn’t want to miss it.
I reached for him, pulled off his navy blue RFFD t-shirt and ran my hands all over his chest, every line of lean muscle traced by my fingers. He wore a chain around his neck, a gold cross. I reached for it, pulled it over his head.
“No offense, but I don’t think the Lord wants to see this,” I said, and he howled with laughter.
“I never dreamed you were like this. That you wanted me like this,” he said.
“Have you looked in the mirror?” I deadpanned. “You saved me, saved my business, put a ring on my finger and helped me scrub mildew off my shop walls and re-grouted the sink. You said you had faith in me when we went in for the loan, and I had cold feet. You say nice things about my cooking, and you held me when I was scared tonight. You’re the first person I want to tell good news, and the person who can help me survive the bad when it comes. Was there ever a moment in your adult life when you realized how I felt about you?” I blurted out.
He held my cheek in his palm, looking at me, his eyes full of something I couldn’t explain.
“My sister gave me nonstop shit about how I wasn’t marrying you out of the goodness of my heart. Because I always looked at you, and that at the Fourth of July last year she caught me almost falling out of my chair watching you.”
“I thought you really liked the potato salad, that you were excited to get some before it was gone,” I said, flushing pink with pleasure.
“Oh I wanted to get some of something, but it wasn’t potato salad. It was the long-legged woman in the cut-off jeans. You have no idea how many times I thought of you in those shorts and that red bathing suit,” he said, swallowing hard.
“Tell me you want me. Just me. Tonight.”
“I want you. I want to be with you all night, until we go to sleep as the sun comes up. I want to call in sick and keep you in bed all day with me. Don’t think my mind is gonna wander, Trix. It never will,” he said.