Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 6-3

Macy hadn’t forgotten any of her training.

Tim tried to wheeze in a breath, but his spasming stomach muscles wouldn’t have anything to do with it yet. He managed little gulps that sounded like backward hiccups.

Macy was livid as she stomped away. When she turned to stomp back, he knew he’d never seen her so angry. For an instant he regretted all of those Kung Fu classes they’d done together.

She stormed right up to him and shouted at point blank range.

“Are you really that stupid?”

“It’s my,” he managed another tiny gulp, “Stu-pid Day. So. Yes. I am.” He hadn’t crossed one line, he’d crossed a hundred. He didn’t know what had come over him. He’d never before kissed a woman without permission. He’d certainly never used his strength to overpower someone.

But the smell of Macy Tyler’s hair had been his undoing. Her intensely fit body had molded against his in ways that had lit fires inside his own. And her hand resting so lightly on his chest…

“Won’t. Happen again,” he managed four syllables on the last breath.

She stared at him in shock, and then she did the damnedest thing. She clamped her hands on either side of his head, pulled him down to her, and kissed him hard.

Angry hard.

Full of need hard.

So hard that it filled his head with images that suggested maybe he should have dragged her off into Heinrich’s fields.

So hard that it went soft, pliant, and warm until at some indefinable moment they shifted from kissing to simply lying against each other wrapped tight in each other’s arms. She lay fully against him, he lay against the helicopter, and Baxter offered sharp barks of frustration mostly muffled by the Plexiglas, but very close to his head based on the thumping he could feel against the back of his skull.

Macy’s head was on his shoulder. His face was in her hair.

His arms were holding her.

Macy.

This was so not right…but it was right in so many ways.

He raised a hand from her back to glance at his watch.

Six-thirty a.m. He’d been awake for three hours.

How had so much changed in three hours? He needed some time to absorb all this.

“Guessing it’s time to go deliver the mail.”

Without moving out of his arms, she pulled back enough to look at his face for a long moment.

Then she closed her eyes on an exasperated sigh and began beating her forehead against his shoulder just as she had knocked it against the breakfast table this morning.