Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 4-11

Laura had never brought anyone here to the cabin; she’d finished building it post-Elgin. She’d certainly never stripped in her bathroom with a man only inches away. Nor ever been so intensely aware of the man in question.

She couldn’t stop herself from turning her back as she pulled her shirt off over her head.

At his sharp hiss, she looked over her shoulder at him.

He was looking down at her waist. His touch was light, but it stung where he slid a fingertip over her skin. He turned her slowly around, looking at her belly, not her sports b*a. She looked down as well. The line above her hip bones was abraded a bright, road-rash red.

It took her a moment to figure it out. “The harness. Mr. Jerk was heavy.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

She flexed her shoulders, which weren’t bad, just incredibly sore. And one of her knees had been kind of sticking to her jeans in a pretty uncomfortable fashion.

“Uh,” she felt old, weary, and banged up. “I’m a mess.” He was going to beg off. She could tell. He was too decent a guy and he’d beg off. Or he was a jerk who didn’t want to deal with a damaged woman. Either way, he was about to be gone.

She didn’t want him to go. Not after the way it felt when he’d held her. She’d never felt so safe before, not even when they’d been up on the mountain and he’d been clipped in beside her. And definitely not after the way he’d kissed her this morning.

Perhaps reading her mood, he stepped back enough to pull off his own shirt then gave her an up and down look complete with an overdone leer.

“If you look this good when you’re a mess, Space Ace, I can’t wait to see you when you aren’t.”

“Stick around, Fire Boy.”

“I just might do that, Space Ace.”

Then they finished undressing each other.

Laura had seen her fair share of fit men, but Johnny Akbar Jepps really was the Great. His chest and arms were well-muscled, not like a weight-lifter, but like a top athlete. And his legs, no wonder he’d been able to run the way he had. They looked piston strong. He wasn’t merely fit, he was practically carved. Muscles shifted in ripples beneath smooth skin. He actually took her breath away.

They didn’t make love in the shower. But they learned a lot about each other’s bodies. The soap was a good excuse for that. More than once she forgot how to breathe as he did miraculous things with a washcloth. She’d never been with a man who felt so good. And when he kissed her, with the water sluicing down over them, they could have been standing under a hot springs waterfall for how romantic it felt. Not once did he grab and squeeze, or forget and rub his hands too hard over where the harness had abraded her.

Having someone towel her off like he was buffing the final sheen into a marble statue left her skin tingling and alive. She wanted to drag him straight into the bedroom.

Instead, leaving their clothes on the floor, he led her back out onto the porch. She protested at the door, but he dragged her stumbling across the threshold and out into the open air. The late afternoon sunlight slanted warmly onto porch. The to-go containers still sat on the small table.

“I need clothes,” she once again tried to go inside, but he closed the front door.

“You don’t get to cover one inch of that glorious skin. It’s just begging to be admired.”

He conducted her to her chair as if he were a maître d’hôtel, and she wasn’t buck n***d and bruised. Of course your average maître d’ probably didn’t serve with manners befitting a better than decent restaurant while sporting an impressive arousal. He dished out skewers of organic beef with peppers, mushrooms, and caramelized onions over wild rice onto paper plates.

Succumbing to self consciousness and a need to cover herself, she placed a napkin over her lap and did her best to stomp down on a desire to giggle at the ridiculous situation. But Akbar didn’t stare at her breasts, well, not much. Just enough to make her think they might be very pleasing to his eye. Mostly he looked at her face and her nerves settled slowly.

“So,” she had to say something. “Tell me about Fire Boy.”

“I’d rather know about Judy Jenson.”

“Nope. You already got enough of that from my mom.” Had she really just mentioned her mom while sitting n***d on her front porch?

“No I didn’t.”

She crossed her arms over her bare breasts, making it clear he wasn’t going to get to look at them again until he answered.

He slapped a hand to his chest as if mortally wounded. “Okay, you win.”

“That was way too easy,” she complained.

“No. Your breasts are that magnificent. I have no power against them.”

“Yet we’re out here eating instead of curled up in bed together, which was my idea.”

Foregoing his fork, Akbar ate a piece of the beef right off his skewer, taking the meat neatly between his teeth and then pulled the skewer out to the side. “I’m a practical guy. I think we need fuel for stamina.”

“Are you feeling weak, oh Johnny the Great?”

“Only when I look at you.”

“Far too corny,” she declared and folded her arms over her breasts again. And once more he slapped his hand to his heart as if slain.

“Okay, I give. I give.” He sat back in the chair, holding his plate and crossing his ankle over his knee. He appeared so comfortable in his own skin.

She wanted to ask how he did that. She leaned back against the chair, but the wood felt cool and bumpy against her back. It made her want to shiver even though the sun was warm against her front.

“Little Johnny Jepps always wanted to be an astronaut.”

“What went wrong? Afraid of heights?”

He rolled his eyes at her, then offered a knowing wink.

Oh right, he jumped out of airplanes for a living.

“Then he wanted to fly jets. For a brief while he considered being a pioneer in a covered wagon, but he kept getting cast as the Indian.” He made pretend feathers behind his head. “Wrong kind of Indian.”

She served herself another skewer. A deer wandered into the clearing and stared at her nakedness. She squinched her nose at it and it looked away, but took its time crossing the grassy yard past her fenced garden as if it was window shopping.

“Mahatma Gandhi was ancient history, so not much to aspire to in the world-changing department. Besides, I grew up in Seattle where the oppression has mainly to do with parental curfews and finishing my meals. Mom was pretty big on table manners as well. Dad teaches English at University of Washington and writes odd bits of literary tales that do exactly what odd bits of literary tales are supposed to do, go forth and not sell. Mom always hoped I’d follow in Dad’s footsteps.”

“A writer?”

“Not that. Dad was five-eleven and married a very nice Indian girl who was five-foot two. I took after her side of the family which is a crime I only forgive her at Christmas and holidays because it cheers her up, poor thing. All her life, stuck with a tall husband, a short son, and a very nice little Indian restaurant of her own right outside the University District.”

“You’ve practiced this line, haven’t you?” Laura realized that she was sitting back and rather enjoying herself. The food was good, the deer was amusing as it finished its first lap around the garden fence and found little to pillage except for a few dahlias that had foolishly stuck their heads out through the wire, and the man was as charming as he was handsome.

“Does it show?” He made an elaborate pout at being caught.

“Storytelling father is sure showing.”

“Wait until you meet Mom,” then he blanched. He looked right at her, then his eyes slid aside; not down, as in to her chest. Aside.“Sorry, that was way too forward. Don’t know what I was thinking. But she’d like you. And not just because you’re a knockout.”

“Not dreaming of some pretty Indian girl for you?” Some part of him, even if it shocked Akbar himself, had imagined taking her home on approval. That was totally absurd on a first date, and they both knew it. But it had been there and she couldn’t ignore that compliment either.

“Mom will be happy if I ever settle down. But you two would get along big time. She also loves to laugh.”

Laura had never seen herself that way. She lived alone. Saw her parents a couple times a week, and most of her closest friends were horses. Not a lot of laughing opportunity.

Then Akbar rose slowly to his feet and came to stand in front of her. Keeping his eyes on hers as he held out a hand actually sent a shiver rippling over the rest of her skin.

He ended up being the one who led her into the bedroom.