told you, I finish everything I start.”
He smiled a bad-boy smile, and touched her, a hand to hers, that was all-and the whole of her melted. “Everything?” he murmured.
Oh, boy. She recognized the heat in his gaze, and felt a matching heat in her belly.
And her nipples.
And between her legs.
A kiss. She wanted just one kiss. Was that so bad?
“Because I think we’ve started something very interesting here. Something we should finish. What do you think?”
“I…uh…”
“I’m all ears,” he murmured and shifted just a little closer. So close that she had to tip her head up to see into his eyes, giving her an up-front and personal view of the scar that slashed his right eyebrow in half.
Her gaze dropped from that scarred brow to his mouth. Way too dangerous. Also too sexy-looking for his own good, for hers-his smile too easy on the eyes, his everything too easy on the eyes.
“Brooke?”
“Don’t I hear a fire bell?” she managed.
He chuckled softly. “No, but nice try.” He shifted to let her move past him, but somehow they ended up bumping against each other, softness to hardness. For a brief breath she closed her eyes and allowed herself to absorb it-his scent, his proximity, the feel of him brushing up against her.
She’d had no idea how much she’d craved this nearness, a physical touch; that it was him, the object of her secret nighttime fantasies, only intensified the sensation.
He put his hands on her arms, sensuously slid them up and down, and she forgot they were in the firehouse, forgot that they should really make at least an attempt to be discreet. Hell, she forgot to breathe. “Zach.” She tore her gaze from his and looked at his mouth.
A mouth that let out a low, rough sound of hunger, and then, blessedly, finally, was on hers, and then she was kissing him with her mouth, with her entire body, and most likely her heart and soul, because, good Lord, the man could kiss. He gave her everything-his hands, his body, his tongue-and when they broke apart for air, he stared down at her in astonishment. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Just damn.” Eyes a little dazed, he took a step back, looking off his axis enough to send a surge of lust and power skittering through her, but she managed to control herself. Controlled and composed. Yeah, that was her, one hundred percent put together.
With hard nipples.
And a telling dampness between her thighs.
“You ever feel anything like that before?” he asked.
“Truthfully? It’s been so long, I can’t remember.”
His soft but not necessarily amused laugh ruffled the hair at her temple and ran down her spine. “Love your honesty.”
She didn’t. And she didn’t love the idea that anyone could have seen that wild kiss they’d just shared. What was the matter with her? She turned away, but he caught her, a hand curving around her shoulder. “Don’t go.”
She needed to. So needed to. “Listen, maybe we could forget about this, at least until I figure out what it is.”
His hand slid down her arm, settling on her waist, where his thumb lazily stroked one of her ribs. The motion liquefied her bones and altered her breath. “Forget it? I don’t think that’s possible. Did you feel that?”
“I felt…something.” Which she was fighting. She wasn’t sure why, when she’d wanted that kiss more than her next breath-but that hadn’t been just any kiss. No. And being with him wouldn’t be just sex, either, and she knew herself enough to know that she wasn’t quite equipped to walk away. Not from that.
And she was walking away. In a matter of weeks. Her job would be over, her grandmother’s home on the market…“It’s natural that we’d feel…” She watched him arch a curious brow. “This. Natural. I’m a woman, you’re a man.” A really, really hot man, but still. “Natural,” she repeated again, and tried to mean it. “We’ve been working hard, and not relaxing, and…”
His head dipped to hers, his eyes a lethal combo of heat and good humor. “So you’d feel this with everyone, then? Say, Dustin? Or Blake?”
“Okay, no. But-”
Triumph surged in his eyes to go with that heart-stopping heat. “Maybe we should do something about it.”
Yes, cried her body. Oh please, yes.
A bell sounded, thank God, and before she could form a response, the call went out for all the firefighters, no EMTs required.
Aidan popped his head in for Zach, who nodded, then looked down into her face. “We can finish this when I get back.”
“No need,” she said quickly.
“Oh, there’s a need.”
And then he was gone.
Brooke spent most of the day out on transport calls with Dustin, and though she gave her all to what she was doing, her mind wandered. Not to the house she needed to sell, or how it was going to make her feel to leave a place she was slowly, reluctantly, started to think of as hers, but to a man and his kiss, and to the fact that he was making her yearn and burn when she never yearned and burned.
“Where are you today, New Hire? Disneyland?” Dustin shot her an exasperated look after having to ask her the same question three times in a row.
“I’m sorry. I’m preoccupied.”
He pushed up his glasses. “It’s because you guys haven’t knocked it out yet. That’s very preoccupying.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“Come on. Are you going to tell me that you don’t want to be with Zach?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “I’m going to tell you that. I don’t want to be with…”
He waited patiently, but the lie wouldn’t come off her damn tongue. Frustrated, she turned to look out the window, watching the town go by. Farmers’ market. An art gallery. An outdoor cafe. “It’s personal.”
“Hey, don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. Hell, I’ve got the same problem.”
“You want to have sex with Zach?”
He pushed up his glasses again, grinned, and pulled into the station. “Not quite.” He hopped out and walked away whistling, getting inside before she could ask him who he had the same problem with.
Zach and Aidan’s rig was in the garage, and her heart skipped a beat. The kiss, the kiss, the kiss…it was all she could think about. That, and getting another. And then she stepped into the kitchen and found Zach just standing there, looking ten kinds of wow.
He was in his gear, a little dusty, a little sooty and a whole lot sexy. He was still practically shimmering with adrenaline from the fire he’d just fought, looking far too edgy to be the laid-back, easygoing surfer guy she knew him to be.
And far too much for her to handle, no matter how much her body sent up a plea to let it do just that. He was too experienced for her, too…everything.
She’d spent too much time in her life trying to get somewhere, trying to find herself, to let a man like this in. Unfortunately, right now, at this very second, she wasn’t thinking about finding herself. She was thinking about seeing him naked. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
But that was a lie, and that haze of lust he always created faded a little as she stepped closer. “Did anyone get hurt?” Or God forbid, like in the Hill Street fire that she knew haunted him, die.
“No.”
But the memory of something bad was etched in the drawn, exhausted lines of his face. He took his losses
