Hold Your Breath (Search and Rescue) (23 page)

“Let’s do this,” she said, turning toward the kitchen sink and slapping her hands together so she didn’t do anything stupid, like hurl herself at him and attach her lips to his.

“Don’t you want to eat first?”

“Nope.” There were too many butterflies in there right now. Food wouldn’t fit. “Let’s get this done. Unless it’s a multihour project?”

“It’s just a leaky flange, so it shouldn’t be.” He headed to a closet. “Unless the plumbing assistant really jacks it up.”

“Hey!” she yelled after him. When he emerged from the closet, toolbox in hand, he grinned at her.

“So, what are we doing?” she asked, her eyes darting to the kitchen sink so they wouldn’t land on his too-tempting mouth.

He opened the cabinet beneath the sink, turning onto his side and sliding his head under the trap. “Get under here,” he said when she hovered above him.

“Okay,” she said doubtfully, “although I don’t see how I can hand you tools in a bedazzled leotard in this position.” She scooted until she was on her side mirroring him, her head and shoulders inside the cabinet. “You have an unsettlingly clean under-sink cabinet. Don’t most people store, I don’t know, rat poison and bleach under here?”

“Grab the flashlight. Is that what you kept under your sink?”

Her stomach lurched at the past-tense reference to her cabin, and she used the excuse of getting the flashlight to hide her expression from him. She’d forget about the fire for a few minutes, and then something would remind her, forcing her to experience the horror with painful freshness each time. When she was with Cal, it was easy to pretend she was safe and not scared all the time, and that there wasn’t a psycho ex-boyfriend out there who wanted her dead. Although she knew it was a false bubble of security, she still wanted to dwell in it for a little longer.

“No.” She turned on the light and aimed it at the drain piping. “I didn’t really use bleach or rat poison. I had dish soap, a bag filled with plastic grocery bags, a stack of paper grocery bags, extra scrubbies, a bucket, extra hand soaps, and a few containers of Bar Keeper’s Friend. Oh, and a big bottle of white vinegar I used for cleaning.”

He’d been positioning the pipe wrench, but paused so he could stare at her. “How could you live like that?”

“It was organized. Well, sort of neatly kept. Maybe a little messy.” She watched as he loosened the pipe with the ease of much practice, wanting to turn the conversation away from memories of her cabin. She couldn’t think about her once-homey kitchen without picturing it engulfed in flames, and her nerves tightened. “So, how’d you learn all this stuff?”

“What’s that?” he asked, his focus still on his work.

“This.” She waved her hand at the interior of the cabinet. “Fixing things. You are intimidatingly capable.”

“Necessity,” he said shortly, unscrewing the nuts on the underside of the sink.

His curtness just made her more curious. “When you got this house, you mean?”

“No.” Although she waited for him to elaborate, he remained silent. To encourage him to talk, she made the flashlight jiggle around the cabinet in a truly irritating way, if she did say so herself. With an annoyed grunt, he reached out and clasped his hand over hers, steadying the beam. “Fine. Growing up, if I didn’t fix something, it stayed broken. Necessity.”

When he ducked out of the cabinet and stood, she wondered if she’d pissed him off with her pushing. She stood as well and saw that he was removing the strainer from the sink. Once he’d lifted the flange, he stripped off a circle of rubber attached to it and attacked it with a wire brush.

“Didn’t your mom fix stuff?” she asked, watching with interest as he scrubbed the sink where the flange had been with equal vigor.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Hand me the plumber’s putty. And because she wasn’t the type to learn to fix something. She was more the type to cry that it was broken and then bring home another loser who wouldn’t fix anything.”

“Here.” After handing him the putty, she watched him apply it with careful precision and considered his use of past tense. “She’s not around anymore?”

“No. Gasket, please.”

“Uh…” Lou looked between the neat arrangement of tools and Callum’s face. “What exactly does a gasket look like?”

He gestured with his chin at a packaged part sitting next to his toolbox.

“Ah.” She pulled open the packaging and handed him the gasket. “Why didn’t you just say the round rubber thingy?”

Although he attempted to give her
the look
, he was obviously fighting a smile as he accepted the gasket.

“I don’t…umm.” Even though she was dying to know the answer, she was also dreading the possibility that he would say yes. “Never mind.”

“What?” Callum returned to his position under the sink.

Joining him, Lou resumed her flashlight-holding duties, watching as he began tightening the nuts he’d loosened earlier. “Do I remind you of her?” When he didn’t answer immediately, nerves made her babble. “Because of the whole princess-of-chaos thing. I mean, I remembered you mentioning your childhood was chaotic, and my life tends to be chaotic, especially these past few weeks since I kicked a dead guy—oh wait, I guess it was earlier than that, because Brent was already shoving pointy objects into my tires—”

“Lou.”

“Never mind. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know.”

“Lou.”

She finally dredged up the courage to meet his eyes. Unfortunately, she moved the flashlight to follow her gaze and he flinched back, raising a hand to block the glare. As he retreated, he banged his head against the edge of the cabinet opening. “Fuck.”

“Ouch.” Cringing in sympathy, she reached toward him and then pulled her hand back again before she did something to cause more damage. “See? Chaos.”

His eyes were squeezed shut for another moment as he rubbed the injured spot. Shaking his head, he resumed his position in the cabinet. “Pipe wrench.”

Lou handed it to him, handle first, with extreme caution.

“And no. You don’t remind me of her. At all.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. You are smart, and you might not know how to do something, but you figure it out. You’re tough and brave, and I respect you.” Since he was focused on tightening the pipe as he said this, she was pretty sure he didn’t notice her eyes get wet.

“Thank you.” He might not have seen her threatening tears, but there was no hiding the waver in her voice. Darn it.

“I’m not saying anything that isn’t true. Hand me that rag.”

As she held it out to him, she gave a watery laugh. “I don’t think you can technically call that a rag.”

He wiped away any traces of excess putty. “Why not?”

“It’s nicer than most people’s guest towels.”

With an amused snort, he examined the repair a final time. “Done.”

“Nice work, doctor,” Lou commended in her best sexy-nurse tone, turning off the flashlight. Although a smile lifted one corner of his mouth, it slipped away when he turned to face her.

“I like having you around.”

The butterflies were back. “Good. I like having you around, too.”

“It’s too quiet when you’re not here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Boring, too.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t the cleverest of responses, but she couldn’t help it. His admission had stolen all her words.

They stared at each other for a long moment until she couldn’t take the rising tension anymore. She had to say something.

“Now what?”

He seemed to be fixated on her mouth. “Now…”

“Yeah?” Her voice had gone husky.

Their faces were so close.

“I’m trying to be patient,” he muttered.

She watched his mouth move, too entranced by the shape of his lips to really focus on the meaning of his words. “Uh-huh.”

“You’ve had a very traumatic week.” His face moved another inch closer to hers.

“Mmm.” She could almost feel his exhale on her skin.

“I shouldn’t…take advantage.”

Lou felt the warm puff of air against her mouth as he spoke. “Yes,” she breathed. “You should.”

“Oh, fuck it.” His lips crashed hard into hers.

The enclosed space quickly became limiting. With a frustrated sound, Callum shoved himself out of the cabinet. Grabbing Lou by the hips, he pulled, sliding her across the tile floor until her head cleared the opening. Once she was out, he flipped her onto her back and was on her again, his mouth as hungry for hers as if they’d been separated for years.

She matched his ferocity with her own, forgetting to breathe as they rolled over the hard kitchen floor, switching off who was on top. Without breaking lip-to-lip contact, they yanked at each other’s clothes, only partially succeeding in getting naked. In a moment of lucidity, Lou realized she still had an arm in one sleeve of her shirt, and her bra was unhooked, but the straps were still looped over her shoulders.

Callum palmed the back of her head and urged her down for another kiss, and that second of clarity disappeared. What clothes she was or was not wearing didn’t matter. All that existed was his mouth on hers and his hard chest against her partially naked skin.

She felt his stomach muscles flex as he sat, bringing her with him so she was straddling his lap. Clutching his upper arms at the sudden movement, she was immediately distracted by the truly impressive circumference of his biceps.

Pulling his head back to break the kiss, he rasped, “Just a second.”

Lou stared at him dumbly as he reached above them and yanked at a drawer, pulling it completely off its runners. Although it didn’t come close to hitting her, she still ducked as the contents spilled onto the tiles. Oddly, Callum did not seem upset by the mess. Instead, he was making it worse, digging through the scattered items and knocking aside those he didn’t want. Finally, he seized a small box with a sound of triumph.

Realizing what he’d grabbed, she cocked her head curiously. “Why do you keep condoms in your kitchen?”

“Preparedness kit,” he said before kissing her again, his teeth tugging on her bottom lip. A groan escaped her, sounding so hungry she would’ve been embarrassed if she wasn’t so aroused. Leaving her mouth, he trailed a line of kisses down the side of her neck.

“Why in the kitchen?” she managed to ask, although her voice was as husky as a phone sex operator’s.

“I have…a kit…upstairs, too,” he explained between kisses. “Everything…I might…need…in an emergency.” His lips touched the spot just behind her earlobe, making her shudder. “Flashlight…matches…Leatherman…first aid kit…”

Although her body was screaming for her to shut up and just let him continue the wonderful things he was doing with his mouth, she couldn’t let it go. “Sex is an emergency?”

He chuckled, and the vibration against her skin drew goose bumps. “It feels pretty urgent to me now.” His teeth scraped lightly against the tendon running up the side of her neck.

“Agreed.” Pushing him onto his back, she followed him down, finding his mouth with her own. As her lips met his, she could feel him laugh before the kiss combusted.

Every nerve ending flamed, making her frantic. His mouth worked its way down her throat, nipping and licking as she arched her head back, giving him better access. Everything in her was focused on where they touched, where his lips and hands moved across her skin, leaving flares of pleasure in their wake.

Rolling them over again, Cal moved down even farther, the scruff of his cheek scraping against the sensitive skin over her collarbone. The roughness contrasted with the hot slickness of his lips and tongue, and she arched her back as she groaned, frantic with need.

When first his hands and then his mouth found her breasts, she almost went out of her mind. Her fingers clutched at the back of his head, but his hair was too short to grip. As he sucked a nipple into the heat of his mouth, she grabbed at the back of his shirt and yanked.

“Cal,” she gasped. “Please. I need you.”

He met her gaze, his normally icy blue eyes burning. “Sparks.”

That’s all he said. It was just her name, but it told her everything. Their playing ended, and they focused on just shoving the necessary clothes out of the way. He fumbled with unwrapping the condom in a very un-Callum-like way, swearing under his breath, but managed to don the prophylactic before Lou grew desperate enough to grab it from him and do it herself.

Then he was inside her.

They both stilled, staring at each other. It was…Lou didn’t have a word for how perfect he felt in her. She’d always mocked the cheesy romantic phrases like “you complete me” or “two halves of the same soul.” But Callum felt like he fit. He fit with her and she fit with him, as neatly as that last piece of a puzzle snapping into place.

He started to move, driving all philosophical notions and soppy clichés out of her head. Everything turned to motion and pleasure and driving heat, until she couldn’t stay still anymore and rolled them both. After a moment of resistance, Callum shifted to his back, and she followed. Straddling his hips, she took control, loving that she could, that they could trade back and forth without Cal insisting on being the boss all the time. As she watched his face—his beautiful, tightly drawn face—she began to raise and lower her body. His expression, usually so closed, broadcasted everything he felt as she moved above him. When she tightened around him, his head tipped back and he groaned. A pleased smile curved her lips as she flexed her fingers, digging her short nails lightly into his chest. Driving Cal crazy was as fun during sex as it was all other times. As excitement started tightening her muscles, Lou moved faster, finding a rhythm and an angle that was exactly what she needed to drive her over the edge. Her body stiffened as she came, and she called out his name, her fingers digging a little deeper into his unyielding flesh.

As soon as she climaxed, he flipped her onto her back again. Even in her fog of pleasure, she felt a shudder of excitement at the ease with which he moved her. When he was on top, he started thrusting in hard, quick strokes that prolonged her orgasm and brought him along with her. He shouted as he reached his peak, which surprised the tiny corner of her brain that was still functioning. Callum was so controlled in all areas of his life that she assumed he would be as calm and stoic in bed, as well.

He was not calm
or
stoic at this moment. No, he was more of a sweaty, panting, limp, and heavy mess, and Lou loved him for it. All except the heavy part—as more and more of his weight rested on her, her shoulder blades were starting to grind painfully into the tiles. His kitchen floor was
hard
.

“Hey, Cal?” she wheezed.

His response was a grunt.

“Need…to…breathe…”

“Sorry.” He flipped onto his back to lie next to her.

Sucking in a relieved breath, she rotated so her head rested on his belly, her body perpendicular to his. Cal’s hand stroked the damp strands of hair off her face. She focused on the ceiling, feeling the rise and fall of his stomach as he caught his breath. As quiet settled over them, Lou wondered what he was thinking and then immediately wanted to slap that thought right out of her brain. She’d wallowed in enough sex clichés for the evening. His breathing gradually slowed while she concentrated on the view in front of her.

“Your ceiling beams are really pretty.”

“Thank you.”

A silence followed, but it wasn’t awkward. Lou was still unable to resist the urge to break it. Propping herself up on her elbows, she asked, “Want to go to bed and do this again?”

He was on his feet in a second, yanking his jeans and boxer briefs up over his hips so he could walk. “Definitely.”

With a laugh, she accepted his hand so he could help her stand. Instead of stopping once she was upright, he kept her momentum going until she was lying belly down over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“Not loving this,” she grunted as he headed for the stairs. “You do know that most people who need to be carried like this are unconscious, right?”

Callum just laughed.

Despite the discomfort, she smiled at the sound. Plus, her current position gave her a really good view of his ass. All in all, it wasn’t a bad place to be.

* * *

Sunday morning was, in a word, awesome.

After an active night, they lounged in bed until a slothfully late hour, when hunger drove them to the kitchen. Since pancakes were the one thing that tasted good when she made them, she manned the griddle, wearing one of his flannel shirts. Because it was fuzzy, smelled deliciously like Callum, and kept her warm all the way from her shoulders to her knees, she decided to steal it.

As Callum was a bit possessive about the bacon cooking, she ceded that portion of the preparations to him. That did not, however, mean she didn’t peer over his shoulder and make pithy comments.

“What is that?”

He gave her a how-do-you-not-know-this look. “A bacon screen.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “So…what is that?”

His sigh was deep and long. “It keeps the grease from splattering.”

“Oh. Awesome.” Lou flipped a pancake. She’d tried for a C, but it had spread into more of an oval blob. The L was better—at least it
was
until she tried to double flip it, and it landed on the edge of the griddle, permanently disfiguring the pancake.

“It is. This way, I don’t have to clean the stove after I make bacon.”

She nudged him aside so she could open the oven door and pull out the pan of cooked pancakes. “But you’ll clean the stove anyway.”

He didn’t deny it.

She added the blobby C and mutilated L to the stack of pancakes and slid them back into the oven to stay warm. “So now you’ll have to clean the stove
and
the grease screen?”

“What’s your point?” He sounded a bit snappish.

“Nothing.” The corners of her mouth tucked in as she fought her grin. Leaning closer, she hooked a finger in the waistband of his jeans and tugged. His eyebrow went up in question, but he allowed himself to be drawn closer to her. Standing on her tippy toes, she gave him a quick, light kiss and then released him.

“What was that for?” His voice was much warmer now. Apparently, kissing canceled out the criticism of his grease screen.

“Just ’cause I felt like it.”

“Yeah?” It was his turn to tug her toward him. “Well, I feel like it, too.”

His kiss was not quick, nor was it light. It was deep and hard and thorough, and left her leaning against the counter, panting for breath when he finally released her. Grinning, he returned to his bacon.

“Whoa,” she muttered under her breath, fanning herself with the spatula she still held in her numb fingers.

His grin widened.

Callum’s bacon was, not surprisingly, perfect. Her pancakes, despite their unfortunate shapes, tasted good, although Lou was pretty sure she’d like anything she ate in her current happy daze. Once breakfast was done and Cal took over cleanup, however, she started to feel the usual restlessness as she fought off thinking about things like fires and deaths and ex-boyfriend stalkers.

“What are you doing?”

Tugging on her stocking hat, she said with what she thought was a commendable lack of condescension, considering the answer was obvious, “Dressing.”

“You’re going outside?”

“I am.”

“You don’t have to be at work for almost two hours.”

“So?”

“So why are you going outside?”

“I’m feeling twitchy. I need to burn off some energy—and some pancakes.”

His grunt still sounded confused.

“Want to come?”

“Don’t we spend enough time outside on calls and training and doing daily life tasks?” he asked.

“But this will be fun.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“Please?” She tried her most winning smile.

“I still think you’re insane.” Despite his words, he moved toward his coat.

“That’s nothing new,” she scoffed.

Although he snorted, she saw a smile fighting its way to the surface. “C’mon. Let’s go so you can run off that energy.”

Bouncing out the door in front of him, she jumped off his deck into the two-foot drifts covering his back yard. Callum followed more slowly, shaking his head.

“I think you absorb all the caffeine from the coffee shop or something,” he commented, eyeing her as she scooped snow into a mound. “It’s not normal for anyone over the age of five to be this peppy.”

She grinned, rolling her large lump of snow into an even bigger ball. “What can I say? I’m a mutant. This snow is awesome, though. It’s never this wet up here.” Normally, snow in Simpson was either powdery fine or frozen into rocklike drifts.

Once she had a decent-sized ball, she started on another.

“Snowman?” Callum guessed, eyeing the large lump of snow critically.

“Of course.”

“Your lower section is uneven.”

“So fix it.”

So he did.

* * *

They were laughing.
Laughing.
While Brent was in the woods, frustrated beyond sanity and freezing, they were having fucking
bonding
time. Her gaze turned in his direction, and he shifted behind the trunk of the tree next to him, although he kept her in his sights. She barely paused before turning back to the man.

It was like Brent was invisible, so easily dismissed. The way she looked at that guy, on the other hand, as if he was the center of her whole world, made Brent feel unhinged.

He started to pace. That guy needed to go. Once
he
was gone, she’d refocus on Brent. He’d become her sun, the person she couldn’t live without. He stopped pacing so he could listen. That feeling was still there, the one that told Brent he wasn’t alone. That person was always there, watching him and trailing him, judging his every movement.

The wind gusted through the trees, making the branches squeak and sway.

“Stop!” Brent hissed in an almost silent exhale. He wasn’t sure if he was talking to the wind or his stalker…or maybe his own brain.

* * *

Lou stepped back, eyeing the snow person. “Wow. I’ve never seen a snowman that…uh, symmetrical.”

Callum just gave a satisfied nod. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Our extremely symmetrical snowman is missing limbs,” she said over her shoulder as she tromped through the snow, heading toward the woods. “I’m going on an arm hunt.” He started after her, and she shook her head. “I’ll be right over there. Why don’t you fix his face while I grab a couple of sticks?”