Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3) (13 page)

He rolled on the condom and she tried to focus on all those good riotous feelings, rather than the nerves, the uncertainty. Because she knew how this worked and it would be just fine.

His rough, scarred hands slid up the length of her thighs, gentle teasing touches that didn’t exactly eradicate the nervous spin of her thoughts, but at least dulled them. It reminded her of how close she’d been, allowed her to think of how much
bigger
the pleasure might be when they were really, fully together.

He nestled at her entrance, a teasing flex of his hips only giving her the slightest hint of what was to come. But then he was easing inside, deeper and fuller, and no matter that she thought this should be it, that he couldn’t possibly be closer or
more,
he kept
going.

“Lina,” he said, his voice a strained, feral thing.

She forced her gaze to his, her pulse beating panicked overtime in her neck, her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest. Everything inside of her tensing and holding too tight to breathe.

His mouth curved the slightest bit, the tiniest flash of a hook in the right corner. “You’ll survive, I promise.”

She huffed out something—a breath, a laugh, she wasn’t quite sure what it was, all in all. She was still too…focused on the way he fit inside of her. But something about the gentleness in his voice refueled her determination to be
fine
, because she did not need to be told she’d survive.

She knew. She was in charge of her own survival, and so despite the fact that it…well, not quite
hurt
, just wasn’t quite as easy or as comfortable as she might have preferred, she was going to find a way to make it what people so often lost their heads and careers and sometimes even lives over.

She relaxed and he stroked his hand up and down her side, his mouth found her breast, his tongue teasing her nipple until she sighed and all but melted back into the bed.

He moved, slightly, and some of that tension eased, loosened. She traced her fingers down his back and he scraped his teeth against her nipple, which caused her to squeak and arch against him.

And that was…that was good. The arching, the movement, so she did it again, shifting against the hard length of him that had joined with the soft heat of her.

He groaned, she could feel it vibrate through her and it…pleased her. That something she did could draw out such an involuntary noise from him. Him. So gorgeous and sure and… She held some power.

So, she moved, and Ace let her. His hands held her hips, but he didn’t guide her. She was the one in charge, moving herself against him, finding the ways to move that made the discomfort ease and the pleasure spread again.

She watched his jaw harden, watched his amazing blue eyes narrow, and found herself smiling when she moved a certain way and he closed his eyes briefly.

“Ace,” she said, surprised it was her voice that was a breathy, thready thing in the air.

He opened his eyes back up.

“Participate,” she instructed.

“I’m trying to be…” His jaw tensed even further, each tip of his finger digging just a little harder into her hips. “
Gentle
.”

“Well, you can stop that now. I’m okay. It’s…” She was a doctor. She talked about intimate things with people all the time, and still she blushed. “Don’t be gentle. Be…” His fingers flexed into her hips again and, slowly, he eased out of her.

Then thrust back in, hitting some spot that very nearly made her vision go white. Or bright light. Or
something
.

“Yes, that,” she all but panted against him.

His grin did things to her heart she’d rather not analyze. Luckily, his lazy movements inside of her did things that made it impossible to do much thinking.

With each stroke, he lost some of his determined tension, he let go, he enjoyed, and as he moved faster, the climax brewing climbed higher. Everything in him seemed to match exactly where she needed him to, and when he bent down and drew her bottom lip between his teeth, she shattered against him.

The pleasure came in waves, somehow bigger and deeper than anything she’d done for herself. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight through the blast of climax, the shudder of release, and the simply perfect moment of being his.

*

Ace held himself
still against the pulsing heat of her climax, reveling in all he shouldn’t. That she was his and his alone, that she held onto him as though he were the center of everything.

Her hands eventually lost their tight grip on him, sliding down his back. So, he moved, slowly, carefully. He knew she didn’t care for his patience or his gentleness, but somehow he knew she deserved it all the same.

Care. He’d spent so many years trying to beat care out of himself, but she pulled it out of him so easily. Lina.
Mine
.

He closed his eyes against the thought and moved, into her, with her. She dragged her fingers up his back then locked them together behind his neck.

“Do it again,” she said with a smile.

He laughed. She killed him, in the best possible ways. This woman so different than everyone he’d ever known.

“If you insist,” he murmured, sinking into the urge to run the edge of his teeth down the tender curve of her neck.

She groaned and arched into him, so he rolled until she was on top.

“Oh,” she said on something like a gasp, wonder in her voice as he shifted until they were both sitting, him still deep inside of her, her legs wrapped around his waist.

“Set the pace, Lina.”

She swallowed. The flush of her cheeks—more from orgasm than embarrassment—had spread down her chest, and his gaze lingered there, and then his mouth. And it wasn’t until he drew a perfect, pink nipple into his mouth, did she begin to move.

He gave ample attention to each breast, small yet sensitive, and he let her move however she wanted against him until he’d learned just the right angle and grip to give her exactly what she needed.

When she lost herself a second time, her groan echoed through him like some kind of brand. It echoed in his head, in his chest. He couldn’t wait any longer to take his, to take hers, to give into everything he’d been trying to hold back.

He rolled her onto her back, plunged deep one last time, everything narrowed to where they met, to where they were one. The orgasm shook him to his center, thundering through him, a heavy beat that threatened to weaken the hands that kept him locked above her.

He focused on keeping his elbows locked, focused on staying deep, holding her through the last wave of absolute bliss.

And then he narrowly rolled off of her before he collapsed, realizing only then how shallow his breathing was, how much of a loss it felt not to be inside of her. The dim room was filled with only the tandem sound of their breathing.

Eventually, he gathered enough strength to get off the bed and get rid of the condom. When he slipped back onto the mattress, Lina was still lying there, completely naked, her gaze very intent on the ceiling.

She twisted her fingers in the edge of the pillowcase, chewing on her bottom lip then very purposefully
not
. She didn’t look at him, and a wave of…

He’d forgotten what it was like to care about someone, to want to protect them and shield them. It was a purposeful forgetting, because he’d always failed. Failed to protect Jess, failed to make their string of foster families love them, failed over and over again to give back to the one person who’d ever given a damn about him.

But Lina, impossibly strong, even in her uncertainty, gave him the hope that maybe…this time…

Don’t be an idiot
.

But he was one, because he reached out and pulled her to him, tucking her head in the crook of his neck, and linking his fingers with hers, resting the connected limbs over his heart.

She let out a shuddering sigh, and he wondered if he’d misread something along the way. If…

“Okay?” he asked, his voice gruff and rusty.

“More than,” she replied, nestling in closer. “A little weird, but very okay.”

He chuckled, and they lay together, entwined and sated. He didn’t want to move or leave. He wanted…this. He wanted to have this, for as long as he could manage it. For as long as he didn’t screw it up.

And the elephant in the room?

It was his turn to stare up at the ceiling, to twist his fingers—except his were linked with hers, so it was just twisting them together.

There was only one thing he knew without a shadow of a doubt in the aftermath of all that had just occurred. He wanted her with a deep need and desperation that shocked the hell out of him. He’d changed his life—settled in one place, bought things, grown attachments and bonds to people.

He wanted to keep on that path and, more than anything, he wanted to do it with her.

The last woman he should have any lingering connection to.

Which meant he had two choices. Run or…

He had to tell her. He should have done it before. He should have forced the issue, because…

This was something, and the lie was a heavy weight between them. She
knew
his sister, the woman he’d purposefully hidden from for the past ten years. To save her the pain of his continual failures, and those failures touching her.

Lina didn’t just
know
Jess, she was friends with her. Lina’s family had taken Jess in, had given her a chance—the kind of chance Jess never would have had if he’d stuck around, and if the way Lina described her family was anything to go by, the kind of chance that could be ruined by someone like him being a part of her life.

He wasn’t the surly, teenage rebel runaway anymore, no, but all his baggage lingered. A bunch of doctors were going to look at his demanding fire jumping job—the kind that couldn’t really be done well into a comfortable retirement—and think he was a dipshit at best.

Jess and Lina were both tied to that family. He couldn’t stain them. Dad and all those foster parents couldn’t be wrong. He was a bad mark and the reason things went wrong—for them, for Jess, for anyone he dared care about.

He ruined things. It was some flaw in his nature he couldn’t overcome except by giving himself an all-new identity.

But his new identity didn’t matter when it came to Lina, because at least a part of her life was connected to his old one. He had to tell her, and let the chips fall where they may. “Lina, you have to let me tell you something.” Because he had to put it out there and if she had to tell Jess…

He didn’t know. Did he run? Did he accept it?
Run. Run, you’d have to run.

For the first time in his life, running seemed like the worst possible outcome, instead of the best. He’d built a life, after an entire life of being little more than a nomad, the past three years he’d built a life here—in Kalispell, with the forestry service, and some insane, crazed part of him thought he could build a life with Lina.

He’d sunk in roots, and he didn’t want to tear them out.

But you will. You were not built for roots.
What an idiot he’d been for thinking he could outrun that.

Lina’s eyes finally met his, eyebrows drawing together. She reached out and brushed her fingers over his mouth.

“Lina, I—”

“It isn’t important,” she said, cutting off his confession, her eyes never leaving his. An intensity to her statement, to the way she looked at him. As though she knew. As though she
knew
and it didn’t matter.

“But—”

She shook her head and pressed her mouth to his, her fingers curling around his scalp, cutting off everything he needed to say.

“We’re just us,” she whispered against his mouth. “It doesn’t matter.”

He sifted his fingers through the soft silk of her hair, let her lips sink into his again. She wouldn’t let him tell her, so maybe it
didn’t
matter. Maybe he really could just be this person he’d built out of the ashes.

With her.

S
omehow, two months
passed like the blink of an eye. Between demanding work hours, sleep, and then…Ace, whenever their schedules meshed, Lina had a life that involved more than work.

The process of becoming a doctor had always been her goal, her focus, and the crux of her life. Doctor, doctor, doctor.

These days it felt less like
her—
her center, her being, her motivation for
everything
, and more like just a facet. For the first time in her life, she felt…kind of well-rounded. Like her life was full. Not just of this one thing, but of lots of things.

A satisfying job, because as much as she’d become a doctor to serve the McArthur purpose and plan, she’d always really enjoyed the work of being a doctor, dealing with emergencies, diagnosing issues. Medical work was the best version of her still.

But she also had an actual friend in Cherrie, the kind of friend she could talk to in ways she’d always been too afraid or too determined to be strong instead.

And she had a…boyfriend. Somehow, someway she and Ace had fallen into an actual relationship. It wasn’t exactly easy with their schedules, and they didn’t exactly talk about spending all their matching free time together.