Wilde Fire (2 page)

“Bree?” It couldn’t be. No fucking way.

“Unless you’re expecting another Bree today, then yeah, it’s me.”

I scrubbed at my face, confused.

“I was a girl the last time you saw me, Jake.” She rolled her eyes like I was acting like a dumbass. Which I fully acknowledged that I was. “I’m a woman now, and those wonderful things known as hips and boobs finally appeared. It’s me.” She snapped her fingers in my face. “Do I have to show you the diamond-shaped birthmark on my leg to prove it?

Okay, the moment was catching up to me. Kind of. This was her. Bree. The woman version, not the kid one I’d kept her boxed in my memory as for all of these years. The boobs and hips comment was messing with me though because now that she’d said it, I was looking.

I shouldn’t have been looking.

But I was.

I didn’t want to stop looking either.

Bree might have been a late bloomer compared to other girls, but once she finally did, she’d gone and done it right. I was a big guy who had huge hands, but I could have squeezed each one of my giant mitts around her tits and had plenty to spare.

What the fuck?

Why was I thinking about that? Why was I picturing it right this very second? This girl had been like a little sister growing up, the girl I remembered jumping rope and blowing bubbles during summer break . . .

God, and now I was picturing her mouth blowing other things.

Her gaze dropped, and if she noticed my cock swelling behind my zipper, she gave no indication.

“So?” She leaned into the doorframe and crossed her arms around her waist. “Do I need to hike my skirt up and prove to you it’s me? Or are you going to invite me in sometime today?”

The skirt-lifting thing was tempting. But she did that and I would not be able to stop at inspecting that birthmark on her inner thigh. I’d have a lot more inspecting to do.

I scrubbed at my face again when I should have been punching it, and swung the door open wide. “I’m convinced. Sorry. Still catching up to you being all grown up now.”

“You’re all grown up too. At least more than the last time I saw you.” Her gaze dropped to my crotch again, and this time, I think she noticed. It would be hard to miss it.

“Do you want me to grab your suitcases?” I asked, hitching my thumb at the rental car she had parked in the space outside the door.

“Yeah, that would be great.” Bree moved around the living room, taking in the space. I couldn’t tell if she liked it or not, but while she was distracted, it gave me a chance to check her out without being all obvious.

She still had that same light-colored hair that hung down her back. The same brown eyes. She still moved the same—all graceful and feminine—but this time she had the hips to sway with that walk. They pulled the fabric of her skirt as she moved. Her ass was the same story—round, full, and equipped to make a dude’s dick twitch.

Her legs were slim and long for her small size, and when I found myself picturing them squeezed around me as I ground into her, I backed out of the door for her luggage.

If for no other reason than to beat myself over the head with them.

This is your best friend’s little sister, Jake. Little. Sister.
I kept repeating the phrase to myself until it cleared the filthy images from my head. There were a million girls out there, plenty of them willing to let me do as many filthy things to them as I had in mind, but this one was off-limits. It didn’t matter how banging her body was or how much my johnson craved her. Off-limits.

After grabbing her suitcases out of the trunk, I was about to head back into my apartment when I stopped myself just outside. I could not mess this up with Bree. I’d already fucked things up by failing on my promise to her. I could not sever whatever connection we still had left by fucking her into next summer like I wanted to.

Off-limits. That was my objective with her.

She wasn’t still in the living room when I came back through the door. She wasn’t in the kitchen either, I noticed, as I went to carry her luggage into my room.

That was when I heard it. The shower. The bathroom door was closed.

Fuck me.

She was taking a shower. She was naked behind that door. Touching her body. Someone just put a bullet in my brain now because I was not going to be able to keep this up for the next six weeks.

“Bree?” I knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, hope you don’t mind but I just jumped in the shower. I’ve been up for twenty hours and needed to wash the airplane funk off.”

My forehead fell against the door. I knew she wasn’t trying to torture me, but she was. She couldn’t help it that I was the kind of guy thinking about sex a minute after I’d just finished the last round.

Oh wait, that was every guy.

“I’m just going to set your luggage in my room. It’s at the end of the hall here.”

“Okay, great. I’ll be out in a sec.”

She might not have looked like the Bree I remembered, but she was still the same person. Making herself comfortable wherever she went. That was one of the things I’d liked about her—that she was comfortable around different people in different settings.

After settling her suitcases beside my closet, I looked at my bed. It was a mess. I had a few minutes to change the sheets and make the bed before she finished in the shower.

The shower. She was in my shower. The one I stood in every day, sometimes jerking off in. After today, I’d spend a lot more time jerking off in there.

By now, my dick was actually hurting from being this hard. Maybe if I just rubbed one out, I’d get over this and then we could both get back to being old friends.

Before I knew it, I was lowering my zipper and pulling my cock free. I already felt better just relieving that pressure, but now that I had a firm grip on it, I needed to release the other kind of pressure.

I focused on the sound of the shower, picturing her wet, naked body. Then I began to stroke myself—nice and slow at first—like I’d start if I was in there now, burying my thick member in that snug little opening I knew she had.

I’d bend her forward a little, arching her back to stroke her in just the right spot to drive her closer to her climax too. My hand started moving faster, the tip of my dick leaking when I pictured myself reach around her body to separate her lips and stroke her.

I had to brace my other hand on the mattress to stay upright as I got closer, feeling my balls tighten when I imagined pinching her hard nipples between my fingers and rolling them until she was moaning my name in equal parts pleasure and pain.

I felt my orgasm mounting, and just before I blew my load, I imagined grabbing those full hips of hers and pounding that fine ass against me until her body was pulsing around my dick, forcing it to release inside of her.

“Fuck,” I cried, giving myself a few last strokes as my cum sprayed all over the sheets. My body went limp, but my cock stayed hard in my firm grip.

Giving myself a second to make sure I’d drained the last drop out of me, I blew out a slow breath. My god. That was the single most erotic experience of my life and it hadn’t even been shared with a woman. All I’d pictured was Bree and wrapped my big hand around my big cock, and my mind had done the rest.

If being with her in my head felt like that, what in the fuck would it feel like to have her body trapped beneath mine when I came inside of her?

Out of nowhere, I felt the weight of the dog tags against my chest again, reminding me of their presence. Fucking her in my fantasies her would be as far as I could let it go, I reminded myself.

I made a promise to take care of her years ago, and even though I’d done a piss poor job of it, that was about to change.

I was going to take care of her the way I promised her dying brother, starting with protecting her from me.

HE SEEMED MORE relaxed now. Less tense than he was when he’d first swung open the door and reminded me why Jake Wilde was someone a girl did not just move past.

He was still hot in the way that bordered boyish charm and rugged man, and in possession of the kind of body that made a girl dream of being lifted up and fucked against a wall. Tall, wide, built like there was a surplus of brawn the day he was created, taking one look at Jake made me eager to get on with my agenda.

It might seem callous. Maybe it was. It might be immoral too, but I needed Jake Wilde out of my head once and for all. I couldn’t keep longing for some guy I could never have. The only way to put him behind me for good was to let him between my legs until he’d pounded some sense into me.

I’d held Jake in too much deity esteem for so much of my life, the only way to bring him back down to the level of mere mortals was to prove to myself he was a man, driven by his dick, living one ejaculation to the next. Maybe once I’d proven that to myself, I could look at him and not feel like everything I’d ever wanted had been bundled inside all six foot five of him.

Maybe once he screwed me and did the guy thing of leaving me high and dry, I could shift some of the desire I had for him to disdain.

Then I could get on with my life and settle down with a guy who’d treat me right, had a job that wasn’t extremely hazardous to one’s life expectancy, and maybe on anniversaries, would put his head between my legs before flipping on the game.

But even as I glanced over at Jake from the passenger side of his old Jeep, I accepted that no man would ever measure up to Jake Wilde. Not even if he did do what I was planning and fuck and run on me.

Not even then, because Jake wasn’t just another hot guy. He’d been my friend and family growing up. He’d had my back and looked after me. A girl didn’t just get over a guy like that.

But I was hell-bent on trying.

I’d spend all summer long trying if that’s what it took.

I cranked down the window and stuck my hand out, surfing it through the wind. I felt a hundred times better after that shower—I wasn’t a fan of airports and cramped airplanes—and felt perked up and ready to start collecting research for my article. I had six weeks to gather everything I needed to write the article. Six weeks to get Jake Wilde out of my system.

I hoped it would be long enough.

“What do you think about Alaska?” Jake had his arm hanging out the window like mine and had a mirrored pair of sunglasses on.

I should have brought my sunglasses too. I was having a hard time not looking at him. Admiring.

His arms were big, stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt. His legs were hidden by those thick canvas pants, but I could tell how muscled they were from the way he was sitting, legs spread wide. And the bulge in his crotch hinted at something considerable that resided in that region of his body

Damn . . . and I thought I’d had it bad for him back then.

“So far,” I said, clearing my throat when I heard my voice. I sounded like I was in heat or something. “I’m loving it.”

“Sorry again about earlier. I feel like an idiot for not recognizing you.”

I smiled out the window. He kinda looked like an idiot at the time too. “It’s okay. Again. I should have given you a warning or something. I should have figured you’d never be able to see me as anything but a kid in pigtails.”

His jaw clenched suddenly, his fist doing the same around the steering wheel. He took a moment to relax them both before replying, “I don’t see you like that anymore.”

When he looked over at me, I felt the muscles banding down my stomach tighten. One look. A few carefully selected words. What that man could do to my body without even touching it. Without even knowing he was doing it to me.

It made me want to speed up my plan to get him into bed. But I wasn’t sure if he’d be as accommodating as I hoped. I knew guys as a breed weren’t exactly discriminating when it came to a woman inviting them into her bed, but with Jake . . . I don’t know, we had history.

Years of history. A relationship that stemmed from friendship and one of him seeing himself as some sort of protector of me. It wasn’t going to be as easy to seduce him as it would have been any other guy, but I still thought it was possible.

The way he’d looked at me earlier, the way he’d clearly been checking me out as I’d wandered his living room . . . I thought he found me attractive. If I could just use that attraction to cripple his big-brother mentality when it came to me, I could get what I wanted from him and move on.

It seemed strange I needed a guy to fuck me to leave him behind, but I’d tried every other way to get over Jake. Nothing had worked. Living across the country. Going years without seeing each other. Dating bachelors so eligible they’d been gobbled up by the next girl a hot second after I’d dumped them.

This was the only option I hadn’t explored. Sleeping with him.

It was the option I was most looking forward to.

“So, Jake Wilde.” I took my notepad out of my backpack and pulled the pen free. I needed to stop molesting him with my eyes, for my panties’ sake if nothing else. “Why smokejumping?” I tapped the end of my pen against the notepad, thinking. “Wait, first, what
is
smokejumping. In your words? Most of the readers won’t have heard of it, and I’ll just sound like Wikipedia if I try to explain it.”