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His family.
He had a wife. Kids. He was fucking thirty-two years old.
My tears came fast and hard. I swiped at them with the back of my hand, wiping soot into my eyes that had them stinging like a bitch.
“Goddammit!”
I loved these guys, they were my family, but that didn’t change the facts. I had to get the hell out of this job. My father had been a fireman, as had his father and so on. My father had been killed in the line of duty when I was four and Ryan one. I wouldn’t let that happen to my kids. And I would have kids. With Carinna.
Maybe I hadn’t been successful in surfacing her emotions last night, but what happened at the firehouse today, how she’d been able to find pleasure in a moment that should have been humiliating for her, proved how thoroughly we were involved. It proved, despite everything she did and said, she loved me.
One more day in the poker tournament and I could put this life behind me. Unlike every other facet of the day, my luck in the tournament had been better, brought me back up to fifth place. All it would take was a few good hands to come out the winner, or at least close to it. I would get those hands and get the fuck off of a fire truck.
Right now I had to get to Carinna. Had to lose myself in her kiss, feel the welcoming warmth of her sweet body. And she would welcome me inside, of that I held no doubt.
Because she was mine. Even if she wasn’t ready to admit it.
Carinna
With the jiggle of a key in my apartment door lock, I looked up from the couch, where I sat watching a Bermuda Triangle special on the Discovery Channel. Jack stormed in seconds later. The acrid smell of smoke clung to him and his face and clothes were dusted with soot. Some women might have been turned off by his appearance. I was hotter than the blaze he’d clearly just put out.
I’d forgone the gin and gone to work at two as scheduled. I’d spent the afternoon being bitchy to my customers and pissed at Jack, nearly as pissed at myself. I’d planned to ream his ass the next time I saw him. Catching the glint of raw need in his eyes, I knew I wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it.
When he opened his arms to me and silently begged with his eyes, all I could do was stand from the couch and go to him. Yelling, accusations, my need to move on—they could all wait. Right now it was clearly physical warmth he needed.
I pushed my hands beneath his dirty white undershirt and attacked his mouth with my kiss. He buried his hands in my hair and kissed me back with a hunger I felt from the rock-hard points of my nipples all the way to my toes.
Even as my pussy swelled with moisture, my heart squeezed tight for whatever demons filled Jack’s head. It made me want to speak words I had no right saying. The kind of affection-laced words I knew would give him hope.
He’d spent years making me believe he was on the same page relationship-wise as I was. In the end, he’d turned out to be just as big of a liar as Hank. The difference was Hank had never been my best friend. And with Hank it had never been anything more than fucking.
With Jack, no matter how rough or wild or kinky it got, it was lovemaking. I tried to deny that truth, but I couldn’t do it any longer. At least, not to myself.
Before we could become victims of our emotions and say words one or both of us would regret, I pulled free of the kiss and went down on my knees. I made quick work of freeing his shaft. Then I took his cock between my lips and savored his salty male hardness with my tongue, in a way he hadn’t allowed me to do last night.
His fingers had eased from my hair as I moved. With the stroke of my mouth around the velvety flesh of his rigid staff, they returned, holding on so firmly to my unruly brown curls, it was as if the caress of my mouth was his life source.
Using my hands on his balls, cupping and massaging their heavy weight, I licked the underside of his cock, trailing the swollen blue vein that ran the length of it.
Jack moaned and his fingers curled tighter in my hair. “Yes. I need this.”
His words were soulful, as if he felt he owed me an explanation for giving in to my silent offer. I knew why he would feel that way and it went beyond what had happened at the firehouse today. It was because I was a greedy bitch about my orgasms. I’d always thought that okay. Why shouldn’t I expect to come a couple times as advance payment for all my hard work getting a guy off?
Only it had never felt like work bringing Jack to climax. And, right now, I didn’t care about coming myself. I didn’t care about anything but making him feel good and, in doing so, chasing away the demons that haunted him.
I pulled my mouth free of his cock to look at his face. His eyes were as soulful as his voice, revealing—what before I could only guess at—his love for me so keenly it stilled the breath in my throat. My heart went from squeezing to a chaotic beat of desire for things that went well beyond the flesh and the pleasures to be found in it.
I pushed my storming emotions aside and gave him a reassuring smile. “I want to give you this, Jack. And I don’t expect anything in return.”
The gratitude in his eyes said more than words could. Before my own eyes gave me away, I returned to my goal of making him feel good.
Sucking the meaty pink head of his cock between my lips, I circled his length with my tongue while I continued to play with his balls, alternately gripping the sensitive sacs and teasing them with little taps. His shaft pulsed in my mouth. His groin pistoned against my face. The deliciously masculine scent of his arousal lifted on the air, filling my senses and making my inner thighs tingle with sensual ache.
I increased the pace of my mouth, loving him quickly, with firm, solid strokes. Stopping when I could feel his sex quivering beneath my tongue, telling me he was on the verge of climax.
Because I knew this had to be our last time together, I wanted to give him the orgasm of his life, push his control to the brink again and again before it finally wore thin. I did so with little licks of the pre-cum oozing from the tip of his cock. Teasing touches of the sensitized skin and the black hair that surrounded his proud member. By drawing his balls into my mouth one at a time and loving them with my tongue and the gentle scrape of my teeth.
Jack’s full-bodied groan and the shaking of his thighs told me when he’d reached the limits of his control. Eagerly, I returned my mouth to his succulent cock, slid my lips down his length and fucked him in earnest.
His hips joined the lightning-fast pace, his shaft thrusting between my lips with exquisite pressure that had the head of his cock tickling the back of my throat and my panties growing unbearably wet despite this moment not being about my pleasure.
He lost control on the fifth thrust. I nearly came as his cream filled my mouth with the hot, salty, delectable taste of Jack.
Gripping my hair with tightly clenched fists, he cried out my name, something I’d always thought of as cliché, but with Jack I loved hearing my name in his deep, rough voice.
I loved.
There were those forbidden words again.
I tried my damnedest to
