Flash Storm Read online

  “It’d be so much easier to wait out the storm here.”

  Yeah. Smarter, too. He knew this because he was normally a smart man.

  But not today.

  Tense, he reached down a hand to help her up, noticing that she was careful to keep her weight off her ankle. She was shivering now, her teeth chattering together, and now that they weren’t warming each other up, he wasn’t all that far behind her.

  Not good. “We’ve really got to get out of this.”

  “I agree.” She drew a tremulous smile. “So let’s go inside.”

  Where they’d once made love in wild, sweet abandon on the ranger’s desk. He remembered everything about that day, how they’d been hiking and stumbled onto this place, how he’d pulled her clothes off one piece at a time, nibbling every inch of skin he revealed, taking them both to heaven and back. “We’re only going in there to wait out the storm and dry off. That’s it.”

  She offered him a sweet smile through chattering teeth and blue lips.

  Dammit. So not good. With a sigh, he turned to the door.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sara was hugging herself, trying to keep smiling, determined to remain positive, but her spirits were lagging.

  She’d gotten Sam alone, gotten him up here in the mountains and then to the deserted ranger station.

  Where they’d first made love.

  She’d hoped doing so would make him remember their good times and forget that five years ago she’d walked away from him without a word.

  Yeah, she really needed to make him forget that part. Or at least ask him if he’d meant it when he’d said he’d forgiven her. Because if he really had forgiven her, maybe they still had a shot. All she had to do was ask, but it stuck in her throat. Fear stuck it in her throat.

  Because what if he didn’t?

  Or what if he couldn’t ever forget and always doubted that she could do long-term?

  Don’t be a coward, a little voice whispered in her head. You need to do this, you need it to go on and forge a real life for yourself, with real relationships.

  She wanted that so badly. “Sam—" she began.

  Instead of answering, he put his hands on the door. It was locked, as it had been all that time ago. He tested it, then put his broad-as-a-mountain shoulder to it and pushed.

  As it had all those years ago, it gave way.

  And something within her did, too. God, she loved to watch him be the hero. She always had. He was so…fierce. Determined.

  Protective.

  At the sound that escaped her, he glanced over at her. He was drenched, his T-shirt clinging to his torso, outlining his every hard muscle, of which he had many. His pants, baggy, heavy with the rain, were low on his hips, low enough to reveal quite a bit of navy-blue knit boxers, and she was having a hard time not staring at him. His face was wet, his eyes dark and unreadable on hers. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Except just watching you breathe is a turn on.

  “It’s something,” he insisted.

  “Okay, it is something. You’re something. Which is why I need to talk to you—”

  “Stop it.” He shook his head and shoved open the door, looking inside before stepping back and gesturing her in ahead of him.

  Always the gentleman.

  As she limped over the threshold, she felt his hand—big and surprisingly warm—on the small of her back, guiding her, and she pretended it was him wanting to comfort her rather than making sure she didn’t fall again and cause him even more trouble.

  Together they viewed the small one-room structure. The desk was still there, right in the middle. The elephant in the room. As she stared at it, her body heated from the inside out, remembering the day he’d laid her back on it, naked, exploring her body in a way that still made her knees wobble whenever she thought about it.

  Obviously not remembering the same thing, he turned to her with his hands on his hips. “Talk quick,” he said. “Because the minute it stops coming down, we’re out of here.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Sam was well aware of the fact that he was being an ass, a really big ass, but he was at the end of his rope. Hell, he’d slipped off the rope and begun to drown.

  Metaphorically speaking.

  In reality, he stood in an abandoned ranger station with the storm blowing outside, the hauntingly beautiful Sara standing before him, water dripping off her in rivulets as she shivered so hard he thought her teeth might just rattle out of her head.

  His instinct was to protect. To fix the problem. To haul her gorgeous ass close and warm her with his own body heat.

  Yeah. He was definitely drowning.

  But none of that was going to happen. It couldn’t happen. He’d been down that road once before with her and all he’d gotten from the trip had been a bad heartache.

  She’d made him love her and then she’d dumped him, and while he’d forgiven her—hell he even understood her, he hadn’t forgotten. Didn’t know if he ever could. Maybe if she could prove to him that she’d changed, that she was capable of sticking around and fighting for what she wanted, that would change. Thing is, he had no idea what she wanted now, particularly from him.

  Watching him, silent, she began to unbutton her blouse.

  His heart stuttered. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re a firefighter. You know the first-aid basics. We have to get out of our wet things in order to have any hope of warming up.”

  Mesmerized, held into place by her every movement, he watched as she shrugged out of her blouse and set it over the back of the lone chair in the room. Her bra was white, cut dangerously low, and thanks to its wet state, utterly sheer.

  Yeah. He was in trouble. “Sara—”

  “You’d better strip, too, Sam. Your lips are turning blue.”

  Funny, but as she unbuttoned her pants, he was feeling anything but cold. “Don’t—”

  Too late. She let the wet pants drop, leaving her in a matching set of white bikini panties.

  Also sheer.

  He swallowed hard and actually began to sweat, if that was even possible. “Sara—”

  But he broke off with a strangled breath when she turned from him to add her pants to the back of the chair, revealing a world-class ass—and the fact that the panties weren’t bikini cut at all, but a thong.

  God. “Sara.”

  She turned back with a questioning smile and he lost every single word in his brain. Complicating matters was the fact that she was still shaking, almost violently now, and when she stepped toward him, he found himself opening his arms and letting her press up against him.

  All those wet, soft, beautiful curves.

  And since he was no saint, not even close, he groaned, and when she went seeking his mouth, he bent his head and kissed her.

  CHAPTER 14

  They were both drenched to the skin, but at the touch of Sam’s warm mouth on hers, Sara trembled from an inner heat, not the cold. She couldn’t help it. Having him hold her was more than she’d dared wish for these past five years.

  He ran his hands up and down her bare, goose-pebbled arms, and then, with his mouth still on hers, stepped back only far enough to tug up his wet shirt.

  They had to take their mouths off each other to get the shirt over his head but then they were back to the kissing.

  And oh God, the kissing.

  Kissing Sam was like kissing no other. His mouth was firm, generous, and he knew how to use it.

  Oh, did he know how to use it.

  And then there was the delicious, heart-stopping fact that she was now bare skin to bare skin with the most beautiful male torso she’d ever had the pleasure of touching. She couldn’t stop herself from running her hands over him—his chest, his shoulders, those flat, ridged abs that she suddenly wanted her mouth on. When her fingers played in the waistband of his dripping wet jeans, he sucked in a breath and she slid her hands inside.

  He was fully erect, straining for release, and she nearly collapsed to the floor