Bear The Fire (Firebear Brides 4) (6 page)

“And aren’t you doing the polar opposite of that?” she asked, biting her lip in a way that made his cock throb with desire. Damn that little minx.

“I’m right here, baby,” he said, gently putting a hand around her ankle and kissing the top of her foot as she trailed the outlines of his chest.

“Physically, yes. But I know you’re just doing this to ignore the elephant in the room.”

Frustrated, Rhodes leaned back, taking a good hard look at Kali Jameson. She was tall, curvy, and full of fire. Yet she was still the sweetest, most innocent thing he’d ever managed to not break. How she’d come out of knowing him without half a dozen or more mental and physical scars, he didn’t know. But to keep it like that, well… he knew the only
real
way to do it would be to make sure she wasn’t around him.

“Yeah?” he smirked, keeping any witty jokes locked away for a less stressful time. “And what about you, Miss Know-It-All?”

“What about me?” she asked, like the notion hadn’t even crossed her mind.

The sunlight played off her skin beautifully, making her almost glow. There was a slight aura around her. He couldn’t think of her as anything but an angel sent to mar herself with him. How could he touch something so beautiful without fucking her up?

“What are you running from? You tell me that I’m being an ass, trying to put distance between crap that hurts me and could hurt others, but what about you, Kali? Don’t tell me you’re in Idaho, promising to marry a deadbeat who left you in the hospital, beaten up and afraid, because your life is just perfect.”

He gave her a hard look, hedging his bets that it would either quiet her with the talk about the past, or it would make her tell him what
he
wanted to know. Either way, he could only come out of this as the winner.

“You’re wrong,” she said sternly, looking away.

The blush on her cheeks told him he wasn’t, though.

“Yeah, right. See, you’re no better. You’re bottling something up too, using me to ignore whatever it is that’s going on with you. People and glass houses and all that, Kali,” he said, his cock going flaccid.

Congratulations, Rhodes. Great diversion. She’ll be out of here in about ten minutes flat at this rate.

But wasn’t that what he wanted?

He wasn’t so sure anymore.

Kali thrust her head in her hands, shaking her head side to side. Her long strands of hair fell like a waterfall. Mesmerizing. He expected her to get up, grab her clothes, and stomp out like she’d used to—like he still did. But instead, she looked up and softly nodded, the blush fading from her cheeks.

“You’re not wrong. I am using you.”

“Nailed it.”

“Ass.”

“So, what is it?”

Rhodes stretched out on the bed, propping his head on his palm and looking up at her. She grinned at him and butterflies stirred in his stomach. Wait, no. Not butterflies. Something much more masculine than that, but with the same effect. Rhodes cleared his throat, pushing the lovey-dovey thoughts out of his head.

This is temporary. It can’t last.

The mantra was getting sort of old.

“I’m a failure,” she said with a sad grin. “You know what I do? I sling coffee at the same place that I used to.”

“The Tired Bean? Sheesh,” Rhodes said, whistling. “No wonder you’re here, then. Even I’m a better choice than that dump.”

She smacked him over the head lightly and he smirked. It was like old times, joking around, spending days and days in bed, telling each other all sorts of stupid little secrets that meant nothing. But he had been a kid back then. He hadn’t
done
anything. No secrets worth keeping. Now? Now he’d been walking around with a huge burden of remorse for years, feeling like the scummiest piece of shit in the world.

What the hell had he done to turn out like Eric Hassleback, the fucker who had killed his father in front of his very eyes? He was even
worse
than Hassleback. At least Eric had had the decency to die along with his victim, but Rhodes was still walking around, breathing air and feeling sunshine on his skin. He was a prick. Nothing more, but probably a lot less than even that, if he were honest with himself.

“Yeah. But it’s not only that. I still live in the same place. Catlyn is my roommate, I think it’s what, six years now? She’s on boyfriend number fifteen now, hashtag ‘LoveOfHerLife’ as usual. And I still put up with it. I haven’t changed a single thing since that night.”

“Why not?” Rhodes asked, frowning. “Do you still sing?”

They’d met when he’d heard her singing at an open mic night. She had this soulful voice that could take a man right along with her and force him to see things the way she wanted them to be seen.

Listening to her had been… well, as close as he could get to a spiritual experience without being inside of her. Thinking that she hadn’t done more with her gift than maybe playing a few random gigs every now and then made his heart ache.

“Sing? Sure,” she snorted, rolling her eyes at herself. “I get up on open mic night with my band once a month. Same place. Same time. Same twenty people listening to us.”

“That rock shit was never your thing,” Rhodes scoffed, remembering the band, Plush Lips, she’d been a part of back then. They’d never known what to do with her voice, and by what he was hearing, they still didn’t.

“Yeah, well, tell it to my insecurities,” she said with a weak smile, plopping back down on the covers, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re not the only one who went off the rails after that shit, Rhodes,” she said softly.

That got his attention. He leaned in closer, laying a line of kisses from her forehead down to her chin, and then he pecked at her lips, honey-sweet as always.

“I’m no good for you, baby,” he said in a low murmur, straight from the heart.

“Shouldn’t I be the one to decide that?” she asked stubbornly.

“You’ve never known what was good for you. Look at you, in bed with me. You know better than that,” he said with a knowing grin, one that she wiped off of his face by pouncing on him and tickling his sides.

He howled with laughter, clutching her wrists and wringing them behind her back. She was back on top of him, that burning intensity back in her eyes that demanded a treat.

“I know what I want,” she said.

“I thought you hated me,” he teased, hiking himself up to sit so her face was hovering close to his, with those maddening lips and green, green eyes.

“I do. But I want you too. I think that’s love, right?” she asked, grinning.

Ow. Straight to the heart, again. It was one thing admitting his own defective adoration of the woman, but hearing those feelings echoed from her sugary lips? Too much.

With a grunt, Rhodes rolled her off of his body and got out of the bed. Kali looked up at him, surprise tinting her features. He couldn’t look at her. When she was vulnerable, or sad, or even just
there
, she was irresistible. He kept drowning in her presence and getting lost in it like a chump, forgetting his head and how to be rational.

“That’s not love, Kali. That’s a bad choice you shouldn’t make.”

He jumped out of the bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor. Pulling them on, he searched around aimlessly for his shirt, but all he found were the tattered remnants of a white tank top he had worn the night before. Frustrated, he went for the door, deciding to find a shirt in his own damn room.

“You’re running again,” she told him, making a cold spike lodge itself straight into his spine. She wasn’t wrong. That was a damn annoying quality about her.

“I’m going to go get some food. Am I allowed to do
that
, princess?”

He shot her a look and she quirked her brow, all knowing, all seeing. His nose crinkled in irritation and he stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him. His own bedroom was across the corridor. Grabbing a T-shirt from his open duffel, he threw it on and shoved his feet into his boots.

It felt like the damn house was sucking the air right out of his lungs. He ran down the stairs and by the time he rushed through the front door, he was heaving for breath. He gripped the rickety wood for support, making it creak and heave under the crushing force of his strong hands.

She was right. About almost everything. But it didn’t matter. It
couldn’t
matter. Being around him would ruin her. Destroy everything that was good about her, no matter how fucking fantastic it felt. He heaved in a big breath and straightened himself up, distinctly aware of the few beads of sweat that had appeared on his forehead.

“You okay?” Royce asked, watching him from the front yard, arms crossed over his chest.

“Yeah,” Rhodes lied, having completely glossed over the fact that Royce was there and that Redmond and Rhodes were climbing into the trucks already, all eyes on him.

“Sure,” Royce said, giving Rhodes his lie without poking at it. “We’re going to go scope out some tracks in the north forests. Think we’re on Hassleback’s trail. You want to come? You look like you could use some…” Royce didn’t finish his thought, a dark smirk crossing over Rhodes’s lips.

“You’re right. I do.”

Rhodes climbed into Ragnar’s truck, adamant about not looking up at Kali’s window. She was twisting him up like a pretzel and it was driving him out of his mind. Maybe a manhunt was exactly what he needed.
 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rhodes

“Not bad,” Rhodes admitted thoughtfully, studying the gear laid out before him.

“Yeah, we have good sponsors,” Redmond chuckled, one hand on the last row of seats as the airplane dipped lower, almost causing him to lose his footing.

Rhodes flipped through the mostly unopened packages, mentally going through the equipment list he usually used during missions. None of his brothers were smokejumpers, but they sure knew how to gear up for it. All the equipment was top of the line, in triple sets and Rhodes got the feeling that there was more stashed away.

Scowling, he looked at Redmond. “Who’s this for? You gone through training without letting me know? Because I know Ragnar isn’t about to jump out of any airplanes anytime soon.”

“Well, I thought maybe you would be the sacrificial bear,” Redmond said with an easy grin, leaning on the back of the chair now.

Looking at Redmond was like looking at a slightly older, less-damaged version of himself. Hell, could he ever get that kind of a grin on his lips, like he was convinced that everything would work itself out eventually? Rhodes doubted it.

“Right. Because when you look at me, you think—model citizen, pillar of small town Idaho. I don’t think so, bro.”

“Worth a try,” Redmond said, though the way he said it made Rhodes think that this conversation wasn’t quite over yet.

Redmond peeled himself off the seat, carefully walking toward the cockpit and Rhodes followed his lead.

They’d been up in the air for about ten minutes now, crossing over Shifter Grove and flying high above the northern forests. One of the bigger fires had happened there and out of the window, Rhodes could see the damage it had done. It would be a while before the woods bounced back. It always made him sick to his stomach to see stuff like that.

Probably why I became a smokejumper,
he thought wryly.

They were the guys who got sent into the most dangerous wildfires, parachuting in instead of working their way through the woods. The job needed fit, capable individuals who could rely on their own strengths and think clearly under stress. As messed up as Rhodes had always been, he was one of the best in the business when it came to his work.

But there was always that slightly masochistic side to him that loved jumping into shit like that, thinking that he might not come out of it. Like watching the tall, proud trees burn exactly the same way they had that night when he pushed Jonathan into the forest. The bastard had tried to get away in wolf form, but he’d caught him. And then he’d hit him and shook him between his jaws until there was nothing but a lifeless carcass between his teeth.

So he’d done what he knew he shouldn’t, but he was also sure that it would hide all the evidence. The underbrush had taken the flame like it was primed for it, burning with a high, open flame. An acre of land went up in smoke so fast that Rhodes had trouble getting back to the house and scooping up Kali before the flames reached the building.

It had worked perfectly. No witnesses. A freak fire, maybe someone being careless with a cigarette butt… someone like Rhodes. He hadn’t smoked since that night. That was until he’d seen Kali again. Now he couldn’t stop. His hands itched for the pack in his back pocket.

“So, what have we got here?” Redmond asked as he and Rhodes leaned on the entrance to the cockpit.

“Nothing so far,” Slate said, crowded by Royce and Ragnar as their eyes scanned the wealth of greenery below, tinted slightly brown and yellow by the drought.

“Someone tell me why we’re really up here to begin with?” Rhodes asked, not really minding and if anything, being thankful for the distraction.

But being away from Kali was like a kick to the sternum when he knew exactly how close she was and exactly how her skin tasted under his tongue. Focusing on anything but her was a real task. The struggle was real.

“I think Slade’s somewhere in these forests. One of the locals noted that they’d seen his truck heading into the clearing roads that could only take him out here. We found the truck, but there’s too much ground to cover on foot.”

“We’d never spot him from an airplane,” Rhodes commented.

“Ah, a non-believer!” Slate called with a chuckle, diving the airplane down so low it was almost grazing the tops of the trees.

The fearless weretiger pilot wore a grin on his face that would have made any rational man step away and put some distance between them, but Rhodes knew it far too well. Another adrenaline junkie. Good to know he wasn’t alone in this.

“Still. He’s one bear and it’s a big forest.”

“Keep your eyes peeled then, Ragnar grumbled, drawing a shrug from Rhodes in response.