Bear The Heat (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 3) (8 page)

He offered a hand, and she took it. The heat of Breaker’s skin, the gentle rasp of calluses against the latex on her palms, brought a smile to Rory’s bowed lips. “You never answered me,” she finally said as she pulled the gloves off with a pop.

“Huh? Oh, why am I here? Well, not all firefighting bears are happy with just getting the fire out and waiting for the next one.

I got a weird feeling about this place. Something about the way it burned just wasn’t right.”

“Arson?” she asked. “I knew I liked you before, but now I’m sure of it.”

He scrunched his eyebrows together. “Because I see arson where everyone else sees electrical fire? Actually... do you remember where the fuse box is?”

“Report said it was over here,” Breaker said as the pair rounded the north corner of the cottage and poked through monkey grass
52

that had overgrown so badly it looked like a wheat field. “I really hope I don’t get any ticks. I hate ticks.”

“Big baby,” Rory said. She smiled briefly, knowing the big bear was too busy with his search to turn back and see her. For some reason, she had always kept her feelings close to the chest, and this was no different. “You know you can just pick them with tweezers, right? Or if you’re a
really
big baby, you can smear Vaseline over them and wait until they die. That’s creepier if you ask me, though. Big dead tick hanging on your leg like a backward boob.”

“A... what?” Breaker froze in his tracks, but didn’t turn around. “Did you just say backward boob?”

“Yeah,” Rory said. “You know, like the tick is this big engorged boob, and its head is the nipple. It’s attacked to you by the nipple, so backward—”

“Oh my god,” Breaker said, coughing. “I am never touching a boob again.”

“Right, we’ll see about that.” Rory answered with her normal witty snark before realizing how it sounded. She blushed, but somehow didn’t care. “Fuse box?” she asked, trying to sail right past what anyone on earth would construe as a groping invitation. To his credit, the big bear once again managed to not turn around and find her blushing and cringing at her own yammering.

“I’d rather talk about boobs,” he said, pushing through the grass. “But I’ll take this. Look.”

Creeping up beside him, careful to avoid a stalk of grass covered in chiggers, Rory leaned in close. “Well that’s not exactly what you expect to find in a fuse box.”

“You mean... you expected fuses? Maybe some circuits? Maybe some breakers? How about a boob?”

“You’re a damn boob,” Rory said, smiling and laughing softly.

“How can this thing be
empty
?”

BEAR THE HEAT

Just as she said, there wasn’t anything at all in the fuse box. No wiring, no nothing. And along with that, there were deep gouges like claw tracks, running down the siding of the house. “Must be somewhere else, but where? There wasn’t anything in the report about it at all. And if this was electrical, someone had to have noticed the box. And what’s up with those claw marks?”

“Weirdest damn thing,” Breaker said. “I’m not really sure what to make if it. Most reasonable thing is that it’s been there a long time. Fusebox just got moved into the basement or something and some animal or other was rooting through it for food. Or... something. Still, I don’t know.”

“I guess there’s nothing much we can do about it now except putting in a report. Still, I don’t like it. Seemed too strange.” Rory sucked a deep breath and bit her lip. She caught a hint of the big bear’s scent. It was hard and leathery and sent a tingle down the back of her neck as she breathed him in. A thought ran through her mind – she could probably throw this guy down in the grass right here and find out if he’d really sworn off boobs.
Holy hell,
what’s wrong with me
? Rory asked herself.
I get within four feet of
a guy and I’m knock-kneed, stupid and getting all breathy? Come
the hell on
.

She shook her head as he tapped his fingertips against the brick. “So... you there? Or did you get abducted by something?”

“You could abduct me,” Rory said under her breath, and then immediately clapped her hand over her mouth.
Of all the stupid
shit. Why did I have to inherit the diarrhea of the mouth gene
?

“Huh?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing, I was just thinking about an old movie.
Fire in
the Sky
, heard of it? It’s about this guy who gets abducted by aliens and is gone for a few weeks, and then his friends find him on the side of the road. Anyway, the guy’s name is Travis Walton and he’s got a new movie coming out. I was just thinking of...

what? Why are you staring at me?”

54

“Because you’re cute when you’re flustered,” Breaker said.

“And honest to God, I’ve never said anything like that to anyone in my entire life. I’m not exactly big on sharing my thoughts, so you’re doing something weird inside my head. It’s like you’re one of those mushrooms that gets in an ant’s head and turns into an antenna.”

Rory’s eyes went as wide and as round as saucers. “Did you really just say that? Because I was thinking about those things earlier. I saw that episode of
Planet Earth
last night. What the hell are those things? How can something like that really exist? I mean, we turn into animals, but that’s normal. Mushrooms that turn ants into divining rods? What kind of godless, horrible world do we live in?”

Unbeknownst to herself, Rory had taken a pair of steps closer to Breaker, and when he put a hand on her shoulder, she felt the heat pulsing through his palm. “Can’t be that bad, can it?” he asked. His voice was a low rumbling growl that Rory could feel in the pit of her stomach. “I mean, you’re here, after all. And I’m standing behind a burned out house
with
you, so—”

“No,” she said. “I guess it can’t be all that bad.”

Rory stretched her neck a little, tilting her face upward toward the big bear, who towered over her by at least a head and a half. “I can’t believe I’m about to kiss you,” he said.

“Why can’t you?” she leaned closer.

In the instant before she tasted his lips, and his scent and his heat coursed through her veins, Rory felt a rough hand on the bare skin of her shoulder, where her shirt had slipped down.

“Because I really am terrified of ticks,” Breaker said. “But somehow, I’m willing to put up with that to kiss you.”

She felt her insides twist into a failed balloon animal that resulted in a granny knot. His lips first brushed hers, and then when she arched her neck further, she managed to suck his bottom lip between her teeth.

BEAR THE HEAT

He grabbed her shoulders first, then clutched her back, pulling Rory’s body against himself. Hungrily, she kissed back, sucking at his lip, then nibbling him gently. Her hands slid up Breaker’s back, through his bristly hair.

“What the hell are we doing?” she asked with a blushing smile when she had to pull away to try and catch her breath. “And aren’t you worried about ticks?”

“Yeah,” Breaker said, “but somehow I can get over that when I’m doing this. Don’t ask how, but—”

He got bored of talking and kissed her again, sliding his lips from her chin to her neck. Tingles of energy prickled through Rory’s entire being as Breaker sucked on her neck. Then he dragged his teeth along her earlobe, and finally, in the hollow behind her ear, where no one had ever kissed. When he got there, the tingles turned into clenching, gripping sensations that filled her core with desperate, hungry pleasure. “No one’s,” she let out a soft groan, “ever done that before. How did you know that I’d—”

“I didn’t,” Breaker said, his face red, and sweat running down either side of his face. “I just decided to take a chance, and...” he trailed off, his fingers curling softly against Rory’s bare shoulders.

“I took a chance,” he repeated, “and just hoped it worked out.”

The way his voice twisted upward at the end of his sentence.

“It worked out... didn’t it?” he honestly seemed like he’d just been abducted by an alien and returned to Earth with no idea where he’d been, or that he’d lost three weeks of his life.

“Breaker?” Rory asked. “You okay in there?” She patted his cheeks softly before curling her fingertips against his raspy beard.

“Hello?”

A moment later, he shook his head, like he was coming out of a haze. “Shit, sorry,” he grumbled. “Guess I kinda ruined the mood, huh?”

“I think probably it’s for the best. We shouldn’t be stripping down and going at it behind a burned down house where neither of us is particularly supposed to be without an escort.”

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Reminding herself of the danger of being caught, and then losing her job, Rory looked around and of course saw nothing at all.

“Although I mean, I
am
technically on the police department and... uh...” Rory’s eyes got big and round and white as she stared at something behind Breaker’s ear.

“What is it?” he asked. “Let me guess? It’s a tick, right? Ha-ha-ha, very funny.” He lifted his hand to his neck, but Rory grabbed it, intercepting his hand from reaching his neck.

“No, no, nothing like that. You just have really nice cheekbones, that’s all.” She was giving her fake out a valiant effort, but she just couldn’t stop staring at the black creature that had latched onto Breaker’s skin at some point. “It’s uh... yeah, no, just your cheekbones. Very striking.”

“Right,” he said, eyebrows knitting together as he grew more and more suspicious. “What is it? Why’d you get all weird?”

She just couldn’t stop staring at the dime-sized black ball.

“Boobies,” she said absently.

Before she could stop him, Breaker’s hand went back to his neck. His fingers found the shiny little knot and he uttered a curse as he realized he’d guessed right all along. “Boobie?” he asked no one in particular, as his lips started going pale. “Oh God,” he sighed. “First I’m checking out what I think is an arson, next I’m making out with possibly the coolest girl I’ve ever met, and now I’m going to pass out and make myself look like the world’s biggest baby.”

As his balance faltered, Rory caught the giant bear and eased him to the ground, using all her mink strength. As soon as he was sitting, he let out a sigh, and that was that. Before he went out like a light for a couple of seconds, Rory heard him mumble something about how shitty his luck was.

She grabbed his arms, and as she heaved him to his feet to get him out of the grass and hopefully prevent any further flirtation with Lyme disease, the giant bear stirred, and sort of whispered her name into Rory’s ear. She wasn’t exactly one to be
BEAR THE HEAT

particularly compassionate, especially about something like
this
, but for whatever reason, the fact that this enormous, powerful monstrosity of a bear was mortally terrified of
ticks
made him seem just that much more real. Laughing to herself, she dragged him by the armpits back around to the side of the house where the fire had burned away any overgrowth that could house the enemy.

As he rustled, grumbled, and finally came back to life, Rory was making a series of notes on her ever present stylus-using digital assistant from circa 1999. She wasn’t some kind of Luddite who refused to use modern technology, but she just liked this thing. It wasn’t something she could explain, but then again, she didn’t need to explain it to anyone.

“Sorry about that,” Breaker grumbled as the color came back into his lips. “It’s... uh, yeah it’s a long story. It involves Lyme disease and a few years of misdiagnosis that ended up giving my doctor a drinking problem and giving me more than a few weird, permanent skin discolorations. Really not that interesting of a story.”

Rory shrugged. “We’ve all got our shit,” she said plainly.

“Yours just happens to be really funny. And for the record, that
does
sound like a pretty good story. Does this also mean you have sworn off boobies again? I can’t keep track.”

The two of them laughed for a few scant moments before falling quiet again. Something unwelcome prickled at the back of Rory’s brain.
We all have our shit
, she thought.
Yeah, we sure do.

If I can manage to get through one damn day without thinking I’m
some kind of failure or another, it’s a miracle. I think I’d trade
mortal fear of ticks for that one any day
.

“This might be the weirdest day I’ve ever had,” Breaker finally said. He pushed himself to his feet with a subdued grunt. “But I gotta say, I think it might also be one of the best. And we didn’t even figure out what the hell we came here to figure out in the first place. I guess that’s the mark of a good distraction.”

58

As he said the final word, Breaker’s eyes fixed heavily on Rory’s. She stared at him, unsure what to say, but thinking maybe there wasn’t anything that
needed
to be said. “I guess we better go?” she finally asked, breaking the stillness. “I mean, you probably have things to do and I have... things...”

“Nah, I’m off for the next day and,” Breaker checked his watch, “a half. Or so. Only thing I have to do is stop by the beer store, and then park my ass in front of Netflix and enjoy an assortment of terrible action movies. I mean, if you have something else to do, then I’ll leave you alone.” He cracked a smile. “I’m just messing around. I know you’re busy, I’m not that kind of asshole. Look, do you have any particular taste for 80s action movies?”