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Authors: Anne Marsh

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BOOK: Burning Up
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The anger and possessiveness drowning him came as an unpleasant shock. She was his. He didn't know where the primitive sensations came from, but damned if he didn't embrace them. She'd wanted him to change, so she was going to have to deal with that man he was becoming.
“I'm going to be late,” he warned, his voice a low, throaty growl.
“What?” Those brown eyes mocked him. “You've got two minutes, Jack, before you blow your schedule. You can't take care of business here in two minutes?”
Turning away from him, she dropped the sheet without so much as a give-a-damn, reaching for her own clothes. Her body was pale and sexy in the gray dawn light, and his mouth went dry. Yeah, he hadn't had him enough of her. Even now, as she grabbed the clothes he'd turned inside out as he'd stripped her helter-skelter, he wanted to take her straight back to that bed and make her moan some more. Instead, he just watched as she tidied up. Her panties were tangled in the legs of her cut-offs, and the lace strap of her bra dangled from her fingertips as she turned and dropped the lot into a wicker hamper. Disposing of the memories.
Like hell.
“Don't push me,” he growled.
“I wouldn't dream of it, Jack,” she said tightly. Turning her back on him, she stepped into a fresh pair of lacy white panties, and he swore he felt his control snap. Lily was playing with fire, and she was about to get burned. Before she could so much as squeak, he had her backed up against the wall of her bedroom. He was bigger, stronger. And she had him far too hot and bothered. Slapping one hand on the wall beside her head, he reached down and captured her chin with his other hand.
Those eyes of hers were pure challenge mixed with a healthy dose of anger. She didn't like being intimidated, but she wasn't running. Lily wouldn't run again. He knew that. And he couldn't ignore the sensual attractiveness of that bedrock strength in her.
He should have warned her, should have given her a chance to demand he get the hell out of her house, but he wasn't feeling nice. Hell, he was angry.
And possessive.
He didn't particularly like himself right now, but he wanted Lily Cortez, and he wouldn't hide that truth. So he lowered his mouth, not taking his gaze from her face. Those damned brown eyes of her eyes didn't flinch. Her angry look matched his, reading the reaction to her he couldn't hide. Whatever she saw there on his face, she must have liked the message, because she gave a little hum of excitement and melted into him.
Damn her.
His mouth slanted over hers, tasting, teasing, and he was so damned lost, he wondered if he'd ever find himself again. Her mouth was sheer, raw heat. She was wet and needy, so boldly honest in the sensual excitement she felt that his entire world had narrowed to her and the shadowy bedroom where he'd wrapped her up in his arms.
“Open up,” he growled, swallowing her little gasp of feminine excitement. He brushed his lips against hers, stroking between their plumpness with his tongue. Drove inside her. No excuses. No hiding. Just raw sensation overwhelming him like a brush fire jumping the line and sucking all the oxygen out of his lungs. Drowning in the liquid heat of her.
Her tongue tangled with his. Exploring. Her mouth met his in a sensual throw-down. He'd kissed her at least a dozen times now, taken her mouth almost every way he could imagine last night. He should have recognized the taste of her, the intimate shape of that mouth. And yet this kiss was pure discovery and unexpected pleasure. He was never going to get enough of her.
She moaned something into his mouth. Maybe his name. Hell, she could have been uttering heartfelt profanity or reciting bad poetry. He didn't care. All he could do was thread his hands through her hair and hang on to this impossible, fabulous woman wrapped in his arms. Let his mouth devour hers, using his lips and tongue and teeth to stoke the furious blaze in her. With a wordless cry, she arched up into him, riding his jeans-clad thigh as the hot, wet heat of her silently demanded he scoop her up and carry her back to the bed she'd abandoned.
Their bed.
Instead, his cell buzzed, jolting him into awareness.
“I guess it's official. You're late, baby,” she drawled.
His whole body jerked. Thick and hard, his dick rose to meet that feminine challenge. So he gave her back her challenge, gave her one of his own with each hot stroke of his hands. Possessive. Raw. He wasn't letting her forget what they'd just shared—or letting her dismiss him that easily. He thrived on challenges, and she'd just thrown down.
She eyed him like she hadn't been devouring his mouth. “Good-bye, Jack.”
“I'm coming back, Lily,” he growled. “Make no mistake about it. I'll be right back here, in your bed, tonight.”
With that, he left.
Chapter Fourteen
S
potted Dick leveled the plane out, bringing her nose around for a final check. He was the best damned pilot Jack had ever flown with. Too profane and too ornery for commercial airline work, but he knew his way around a plane. Or a chopper. If the bird had wings, Spotted Dick could fly her. He had nerves of steel, as well, and no landing zone was too small or too short. Any landing he could walk away from was a good landing in Dick's book.
The crew was comprised of eight men. Jack had pulled military tours in the deserts of the Middle East, fighting his way through oil rig fires and gun battles. He'd learned more than he wanted about hot and dry and exposed. His third tour had taken him to South America. That tour was all about the drug wars and covert ops. The entire jump team was ex-military, ex-Marine, men he'd fought beside during those three tours. He knew them. Knew precisely what they were capable of. Fighting fires was simply one more battlefield, and they'd checked gear as soon as Spotted Dick put the plane into the air, because you never fucked with your gear. Gear was survival, plain and simple.
Beside him, Evan re-strapped his blade, whistling silently.
When Jack signaled to huddle up, they pulled in. Seven hard faces turned toward his. His jumpers were big, strong men. Fighters. Stubborn as mules. And damned uncivilized. They'd have fit just fine into Strong when the town had been a lawless mining camp. Hell, he wasn't sure all of them had gotten the memo that they were inhabiting the twenty-first century.
“I need to call in a favor,” he said, “when we're done on this job. I need eyes and ears on Lily Cortez.”
Even over the roar and throb of the plane's engines, he heard the low whistle from one of the jumpers at the back. “Setting the bar real high for the rest of us, Jack.”
The other jumpers chimed in with cheerful obscenities, and Jack knew that this was simply playful banter. Should have been just another line in the game they all played. Enjoy life, enjoy the summer. Take what was offered because tomorrow there was always another fire. Another chance to jump. Another chance they weren't all coming back, because shit happened on the fire lines, and no one had ever pretended otherwise.
“She's off-limits,” he said, because he couldn't pretend, and the catcalls cut right off. He didn't know what was written on his puss, but clearly the boys had gotten the message. Loud and clear. “Some son-of-a-bitch is stalking her. She cuts a damned flower out there, I want to know about it. As a favor to me. This is off the books. Give me your hours, and I'll take care of you, but this is personal.”
They'd all known someone—a mother, a sister, hell, even a girlfriend of their own—who'd been given a raw deal by some bum. They'd fought covert wars, holding the invisible lines separating good guys from bad. They were damned good because they'd had two choices. Get real good, real fast—or die. Lily wouldn't know they were there, not unless they wanted her to know.
The plane banked smoothly, coming around. Jump site was coming up fast.
The four fires weren't that far away from Strong, but they were in a location that was pretty inaccessible. Just the one main road in and then a handful of service roads. Problem here was water. Or, more precisely, the lack of water. You drove it in or you flew it in, but you weren't hooking up to a hydrant. Their job was to jump in and cut line until the fires burned themselves out.
Dropping a team made sense. Up in the air, the team had a big-picture view that teams on the ground wouldn't have. And, once you'd dropped, that same team became eyes and ears on the ground. He needed those eyes and ears.
Both here and on Lavender Creek.
He said the words that sealed the deal, guaranteeing that none of his jumpers would let Lily's stalker walk easy. “He's a serial arsonist.”
This time, the curses weren't good-natured. A man who set fires was a danger. A walking, ticking time bomb threatening to take a team of good men with him, because they'd be the ones jumping into the heart of the blaze to clean up his shit. Now he'd dragged Lily into the mix, and none of them liked that.
“She down with this?” Sprawled on the floor of the plane, shouting to be heard over the engines' vibrations, Zay should have looked ridiculous. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his jumpsuit, exposing ink from a half dozen tours of duty across most of Asia.
He gave Zay the truth. “She won't know you're there. I don't want her to hear you or see you.”
“Straight up?” Joey shifted, his head coming up from the gear bag he was organizing. “That's how you want to play it?”
“You ever met Lily Cortez?” Joey's silent head shake said it all. “Let me be real clear. She doesn't believe there's really a problem. She thinks she can handle on her own a man who'd set a forest fire just to scare the piss out of her. You and I—we both know what kind of a man sets wildland fires.”
They'd read the profiles, even met some of the assholes who'd done that kind of thing. Almost all of their wildland arsonists were male. Looking for a little fame and glory or out for revenge or an adrenaline rush. A man like that was no one Lily Cortez should have to handle on her own.
“So we watch Lavender Creek,” Zay drawled. “We stick to your Lily like a stamp to an envelope. Got that part. Then, say this little bastard decides to pay Lily a visit out at her farm—tell me how this next part unfolds. We return the favor?”
From the cockpit, Spotted Dick bawled a heads-up and an altitude. The first jump site was coming up fast. Jack had no illusions about his team. Hell, he had no illusions about himself. If the only way to stop the arsonist required lethal force, he'd do it. Any one of them would. Part of him wanted to give in to the primal urge to hurt as Lily had been hurt. Strong, California, wasn't a battlefield, however. Not yet.
“We take it to law enforcement first,” he said, looking each man in the eye. “We give them the chance to deal with him.” He knew each of them heard the unspoken agreement: if the law failed to take care of business, Jack's team would. If only for this summer, Lily Cortez and Strong were all his. His base. His territory. Whoever this arsonist was, his power trip was over as of this minute.
The spotter moved to the door. Three thousand feet below, the local fire crew's early responders had parked their trucks end-to-end along the roadside, turning the remote-access area into a parking lot worthy of a shopping mall on a Saturday. The road hugged the edge of a particularly virgin stretch of forest, where giant ponderosa pines punched their green tops up into the smoky sky. Usually a jump team wouldn't have been called out for what was essentially a ground fight, but Strong was shorthanded this season, and right now they had a chance to dig a scratch line to hold the small fires before they chewed up the neighborhood.
The fire's head here was a hot run of flame burning up the slope where a thick cloud of white-gray smoke billowed up into the bright blue. Flames were clearing fifteen feet, so there was plenty of fuel. The line crew had made an initial attack, but, on the other side of the line, maybe a quarter mile back, were houses. If the wind had shifted the other way, there'd be nothing but ash there. Could still go that way, from what Jack saw.
The situation report said the weather was only going to get worse, hotter and drier, so stopping these small fires now was key.
Unfortunately, the trees in this area were big-ass, well over one hundred feet tall. That meant their first jump spot for today was a narrow sliver of space he could barely see through the thick carpet of the treetops.
Next to him, the spotter cursed. “You're going to have to jump right through there.” He jerked a thumb at the handful of openings in the canopy. “That's going to be a bitch to steer through.”
Where the trees ended, a steep slope began and ended in a small patch of clearing.
As Spotted Dick brought the plane around, the spotter hooked his harness onto a restraining line tethered to the plane. If he fell out, the rest of the team shared the responsibility of hauling his ass back in. “Door's opening,” he bellowed.
Jack threw an arm over his reserve chute, because if the chute caught a blast of air from the door and blew your ass out, zero to sixty, it wouldn't be pretty when you hit. Up ahead, the spotter grabbed the handles and pulled. The door slid free, fresh air exploding into the plane.
The drift streamers flew out the door and down. Jack caught a flash of sky like a giant bruise through the open hatch, the bright blue of the California summer streaked with black smoke. Even as he watched, the red, yellow and blue streamers snapped open, weighted down to mimic the weight of a jumper. That was one hell of a party down there, however. No cake-and-candles affair.
The spotter nodded and spoke into his headset. “Got us some drift. Two hundred yards.”
Spotted Dick adjusted the plane, making a second pass as the spotter tossed out the streamers again, two hundred yards upwind of the jump spot. Dead-on hit. Good. The plane climbed higher to hit jump altitude.
As soon as they hit three thousand feet, the spotter was barking out orders. “Get into the doorway, boys.”
They'd jump two at a time today because there were four nearby fires to contain. First out the door were Joey and Zay, Joey jumping with his customary war whoop, while Zay dove silently beside him.
The wind had either shifted on Joey as he cleared the plane or he'd a hit a downdraft, because he'd hung up maybe thirty feet from the ground. He flashed the plane the bird and then cut himself free. The next pair jumped better, and then it was Jack's turn to go with Evan.
Dropping into the open doorway, he hung his legs over the edge. He checked his release and lines, making sure the cutaway clutch was in plain sight. First man out had needed that clutch.
“Ready,” the spotter roared. Jack sucked in air, coming up onto his feet. Arms and legs braced in the door. When the spotter's hand smacked his shoulder, he launched himself into all that open, empty sky. Counting off the seconds as his body rolled through the air, fighting gravity and the gusts battering at him. He pulled the handle on the four-count.
Over on his right, Evan whooped. Jack grabbed the steering toggles and banked, making for a small clearing below.
The ground rushed up beneath his booted feet as he punched down through a hole in the canopy, the sides of his chute grazing the thick, leafy cover. He didn't hang up, though, so he sent up a small prayer.
Take that
. Pulling hard on the toggle, he narrowly avoided one of the ponderosa's smaller cousins, and then the ground was barreling toward him. Twenty feet. Ten. His feet hit hard, the shock of the impact sending him running forward as he fought to keep himself upright.
Hell if he was ass-planting now.
 
Twelve hours to cut line. Another hour to hike back down the ridge and join up with the local boys who'd come out to do a little firefighting themselves. Evening was coming on fast, and the shift in the humidity might just save all their asses. This was familiar ground: he was right at home with the whine of the chain saw and cheerful obscenities. Swiping a bottle of water from a box set out on the tailgate of a pickup, he moved in, assessing. “What have we got?”
The four original fires had become one, and this close to the line, the furnace blast eating up the ponderosas had him sweating even though he wasn't close enough yet to spot what else was on fire. A thick, smoky tang blanketed the air, coating his throat and skin. He'd smell like bad barbecue by the time he was done here. The heat and dust were already almost impossible. Should have been the end to another pretty summer day, and, from the looks of the sky, maybe it was somewhere. Most of the horizon was the kind of impossible blue and sunset reds that sent folks running on outside. To the north, however, was the familiar gray haze and the smoke that promised fire.
After a second phone consult with Evan, he'd decided against sending his boys up in the plane again. That was overkill. They'd dug their line over the ridge, but there was still plenty of hard, dirty work down here on the ground, and he lost himself in it.
Swinging the Pulaski, he drove its sharp claw end into the iron-hard dirt. Each blow reverberated through his body, ripping through the muscles in his arms and shoulders in a familiar rhythm. Up. Down. Through.
This was where he belonged. Right here, right now, on this line with his team, carving a strip of safety out of the forest. No question about it. In town, he got that itch between his shoulders that signaled he needed to get the hell out of there, but Strong hadn't been all bad. Not this time around. Maybe it was that little light his Nonna got in her eyes when she was going on about her plans for the place, or maybe it was Lily's cussed stubbornness in hanging on to a lavender farm she didn't know the first damned thing about running, but he hadn't been bored.
He'd felt welcome. Needed.
And being needed for more than his back and a willingness to launch himself out of a cockpit and dead center into a fire zone was something altogether new. He'd sort it all out later, he decided. Not now. Not when he had work to do.
BOOK: Burning Up
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