Fueling Her Fire

Fueling Her Fire

Piper Trace

Lonely and frustrated with her love life, Kip’s decided to
spend Christmas  alone in her family’s cabin in the mountains, rediscovering
herself and not thinking about men…until a last-minute firewood delivery brings
her face-to-face with the grown-up version of the sexy football star who broke
her heart eight years ago.

Kip’s never stopped thinking about Dylan, but the memories
are both searingly hot and brutally painful. When they find themselves snowed
in together on Christmas Eve, neither can deny the passion that still smolders
between them. If they can overcome the past, they can let the flames ignite at
last.

Chapter One

Kip stared at Dylan Johnson’s personal page on the social
networking site. A photo of a dilapidated barn stared back at her from the left
corner of the page where Dylan’s handsome face should have been. A terse
announcement in the middle of the screen boldly implied she should reach out to
him. “Dylan Johnson only shares his information with friends. Do you want to
connect with Dylan Johnson?”

Kip had only been curious to see a recent picture. She
pressed the cancel button and threw the phone on her passenger seat in
frustration.
Do I want to connect with Dylan Johnson? Hell yeah.
She
could only imagine what her high-school crush must look like now, all grown up.
He’d been a stud at eighteen—good-looking, athletic and universally swooned
over—but now at twenty-six, with eight years more experience? He could probably
completely blow her mind.

Even now all these years later, her memories of him had the
power to provoke a reaction in her—a quickened heartbeat, shallow breaths—if
she dwelled on them long enough. And when she felt as lonely as she did now,
she tended to dwell… She remembered his strong, capable hands and a part of her
wished she could feel them on her again.

He’d had big hands. His unfailing grip on a football helped
make him a varsity star in their small West Virginia high school. She closed
her eyes and thought of what his hands might feel like now, cupping her
breasts, lifting each one in turn to draw her hardened nipples into his mouth,
his raven-black hair falling over his forehead and his cobalt-blue eyes looking
up at her through long lashes. She imagined him moving his other hand under her
ass to pull her slowly and deliberately against his obvious erection.

And she knew his hands weren’t the only big thing about him.

Kip shook her head. She couldn’t believe thinking of Dylan
could still get her hot, eight years later. She was a woman now—no longer the
eighteen-year-old geek letting the high-school football star feel her up after
school. Amazing though, how just heading toward the little Dalton Run town line
made her feel like she
was
still that girl.

Throwing her luxury SUV into reverse, she backed it out of
the Christmas tree lot, her tires crunching in the gravel, a tall blue spruce
secured to her roof by the helpful staff. She knew she was only feeling sorry
for herself for being alone at Christmas and that isolation and self-pity were
causing her to crave the comfort and heat of an old flame…but she also was
smart enough to know that such thoughts were really stupid.

Especially because he wasn’t just any old flame—he was the
old flame to whom she’d never found an equal. The old flame who, despite what
he had done to her, still made her pulse pound more than any man since. The guy
about whom she’d fantasized over and over again when she was alone and taking
care of herself, or when she wasn’t alone, but in bed with her sorry
ex-boyfriend.

Geez god.
What was she thinking? She’d been fighting
the urge to look Dylan up ever since she’d left that morning. Waiting for the
staff at the Christmas tree lot to secure the tree to the top of her truck had
given her the few minutes of boredom it took for her resolve to crack.

She made an exasperated noise, mad at herself for looking
Dylan up on the site and fueling her foolish memories. Especially now, when she
was heading back to her small hometown to spend a miserable Christmas Eve
completely alone, the day after she’d dumped her cheating boyfriend. Really,
this was the worst day to be dredging up those memories.

No, she would
not
connect with Dylan on that site. Or
anywhere, ever. Because of the
other
memories she had of him—the
memories of shame, of humiliation.

“Hey Kip, how much do you charge?”

The stares and giggles in the hallways of the high school.
The jeering voices. An unidentified female voice yelling “Whore!” during her
valedictorian speech and Kip’s resulting stumble over her well-memorized words.
Not able to recover her composure, Kip finally cut her speech short and fled
the stage in tears.

Turning on the radio, she tried to shake off the old,
familiar feelings. She was determined to have a nice Christmas, even if she
was
back in Dalton Run and even if she
was
alone.

Kip Parker, why the
hell
did you think this was a
good idea?
She chided herself, using the name she couldn’t seem to shake
from her past—the name they knew her as in rural Dalton Run.

But she was no longer Kip Parker, she reminded herself
firmly, she was
Kim
Parker.

When she and her mom had moved to Dalton Run to live with
her grandmother, some school administrator had made a typing error in her
paperwork. The office-worker, not realizing the potential permanence of such a
mistake, had mistyped the last letter of Kim’s first name as the first letter
of her last name, causing every teacher that first day to introduce her as “
Kip
Parker”…and it had stuck. It had stuck so thoroughly, in fact, that Kip had
actually had to produce a birth certificate to prove her real name to the high
school so her diploma wouldn’t come under the moniker they had given her.

The woods around her closed in as she turned off the highway
onto the rural route that wound up the mountain to Dalton Run. The snow that
had started falling as soon as she’d crossed the West Virginia state line hadn’t
slowed. The fat, fluffy snowflakes were accumulating so quickly that the road
was barely discernible from the land around it and Kip was thankful she had a
four-wheel drive.

Her thoughts drew again to Dylan, who had never been her
boyfriend, but had been the first man she’d slept with. He’d been all Kip had
thought about when she’d thought of losing her virginity…and she’d thought
about that a lot back then. But her crush had been pure fantasy, because Dylan
was high-school royalty and Kip was a geek. He’d never go out with her.

“And he never did,” she said bitterly, though she was alone
in the car. Shifting in her seat, she recognized the familiar anxiety triggered
by any memories of Dylan that didn’t involve sex. As much as she tried to only
think of him as a convenient subject of her sexual fantasies, the memories of
what eventually happened between them sometimes seeped in. It was always the
same—anxiety and desire, desire and hurt. “Goddamn it,” she muttered, shaking
her head again, her hair whispering over the nylon shoulders of her winter
coat.

She touched her hair, thinking how much longer it had been
back then. She’d had pretty hair, but she’d been shy and not nearly as flashy
as the girls Dylan dated. The one she remembered most clearly was a beautiful
blonde cheerleader named Jackie. It had seemed Dylan was always on-again,
off-again with her, though he could have had any girl.

He’d had striking good looks. Tall and muscular, even at
eighteen, he had black hair that fell over his forehead in a casual tousle and
eyes blue like an October sky over the mountaintop. In contrast, Kip remembered
her looks being common—wavy, dark-brown hair, hazel eyes and makeup firmly
categorized as “natural”. Nothing showy, nothing special.

She tried to concentrate on the road or on the comfort of
the familiar cabin waiting for her,
anything,
but her traitorous mind
could not be corralled. She wished, as she had countless times before, that
she’d never tutored him. But Dylan had been in danger of not graduating and
he’d approached Kip about helping him.

She’d had a scholarship to an out-of-state college and his
dad had lined up a job for Dylan at the local lumber mill. She’d soon realized
Dylan was more intelligent than his grades reflected and had encouraged him to
consider college, but he’d insisted college wasn’t for him—he needed to be
outside in the open air, working with his hands. Back then, even in her
relative innocence, Kip had a lot of ideas of what he could do with his hands…

She sighed.
Those were good days. The days before it all
went wrong.
Those days they’d spent as much time lying on his bed next to
each other staring at the ceiling and talking about life as they’d spent
studying.

She chewed on her lip.
How could something so good have
turned so bad—and so quickly?

It had been one month before graduation when he’d first
kissed her, leaning across his chemistry book, final exams forgotten for the
moment. She’d been surprised at the ease she’d felt between her and Dylan and
how natural it had felt for them to kiss. When they were alone in his room it
wasn’t Dylan the football star and Kip the brainiac, it was just Dylan and Kip,
a boy and a girl who liked each other.

Kip realized she was sitting stock straight in her car seat,
her body zinging with tension. She consciously tried to relax, reminding
herself she’d probably never see him again. She didn’t even know if he still
lived in Dalton Run. Moving a hand off the wheel, she rubbed it up and down her
thigh to ease the tightness in her muscles, but it didn’t help to settle her
down. Every mile she got closer to that town, the less she was able to keep her
mind off him.

After that first kiss they’d almost never studied. Making
out was much more fun. She’d stopped teaching him things and he’d started
instructing her instead. She never understood the way things turned out. He’d
been so loving the day they’d finally had sex, holding her face in his hands
when it was over and kissing her like she was a treasured thing. It had been
awkward and quick, but she remember feeling happier than she’d ever felt in her
eighteen years.

How could I have been so naïve?

She wondered with an honest twinge of jealously if he’d ever
married his cheerleader. What if things had been different? What if he’d
genuinely liked Kip, or they’d dated and just grew apart when she went out of
state for college? If things had been like that, then maybe now when she’d made
her last-minute decision to come home to Dalton Run for Christmas she would
have felt comfortable looking him up. Maybe they could have even planned to get
together.

He could have met her at the cabin, helped her set up the
tree and sat under it with her next to the wood stove, sipping wine and
catching up. The Christmas lights would twinkle, reflected by his icy-blue eyes
when he laughed, enjoying their conversation. He’d smile at her, his dark hair
falling lazily over his forehead, remembering how much he enjoyed being around
her.

Kip reached over to her dash and turned down her seat
warmer. Thoughts of Dylan always got her temperature up. She could picture them
sitting on a blanket under the Christmas tree, so close to each other. There’d
be a moment of awkward silence when they both realized how much they wanted to
kiss, but feeling shy because they hadn’t seen each other in so many years.

He’d lean in to her, wetting her lips with his, gently at
first, cautiously pushing his tongue into her mouth. He’d taste like red wine
and she’d kiss him back eagerly, not pretending to need to warm up to the idea.

And they would both know what they were going to do—what
they’d intended to do—catching up in the cabin alone. Besides, she was a woman
now. She knew what she wanted and she was not going to apologize for it.

Kip squeezed her legs together at the thoughts, causing a shiver
of arousal to ripple through her. She moved her hand up her thigh, drawn by the
lovely pulsing desire that had started between her legs. Pressing her fingers
against the crotch of her jeans, she encouraged the growing pleasure there.
She’d allowed her sexual needs to go neglected for too long and now she was in
a bad way.

Kip had never touched herself in the car before, but since
she’d broken up with her boyfriend she’d been experiencing an interesting side effect.
An undercurrent of simmering sexual focus seemed to permeate every moment. Not
even two days ago she’d looked in the mirror and privately made the decision to
marry William when he asked her. He was a stable and reliable guy…just what she
deserved, she’d thought. But marrying William would have meant resigning her
sex life to the carnal equivalent of a monotonous road trip along an infinite,
smooth-paved desert highway.

But now? Now she was free again—free to explore, experience
and find a new path. And she was excited about it. She wanted hills and hairpin
turns and tunnels. Since yesterday, she had found that even the slightest
thoughts aroused her…and heading back to her hometown, those thoughts were now
all focused on Dylan.

The snow falling around her SUV created a dreamlike scene
against the backdrop of the thick forest, now covered in white, and she was
able to lose herself in the fantasy.

They’d kiss with the passion that eight years of wanting
stores up in a person. He’d press her to the floor and devour her mouth with
his, leaving her gasping when he moved his lips to her neck. The caress of his
tongue and even the graze of his teeth would divulge his greed for her body.
Groaning against her skin, he’d barely contain his pent-up need for her. She’d
press her body upward to meet his, leaving no question that she was as hungry
for it as he was. Pushing her shirt up he’d find her braless, nipples tightened
and ready, and he’d take full advantage of her bare breasts.

He’d cup first one breast, then the other, rubbing them and
teasing her hard nipples until Kip was ready to beg him to touch her pussy.
She’d pant and sigh, not holding back any noise of pleasure he provoked from
her. William had not been comfortable with unrestrained behavior, especially
during sex, and especially not from Kip, she’d discovered. But it wouldn’t be
like that with Dylan.

Dylan would press her to the floor and then he’d shift his
position so he could lower his lips to her breasts, sucking her nipples into
his mouth. She’d vocalize every beautiful sound of excitement that bubbled up
in her, excitement borne in part from having a new man’s lips on an intimate
area of her body. The nerve endings in her nipples would be zinging and every
lap of his tongue would build her excitement. The tension in Dylan’s body and
the hardness of him pressed against her would only fuel her desire more.