Spark Of Desire (30 page)

Jessica rolled her eyes. “You aren’t that old. My father is twelve years older than my mother.”

“Does that mean you could be in love with me?”

Jessica swallowed. He looked desperate. If she told him the truth, how far out of hand could it get? He had proposed, but would he still love her when she didn’t need him? Would she end up in a sham marriage he wouldn’t end because of some point of pride, and she wouldn’t end because she was weak and craved any little bit of him he would allow? “Don’t get any ideas.”

“I’m looking for small victories right now. I’ll take anything I can get.” He put one foot on the step above him, and she moved back a step. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Then why are you wrapped up in a blanket?”

Jessica dug her fingers into the afghan. She wouldn’t have given it up now for any reason. It was a shield. “After tomorrow I’ll be a full-fledged member of the department. I won’t need your help anymore.”

“So?”

“So, you might be less interested in me when I don’t need you. I’m not exactly clingy.” She almost added
despite the fact that I am clinging to an afghan on a hot night
.

Kevin laughed. “Believe me, that’s the last thing I want in a wife.”

Jessica reached behind her for the door. When he said
wife
, some of the strength went out of her knees. “How can I believe you now? When you kicked me to the curb and ignored me for two weeks?” she wailed.

“Isn’t this enough? It’s the most valuable thing I have to offer.” He held out the ring.

She looked at it balanced between his fingers. The porch light glinted off it. It wasn’t round anymore. Heavy wear left it oblong and thin along the sides. No one would call it beautiful, but it was his great-grandmother’s wedding ring. He hadn’t meant what he’d said before. What if he did still want her when she didn’t need him? What if he wanted her more?

“Jessica,” he said, “will you please marry me?”

“Yes,” she answered.

Leaping up the last two steps, he pulled her into his arms. He pressed his face against her neck. “I wanted to talk to you, but I thought you hated me. You had every right to hate me. Bobbie was right. I am an idiot.”

“Bobbie?”

Kevin brushed his fingers through the little hair she had. “Bobbie came over to my house last week to ream me out for breaking up with you.” He kissed her forehead. “I missed you.”

Jessica leaned against him. Her whole body still trembled with the tension she’d been carrying around for two weeks. “Why don’t we go in the house? We’re letting all the bugs in.”

Kevin scooped her off the ground and carried her through the door.

“What did you do that for?” Jessica asked when he put her down inside.

“Practice. I have to be ready for after we get married. Here, let me have your hand.” He sounded almost giddy.

Jessica held out her hand and he slid the ring onto it. “It’s way too big,” she pointed out. “Do you really want me to wear it?”

“Maybe not to work.” Cupping her face in his hands he leaned down and kissed her.

Jessica sagged into his embrace. The afghan slipped off her shoulders and dropped to the floor behind her. She wrapped her arms around his neck so she wouldn’t slide to the floor with it. It felt so good to be in his embrace again. One hand around her waist, he stroked across her shoulders and back with the other. She moaned when he pulled away from her lips to kiss her neck. A surge of emotion welled up from her belly, a heady cocktail of nerves and desire. His hand reached under her shirt, and she shivered.

“Jessica,” he whispered. He started to step back.

“No,” she whimpered. She tightened her grip on him, needing to be touching him right now, needing contact.

“I’m not going anywhere.” He reached back and untangled her from his neck. Closing his eyes he held her hands against his face, breathing deeply. “I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

She watched him, still shivering. For a long moment he kept her hands against his cheeks before he opened his eyes again, searching her eyes until her breath became short. He kissed her hands. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t think of what. What would he think if she asked him to stay the night? Would she even be able to form the sentence?
Have sex
sounded juvenile and
make love
flowery. In books and movies, the hero and heroine fell into bed, and it seemed perfectly acceptable. At least all the ones she could remember right now. Memory seemed to have deserted her along with her voice. But in a powerful and inarticulate way, she wanted to feel him against her and within her.

Kevin brushed his fingers through her hair. His hands trembled, she noticed. She had worked him over when she didn’t answer the door. Telling him no the first time he proposed hadn’t helped either. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

Jessica licked her lips. Now that she thought about it for a moment there were a couple of things. For not answering the door. For telling him no the first time he asked her to marry him. For being so nasty at the store. She shook her head because her voice abandoned her again. The ring hung around her finger, reminding her of its presence. “Can you stay?”

“Stay?”

“The night?”

He looked baffled, as if he hadn’t planned that far ahead.

Or maybe he hadn’t planned to get this far, she thought. He might have assumed she would turn him down. Bitting her lip, she said, “I mean, if you’re comfortable with that.”

He glanced at the living room, grinning. “Almost too comfortable. We should close the front door.”

“Go ahead. I’ll meet you in the bedroom.” Turning away from him, she walked away, listening to him close the door and lock it. She turned on one lamp on the dresser, but otherwise left the room in darkness. The fan in the bedroom window drew the cool night into the room, creating a quiet hum. The coverlet hung over the foot of the bed where she had draped it a few weeks ago when the heat became too much at night. Kevin walked around in the other room, turning off the television. Should she change into lingerie or not? She considered the idea nervously. That was the fantasy and she had a few pieces, but he was already standing in the doorway. She smiled. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” he repeated. He drew a ragged breath. “I didn’t bring any protection.”

“I take birth control,” Jessica said. A slow, amazed smile crept across his face. Delicious tension built across her skin. He would be touching her soon.

He moved across the room faster than she expected. This time she didn’t have time to pull back like she had in the kitchen that day long ago. His hands slid around her waist and up under her shirt in one fluid motion, dragging his callused fingers across her skin. Lifting the shirt over her head, he pressed his hot mouth against her shoulder. The electric contact skimmed across her skin until the connection closed at the apex of her thighs. Her knees gave, and she toppled over backward, pulling him down on top of her. His mouth covered hers, pillaging her until she couldn’t think anymore. He pressed her into the mattress with his heavy and hard body, his manhood urging against her. For an instant she feared she might be too small to accommodate him. Strange thought. That anything of hers might ever be too small. But her body seemed to strain for him, opening, blooming. The back of her bra opened.

Wanting to feel his skin pressed against hers, she tugged at his shirt. He had to roll off her to get out of the shirt, and she pulled off her bra. For a moment he lay next to her, admiring her. The cool air from the fan whispered across her skin, teasing her already deliciously tense nipples. She stared at him, wanting to ask him to touch her or kiss her or something. Something more than just lie there looking at her, but she couldn’t find the words. She couldn’t find any words. When she reached toward him, he caught her wrist and pushed it back onto the bed beside her so she lay helplessly, watching him look at her.

Kevin traced his coarse fingers down her neck, across her collarbone and down her side to the underside of her left breast.

Jessica’s breath caught in her throat. Her whole body ached with a need she couldn’t describe. She closed her eyes and focused on the sensation of his hand cupping her breast.

“You’re going to be my wife,” he murmured, his mouth brushing her temple.

She shuddered. That little word had gained power over her in the last fifteen minutes, leaving her defenseless. He leaned against her so she could feel the length of his body pressed along hers.

“My beautiful wife.” He shifted up to his hands and knees.

He loomed over her until her eyes focused on his before he moved again. Then he pounced, covering her bare skin with kisses, nuzzling under her breasts and teasing his tongue around her belly button. Her body throbbed under the assault. She writhed under his touch, arching toward him, moaning for more while her body ached with near pain. Squeezing her eyes closed, she reveled in the feel of his mouth and his hands on her bare skin.

When he reached the waistband of her shorts he sat back, breathing hard. His fingers played around the edge, but didn’t attempt to move under the fabric. Jessica opened her eyes to look at him. If she’d had words she would have begged him to stop or continue, but not to stall here. Her belly coiled and twisted under the light, teasing touch of his fingers.

Moonlight fell across him, showing her the focused expression on his face. He studied her every helpless motion as if he were waiting for some signal. She could see his broad chest clearly defined and wanted to touch it, but didn’t think she had the strength to reach for him. Clenching the sheet with her sweaty hands, she heard it pop up from the corners of the bed. As she met his eyes, she felt his hand slide under the waistband of her shorts. Her body crested in a paroxysm of desire. She felt wrung out and worn, but a knife edge of desire still cut through her.

Kevin stood up to slide his jeans over his hips. “You smell wonderful, Jessica,” he moaned. “You taste wonderful.” He teased his tongue along her throat. “I love you.”

Jessica moaned in response and felt him enter her. She wanted to tell him she loved him, too, but her body was more concerned with the feeling of him inside her to interest itself with language. Her hips shifted, rising to meet him.

“You’ve never done this before,” he said, drawing himself out.

Shaking her head, she reached for him before he slipped away. He eased in again, and a sharp pain startled a cry from her. He covered her mouth with his, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. The pain disappeared under the sensation of him moving deep inside her and the glimmer of breeze across their sweaty bodies. Another crest took her, blotting out everything and taking another cry from her. An instant or an hour later she felt him roll off her. She felt more spent now than she had after the physical exam.

But the physical exam hadn’t left her with this sense of shuddering relaxation and deep completion. She didn’t even have the strength to keep him from moving away from her.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she had the strength to form thought again.

Kevin had propped himself up on his elbow next to her. “Sorry about what?”

“I should have told you I was a virgin.” She decided the darkness was a good thing. He couldn’t see her blush this way.

“Don’t be sorry. I would have done things differently if I had known, but it doesn’t matter now.”

The low thrum of his voice hummed along her overworked nerves. She moaned.

He shifted, chuckling. “You’re going to make it easy to seduce you.”

“As long as I can keep you interested, we’ll be fine.” She reached over, running her fingers through the coarse black hair on his chest.

He caught her hand. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem.”

* * * *

Kevin woke up in the watery pre-dawn light. For a moment he couldn’t place where he was. Not home, not the station. Then he remembered last night when Jessica had given him three shocks in the space of an hour, each of which should have killed him. First, she’d said no when he asked her to marry him. He’d tried to convince himself she might say no on the drive over, but he didn’t seem to have heard himself. No man expects a woman to say no when he asks her to marry him. Then she’d asked him to stay the night. Despite his apparent conviction that she would agree to marry him, he hadn’t expected to get through her door, let alone into her bed.

Where, third, he’d realized she was a virgin.

If he’d known that before, he wouldn’t have teased her so long, would have moved more carefully. But how could he have guessed? Most women at her age weren’t, but then most women didn’t want to be firefighters. He smiled, deciding he’d managed to find himself his own personal enigma so he could spend the rest of his life trying to figure her out.