Dammit if she didn’t kiss me back with the same enthusiasm I had envied seeing with Eli earlier. I could feel her desperation with every move she made.
Teeth. Tongue. Hands. Fingernails.
Frankie gasped into my mouth as her fists curled into my shirt, pinning herself between me and the seat of my truck. I growled when my hard-on pressed against her stomach, and she pushed back against it.
“Is this what you were wondering about, Frankie?” I said against her lips, baiting her and toying with the fire she always tried to burn everyone with.
“You kiss like you fight on the ice.” She whispered breathlessly. “I knew you would.”
“And you kiss like you need saving.” I murmured back. “But don’t make me your safe place unless you mean it.”
She scoffed, and I could see the moment she went to make a smart-ass comment back, but stopped herself. Instead, she paused and then replied, “What if I want both?” She asked gently. “What if you both make me feel safe in different ways?”
And then it was my turn to stay silent. I didn’t reply because I didn’t have an answer for her.
Instead, I kissed her again.
And she kissed me back.
Even though her kids were next door at her mom’s for the night, and I wanted nothing more than to take her inside and spend the night in her bed, I didn’t. But only because as I walked her to her front door and waited for her to walk inside, and turn off her porch light, the same question ran through my head on repeat.
What scared me more?
The fact that I finally had something I wanted to win—or that I might be willing to share her just to keep from losing her?
The icy stillnessof the morning usually soothed my errant mind, while pausing my tired body after a long eventful shift. But not this morning. I sat on the back bumper of Engine Twenty-Two and tried to find that familiar peace that could only be found after a bad call in the middle of the night and before the world woke up for their normal, mundane day. That space whenpeople were none the wiser about the terror that we faced while they slept peacefully in their homes.
I longed for the comfort I normally found in that space. My mind had been wreaking havoc on me all shift, a shift I wasn’t even supposed to be working and regretted volunteering for since last night.
Right about the time I walked away from Frankie and her sweet, sinful lips so I could push her and her desires into my best friend’s eager and capable hands.
Damn, Trav was going to owe me big time.
My body tightened again, remembering the way Frankie had asked me to kiss her. The way she tasted, the way she sounded when I eagerly obliged. She had felt perfect, pinned to the wall, kissing me back with such vigor and need.
I knew for sure that no one had touched her body with only her pleasure in mind for a long time. She might have dated or hooked up with men since returning to Cedar Bluff, but I could just tell that no one had taken care of her needs the way she deserved.
Or maybe now, after she went home with Trav, someone had.
Last night I’d pushed her toward my best friend with a joke on my lips, and something like a blade twisting in my chest.
Think of me when you kiss him goodnight.
I’d said it like it was funny. Like it didn’t matter. But it did.
And I thought about it all night long. I thought about her.
Her mouth. Her eyes. The way her fingers curled into my shirt like she didn’t want to let go.
And then—the look that Travis had in his eyes when I turned around and found him watching us. Watching her.
Like she was something he’d been trying not to need and just couldn’t anymore. Part of me felt good for giving my friend the push he needed to make a move on the woman he had lusted after for years.
And the other part of me felt gutted that Frankie was that woman in the end. Something happened between them after I went to work, I could feel it in my bones. But it didn’t hurt me to think about.
That was the part that messed with my head the most. I didn’t feel like I lost something as Travis gained it. It felt like we were sharing something we weren’t supposed to be allowed to have in the first place.
So even though we were splitting the prize, it was still a win for both of us.
