Page 8 of Tangled Up with the Firefighter

“Shh, baby,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to hers. “I’ve got you. Just feel me.”

I sink deeper, inch by careful inch, until I’m fully seated inside her. The heat and pressure are overwhelming—her body hugging every inch of me so tightly, it borders on pain. I hold still, letting her adjust, my thumb never stopping its gentle rhythm on her clit. Her breathing is shaky, her hands clutching my shoulders, but she nods and rocks her hips once, urging me on.

I start moving—slow, deep rolls of my hips instead of hard thrusts. Every glide draws a fresh wave of slick sound between us. She bites her lip to stay quiet, but a helpless little moan escapes anyway. I kiss her to catch it, swallowing the sound as I keep rocking into her, whispering between kisses.

“Relax for me, Laurelle. Let me make it good.”

The tension builds gradually, achingly. I watch her face the entire time—the way her eyes go hazy, the way her mouth falls open when I hit a spot that makes her tremble. Her nails dig into my back through my shirt as she starts meeting my thrusts, her breath catching every time I grind against her clit.

When she comes again, it’s quieter this time, but no less intense—her whole body tightening around me in pulsing waves, a soft, broken whimper vibrating against my neck. The feeling of her rippling around my cock drags me over the edge right after her. I bury my face in her neck, hips jerking as I spill deep inside her, groaning her name like a prayer.

We stay locked together, breathing hard. I can feel her heart hammering against my chest. Slowly, I pull out and ease her leg down from my hip, but I don’t let her go far. She kicks free of the jeans still tangled around her other ankle, and I turn her gently so her back is to my front and wrap my arms around her, holding her close while our breathing gradually slows.

The bay is still quiet. The light has shifted, and the vase of wildflowers is still sitting on the tool bench against the wall where I left it.

“I should put those flowers in the kitchen,” I say against her hair.

“Probably.”

“The crew is going to have questions.”

“About the flowers?”

“About why I’m standing in the bay holding the woman who brought them.”

She laughs. It’s quiet—barely a sound, more of a vibration I feel against my chest than something I hear. I tighten my arms around her and she lets me, and for thirty seconds, I stand in the place where I work and hold something I chose instead of something that needs me. The difference is so sharp it almost hurts.

I carry the flowers to the kitchen table and set them in the center, between the coffee machine and the stack of incident reports Holt will never file. The wildflowers look absurd in this room—purple and white and green, surrounded by stainless steel and whiteboard rosters and a refrigerator covered in shift-trade notes.

Somehow, though, they look like they belong here.

She appears in the kitchen doorway, sweater straightened, hair still loose, watching me arrange the vase on the table like placement matters.

“Same spot every week,” she says.

“What?”

“If I bring them every week, they go right there. Same spot.”

I look at her. She’s offering me something. A standing order. A reason to keep showing up. The same structure I used to keep walking into her shop, turned around and handed back to me. She’s doing it on purpose, and she knows I know.

“Same spot,” I say. “Every week.”

She nods, and the deal is made, and I think I just got claimed by a woman with pollen on her collarbone. I’ve never, in my life, wanted anything more.

5

LAURELLE

Isee them through the shop window.

Dean is crossing the courtyard with a woman I’ve never met, heading toward Lea’s coffee shop. She’s animated, talking with her hands, gesturing at the old stone buildings like she’s seeing them for the first time.

Dean is walking beside her carrying her purse and nodding in the right places, and when they reach the coffee shop, he holds the door and pulls out her chair before she’s finished her sentence. She settles into it without breaking her thought, like a man pulling out her chair is so expected it doesn’t register as a gesture.

His mother. The birthday was Friday. She must have come up for the weekend.

I watch through the glass the way I’ve watched him for days now, from inside my shop with living things around me and distance between us. But the distance feels different this morning. Yesterday, he was in the bay with his hands on me and his mouth against my ear, and I woke up this morning still feeling the weight of his arms and the steadiness of his breathing against my back. His name was the first thing in my head before I even opened my eyes, and nothing about that felt optional.