AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She tilted her head back to give him better access. “Do I sense a but in there?”
He bit her earlobe, and she nearly levitated off the counter. “But,” he breathed in her ear, “if you were in skirts right now, I’d already have my hands on your bare skin.”
That was it. She was never wearing pants again.
“They say the things you have to work for are that much sweeter in the end,” she said, dragging her teeth lightly across his neck.
A low growl rumbled from his throat, and he yanked her shirt out of her pants. His hands brushed against her rib cage, and her head dropped back as she tried to suck air into her suddenly nonfunctioning lungs. He dragged her closer to him, spreading her legs wider to accommodate his hips, and even through their clothing she could feel the hardest part of him pressing against her overheated core.
She whimpered and clung to him, her lips seeking his again. He pressed against her again, his tongue mimicking the action of his hips. The sensations crashed against her, through her, too quickly, built too high, too fast. It was too much and not nearly enough, and she wrapped her legs around him while he ground against her, trying to chase that crest that was just out of her reach.
There was something else there, something familiar that she couldn’t quite place through the haze of sheer lust that obscured everything but the sensations this man was creating in her body.
“Adam,” she gasped. “What is that?”
“What is what?” His teeth nipped at the juncture where her shoulder met her neck, and she nearly sobbed at the pulsing jolt that went through her.
But something nagged at her; something was off…
His hand closed over her breast just as he ground against her again and that building pressure broke, cascading through her in wave after wave that had her clinging to him for dear life.
His lips found hers again, and he kissed her until her body stopped trembling against his.
Their gazes locked and Adam smiled softly, holding her while their senses slowly returned. And then their eyes widened in sudden simultaneous horror.
Was that smoke filling the kitchen?
“The pies!” Adam said.
He pushed away from her and rushed to the oven, jerking it open. Flames shot out, and Adam jumped back with a shout. He grabbed his shirt from the floor and waved at the flaming pastries, but that only fanned the flames higher.
Nora tried to get closer to help, but Adam kept her back. “The flames are too big to grab them,” he said, pulling her back from the oven.
His eyes darted around the kitchen. “Hand me the broom!”
She grabbed it and handed it to him, then stood back as he used the handle to knock the pies out of the oven. Which removed them from the source of heat that had caused the fire to begin with but might have been a moot point considering they were now their own mini infernos.
The flames licked at the cabinets, and Nora ran to the door to grab the small rain bucket that Martha kept there for just such an occasion. In her haste, she slopped half the bucket on the floor before she ever got to the pies. But what was left was enough to douse one pie.
The front door burst open, and shouts filled the store. Wonderful. The smoke had alerted the neighbors to the fire, and it sounded like half the town had turned out to help.
She grabbed a small towel and beat at the corner of one of the cabinets that was smoldering. Adam, bless him, used the broom to shove the other still-flaming pie out of the open back door. Once safely outside, he flipped it over in the dirt, finally extinguishing it.
Nora pressed one hand to her mouth, the other to her chest. And slowly realized that most of the town was staring at them, looking back and forth between the half-clad Adam and her own disheveled state.
She’d never been so thankful for a fire in her life.
While it was still a bit odd, to be sure, Adam had obviously been using his shirt to beat at the flames, since it hung from his fingers in rapidly disintegrating shreds. And the fact that she’d likewise been rushing about to put out a fire could account for her less than pristine state.
Though the amused stares of more than one of the people on the street said they weren’t fooled for a second.
There was one person most decidedlynotamused.
Martha pushed her way through everyone and into the kitchen. Where she stood surveying the damage with open-mouthed horror.
It could have been worse, so much worse. But it still wasn’t a pretty sight. The floor and some of the surrounding cabinets were scorched from the flames. There were lumps of a smoldering tar-like substance in the oven that Nora assumed were portions of pie filling. And what wasn’t burned was covered in a fine layer of flour and bits of pastry dough from whatever attempts Adam had made at baking a pie before almost burning the kitchen down.
“Martha,” Adam said, but Martha just held up a hand as she slowly made her way around the kitchen, taking everything in.
