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Lucy’s orgasm went from a whisper to a scream in the time it took to call his name. Her pussy squeezed and released, her pleasure rippling outward and her breath sawing out in hard gasps. Sam gripped her hips tightly, murmuring her name in return as she took everything she could from him before collapsing back to the mattress in a boneless heap.
“Give…me a second,” she said, because she could barely remember her name, let alone get her bearings.
But then Sam smiled and said, “Oh, sweetheart. I would give you anything,” and all of a sudden, Lucy didn’t need a minute.
She only needed him.
In one unbroken motion, Lucy had him on his back. His breath kicked out in a surprised exhale, then became a moan when she started to fuck him in long, hard thrusts. His hands gripped her waist, her pussy growing slicker as he lifted her up only to lower her right back where she belonged, with his cock deep inside of her. They moved together seamlessly, one taking the lead only to give it back without hesitation, thrusting against each other again and again. Sam’s fingers tightened on her hips, and Lucy levered forward, her palms flat against the bed on either side of him. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her in place, pushing up into her once, then twice before his body went taut. His hold on her never faltered, even when his body shook, and she held him back, their bodies pressed together from chest to belly to hips as he came.
Lucy leaned her head on Sam’s shoulder, her lips resting on the thump-thump-thump of the pulse point on his neck as their breathing began to slow. There were no rules for what she was feeling, lying here with him, their bodies tangled and her heart wild on his. It was reckless and fierce and totally crazy.
But it was also right and pure and good, and she knew in that moment, with both of them vulnerable yet still there, clinging to each other, that she never wanted to let it go.
25
Malachi took a deep breath, then exhaled it in a string of words so hateful, they sliced through the cold night air before fading away on a thick puff of white. The thrill he’d felt at setting Lucy’s SUV on fire had waned more quickly than he’d expected, the memory of the flames and the fear on her face now so faded, he was already restless for something far bigger. He’d planned to do the same to Sam’s Jeep to at least keep his momentum going—Christ, the thought of wiping that arrogant look off the bastard’s face made Malachi’s whole body shake with excitement. It would serve Sam right for fucking up the plan to let the warehouse burn in the first place, and oh, how Malachi needed something to burn.
But the police had been smarter, or at least more cautious, than he’d expected. They weren’t treating Lucy’s SUV fire as another in the string of random arsons, the way he’d taken care to make it look. Sam’s Jeep was no longer parked in its usual space on the edge of the lot in front of his condo, in the semi-shadows. Now it rested in a highly conspicuous spot, close enough to the buildingandthe building’s security cameras to make setting fire to it too risky. Even if Malachi could pull it off unidentified—after all, he wasn’t stupid, no matter what his father said—the Jeep was too visible now. Someone would call nine-one-one with plenty of time for the RFD to come and extinguish the fire long before it caused the level of completion Malachi required. Trying to set fire to Sam or Lucy’s apartments posed the same challenge, both of them in large, well-populated buildings that would make early detection a certainty. Plus, the heightened security around both firefighters had made even simple surveillance difficult. He’d had to track them and their investigation from enough of a distance that he’d barely even seen them for almost a week, let alone learned anything useful or found a way to stop their investigation so he could complete his plan, and damn it, this wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go.
He wasn’t just some newbie trying to get his rocks off by throwing matches around to see what might happen. Malachi took fireseriously.He knew how to make it do what he wanted, how to make it destroy everything in its path. He knew how to feed fire, how greedy it got when it began to lose control—he knew, because they were the same, that way. Needing things to burn. To twist and warp under the intense heat. To lead spark to smolder, then smolder to flame, flame to ash.
Worthless amateur,his father’s voice seethed, the contempt filling Malachi’s ears even though he stood a block from Sam’s building, in the shadows, alone. He tried to stamp it out. He’d exorcized his father properly—by fire, of course—burning down the work shed where his father had once kept all of his precious things. Those things had meant more to his father than Malachi or his mother ever had, and oh, how Malachi had laughed when the fucking thing had burned, the fire destroying the whole structure in a matter of minutes.
Yet still, his father’s voice persisted, stirring through the ashes.You’re nothing but a stupid little boy. Those fires you set were child’s play. A shed? A couple of vehicles? Some piles of leaves? They’re nothing. You’ll never have what it takes to finish arealjob.
“Shut up,” Malachi snapped, anger bubbling like acid in his throat. He slammed his hands over his ears, desperate to block out his father’s echoing laughter. “Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up! You don’t knowanything.”
I know you,his father countered, and why, why, why couldn’t Malachi ignore him?You’re so useless, you couldn’t even burn down an abandoned warehouse. And now you can’t get within a thousand yards of those firefighters to try and scare them off. You’re a coward. A weakling. A—
Rage exploded across Malachi’s field of vision, sending his fist smashing into the wooden fence he’d been standing beside in the shadows. He made contact with a loud crack, swallowing down the agony that raced up his arm like a strike of white lightning. The pain centered him, bringing him back to his purpose, and he took a breath, then another. It was true that he hadn’t burned the warehouse to the ground, and that he hadn’t been able to make Sam and Lucy pay the way he’d wanted to. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t, only that he couldn’t rightnow.
“Of course,” he murmured, a smile hooking over his mouth as an idea bloomed in his head. “Timing. That’s the answer.”
Unlike his father, Malachi knew how to be patient. As long as his goals were met, how long they took didn’t matter in the end. If he stayed off the radar long enough, the police and the RFD would have no choice but to abandon the investigation. They already had so little to go on, anyway. For fuck’s sake, they hadn’t even figured out who he was, let alone how to find him. All he had to do was stick to his original plan to wait them out, then he could go back to burn the warehouse down. Once he’d completed that task and given the fire what it wanted, he could leave Remington, starting over in a new city where he could burn even bigger things all the way to the ground with far less fear of being caught.
But wait,whispered a voice inside his head, this one even more dangerous than his father’s.What if you could punish Sam and Lucyandburn the warehouse down at the same time? Why not make them all burn?
Malachi stilled, his pulse thundering against his eardrums in the quiet. Burning Lucy’s SUV had given him so much satisfaction. Made him feel powerful. But punishing her and Sam directly?Permanently?Now that was something his father had never done. It would give Malachi a whole new level of control.
Killing them would be risky, he reasoned, and the plan would have to be nothing short of perfect. The wait would take discipline, too. But, oh, the reward. If Malachi burned Sam and Lucy along with the warehouse, the completion would be like nothing he’d ever experienced, the rebirth so pure, he wouldn’t just be powerful.
He’d be fucking invincible.
Pushing off the fence, he slipped through the darkness. He was smarter than his father could ever imagine. He’d wait for the right time, create the perfect distraction, then he’d strike.
This time, he would finish what he’d started, andnothingwould stand in his way.
* * *
Sam was,quite possibly, the luckiest man on the planet. Yes, the job he loved was in some limbo right now with this case, and no, there hadn’t been a break in said case after a week’s worth of brain-numbing investigating. But there hadn’t been any more suspicious fires, either, nor had there been any sign of threat or danger anywhere near his condo or Lucy’s apartment. The extra patrols around Station Seventeen and Chief de Costa’s home had also yielded an all-clear. Best of all, Sam had spent every day working beside Lucy, along with every night in bed with her. They’d fallen into a routine that felt anything but, sharing favorite recipes (her mother’s cornbread recipe had ended up being a perfect match for the chili he never made the same way twice, but always ended up delicious), taking long walks around the very public paths of his condo complex when he felt absolutely stir crazy, and talking about everything from the best place to get donuts in Remington (Sweetie Pies. Duh) to what they’d do if they won the lottery (travel, donate to charity, then ultimately come back to work, because what was better than being a firefighter, honestly?). Even their deeper conversations about his estrangement from his family had felt somehow easy, in a way that Sam had never thought possible, and even though he knew what he was feeling should scare him shitless, it didn’t.
He wanted Lucy, any way she’d have him, no matter the risk.
“Good morning,” came a sleepy murmur from beside him, and speak of the devil, even if she felt like an angel all snuggled up beside him in bed.
Sam curled his arms around Lucy a little tighter, his cock waking all the way up right along with the rest of him. “Morning,” he said, running his fingers over the spot where her tank top gave way to the smooth, warm skin of her shoulder blades.
“We should get up,” she said. But she shifted closer, the heat of her bare legs on his giving him all sorts of bad intentions andverygood ideas, and he rolled her onto her back in less than a breath.
