Page 256 of Her Reluctant Hero
“I knew two of them, Jon and Bev.” He sat against the headboard and reached for another bottle. “This was Jon’s favorite beer. I trained with him, about a million years ago, and Bev was on my crew before I moved over to the Bear Claws.”
“You slept with her.”
He looked at her sharply. “What made you say that?”
She merely lifted her eyebrows as she drank.
“Yeah, I did. Hell. It was a long time ago, before Jen.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “She wasn’t going to do this long, was only going to do it to pay for college, and hell, she should have graduated about seven years ago. She must’ve got bit.”
“What was she going to school for?”
“Testing me to see how well I remember her?”
“Just curious about the kind of woman who draws you.”
“You already know you, and Jen.”
“And I can see no similarity, except this.” She laughed, pulling a strand of blonde hair through her fingers. “So tell me about Bev, unless it bothers you.”
He shook his head. “She was young. This was, what, almost ten years ago. She wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, and had that look, you know, the dimples, the twinkling eyes, the kind of singsong voice. And yes, she was blonde. She had this great energy. Really lit up the place.” He took in a deep breath through his nose, his focus on his hands.
“Did you love her?”
“No. I liked the hell out of her, though. Seriously, she left to go back to school. I don’t know what she was doing back up here.” He turned his head, opened his eyes. “I don’t want you back on the mountain.”
“What?” She nearly knocked her bottle over. If he’d slapped her face, she wouldn’t have been more surprised.
He righted the bottle before the beer foamed over the lip and onto the mattress. “I don’t want you up there. If this fire can take two veterans...” He lowered his head, gathering himself, then looked back at her. “Well, I don’t want to go get your body.”
She reached over, cupped her hand over his cheek, the stubble bristling against her palm. “Why do you feel you have to get theirs? It isn’t your fault they died.”
His gaze sharpened and he drew back from her touch. “I know.”
“You going up there won’t solve anything.” She leaned forward, tucking her beer in the circle of her legs. “You don’t want me to go up there, I don’t want you to go up there. You shouldn’t see them like that.”
“If it were me, I’d want someone I know to be the one to bring me down. It’s the right thing to do.”
Honor. It meant so much to him, and made him the man he was. The man she loved.
Whoa. How had that slipped past her defenses? And now that it had, could she pretend it wasn’t there?
Did she want to?
“Will you be there when I get back?” he asked.
And because it was such a small thing, because it was good to be needed again, she said, “Yes.”
He leaned toward her, took her beer and put it on the table before cupping her face in his hands and kissing her deeply. She wrapped herself around him, unable to stop herself.
“I’m sorry, Peyton,” he whispered against her hair. “I want you.”
“Gabe—” Peyton’s pulse kicked into high gear. She felt like a mouse facing a hungry cat.
Then he was kissing her, his hands fisted in her hair, his mouth slick and hot and desperate. He loosened her ponytail, stroked her hair against her neck. The touch of her own hair made her nerves dance.
His unshaven cheek scraped her cheek and she reached up to touch his jaw, stroke the stubble, at once scratchy and silky. Beneath it his skin was hot and damp. She dragged her touch down his throat, feeling the play of his muscles as he devoured her mouth, sending reason into flames. She slid her hands up his chest to wind around his neck as he tugged her closer.
He broke the kiss for the moment it took him to lower her to the bed. He pushed his hips rhythmically against her until she pushed back, and the sound of heavy breathing and pounding pulses covered the rasp of zippers and swish of cloth.
