Chapter 13
Abby
Fourteen Weeks
“Itold you, my lady,” a handsome masked stranger murmurs in a sultry voice, stepping in closely until my back is pressed to the wall in the darkened hallway. “I will always come back for you.”
With those words, his mouth crashes onto mine, and there’s no sensing where he ends and I begin–there’s only lips and tongue and teeth and heavy, needy breaths as he ravages my mouth. His hips press into mine, the friction deliciously satisfying even through the layers of my skirts.
“Wait,” I say breathlessly. “I want to see your face. Please.”
He doesn’t say anything, but doesn’t stop me when I reach for his mask, my fingers finding the edge of the delicate fabric and pushing it up over his head.
To my surprise, it’s not a stranger at all–I don’t know how I missed it before.
I should have recognized the fierce, stormy gray eyes that I’ve looked into a thousand times.
“Oh,” I gasp. “It’s you.”
“It’s me,” he says, his words muffled through the slow kisses he trails up my neck. “Does that change your mind?”
“No,” I whisper, cheeks heating with both shame and desire. “Is that wicked of me?”
“Not as wicked as what I’m about to do to you,” he growls, reclaiming my mouth with his.
He reaches down, finding the hems of my skirts and ghosting his fingers tantalizingly up my calf, then up my inner thigh until he reaches the heat pooling between my legs.
His pupils blow wide as he drags a finger slowly through my wetness, making me cry out.
“Jack–”
“Good morning sunshine!” Ellie cries in a sing-song voice, pulling my curtains back and letting the light into my room. I sit bolt upright, chest heaving the way it was in the dream I was just having.
The masquerade ball dream.
The sexy masquerade ball dream.
Starring Jack.
“Are you okay?” Ellie asks, cutting through the replay. “Did you have a nightmare? You look flushed.”
“Oh my god,” I moan, flopping backwards and pulling a pillow over my face. “Worse, Ellie Bellie. So much worse.”
“What the hell does that mean?” she says, her blue eyes wide with shock as she wrenches the pillow away from me. “‘Worse’ than a nightmare?”
“That fucking show,” I huff. “I knew that bingeing TV before bed was a bad idea. It put…ideas in my head.”
“What kind of ideas?” she asks slyly, a knowing smile spreading on her face.
“You know exactly what kind,” I moan, trying to hide from her again by burying my face in my hands. “Ideas about hot, British regency men whisking me away to dark corners because they simply have to have me.”
“Well well well, my naughty ginger angel,” she cackles. “And here I was worried you were dreaming of something traumatizing. A sex dream? Spill right now and please, spare no details.”
“I haven’t gotten to the traumatizing part yet,” I say through gritted teeth. “It was a fucking masquerade ball, and right before you woke me up, things were getting hot and heavy, and I took his mask off, and–”
“Please tell me you didn’t have a sex dream about David,” she gasps. “I will pass out on this floor right now.”
“Worse,” I say grimly. “It was Jack.”
She squeals loudly, waving her hands frantically in a mixture of horror and delight.
“Oh my God,” she screams. “I’ve never, ever thought about Jack with a girl–ew!” She dissolves into giggles, rolling around on my bed like it’s the most ludicrous thing she’s ever heard.
“Will you stop,” I grumble, smacking her with the other pillow. “You cannot breathe a word of this to anyone. Oh my God. How am I supposed to look him in the eye ever again?”
“Oh, hush,” she says, pulling herself together. “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a combination of your horny pregnancy hormones and several hours of watching men in those slutty little shirts that turn see-through from a singular drop of water.”
“Of course it doesn’t mean anything,” I say quickly. “It’s just weird and embarrassing.”
It was just a dream. It’s not a big deal.
But no matter how many times I tell myself that, it doesn’t stop the flashbacks I get the rest of the day–a roguish grin, lips pressed against my pulse, strong hands gripping my waist.
And gray eyes I worry I could very much lose myself in if I’m not careful.
***
I spend the afternoon trying to busy myself, my heart rate increasing with every minute closer to the time Jack should be home.
Stop it, you freak. It was just a dream. Be normal.
But when the front door opens, the glass in my hand slips, shattering into a thousand pieces on the kitchen floor.
“Abby?” Jack calls from the entryway where I can hear him drop his workbag heavily. “Are you okay?”
“Um, yes, everything is fine!” I yell, my voice an octave higher than it should be. I step gingerly across the floor, grabbing the broom from the corner and hastily sweeping up the shards. “I just broke a glass, that’s all!”
“Hey, be careful,” he shouts, closing the distance between us in two gigantic steps.
“Let me do that, you don’t have shoes on.
Here, let me just–” He takes the broom from my hands and leans it against the wall before placing his hands on my waist and lifting me onto the counter, away from any danger of cutting my bare feet.
Oh no. Why was that hot?
My pulse flutters rapidly as I watch him clean up the mess, his eyes carefully combing every inch of floor to make sure every last piece is swept up.
He dumps the dustpan into the trashcan, and immediately pulls the bag out and ties it up, taking it straight to the outside bin.
I don’t move from where I’m perched on the cold granite, completely frozen by the utter disbelief of what just happened.
Goddamn, he didn’t even bat an eye when he picked me up.
When he comes back into the room, he looks surprised to see me still on the counter.
“You can get down now,” he laughs. “It should be safe.”
“Oh, right,” I say, hopping down quickly. “Duh. Thanks for taking care of that.”
“No problem,” he says, shrugging out of his uniform jacket and sitting in a dining chair before bending down to unlace his boots. Now that the shock has worn off, my heart jolts when I see how disheveled and exhausted he looks.
“Are you okay?” I ask. Stepping closer to him, I inhale deeply. “You smell like smoke. Why do you smell like smoke?”
“Garrett got food poisoning,” he grunts, yanking off his shoes. “So it was just me and Tyler, and two of the new guys. We got a call about a house fire, and I had to go with them. We didn’t have enough guys, and they needed all the help they could get.”
My stomach drops, and I feel the color drain from my face.
“I thought you weren’t going out in the field?” I ask tensely.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning on it,” he sighs wearily. “But I didn’t have much of a choice, they needed me.”
I don’t say anything, trying to will my blood pressure to decrease, for an entirely different reason now. At my silence, he looks up at me.
“I’m okay, Abs,” he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I’m bone-tired, but I’m fine. It was a simple kitchen fire, some kid put tin foil in the microwave. It stank like hell, but everyone was okay.”
“I just didn’t know I needed to worry about that,” I mutter, unfairly. He’s literally the deputy fire chief–of course he’s going to fight fires. I can’t be upset about that.
He also has no obligation to tell you these things. You have no right to be upset about anything at all.
“I know,” he says apologetically. “I should have called you instead of showing up looking like a mess. The worst part was just being out of shape, I’m not used to it anymore. Tyler gave me shit about that–he was still fresh as a daisy when we left the scene.”
I step up to his chair and wrap my arms around him from behind.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten irritated. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve just had a weird day, regulating my emotions has been tough.”
Emotions, daydreams, libido–tomato, tomahto.
“You don’t need to apologize, Abs,” he says, reaching up to pat my arm. “I was in such a rush to make it home on time that I didn’t think to warn you.”
I glance over at the clock–it’s only 6:05.
“You made sure you were back when you said you would be.”
“Of course I did,” he says, standing up and hooking his thumbs into his fireman suspenders. “I told you I’d be back by a certain time, in one piece, and I meant it. I might look a little worse for the wear, and smell like it, but I’m here for you, like I promised.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, overwhelmed with emotion. “That means more than you could possibly know.”
“I will be wherever you want me, anytime you ask,” he emphasizes, brushing my hair back out of my face, something more than just comfort shining in his eyes. “You just say the word. You aren’t alone, Abby.”
After today, I really and truly believe him.