Vortex, page 6
“So what was it?”
Chapter 11
Now that she’d asked the million dollar question, he couldn’t pretend to ignore it.
Actually, ignoring the elephant in the room had only made him more miserable, and here he was trying to make her miserable.
“I got jealous,” Ce mumbled, unable to face her since it was ridiculous. They’d met yesterday, and he’d been a grumpy prickly asshole most of the time who didn’t deserve the time of day from her. “You were flirting with the Ortho doc, and I felt I didn’t compare.”
“You were jealous? Of Jon?” she was staring at him like she was shocked.
“Of Dr. Navarro. Yes, and it’s more about me than you,” he admitted.
“How?” She was cutely confused by these revelations.
“So, I found out this week that a girl I dated is seeing… a big shot.” He veered away from his choice of words. Whether or not Erin had done him wrong, he wasn’t going to worsen things for her by telling tales out of school. If he had fought for her honor, he wasn’t going to stir shit up in the tiny female firefighter community. “She moved up in the world from me, and a doctor is a big step up from a firefighter.”
Bianca nodded. “You and the girl, were you serious?”
“No. Not serious, but still, it stings a little. Was she slumming it to hang out with me?”
“I don’t see hanging out with you as slumming it.”
“If you can have an orthopedic surgeon, you can do better than me. Mom said I should become a dentist, but I wanted to be a cool firefighter. Navarro was right; I’m a Neanderthal with an axe.”
“You are a cool firefighter. Do you even like teeth?” She grinned, showing off her pearly whites.
“No, and I had like fourteen cavities growing up. The point is, I’m sorry about being a jerk over Dr. Navarro and giving the kiss in the elevator. I was out of line, and you and him—he’s lucky with you…”
“Casey.” She tapped his arm with hers and leaned close to him. “Let me clear a few things up. No one has been calling you a Neanderthal with an axe. That’s what Dad… Dr. Glazier calls his ortho residents—Neanderthals with saws, scalpels, bovies, drills, screws, axes, hammers. He has a long and colorful list, which includes chainsaws.”
“Oh,” Casey felt pretty dumb at the moment. Glazier had made a comment during the fasciotomies using those same words. “What about the whole pregnancy and spinal surgery you two talked about?”
“He was checking to make sure I wasn’t pregnant before I went into the CT scanner. And spinal deformity surgeries are staged over two marathon surgery days, so we didn’t do anything except sleep afterward—far away from each other.”
“What about the whole pleasure making the hours short and being lucky?”
“Probably a quote from Dickens or Tolstoy or Ghandi. Jon passes the time during long surgeries by throwing out quotation word salad. And he called me a lucky duck, not you. Jon is gay.”
“He is?” Casey almost fell over, reexamining the entire conversations he’d listened to with a new light.
“Gay, and in a relationship with a general surgery resident when I left. Doesn’t mean he can’t envy me about getting to hang out with a hunky firefighter like you. He did help you put your lead apron on.” She grinned, practically sparkling with mischief.
“I’m an idiot.” Casey had made assumption on top of assumption, worsened by his own mindset. “So it was just a fun chat between you two and not more?”
“Pretty much.” She put her hands under his chin, her warm lovely hands, skilled at insane sorts of surgeries he’d never imagined. “While I’m not looking for anything serious, I don’t regret the kiss. Not even a tiny bit.”
He shook his head, “You don’t understand—our kiss in the elevator. It wasn’t me. I don’t… That’s not…” He couldn’t come up with a way to explain where he’d lost control.
“Your identical twin kissed the heck out of me?”
His thoughts switched off again because she was that cute, funny, sweet… and infinitely forbidden kissable deliciousness. Despite his best intentions, he was losing sight of the right thing to do.
If he wasn’t careful, chivalry was going to die a very fast death, and he’d have her on her back on his table with a side of waffles and orange juice.
“Oh, it was great. But I don’t usually take like that. Not give you a choice. The kiss. It was too much.”
She feathered her hand down his cheek. “A really hot kiss was too much?”
“No, but it’s not the guy I try to be. Usually, I’m the guy who carries your groceries, helps rearrange your furniture. This past week I’ve been nothing except frustrated.”
“And grumpy hot?” she suggested, not removing her hand.
“I shouldn’t be praised for acting like a shit head. And when I kissed you, I wasn’t feeling very nice.”
She put her hand on his chest, and her heat singed him through his T-shirt. “I’m a nice girl. A good sunshiny happy girl. But nice does not always means sweet. You can be good, and you can want. So it’s okay. Don’t you want?”
She brushed a hint of a kiss across his mouth. When he didn’t respond immediately, she started to draw back.
Fuck chivalry. Fuck being a good guy.
“No,” he said and caught her shoulders. “I want.”
And back in he went, caught in the vortex.
Chapter 12
This is not where she’d thought her first shift as a firefighter would lead her. The highs, the lows, life, death. The confusing collision of her old world and her new. The shadows of the past, the fear of the future, and the promise of the now.
Which was the only explanation she could come up with to justify why she was kissing Casey, despite every warning they’d been given.
Or he was simply a damn good kisser, and she wanted what she wanted—the taste of orange juice, waffles, kisses, no promises, and the chemistry they’d been resisting.
Somewhere mid-kiss he’d pulled on her shirt and seemed to be trying to figure out how to open it without separating their mouths. Her uniform belt kept it tightly in place, defeating his efforts.
Undeterred, he released her and gave the buttons on her uniform shirt a look like he was considering snapping them off.
“Hey, you are NOT ruining my shirt. It’s got to survive more than my first shift.” She laughed and started opening the buttons by her neck.
He whipped out a pair of trauma shears from his newly unfastened belt and said, “Three, two, one…”
She got the shirt over her head and tossed it at his torso. He didn’t appear to notice because he stared at her breasts, still bound up in sheets and safety pins from yesterday. “Hey, you helped put me in this.”
“And I’ll help take you out.” He rolled his shirt off and shook his pants down to his boxers.
Bianca was so busy drooling over his thick, near-brown chest hair and the happy trail pointing to the outline of his erection that she didn’t realize his intentions until he pulled her toward him.
Not allowing her to make any comments, he immediately used the trauma shears to cut through her wrappings.
A normal person would have expected to breathe more easily once released from confinement like that, but, instead, the air was sucked out of the room as his gaze devoured her naked chest. Her nipples hardened to tight points, begging for his touch.
“I think I can match you.” She reached for her belt and discovered lust made her fingers clumsy.
“Rookie.” Casey proved his ability to multitask by sucking one brown nipple into his mouth and undoing her belt at the same time. Naturally he was familiar because he’d been doing his own for years.
She kicked her pants off, and there they stood, mostly naked in his kitchen, both wearing similar plaid boxers. Hers were smaller and pinned on. “Whose are these?”
“Royce’s.” Casey’s eyes never moved off her breasts.
Bianca was shocked she didn’t spontaneously combust right there, but it wouldn’t hurt to fan the flames. Casey wasn’t the rescuer in her memory, but he was the guy who’d supported her through the craziest surgery of her life, so he deserved every drop of ecstasy she sensed waiting around the corner. She dropped her voice a pitch. “His? Now that’s so dirty…”
No time to make any more naughty suggestions because Casey simply picked her up, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her down the hallway.
“Hey, put me down. I’ve been dying for a chance to grab your ass.” She couldn’t quite reach from her position.
They crossed the threshold of his bedroom, and he dropped her face down on the bed. Before she could speak, he smacked her butt on each cheek and said, “Bad girl.”
She rolled over and got on her knees. The edges of his boxers were too tempting to keep her hands to herself. She grabbed the waistband and tugged him toward her.
His gray eyes got even darker, boring through her. She slid down his boxers, and his big cock stood at attention. Bianca put her hands on his ass and leaned forward to give the tip of his dick a good hard suck. Some women said they didn’t like giving Bj’s, but not Bianca. It was an unending turn-on for her to make a guy melt into putty, courtesy of her hands and mouth, not to mention getting to squeeze the firm ass of his at last.
He didn’t say anything, yet he wasn’t protesting because his hands rested on her head, gliding with her as she worked her mouth on him. A most interesting squeak did emerge from his lips when she deep-throated him. She glanced up and loved the way he’d gone unfocused and lust drunk—same as her.
“Enough.” He pushed her shoulder back, freeing his erection from her mouth.
“You sure you don’t want more?” She stood and wiggled out of the shorts that had been Royce’s. She teasingly whacked his cock with the borrowed boxers.
“More,” he grunted and effortlessly flipped her back onto the bed.
Her body vibrated in anticipation. Yesterday, she’d tried to be one of the guys, but it didn’t matter right now. She was a curvy girl who wanted a big strong man to climb on top of her and use her body the way it was meant to be used. The logic and the warnings didn’t stop her from craving her forbidden thank-god-you-don’t-work-at-his-firehouse illicit firefighter nookie.
Logic definitely took flight because he ducked his head right between her thighs and set about licking up every drop of moisture he’d inspired.
Clearly no stranger to fulfilling a woman’s needs, Casey tongued her swollen, achy clit, sending sparks up and down her body. He parted her folds and slid his fingers inside of her, finger banging her as he sucked.
She had plenty of dirty thoughts about him, but they definitely didn’t compare to the reality. After what he said about being a nice guy, there was something about reducing him to a caveman ravishing her unresisting body. The combination of horniness, an intense shift, and his skilled mouth pushed her over the edge.
She shrieked her heart out and was beginning to come back down when she realized Casey wasn’t between her legs anymore. He was sitting back on his heels, basically savoring the sight of her coming undone.
Not that he was in much better shape. Her juices were smeared on his face, and his features were tight with tension and hunger.
Wow, the moody fire grump and been replaced by a hotter than hell savage.
“Now?” his voice was practically a snarl.
She beckoned, wanting nothing more than for him to fall on her. Without removing his gaze from her body, he reached into the top drawer of a nearby nightstand for a condom. He had no difficulty putting it on, covering the thick veins of his cock dark red with need.
Still, he held back, a coiled spring.
And she knew why, whatever he was about to do to her, it would be feral. So if she wasn’t sure, he couldn’t risk being unable to stop.
Not a problem.
To make sure he understood, she opted to use words. “Casey, I want you. Take me. Have me.”
She didn’t have to say more because he pounced on her. He was kissing her, inhaling her, pinning her down as his rod sought her center. He was almost in the right spot when he paused, poised over her, the tip of his cock resting on her channel.
“Beg,” the single word barely sounded human. He released one of her wrists to pinch her nipples.
Begging sounded perfect. “Casey, please. Please. Please. Casey. Casey.”
His dick slid inside, a slow centimeter by centimeter descent, his eyes still fixed on her face. With every blink, his expression became more animal, more primal.
When he was seated fully to the hilt, she could barely breathe. His shaft stretched her in the good spots, filling her in such a way she felt nothing but the pleasure of being desired and wanted. She needed him to move and bring more pleasure to those good spots. She pleaded one more time, “Casey, please. I want you.”
And he went wild. He started pounding her hard, driving deeper. She couldn’t even hold him because as he possessed her, he kept her arms pinned down. Every stroke felt unbelievably good, driving her over the cliff again. She spasmed, arching her back to push against his thrust. He dropped his mouth back to her breast, a siphon adding pleasure to her shaking body.
The second she relaxed, he pulled out, flipped her onto her stomach, and reentered from behind. She lay flat, and he was pressed directly on top of her. His heartbeat hammered against her back, letting her feel every breath up until the moment he let go.
They lay there in a pile of sweaty bodies, simply being. Presently, he sat up and lifted her up. Before she could ask, he tucked her under his comforter and made sure she had his pillow. Then he tossed the condom and put his boxers on. Only after did he lay down on top of the comforter next to her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, resting on his pillow.
“You don’t have any clothes,” he stated, his voice back to normal.
Or not normal as she’d understood it. The moody, cranky Casey wasn’t the real one. This one, the nice sweet chivalrous one was the real ‘Casey.’
“No, why aren’t you under the covers too?”
“Because I don’t want to crowd you, especially after… are you okay? I was rough, and I can’t say I’ve done that before,” he admitted.
Bianca tried not to choke. They’d had unrestrained phenomenal sex and he was worried he’d been too rough? She resorted to teasing to ease his concerns. “If this was the first time you’ve had sex, then you did a great job.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever lost my head, and I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
She sat up with the covers over her chest and kissed his mouth. “I promise, it was great, and I loved it—even if you aren’t used to feeling like you were pounding the sunshine out of me.”
He put his arms around her, relaxing and giving her the post-coital closeness she wanted. “I’m not sure even sex can pound the sunshine out of you. This was more frantic. Usually it’s much lighter, two people wanting to have fun together.”
“We were having fun, but I get it. Yesterday, I’d kinda hoped the hot guy and I might kiss in the future. Maybe we’d have a friendly coffee with a little naughtiness. Instead, we—”
“Instead, I was ready to drag you by the hair to bed.” He rested his head on her shoulder. “Am I wrong to have liked it? A lot?”
“Chemistry mixed with some crazy mid shift Medic surgeries might do that,” Bianca searched for a reasonable explanation. It reminded her of breakup and makeup sex when both parties were super emotional. Except there wasn’t any breakup or makeup, which pointed to a falling in love rabbit hole she was NOT going near. “It was wild.”
“Royce is going to hit the ceiling over this.” He chuckled and kissed her shoulder.
She curled into his warmth. There was a lot to be said for a nice, strong, hot body. Especially one who had been so committed to her pleasure. “And it’s Royce’s business because?”
“Because it’s a firehouse. Everybody knows everything about everyone. Don’t pretend it’s not the same at MetroGen.”
She turned around to give him a kiss. His response was quite enthusiastic, to the point he got under the covers and was back on top of her with a fresh condom in his fingers. She rubbed her hands down his chest and lower to where his erection was stirring. “Glazier was doing someone, and I didn’t know about it until today, so if you want something enough, you can keep it quiet. Besides, I told Royce he wouldn’t see it happened again.”
His thoughts were practically visible on his face. “Did you do that on purpose?”
She smiled. “What do you think?”
He licked her shoulder and then popped a nipple back in his mouth, making her moan before moving to the other side. “I think you throw people off with your shiny smiles to get what you want. I’m not fooled.” His last words were said at a lower pitch, a sure sign the man-imal version of Casey was coming back to the forefront.
“It got me here, didn’t it?” She twirled her fingers into his hair, letting him work his magic. “And now we’re… I’m not sure if we’re together or friends with benefits or whatever fits in between.”
He went still suddenly and tumbled off her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, part of her lurching to a sudden stop.
“I’m sorry, Bianca. I can’t do this.”
Chapter 13
“I’m sorry, Bianca. I can’t do this.”
The words passed through his lips with difficulty. His cock, his body, and part of his heart wanted to be right back inside her, possessing her, making her his.
But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t do that to her. She mentioned the future, and he hit the brakes.
It took so much effort his arms shook, yet he kept the distance between them. If he touched her more, he’d be sucked back in.
Chivalry wasn’t dead yet. It hurt like hell though.
“We can’t do this? We already did this! We had amazing sex, and now you said—”
“Screw it.” He kissed her to make her quiet, and the wave of need threatened to overwhelm them. He tore himself away and forced the words out. “I like you. I’ve known you for a whole day, and I like you a lot. But being together, starting something, isn’t going to be fair to you.”
