For someone like him, she could see that. What better job for a guy with a rescue complex than a firefighter who rushes into burning buildings to save people and rescues cats stuck in trees? Other than his job, his family, and a few close friends, he didn’t seem to have a lot of activities going on—beyond the one he was currently shunning.
He was a workaholic with a rescue complex.
Guess who was the kitten out on a limb this time? That realization—along with her dad’s advice earlier to open herself up to the fact that she could, possibly, maybe be (on occasion) wrong about people—made her prickle.
“And you thought what a better way to spend a vacation than in Antioch, Missouri, with me as your safety date?”
One of his eyebrows shot up. “Safety date?”
“Yeah, the one you don’t have to worry about making you fall off the no-sex wagon.” Okay, that came out a little harsher than she meant it to, but she was salty. No one wanted to be the pity date, especially not the woman who some men thought should be eating a salad with no dressing or shredded cheese or anything that tasted remotely like it had touched an unsaturated fat at any point in its existence.
He stiffened and looked at her with annoyance. “That was the initial plan, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”
She sat up straighter in her chair and gave him the icy look that froze her badly behaving clients in their tracks.
“Look, I know you’re not into me, and I’m okay with that. I’m not fishing for compliments. I know I don’t turn most men on,” she said.
“You are the most frustrating woman…” He groaned and stared at her long and hard. Like he was wrestling with something. He finally nodded, making some decision, and continued, “Good, because I’m not giving them out,” he said in a low voice with enough gravel in his tone to put her on alert. “Consider this a list of complaints.” He began counting off with his fingers as he went through each point. “You’ve made it so a good night’s sleep is an unobtainable goal, because I can’t close my eyes without seeing your ass and wondering how it would move when I buried myself balls deep in you.”
Her cheeks flamed. That was not what she was expecting. Not at all.
“When I almost ran Scarlett off the road in Illinois?” he went on, holding up a second finger. “That was because I was imagining the sound you’d make when I grazed my teeth over the tip of your nipple and then sucked on it hard enough to make you beg for more.”
And there went her panties. Call the fire department. Oh wait, she had someone with a hose right across the table.
His words were so unexpected, she was having trouble breathing. She couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment that he felt the need to lie to make her feel better or imagining him doing all those things to her. It was a toss-up at the moment.
He stared at her with a look she’d never seen him have before. Oh, she’d seen flirty Frankie. This wasn’t him. This was something different altogether. Hotter. More intense. The air around them sparked and sizzled.
He lifted a third finger. “I have had more inconvenient and unplanned hard-ons in the past five days than a grown man should admit to. And after I woke up in that B and B and saw you sleeping in the bed next to me, with your tank top not even having a hope in hell of containing your boobs? That’s when I started revising my definition of what sex is, because thinking about how good you must taste is all I can think about when I’ve got my hand wrapped around my dick. There is nothing more that I want to do right now than find out just how much my imagination sucks, because I bet you taste better when you come than anything else in the world. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
It was probably just because they were together twenty-four seven. It was a vacation-from-reality reaction on his part, that was why he couldn’t do anything about it. Besides, he was an admitted man-whore, and she was basically the only single woman he’d met all week.
Still…it was hot in here.
Check that.
It was scorching. Her whole body had that oh-my-God-yes tingly thing going on. Just from his words. Was that possible? She hadn’t thought so until that moment.
It was so disconcerting that her next question flew out before she had a chance to consider it. “You saw my boobs?”
One ginger eyebrow went up. “After everything I just said, me seeing your fan-fucking-tastic rack is what you’re caught on?”
“Yes,” she said as she shook her head no.
He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Thank God I didn’t tell you the rest of it.”