The Firefighter's Woman Read online

  Twenty minutes later, Sarah was meeting the reason why she couldn’t crash on John’s couch. The large leather three-seater was taken by a very large, very fluffy dog who let out a groan and stretched his long legs out in front of him as Sarah and John stepped through the front door of his house.

  “Oh, my god!” Sarah let out a little squeal in spite of herself. “What sort of dog is he?”

  “Newfoundland mix.”

  “Is he friendly?”

  “Very,” John smiled. “You can go say hello.”

  Sarah sat down on the arm of the couch. The dog nosed her, long tail thumping against the couch with many wags, then put his heavy head in her lap. When she patted him, her hand slid through his fur and utterly disappeared.

  “Oh, my god, what’s his name?”

  “Odin,” John said, grinning at her reaction.

  “You are the fluffiest doggy ever to exist,” she informed the dog. “Yes, you are. You are a Mr. Fluffy.”

  “I want to sleep on the couch,” she said. “He’d make a better pillow than any other pillow, I bet.”

  “You like animals, huh?”

  “Love them,” she said, grinning as Odin licked her face with a tongue that seemed to extend the full length of her face.

  “You don’t have any pets yourself?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t get anything that might die. I don’t have any more room for urns on my mantelpiece.”

  What might have been a somber moment was transformed by Odin putting his big paw on her lap, gazing into Sarah’s face, and licking her nose with enough force to make her squeal and pull away for a breath.

  “You are a silly dog,” she informed the animal. “The silliest dog there is.”

  Odin wagged agreement.

  “I’m going to sleep out here with him,” she reaffirmed, sliding down onto the couch with the dog. His big furry lumpen body was warm and comforting after a very scary day. Outside, dawn was beginning to break and Sarah suddenly felt her eyelids starting to get heavy. Something about being in a comfortable warm house with a friendly canine pressed by her side made her body give up the battle for consciousness.

  *

  John chuckled at his dog’s confused face as he picked Sarah’s sleeping form up from the couch and carried her to the guest room. She barely stirred, so exhausted that not even being laid on a bed that was not hers woke her up.

  He felt a welling in his heart, a warmth that spread through his chest. He didn’t know why, but it just felt right having her there, as if something that had been missing all along had finally come. He bent down and pressed a chaste kiss to her sleeping forehead.

  “Good night, Sarah,” he murmured softly before retiring to his bedroom. With Sarah safe, he finally let the exhaustion that had been creeping up for hours overcome him and draw him into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  A scream several hours later brought John out of bed. He was on his feet before he was really awake. The sound wasn’t coming from the spare room. He turned on the lights in the hall and then the lounge and finally the kitchen. That was where he found Sarah, standing in the middle of the kitchen wild-eyed but still very much asleep. She was in the middle of a night terror, which was not surprising after what she’d been through.

  “What are you doing, sweetheart?” He kept his voice low and gentle.

  “I need a hammer,” she mumbled. “Have to build a house. It got huffed and puffed down. There’s a wolf on your couch.”

  “Okay, back to bed,” he said firmly.

  “I need a hammer,” she insisted as he walked toward her, put his hands on her shoulders, and gently steered her back to bed. He didn’t put her in the spare room. Instead he took her back to his own bed. She needed to have an eye kept on her, especially given the fact that she was looking for hardware. He wouldn’t have put it past her to try to actually rebuild her house personally when she was awake; she had that kind of dogged determination about her.

  Sarah did lie down when he told her to, but she squirmed as she lay next to him, tossing this way and that until he looped an arm around her waist and gently pressed her firmly against his body. The hard lines of his frame seemed to settle her and she quietened after a while, the little non-verbal whimpers becoming quiet snores.

  Chapter Five

  Sarah woke up next to a very large, shirtless man. For a split-second of morning amnesia, she didn’t know who he was or where she was. The room wasn’t familiar. The bed wasn’t familiar. Her reaction to the confusion was to panic.

  “What the hell!” She leaped out of bed, staring at the stranger.

  He woke up, eyes bleary with sleep. Realizing she was only wearing a sweater, Sarah pulled it as far down her thighs as she could as slow memory began to return.

  “Easy,” he said, his voice deeper for being groggy with sleep.

  “I didn’t go to bed with you,” she said, scowling at him. She couldn’t actually remember if she had or not. She couldn’t remember much besides the roaring that suddenly echoed in her head, the memory of her house swaying and then cracking around her. The image somehow superimposed itself over the bedroom for a few seconds, making her blink the fear away.

  “Hey.” He reached out to her. “It’s okay, come sit down.”

  Sarah scrunched her eyes tight, then opened them again, turning her fear into anger at him.

  “You took advantage of me!”

  “I didn’t,” he said, pulling the sheet up over the tent in his shorts. It didn’t do much to hide the thick length of his morning erection. Her eyes were drawn to it inexorably, widening as she put her hand down between her thighs out of reflex.

  “Okay, so you didn’t,” she confirmed. “If you had… I’d be in two pieces.”

  John let out a laugh. “With the right preparation, I’m sure you’d take it beautifully,” he said with a wink that made her glow bright red.

  “Oh, my god,” she half-said, half-squealed, clapping her hands to her blushing face. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  He smiled handsomely and crooked a finger at her. “Come here.” He drawled the order in slow, sexy tones that made her obey. She sat down beside him, tentatively at first, unsure of herself.

  “I would never take advantage of you,” he said gently. “You were sleepwalking, scared and disoriented, so I figured you’d be better off where I could keep an eye on you. Nothing happened.”

  Sarah was surprised to find herself feeling a little disappointed. John was very attractive, especially with his messy bed hair and his shirtless chest showing his powerful body. She found herself reacting to him in a way that completely contradicted her initial panic. There was no way for him to know it, but the first little trickles of moisture were starting to make themselves felt between her lower lips. No matter how she tugged her sweater down, she didn’t feel in any way modest. In fact, the motion only served to make her hard nipples stand out underneath the fabric.

  John’s eyes roamed her face and dipped to her chest and then her bare thighs. Sarah squirmed as a silence drew out between them. Not an uncomfortable one, but one that seemed pregnant with possibility.

  He was waiting for her to respond, she realized. “Oh… uh… okay.”

  “Nothing will happen either… unless you want it to.” A thick brow rose at her as his lips spread in an inviting smile. She couldn’t forget about his erection, covered, but in no way truly hidden by the sheet.

  “Do you want it to, Sarah?”

  She blushed furiously. The answer stuck in her throat. She couldn’t say yes. What kind of girl would that make her? One who slept with men she barely knew. Sarah thought better of herself than that, but suddenly ‘better’ didn’t seem to make much sense. Was it really better to deny what was so thick between them she could almost taste it? Was it better to pretend to be proper when she was yearning for him to touch her?

  He reached out and trailed his fingertips lightly over the outside of her thigh in a soft, tender caress. She bit her lo
wer lip and just barely managed to meet his gaze.

  “Suddenly the mouthy brat gets quiet,” he said teasingly. “Why is that? Do you not know the answer? Or do you just not want to tell me?”

  She made a sound that was almost certainly not a word, and cast a pleading glance at him, imploring him not to make her ask for it. He seemed to understand what she wasn’t saying, because he hooked his hand around her thigh and pulled her across the bed until his erection was nestled against her leg, the warmth of his hand exciting her tender parts. He was just inches from her bare lips. The fact excited her so much she could feel the moisture between her lower lips increase as her pussy became slick with desire.

  She lay back and looked up into his face, his golden-flecked eyes capturing hers with a heated gaze and then his mouth claimed hers in a kiss that drove every thought from her head. His hand slid up her thigh and his warm, strong fingers cupped her mound. She let out a moan into his mouth as his tongue played with hers in a slow sensual dance. Her hips began to move, sliding her slit over the fingers tenderly playing with her pussy.

  Sarah had made love very few times before, and never like this. Her previous lovers had been faltering boys groping at her for their own gratification, but John was a man and he laid natural claim to her body, arousing her with a masculine ease that made her flow with excitement.

  Her legs parted, one thigh sliding up over his hip. John’s shorts had either been pushed to the side or melted completely because there was nothing between them when the head of his cock bumped up against her plump lower lips, the tapered head of it finding that hot little spot from where her juices came. He pushed himself smoothly up inside her, taking her in one long, slow, masterful stroke, her pussy engulfing him with a hot embrace as she let out a wail of passion against his lips.

  John slid in and out slowly, taking his time, letting her become accustomed to the superior length and girth of his manhood. There was no protection between them, just bare skin on bare skin, her pussy juices coating the shaft of his manhood in a gleaming sheen.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this…” She whispered the words against his neck as she buried her face there, hiding from the wanton fact of what she was doing even as her hips thrust back to make sure she impaled herself on him as deeply as possible.

  He stilled his movements and she felt him there inside her, stretching her as wide as she’d ever been stretched.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  Sarah couldn’t bring herself to answer. She made a small sound that might have been yes, might have been no. A moment later, his strong hand tangled in her hair and gently pulled her back so she had to look him in the eye, had to answer him.

  “Do you want this, Sarah?”

  “Yes…” She let out a cry of pure desire as he slid back in, filling her to the very hilt.

  “Then don’t fight it,” he murmured, pressing kisses to her mouth, her neck, her collarbone and lower still, his hands cupping her breasts as he took first one nipple in his mouth and then the other, his hips never stilling, thrusting in a constant motion that kept her in thrall to him, her leg sliding higher around his waist as her pussy was spread around his cock. She could hear her juices every time he thrust deep, near shameful sounds of desire.

  She couldn’t have fought him if she’d tried. She could feel herself melting around him, becoming one with him, wanting him harder and faster and… she let out a little impatient sound and nipped at his neck.

  “Careful,” he said, palming her bottom and giving her cheek a little slap. “You don’t want me to stop fucking you and start spanking you, do you?”

  Her pussy quivered in response to the question. He chuckled and slapped her bottom again, harder this time, accompanied by a rougher thrust that made her yelp and reach for his arm to hold on as her bottom was bounced away from his cock and then spanked back down again.

  John rolled over, taking her beneath him, his hands on her thighs, pushing them back so that her pussy was spread around the thick width of his cock in a way that seemed vulnerable and lewd at the same time. Looking down, Sarah could see the hard bud of her clit standing erect between her lips, a little monument to her lust as John once more resumed a slower pace, sinking into the depths of her body, then pulling out all the way to the very tip of his cock. Over and over she watched his flesh slide inside her, making her pussy clench and squirm as much as she could while trapped in his strong hands. She could move very little while flat on her back with her legs also pressed back toward the bed. She was a prisoner being taken at length. John didn’t seem in any hurry to come. His handsome face was marked with desire, but also self-control, which made his lovemaking an erotic torment.

  “I told you you’d take me beautifully,” he purred down at her. “Look at your hot wet lips wrapped around me. Look how your cunt grips me.”

  “Fuucckkkkk…” Sarah moaned as a bolt of pleasure shot through her pussy. His words alone were almost enough to make her come.

  “I saw this sweet little pussy yesterday when I was spanking you for being such a naughty girl,” he continued in a sexy drawl. “And I knew it would feel just perfect when I took you.”

  “You planned this?”

  “I didn’t have to plan anything,” he said, sliding all the way down until his cock was as deep as it could go. “I knew you were mine, Sarah. Are you telling me you didn’t know that too?”

  He moved his hips in a slow gyration, making his cock stir in a slow circle inside her tight pussy. She was panting now, so close to coming she could barely hold back.

  Just as she was on the very brink, he pulled out, leaving her pouting slit open and empty. Sarah let out a wail of complaint, which did not last long as he moved up the bed, took a handful of her hair, and slid his wet cock into her mouth.

  Her juices mixed with his pre-cum, both coated her tongue as he slid inside her and began to fuck her mouth much like he had her pussy. Sarah looked up at him, unable to speak with her mouth full, her eyes brimming with the question she could not form as he pumped his cock between her lips.

  “Don’t want to come inside that bare pussy, do I?” he said, his voice taut with desire as he used her mouth. “Can’t risk filling you with more than my cum just yet.”

  His words made her cunt spasm. He reached down, pushed two fingers inside her and pressed his palm against her clit. With his cock still firmly in her mouth, he began thrusting thick fingers in and out of her, hard and fast, his palm spanking her lips and clit as he pumped his cock over her tongue, two orgasms building one at each end of her. His orgasm and hers. He came first, making a guttural growl as his cock swelled inside her mouth and then his cum spilled over her tongue.

  “Swallow,” he ordered before she had the chance to spit it out. “Every last drop. And lick my cock clean too.”

  His orders were carnal and base but she found herself obeying, taking his seed down her throat and into her belly and even lapping at his cock with her tongue as his fingers swirled in her wet pussy. She couldn’t believe what she was doing. She couldn’t believe how he was treating her, with an easy dominance that seemed to assume that she would obey him.

  “Good girl,” he purred happily, sliding his fingers in and out of her harder, the flat of his palm slapping her pussy over and over. The orgasm that had been welling since he first thrust inside her burst the dams of her self-control and she came, quivering, moaning, tasting his cum on her tongue as she ground herself against his fingers and his hand that was pressed hard against her pussy, covering her clit and her swollen lower lips, massaging her through the last quivers of her orgasm until finally she fell back, sated at last.

  “Well, now you’ve taken advantage of me,” she said in satisfied, happy tones. Sarah had not felt such a surge of relaxation and general well-being in a long time. She hadn’t known that sex could be that good, or create such a sense of… completion.

  “If that was taking advantage of you, then I’m afraid I’ll be taking advantage of you as often
as I can,” he drawled.

  She rolled over onto her side and smiled at John. “You were kind of mean.”

  “Mean? Was I?”

  “Mhm. Ordering me around.”

  “It’s not going to hurt you to be ordered around a little,” he drawled. “And I don’t think you think it was mean either.” He palmed her bottom, then smacked it lightly. “I think you liked it.”

  She had liked it. A lot. There was something freeing about having her freedom curtailed. As she curled up with John and he stroked her bottom and thigh, she felt a sense of peace she hadn’t experienced before. It was very odd, almost disconcerting to feel so good when she knew that in reality, everything was very bad. Her house was gone, and along with it the memories it had held—the memories that were all she had left of the family she’d lost.

  As the glow of coital bliss dissipated, she knew what she had to do.

  “I need to go to the bank,” she said to John. “I need to get some money. And I need to go shopping. I have to buy something I can wear without looking like an escaped convict.”

  “You don’t look like an escaped convict. You look cute.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes at him. “I at least need some jeans,” she said. “And, you know, maybe some underwear.”

  “I don’t know about the underwear,” he said with a wink. “I think I like you without it.”

  “I bet you do,” she smiled, then let out a little yelp as he patted her bottom firmly.

  “I’ll drop you at the bank,” he said. “I’ve got a few errands to run myself, so we’ll meet at the car once we’re done and maybe grab some lunch.”

  “Sounds good,” she smiled. “Thanks.”

  Chapter Six

  After a quick breakfast they drove into the city together, chatting idly about nothing much of consequence. John was in a good mood, and in spite of everything that had happened over the previous twenty-four hours, so was Sarah. She wasn’t happy in the way she’d been happy in her earlier years, the carefree way she’d felt about the world and everything in it. But John’s lovemaking had brought her a new kind of happiness, an animal connection of desire. Just being near him made her feel better about the world—no matter how broken it was.