Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (25 page)

“And she’ll still be out there tomorrow.” Max slid his hand up and down her spine, feeling her knotted muscles beneath his palm. The woman was wound tight. He knew she had to be exhausted. He hadn’t missed the faint signs of circles beneath her eyes today. She’d put on a good show, seemed to be in high enough spirits before the call about the fire at the physical therapist office had come in, but he knew the case was wearing her down.

“She’ll hit a daycare next, Max.”

The panic in her voice twisted around Max’s heart. “She’s already hit once today. It won’t happen tonight.”

“How am I going to stop her if I don’t know which one? There’s got to be at least a dozen private daycares in Silver Springs, and that’s not counting the ones run by the school district.”

“You’ll put every one of them on alert.”

“That didn’t work with the—”

Therapist office. Max knew that’s what she was about to say, but he bulldozed over her. “And you’ll get with the SSPD in the morning, organize a round-the-clock watch on the daycares in the city, and see if they can post an officer at each one until you take Joyce Randolph down.”

She rested her forehead on his shoulder, and Max feared she might start to cry.
Please don’t let her cry.
He never knew what to do when a woman burst into tears. Even when it happened to his sister, which was thankfully not very often, he never knew what to say to her.

“What if we’re wrong? What if it isn’t Joyce Randolph and I spend all this time investigating her and leave the door open for the Flame Jumper to strike again. It’ll be a daycare this time.” Her head sprang up, nearly bopping Max in the nose. “A
daycare
!”

Max cupped her cheek. “It
is
Joyce Randolph.” He was certain of it. He could feel it in his gut and his instincts were rarely wrong. “And, so far, all the fires she’s set have been when the businesses were closed. She’s not out to hurt anyone.”

“She engineered two wrecks to happen. Three, if you count the one from four years ago. She could’ve killed whoever was in those cars, and you’re going to tell me she’s not out to hurt anyone?”

Max didn’t have an argument for that. What could he say when he so easily saw her point? “Rest,” he tried again, running his fingers through her short bob of fiery-red hair. “Get your head clear tonight, baby. Then you can work like a dog finding her tomorrow.”

“You can go.” She eased back, put a hand on his shoulder, and attempted to stand from his lap.

Max tightened his hold around her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I need you to go. I can work better when you aren’t distracting me.”

“And you work just fine when I
am
distracting you, too.” He waggled his eyebrows and grinned. “We proved that yesterday.”

Regina groaned. “Max, please. I’m not mad at you anymore, okay.”

“That’s good to know.”

“So, it’s okay for you to leave.”

“No, it isn’t.” He had absolutely no intentions of leaving her alone tonight, and he had very good reasons for his decision that had nothing to do with his throbbing cock. “Gina, that newspaper was left outside your front door. The Flame Jumper, whoever the hell he or she is, knows where you live. Do you really think I’m going to let you stay here alone tonight?”

Regina rolled her eyes. “You just said she’s not out to hurt anyone.”

Max lifted a brow. “And you really want to take that chance?”

“I’ve been a single woman for twenty-nine years, Max. I’ve taken self-defense classes. I have a gun and I know how to use it. I can protect myself.”

Max grinned. “I don’t doubt that you can, but I won’t be able to sleep tonight knowing you’re here alone. My shift at the station starts in less than twelve hours. I could really use a good night’s sleep.”

The corners of her lips twitched. “Oh, please. Are you trying to appeal to my sense of pity now?”

“Is it working?”

That made her laugh. “No.”

“Then that’s not what I’m doing.” She’d quit trying to get out of his lap, stopped pushing at his shoulder, and he wondered if she realized she’d started twirling her fingers in the hairs at his nape.

“Okay, so what
are
you doing?”

Max thought about it.
Trying to get in your pants.
Nope, not the correct answer to give right now even if it was what he wanted.
Trying to protect you.
Hell, no. That was definitely not the correct response.

“I just want to be with you,” he finally said. “I want to stay with you, hold you, and maybe we can both get a good night’s sleep.”

Bingo.
He all but heard the ding of the correct-answer bell ring in his head as he watched her expression soften and felt her start to melt in his lap.

He dropped his voice to a whisper as he eased in to brush the tip of his nose against hers. “Is it so wrong for me to enjoy being with you?” He grazed his lips over hers. “For me to want to stay with you?” He dragged his hand up her back, silently cursing all the clothing that prevented him from feeling the soft warmth of her skin. “For me to want to keep holding you?”

“You’re doing it again.” Her breath fanned his lips when she whispered, and her fingers delved deeper into his hair.

“Doing what?” He cupped the side of her neck and grazed the pad of his thumb over her jaw.

“Getting to me. You’re good at it, you know? I get around you and I have all this willpower stored up that I’m certain is going to keep me strong enough to resist you. Then you lay on all this charm and that willpower disintegrates.”

Max’s heart skipped a beat. Damn, he hadn’t realized he had that effect on her. “Are you saying I’m irresistible?” He felt her smile against his lips as he brushed another light kiss over her mouth.

“And stroke your ego that way? Not a chance.”

Max bit back a smile of his own. “I don’t have an ego, sweetheart.”

“All men have egos.” She wiggled in his lap, grinding her tight ass on his aching cock. “I can feel yours right now, and it’s definitely hard as a rock.”

“I might be insulted by that if you hadn’t just made all my thoughts scramble. Christ, Gina.” He slid his hand from the side of her neck to her nape and kissed her.

It didn’t matter how many times he kissed her, the woman always tasted extraordinary. He lost himself in the kiss, in the way her tongue met his stroke for stroke, and the way she angled her head in his hand, allowing him to take the kiss deeper. He made love to her mouth, wanting to consume her, knowing without a doubt he’d fallen soul-deep in love with her.

The realization should’ve stopped him cold. He’d been with plenty of women in his life, enjoyed spending time with lots of them, and even considered keeping a few of them around. He’d never been in love with any of them, though. He’d never known the feelings of need, of soul-wrenching desire and chest-tightening emotion he felt with Regina.

“Max.” She groaned his name as he broke the kiss to trail his lips over her jaw.

He licked the column of her throat when she threw her head back and then growled like a tormented animal when his tongue collided with the neckline of her turnout coat. “Stand up,” he told her, but didn’t give her the chance to move on her own. He grabbed her waist and lifted her off his lap, standing with her and gazing down into her eyes.

A wicked smile unfolded on her lips. “Problems, Lieutenant?”

“Damn right.” He released her waist and started unfastening the buckles on her turnout coat. “Christ, why are these things harder to get off of you than they are when I take off my own coat?”

She laughed, the sound a clear indication of the pure vixen inside her. “Are you ever in this much of a hurry to get out of your own coat?”

“No. By the time I’m taking it off, I’m usually too worn out to move fast.”

“What you find beneath it isn’t going anywhere, at least not for a while, you know?” He’d shrugged off his turnout coat before getting behind the wheel when the left the crime scene. She flattened her hands on his chest, and he felt the heat from her palms seep through the material of his T-shirt. It absorbed immediately into his bloodstream and traveled straight to his cock. “You can take your time.”

Max slowed down, only because her words inched open an emptiness inside him that had started to form days ago. She intended to move, and he firmly believed she would follow through with her decision. The question wasn’t would she do it, but when? Except, he already knew the answer to that, too. As soon as she caught the Flame Jumper, she’d be gone. Lucky for him, he had a plan.

He pushed all thoughts of her moving aside and realized, by slowing down, he’d managed to unfasten her turnout coat far more quickly than he’d been managing to do when he was rushing. He pushed his hands beneath the sides of the coat as it fell open and shoved it off her shoulders, letting it fall at its will to the floor. It did him little good seeing as how he still had her T-shirt and the bra beneath to get through before he could finally put his hands on her creamy flesh. Then, he had bunker pants, blue jeans, panties, and boots to contend with.

He slid the suspenders connected to her bunker pants off her shoulders, and the pants blessedly fell in a pool around her feet. “I’ve never stripped a woman from a set of turnouts before.”

“Really?” She sounded surprised.

“Really.” He held her elbow, giving her stability as she kicked off her boots and stepped out of the pants. “I’ve got to say, I’m not liking it at all. It’s too damn much to take off of you.”

She expelled another of those vixen laughs. “Why, Lieutenant, I thought you were a man of more patience than this.”

Max fisted his hands in the bottom of her T-shirt, yanked it free of her jeans, and pulled it up and over her head. “Sweetheart, if I had my way, you’d never put on a stitch of clothing again.”

“I bet that would go over real good at the o–o–office.” She struggled with the last word, drawing a sharp breath between clenched teeth when he unhooked the front clasp of her bra with a flick of his fingers, pushed the cups aside, and molded her breasts with his hands.

“Oh, yeah,” he groaned as he squeezed her perfect breasts. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” He slid his hands beneath her breasts, weighing them in his palms, and flicked his thumbs over her pebbled nipples. The contrast of the dark-brown areolas against her pale, freckled flesh was one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen.

She moaned, her breaths growing ragged as he toyed with her nipples, lightly pinching them and then gently rubbing the pad of his thumb over their hardened points to soothe the pain. It didn’t take her long before her hands got busy on him. She unfastened the button of his blue jeans and tugged the zipper down, one hand immediately reaching inside his now open fly to cup his cock through his briefs.

It was Max’s turn to suck a sharp breath through his teeth as torment collided with pleasure to create a wild concoction in his system that had him releasing her breasts in a haste to rid her of the rest of her clothes. He damn near snapped the button off her jeans in his rush to slip the blasted thing through the tiny slit in the denim.

She laughed. “There you go rushing again.” She apparently wasn’t in any hurry. The hand she’d slipped inside his jeans had kicked into a slow grind on his shaft, gliding up and down, and working his cock to a frenzy despite the barrier of his briefs.

“Can I help it if I go crazy not being able to touch you?” He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, caught the string of her panties on her hips during his descent, and shucked both down her legs. “I need to feel you, Regina, all of you.”

* * * *

The sheer desperation in Max’s husky voice ignited a firestorm in Regina that raced through her system. He stripped her of her clothing like a man starved for physical contact. It had been less than twenty-four hours since they’d had sex, yet he was acting as if it had been a lifetime.

“Turn around.” His hands gripped her hips, and he spun her in his arms, yanking her back against the hard wall of his body.

Her head fell back on his chest as his hands started an exploration of her flesh that had her needs for him blazing out of control. Her senses reeled as his hands glided over her belly, dragged up her abdomen, and closed over her breasts once more. She closed her eyes as he caressed her breasts, flicked his thumbs over her nipples, and then caught them between his thumbs and forefingers in a pressured squeeze.

“Max!” Pain collided with pleasure on a fiery path to her pussy. Her clit burned, aching to be touched, and she shifted her stance, squeezing her thighs together in search of some sort of pressure for the throbbing bud.

He released her nipples, his hands lowering torturously slowly once more down her front. “Open your legs for me, Gina.”

His voice, so dark and gruff, sent curls of heat whipping through her womb before they struck her clit. She couldn’t deny him anything he asked. Her knees started to shake, but she forced her legs to part for him, a strangled cry escaping her lips as he delved a finger between her sodden folds and raked it over her clit.

He buried his face in the side of her neck as he drew pressured circles around her throbbing bud. “Damn, you feel so good. You’re so hot and wet for me. I could keep you like this for hours, in my arms, my finger pleasuring your pussy. Would you like that, baby?”

“Yes.” The word left her without thought. “No.” She cried out as his finger pushed further down, the pad pressing over her flaming entrance. Her pussy lips contracted, sucking at his finger in an attempt to pull it inside her.

“No?” His voice rang with question as he delved the tip of his finger into her vagina, stopping at the first knuckle.

“I’d lose my mind if you tortured me like this for that long.” She was half out of her mind already. Needs tightened inside her, desires morphing to sheer demands as his finger pushed another precious inch inside her pussy.