Table of Contents

Legal Page

Title Page

Book Description

Dedication

Trademarks Acknowledgement

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

New Excerpt

About the Author

Publisher Page

A Totally Bound Publication

The Shy Dominant

ISBN # 978-1-78184-976-7

©Copyright Jan Irving 2014

Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright February 2014

Edited by Stacey Birkel

Totally Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2014 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

Warning:

This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Burning and a Sexometer of 2.

This story contains 98 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 9 pages.

Men of Station 57

THE SHY DOMINANT

Jan Irving

Book two in the Men of Station 57 series

Shy Battalion Chief Fred James sets out to use everything he ever learned about controlling fire to pleasure Dharma Munroe and tame her to his hand alone.

Fred James is the dedicated battalion chief of Station 57 and a caring single father whose wife abandoned him and his children. Thinking he’s too old for free-spirited Dharma Munroe, Fred hides in the shadows until the night he finds her working at a topless bar.

Turns out navigating a relationship with an independent woman isn’t easy. He’s clueless trying to figure out what she wants and how to give it to her—but he’s determined to figure it out. Shy or not, he sets out to use everything he ever learned about controlling fire to pleasure his woman and tame her to his hand alone.

Dedication

To following your own dharma, wherever it takes you.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Laura Ashley: Laura Ashley plc

Etsy: Etsy, Inc.

A gentleman is merely a patient wolf.

—Lana Turner

Prologue

Dharma Munroe bent close to Fred James, smiling the same smile she greeted him with every morning at Coffee Dreams, the San Diego coffee shop where she worked for her best friend Sian as a barista. But this wasn’t the coffee house and she sure as fuck wasn’t wearing the green T-shirt with the shop logo she sported there.

Instead she was dressed in a hot pink thong.

And nothing else.

Fred couldn’t keep from staring at Dharma’s bare breasts. They were generous and lush, the nipples large and dark. Not the nipples of a twiggy little girl but an earth mother.

He swallowed then jerked his gaze up to meet her slanted brown eyes, colour heating his cheeks. He shoved a hand through his hair, the mirror opposite at the bar catching the silver streaks in the dark blond.

As if he needed a reminder that he was in his mid-forties and this girl—and he could use the word very deliberately since Dharma was in her early twenties—was half his age.

And he lusted for her.

“What can I get you, Fred?” she asked in her usual chipper tone.

“Jesus, Dharma,” he growled.

“Sorry?” She blinked, as if she couldn’t figure out what his problem was.

Just then Fred caught a man at the bar eyeing Dharma’s shapely body, the olive toned skin she’d inherited from her Italian mother and the long, long killer legs. Rage burned through him like brush fire.

He got up from his chair and took Dharma’s arm firmly but with his usual gentle care with women.

“Fred!” She dragged her feet in her high scarlet heels, but he led her inexorably to the exit at the back. He hit the door and they were suddenly facing a red sun sinking like an island beyond the deserted beach.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, young lady?” Fred demanded as soon as the door slammed shut behind them.

Dharma blinked then pushed some of her long brown hair out of her eyes. “Working.”

“Working,” Fred repeated flatly. “Is that what you call it, walking around in your underwear?”

Dharma looked down at her body and shrugged. “Well, one piece anyway.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

Her eyes heated. “Yeah, I saw that.”

He blushed again, hoping she hadn’t guessed his first reaction at seeing her beautiful naked breasts. He’d wanted to reach out and cup them, since she seemed to be offering them to any man who sat down in the seedy bar.

“Fred, will you relax?” she said, punching his shoulder in a friendly manner. He couldn’t help but notice how the movement made her breasts jiggle. It was going to be interesting to see just how far his control would hold while he talked to the woman who’d intrigued him for months while she stood there half naked.

“Does Sian know you work here?” he demanded. He wanted to take off his T-shirt and cover her up. She looked so untouched and lovely, like a long-legged Venus.

“What?” She laughed. “Why would she care?”

His jaw tightened on the words he wanted to shout at Dharma. But he wasn’t as reckless as he’d once been, chasing fire. He’d been leading his people for a long time as a battalion chief. He’d learned to control his temper. “She would care because she’s your friend,” he said. “Surely she wouldn’t approve of you working in this place?”

Now her brown eyes snapped at him. “It’s not her business to ‘approve’ of what I do. Or yours.”

“Of course it’s not.”

She looked surprised at his easily capitulation.

“But that doesn’t mean anyone who cares about you and respects you, wouldn’t worry about you displaying yourself for men.”

“I serve drinks, same as I do at the coffee shop,” she said flatly. “But the tips here go a long way on my student loan. If men—or women—want to look at what the goddess gave me then let them look. It’s. No. Big. Deal.”

He looked away, studying some gulls hovering over the water. “It’s a big deal to me.” The words were out before he could hold them back. Forbidden words. Words he’d promised he’d never say to her.

He rubbed his forehead, inhaling deeply and wishing for some kind of anchor to help him draw in his feelings. Feelings like how part of him was getting off on Dharma displaying herself—as long as other men clearly knew she was his.

I’m losing my mind. Why do I always want to put my stamp on this girl, like a tattoo? As if she’d want me, a shy, awkward man who is way too old for her.

She nodded towards his wedding ring, the gold catching the falling rays of sun. “I don’t fool around with married men.”

“Of course not!” he growled. “I know you’re not that kind of person.”

“And neither are you, Fred.”

“I’m not married, not really.” He didn’t want to explain to her that he wore the ring mainly to keep from being hit on. A lot of divorced women in his daughter’s dance club saw him as a good candidate for husband number two or three. “But purely as your friend—”

She raised an eyebrow and he nearly laughed. No bullshit with Dharma. “You are not feeling friendly towards me, Fred. You want me.”

He sucked in a breath. “Yes. Yes, damn it. But what if someone in there wouldn’t listen if you said no? What if he got a little too friendly?”

“We have three kick-ass bouncers.”

He wanted to shake her, but if he put his hands on her, he wasn’t sure he would be able to let her go. He’d been avoiding the coffee house where she worked lately, knowing that his feelings for her had slipped into something inappropriate. “What if someone followed you home?”

She opened her mouth. Shut it.

He nodded grimly. “It could happen, Dharma.”

“I have pepper spray and I’ve taken self-defence classes.”

“What kind of self-defence?”

“Well, um, tai chi.”

“Tai chi.”

“Hey, it originally was a form of self-defence. If you speed it up—”

“Christ. Any man who goes in that bar is going to assume there is more on the menu than you serving drinks with your pretty tits on display. You need a protector.”

“A protector? That’s so retro, Fred.” She poked him. “Look, I know you don’t get it, but this”—she waved a hand over herself—“is just a body. I enjoy it, I like how it makes me feel, but I’m not hung up over it. Why shouldn’t I use it to help me pay off my mountain of loans?”

“Honey, I can find you work.” Another forbidden fantasy flashed through his mind, of Dharma waiting for him at home, wearing only the thong. The first thing he’d do after he made a joke of inspecting her house cleaning—because he knew from visiting her apartment she was not tidy—would be to spread her over his big kitchen island and have her.

He might or might not allow her to come. He broke out in a sweat, imagining her begging him to allow her release.

And, oh, God, why was he thinking these things? But ever since he’d met this free-spirited girl, he’d wanted to possess her. Completely.

“I have a job, thanks. And don’t call me honey.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not your daughter.”

Damn. Stacy was a teenager now. As if he needed another reminder of how he was too old for Dharma.

“I’d die before I let Stace work in a place like this.”

Dharma went white then red and he knew he’d gone too far.

He’d hurt her.

“Because I love her.” His voice cracked. “Dharma, you’re my friend. You have no idea how much I look forward to going into Coffee Dreams and hearing about your latest craziness, like the time you decided you’d green the roof of your apartment.”

A reluctant smile touched her lips. “Hey, there were already weeds up there. I figured some flowers and herbs wouldn’t hurt.”

His lips twitched because he’d come over to her place with a few of the guys from the station house and helped repair the hole that she’d inadvertently made in her ceiling. “It was an earth-friendly idea, just not very practical.”

She laughed and for a moment, despite her very distracting appearance, that familiar warmth zinged between them.

Friends.

He shoved a hand through his hair, wishing he was as smooth as Taz, the lady killer in the fire hall. It was whispered Taz knew all about how to make a woman do what a man wanted. “Dharma, you have no idea what a life saver you’ve been for me. Being able to talk to you…” He shook his head.

“You never talk about your wife. Your girls, but never…” She stopped, chewing her lip. “I’m sorry. Way out of line.”

“My wife is in Arizona,” he told her. “I think. She left me three years ago.”

“She left you three years ago?” Dharma stared at him in shock. “She’s an idiot.”

He flushed. “Thank you.”

“I mean… Oh, Goddess, I’m sorry!” Now her youth showed itself in her awkwardness. She was embarrassed for him, angry at his wife.

“Don’t. I like your honesty.”

“Look, can I…?” She huffed. “I’m going to take my break.”

If he had anything to say about it, it would be permanent. “Fine.” He watched as she opened the door and shouted something to one of the bouncers. The big man nodded, giving Fred a ferocious scowl so he’d know to behave himself.

“Give it over,” Dharma said as soon as the door closed.

“Excuse me?”

“Your T-shirt. I’m going to put it on so we can have a serious talk.”

He had it skinned off in a second but stopped at the way she was staring at him. She was looking at him the way he’d looked at her bare breasts, at the tattoos that decorated both of his hard pecs and his shoulders and upper arms.

“Are those…Japanese?” Her voice was hushed, as if seeing him without his T-shirt was an intimate act.

In a way it was. Fred was abashed about showing his body to anyone. He usually kept it covered. “Yeah. I was in the Navy. Got them on shore leave a long time ago.”

“A koi in a lotus pond.” She reached out and grazed a hand down his chest and he couldn’t keep from shivering. He wanted her to touch him. Ached for it.

Instead, he took her hand, steering it safely away. For her, touching him was probably no big deal, but it made him want to push her to her knees. He had no idea what he’d do then, except he wanted to look at her that way, to filter her silky hair through his hands as she knelt for him.

Being bold Dharma, she made no secret of studying him. He cleared his throat as he watched her put on the clothing still warm from his body. It gave him an aching feeling of possessiveness that she was wearing his T-shirt.

“White cotton. So you,” she said.

“Boring, you mean.”

“There’s nothing boring about you.” She laughed again when he gave her a disbelieving look. “You’re as hot as Brad Pitt. Too bad you didn’t pose in the nude.”

“What?” He couldn’t follow her logic, if there was any.

“In the infamous calendar you guys did for charity,” she said. “You’re my favourite model but you left your swimming trunks and T-shirt on. Damn, that was a let-down.”

“Ah…yes.” He found himself combing fingers restlessly through his hair again. She made him so goddamned nervous.

She grinned, as if she liked his awkwardness.

“All right, we can talk now.” She folded her arms which only served to plump up her breasts under the thin covering.

“Sure.”

She laughed. “Hey, I can’t help having the body of a goddess.”

“You’re a vixen.”

“A vixen?” She looked intrigued. “I think I like that. Kind of old-fashioned, but that’s okay. You’re an old-fashioned guy. Better than calling me a slut.”

“You’re not a slut!” His hand shot out, gripping her wrist.

Her eyes widened. “No, but some men think—”

“I don’t give a goddamn. You’re unusual, free spirited…but a lady.”

Her eyes grew misty. “Oh, Fred… I wish I didn’t like you so much. I can’t stop thinking about you. You know that, don’t you?”

He wished he didn’t like her as much as he did either. How many nights had he dreamed of her, tangled in sweaty sheets with no hope of ever touching her?

“Dharma, what are you really doing here? Is the money worth it?” He held her gaze. When she didn’t look away, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and pushing an errant strand of her glossy brown hair out of her eyes.

“Tell me why you’re here and maybe I’ll think about it.”

“Taz and some of the guys are meeting up here.” He raised a hand before she could bring up the obvious double standard. “It wasn’t my idea to come here. I didn’t even know it was a strip club.” He blushed and she smiled.

“Okay,” she said. “Yeah, I believe that. Everyone knows Taz is a pig, but this place is definitely not your style.” She leaned closer, her fresh citrus scent suiting the sea air and not the stale beer smell inside the bar. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“I have a secret?” he repeated. He was barely able to keep his mind on her words. He was just as bad as the other men who’d been hot for her inside the bar.

A smile curved her generous lips. “Yep. You’re shy.”

“I’m not—” Oh, Jesus, if she only knew.

“Oh yeah, you are. It’s so sexy.” She sighed. “I wish…”

But Fred had stopped wishing years ago. He had two girls to raise and a job that took all the rest of his time. There was no room for anything more and he was too old for a second chance. Especially with this fiery, younger woman.

“You’ll quit working here?”

She cocked her head. “I have two weeks off coming so I’ll think about it. You mentioned a job?”

He laughed at her bold go-get-‘em attitude. Damn, she could always make him smile. “I was thinking of a part time receptionist job in the municipal hall. Since they’re just next door to the fire hall, they lend us administrative support occasionally, so I know they’re looking for someone.”

“I can type, but I’ve never done that kind of work,” she said frankly.

“It’s not hard to learn and Mrs Anderson could help you pick up what you don’t know. She wants more time to travel and spend with her grandchildren, so she is cutting back her hours. I…we really need someone to pick up the slack.”

“How much does it pay?”

“I have no idea. I can find out.” He waited, listening to his own heart beating in painful suspense as she paced, her high heels clicking on the asphalt. He found himself staring at the bare globes of her butt before he yanked away his gaze. Goddamn, he’d kidnap her if he had to, but she was not working here without him to look after her!

“It’s less than what I make here,” she mused. “But I wouldn’t have to be at the office until two-thirty a.m.”

“No.”

“The boss here doesn’t miss an opportunity to pinch my ass. Would I have to worry about that with you?”

His skin heated in another damnable blush. “No.”

“Too bad.” She looked a little wistful. “I wouldn’t mind a spanking from the boss.”

“A…what?”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “I’ll let you think about it.”

Holy shit, she was a little kinky. And he was so not going to be able to sleep tonight picturing her in her thong in his beige office, her rear end pinkened by his hand.

“Not fair, Dharma.”

“I know, but you’re making me consider quitting my job, so I figure you deserve it.”

“I couldn’t make you do anything, honey. You’d take my head off.”

Her eyes glinted. “Oh, I can think of a few things you could make me do. And we’d both enjoy it.”

He was breathing hard. Her gaze slid down his chest to the front of his pants.

“Dharma…”

She closed her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry, I’m being bitchy. It’s just… Most people judge me. I hated you seeing me working here because I thought—”

“I don’t judge you. I just want to protect you.”

“Again, that is so retro.”

“I know.”

“I guess you wouldn’t jump into burning buildings if you didn’t need to rescue people.” She lifted the hem of her borrowed T-shirt.

“What are you doing?” Sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Giving it back to you. I’m going back inside to tell Armando I’m starting my vacation tonight.” He opened his mouth to argue with her, but she raised an eyebrow. “I need to quit for me, so I’ll take the time off, try out this secretarial gig and see how it goes. If I like it, then I’ll quit working here, but it’s not smart in this economy to do that without knowing if I’ve got a sure thing.”

It was pragmatic good sense. Too bad he hated the hell out of it. “When will you quit working here?” he pushed.

“I’ll do one more night as a test case after my vacation. If it doesn’t feel right…” She shrugged.

He’d find a way to make it totally not feel right. “So can I drive you home?”

She frowned. “I’m almost done for the night, but I don’t need you to do that.”

“I didn’t see your car.”

“Took the bus. Oh, all right, drive me home.”

“Please leave my shirt on.” He smiled at her, feeling more at ease with his almost-victory. “I’m willing to beg.”

She gave him a direct look. Then she brushed her mouth very gently against his. It was a kiss that could have been just between friends. “I’d like you to make me beg.” Her meaning was clear. “You better keep that wedding ring on, because if it ever comes off, I’m coming after you.”

He balled his fists to keep from tangling his hands in her hair. He was relieved she was at least half-dressed. The truth was, he didn’t want Taz or any of his men to see her half naked and assume she was free.

Even though he had no right, even though he was too old for her, he wanted Dharma to be his woman.

Chapter One

Dharma muttered under her breath.

“What was that, young lady, are you using bad language again? Your mother and I despair…”

The censoring voice made her jump so she hit her head on the top of the file cabinet. She swore, this time with both venom and volume and looked over her shoulder at her nemesis in her new job—the legendary fire hall heartbreaker, Taz, his nickname short for Tasmanian devil.

“Screw you.”

His eyes heated and he gave her ass a long, lingering look, obviously mentally stripping away the demure cotton of her skirt. “Now?”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I’m always serious about fucking,” he said with apparent sincerity.

And with Taz, that’s all it would be. He would give a woman—or the occasional man—his cock, but he wasn’t the type to sugar coat a fuck.

“How is it you’re able to sleep around so much? Are women that desperate?”

He grinned. “I make ‘em that way.”

“I bet.” She didn’t underestimate the power of a man who stood six feet five, with bottle glass green eyes and black tangled hair that looked like it had been tousled from a demanding female hand. Right now Taz had his arms folded as he watched her, biceps bulging from all the hours he spent either on the beach with his surf board or working drills at the fire hall.

“I told you I’m not interested.” Her cool glance of dismissal only seemed to amuse him.

“I heard you, tigress.”

“Don’t call me that.”

His eyes were half slitted as he continued to consider her. “Better to play with me than a married man, sweetheart.”

She ignored his shot about Fred. She didn’t want to reveal that he wasn’t exactly married because she figured it was Fred’s secret to share. And anyway, she was not pursuing her sometime boss, much as she damn well wanted to. The most she’d done was rename her vibrator Fred. “What a joke, you using ‘sweetheart’.”

He grinned again and Dharma couldn’t help but laugh at him. That’s how she’d always handled Taz, laughing at him when he hit on her. She thought he might actually enjoy their little battles though she bet he’d definitely take her up if she ever gave him a clear ‘go’ signal.

He was a born predator.

And a damn sexy bastard.

She knew he’d be unbelievable in bed. Too bad she was so crazy about a bashful older man who couldn’t see his own appeal.

“Do you have any work to do, other than stalking me?”

“I’m worried about Fred.”

“Why, is something wrong with the girls?” Fred’s office was utilitarian except for all the vivid photographs and artwork from his daughters. They lit up the room.

“I was hopin’ you could tell me.”

Dharma’s gut tightened. Fred had been quiet lately. She’d caught him staring into space a couple of times at his desk, which was not like him. He was driven by his job and she knew the only reason he didn’t work insane hours was his daughters depended on him. “I don’t know what it could be.” Her lips tightened. “But I’ll find out.”

“Good girl.”

“You so set me up to do your bidding,” she drawled.

“Too bad doing my bidding doesn’t translate to sex.” He shrugged, but she couldn’t be annoyed with him over his prompting her to dig into Fred’s life. Taz might be a heartless slut, but when it came to his friends, he was protective.

“I’ll let you know if it’s something he’d want you to know.” She sighed, standing up to rub the curve of her aching back.

“Not doing too much, are you?”

She flushed, knowing he was referring to her periodic arrhythmia. A few months ago when she hadn’t been sleeping well, she’d eaten half of a caffeine-laden chocolate brownie and suffered an attack. She’d managed to freak out her friends and earned a trip to the ER, where they’d slowed her heart down with a drip that had taken hours.

“No, it’s unlikely to come from low impact activity like this,” she said. “And anyway I take my mini strength aspirin so I’m golden.”

“Make sure you keep taking care of it.”

“Taking care of what?” Fred growled as he appeared in the hallway. “Are you flirting with our borrowed admin again?”

Taz raised his hands. “She’s all yours,” he purred.

“Just what does that mean?” Fred blushed, but Taz was already striding away.

Dharma took a moment to study Fred. His hair was cut close to his skull, but somehow Dharma had the impression he’d been shoving his hands through it. He looked tired and pale under the tan he had from all the time he spent out of doors. He trained constantly with his men and women, despite all the paperwork and hassle of his job.

She leaned against her desk, folding her arms, levelling her best gunslinger look at him. “What’s up?”

His brows rose. “You do realise you work for me, right?”

“I can care about you as well as work for you. Something’s not right, Fred. Taz picked up on it as well, so you have us both spooked.”

Fred held her gaze, then gave a curt nod. “Come into my office.”

Without speaking, Dharma followed him, but something in his manner had her heart thumping and heavy rocks weighing down her gut.

He closed the door softly behind them, gave her a look she couldn’t read then stepped behind his desk to stand and look out the window which faced the driveway cooking under the hot sun, heat waves rising like smoke off a grill.

“You’re scaring me.” Dharma’s fingers dug into her palms.

“I never told you that shortly after meeting you, I asked my wife for a divorce,” Fred admitted flatly. “I guess you inspired me to try to change my life for the better, kind of how I really want you not to go back to work at that dive.” He gave her a pointed look so she’d know he hadn’t forgotten the issue with her working at the bar. “Months ago, when I hired a private investigator and tracked her down, she was working in a cafe in Tucson.”

It hurt to hear about his wife. She knew they’d been separated for years, but the woman had a claim on Fred.

“So?”

“So now she’s met someone and plans to remarry.”

“You told me she left you years ago.” He hadn’t said he didn’t still love his wife, Dharma remembered with a sharp splinter to the heart.

He rubbed the back of his neck, his T-shirt damp from a recent run, his body hard and muscled and everything she’d ever wanted. She wanted to tug up that shirt and lick his tattoos. “She wants time with my girls, Dharma. Half the year at least.”

Dharma blinked. “Excuse me?”

He spun to look at her, his eyes burning like a gasoline fire. “Stacy and Mattie. My wife wants them back part time.”

“But…they’ve been with you for years. They live with you.” Dharma knew because all the years she’d served him coffee he’d told her about Stacy’s softball game or how Mattie was dead set against getting braces for her slight overbite.

He covered his eyes. “Oh, hell.”

“Fred.” She moved around the desk and reached out to touch his tense back then just let her hand fall, muttering, “Screw it.” She put her arms around him from behind, holding him. “Your wife just can’t take your children. If she wanted them so much, why hasn’t she been in the picture?” In all Fred’s proud stories of his kids, she’d never heard anything about his wife. It was like there was a black hole in his family that he never spoke about.

He gave a snort that sounded wet with tears. He still had his eyes covered in the manner of a man who didn’t like anyone to see him give way to emotion.

Oh, Fred. Oh, God, baby… She shoved those words deep inside. He didn’t need her sympathy right now. He needed a friend he could talk this out with.

“The man she wants to marry is big on family and he has the money to support one. He can’t understand why Marilyn doesn’t have the children,” Fred said. “She’s never shown much interest in them, but I think she wants to put on a show for him. It kills me that they might fall for her act, might get hurt.”

Anger burned. “Fred, you’ve raised them. Your wife just split and left them, so surely that counts for something?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded impossibly weary. “Judges still favour a mother taking the children.”

“But you have all kinds of contacts. I know you won’t let her do this. Come on, you’re just worried because you see it as your job to keep them safe.”

Fred’s muscles tightened. “I’m afraid,” he whispered. “Dharma, I’m afraid.”

“Fred.” Only his name. She couldn’t think what else to say. She wished she had the power to make everything all right.

“You’re such a beautiful father to those girls. Just last weekend you went through a roll of bills to win Stace a stuffed tiger at the fairground shooting gallery.”

He looked surprised. “You knew that?”

“You told me, remember? Over coffee on Monday morning. You were short a quarter so you told me why.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah, I was short cash.”

“And you helped Mattie build a model of the Parthenon for her history class. It’s pretty kick ass.”

“It is.”

“These are your children, your girls.”

“I’m afraid that no matter what I do, they’ll be hurt.”

Her gut clenched. “That’s not right.”

“Oh, Dharma…” His tone reminded her that he saw her as too young, too idealistic. Her jaw hardened.

“It’s not right. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to talk to the girls.”

She nodded, wishing he didn’t have to do that but knowing he could handle it. He might not see it, but she knew he’d die to keep them safe, to keep them from being hurt. And despite how bashful with her he sometimes seemed, she knew from watching him in the fire hall that no one pushed him around. “Can I…help somehow?”

“No.”

No, of course not. It was a family thing. She was his friend, she ached to be his lover, but she hadn’t really been introduced to his children.

She was on the outside.

“Fred, you’ll keep your family safe. You’re my hero, remember?”

“Am I really?” He looked like he ached to be her hero.

It hurt her heart the way he looked at her.

“I haven’t been courageous. I shut down when she left. Until I met you.”

“I don’t blame you. You had to take care of your family.”

He cleared his throat. “Trust you to see that.”

She gripped his face, rubbing the sides of his cheek and hearing the slight rasp of his whiskers against her palm. He closed his eyes under her touch.

“Fred.” Longing. Need. Anger. Comfort. She kissed him, arms tight around his neck, her lush body plastered to his hard frame.

“Oh, Jesus, you don’t know what you do to me. Dharma! You don’t know…” He was kissing her back. His big hands cupped her bottom, lifting her and suddenly she was on the edge of his desk. She could feel him, and oh, he was big. She felt an unaccustomed flash of nervousness.

His hand was on her calf, sliding up to where her body needed him.

“Dharma…” He was trembling as he laid his forehead against hers.

“Don’t,” she choked. “Don’t pull away and say I’m too young for you.”

But he stepped back from her, reaching out and smoothing her hair out of her face.

“I respect you too much to—”

“I don’t want just your respect,” she growled. Then she hopped off the desk, her body hurting. “Damn it, I’m sorry! You have too much on your plate right now. That got out of hand.” She blew out a shaky breath.

He nodded, his face hard, grim, but his eyes still burning. He made no effort to conceal how his body still needed her. She had to drag her gaze away from the intimidating shape of him outlined by his pants.

“Thanks for…listening to me.” He avoided her gaze.

Emotion gripped her throat. “Anytime.”

A hard knock on the door broke the moment.

“Yeah?” Fred called, all male authority again.

Luke Cade stuck his head in. “Fred, we’ve got a situation at that shell of a gas station that burned down last week. Two kids went inside on a dare and the structure has collapsed.”

“Shit!” Fred reached for his hard shelled helmet and his fireman’s heavy coat then brushed past her, following Luke at a run.

Dharma wrapped her arms around herself, knowing Fred would somehow find those kids and make them safe.

Her real life shy hero.

Chapter Two

Fred lay in moonlight spilling like silver over his king bed, staring up at the stars traversing across the skylight above.

The girls were asleep at last.

He’d burned dinner and hadn’t bothered to eat any himself, finally ordering pizza. Tonight he’d told his children about their mother’s upcoming wedding plans.

Stace had taken the news too quietly. Fred thought that, like him, his oldest daughter had been waiting to see if Marilyn would just come home one day and life would go back to the way it used to be. Of course, that hadn’t happened. He’d known in his gut his marriage was over years before she’d left. She’d emailed him a flippant note, filling him in on her new life.

Back then, he hadn’t shared the revelation with the girls.

Protecting them. He’d been protecting them. He couldn’t bear it if they thought that Marilyn’s new life was more important to her than her children.

She’d been living with a travel agent. Since then, Marilyn had never come home, never seemed much interested in hearing about Stacy or Mattie.

The worst had been the birthdays.

Fred had been sure she’d send a card for Stacy’s birthday, even just email her. Stacy had nagged him to check every day. Finally, he’d taken the coward’s way out—he’d picked up a birthday gift for Stacy and told her it was from her mother.

Fred had got quietly drunk that night once the girls were in bed.

Of course he’d called Marilyn from work, but she was disinterested. For Marilyn, their children had been an accident. She’d got pregnant with Stacy and they’d decided to get married. He’d known it wasn’t the life she’d wanted.

Marilyn wanted to be an artist and somehow that didn’t mean marriage and family. She’d teased him often enough about how his love of his career and duty was boring and predictable…but she’d loved sex with him, loved running her hands over his muscled body, sketching him. The longer they were married, the harder it had been for him to feel anything but empty, anything more than the stud who held her down, gave her the rough, demanding sex she loved. Then one night he’d come home and she’d been gone.

His wife was gone and Stacy had ballet lessons. Mattie had math homework. The house had been dark.

He’d told the girls not to worry, hustled Stacy to class, sat with Mattie through her assignment and ordered pizza. Thank fuck for pizza. It had become the family standby until his cooking had marginally improved.

He closed his eyes, rubbing his chest where he could almost feel the bruise left in his heart. Months had passed, and he’d learned to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving and where to hide the Easter baskets. He’d used the basic sewing skills he’d garnered in college to repair Stacy’s tutu.

He’d hired Mrs Collinson, their nearest neighbour, to stay with them when he had to work long shifts. He’d made ‘fake it till you make it’ his parental motto.

All that time he would have killed to have someone to talk to, really talk to so he could feel like a man again.

Then one day he’d walked into Sian’s coffee shop and there she’d been, Dharma, with her sparkling interest in people and husky, knowing laughter. She’d listened to him and she’d been delightfully easy on the eyes.

As well as another free spirit like his wife. Apparently he was doomed to be attracted to the same kind of woman.

He’d told himself it was all right to enjoy flirting with her. It wasn’t anything serious.

Until he’d woken up one night with the sheets damp with sweat. He’d dreamt he’d held her down, her long hair wrapped in one fist, wanting to give her the kind of raw, passionate sex he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He wanted her and slowly it changed everything.

He tried to stay away, but he couldn’t do it. Seeing her was sometimes the only thing that kept him alive as a man, pathetic as that was. He needed those moments with her, sandwiched between parent-teacher nights or walking through a canyon left barren by wild fires.

He needed her, but not as a friend.

He groaned, shifting onto his stomach. He needed her now.

His cell phone mocked him from the bedside table. He could lie awake for another shitty night or he could call her. Just hear her voice.

She’d told him if he ever needed to talk he could call her, day or night.

Damn it, she’d hadn’t really meant it, he told himself. No one really expected you to take them up on such an offer.

But Dharma…she was different. He’d never met anyone like her.

The cell phone sat there, waiting…

It was in his fist. He hit her number.

It rang twice. “Fuck.” He moved his finger to end the call.

“Hello?” Her voice, deep with dreams.

“Uh, Dharma.”

“Fred? Fred, is that you?”

He didn’t know any other loser who would call her at four-thirty a.m. “Yeah.”

“Are you okay? Are the girls okay?” Anxiety sharpened her voice, took away the sexy sleepiness.

“They’re fine.” His throat closed. He felt awkward. He hadn’t dated a woman in years. And Dharma was so much younger, so much hipper than he was. Bad idea—calling her had been a bad. Idea.

“I’m so glad you called,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

“You were?”

“Umm.” He heard a rustling sound and couldn’t help but picture her on the sheets of her bed. Did she sleep naked? Sweat broke out on his chest as he imagined her lush breasts. He wanted them in his hands. He wanted to cup them, to kiss the large nipples.

“Of course. You talked to the girls?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes.

“That had to be rough.”

He grunted.

“Hang on a sec…” He heard more rustling.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting on a robe.”

He wanted to ask if she was wearing anything. Damn, that would be original. “I’m sorry I called you. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

She sighed. “Fred, it’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well anyway.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t sleep well alone.”

His throat dried. Dharma laughed. “Now I’ve shocked you.”

“No. You’re a beautiful young woman.”

“I like men.”

Jealousy flared. He hated the thought of her being free. He wanted a claim on her so she only submitted to him, curled around him, shared her bed with him.

“Now you’ve gone quiet again.”

“I’m glad you’re alone!” he burst out. Then he reddened and was grateful she couldn’t see the colour staining his cheeks. Damn, he was barely experienced compared to her and it burned his ass.

“Fred. It’s all right.”

“I don’t need to be soothed by you.”

“Oh, I could put a smile on your face.”

He huffed out a breath, but he had hardened against the mattress as soon as she’d answered the phone. So yeah, she could definitely put a smile on his face.

“How did it go?”

“How do you think it went? Mattie says she doesn’t care. It may be true since she claims to barely remember her mother… Stacy, I don’t know. She’s been off lately.”

“Off?” Now he heard what he thought were kitchen sounds. He remembered her little apartment, colourful as a gypsy’s cart, a tangle of dyed silks and a mess of wool projects and paintings. So like his wife. He wondered if that meant she was happier going from man to man.

“Sometimes she looks like she’s holding something back, but when I ask her about it, she clams up. I get the impression I’m the last person she wants to talk to.”

“Hmmm.” He bet she was making coffee. He heard milk steaming and wished he was with her in her little kitchen. He wished he’d spent the night with her and now she was making him a latte. He’d love to be in her bed, be spoilt by her. “It could be something Stacy would only be comfortable confiding in a woman.”

“Oh shit.”

Dharma laughed at his ‘I’m sunk’ tone. “Don’t worry, I’m an expert at talking to people, remember? Why don’t you introduce her to me, maybe near the end of shift tomorrow? If it’s not a very deep issue, she may talk to me about it, or I might get a sense on where to point you.”

“You’re at the coffee house, right?” He knew her schedule perfectly. He was always disappointed if he went into Coffee Dreams and she wasn’t working.

“Yep.”

“I’ll see you then. Five?” His heart was pounding. He was going to see her again. Fuck, he was a loser.

“Five sounds good.” He heard a smile in her voice. Could she actually be looking forward to this as much as he was?

* * * *

“I go to this place all the time,” Fred told Mattie and Stacy as he ushered them into Coffee Dreams after work. Stacy’s expression was closed off while Mattie walked with him to the counter to order something to go. Dharma was there, wearing some kind of necklace that was made up of yarn and rusty washers. It rang softly as she moved. When she pulled out fresh cups for them, Fred saw the back of her hands had an intricate pattern on them.

“What’s that?” Stacy asked.

“It’s a temporary henna tattoo.” Dharma held her hands up so they could get a closer look. “My friend runs a studio where she paints them. This is your basic paisley design.”

All Fred could think was he wanted those exotically painted hands on him. He sucked in a deep breath. “Stacy, Mattie—this is Dharma. She’s a friend.” Fred wished he wasn’t flushing as he introduced Dharma. Stacy gave him a sharp look.

“Hi!” Mattie grinned, exuberant as always. Stacy’s greeting was far more subdued, but it didn’t seem to trouble Dharma. She shook each girl’s hand politely then gave Fred a grin. “Coconut latte?”

“Damn, am I that predictable?”

“More like reliable.”

“Sounds boring.” Again doubt ate at him. Did she see him the way his wife had? The things he wanted to do to Dharma were not at all boring and predictable. He was a big man, so he’d learned to draw out his lovemaking with lots of foreplay. He wanted to taste Dharma, wanted to lick her until she was ready for him.

“I thought Dharma would come over this weekend, join us for dinner.” The words just left his mouth. Mattie smiled at him, but Stacy didn’t look thrilled.

“That sounds great!” Dharma said. “I’ll make dinner.”

“You will?” No one had cooked for him in ages, unless he went to a restaurant.

“Yeah, how about Indian food?”

“I want it,” Mattie said.

“Sounds weird,” was Stacy’s answer.

“Should I pick you up?” He didn’t know the etiquette. He had to remind himself this wasn’t a real date. Dharma was only doing this as a favour to help him with Stacy.

Dharma wrinkled her nose at him, which made her look very young with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I’ll drive myself, thanks.”

“Okay.” He put his hands in his pockets as the girls gathered the tray of drinks and biscotti and headed for the door. He didn’t want to leave her. “I’ll, uh, see you then.”

She looked right at him, her face a little sweaty, radiant with the slanting sun coming through the windows. “See you then.”

Chapter Three

Dharma was dressed up in what she called her ‘French cupcake’ outfit—a hot pink silk sweater that had fallen off one shoulder and a black leather skirt with high black leather boots—chocolate cake to go with her raspberry frosting. She slammed the rusty Toyota door closed with one hip, balancing a bag which was warm and damp and sending scent into the air like spicy incense.

“Damn, I’m good.” She was also nervous. It was ridiculous, but she was nervous as she was confronted with Fred’s large suburban home, so different from her cheap and cheerful apartment.

The lawn was freshly cut, green from the sprinkler. Palms ruffled in the breeze off the ocean. He probably had a landscaping service since she knew he worked very long hours. Fred had come from money, she’d known that before she’d spotted the Mercedes SUV parked in the driveway.

“Okay, so he’s rich. That’s okay. I’m rich in experience,” she coached herself as she walked over the paved stone path to the front door.

Fred’s calendar photo flashed through her memory. He’d been wearing a swim suit and T-shirt, but he was a big man, intimidating, with a brutally carved face and a military style haircut.

He was nothing like the men she usually dated.

“Just friends, just friends, just friends,” she muttered before hitting the bell.

The door opened and she was looking into Fred’s eyes in a thirteen-year-old girl’s face. Hostile eyes.

“Hey, Stacy,” she said.

“My dad’s not here.”

“Oh. Well, he might be running late. With his job—”

“I know that!”

Dharma didn’t let her bright expression falter. “We could start decorating. He’ll be in for a surprise when he gets home.”

“Decorating?” A gleam of curiosity briefly sparked in Stacy’s eyes. “I thought you were making him dinner.”

“I’m making all of us dinner,” Dharma corrected. “May I come in?”

“Okay.” It wasn’t the most welcoming of invitations, but the bag was heavy so she followed the girl into the entry way…which held a gold Federal style mirror and a gilt marble table. Polished hardwood was interrupted by tribal rugs. The house was like a jewel box, the outside was nice, but inside… “Wow.”

“Excuse me?” Stacy raised her brows and gave Dharma a snooty look. “You act like you’ve never been in a house before.”

Dharma laughed. “Not Fred’s house. You must love living here. He’s got great taste.”

“You think so?” Now there was a trace of something in Stacy’s voice. Dharma put her bag down and stepped into what looked like the living room. “Oh. My. Goddess!” She shot across the room to the tapestry, staring at a field of irises, vivid as any Van Gogh had painted. The bottom was trimmed with sparkling beads in the style of a 1920s handbag. She didn’t need to read the signature to guess who had created it. “You are so talented,” she told Stacy.

Stacy shrugged, but Dharma felt a slight crack in the ice. “How did you make this piece?” Dharma huffed out a breath in awe.

“It’s from a photograph I took in France. Dad took me and Mattie there last summer because she wanted to see Paris.”

And you didn’t want to see Paris, not at all, Dharma thought with amusement. Yeah, right. “You went to Paris?” She sighed. “Do you hear that sound?”

Stacy was staring at her like she was very strange. “No.”

“It’s the sound of my heart breaking. Mannnnn! I’d love to go there. All those neat flea markets and pastries and art galleries and just…Paris!”

“You’ve never been?” The superior tone was back, but it wasn’t quite as sharp.

“Nope, I’m poor. Probably be years before I can make it over there.” Dharma turned her attention back to the tapestry, not bothering to resist reaching up and tracing the nub of the woven cloth.

“I, uh, did it on a knitter’s loom. I took lessons at the local community centre and then just wanted to try to make something of my own,” Stacy said, moving closer. “You really like it?”

“It’s amazing. You should think about selling on Etsy.”

Now Stacy smiled. “I’d like to, but Dad wants me to wait until I’m older.”

Dharma did a slow circle of the great room—and great it was. Pottery glazed in copper and teal greens was arranged attractively on Mission tables while comfortably beaten leather couches were grouped close together. Kelim and rag rugs were the perfect place for a young girl to spread her homework out or watch the big Plasma screen peeking out of a half-open red Chinese cabinet.

“Did you do all this, the decorating?”

Stacy nodded, flushing a deep rose. “After my mom…left, Dad said we needed a change and he’s hopeless. So I found things, like in local boutiques and stuff.”

“Boy, did you. I thought this place was a jewel box when I came inside.” Dharma stopped admiring and looked straight at Stacy. “You’ve got better taste than I do.”

Stacy blinked. “Yeah?”

“Totally. I have what’s called ‘artistic taste’ so sometimes I like to mix acid greens and tangerine and let them scream on the walls. The last time the plumber visited to fix a drip in my kitchen pipe, he asked where I go when I have a headache since there’s so much colour in my home.”

Stacy glanced back at Dharma’s bag in the hallway. “You said we’d be decorating for dinner?”

Dharma nodded. “After seeing this, it’ll seem a bit basic to you, but I’m doing a theme menu.”

Stacy helped Dharma unload the hunks of quartz crystal and seashells, arranging them on the large coffee table.

“We’re really eating here, not the dining room?”

“Do you eat there a lot?”

“Nah. Mostly we eat in front of the TV. Some nights Dad’s so tired he falls asleep on the couch.”

“It’s a lot on him, his job is so demanding and then he wants to spend time with you and Mattie.”

“I guess.”

“He talks about you all the time.”

Stacy fiddled with a small amethyst geode. “Are you his girlfriend?”

“Nope. But I’m going to be straight with you—I wish I was.”

She stiffened. “He’s never been with anyone but my mom—”

“Yeah. It’s complicated, Stacy.” She held Stacy’s gaze, woman to woman.

Stacy frowned. “I really want to dislike you.”

“That would certainly be the easy path. Do you think that would make you happy?”

Stacy studied her, fiddling with a hunk of smoky quartz. “It would be satisfying.”

“I can’t argue with that. It’s always easier to have a target when life sucks.”

Stacy put down the crystal. Dharma could feel the girl’s indecision. “Should we put out the food?”

Dharma heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up in the driveway. Fred. He was home. And her heart was pounding.

She licked her lips. “Yes, let’s start with the chickpea curry.”

Fred was going to be soooo happy.

* * * *

Fred was so tired. And confused.

Even from the driveway he could smell something exotic and appetising wafting through the open windows of his house. Had the girls given up on him and ordered in? Neither of them were great shakes in the kitchen, but then neither was he.

The door flung open and there was Dharma, wearing a party hat and a tiny skirt and boots that seemed to make her long legs stretch even further. She was laughing. “Oh!” she said when she saw him. “I was just going out to get something in my car.”

Then he noticed her little rattletrap parked on the kerb. Man, he’d been so exhausted he hadn’t even seen it. “You were coming over today.”

She closed the door then frowned. “Yes.”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “Shit.”

“You forgot.” She arched a brow but looked more amused than pissed off.

“Yeah, I did.”

“You guys had a call just as I was leaving for the grocery store.”

He nodded. “Don’t want to talk about it.” He needed to shake off the despair of two seniors losing their home and a lifetime of memories. At least the couple had escaped the fire safely.

“Okay.” She reached out and touched his cheek and brought him up short with just that touch. He felt it to his toes, as if she’d shot life back into him. Painful, yearning life.

“Oh, Jesus.” He needed, very badly, to be close to her. He needed to just be a man.

As if she read his sudden yearning in his eyes she shook her head. “The girls are waiting. I’m not sure Stacy is ready for you to have a girlfriend.”

“Are you my girlfriend?” He couldn’t believe the words had come out. But damn, he wanted her to be his girlfriend. His young, pretty, vibrant girlfriend. He wanted to be able to go over to her place and trace her naked body with his tongue. He wanted to bend her over her cheap kitchen table and fuck her from behind.

His body tightened painfully with eagerness, and he cursed himself for feeling this way. His daughters were waiting for him and he was hard and randy and desperate for Dharma.

“Yes, I want to be yours,” she said very softly.

He closed his eyes, sucking in deep, cooling gulps of air. Hadn’t he been worn out a few seconds ago? Now he was burning for this beautiful girl—even though he knew his life was a mess and she was far too young and untamed for him.

When he didn’t say anything more, she flushed, as if she was embarrassed by how much she’d given away to him. He hated seeing it. He wanted to claim her and have nothing stand between them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should go inside. Is that great smell anything to do with you?”

She forced a smile which didn’t reach her solemn eyes. “I did a theme dinner and the girls helped. They’re really excited to show it off to you.”

Warmth touched him. “You did that for them.”

She shrugged, opening her squeaky car door and pulling out a small baking tray. “Nanaimo bars,” she said when he eyed it.

“My favourite!”

“I know.” Now her smile was a little easier. “You’ve been known to eat three at a time at the coffee house, though how you can eat like that and stay in such shape—” Her gaze ran over his T-shirt which was clinging to him in the sweaty heat. He wanted to peel it off and invite her to touch him.

Her gaze fixed on his, as if she read his silent invitation. For a moment the muffled street and neighbourhood sounds seemed to shut off so they were totally alone, a man wanting his woman.

“We better get inside.” His voice was rough. He couldn’t help how she made him feel, hungry and wanting. And alive in a way he hadn’t felt for years.

Her lips quirked wryly. “Safer.”

“Yep.”

He held the door open for her and immediately spotted Mattie and Stacy staked out around the coffee table in the great room. The delicious spicy scent emanated from there, wrapping around him like a home coming present.

“Dad!” Mattie gave him her bright smile. “We saved some stuff for you.”

Candle light flickered against the walls, throwing shadows wildly as he closed the front door. He stood a moment, taking in the transformation to his plain wooden coffee table. It was big and sturdy and Stacy had been at him for a while to replace it, but it was a great place to put up his feet so he’d so far been resistant to his daughter’s decorating disdain.

Somehow the battered maple had become a place of romance. Hunks of crystals and sea urchins decorated the surface where food wasn’t laid out. Interesting dishes in round and oval shapes held steaming platters—oysters, shrimp and tumbled vegetables in red curry. The girls were drinking from champagne flutes.

“Sparkling peach juice,” Dharma whispered. “Although in Europe, it would so not be a big deal for them to have a glass of red wine with dinner.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re a rebel but not a parent. I shudder to think how I’d get them to go to bed at the appointed time if they had alcohol in their system. Sugar can be bad enough.”

“Oh, yeah. Hadn’t thought of that one!”

She took his hand and led him to the table where Mattie served him up a king-sized plate. He took it, wanting to shovel it down he was so goddamned hungry, but he didn’t want to ruin the ambiance for his girls.

His girls.

He realised he had automatically included Dharma as one of them, as if she completed his family.

He swallowed tightly. “I can’t believe you did all this.”

“We get to keep the crystals and seashells, Dad!” Mattie sang out. She took the dessert from Dharma and would have dived in, but Stacy sneered at her and put the Nanaimo bars on lusterware plates first. “It’s supposed to look good, dummy,” Stacy said.

“Tastes better,” Mattie mumbled around her own serving, her contentment unmarred by her older sister’s waspishness.

Dharma grinned at their byplay and Fred felt his mood lift, becoming as bubbly as the drink Dharma handed him. He wished it was a beer. From her amused look, he guessed he was transparent.

“Thanks for doing all this,” he told Dharma. He found himself studying the shape of her eyes, liking the slightly exotic tilt. To bury his feelings, he turned his attention to his food and the chatter of his girls.

His girlfriend.

If only she could be.

* * * *

“Did you get a chance to talk to Stacy about whatever has been ridin’ her?” Fred asked later as he and Dharma washed out the serving dishes.

Dharma shook her head, her hands wet from the sink, sleeves rolled up, hair clinging to her forehead. She looked earthy and sweaty, like a sexy laundress from another century.

“No, to be honest, it was probably too optimistic to think I could get her to confide in me. I mean, she’s not one of my adult girlfriends. She’s…”

“A kid. And you have no experience with kids.”

Dharma shrugged. “Nope. Anyway, she’s also pretty territorial about you. Haven’t you dated at all?”

He cleared his throat.

“I’m guessing just a couple of one night stands.”

Since he’d driven the girls to a schoolmate’s home to see a litter of kittens after dinner, he was franker than he would be if they were in the house. “A firefighter can always get pussy,” Fred stated baldly.

Dharma’s eyes widened at his deliberate crudeness.

“That’s what it is,” he continued, wanting her to understand he was not in a position for a relationship, especially with someone so young and unfettered. “I’d be alone with a woman like we are now and she’d slide off her panties…” He glanced at her colourful clothing meaningfully. “Climb up on the kitchen island and spread herself for me. And I’d take what I was offered, Dharma. I am a man.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How nice for you, that women make it so easy.”

He couldn’t help but grin at her acid tone. Was his tigress actually jealous?

But she wasn’t his, he reminded himself for the thousandth time. Sex was one thing, having a girlfriend was another.

“You think if you have me, it’ll be all over, Fred?” Dharma asked him in a husky tone. She put aside the casserole dish she’d just washed. “You think you won’t want me again?”

“Dharma…”

“Who was she, the woman who just hopped on your kitchen counter and offered herself?”

Damn, he hadn’t expected her to ask him that. She had her hands on her hips, confronting him.

“My neighbour,” he said. “And it was her kitchen, not mine. She doesn’t have kids so she could make as much noise as she wanted when I fucked her.” He was being deliberately crude so she’d back off.

Only she didn’t.

Instead she unhurriedly packed away the pans she’d brought then pointed to the kitchen counter. “That about right?”

“I…uh…” He couldn’t think. She was shimmying out of her skirt, the leather sliding down her legs and boots. Underneath she wore a pink thong and he lost his breath when he saw again her high, round ass, bare to his gaze.

Dharma thrust her hair back over her shoulder and let the thong drop. Somehow leaving her top and boots on only made her look more illicit. “It’s a bit high…” She lifted herself up on the island as he watched, frozen. “Fortunately, I do yoga.”

Then she spread her legs so he could see her glistening pink depths. “If I were your girlfriend and you’d had a tough day, this is what you could expect to come home to,” she said.

Chapter Four

“You’re too young for me,” Fred managed to croak. He was surprised he wasn’t going into cardiac arrest since his heart was pounding so hard. He was shaking. Jesus, he was actually shaking.

Dharma was a fantasy as she fell back, her long hair a silken tangle over her full breasts and the countertop surface. Her eyes were both heavy-lidded and challenging as they held his. Her cheeks flushed as if she felt the power he did.

“What are you afraid of?” she whispered.

He swallowed. If he even so much as grazed her hair with his fingers he’d be on her, in her. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Tell me.”

Tell her? A dark fantasy rose inside him. Her wrists bound with his belt, her legs splayed on his kitchen island on a typical weekday night. Except his girls were somewhere else and when he got the pizza box from the young man at the door he let him into the kitchen so he could see Dharma.

He wanted to show her off to other men. How was that for a normal fantasy?

And maybe Fred would let the pizza delivery guy—whom he knew was single and oh so lonely—graze a finger over Dharma’s luscious wetness, touch and play with her, make her gasp and beg while Fred controlled the situation, controlled her pleasure utterly.

“You need to go home,” he ground out as sweat broke out on his body. He couldn’t let her know how disgusting his fantasies were. The things he wanted to do to her. The things he wanted to watch her do…

She sat up. “Seriously? You just told me you had casual sex with your neighbour on a kitchen island, that it was no big deal because you’re a man.”

His jaw bunched on the words he couldn’t say. The needs he had to lock up and bury. His body hurt, wanting to go to hers, to please her as her man.

“Can’t. I’m sorry.”

Dharma jumped off the island. She bent her head, hiding her face from him and he felt awful for her, fucking awful, imagining her humiliation. “I’m sorry I pushed you.” Her voice was tight, as if she was as wound as he was. “I didn’t mean to… That is just not cool.”

What was she talking about? He couldn’t think.

I want you so much.

But he didn’t have the courage to share this forbidden side of himself. She was his friend, she was too young, she was—

Everything he ached for. Everything.

Dharma sucked in deep breaths, fighting hot tears aching to spill. How could this have gone so wrong? She’d planned to seduce Fred. He liked her, she knew he did. He laughed at her jokes, he smiled into her eyes, he blushed when she caught him looking at her ass when she bent over to get fresh coffee beans out of the giant sacks they used at Coffee Dreams. She’d assumed his story about the neighbour was his bashful way of sharing what he wanted.

Her up on his kitchen island so they could share some hot, fun sex.

How could she have been so stupid?

She forced herself to look at him, skinned down to a T-shirt, his biceps bulging from his crossed arms, his hair so close to his skull it resembled a warrior’s helmet.

He looked intimidating.

But she refused to be intimidated.

She refused to be embarrassed.

Oh, damn it, no. She was. She couldn’t help it.

She felt shattered, like she had to get away from him right now.

“I’m glad you liked the food,” she managed.

“It was…nice.”

Nice? What the hell did that mean? Had it been nice when she popped up on the table and flashed him?

Gritting her teeth, she said, “Nice. Great.”

As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, “I don’t use fancy words like Taz.”

“I haven’t heard too many from him.” Did she have everything? She had to focus, had to centre herself. Why couldn’t she centre herself? Men liked her. Men wanted her. It was no big deal that Fred had rejected her.

Her throat closed.

“Okay, well, tell the girls I enjoyed dinner.”

“Dharma, I—”

Oh, no. She could not talk about what had happened. If she did, she’d break down. Messy tears, crushed expectations, and it would only make it a million times worse when she was lying in bed alone tonight, wishing she could move to Paris.

“I don’t want you to hurt.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Too late.”

Silence stretched, tense and painful.

“I won’t be in the office for the next couple of days,” she said. She tried to make her pace look brisk and not like she was running as she hurried to the front door.

Fred grabbed her arm. “Are you quitting because of what happened?”

“What? No. I have to put in a couple of nights at the bar.”

“Like hell.”

She glared at him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“I told you when I took the secretarial job that I’d weigh the two jobs and decide which one suited me better.” She reached for the doorknob, but he slapped his hand against the door.

“I don’t want you working there!” He was looming over her deliberately, she was sure. What a jerk. Why had she ever thought him sweet and so sexy?

Why did he still feel that way to her stupid heart?

“I worked at the bar for months, one or two more nights is—”

“Is hell. It’s hell, Dharma.” His voice was hoarse. When her gaze shot to his, he looked away. “I know I can’t ask you to stop working there. I have no right.”

Her nostrils flared, taking in his scent, hot sunshine and exhaust from the fire hall. He smelt rough, like a man who worked with his hands. She still wanted to touch him, caress his chest through his T-shirt. “No, you don’t,” she said quietly. “Goodnight, Fred.”

With obvious reluctance, he stepped back, arms folded in the classic posture of holding back.

She swung open the door, jumping as she suddenly faced a stranger.

The woman raised her pale brows, taking in Dharma and Fred. She was a petite blond with an oval face and pale green eyes. “Well, isn’t this interesting?” she said, her gaze running over Dharma in a way that made it clear she thought Dharma had either just had wild sex or run a marathon. “Who are you?”

“Dharma,” Dharma said, completely fed up with the way the evening had gone. “And you?”

The woman smiled. “Fred’s wife.”

Chapter Five

“How did the big date go last night?” Sian Blaine asked the next morning in Coffee Dreams. She expertly made then slid a decaffeinated red-chocolate mocha in front of Dharma, who was slumped at one of the tables.

“Disaster,” Dharma moaned. “Disaster upon humiliation.”

“Oh, good.”

Dharma lifted her head from her crossed arms and gave Sian a glare. “Hey, you’re supposed to be part of my support system, remember?”

“I remember you’re part of mine.” Sian rubbed her pregnant belly gently. She was only working half shifts now on Luke’s insistence. Both of them were wildly anticipating their baby. Sian had decorated a bedroom in their fancy beach house to mimic a carousel, going so far as to hire Dharma to do a beautiful mural on the wall of prancing horses. The crib itself was inside a carved dancing pony with a black mane—in case it was a boy—sporting blue and purple roses decorating its saddle. Dharma figured this was going to be one spoilt kid.

She raised an eyebrow at her friend. “Ahem, support system?”

Sian grimaced. “Okay, Luke’s been harsh on the subject of you and Fred.”

“If he disapproves he can stuff it!” Dharma began hotly.

“Whoa, no, you don’t! You are not putting me between my soon-to-be husband and my best friend.” Sian sat down next to her. “Dharma, the men at the station all work together, put their lives in Fred’s hands. Luke is protective of him. He doesn’t think he’s sophisticated enough to deal with a light affair with ‘La Dharma’.”

Dharma had to smile at her friend’s nickname.

“You and Fred are such opposites.”

“I seem to remember you being sensitive about Luke being younger than you are, but it’s not relevant anymore,” Dharma said.

“From what I’ve heard, Fred’s wife was a free-spirit. And you’re a free-spirit times a thousand. You could break him, Dharma. He’s an old-fashioned man about love meaning commitment.”

Dharma sucked in a breath. Oh, Goddess, her eyes were stinging. “I wouldn’t,” she croaked. “And anyway, he hurt me.”

“Tell me what happened?”

“I thought we were going to have sex on his kitchen counter,” Dharma admitted defiantly. “This is me, remember? So I offered and he, uh, turned me down.”

“Kitchen counter?” Sian flushed. “What is it with the men of Station 57 and kitchens? Maybe it’s the thing about the hearth being in the kitchen. Hearth equals fire…”

“You’re trying to distract me and it’s working.” Dharma put her chin in her hand and stared at her friend. “Do share, girlfriend. Is that where my future painting student was conceived?”

“Never mind. Okay, so you didn’t have sex. Big deal.” Sian sucked in a breath. “Oh, shit, it is a big deal. I’m sorry.”

“After he rejected me his ex-wife showed up,” Dharma related with brittle humour. “Ouch.”

“I shouldn’t want him because he’s a straight-laced fuddy-duddy, thinking he needs to protect me.”

“With an extremely gorgeous non fuddy-duddy body,” Sian put in, smiling.

“Very. I only wish I’d seen more of it,” Dharma moaned.

Why couldn’t Fred have a younger, spirited girlfriend? If he’d married a free spirit, then it seemed to Dharma he was attracted to her kind of woman. Opposites attract. Put opposites together and you had fire. And controlling fire was what Fred was all about.

Her toes curled at the thought.

* * * *

“I just need some, ah, pointers on dating a young, hip woman,” Fred said.

“So you want me to mentor you on how to dominate Dharma sexually? Shit, boss.” Taz ran a hand through his hair, more agitated than Fred could remember seeing him. Normally nothing shook Taz, though Fred had his own ideas on that. As a commanding officer he had worked with a lot of younger men. Some were messed up because their parents had taken their own shit out on their helpless kids, and Fred had always had the feeling this was the case with Taz.

In the workplace, Fred was used to doing the mentoring, to being someone his people could look up to, learn to trust. And in trusting him, they learned to trust themselves. They became better people and better fire fighters as a result.

But asking Taz to mentor him because it was rumoured Taz was an experienced Dom was totally different. But what else could he do? He couldn’t get his woman out of his head, yet at the same time he was out of his league. He had all these fantasies, this hunger. Would he repulse Dharma? He felt so clumsy.

He’d already blown it once.

Fred said tersely, “I don’t know how to do this, to romance someone like Dharma.”

“Romance?” Taz’s lips curled.

“Yes, romance. Sex begins in the brain and the heart. If you ever dated smart people, you’d know this.”

He hated remembering the look on Dharma’s face when he’d rejected her.

It was killing him.

When he’d visited the coffee house this morning Dharma immediately went into the back, leaving Sian to serve him. It had made him ache. Damn, he needed to talk to her. Just needed her…

Somehow he had to win her back, give her what she’d asked for when she’d made herself so vulnerable to him on his kitchen countertop.

“Will you teach me how to enthral her?”

Taz blinked, then his eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“Just…the best Doms are obsessed with the needs of their subs.”

Taz grinned, but then his expression became instantly impassive as a slender brunette crossed from her garden to his, carrying bulbs and soil.

“What are you doin’?” he demanded. “I told you to stay off my property, Jenny.”

Hurt moved through the young woman’s large vulnerable eyes. Fred felt instant annoyance with Taz. “You are such an asshole,” he muttered, going to the stranger.

“Hi, I’m Fred. Are you Taz’s neighbour?” He stuck out his hand and Jenny flushed, putting down the bulbs and taking off her garden glove so she could shake.

“I’m Jenny Ann Green, and yeah, I am.” Her accent was Southern, which went with her old world Laura Ashley style of dress. Christ, she was about the same age as Dharma but they couldn’t have been more different. This girl was shy and uncertain. Fred felt an instant kinship with her.

“My condolences on having Taz as your neighbour.”

“What are you doing here?” Taz crossed his arms, looking big and scary.

“I…I forgot I’d cut these bulbs out for your yard. My grandma taught me to share—”

“Take your bulbs and get lost.”

Jenny paled, but then with cool dignity, turned her back on Taz and retraced her steps.

“How could you be such an asshole?” Fred demanded. “She’s obviously a sweet person.”

Taz stared after Jenny, face hard.

“Taz?”

“She needs to stay away from me.”

“I’m sure she will since you’re acting like such a jackass.” Fred headed back to his SUV. No way could he ask Taz for help now. No way. Not after witnessing how cruel he’d been to someone innocent. He needed someone with heart to give him advice on Dharma, not just an unfeeling sex manual.

“Wait…”

Taz was at Fred’s door. He didn’t meet Fred’s gaze. In a voice so soft, Fred could barely catch his words, Taz said, “Jenny scares me, all right?”

With that, Taz strode back to his house.

Fred shook his head. “Who the hell are you, Taz?”

* * * *

“She’s very pretty.”

Fred pretended not to hear the comment. “The girls are thrilled you’re coming to the dance recital.” He turned the SUV onto the side street that offered the best chance of finding parking at the busy community arts centre.

Marilyn shrugged. “Least I could do since I’m in town.”

“How long are you staying?” He had offered her the guest room in the house, but he didn’t want her there.

“Just until the wedding. They grew so fast,” Marilyn noted as they walked towards the centre. “I never thought… The years just went by so fast.”

“You need to respect their home, their routine. I’ll fight you to keep them, Marilyn. You’ll have to take the time to know them before I’ll let you make off with them for half a year.”

“The voice of the man in command. I always found it very sexy.” She sighed. “I also forgot how influential you are in this town. Judges, lawyers…”

“I’m telling you I won’t let you play with their feelings. I protect them. Always.”

Marilyn bit her lip. “What if I…really want to try to make a new connection with them?”

Fred wanted to shut her down, but he couldn’t do it, not if she was sincere. Even if it killed him. “We’ll see,” he muttered. “But no more talk of taking them from me or all you’ll get is a handful of cactus.”

“All right. Is your friend Dharma going to be here?”

“No.” He wished Dharma was. He couldn’t sleep, he was having trouble eating and he was grumpy with the girls at home.

“I like her name. It’s means good destiny, the opposite of karma.”

“I know what it means.” Now that he’d handled this crisis with Marilyn, he could reach out to Dharma.

He wanted to make her his woman. And he was through waiting.

* * * *

Dharma was exhausted.

It had been a long night working at the bar. Her feet ached since she’d become unaccustomed to high heels in no time. Her back ached from a peculiar tension—all night she’d felt as if someone were watching her, stalking her.

And she was depressed.

She’d gone to work just like she’d told Fred she would. Go her.

But she’d felt even more of a loser than she had when he’d rejected her on his kitchen island. Why? It was stupid to feel that way.

Men found her gorgeous. They wanted to touch her, she could see it all night in their lust-glazed eyes as she flirted and served drinks. But something was missing. She used to enjoy the job in a light way. Now she was close to tears after a single shift.

“I’m driving you home.”

The soft voice behind her made her screech. She grabbed her chest, panting. “Are you trying. To kill me?”

“Nope.” Fred’s expression was grim. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans with a plaid shirt. His features looked stark, all tired, mouth-watering man with a capital M. And she’d missed him this past week. Goddess, she’d missed him.

“What are you doing here?” she sighed.

He shrugged. “I told you I needed to look out for you.”

“Look out for me?” she repeated.

“Said it clear enough.”

She saw dark fire in his eyes. Oh, he was angry, was he?

“You don’t want me, remember? You…” She sucked in a breath so she didn’t do something stupid, like start crying. “You made it clear.”

“I want you.” His voice was soft. “I’m just so scared and intimidated by you that—”

She blinked. Was she hallucinating because she was so weary herself? “Hey, you just need some practice. Just think of how you are on the job, all take-charge and confident. I know I do. It’s incredibly sexy.”

Colour darkened his cheeks. He shrugged again. “Thank you.”

“Why are you scared?” Despite herself she’d walked closer to him so they stood face to face, her arms wrapped around herself while his hands were in his pockets. But she could feel the yearning sparking between them like a force field. If they got too close, they’d burn up.

“Because you make me want things I told myself I can’t have.”

She wanted to reach out and touch the side of his face, stroke him, soothe him. Crazy. “And what is it you think you can’t have?”

He avoided her gaze. “For one thing, it kind of turns me on to see you working in that place, to see men looking at your beautiful tits. Only thing that would make it better was if they knew who you belonged to.”

Her mouth opened, closed. “Really? I thought you hated me working there.”

“I do, when I’m not around to protect you and…to watch you.”

His gaze was on his scuffed cowboy boots.

“You’re into voyeurism?”

“I… Ah…”

“Because there’s nothing wrong with that, even though I don’t need you protecting me.”

His jaw bunched. Now he looked at her with flaming blue eyes. “I need to do it. And I don’t care if you like it.”

Shock punched her. Because what she was seeing was not a man who didn’t care about her—Fred cared too much.

Tentatively she reached up and brushed his cheek. His eyes flashed to hers, burning her. He was shy, awkward, on fire.

“What if I told you I don’t mind you showing me off?”

“I… You don’t?” His tone was all what-the-hell?

She had to grin.

She wanted to curl one of her legs around his thigh. But what if he pushed her away again? It would hurt so much. It would smash her pride in the dirt.

Holding his gaze, she still couldn’t stop herself from moving closer, from rubbing her red high heel against his boot. The scraping sound it made echoed between them, heavily suggestive in the still night air.

He groaned, shuddering as if she were touching him somewhere much more personal. He caught her arm, holding her firmly. “Don’t play with me.”

Humiliation rose, but she shoved it down, determined to see him this time, to not make assumptions. Fred was subtle, almost as if he needed her to draw him out.

To help him with his confidence.

But at heart she could feel he was steel and fire.

“I wish you would play with me.” She was being totally honest, leaving herself emotionally bared to him. “What do you want, to tie me up? To put a leash on me for the night and parade me around in front of other men?” His eyes flared even hotter. “To spank me? I get wet thinking of you doing all of those things, sugar.”

“You…can’t.”

She cocked a brow at him then took his big callused hand in hers, dipping it under her short skirt and up to her panties. He gasped when he touched her, felt how hot and wet and ready she was.

Never taking his eyes off hers, he delved under her thong, stroking her with one long finger before suddenly impaling her on it. She grabbed his arm in shock, her body quivering on the edge for him already.

“You like that?” His voice was hoarse, but commanding. “Take off the panties.”

Then, as if remembering they were standing just outside the bar, he took her wrist and tugged her into the deep shadows of the woods where his SUV was parked. She leaned against the passenger door and he caged her with his arms.

The only sound was their ragged breathing as she reached down and tugged her thong free so it fell onto the unpaved dirt. She stared at it, finding it somehow weirdly significant that this was the second time she’d done this for him. Would she be stripping at a word from him in future? She suddenly craved it.

“Now lose the skirt.”

She moaned, squeezing her thighs together. His no-nonsense tone was turning her on so much. What would he do to her?

She pulled the hook free on the pink leather and it fell in a rustle at her feet.

Fred kicked it away, along with her panties, leaving her lower body totally exposed to his gaze. He didn’t touch her, he just looked at her.

Then he reached out and cupped her pussy, squeezing it possessively.

When he met her gaze, that hint of colour was back in his cheeks. He was bashful and yet totally in control. It was a hot combination that completely enthralled her.

“Is this mine?”

“Yes,” she whimpered.

He cocked his head as if he was considering just what to do with her. Her pulse thudded in her ears. She couldn’t help pushing herself wantonly into his hand.

He flicked his fingers sharply against her in dismissal and she gasped at the splinter of pain and pleasure. He wasn’t shy in how he handled her.

“You look like you’re doing just fine, boss,” a deep voice said.

Taz.

Dharma swung her head around in shock, seeing the other firefighter watching her with Fred. As her gaze flew to Fred’s, she sensed this wasn’t an accident. For some reason her shy older man wanted Taz here.

Taz made no secret of studying her partial nudity, giving her a considering and appreciative look. That look did not discomfort her. If she hadn’t been so crushed on Fred, she knew she’d probably have slept with Taz by now. He was sexy.

“I asked Taz for, um… I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

She wanted to tell Fred he was doing just fine, but she felt his edginess. He wasn’t comfortable yet with this domineering side of himself.

“I’ve been in that bar all night, bored out of my skull. I came to lend a hand.” Taz reached out, and without hesitation, Dharma took his hand. One quick look at Fred and she saw a look of fascination. He likes to watch. But she sensed that if Taz did anything he didn’t like, he’d take over as coolly as he did as chief at the fire hall.

“Up.” Taz ordered and Dharma found herself sitting on the hood of Fred’s SUV. “Relax,” Taz chided.

She let herself fall back onto her elbows, all too conscious of the concentrated stares of both men on her open body.

Teasingly, she lifted one leg, flashing them both. She had never been a shy person and she loved this.

She saw Fred’s hands ball into fists, as if he were keeping himself off her only with an effort.

“Bad girl.” Taz lightly slapped her thigh. “You do that only when we ask for it.”

She wet her lips but then nodded. Not at Taz, but at Fred since she was his.

His eyes darkened, the pupils large and black, swallowing her reflection as she lay spread out on his vehicle.

Taz looked at Fred. “May I touch?”

“Yes,” Fred agreed tersely. He didn’t look away from Dharma. She knew if she had any doubts about what was going to happen, he’d listen to her. He’d stop Taz.

But she’d been telling the truth about Fred’s fantasies. They intrigued her. She wanted to experiment.

Taz grazed her leg lightly with a fingertip. The touch was gentle, but it made her jump in surprise.

“Careful,” Fred growled.

“You’re definitely her daddy, aren’t you?” Taz said with amusement. He looked at Dharma. “He didn’t take his eyes off you for a second all night.”

Fred gave Taz a cool look that seemed to say ‘Don’t push me’.

It was delicious, being owned by Fred, even if it was only for this night, for this moment. Delicious to imagine him watching her, ready to intervene if any of the customers got too friendly.

“Spread yourself wider, honey,” Taz said.

Colour burned Fred’s cheeks, but he watched, rapt, as she obeyed. For her part, she only had eyes for him. Taz felt like a sexy extension of this man she was so hung up on.

When Taz touched her, she cried out, “Fred! Goddess, Fred…”

Breathing hard, Fred loomed over her, watching her face as Taz stroked her, teased her. She instantly lit up, riding the edge.

“You’re my woman. Mine to share.”

She’d never imagined a surrender could be so total, so extreme. She’d played light bondage games, a little spanking, but she’d never imagined letting herself be given to another by the man dominating her.

No wonder Fred thought his fantasies were too dark. They were, dark and wild so that she trembled, her body glistening with her obvious arousal.

“Put a finger in her,” Fred ordered Taz.

She gasped as Taz complied, rubbing her almost harshly, just the way she liked. Fred stroked her hair as Taz saw to her pussy, rubbing and playing so that she dug her nails into the hood, her body screaming to come.

“I want to fuck her. Now,” Taz growled.

A forbidden thrill raced through her as Taz looked not at her, but at Fred.

“No.” Fred looked into her eyes. “Come for us. Do it now. Make it good for me as I watch you.”

Taz speared two fingers into her, giving her a careless caress. Legs splayed wide, bared to them both, Dharma let herself go, her neck arching as she cried out hoarsely, riding every bit of pleasure Taz offered at Fred’s direction.

After, she just lay there, trembling, her body feeling the aftershocks. She’d never come so hard and Fred hadn’t even touched her. And yet this had somehow all been about him.

She felt completely mastered for the first time in her life.

Fred reached out and lifted her into his arms, holding her as if he treasured her.

She didn’t see Taz as Fred placed her carefully in the passenger seat. She figured he’d already split, leaving her to Fred. “I thought I’d take the bus,” she said groggily.

“Like hell.” Fabric on her ankles, smoothing up her legs. Fred was replacing her clothing, caring for her.

Unexpected tears stung her eyes again. She gritted her teeth, forcing them back. Why was she so emotional? When Fred put her skirt back on, his hands gentle but awkward on the tiny clasp, she watched him, feeling herself ache…to be held? Is that what she needed?

She’d never needed that before. Usually she laughed and joked after sex, but with Fred…

“I can’t believe I went that far.” He laughed, but there was an undercurrent of embarrassment in his voice. “I’m sorry.” He was back to not meeting her gaze.

She swallowed, reaching out to stroke his cheek. “It was hot, what we did.”

His gaze flew to hers. “You liked it? You like me?”

She nodded.

“I’ve never…done anything like that. God almighty!”

His bashfulness after his display of mastery was adorable.

“Me either.”

“Never?”

“Fred, I have had a spicy sex life but that was…” She didn’t have words. “I never imagined sharing something like that before. I never thought I’d find it so hot, so…liberating. But I could be like that because I knew you’d take care of me.”

“Absolutely.” His eyes shone with that inner core of steel. “Watching you like that was the hottest moment of my life.”

“But you didn’t—”

“No. I come when I’m ready to come.” His chest rose and fell hard and she could see his erection straining against his jeans, but he was in control of himself, reminding her that he was older than she was, tempered by life.

In fact, it seemed like he was making a point of how in command he was. It made Dharma wonder if what they’d just done would happen again and if it did, could she tempt him somehow into coming with her? Would he fill her, take her against the car?

The thought made arousal burn again, hotter this time. Her body was already throbbing, already pleasured, but she hungered for more.

She was desperate for more.

He got in the truck, looked at her and raised a brow.

She buckled herself in.

Fred might be shy, but he was definitely in the driver’s seat.

As they drove in silence, she stole glances at him, feeling an unaccustomed reserve fall between them. She wanted to ask him if they would be together again soon. Like…how about now, when he took her home?

He stopped in front of her dilapidated apartment, giving it an annoyed look as if he’d like to single-handedly fix the place up for her. “Is that place even up to code?”

“Yes. And you ask me that every time you come here.”

“I want better for you.”

She licked her lips, squirming in her seat. “Do you?” Her voice came out husky.

He looked at her and his lips curled into a sly smile. He unbuckled her belt, a total gentleman, damn him, leaving her even more desperate. She wanted to climb onto his lap.

“Fred…”

“Miss me tonight.”

She bit her lip.

He reached down between her legs and cupped her, squeezed her. She moaned, arching, losing herself.

“Good girl.” He reached around her and thrust open the door for her.

She was about to snap at him when he brushed a finger down her cheek. The gesture was sweet and old-fashioned, and she craved it as much as she had the one he’d just given to her sex.

“You better serve my coffee tomorrow morning, Dharma. I like to see your face.”

Throat tight, she nodded. “I like to see yours.”

Somehow she climbed out of his SUV.

Of course, being Fred, he waited until she was safely in her apartment with her door locked before he drove off.

Chapter Six

Dharma’s heart raced when she found Fred and Taz waiting for her after her shift ended the following night. She’d spotted them in the bar earlier, passing the time playing pool. It had made her edgy, wondering how they’d play tonight.

All she could think of now was how she was dying to come. She’d tried a half dozen times to bring herself off in bed the night before or in the shower, but she’d been distracted and rushed and irritable because she wanted Fred there with her.

Tonight there was a solidarity about the two men, as if they’d worked out what they planned for her. Taz took her arm, guiding her to Fred’s SUV. “Get in the back,” he ordered while Fred went around to the driver’s side.

Mouth dry, Dharma obeyed.

Fred did a U-turn and they drove down the highway until he turned off on a dirt road. She heard the crash of surf and felt the warm air through her open window. Neither man looked at her or spoke to her, which only heightened her arousal and suspense. What were they going to do with her?

When they came to a stop in a deserted spot, Taz turned and looked her in the eye. “Strip off your clothes and then climb out of the truck. Oh, leave the shoes on. I like the heels.”

Her heart gave a thump at the coolly phrased instructions. She felt giddy, unfettered the way she’d been when she first began to paint and every colour was singing for her to use it.

Hands shaking, she pulled off her tank top then her skirt and thong. Since she hadn’t worn a bra, that left only her red heels.

She was still trembling finely as she exited the SUV, feeling foolish to be so…nervous?

The wind was cooler now against her bare skin. It felt like a touch. She crunched over gravel, walking to where Fred and Taz waited for her.

“Hold your hands out,” Taz said.

And all the time he was giving her orders, Fred watched.

She held up her wrists and Taz tied them quickly and expertly. Then he walked around her, as if inspecting her. The second time he circled, he grazed her nipples with the back of his hand, making her body jolt.

“You aren’t to move unless we say you can.” He put his hands on her waist and lifted her, actually lifted her as easily as if she were a child and placed her with her front leaning against the warm hood of the SUV.

A second later he kicked her feet wider then pushed her so she was plastered against the vehicle, the position completely exposing her pussy lewdly to their gazes.

And she felt them looking. She wanted to moan and squeeze her thighs together, but she knew they would not permit it.

She belonged to them now.

More gravel crunched and Fred moved so he was standing directly opposite her. He leaned over the hood, took her hands in his. He was blushing fiercely, but his gaze was just as fierce.

What was Taz going to do to her while Fred watched? She was dying to know.

Fred took her hands. “You, ah, indicated you wanted me to push you over my desk one day and spank you.”

Humour and tenderness for him warmed her. “I indicated?” Oh, he was adorable when he wasn’t intimidating.

“Yeah.”

“Is Taz going to spank me?” Her voice got husky at the end of the sentence. “While you watch?”

“Taz is going to use a riding crop.” As if he was worried she’d shut him down, Fred added. “He’s teaching me how to use one. I wouldn’t risk your skin until I can handle it.”

“A riding crop?” Her heart jumped again. Part fear, part thrill.

Eyes heavy lidded, Fred whispered. “You’ve never played with one?”

She shook her head.

“We need to know if you’ll let us try this. You have to tell us.”

Deeper waters. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she allowed herself to go there. But Dharma had always prided herself in being adventurous. She nodded.

“Say it, Dharma.”

She licked her lips. “Yes, I want to try.”

Her hands were cold and shaking slightly. She gripped Fred tightly, absurdly grateful for his lifeline.

“I’m right here. I want you to look in my eyes the entire time. If it ever gets too much, if you need to stop, all you need to do is pump my hand twice. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Something hard and cool traced her spine, moving from one vertebra to the next in an unhurried fashion. Because she couldn’t see what Taz was doing, she died a little each second.

And Fred was watching it all, his lips parted, his eyes a dark midnight blue. She felt him with her.

When Taz ran the crop down the open slit of her body she gasped, shuddering at the solid feel, at the intention and authority she could feel humming through it from Taz to her.

She heard it whistle then there was a bright hot flash of pain on her right buttock. The sound, the impact made her think of that first moment when you dropped something on a frying pan. Her body arched and sound whispered through her lips. “Ahhhhh.”

“Don’t close your eyes. Look at me,” Fred commanded.

Her eyes snapped open and it was so intimate to look into him and feel him looking into her. She was more naked this way than she’d ever been in her life. He could see everything, read everything so she was an open book in his palm. He could move her from page to page and all she could do was surrender and be open to him, to this moment, to the sound of the crop falling, the strike, the hot sizzle of pain, the satisfaction of it as it bloomed on her skin like the toughest kiss.

Her submission turned her on as much as anything else. The almost-humiliation of being naked while both men were clothed. She was liberated by every gasp Taz made her utter, by the spill of a tear that wanted to fall, the soft rain of the crop, heating her like a warm bath would until it was hotter, hotter, until she writhed and tears were falling onto the hands she clasped to Fred’s.

All along he was both observer—which was so sexy—and participant, as if part of him ate up every pained cry she gave, rode the same edge of harrowing desire.

“Stop.”

The voice was like water hitting her face, soft but with as much impact as Taz’s strikes. She saw Fred looking at Taz, sensed they were silently communicating, but she felt oddly peaceful while her body hummed, her fingers curling, the throbbing pain of her ass, the neediness between her legs.

“We’re both going to fuck you,” Fred said.

“Yes, oh, yes.” She collapsed against the side of the SUV, her legs too shaky to hold her now, but it was okay because Fred and Taz were both suddenly behind her and they held her up. Two sets of hands moving her confidently so her feet left the ground, spreading her wider, a callused big palm patting her ass—Taz, she thought.

She heard the rustle of plastic then the wrapper was placed deliberately beside her. Another hand on her back, stroking her, almost consoling her so more of those wonderful tears dripped. She was not a crier, but this felt so good, as if they’d reached inside her to some bottled up place and helped her open it.

Fred had given her this gift. Because she loved him.

That thought made her eyes pop, but she couldn’t hide from it. Not after what they’d done to her. Nothing was hidden, not her shadows, not her moments of light. She was naked to herself as much as to Fred and Taz.

A hand on her back steadied her then she felt the blunt head of a cock rubbing against her pussy. She was so alive now it was like every brush set off fire crackers in her blood. She gasped and tried to shove herself back, so desperate to be fucked.

Two sets of hands again took control, holding her unmoving so she was breached then entered from behind. Belatedly she realised she wasn’t sure who was taking her. Taz? Fred?

The not knowing sent a delicious tingle of the forbidden. They had given her a taste of the whip, a taste of humiliation and absolute control and now they were giving her a taste of stranger-sex, something that had purely been a fantasy before now because she valued herself too much not to be safe.

But Fred…Fred rescued kids and elderly people, took care of his men and had no hesitation running into a collapsing building. Fred would always, always keep her safe.

“Sweet ass,” Taz grunted and she knew it was he who took her now. Fred stepped into view and she saw he’d stripped away his own clothing, revealing that hugely muscular body, tattooed extensively not just on his chest and arms but down his legs and on the flat plain of his belly. His abs rippled like corrugated steel, his hips were defined, perfect for a woman to hold onto while she sat herself on him. And his cock… He was huge, swollen and thick, larger than any man she’d ever had before.

Faint apprehension tingled up her spine. Could she comfortably take Fred?

Taz tangled his fist in her hair and she heard him say to Fred, “Thank you for lending me this. She’s a hot, wet, tight little cunt. Feels perfect around my cock.”

The way Taz talked about her made her Fred’s property and yet not a ripple of disquiet moved through her. She felt serene and deliciously claimed by the drag and retreat of a heavy cock, the shock of pleasure as Taz fucked her slowly, thoroughly.

Her bound hands could not find enough purchase to offer her any counter-balance to enhance her pleasure. She was going to get fucked, for as long and as hard and as slow and measured as Taz cared to give it to her, but she wasn’t sure he would give her quite enough so she could come the way she needed.

“You’re not going to come, little cunt,” Taz said, smacking her ass hard to light up all the heat he’d brought with the riding crop. “Only Fred can give you that.”

Dharma had never let any of her boyfriends call her a cunt. She hated the word. Why was it so sexy hearing it from Taz?

He thrust inside her again and her toes curled. Every taking seemed to go deeper and deeper inside her, until she was panting, until she began to beg him to go faster, please, she needed it just a little faster.

The sexy bastard laughed and kept up his steady pace until finally he gripped her hips, his fingers digging in as his body shuddered. “Hot little piece!”

She was still warmed and wet and on the edge when she heard more plastic crinkling then felt Fred behind her. He pushed inside her unhurriedly, widening her channel ruthlessly with his sheer size. Her breath caught as she struggled to accommodate his size.

She’d taken one man and now with her body slick and open and hot, she was taking another. Did this make her a slut in Fred’s eyes? She didn’t know, and she hoped not because she had opened more than just her body to him. In all those long days they’d talked, in the shared looks at the coffee shop, in the moments when he opened a door for her and put his hand on her lower back protectively, these feelings had been growing.

He could hurt her now. He could devastate her.

And still she would let him do what he wanted with her.

And still she loved him.

He took her hips, pulling her back on his erection, claiming her so she was so full she whimpered.

Then he fucked her as she’d never been fucked. He slammed into her hard and dangerous, and his arms came around her, pulling her in tight under his crouching body, his face brushing hers, sweat running down his cheeks, his eyes glazed as he shoved in and out…

She screamed as she came, feeling it like a life and death impact. He rode her a little longer before he jerked and began to shove inside her.

After, she was completely limp while Fred held her captive under him, and she was crying because everything had been too much, just too much.

He swung her gently into his arms and she wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling like she was torn apart, like she truly was dying as pain welled up and flowed from her. It was the most peculiar sensation of her life, as if their shared sex had done more than pleasure her body.

“Take the keys,” she heard him say to Taz. “Leave us alone for a while. You can come back with your bike in the back later.”

The SUV fired up, but Dharma didn’t care. All she cared about was Fred holding her, walking with her naked until he sat down on a silvered log on a tiny beach lit only by a fine sliver of moon.

She gave herself as much to him now, curling tight as she continued to cry silently.

He never let her go.

* * * *

The wind tugging a tendril of hair into her face woke her in irritation. She was curled against the log, Fred’s shirt tucked around her. She saw him right away, standing at the water’s edge, magnificently male and still gloriously naked. Hers, if she had the courage to try to make this complicated older man belong to her.

Her throat tightened because she wanted that more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life.

She didn’t think about it. She tossed aside the shirt and crawled to Fred on her hands and knees.

He turned and when she reached him he put a sandy foot over her neck, pressing down lightly. Then he was on his knees, breathing hard. He covered her, pushing her hair out of the way so he could lave her neck with his tongue, like an animal taking possession of its mate.

He bit her, a little savage, hard, stinging pain that went straight to her pussy. He brushed her there, testing her as she opened to him, holding nothing back.

He cleared his throat. “I’m clean… I mean, I should have said it before. I’ve only been with two women in the past two years.”

“I’ve had more partners, but I’ve always been safe and I was tested recently,” she said. She felt his tension over her confession as if he didn’t like it that she’d had more lovers even though she hadn’t hidden it from him. “You’re only jealous because you weren’t there to run the show.”

“Maybe. Jesus!” He laughed and she heard his chagrin in his laughter. He was still uncomfortable with what he liked.

“Is that what you want, for us to…share?”

He cupped her face in his big hands. “No. I’m territorial as hell, which probably makes what happened with Taz seem weird but…”

Gladness rushed through her, soothing her. “I loved it. You gave me so much pleasure using him as your, um, surrogate, but…” Her throat dried up. It’s you, she wanted to say. You’re the one.

“He’s still going to give me pointers. I like what we do, but I can’t do it irresponsibly,” Fred said.

It was so Fred to have that attitude. They would play, but they would do it so it was safe for her, always.

He leaned his face against hers, whispered against her lips, “I want to come inside you.”

She pulled back, shocked to the heart. “Wow.”

He dropped his head, rubbing the back of his neck which made his muscles bulge and his tattoos move like living works of art. He looked like an exotic god in the moonlight, primal but still with that hint of shyness.

“I know. It’s a fucking stupid idea. I have two daughters. I know what it’s like to get pregnant by accident.” His blue eyes lifted, sizzling into hers. “And you should know that wherever you are in your cycle, I’m really good at making babies. Even if we take precautions, I will likely knock you up sooner or later if we keep doin’ this.”

Wow again. She covered her chest, trying to absorb the impact of his direct words. He’d spelled it out baldly, and he’d totally terrified her…and turned her on?

“Okay, you’ve said what your body can do, baby-maker. What about what you want as a man?”

He rubbed his jaw and she heard the rasp of his whiskers. He grew them faster than any other man she knew, which was why he kept an extra razor at work. He was virile in every sense of the word. “What I want…” He laughed softly, heat pinkening his cheeks. “Oh, fuck.”

“Fred.”

He gave her another of those sizzling looks that made her toes curl. “What I want is to get you pregnant. I’ve never felt that way. Marilyn and I just fell into it but you… I get hard thinking of covering you until we make a baby because then you’ll be tied to me. Then I can reel you in under my roof. Then I’ll have a hold on this beautiful, scary, mysterious much-younger-lady.”

Her lips parted. Had the sex with Taz been as much about enthralling her as titillation for Fred? It had been. He’d found a totally unique form of courtship for the adventurous woman she was.

He was busy corralling her while he pleasured her.

“You diabolical man, you keep offering me these tastes of a life I’ve never experienced.”

“If you let me come inside you”—his voice was throaty—“I’ll make it better than you can imagine. You’ll want it over and over again until I knock you up.”

Her breath caught because suddenly, crazily, she did want that. She could see it happening, and she felt a tug not just of hot desire, but of that deep pool of pain that lay quiet around her breast bone. That wish for connection. For family?

She’d been on her own since her mother passed away and Fred knew it, knew she hadn’t had a happy childhood but a lonely one, passed in foster homes. She’d come into her own when she’d gone to college and begun to paint.

“I’ve never had unprotected sex before.” And now it was a siren’s call, and she wanted it. It was the most crash-test-dummy event of her life, and she’d done some reckless things.

He raised one eyebrow.

“You made me want to risk it, just once…” She chewed her lip. “But your life is so messy and I’m not sure I’m ready to become a mom and—”

“And yes?” His lips brushed her forehead, then her cheeks and her mouth.

She lifted her leg around his, feeling his hard penis brush against her sex. She was on fire to feel what it would be like.

“Just this once, okay? We’ll take this risk one time right now, but then we go back to being as safe as possible.” She loved him, but she had no idea where they were going. If any of her girlfriends heard her just now, they’d be shocked because she was always so careful.

Well, except for Sian. She would understand Dharma’s moment of weakness.

“Yes?” he asked her again, holding her gaze.

“Come inside me.” She took hold of him, feeling again how thick he was.

He took her wrists in one of his hands, raising them above her head, lifted her leg even higher so she was splayed open and mounted her firmly.

The commitment of this act took her breath, more primal than marriage. This was what had preceded marriage, sex as a creative act.

She groaned as he pushed inside her in one heavy thrust. He threw his head back, grunting, hot and eager, overwhelming her.

He ran his hand over her breast, cupping and squeezing it, appreciating it before he settled his palm on her belly.

His gaze held hers, deadly serious.

And she knew he wanted to make her pregnant.

She fought to get closer, they strained… She felt his heavy balls slap her body and she was conscious as never before that he was full of life. This wasn’t light, fun sex. This was a man trying to make a baby with his woman.

When he freed her hands, she gripped his hips, his ass, digging in her nails, then she was shuddering, going deep, going under, her body subdued under his as he shot inside her.

After they were done, he reached down for her ankle and lifted it onto his lower back.

“I’d take care of you. You know that.”

“Yes, I know, even though I can take care of myself. Does this mean if the pizza boy showed up at your door he’d only get a look in?”

He rubbed her breasts possessively. “So you have a touch of exhibitionism? Bad girl.”

She choked on a laugh. “Yes.”

He rubbed his lips tenderly against hers. “I’ll keep asking to make a family with you. And you’ll let me do it again, sooner or later.”

She didn’t make him pull out. Every minute could mean they made a baby together.

So she figured Fred was right, he probably would get her to take the risk again.

Chapter Seven

“Wow,” Sian breathed. “Wow.”

“I know!” Dharma decided she’d give her best friend rainbow toes, so after pulling Sian’s feet out of the basin where she was soaking them, she towelled then buffed Sian’s feet before choosing orange, pink and green for her colours. Sian trusted her with such decisions and anyway, it wasn’t like she could do her own pedicure anymore, not with her belly so swollen.

“But despite our temporary insanity, I’m not. You know, preggers.”

Sian rolled her eyes. “What would I know about how that feels? Ohmygod, keeprubbingmyfeetyougoddess!”

Dharma laughed, giving Sian a pinch to her instep. “Doesn’t Luke give you foot rubs?”

“Luke gives me constant rubs. Everywhere!” A gleam lit Sian’s eyes, clueing Dharma into the fact that Sian enjoyed rubbing…everywhere. “He’s worn to a frazzle, poor man.”

“He’s still not sleeping?”

Sian shook her head. “I don’t sleep so he doesn’t sleep. And I think he’s nervous, he wants this baby so much. Luke didn’t have the best family life.”

Dharma sighed. “So you aren’t all judgy about what I did with Fred…and Taz?” She’d told herself she’d shrug it off if Sian disapproved. Then she’d told herself that her best friend wouldn’t disapprove, but the truth was…she was just telling herself that. It would hurt if Sian thought she was nuts.

It would bring home her recklessness.

Sian shrugged. “You’ve always been adventurous, but you’re also smart. Besides… Taz has a certain, ah, rough charm.”

Dharma grinned. “Very rough. I’ve seen him at work a couple of times since that night, but he just goes about his business, one cool customer. I just wish…”

“What?”

“I haven’t seen Fred in a week. Just a couple of quick texts since he and the girls were roped into his ex-wife’s wedding plans. He hasn’t even been to work.”

“You know he’s doing it to watch over his family. He’s very protective of them.”

“Yeah, I know. That protectiveness melted me when I first met him. I wouldn’t have expected a single dad to try to relate so much to two daughters. It’s just…we left so much unsaid and I feel—” She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Vulnerable, like you left yourself open to getting hurt?” Sian asked quietly.

Dharma nodded.

“You really care about him.”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

Sian bit her lip. “He’s a lot older than you are. You’re very different.”

“I know, but we are both adrenaline junkies. We like taking action, even when it might be disastrous. Otherwise he wouldn’t run towards a fire and I wouldn’t paint something, put it in a show and risk being torn apart by critics.”

And right now she hated that she was missing her sparkle, dragging around. She was not behaving like the woman she had always thought she was.

“You need to do some of that painting,” Sian suggested, admiring her finished toes. “And something outrageous.”

Dharma’s lips quirked. “Something outrageous?”

“Come on, you’re ‘La Dharma’. I’ve lived vicariously on your experiences for years. Are you going to get all mopey and let me down now?”

What about letting herself down? Dharma thought.

“No, I’m not.” As the words popped out, a wicked image lighted Dharma’s imagination and she started laughing. “Hang on and let those toes dry. I have to text a gorgeous male. Or, a couple of gorgeous males.”

* * * *

Fred was having a Bad Day. Bad Day should be spelled with all caps, italicised and bold, he thought as he limped out of his SUV towards the front door of Dharma’s weirdly charming apartment building—he noticed she had acquired a glowing pink flamingo lawn ornament which wore a T-shirt saying ‘Mardi Gras Mondays’!

His Bad Day had begun when Stacy had pitched a fit about the dress her mother had chosen for her to wear as a bridesmaid at her wedding. It was blue and Stacy wanted purple. In fact, she wanted a purple tutu and black boots, thank you very much. What the hell was that? Except Fred thought he knew what the weird fashion statement signified.

Stacy didn’t want to go.

Mattie was fine with her dress, but she wasn’t happy over the timing. The wedding was set for the same day as a school play where Mattie had helped carefully design the set and she didn’t want to miss out. His youngest daughter had asked him what was the big deal anyway? She hadn’t seen her mother in years, so what was one more night?

The hell of it was, he agreed with both of his daughters. Why should they go? To top it off, he’d spent a torturously boring and God-awful family dinner with Marilyn, her fiancé Ryan, and Mattie and Stacy.

He hadn’t seen Dharma in days.

Had he made her pregnant?

The question was like a refrain from a song that kept playing in his head over and over again.

He rubbed his leg, yanking out the cane he was forced to use for one more day and loathing every minute of it. He already felt too old for Dharma. Now he had to use a cane, giving her a great visual.

Had he made her pregnant?

Christ, the things they’d done, the things she’d let him do…

It was like as soon as they were together some kind of chemical reaction occurred, and he was a primitive man with his mate. All he wanted was her head under his hand while he had her on her knees, her legs open when he needed to mount her. And he wanted to do it over and over again.

Was she all right? He hadn’t had any time to talk to her properly after they’d had unprotected sex because Taz had arrived right after they’d made love and Dharma’d had an early shift…

Did she regret letting him fill her with his seed? But God damn, it had felt so good.

He hardened thinking about it.

He told himself he’d driven over here tonight to talk, to make sure she was all right, but the truth was he needed her, needed to renew the bond of the flesh. He wanted his hands cupping her ass, her teeth in his shoulder, her legs around his waist while he fucked her.

* * * *

Dharma froze, hot chocolate sauce dripping from her spoon onto her flokati rug. Andrew frowned, his mouth still open to receive the tasty goodness. His twin brother, the delectable Anton was scratching irritably at dried patches of chocolate on his muscled chest. Maybe he had an allergy. Damn, why hadn’t she thought of that before she’d used chocolate?

Both men were completely nude, their beautifully proportioned bodies surrounded by everything she could find in her apartment that was pink. It was the perfect frame of all that maleness, the perfect statement for her next piece…

“What the fuck is this?”

She whirled, almost hitting Andrew with the spoon.

Her old fashioned Fred had his hands on his hips, staring at her from the entrance of her living room, the spare key she’d given him ages ago when she kept losing hers dangling from one fist.

Anton noticed Fred and nudged his twin with a smirk. “Hey, do we get the white chocolate now? Mmmm.”

“White chocolate,” Fred repeated hoarsely. With an exaggerated movement, he placed her keys on her mango painted coffee table. The gesture had such finality that for a second Dharma’s mind went completely blank.

“Art,” she said. “It’s art.”

“Of-fucking-course it is.” Fred turned his back, limping towards her front door because he was using…a cane?

What the hell, when had he hurt himself? He hadn’t texted her about this!

But then she was running because she’d come alive as soon as she’d seen him. “Wait!”

He was already outside when she huffed out the door, tripping on the scarlet skirt of her kimono.

“Fred, will you wait!”

He knocked her hand off his arm, giving her a look so full of hatred she gasped. “Free spirit. Just like my wife, right? I have a family and I had to put them first this week—”

“Wait, I know that—”

“And while I do that,” he gave a jerky nod to her apartment, “you’re already partying with boy toys?”

“Boy toys.” She laughed. “Oh, they’d love that.” She reached out when he opened the door of his SUV. “Please, stop. You’re being an ass—”

“Yeah, we old-fashioned guys who like our women to be faithful can be real asses.”

“I am faithful.”

“I can fucking see that.”

“I am,” she growled. “I am so faithful. I can’t sleep. I can’t use my vibrator. You wrecked me with your stupid blushing and the way you just took me sometimes and the way it felt when I let you—” Her voice died. She kicked his tyre, riled that her stupid voice would break just when she was telling Fred off. How unfair was that?

He glared at her apartment and the two naked men she could see peering out her front window at them. “So what do you call that?”

“I told you, art.”

“Right.”

His voice was a slap, but she heard the hurt under it.

She swallowed, staring at him, seeing him staring back at her with the same misery. She backed off, raising her hands. “Okay, you either trust me or you don’t.”

“Dharma.”

“I’m done.” She wrapped her kimono tighter around herself because suddenly she felt very cold as she retraced her steps back to her apartment.

She felt Fred watching her. Then she heard him kick something—his truck? She didn’t turn around to look because she was crying.

“Fuck!” Fred growled.

She heard him fire up his SUV then she didn’t hear him anymore because she was back in the womb of her apartment.

“Okay, guys,” she announced. “Let’s forget the chocolate and the photography session and cut to the bourbon. Who’s with me?”

Chapter Eight

The banging on the coffee house door resounded in Dharma’s head. She opened one eye, glaring at the tall figure through the glass. The massive shape had to belong to one of the fire fighters from Station 57. This was their favourite coffee house, even before one of them had got engaged to the owner.

Great, just what she needed on top of the hangover of all hangovers, a visit from a testosterone driven caffeine-junkie.

“We’re not open,” she croaked before putting her head back down onto her hands.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“What part of we’re not open do you not understand?”

She got up and the room swam. Swallowing, she made it to the front door with the ‘Closed’ sign prominently displayed, along with their hours—they didn’t open for another thirty minutes. Every step in her sandals lit off pain in her tender skull.

She met determined and all-too-familiar blue eyes through the glass.

“Forget it.” She reversed her course.

“Dharma. Dharma! Open this door. Now.”

“Open this door?” she repeated, glaring over her shoulder at Fred’s intimidating bulk. His hair was plastered to his skull, dripping with sweat from what looked like a recent run. His eyes burned her through the glass. “I’ll open this door.” She unlocked it and faced him, channelling all the crappiness factor of her early morning into her sizzling look.

“Good girl.” He brushed past her but then stood in the centre of the darkened coffee shop, hands on his hips, suddenly looking awkward, as if now he was in here, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Ignoring him, Dharma crept past, hoping that tiptoeing would keep her head from exploding.

“I’m sorry.”

She froze. “Excuse me?”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“Don’t shout!”

He suddenly loomed over her, placing big hands on her temples, rubbing gently. She wanted to moan… She slapped his hands off.

“You don’t get to go there!”

He cocked his head, as if considering her. “I was an idiot.”

“You can say that again.” She frowned. “Why are you saying it?”

“Because I’m crazed with jealousy—did they both have to be naked, Dharma, really?” He sighed. “But then I remembered all the other peculiar things you do for your, ah, art. I remembered how you make me laugh when you talk about your projects here in the coffee shop and I…”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You didn’t sleep with them?” he burst out.

She turned on her heel but got no farther since he lifted her up by her waist and plunked her on the counter, stepping between her legs.

Her hands went up automatically to hold him off.

He leaned his forehead against hers. If he’d been a big cat, the sound he made would have been purring.

“Tell me you didn’t do anything with them.”

“I thought you said you knew it was just an art thing!”

“Up here.” He tapped his skull. “But…” He swallowed and she saw his eyes were bloodshot. She saw the fine white squint lines fanning out from them and his pallor under his tan. “They were a lot younger than I am.”

“Oh, Fred.”

“But not as well endowed.”

She rolled her eyes, trying not to let him make her laugh. She could still feel tension humming from him like electricity through a wire.

“But they also weren’t using a cane.”

She frowned. “An old injury from work?”

His eyes widened. “Yeah. It acts up sometimes like a bitch.”

“Okay, I’m supposed to find the fact you’re a seasoned man”—she put emphasis on the word ‘man’—“not sexy?”

He was blushing. “When you put it that way…”

“Anton and Andrew are neighbours of mine, fellow art students. I’ve painted, photographed and practically photocopied their asses a hundred times. I had a school project and they helped me out.”

“Am I allowed to be uncomfortable about them helping you out without wearing clothes?”

“No.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t remember asking.”

He huffed out an exasperated noise. “Do you have to be so inflexible, woman?”

“I’m inflexible?”

“I’m jealous.”

“I get that.”

He rubbed his forehead against hers. “Do you like them more than me? Do you like their bodies, did they get you hot—?”

“What? No!”

“Did they kiss you, touch you?”

“You’re really crazed.”

“Just answer the question. Be specific.”

She let out a long drawn out sigh. He took her hand, meshing their fingers. Why was she allowing that when she was still so hurt and angry?

“Specifically no.”

Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders. “I want to be there the next time you hold a photo shoot in the nude.”

“Hey, I wasn’t. Nude, that is.”

He blinked. “I guess not.”

“Are you done? Because I need to open soon.”

“You look like hell.”

“I feel like it.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I just don’t know what a woman like you would see in me.”

“That’s our problem, isn’t it?”

“Can I hold you?”

“What good will that do?” She was suddenly so tired.

“I don’t know.” He carefully pulled her into his arms. “You could have any man you wanted.”

She gripped his T-shirt. “After all these months of coming in here, of talking to me, of sharing and becoming friends, you think I want anyone else?”

“I think right now you want anyone else.”

“Okay, yeah.” Now he had her laughing again.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that you’re so beautiful and experienced and… I’m just a guy.” He dropped his head.

“My guy.”

“Yeah?” His face lit up like a sunbeam.

“What do we do now?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. Would you come to the wedding?”

Dharma stiffened. “Your ex-wife’s wedding?”

Fred rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m hating it without you. And I need to show up because I’m not going to force my girls to go…”

At that, Dharma grinned. “They have other plans, huh?”

“They hate the idea. All week they’ve been making my life hell and I thought…why should they go? Is there a scoreboard out there saying they aren’t good daughters, good people if they skip their estranged mother’s wedding?”

Dharma sagged against the counter. “No scoreboard. So you’re just going to let them be kids and not try to force them into a mould? And you ask why I’m”—she swallowed—“crazy about you?”

“Unfortunately, I’m an adult, so I have to attend. Make it bearable and come with me? I’m useless without you, baby.”

His head was against her neck and she loved the feel of him, all big and masculine and needing her. She felt encompassed by him, as if this was her place.

“Yes, I’ll go. I didn’t like both of us reverting to being single again.”

“Because after what we did…we aren’t.”

She nodded. As crazy-fast as it had happened, the kinky sex, the decision to take a risk had bonded them in a way that she didn’t quite understand. She only knew she craved more.

“You’re feeling insecure with me, so why not find a way to be sure?” she prodded, wrapping her arms around his neck.

His eyes widened, then grew calculating. “Taz suggested I bring you over to a special place he visits sometime soon.”

Just like that she felt herself getting wet. It was his tone of voice, like he’d down shifted into a more primal part of himself, channelling his dark side.

As if to prove her right, he slid one hand under her skirt. She gasped when he reached her panties. He cupped her, squeezed, and she moaned, trembling, her legs opening wider for him.

He slid his hand under her thong and smirked when she soaked his fingers.

“You can’t wait for me to dominate you again.”

“No,” she whispered. “After Taz used that crop on me, I looked at my ass in the bathroom mirror until the marks faded.”

“You liked them?”

“I did like them. I surprised myself.”

“Me too, by how hot it was to watch him giving them to you.”

Their breathing had picked up.

“How soon before you have to open?” Fred demanded.

“Five minutes.”

“Enough.”

He strode to the front and drew down the screens. When he turned around, Dharma’s panties were on the floor. His eyes flared. He grabbed her by the hips and put her on the counter.

“How do you feel about getting fucked hard, right now?” His voice was hoarse.

She whimpered.

He pushed up her skirt and spread her wide. “You’re not pregnant?”

She shook her head.

“Rationally I’m glad. It’s too soon.”

“I know, I know.” But she’d wanted to be pregnant. She couldn’t understand the overwhelming want of it. It swamped her now. Down, hormones, she ordered. This wasn’t the time, not yet. She wanted Fred with all her heart, but they couldn’t just be together so easily. Could they?

He fished a condom out of his wallet and pushed down his shorts, wasting no time in covering himself. Freed, he was long and thick and she couldn’t stop from reaching out and stroking him, wanting him to come home inside her.

“Oh, fuck, don’t do that, or I’ll come.”

She smiled.

He lifted a brow. “Do I have to order you to stop?”

“Probably.”

He jerked her to the edge of the counter and thrust into her.

Dharma screamed, her legs wrapping around him.

Fucking—it was fucking in the crudest and most wonderfully delicious sense of the word.

He used love names, sex names. He pulled one of her thighs open. “I need deeper in that sweet little cunt.”

“Yours.”

He reached between them and gave her a possessive squeeze. “Damn straight. When”—he frowned, panted—“does your shift end today?”

“Uh…five.” She couldn’t think. She was on fire, living for every drag of his big cock. The only thing that could have made this better was if they’d had time for him to give her a spanking before he fucked her. At the thought of that, she groaned, almost feeling the impact of his hand on her ass, seeing her offering it to him, pink from his swats. He’d take her from behind so she could feel her spanking, could feel how he owned her.

“I’ll come back tonight. Don’t put the panties on. I want you to feel where I fucked you all day. I want the air to touch you and remind you that when you close I’m going to do you again. In fact, you better get used to me bending you over this counter after work.”

Her body was luscious and wet, receiving him slickly. He pinched her nipples—hard—and she arched her back. “Need it…from you.”

“Only from me,” he growled.

“Yes.” He caught her hands above her head and held her gaze as he fucked her. He wouldn’t let her look away for a second. She could hide nothing from him, not her thrill in her submission, not her body’s reaction to him, not the way she burned between her legs to come.

“You want to be outrageous, Dharma? You do it with me. If I decide I want to watch another man touch you or even fuck you, it’ll be on my terms, at my command.”

His words touched her off, sent her flying so she contracted tightly around his cock, over and over again as she groaned, giving it up for him.

Chapter Nine

Dharma sucked in a breath before smacking the golden lion door knocker against the black lacquered door.

There was a long pause then the door to the discreet club where Fred had asked her to meet him Friday night opened. A young man raised an eyebrow and Dharma told him she’d been invited by Taz, using Taz’s real name—Norman.

No wonder he preferred his nickname. It didn’t suit him, unless you thought about Norman conquerors, medieval knights and broadswords. That was the kind of Norman that fitted Taz.

“You’re expected,” the man said and Dharma took in what he was wearing. Black leather pants and no shirt. His hazel eyes were sober but gave the impression he’d break into a smile at any time. When he turned his back to lead her into the mansion, she saw red welts on his back.

“All you need for tonight’s entertainment is in this room.”

She was shown into a small bedroom off the foyer. There was a brocade covered bed, a painting of a seascape and the suggestive perfume of white lilies on a dresser. Somehow the room felt hotel-like and anonymous although it was very classy.

On the bed she saw two scraps of pink, and not baby doll pink but fuchsia, one of her favourite colours. She remembered telling Fred in one of their endless conversations at the coffee house how she liked colours that were alive.

He’d laughed and said he wished he had her courage. He just stuck to beige and black. She’d leaned over close to him and whispered that he didn’t need clothing to look good. In fact, she bet the opposite was true.

He’d blushed, of course.

She smiled now at the memory. “Thank you. After I, ah, change, what do I do?”

The young man shrugged. “Wait here. Someone will come for you. Oh, and your car and clothing will be delivered to your home if you’re not, um, in the state of mind to deal with it later.”

Very intriguing. Dharma put down her purse and pulled off her red halter top and bra. Too bad Fred wouldn’t get to see it—yet. When she was nude, she picked up the first piece of lingerie and another memory hit her. It was the duplicate of something she’d seen window shopping in town, a sexy peek-a-boo set she’d actually confessed to Fred she had a weakness for but couldn’t afford—and this was months ago. Had he bought it for her way back then? He must have.

She slipped on the panties, which were a ring of frothy pink that accented but in no way concealed her sex. The bra came up to her nipples, lifting and cupping her breasts as if for a man’s hands. Looking at herself in the mirror, she had never seen herself look more frankly sexual. She looked like a rich man’s toy.

Her hair was up. On impulse she tugged out one of the pink ribbons she’d used free, leaving it messier and more suggestive. The ribbon she tied around her neck, making her look like a gift.

A knock at the door. It opened a second later, revealing Taz and Fred.

Both men were dazzling in black turtle necks and jeans, hinting at the superb conditioning of their bodies and showing off their darkly tanned skin, but Dharma automatically took her cue from Fred.

He looked grim with his skinned blond hair, his blue eyes focused on her with hungry intensity. His gaze ran over the bra and panties and the way they showcased her assets.

Fever burned, making her nipples harden, aching for the first touch of his mouth, making her body slick, wanting his fingers.

The atmosphere pulsed, dark and anticipating.

Going with instinct, Dharma went directly to Fred and fell to her knees, wrapping both arms ardently around one leg.

She heard him suck in a shaky breath, then felt his hand cup her head, big and callused and full of possession. “Oh, baby, you look good like that. I want to see you like this all the time.”

His hand messed her hair up even more so it fell around her. He nudged her with one boot so she was riding the leg she’d been hugging. She gasped at the ruthless feel of cool impersonal leather against the most intimate part of her body.

“Like that?”

“Yes.”

“So hot for it.” Taz also caressed her hair, making no secret of the burn of appreciation in his dark green eyes. “She’s the perfect sub for you, Fred.”

Dharma felt a thrill at their appreciation. She decided this was part of what she liked about the games she and Fred were playing, the way she felt worshipped, as if he would do anything to please her.

As if he were reading her mind, he said, “I think I’ll call you Aphrodite when you’re dressed like that. Christ, you stop this old man’s heart.”

“Old?” She cocked a brow. “Experienced, tempered, male.”

He closed his eyes, his face tightening. “You make me feel all those things.” His eyes snapped open. “Only you.”

His gaze again demanded more than her submission, but her commitment. Her throat dried because it was a holy-shit-I’ve-never-done-this kind of commitment. The kind that would make her his woman, on a roadside when he took her, at the office when he pulled her onto his lap in his office and kissed her, on rainy winter nights when she had the flu so she slept in late in their bed.

Their bed.

Whoa.

What was she thinking?

She didn’t do this kind of commitment. She played, she had fun, she invited men or the occasional woman into her bed for a hot tumble.

She didn’t live with a man with two daughters.

She didn’t make a baby with that man.

But hadn’t they almost done that?

What had Fred done to her with his shy smile and his rock hard body and his steely determination, giving her more pleasure than she’d ever experienced?

Wily male.

There was a sharp mind behind that sweet smile, behind her friend. And tonight was more of the taste of the forbidden he was carefully offering her. As if he planned to make her addicted.

“Here are the rules,” Taz said, folding his muscled arms. “Fred will allow you to be touched and spanked. Everything else requires his approval.”

Dharma’s heartbeat accelerated. She wanted to ask questions, but she was also dying not to—because she liked the suspense of not knowing what would happen. She’d never been to a club like this.

Fred reached down and helped her to her feet. He cupped the back of her neck firmly so that she felt collared by his touch. Taz led the way down a rich cherry-panelled hallway, fragrant with the same white lilies.

Dharma was conscious of the lustful looks she garnered from both men and women as she walked past wearing her peek-a-boo underwear. Fred didn’t let go of her neck, as if he needed to assert his ownership.

They entered a large great room with a state of the art stainless steel kitchen to one side and a sunken living room with a towering beach rock fireplace. A couple of young men were sprawled on the couches. They straightened immediately when they spotted Taz. Dharma saw respect and a touch of apprehension in their gazes, as if the younger firefighter inspired both.

Then she noticed something else about the strangers—they bore an uncanny resemblance to Andrew and Anton, her favourite models.

She frowned at Fred, but he was being careful to avoid her gaze. What are you up to? She wondered. Did he feel a need to recreate the night they’d fought but maybe this time deliberately place himself in the picture?

“No one else will enter the room while we’re here,” Taz spelled out and Dharma snapped her attention back to him, appreciating that he was listing the rules for tonight’s game. She also appreciated the pause that always followed his announcements, as if he were giving her and Fred time to talk if she was uncomfortable about something.

Her gaze flashed to Fred and she saw him watching her quietly, even as he continued to blush. He tapped one foot, letting her know he was both restless and slightly embarrassed by the force of his anticipation.

But he wanted this. He wanted her spanked and touched and looked at by other men, all while he watched, all while he alone had the power to grant or deny her favours.

It hit her then that this was new to him too. Why else would he be working with Taz? He wanted everything safe and consensual for her, and on the job, he had to rely on Taz in life and death situations. There couldn’t be a deeper trust than what the two men already shared.

The thought made her throat tighten. She supposed other women would appreciate a bouquet of flowers, but this was a gesture of caring, what Fred was offering her. This was a well-thought out campaign to win her sexual subservience.

And it was working. Goddess, was it working.

“Go kneel by the couches,” Taz ordered her. “You’ll serve us food and drinks from the kitchen if we request it…and don’t be shy about showing off.”

Showing off? Dharma’s eyes widened as she mulled over the possibilities as Fred and Taz settled in the seating area.

Oh, she was good at showing off. And right now her blood was singing to do it for one man, to perform for him and make him crazy to have her and only her.

She walked over to the two good looking blond men. Instead of kneeling in front of them, she climbed onto the lap of the first one, her legs open, revealing not just her sex, but her backside fully to Taz and Fred’s view.

She heard Fred suck in a breath. Oh, she was getting to him. Her bashful voyeur.

“What’s your name, sugar?” she purred.

“M-Michael Millar.” He gave Fred a nervous look then tentatively stroked her rear end. She arched into his touch, enjoying it.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Millar, you’ll never be a dominant when you stutter if a beautiful woman sits on you,” Taz said in disgust.

Dharma looked at Taz, arching a brow. “Are you saying I can’t make a man stutter?”

Appreciation lit his eyes. “More like bring him to his knees if he’s not tough.”

Dharma let herself fall back onto the couch. Pretty soon Michael and Tony, the other cute guy, were freely touching and kissing her body. She squirmed, getting more turned on by the second and it suddenly hit her that she hadn’t felt any desire like this the night she’d done her photo session. In the past she had fooled around with her neighbours. What was different tonight was Fred’s presence. His watching her through hooded eyes heated her blood. She was writhing for him. She wanted to catch and hold his attention. She wanted to drive him to the point that he put his hands on her, where he spanked her for being a little too alluring to other men.

As she watched his chest rise and fall sharply, she thought she might be driving him to that point, but every time she thought he’d spring to his feet and claim her…he didn’t. At first she was confused, but when Michael began to stroke her pussy, teasing her into a frenzy, she understood—Fred was quietly asserting his control.

He mastered himself so he could master her.

She held his gaze, her body sizzling, craving an orgasm that the other men were not permitted to offer her. “Please,” she whimpered.

One corner of his mouth lifted. He recognised that she’d got his point.

“Come here, Dharma.” His voice was rough velvet temptation. She abandoned her ardent admirers without a backward look and saw Fred’s eyes heat as he watched the byplay. She couldn’t have made it more clear who she wanted to be with.

She sat on his lap, putting her arms around his neck. “You don’t need to work to keep my attention. I’ve given it to you for months now,” she said.

“I don’t want to be only your friend. I’m not some sexless—”

She laughed.

“Is that what you are—sexless?”

“Wench.” He slapped her rump and her eyelids fell. He rubbed the heat mark his palm had left. The squeeze and pressure of his fingers had her panting. He watched her, the pointing tips of her nipples, the flush over her chest, her hot, succulent body currently rubbing urgently against his knee. “If I decided you wouldn’t get to come tonight, what would you do?”

“I would be very, very desperate.”

He palmed her ass, massaging it intensely so that she trembled, thinking she might climax just from those rough hands rasping against her skin. “But you wouldn’t pout. You’d accept.”

“You’re teaching me to accept,” she said, holding his gaze. “You’re training me, aren’t you? As much as Taz is training you.”

He gave a brisk nod that sent another whip of heat through her clit.

“What will you do with me when I’m trained?”

His fingers delved into her pussy, caressing her folds so she moaned, unable to stop herself from thrusting against his hand. She was feverish with the need to come, but she wanted to come for him, not just for herself. She wanted him to watch her, to know that at the height of her moment, she performed for him.

“Anything I want.” One finger penetrated her and she gasped. “Men adoring you should be old hat to you.”

“You’re making everything new, exposing…me.” And it hurt, to be opened so much, to have all these raw emotions rise up. Why was it happening? It was just kinky sex, wasn’t it?

Humour lit his eyes. “In more than one way. Take off the lingerie and plaster yourself against the coffee table.”

Panting, she wobbled to her feet. Her pulse was racing, sending impulses that fired like a drug through her system. She barely managed to tug off the bra.

Fred didn’t help her at all, but just watched her lazily, his gaze focusing on her shaking hands.

She was conscious of the other men watching as well, of the want in their eyes. She put her fingers under the panties and dropped them, then freed her hair.

Completely nude, she leaned over the coffee table, feeling its hard surface against her breasts, how it plumped them up and made her more conscious than ever of her female curves, how the position raised her ass.

Taz reached over and ran a hand down that ass, as if to remind her of her place. Even that little sting of humiliation did nothing but make her wetter, hotter, so that she shifted restlessly against the table.

What would Fred decide to do to her like this? Would he command one of the men to discipline her? Would she be ordered to suck one of them off? Or would she be fucked?

The last thought made her hands curl into the wood like claws.

“She’s primed,” Taz said.

“She’ll get what she needs, in my way, in my time.” Fred was on his feet. Dharma turned her head to look up at him. Please, her eyes begged him.

“Hold still,” he warned her. “Don’t move, you’re beautiful like this.”

She nodded, her throat too dry for speech.

He inserted his leg between hers then lifted it so his boot brushed against her weeping sex. “Feel that?”

She closed her eyes. Her body was screaming. “Oh, yes.”

He put his boot back down on the floor and she couldn’t help shuddering in disappointment.

“Drop down, press your body against it.”

There was something so intimate about this, about Taz and the other two men watching as she lowered herself so she was sitting on one of Fred’s boots. His leg between hers felt vaguely threatening and completely domineering.

“Polish it.”

With a whimper she began to work herself against the leather. At this point she was so aroused she didn’t care if she looked like a needy little sub. She was. Somehow this wasn’t an amusing game they were playing anymore. She was changing, like she was a rose and petal by petal Fred was opening her, claiming every part of her.

“You’d fuck yourself against anything right now if I told you to do it,” Fred said.

The truth was crude, a slap, but it only made her work harder. What if he took that boot away? She’d been teased to the point of pain. She needed to come, would do anything to come right now.

“Slow down.”

She moaned in protest but managed to jerk her body to a halt. Shivering, she held position, but when he didn’t remove the boot, she began cautiously to move again.

“I think you need something in your mouth.”

She thought she guessed what would happen next, but Fred, as always, was not predictable.

Taz lifted something from the table. It was chocolate, shaped like a penis.

Chocolate…

“It’s carob,” Fred whispered, as if he wanted to soothe her. “Safe for my pet.”

She opened her lips and Taz fed it slowly into her mouth. She felt the avid gazes of all the men in the room as she closed her eyes and savoured the treat as if she were sucking cock.

It was easier to bear the pain of her need with her attention diverted to pleasing Fred. She nibbled gently, letting Taz thrust in and out of her mouth, while barely moving her pussy against Fred’s boot.

Suddenly time seemed to stretch, where the suspension of her pleasure was exquisite and she wanted it to go on and on. Her body felt heavy, rooted to the floor while her head was almost spacey. Incredible peace weighed her limbs. She was totally focused on sucking the carob treat with its hint of cinnamon, the smooth melt in her mouth, milky on her tongue.

Her heavy eyes opened and she looked up at Fred. Would it be his body she pleasured the next time they did this? She licked her lips, and he shuddered.

“Christ!”

He lifted his boot, nudged her sharply. She came instantly, but even the obedient contractions of her body felt warm and removed, as if she was somewhere higher, floating, while being totally in this moment.

Her pleasure was like spikes of a sea urchin, spreading out, flaring in incredible colours against the backs of her closed eyelids. When it was finally over she collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

Blinking, she felt the carpet mashed against her face. She was lying on the floor and Fred was cursing, checking out her head.

“I don’t think she hit it when she fell,” Taz said.

“I’m sure she’s okay. It’s a thick rug,” another voice said.

All she could do was look up, holding Fred’s worried gaze. She couldn’t smile, she couldn’t seem to reassure him. Floating…

He swung her up into his arms. “Baby, please be okay.”

She closed her eyes, aware of him carrying her, aware when they left the club and the cool evening breeze brushed her skin. He hadn’t bothered redressing her, just ran with her to his truck. He put her in the passenger seat, buckled her in then took off his sport coat, throwing it over her. His eyes were scared, his hands gentle.

“F-Fred.”

He climbed into the driver’s side.

His face was white and tense.

“’Mmmm okay.” I’m okay. Don’t…worry.

“Dharma?”

It was like lifting a house, but she managed to flop a hand against his thigh.

“You aren’t hurt? I can take you to the ER.”

She remembered the last time she’d gone there. Fred had been waiting for her when the doc had checked her out. He’d driven her home and stayed the night on her couch, not wanting to leave her alone in case her arrhythmia reoccurred.

“Isss not m’heart.”

He stared at her.

“Feel…really good.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Taz tapped on the driver’s side window. Fred released it down.

Taz was looking at her, examining her face with an experienced gaze.

“She’s fine, Fred. Fred, man, she’s fine.”

As if he knew he wasn’t reaching Fred, he reached in and grabbed the other man’s arm, tugging sharply.

“You took her high, really high. Your lady is very happy right now, that’s all.”

“Mmmmm,” Dharma agreed.

Taz backed away from the truck. “Take her home. Watch over her.”

Fred looked at her. A second later, he pulled out of the parking lot, driving fast, jaw flexing.

Dharma kept her hand on his big thigh. She kept stroking him and gradually they slowed down. Gradually his muscles didn’t feel like unyielding iron under her touch.

When he parked at his house, he looked at her. “The girls are staying with their mother tonight. It’s okay, we’ll be alone.”

She hadn’t thought of it before he brought it up. She couldn’t muster much feeling about it one way or another. The lovely floaty feeling persisted, and she wanted it to. She didn’t want to think.

Shielding her with his body, he carried her quickly inside his house. The beauty of it, along with the scent of basketball practice and hair gel, of man and leather jacket greeted her. He carried her upstairs, kicking a door shut behind them.

She’d never been in his bedroom. Dazed, she could only stare up at the round skylight over the bed. The moon shone down on her like a blessing, cool silver light soothing everything, giving it a gentle sepia colour.

Fred stripped away his coat and placed an afghan over her. He pulled her tight into his body and she lay there, limp and wildly happy.

She loved him, she loved him and she was in his arms with a lover’s moon overhead.

She closed her eyes and he held her as she sailed away.

Chapter Ten

Dharma woke with her face squished into Fred’s neck, her hand fisted in his sweater and one leg hooked over him. He was staring at her and she wondered if he’d slept at all. It didn’t look like it.

“I’m not making a getaway, ma’am, I promise,” he drawled.

Her lips quirked. She felt sleepier than she could ever remember, except for when she’d had a bout of the flu a couple of months ago.

“How do you feel?”

“Heaven,” she croaked.

“Really?” Concern still darkened his eyes.

“Yep.”

“Taz said it was subspace. He’d told me about it but—” Fred ran a harried hand through his hair. “You weren’t supposed to go there, not yet!”

Her lips quirked again. “Sorry.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “You fell like a champion boxer after a knockout punch.”

“I didn’t feel it.”

He ran his hands ran over her head again. Her hair was so mussed, she figured it was not the first time. “No bumps that I can find.”

“I feel really good. Like…” She still wasn’t quite tracking, as if the route between emotion and expressing it had been burned out. It wasn’t a bad thing at all. She was somewhere else. Nirvana. “Like I’ve eaten chocolate mousse and been massaged at a spa and gone swimming and had the most incredible sex in my life.”

“Hmmm.” He reached out for a pitcher and glass, pouring her some water and holding it for her so she could drink. She drank three glasses before her thirst was quenched.

“What did you do to me?”

“It wasn’t me. It was—”

But she only shook her head. “Let’s…let’s be clear that it was you. I never would have done that stuff with you and Taz if it hadn’t…been you. Because even though I’ve fantasised about two men, it’s not safe, you know? But you gave me that.”

His mouth was still a grim line, but his eyes were so alive, eating her up.

“And tonight… I never wanted to go to a club like that. I have no interest in Taz, or those other two guys, whatever their names were.”

His lips curled at this.

“But you made the difference. Everything I experienced was because you got me so hot, so out of myself that I could…be free somehow.”

“Oh, you were free, all right.”

“Can we do it again sometime?” she asked wistfully.

Fred looked both proud and like he wanted to bang his head against the wall. The line between her heart and her actions was reconnecting. He’d set her free, and now he anchored her, brought her back to him because he needed her. “I really want you inside me now,” she said.

“Dharma.” He laughed, a broken sound, a sound of exasperation and surrender. “You could have been hurt.”

“No.” She squeezed his arm. “Never with you. We just didn’t know how high you could take me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Lover,” she whispered, kissing his chin. “BMF.”

That got his eyes open. “Huh?”

“Best male friend.”

“Of course.”

She kissed his ear then whispered directly into it. “Master.”

He shuddered and she knew she had him.

“I’m wet. I can still feel that I’m wet.”

“You came so hard, so long… I thought it would kill me. I nearly came, watching you,” he groaned. “And I’m too old for that—”

“Excuse me, but you had better start redefining the age thing,” she interrupted. She took his hand and placed it very deliberately between her legs. When he felt how sodden she still was, how she throbbed against his hand, his eyes widened. “This is what you do to me.”

His eyes flared. “I wouldn’t leave you in need. A good Dom would never do that.”

“Mmmm, let’s hear it for good Doms.”

He shoved his clothes off then he parted her thighs, touching her, exploring her as if he couldn’t believe how ready she was. She was tender too, so she sucked in her breath, her nerve endings sparking.

As if he read her, he gentled his touch, stroking her until she moaned, lifting her hips wantonly for his caresses.

“There’s no one here tonight?” she asked.

He blinked. “Ah, no. Just us.”

She leaned close to him and whispered a special request.

Two minutes later, Fred laid her on her back on his kitchen island. They were shadows in the darkened kitchen. Dharma felt like another woman in the softened light, ripe and primitive.

Perspiration slicked Fred’s face. His erection was huge and swollen.

He tugged her ankles until her ass rode the edge of the counter then splayed her wide. Holding her gaze, he palmed himself. “Should I cover myself?”

It hit her, that they were at this precipice again. How had they got here again so fast? Then she accepted that every time they made love, there would be this need, this want, to not use protection.

“It’s selfish and irresponsible to just do this without you moving in first, without a period of adjustment for the girls to get used to you, without—”

“No,” she said, gripping his hand and squeezing it. “If they don’t have to go to a wedding they don’t want to attend, why should we put our lives on hold? I want this. I don’t know why, and it doesn’t make any sense, but I want you to make me pregnant.”

“You’re moving in,” he growled.

She felt a brief pang for her little apartment, but maybe she could still keep it as a studio. “All right.”

When he pressed against her it was Nirvana again and she felt so peaceful. Not floaty and out of this world, but her heart was quiet. This was right.

He thrust into her, massive. He grunted as he began to fuck her and she kept her feet flat so she could savour it even as her bobbing breasts seemed to madden him so he cupped and squeezed and ran his open mouth against them.

She squeezed him with her inner walls and felt her pleasure increase. He lifted her, rubbing her open body every time he pounded her, so that she had no choice but to come while he spurted hot and deep inside her.

He collapsed on her and they both fought for breath. His whole body was trembling…or was that hers? Finally he hefted himself onto the island and spooned her.

“This is not the bed I hoped to share with you tonight,” he grumbled.

“We’ll get up. Two minutes.”

“You are so falling asleep.”

She yawned hugely.

His hand cupped possessively over her sex, one finger gently penetrating her, stroking little delightful aftershocks.

He lifted her leg.

“Again?” But she wanted him, despite being sore and swollen, she couldn’t get enough of the white heat of his fucking her.

“Again,” he said. “And again.”

Chapter Eleven

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Dharma asked Stacy over a pumpkin spice latte in Coffee Dreams the next morning.

She was trying to cover for the fact she was feeling incredibly self-conscious. Stacy and Mattie had returned home to find Dharma climbing out of their Dad’s shower. Then she’d discovered Fred had gone through his eldest daughter’s clothes in search of something for her to wear to work since she didn’t have time to go home first.

She was opening and Sian didn’t come in until ten lately because her pregnancy could leave her exhausted mornings—but full of life at night. Go figure with hormones.

Dharma wondered if she were going to get up close and personal with them herself the way she and Fred were carrying on… He’d had her on the stairs, in the shower and finally in bed just before dawn, all without any protection.

Which brought her back to this kid who was giving her a direct look, as if to tell her to knock off with the chipper act.

Okay, so she would. She sat down beside Stacy, exhaling in relief.

“Do you often sit with the customers?” Stacy asked, the superior act back. Oh, goodie.

“Nope. But we’re not officially open yet.” Dharma narrowed one eye. “Are you sure you want to be here today?”

“It is ‘Take your Daughter to Work’ day,” Stacy said. She bit into a raisin scone. “And since your my Dad’s GF, you qualify.”

“Okay. Look, I’m sorry about the clothes. I’ll have them dry cleaned and I will never, ever allow your Dad to do that again. He doesn’t understand what a boundary he crossed.”

“He didn’t know I had Victoria’s Secret P.J.’s until this morning,” Stacy grumbled.

Dharma had to grin, that would have been an eye-opener for a single dad.

Stacy traced a pattern on the counter. “So are you, like, going to be around all the time?”

Dharma sighed. If she were dating a single man, she could just bliss out and enjoy, but she wasn’t. Fred was a package deal. “Probably. Are you going to hate that?”

“You’re not my mother.”

“Please!” Dharma laughed. “You’re almost all growed up.”

Stacy seemed to relax. “I might be cool about the occasional night—without the closet sharing—if you talk to my dad about Jeff.”

“Oh.” So that’s what Stacy’s secret was. And Dharma had a feeling it was going to give Fred another heart attack. She knew that if Stacy had a boyfriend and he’d known about it, he would have shared before this. “You are so using and abusing whatever power I have over your Dad.”

“Get used to being manipulated.” Stacy smiled.

Dharma laughed. “You’re all right, kid.”

* * * *

Flames shot across the valley as if shot from a scatter gun. Fred saw another truck arriving on the scene, the red and blue revolving lights adding to the haze of hell in this burned out part of the landscape. Shouts came from his people desperately digging a fire break, trying to make a stand.

“Where are those goddamn water drops I ordered?” he growled.

The wind was picking up, playful and deadly, straight off the ocean.

He knew in his gut they were going to lose more ground…and on the hill below this valley was the beginning of their little part of town. The houses, the fire hall and the strip mall containing Coffee Dreams.

His woman was there. His child.

No, they weren’t. Dharma would have got his message. She’d clear out, keep Stacy safe.

Fire leapt like a merry bonfire, igniting brush so they exploded like puffy matches.

Losing it. “Fall back!” he yelled into the radio. “Fall the hell back!”

Way out in the field, Fred saw Taz tackle Luke. They went down in the trench. Verooom. The acid fire breath of the dragon. Sparks and debris whistled past.

Fire everywhere, unstoppable.

But somehow he would stop it.

“We have to get you out of here, now!” Dharma dragged Sian away from the spot fires erupting all around the little strip mall. There was a crazy wind, hot and full of sparks that tore at the women’s clothing and hair.

Oh, Goddess, they were going to lose the coffee shop.

“But Luke’s here somewhere. I feel him!”

Sian was ice cold and shaky in Dharma’s arms, tears running down her cheeks. “He’s hurt. I can feel he’s hurt,” she moaned.

“Listen to me, if he is, there is nothing you can do. You can’t stay here!” Dharma shoved her best friend into her car next to Stacy, who was pale and saucer-eyed, one hand pressed against the closed window. “We have to go. Now!”

She threw the little car into drive and they fishtailed out of the familiar parking lot. She heard the roaring sirens of approaching sirens. A fire truck past them, charging up the hill beyond Dharma’s little car.

She knew Fred was up there.

“Be safe,” she whispered.

* * * *

“How did the fire start?” Stacy asked Dharma hours later as they sat in the hospital waiting room. Sian had begun early labour pains so Dharma had taken her straight here from the coffee shop.

“Some orderlies were saying robbers ignited it deliberately to hide their escape from a convenience store.”

“Someone started it deliberately?” Stacy looked like she was going to cry. “We might lose our house.”

Dharma put her arm around the girl. “At least your sis is with her mother.”

“Shopping. Mom’s totally trying to buy our love.”

“Hey, don’t knock it, it’s a time-honoured tradition.”

Just then the swinging doors opened and Taz walked in. His face was blackened so his green eyes stood out like bleak emeralds. He walked as if he was caught in a nightmare.

Dharma leapt to her feet. Fred! Oh, God, had something happened to—

“Taz!” She snatched his arm.

He looked at her as if she was a ghost, barely visible to him before he shook her off, continuing to head down the hall. She watched as he talked to a nurse then collapsed in a chair.

“What is it, Dharma?” Stacy asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not your dad, honey.” Somehow she had to believe it.

A second later the door swung open again and Luke appeared, looking more exhausted than Dharma had ever seen him. His eyes darted frantically, found her.

“She’s all right!” Dharma called. “She and the baby are fine.”

Luke squeezed his eyes closed. He had a bandage on his forehead. “The coffee shop is gone,” he said hoarsely. “Sorry. I’m…” His voice was hoarse from smoke inhalation and a chill ran down her back. It was easy to forget sometimes that the men and women of Station 57 risked their lives. Every day, they did this, putting themselves on the line.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Sian created Coffee Dreams and she can do it again.”

Faint light sparked in his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we can do it. Where is she?”

“Next room to the right. But Luke, is Fred—?”

“Dad!” Stacy was suddenly crushed against Fred’s heavy fire retardant coat. A second later so was Dharma. She breathed in man and sweat and smoke and felt him, solid and exhausted and filthy. But alive.

He pulled back, looking them both over with bloodshot blue eyes. “Marilyn’s just behind me. She’s going to take you back to her hotel room, Stace,” Fred said. “I’m going to be on call through the weekend.”

Stacy nodded against his chest. Dharma guessed she was used to the tough side of being a firefighter’s kid.

“Come and sit for a moment,” Dharma said, guiding Fred carefully to where they’d been waiting. “Stace, can you get your Dad a glass of water?”

The girl raced off in the direction of the nurse’s station.

“You’re all right?”

He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath. “Yeah, but I’m afraid you’re out of a job for a while, honey.”

“I heard.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, as long as no one was hurt.”

“Just the poor folks the robbers held up in that store.” Fred looked over at Taz, who was slumped in his chair, head cradled in his hands. “They hurt someone he knows, a neighbour lady.”

“Oh, Fred.”

Fred looked deeply into her eyes then kissed her, a man to his woman kiss. She returned it. “I love you, I love you,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

His lips quirked. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Now…go talk to Taz. I think you might be the only one who can reach him right now.”

“You’re a tough broad, you know that? I knew you’d take care of everyone on the home front.”

Dharma crossed her arms, forcing herself to let go of Fred, to let him do what he needed for his men. “Apparently I’m going to have to be, living with you.”

“Try married to me, honey,” he said then laughed when her eyes popped.

* * * *

Fred had never felt more his age than he did walking down the corridor towards Taz. When he reached him, he didn’t speak. He just settled next to him.

Stacy appeared with a glass of water. Fred drank gratefully and pulled his daughter in his arms. She complained he was holding her too tightly. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Look, here’s your mother.”

Stacy grimaced. “Maybe she’ll take me shopping and make everything better.”

“Stace—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll let her have her shallow way with me.” Stacy gave him a level look. “One more thing—I like your girlfriend, but lend her my clothing again and you die.”

Before he could deal with what she’d said, Marilyn was there. Stacy let herself be led away with her sister and all he could feel was a rush of relief that his girls were safe. The fire could have raged longer, taken more homes, taken lives, but somehow his people had helped stop it.

It was worth all the aches and pains and knowing he was going to hurt like hell in the morning. And for several mornings after this one.

He saw Dharma and Luke talking down the hallway before disappearing into one of the rooms. Going to Sian? He’d heard she’d had contractions…

His eyes closed. Burning and sore and so tired…

He roused a while later. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Taz was gone and Dharma was holding his hand. Her brown eyes, her long hair and shapely figure made her a knockout, even as washed out as she was.

“Come home with me?”

She nodded.

“I have to change clothes, go back out into the field. We’re putting out spot fires…”

“Okay.” Brave and tough. And she loved him. Christ, he couldn’t believe it.

He had wanted nothing but her for months but told himself it couldn’t happen. He hadn’t let himself hope until she hadn’t been shocked and repelled by his darker side but aroused by it.

Mmmm. He pleased her.

And maybe if he kept working at things with her, trying to figure out this relationship with a younger woman thing, ideas would come to him like offered bouquets. His ex-wife, Marilyn, was going for it.

She was trying to find new love.

She was…brave?

It was a new way of seeing her, aside from the haze of bitterness like smoke in his eyes. So they hadn’t made a go of it, he and Marilyn. But he hadn’t loved her the way he did Dharma. And maybe the wanting to make a baby with Dharma right now wasn’t so crazy. He’d been a single dad long enough to know he loved it, and he didn’t have time to mess around if he was going to play a big part in his new kid’s life.

With Dharma’s hand in his, he led them both out into daylight and his truck.

* * * *

Fred was quiet on the drive to his house. Dharma had slid close to him as soon as he’d started up the truck, her arms around him, her face pressed against his shoulder. Now and then he stroked the back of her head protectively with one hand.

He liked her where she was, liked her blatant show of affection.

When he pulled into his garage, she blinked in surprise. Usually he parked outside.

The doors slid shut behind them and Fred freed her from her seat belt, then himself.

She was on him in a second, straddling him, kissing him, tears running down her cheeks.

“Oh, baby, it’s okay,” he soothed.

“Need you.”

He kicked back the seat and yanked her skirt up, tearing off her panties. He thrust his fingers into her and she gave a sharp cry.

Lying back, he let her free him, take him in her hand. A second later she was riding him, moving hot and hard in the too tiny space.

She was as beautiful as a dancer, her face glowing, her hair all around them. He shoved up her shirt and bra so he could palm her bouncing tits, remembering how he’d wanted to do this that night in the bar.

“Ummm.” She leant back, enjoying the hell out of riding him.

He wet a finger in her slick heat then traced it to her other opening. Her eyes shot open as he deliberately penetrated her there. “I’m going to take this pretty little ass sometime soon.”

“I’ve never…”

“You will. And you’ll like it.”

Her eyes were dark and serious as she nodded. “Yes, I will.”

He pushed his finger deeper, rubbing her harshly. She screamed and came, and he was right behind her, on fire with the idea of screwing her ass at that club. He’d take her against that coffee table. Maybe by then he would have her collared. It wasn’t something he wanted twenty-four seven, but he had decided he liked the idea of embracing certain traditions when they visited the place.

Besides, he wanted his ownership of her completely obvious, as if her coming on his cock or begging for his hand between her legs or slapping her ass wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever share her with another man again, not now he was feeling more confident of her feelings for him as a man, but he still liked the idea of showing her off.

And she was so okay with that.

She was, in fact, perfect for him. And he’d felt it down deep inside, all the time they’d talked and flirted in that coffee house.

“I’ll help you get out of those clothes,” Dharma said. “And you’ll need food and a hot shower.”

“If you share the shower with me, honey, I won’t have time to eat.”

She nibbled her lip. “Okay, I’ll overlook the lack of shower sex this once in the interest of feeding you.”

He brushed her lips with his. “I love you,” he said and had the pleasure of seeing her eyes pop a second time. “I’m putting an engagement ring on your finger before the end of the week. Got that?”

“Ah…yeah. Okay.” She looked completely dazed.

He planned to keep surprising her like that for a very, very long time.

Coming Soon from Totally Bound Publishing:

Men of Station 57: The Protective Dominant

Jan Irving

Released 11th April 2014

Excerpt

Chapter One

Jenny Ann Green was digging in her garden again.

Taz watched her from the open door of his kitchen, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

Dirt shot like it was geysered out of the ground, hitting her face, hitting the ratty-looking things in her gardening basket. She dropped her trowel and began tunnelling into the earth with her bare hands, more dirt whipping out, shooting onto the neatly kept grass.

“Fuck this,” Taz growled.

He reached her in seconds. Stood there, trembling. Closed his eyes. Don’t touch her, asshole. You can’t touch her.

But it was hard, so freaking hard not to yank her off the ground and into his arms.

“Jenny?” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat, balling his fists. Don’t scare her.

She kept on digging. She probably hadn’t heard him.

“Jenny, look at me, sweetheart.” A memory of a female voice mocking him for using the word ‘sweetheart’ came to him. Dharma, his friend Fred’s smoking new girlfriend. Yeah, she’d pointed out that using that word hadn’t suited him at all since he was such a bastard with women.

She’d been right.

He was.

He didn’t like women. He didn’t trust them.

They had their use and he kept what he wanted from them tightly compartmentalised.

With his head thrown back, he dragged in deep breaths, trying to centre himself. As an experienced dominant, he knew the first rule was to master yourself before you tried it with anyone else.

But it was so hard because Jenny got past all that. She was the crack in his armour that kept getting wider and wider, and it scared him because what the fuck would spill out if he kept letting her in? Nothing good. Absolutely nothing good, he knew.

When he had control, he knelt beside her, ignoring the dirt that she shovelled in his direction. Hell, the girl couldn’t even see him out of those spacey eyes so the dirt coming towards him was nothing personal.

Jenny was too polite, too sweet to ever throw dirt his way, much as he deserved it for the way he’d treated her.

He remembered the evening he’d come home and found that she’d planted flowers along his drive. “If I want fuckin’ flowers, I’ll plant them myself. Now get your ass off my property.”

Yeah, he’d been a real prince.

“Jenny Ann.” His voice was calm. “Jenny, wake up, sweetheart.”

No response. She was putting the weedy-looking things into the hole she’d dug. Damn, it was as deep as one Bo, his friend Mike’s golden retriever, routinely dug in Mike’s backyard.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m…” She frowned and looked down at the bulb in her fist. “Saffron bulbs. Come up in the fall,” she said in her honeyed Southern lady drawl.

“That’s good, Jenny,” Taz said. “But do you have to do this now?”

“Now…” She blinked. He could see her mind slowly coming back online. Suddenly she shuddered violently, looking around her.

It was killing him. He had to put his arms around her. “Jenny.”

She was ice cold. Ice cold. Shivering in her little threadbare nightie. No slinky red gown and red shoes for Jenny Ann. No, she went to bed alone in soft cotton, worn from too many washings.

He tried not to look at her nipples through the gown. She had larger breasts than he’d thought. She had a way of hunching her back or wearing too-large clothing so he hadn’t been able to see them clearly. He wanted to take them in his hands. Bastard, to be thinking that now.

“Let me go, let me go!” She was tearing at him, clawing, smacking—all of it so ineffectual because he was a big muscular guy and she was a tiny little thing.

Aching, he let her go. Watched her fall on her butt in the earth, watched her glance around frantically, getting her bearings. Her chest rose and fell. Finally she curled up in a little ball, a thready sound coming from her.

Panting, he stared.

“Oh, Jenny.”

When she didn’t move, he couldn’t take it anymore. He reached down and picked her up, tucking her ball shape under one arm.

And she growled at him.

Taz blinked. Frowned. That was new.

Women as nice as Jenny Ann didn’t growl.

“Stop that.” He tapped her butt then froze. What the hell was he doing? She wasn’t one of the women he used. But his palm wanted to stay on the warm, lush fullness, wanted to squeeze. She was not a stick woman. If a man made love to her, he’d sink in, be surrounded by feminine warmth.

Probably why she was so self-conscious about her looks, he thought with annoyance. Women shaped like women weren’t found on magazine stands or in movie theatres. They were made to feel ashamed of their curves.

He paused, realising belatedly that he’d automatically carried sweet little Jenny Ann to the door of his kitchen. What was he doing?

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Just hadn’t been getting enough sleep…

“Put me down.” Her voice was timid, uncertain. It would have broken his heart—if he had one.

Screw it. He shoved open the door and plunked Jenny on one of his kitchen chairs. She immediately pulled her legs up to her chest, shielding her body from him.

“Aw, hell.” He backed away from her, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just thought”—he blew out a breath and she jumped—“I’d make you an omelette.”

“Omelette?” She looked up at him, her dark eyes serious.

“Yeah. You know, it’s not just for breakfast anymore?” he cracked. She didn’t smile, but she also didn’t run, so he took it as a good sign.

She rubbed her forehead. Her long brunette hair was free of its habitual no-nonsense bun and he saw that it must be long enough to reach her plump ass. Jesus, what would it be like to lie down with her and have all that dark, silken stuff on his body?

He looked away.

“Anything you don’t like in your omelette?”

“Ah…” She blinked. “No. I’m not picky.”

“Good thing if you’re going to eat my cooking, sweet cheeks.”

He had a pan out before she said, again so softly he could barely hear her, “I don’t like being called ‘sweet cheeks’, thank you very much.”

He grinned, unaccountably happy to get a rise out of her. It sure beat coming home to her sitting on her porch swing, staring out at the horizon with haunted eyes. Or, worse, hiding in her house like she had for weeks after she’d been attacked.

Taz squeezed his eyes shut and blocked that thought. He couldn’t… He couldn’t think about that. Whenever he did, it made him crazy.

She was so delicate. A man his size could knock her over without a second thought and she’d been attacked by three men…

Don’t think about it. The pan rattled against the burner in his shaky grasp. He released it, then ignited the flame. A flashback of what she’d looked like in her hospital bed hit him. Her face covered in bruises, as if a man had beaten it with his fists, one eye swollen shut, the stitches on the side of her neck—

“I have some Jack cheese.”

“Okay.”

He glanced at her and saw she was sitting up at his table now, her head in her hands. “What time is it?” she asked, her voice sounding too tired for someone in their early twenties.

“Just after three a.m.”

Her lips stretched into a smile with no warmth. “Oh, that late, huh?”

“Because last night it was one thirty when you did your midnight gardening routine? Yeah, things are looking up, sweetheart. You’re getting closer to daylight hours.”

She swept him a look out of eyes the colour of moss agate. “You don’t have to get up every night and rescue me when I go bonkers.”

“Yeah, I do.” His voice was flat, uncompromising.

“Because you’re a professional fireman. I get it.”

He shrugged because no, she didn’t. Rescuing someone had always been secondary to him. It was the thrill of the dare, the risks he took that had made him who he was. He knew he lacked Battalion Chief Fred James’ commitment to serve and his best friend Luke Cade’s passion for helping people. He knew it but could experience only emptiness.

For him, it was the rush of doing something that might, just might, get him killed.

When he pictured what it meant to care about someone, he heard the snap of a lighter, the sound of his mother’s voice.

Hiding in a closet when he was very young. Making breakfast for her to sweeten her temper. He knew to run if any of her johns looked at him with interest but sometimes…he couldn’t get away…

“I have, what do you call them, fresh yellow peppers?”

A faint warmth in her eyes, like a spark in the darkness. “You raided my vegetable garden again.”

His lips quirked. “Guilty. But they are great with fresh steak.”

“I wouldn’t know. Vegetarian here.”

“Of course.” She was too nice to even eat meat. He had to stay away from her. He’d been trying for months but somehow she’d sneaked under his armour, so he watched her and wondered. Made it impossible for him to sleep through the night.

And made it impossible for him to leave her alone in her grief.

She hurt and he could feel it. It haunted him like wrenching music.

The contents in the pan sizzled, the only sound in his kitchen until the birds woke up and began to chatter outside as he made her omelette. When it was done, he cut it in half and placed it on two plates.

He sat down at the table next to her but not too close.

The strung wire tension of her shoulders seemed to ease. He wished he could reach out and push her hair behind one of her ears.

“It’s good.” She looked so surprised that he cocked an eyebrow.

“Glad you like it. It’s the first time I’ve ever made breakfast for a lady.”

She blinked. “You have, ah, ladies here all the time.”

He gave his attention back to his early breakfast. “They don’t sleep over.”

It was quiet again except for the sounds of their eating. When he glanced over to measure how much she was putting away, he relaxed when he saw she had ploughed through most of her omelette. She was a little thing, which oddly only made those lush breasts look larger.

“You’re right,” she said. “I never realised it, but your visitors’ cars are always gone in the morning. I, uh, just thought they were early risers.”

He had to grin at that idea, but then it sank in, how she’d had that insight into his private life. She was his neighbour, she knew things about him—when he forgot to put out the trash, what time he came home on a Friday night—and possibly insight into his unconventional love life.

The thought sent a burn of heat to the base of his neck. He didn’t know if it was embarrassment or arousal.

Jenny never made things easy on him. She was not an easy woman.

“Have you…talked to anyone?” He’d been dying to ask her the question for weeks, but she’d been so fragile when he’d first caught her in her sleepwalking act that he’d been afraid to push.

She swallowed hard and he got up, grabbed a mug and filled it with coffee fresh from his timed maker.

“Yes,” she said again in that very soft voice.

More questions rose to his lips. He strangled them down. She’s not ready to talk to me about this.

Although why Jenny would ever be ready to confide in him was an audacious thought. Just why did he imagine she’d want to do that? She was a shy little mouse and he…was not.

He fought off the urge to reach out and pull her onto his lap. Make her confide in him.

Patience.

She sipped the coffee. Her hands shook so that the liquid sloshed. Belated shock?

“Jenny.” He steadied her hands with his own until she settled. Her face tightened but she didn’t scream the way she had the first couple of times he’d woken her out in her garden. “Will you try something with me?”

Worried eyes studied him.

“A breathing exercise. You know I, uh, teach yoga?”

Her eyes widened. What had been running through that agile and secretive mind of hers? “Yoga, really?”

Colour burned his cheeks. “Yeah. I took some classes a while back and… Well, now I teach it, okay?” His tone sounded annoyed to his own ears.

She smiled. “Okay.”

“Breath work can be very calming to the body,” he continued, unable to meet the innocent curiosity in her gaze. He knew she was curious about him. She must sense that he had secrets. “Do you want to try?”

“Would I have to sit in the lotus position or something?”

“Nope. Just put down your mug and close your eyes. You can follow the directions of my voice.”

“I won’t, like, suddenly want to do handstands with one arm or something?”

He laughed, delighting in her sense of the ridiculous. “No, that’s hypnotising someone. I won’t do that.”

He reached out, took the mug from her and put it on the table. He saw with satisfaction that she’d eaten every scrap off her plate. Feeding her gave him a primitive kind of satisfaction, as if she was his woman to care for.

“Close your eyes.”

She chewed her bottom lip, which was pink and slightly less full than the top one owing to an overbite. He thought it was sexy as fuck.

“Close them.” Without thinking, he had used his commanding tone with her but oddly it didn’t seem to freak her out. Instead, she instantly obeyed.

“Now I want you to take some deep breaths. In and out, that’s it. Let your shoulders fall as if you’re sliding into a hot tub of water.”

“Like your hot tub out back?” When she smiled, she had dimples.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah.” Had she seen him out there in the nude?

“I’ve always wanted one of those, but I’d probably pretty mine up with landscaping, give it a fake waterfall.”

“That’s good. Picture renovating mine.” He let his voice drop, become roughened velvet to wrap around her. “You can hear the soft tinkle of falling water and above your head, a breeze is playing with the palm leaves, making them rub against each other.”

“They sound like paper crackling when they do that,” Jenny mused.

“Yes, that’s right, Jenny. As you float on your back you can pick out the stars, the planets hanging above you like points of light. You have nothing to do, nowhere you need to be.”

“Sounds so nice.” Her voice was wistful.

“Now I want you to close your lips and inhale slowly. That’s it, slow, yeah… And now, when you exhale, pretend you’re blowing towards a candle right in front of you. See it, Jenny, a pink candle with a slender flame. You want to blow just hard enough to make that flame flicker but not blow it out.”

A frown line briefly appeared between her eyes as she took her first two scripted breaths, but in only a moment she had it. Again he felt warmth move through him. He was helping her. It felt completely right that she was here, under his roof, fed by his hand, protected from the night terrors by his body and his voice.

“You’re doing so well, my good girl.”

When she slumped back in her chair, her face impassive with deep relaxation, he risked stroking her hair. “Mmmm.” She turned her face towards his touch.

His heart jolted.

Mine.

He yanked his hand back. What was he doing? He knew she’d only responded that way because he’d put her in a light trance.

“Jenny.” His voice was hoarse.

She didn’t respond this time. She was dead asleep, sitting upright in his kitchen.

He got up and quietly put away the dishes and cleaned up. He lived alone, but he was meticulous about cleanliness and not living the careless bachelor life.

Then he couldn’t put it off anymore. He knelt beside Jenny and carefully pulled her into his arms. She was very slight, her head resting against his collarbone.

His heart pounded as he just gazed down at her, seeing the purplish shadows under her eyes. How much sleep was she managing? He knew she worked at home as a computer programmer, which was probably the only reason she’d managed to hold her job while dealing with the fallout of her attack.

Did she catch a catnap only to wake in terror?

He was fucking tired of worrying about her.

He headed deeper into his house, past the door that led to the basement—which he’d have to remember to lock—and up to the second floor where he kept a home office, a master bedroom and the tiny guest room that consisted of a twin bed made up militarily neat. A couple of boxes sat in one corner. The room was barren of any life, but it wasn’t atypical of the rest of his house.

He laid her on the bed and covered her with an old quilt. She looked so small and pale, and again he flashed back to seeing her in the hospital. He remembered hearing her crying one night when he’d come to visit her. He’d frozen outside her room, unable to enter but also unable to leave, as if somehow it was important that someone heard Jenny Ann sob her heart out alone in the dark.

“Sleep, honey,” he whispered and then, because she wasn’t awake and he couldn’t make her afraid, he kissed her forehead.

Order your copy here

About the Author

Jan Irving has worked in all kinds of creative fields, from painting silk to making porcelain ceramics, to interior design, but writing was always her passion.

She feels you can’t fully understand characters until you follow their journey through a story world. Many kinds of worlds interest her, fantasy, historical, science fiction and suspense—but all have one thing in common, people finding a way to live together—in the most emotional and erotic fashion possible, of course!

Email: janmairving@gmail.com

Jan loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.

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Uncommon Cowboys: Shifter Cowboy

Uncommon Cowboys: Shy Cowboy

Uncommon Cowboys: Straight Cowboy

Uncommon Cowboys: Wounded Cowboy

Uncommon Cowboys: A Plain, Ordinary Cowboy

Uncommon Cowboys: Cowboy in Ravenna

Uncommon Cowboys: Lonely Cowboy

Power Games: The Wizard’s Boy

Men of Station 57: Forbidden Fire

Lightning Strikes: The Viking in my Bed

Lightning Strikes: The Alien in my Kitchen

Lightning Strikes: The SEAL in my Attic

Subspace: His Landlady

Totally Bound Publishing

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Legal Page

Title Page

Book Description

Dedication

Trademarks Acknowledgement

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

New Excerpt

About the Author

Publisher Page