Putting Out Fires Page 3

  “I’m sure Ang thought the whole thing was hysterical,” he said.

  “He did. He said I should just give you a blow job.”

  He laughed. “Well, I can’t say I’d object.”

  “He suggested I buy a leather harness.”

  Jared looked over at me with an appreciative glint in his eye that I recognized immediately. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “He also suggested eyeliner.”

  Jared laughed. “That isa bad idea. I’m not into that.”

  “Thank God,” I said, and he laughed again. “He said I should tie you down.”

  “If you want.”

  “Or that I should let you tie me down.”

  He glanced at me sideways, grinning a bit. “You do have handcuffs, you know.”

  “You’re saying you areinto that?”

  “I sure wouldn’t mind cuffing you to our headboard.”

  I didn’t know why I’d never thought of that before. Now that I was thinking about it, I felt my blood stir. I loved it when Jared was aggressive in bed, and I could imagine how he would be if I was helpless underneath him. I thought about the things he might do to me, each one a bit better than the one before. It turned me on more than I would have expected.

  I leaned across the seat and used a handful of his hair to angle his head away from me so I could kiss his neck. “I think I’ll let you.”

  “Good,” he laughed. But he didn’t allow me to continue. He pushed me away. “I’m holding you to that when we get home.”

  I definitely didn’t want to wait. I suddenly wanted very much to keep touching him, to get him off right there in the car, but I made myself move back to my own seat. After all, he was driving. It’d be pretty bad form if I caused him to wreck. I didn’t want to have to explain that to any of my fellow officers.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  I hadn’t been paying attention to where we were going, but now I looked. It was a place I recognized: a small dirt parking area next to a trail head. And even though I couldn’t see it, I knew that not far up the trail was a huge stone abutment. The Rock, as the local kids called it. And except for coming up here as a cop to bust a few teenage keggers, I’d only been here once: the day Jared and I met.

  I looked over at him in surprise, and found that he was actually blushing. “It’s a stupid idea, isn’t it?” he asked. “No,” I assured him. “It’s not.”

  The sun was setting, and we had our hands full of wine and glasses, and there were still small patches of ice and snow in places, so we didn’t climb the rock face as we’d done the day we met. Instead, we hiked up the side of the hill and then walked out onto the top of The Rock. We sat down on the edge, side by side as we’d been that first day. Jared handed me a juice glass full of wine, and we watched the western sky turn bright shades of orange and pink as the stars started to appear above us.

  Three years earlier it had been spring, the day bright and warm, the valley below us green and alive. Now it was cold and brown, but it was beautiful nonetheless. I thought about how pleased I’d been that day, sitting next to Jared on the rock. I’d known right then I’d found somebody who could be a friend, somebody who might be a kindred spirit. But I hadn’t dreamed how important he would end up being to me. He had become my best friend and my lover and my savior, and I could only marvel at how fate had led me into his family’s auto parts store that day to ask about the Jeep for sale out front. What if I’d never gone in? Coda was a small enough town that we would have met eventually, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t have been the same. The magic of sitting in this place with him would never have happened. I would never have admitted the secret I’d buried in my heart for so long—that I was attracted to men, that I had no idea how to truly love a woman—and I would have gone on forever dating girls, trying to make my father happy and failing, watching my mother linger in an unhappy marriage.

  And it wasn’t just my own life, or that of my parents, that had been affected. Jared’s life had changed too. If we hadn’t met, he might still be working at his family’s shop instead of teaching, as he’d really longed to do. If he’d stayed there, the shop might not have closed. We would never have met Zach and Angelo at all.

  Our entire life together seemed to hinge on that moment when I’d seen Lizzy’s Jeep for sale. I’d decided on a whim to ask about it, and he’d been the one behind the counter. Everything that I cherished was a result of the simple fact that I’d met him and that he’d brought me here to this place, for some reason I didn’t exactly understand even to this day.

  He meant the world to me. I loved him so much. I wanted to tell him all of it, how I knew my life hadn’t been the same since the moment we met. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t open up like that. Not even with him.

  Jared was already pouring himself a second glass of wine. I hadn’t even tried it yet. I took a drink and almost choked on it. “Angelo’s right,” I said when I’d finally managed to swallow it. “This tastes like dirt.”

  Jared laughed. “I kind of like it. The second glass goes down a lot smoother.”

  There wasn’t much light left at all, but I could tell that his cheeks were red from the cold. I could see the cloud of his breath in the cool air. I put my glass down and moved behind him so that he was sitting in front of me, between my legs. I wrapped my arms around him, and he leaned back against me with a sigh. I buried my face in his coarse curls. His hair was getting too long, and he kept threatening to cut it. I objected each time, but I knew I’d have to let him soon. It was getting a bit out of hand.

  “I’m sorry about the kitchen,” I said.

  “You’re forgiven.” He reached back and slid his hand in between us, down my stomach to cup my groin. He squeezed a bit, teasing me. “I really do want to cuff you to the bed.”

  “We can go home now, if you want.”

  “Not yet,” he said, letting me go to pour himself more wine. “We should do something fun first.”

  “That’s not fun?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I admitted. “It’s still early, and it isValentine’s Day.”

  “Exactly. And I’m hungry. All this wine on an empty stomach is giving me a nice buzz.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  He shrugged. “What’s Angelo showing tonight?” “Goodfellas.”

  “For Valentine’s Day?”

  “He says it’s Anti-Valentine’s. They’re serving nachos and wings and beer.”

  Jared turned his head so he could look back at me over his shoulder. “That sounds perfect.”

  And it did. That was the funny part. I’d been so determined to find something romantic, I hadn’t thought enough about us. We didn’t have quiet candlelight dinners. We didn’t watch tearjerkers. We drank beer and watched football and when it came to movies, we generally agreed that the more explosions, the better. How had I let myself forget?

  I sat there with my arms around him, sharing his body heat and smelling his hair while he drank more wine. “It’s almost seven,” he said after I had no idea how long. “We should get going.”

  I stood up and put a hand down to him to pull him to his feet. I’d only had the one tiny glass of wine, but he’d finished most of the rest.

  “I think I’m violating an open container law,” he said. “I’ll give you a ticket later,” I said as I took the keys from his pocket.

  I followed him to the car. Now that I wasn’t holding him close, I started to realize how cold it really was. Dark, too. Our only source of light was a fat gibbous moon. Going down took a lot longer than going up had. I was glad things had ended well, and yet, I still wished I had told him. I wished I had the nerve to open my mouth and say it all. Sometimes, I wished we weren’t both such guys.

  He stopped at the Jeep. It was the same Jeep we’d driven up here the day we’d met. The one I’d bought from his sister-in-law the very next day. He stared at it for a moment before turning to look at me, although in the dark I
couldn’t read the look on his face. He seemed to hesitate, and then he walked over to me. He put his arms around my waist and looked up at me. “I’m really glad you wanted the Jeep.”

  It made me smile. It was such a relief. It made every doubt in my head disappear. I didn’t have to tell him anything, because he already knew. We had always understood each other so well, and I realized what a fool I’d been to doubt it.

  Jared kissed me. His lips were cold, but his mouth was warm. I could taste the wine on his tongue, and it didn’t taste like dirt at all. It was sweet and tart at the same time, and he pulled me tight against him, his hands and the sounds he made as we kissed hinting at what would come later, once we were home.

  He pulled away from me, a bit breathless from the kiss. “Next year,” he said, “ignore Zach and take Angelo’s advice instead.”

  I laughed. “I will. But don’t you dare tell him you said that. I’ll never live it down.”

  His arms were still around me, and he threw his head back and laughed, which gave me a good excuse to kiss his neck again. “It’s a deal,” he said. “I won’t tell him about the handcuffs either.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  I held him tighter, burying my face in his hair. “Thank God for that too,” I said, mostly to myself. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  About the Author

  MARIE SEXTON was always good at the technical aspects of writing but never had any ideas for stories. After graduating from Colorado State University, she worked for eleven years at an OB/GYN clinic. She quit the clinic at about the same time she started reading M/M romances. At some point in the ensuing months, the static in her head cleared, and her first story was born.

  Marie lives in Colorado. She's a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other. In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband. Matt and Jared often tag along. Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity. She loves them anyway.

  Visit Marie's website at http://www.MarieSexton.net or find her on Facebook.

 

 

  Marie Sexton, Putting Out Fires

 

 

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