The chains of control shattered; madness broke free.

Through the haze of steam and passion he watched her eyes go blind. Still he drove her, himself, greedy for more until pleasure ripped through him and emptied him out.

She let her head drop on his shoulder until she could get her breath back. Might be a while, she realized, as she was currently panting like an old woman.

“Need a minute.”

She made some sound of agreement to the statement.

“If we try to move now, we’re both going to end up going down and drowning—after we fracture our skulls.”

“We’re lucky we didn’t do that already.”

“Probably. But we’d die clean and satisfied. I’m going to turn off the water. It’s going cold.”

She’d have to take his word for it. Her body still pumped enough heat to melt an ice floe. She managed her first full breath when he brushed his lips over her hair. She simply didn’t know how to react to sweetness—after.

“Got your legs under you?” he asked her.

“Steady as a rock.” Hopefully.

He let her go to reach out and grab towels. “It’s a sacrifice to give you anything to cover up that body with.” Before she could take it, he wrapped it around her, laid a warm, lingering kiss on her lips.

“Problem?” he asked her.

“No. Why?”

He trailed a fingertip between her eyebrows. “You’re frowning.”

“My face is reflecting the mood of my stomach, which is wondering why it’s still empty.” Which was true enough. “I’m starving.” She relaxed again, smiled again. “Between the jump and the shower bonus, I’m out.”

“Right there with you. Let’s go eat.”

She started to move past him to the bedroom, turned. “I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. You’ve got skills.”

“I also work well horizontally.”

Her laugh rolled out as she pulled out a T-shirt and jeans. “I think you’re going to have to prove it.”

“Now or after food?”

She shook her head as she pulled on clothes. “After, definitely. I’m in the mood for... Aren’t you getting dressed?”

“I’m not putting that stinking mess back on. I need to borrow your towel.”

She thought of the state of the clothes they’d both dragged off. “Just hang on a minute. I’ll get you some clothes.”

“Really?”

“I know where your quarters are.” She breezed out, strolled into his room.

He kept it tidy, she thought as she pulled open a drawer. Inside spaces, too. She grabbed what she figured he needed, took another quick look around. When she noticed the photograph, she stepped over for a closer study.

Gull, she noted, with what had to be his aunt and uncle, his cousins, all arm in arm in front of big, bright red doors.

Great-looking group, she thought, and the body language spoke of affection and happy. In front of the arcade, which, she realized by what she could see of it, was a lot bigger than she’d envisioned.

She took the clothes back, pushed them into his hands. “Hurry up and get dressed before I start gnawing on my own hand.”

“Hurry up and get undressed, hurry up and get dressed. Orders, orders.” He sent her an exaggerated smoldering look. “Dominant females make me hot.”

“I’ll see if I can find my whip and chain later.”

“Ah, a brand-new fantasy to explore.”

“Don’t forget to call me ‘Mistress.’ ”

“If you promise to be gentle. By the way, I like the tat.”

“Good-luck charm,” she told him. “If I wear the dragon, the dragon doesn’t wear me. How about yours?” She walked around to tap the letters scrolled over his left shoulder blade. “Teine,” she said.

“It’s pronounced ‘teen,’ not ‘The-ine.’ Old Irish for fire. I guess if I wear the fire, it doesn’t wear me.”

“It just gets to try us both on from time to time. How’d you get that one?” she asked, gesturing to the scar along his left ribs.

“Bar fight in New Orleans.”

“No, seriously.”

“Well, it was, technically, outside the bar. I went down for Mardi Gras one year. Have you ever been?”

“No.”

“Not to be missed.” His hair, still damp from the shower, curled at the collar of the shirt he pulled on. “I was in college, went down with some friends. After the revelry, we hit a bar. This asshole went after this girl. Sort of like the asshole who hassled you, but this one was drunker and meaner, and she didn’t have your style.”

“Few do,” she said with a grin.

“No argument. So, when I suggested he cease and desist, he objected. One thing led to another. Apparently he didn’t like the fact I was kicking his ass in front of witnesses, so he pulled a knife.”

The grin changed to openmouthed shock. “Well, sweet baby Jesus, he stabbed you?”

“Not exactly. The knife sort of skimmed along my ribs.” Gull motioned a careless finger over the spot. “He didn’t get much of me, and I had the pleasure of breaking his jaw. The girl was really grateful, so a night well spent.”

He tied his sneakers. “I have a spotted and unruly past.”

“You’re a puzzler.”

“Okay.” He held out a hand. “How about I buy you dinner and a couple of cold beers?”

“I say since meals come with the job, that makes you a cheapskate, but what the hell.”


Later, after Gull proved he did indeed work well horizontally, Rowan gave him a sleepy nudge. “Go home.”

“Nope.” He simply tucked her in against his side.

“Gull, neither of us is what you’d call petite, and this bed isn’t exactly built for two.” Besides, sleeping with a guy was different from sex.

“It worked pretty well so far. We’ll manage. Besides, you saw the jump list. We’re first and second man, first stick. If we get a call, all we have to do is put on the clothes currently strewn all over the floor, and hit it. It’s efficient.”

“So you always sleep with your jump partner for the sake of efficiency.”

“I’m trying it out with you first. Who knows, if it saves enough time, it might become regulation. If we’re clear, do you want to take a run in the morning?”

His hand, trailing lightly up and down her back, felt good—soothing. It was late anyway, she thought, she could make an exception on the sleeping rule this one time. Except she’d already made an exception on the sex, and now...

“Are we going to keep doing this?” she wondered.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to give me about twenty minutes.”

“Not tonight. I think we’ve rung the bell on that.”

“Oh, you mean as a continuing series.” He gave her ass a light, friendly pat. “Definitely.”

“If we continue the series, there’s a rule.”

“Of course there is.”

“If I sleep with a guy, I don’t sleep with other guys, or sleep with that guy if he’s banging anyone else. If either of us decide someone else looks good, that’s fine. Series over. That one’s firm. No exceptions.”

“That’s fair. One question. Why would I want anybody else when I get to take showers with you?”

“Because people tend to want what they don’t have.”

“I like what I’ve got.” He gave her an easy squeeze. “Ergo, I’m happy to abide by your rule on this matter.”

“Ergo.” She chuckled, closed her eyes. “You’re something else, Gulliver.”

Right then, tucked up with Rowan in bed, an owl hooting dourly in the night and the moon shafting through the window, Gull figured he was exactly who, and where, he wanted to be.


It took less time to burn a body than a forest. An uglier business, but quicker. Still, collateral damage couldn’t be avoided, and probably served as an advantage. She didn’t weigh much, considering, so carrying her up the trail, through the lodgepole pines, wasn’t as hard as it might have been.

The shimmer of moonlight helped light the way—like a sign—and the music of night creatures soothed.

The trail forked, steepened, but the climb wasn’t altogether unpleasant in the cool, pine-scented air.

Better not to think of the unpleasant, of the horror. Better to think of moonlight and cool air and night birds.

In the distance, a coyote called out, high and bright. A wild sound, a hungry sound. Burning her would be humane. Better than leaving her for the animals.

They’d probably come far enough.

The task didn’t take much effort or require too many tools. Just hacking away some dried brush and twigs, soaking them, her clothes. Her.

Don’t think.

Soaking it all with gas from the spare can.

Try not to look at her face, try not to think of what she’d said and done. What had happened. Stick to what had to be done now.

Light the fire. Feel the heat. See the color and shape. Hear the crackle and snap. Then the whoosh of air and flame as that fire began to breathe.

A thing of beauty. Dazzling, dangerous, destructive.

So beautiful and fierce, and personal, when started with your own hands. Never realized, never knew.

It would purge. Erase her. Send her to hell. She belonged there. The animals wouldn’t get her, tear at her as the dogs had torn at Jezebel. But she’d earned hell.

No more harm, no more threat. No more. In the fire, she would cease to be.

Watching it take her brought a horrible thrill, a bright tingle of unexpected excitement. Power tasted. No tears, no regrets—not anymore.

That thrill, and the rising voice of the fire, followed down the trail while smoke began to climb toward the shimmering moon.

14

For the second time Rowan woke curled up to Gull with her head on his shoulder. This time she wondered how the hell he could sleep with her weight pressing on him.

Then she wondered, since she was shoehorned into the narrow bed with him, why the hell she wasn’t taking advantage of it. She bit his earlobe as her hand trailed down his chest. As she’d expected, she found him already primed.

“I’d’ve put money on it,” she murmured.

“I like your hand on it better.”

“Now this...” She swung a leg over him, taking him in slowly. Slowly until she sheathed him in the warm and the wet. “This is what I call efficient.”

Thinking there was no finer way to greet the morning, he got a firm grip on her hips. “A plus.”

When she bowed back, the sun slanting light and shadow over her body, casting diamonds through her crown of hair, a snippet of Tennyson flitted through his mind.

A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair.

She was that, in that moment, and in that moment took command of his romantic heart.

His grip gentled to a caress. And she began to move, undulating over him in a slow, fluid rhythm. Sensation spooled through him, unwinding a lovely, lazy delight.

Her eyes closed, her hands stroked up her own body, inciting them both.

Through the bars of light, the building beauty, he reached for her. He thought they could drift like this, leisurely awakening body, blood, heart, forever.

The siren screamed.

“Shit!” Her eyes popped open.

“Give me a fucking break.” He held on to her for one frustrating moment, then they broke apart to scramble for clothes.

“You did this,” she accused him. “You called it last night with that damn efficiency crack.”

“Ten minutes more, it would’ve been worth it.”

Instead, in ten minutes they suited up in the ready room.

“Spotted smoke at first light.” L.B. gave the outline. “Lolo National Forest, between Grave Creek and Lolo Pass. It’s fully active on the south slope above Lolo Creek. Conditions dry. Rowan, I want you in as fire boss; Gibbons, you’re on the line.”

The ground thundered as the tanker began to roll with the first load of mud.

The minute she boarded the jump ship, Rowan pulled out the egg sandwich and Coke she’d stuck in pockets. She ate and drank while she coordinated with the pilot, the spotter.

“There she is.” She pressed her face to the window. “And, damn, she’s frisky this morning.”

A hundred acres, maybe a hundred and twenty, she estimated, already fully active in some of the most primitive and pristine areas of Lolo. Lewis and Clark had traveled there, and now the fire wanted it for breakfast.

Here we come, she thought, and guarded her reserves as wind rushed in through the open door.