The wind had picked up toward nightfall. Hauling in at the end of the day had felt like an almost unbearable hurdle… one of many. My eyes were filled with grit, my filthy neck and forearms like sandpaper. I was so exhausted I was almost hearing things. The wind sounded soft and sweet, like my Ember’s voice…

“Well, this is the last of the it,” Randy said, handing me another bowlful of stew. When we weren’t working, every minute was either spent sleeping or eating. We’d just finished a relentless eighteen-hour shift; even so, it was the food we needed most of all. It takes more than six thousand calories a day to keep a firefighter working at this pace. And the sleep isn’t really even sleep anyway. It’s more like a few short hours of utter non-existence…

“Cap says the winds are holding for now, and direction’s good,” Randy said, sitting down beside me. “We made damn good progress today on those lines. The Deer Fire’s the closest one… and it’s still a couple of hundred miles west.” He put his bowl down, half-finished and eased back onto his bedroll. “Christ…” he said, “I think I’m getting… too fucking old… for…”

I glanced over and smiled. He was sound asleep, spoon still in hand. I cleared it all away and covered him up for the night. I was every inch as exhausted as he was, but as I finally laid down myself and tucked my hands behind my head, it wasn’t sleep on my mind. It was Ember.

The night sky was cold, growing colder by the second, and the stars glittered in the Colorado sky like nowhere else in the world. Growing up as a boy, I’d traveled the world with my parents, and seen damned near every mountain range that had resort possibilities and the potential to make my family even wealthier. But there was no more beautiful country in the world. No night sky any brighter, or air more pure. This land was my home, as much as Em was my soulmate. I’d give whatever it took to protect them both. For the moment, the land was safe enough. It was Ember who burned inside me.

I threw off the blankets and stuffed my feet back into my boots. Somehow tonight, the cold air seemed only to stoke the need inside me. Ember and I had barely begun again, when I’d had to leave her. Only the enormous amount of work still ahead of us kept me away from her. I walked out through the trees to the east ridge. She was out there… on the other side of those mountains, in the valley beyond. I ran my hands through my hair and watched my breath escape in a cloud of steam. So fucking close… and still not close enough to touch. I unzipped and gave my ready cock its freedom, wondering if she’d found her ring. I’d kept it with me every day, every night since she had given it back. Having it had been a way of keeping her close to me. Only the passionate brilliance of a ruby could reflect the intensity that burned between us. It shimmered with a hundred different shades of color, like her hair on a summer day, with all the complexity of our feelings for each other… I wondered if she was wearing it now as she climbed into our bed…

Just the thought put a smile on my face and made my cock grow hot and heavy in my hand. The shock of cold air on my skin only made me harder, as I imagined plunging myself into the heat of her body… or the warmth of her sweet mouth…

I drew one long stroke from balls to head and it jerked in my hand impatiently. My cock had always been headstrong, with a mind of its own. And it had always led me straight to the delicious heat of Ember’s body. It needed that warmth now… just like I did. I slipped my hand over the thick head and stroked its wetness down my length, imagining I was slipping myself in between her wet, velvet thighs.

I spread my legs wide and closed my eyes, willing myself back home where she waited. Like so many times before in the years without her, it wasn’t lust that drove me. This was an act of love, even from a distance. From the first time I’d taken her as my own, every climax had belonged to her.

I drew in a deep breath and thrust with my hips, not into cold air and my own hand, but into Ember’s heat. Into the sweet, warm shelter of her flesh and the embrace of her love. I rocked on my heels, building up a rhythm that always made her breath catch and her pussy tighten against me. I gripped harder and moved faster, imagining her breathing matching mine as we climbed together toward the top. I’d bury myself in her until my balls were pressed hard into her flesh, tight against the cleft of her ass when our climax began. She always said it made her come harder when she felt them pulsing there… and emptying inside her, the way it was meant to be…

I groaned as it hit, hot seed spilling out in a rush. For a moment I could almost see her, almost feel her. I dropped to my knees, flooding the ground, lost in my image of her climaxing too. I could almost feel her squeezing me in rhythm with the powerful, throbbing pulses that pummeled me. I could almost taste her mouth… Whenever I came inside her, I could always taste the salt of us… mingling on her lips…

It was more than half an hour later before I trusted my legs to get me back to my bedroll. I climbed into its cold comfort and fell asleep almost instantly. There was only one thought left in my drained and spent body; that two weeks had already been too long, and longer still was totally impossible.

Tomorrow I would find a way to head back to the cabin…

and to her.