I’d watched in the rearview mirror until I lost sight of her. It was the hardest fucking thing I’d ever done, leaving her. Why did I always seem to be driving in the wrong direction…?

All the more reason to get back out there and stop the fucking fire in its tracks, once and for all. I’d made a commitment to the crew and I’d honor it. Randy, my best friend, was still out there and about to become my brother-in-law. It was my job to get us both back home safely… and as soon as possible. I knew I had to focus, to keep a clear head in order to make that happen. But Ember had burned her way deep under my skin. And she was smoldering there… even now…

There wasn’t an inch of her skin I hadn’t touched… hadn’t tasted during the night. I could still feel her silky thighs and the velvety heat of her sweet depths. She’d grown softer, rounder, ripening in the last few years, blossoming into a beauty I almost couldn’t comprehend. Like the majesty of the Rockies, or the quiet splendor of a sunset… like the raging, uncontrolled power of a wildfire, she left me breathless. I could never possess her, any more than a mountain could possess the sky. But every time I touched her, every time I took her in my arms, I experienced the same sense of awe. That she had been made for me, just as I had been made for her. That together we were perfect, complete in a way that finally made us both whole. All that was left was to make her my wife. And the mother of my children. Just the thought made my cock stiffen with anticipation.

From our very first time, there’s been nothing I’d wanted more than to plant my seed inside her and watch her body grow round, her belly ripen. We’d started trying when I’d asked her to marry me. But then I’d made the decision to join the hotshot crew… and she’d ended us and given me back the ring. It had all happened so fast… we hadn’t had enough time…

Maybe she would have stayed, if she’d been pregnant then. Or maybe not. The thought made my blood run cold. My heart thudded painfully in my chest as I drove farther away from her. Finding her at the hot spring had been the last thing I’d ever expected; god knows I hadn’t been prepared to take any precautions. It had felt so natural, so right to come inside her. And we’d picked up right where we’d left off…

There wasn’t any denying it. I’d wanted it from the very first time I’d touched her. My Ember, filled with my baby, would be so fucking luscious. Just the thought of taking her while I ran my hands over her round, full belly made me ache to turn the truck around. If we hadn’t already gotten pregnant, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna waste one more minute after the wedding…

“The only thing that matters now is that we’ve found each other again,” I said to the horizon. The sound of the truck’s engine and the tires on the road mostly drowned the words. “And I’ll be home in a few more weeks, Em. I’m marrying you this time, no matter what. And the only commitment in my entire life will be to love you deep and hard, until you’re carrying my baby.” I leaned one arm across the back of the seat, and shifted my weight. The images in my head of Ember pregnant had my cock pounding hard in my jeans.

I couldn’t wait to hold her in my arms, to peel her clothes off until she was naked and exposed… full, swollen breasts, her belly ripe and taut because of me…

I couldn’t see the smoke. I could smell it.

“Thank fuck, you’re back,” Randy said, dropping heavily to the ground. A firefighter’s gear can weigh almost half his own body weight, and sweat ran down his face in spite of the bitter cold. Half a dozen other men by the crew haul looked as dirty and exhausted as he was. “The pumps have been icing up, not that it matters much. Half the choppers are grounded with frozen lines…”

I’d been monitoring the radio and knew the lakes we’d been drawing from were mostly frozen over. A gust of wind swept through the gorge where we’d made our base camp and cut through my own heavy jacket. “Fire’s taken most of the scrub oak and cedar to the north?” My face was stiff with cold and my words were clipped.

He nodded and dragged his helmet off onto the ground beside him. “It’s burning hot now, and faster than ever. Everything is fucking dry as tinder.” He looked up at me, his gritty face serious. “The air temp is near freezing, sometimes well below, and even that can’t cool her down.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “The winds haven’t let up long enough for us to set more controlled burns. So we’re fighting by hand now… it’s fucking axes and chainsaws… Most of us have been on forty-eight-hour shifts…”

Halfway through his sentence, his head fell forward onto his chest and his jaw slackened. I watched the weary rise and fall of his chest. Every man on the job knew how it felt, to need sleep even more than food or water, to be too exhausted to choose.

I bent down and heaved him up and over my shoulder, taking him to sleep in one of the hauls. I would finish his shift, and another two straight days of my own after that. It was time to find the captain and learn exactly what we were up against. From everything I’d heard and from the look I’d seen in Randy’s eyes, the fire I’d left a few days ago was not the same one I’d just come back to.

Not by a long shot.