I’m staring into a pair of high mountain sky-blue eyes, spent, my arms circling a muscular back, and I’ve just had the most intense orgasm of my life.

The eyes don’t belong to Jon.

Mine widen—I can feel them being stretched like one of my canvases. I didn’t just- no I cannot have-

“Oh, fuck!”

“Yeah, we sure did.” The bastard grins.

“Get the fuck off me,” I snarl.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He puts both hands on either side of me and pushes himself upright. The slithery feeling of his cock coming out gives me an aftershock, and I gasp. It’s still almost solid. I glance down and see the thing is softening but it’s a huge bastard. I’m amazed I managed to take it all inside me. Then I realize I’m going to be sore as all hell tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow. He grins again.

“You bastard!” I say.

“Probably. But you did say you…”

“Shut up. I know what I said. Now will you get out?” My demand isn’t really a question.

“Yes, ma’am,” he repeats. Still grinning, he can’t take his eyes off my parted folds as he pulls up his pants, searches the floor for his shirt and shrugs it on. “I’ll go find the dog.” He glances at his watch. “You have… ten minutes to finish putting stuff in your car, and then we’re going. If you refuse, I’m authorized to arrest you.”

“You’re lying. You aren’t law enforcement. Take the dog and get lost. I never want to see you again.”

I’m not thinking straight. How will I get my Mr Pete back?

“Citizen’s arrest. You forget about those handcuffs?” He leers at me again with that lop-sided cocky grin I’d like to slap off his smug but even more gorgeous face.

“Shut up.”

“You never answered me. Did you set this fire?” he asks.

“What? No! Of course not.What the hell are you talking about?”

I remember now. He asked that before. Why would he think that? The question falls out of my mouth in spite of my intention not to speak to him again, ever.

“Why would you think that?”

He does a slow turn, pointedly looking at each of the canvases.

“Oh, I don’t know. Because you seem to be more than slightly obsessed by fire?”

Rage clouds my vision. That doesn’t deserve an answer, but he’s going to get one, along with a piece of my mind.

“Ever hear of loss, grief or stress, you fucking bastard?” I snarl viciously. I’d actually like to find that knife and use it, seeing as he’s already decided I’m a nutjob. “Did you get the part where my fiancé was killed in a fire through your fat head? One year ago, today? It’s fucking therapeutic. A way of processing. God, you’re such an asshole.”

“Lady, I’ve been called much worse. Okay, I accept you didn’t start the fire.”

“Accept? You accept?” I squeal.

He starts backing up.

“I’ll take your dog. But I am not leaving you behind when I leave here, and I repeat, I am not going to die for you. You’re coming with me one way or another. You can save your car and whatever possessions you can get into it in the next ten minutes, or you can leave it all to burn. Your choice.”

He stomps out, , tugging his belt together as he goes and slamming the door behind him.

I’m propped on my elbows, butt and thighs spread over my table, and legs still splayed. Now that he’s gone, I realize I’m lucky he didn’t all me out for being a hypocrite as I reamed him out. A few seconds pass as I take it in. I’ve just had sex with a total stranger, who bears only a passing resemblance to my lost love. I’ve done my best to antagonize the man whose seed is oozing out of me at every turn.

And he’s still here, still trying to find Mr. Pete to save him from the fire. And still trying to save me. I’m a bitch. A well-fucked and completely satisfied bitch. Fuck that was incredible. I haven’t felt this alive in at least a year.

I start to cry.

Outside, Shawn’s calling the dog and I note that Mr. Pete isn’t howling anymore. Where has he got to?

I push myself the rest of the way up, discover my panties are hanging off my ankle, beyond salvation and rip them the rest of the way off. I’ll have to go commando. I pull up the jeans, find my top and tug it back on. How long did he say? Ten minutes? No way! Four or five must have passed already.

Frantically, I shove my feet into my flip flops and run for the house. “Shawn! Shawn, I need help!”

He isn’t in the house, and neither is Mr. Pete. I grab my engagement ring, which I don’t wear while I’m painting because I’m so messy, and shove it onto my ring finger. For safekeeping I tell myself, knowing it’s a lie.

Flip flops aren’t the best mountain footwear, but there’s no time to find socks or put on my boots. Finding Shawn on the other hand is urgent. If I don’t wrap the canvases, just stack them, that will be faster. But there’s not enough room in my car. I needed to wrap them and tie them onto the roof. Also no time. The air is thickening with acrid smoke every moment.

The bastard has a truck, doesn’t he? At least some of the paintings will survive if he agrees to take them. Filled with the relief of finally putting a plan together, I run outside and circle the house. Where the hell has he gone? Is Mr. Pete afraid of him and l took off, leading the bastard deeper and deeper into the surrounding forest?

I call out, my throat rasping from the smoke. No answer from either of them. I turn and run back to the studio and grab as many canvases as I can carry, then stagger with them to his truck, only to find the flat bed is enclosed. I leave them on the dried up earth and carry two of them to push into the back seat of my mini-Cooper. The rest won’t fit.

More than ten minutes have passed. Damn that man! He imposes a deadline and then disappears. Fuck him. I should get out of here. But I can’t leave without him. He’s searching for my dog, after all and it was Mr Pete who was responsible for getting us into this ridiculous situation in the first place.

“Mr. Pete!” I shout.

I need to find them both. I go back into the house to get the leash, but it’s gone. Shawn must have taken it. I sit down to think, but immediately pop back up. If I’m going to wait, I may as well do something productive, like finish making the sandwich I started. I go into the kitchen. There’s a huge bite taken out of two slices of sourdough. The sandwich meat is gone. Shawn must have taken it to tempt Pete to come to him, but not before helping himself to a bite. That man has no qualms about taking whatever he wants.

I stand in the middle of my kitchen, trying to think. What should I do? If I go past the edge of the clearing to look, I could miss both Shawn and the dog. Early childhood training reinforced the idea that when lost, you stay put so as not to go wandering in circles. But if Shawn is somehow lost in the smoke, he could - die. A surge rises through my core and my mind goes completely blank as though a switch was thrown off on my brain.

At least I’ve also pushed out the thought that Pete may also be lost and unable to smell his way home because of the smoke, which is working its way under doors and window ledges into the house, thicker now. I’m having some trouble breathing. The panic about my dog and the - that man - sends me outside screaming.

“Shawn! Shawn, follow my voice! Oh, god! Don’t you die! You promised you wouldn’t on my account, remember? Shawn! Mr. Pete!”

I keep it up until my throat is raw, and I need a drink of water. As soon as I’ve had some, I’m back outside, screaming anything I can think of to provide a beacon of sound for him. I’m sure it’s just because of Jon, the past, and nothing to do with the sexy firefighter somehow finding, against my will and against all odds, a place in my heart.

Visibility is down to no more than a yard or two and the flames are starting to lick at the edges of the scene. I look down at the painting and up at real life, as the same phantom wearing turnout gear swims through the murky air. It’s like some crazy movie where the painting has become reality. I’m shaking hard when the figure comes stumbling toward me into my arms.

“Jon,” I murmur.

“I’m so sorry, Lila. I can’t find him,” Shawn croaks.

I grab him around the waist and hug him to me.

“Where the fuck have you been? It’s been way more than ten minutes! I thought you were going to -”

I burst into tears as his arms come around me. I don’t know whether I’m crying from relief, from grief for my dog, or from sheer frustration with this impossibly stubborn and arrogant man.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, croaking so I feel bad for putting him through all this. “Are you ready to go?”

I struggle out of his embrace and look up at him. He’s covered in soot, his face blackened from it.

“Without my dog?” I frown. “No. You go ahead. Save yourself. Mr Pete will come back to me, I’m sure.”

Shawn’s expression hardens. I see the small muscle flex where his jaw is hinged. I know nothing about him but I do see his stubborn side is emerging.

“I hate it as much as you do, Lila, but we can’t wait any longer. The smoke is going to kill us if the fire doesn’t, and I’m not sure we can even get through now. But we have to try.”

He doesn’t say what I’m thinking. We would have had fifteen more minutes to find Pete if we hadn’t… I shove the thought away.

“No, we don’t. I don’t. You don’t owe us anything. Save yourself.”

I don’t add bastard. Even if he is one, that isn’t fair. He’s done his best to get me out of here, and the fault is mine alone if I die here. The romantic drama of dying here the same way as Jon and with the paintings of him suddenly seems dry. He wouldn’t want that. And suddenly, I don’t either.

Why did he have to show up now? Before what happened in the studio, I’d have been perfectly happy to leave this world and join Jon. It would have been the sweetest irony to die in a fire, the same way Jon did, a year to the day later. I’m not afraid of burning. The smoke will get me before the fire does.

Already it’s hard to breathe. But I am not leaving Mr Pete behind.