Chapter Three
He was twelve hundred miles from L.A. In a bar with a beautiful stranger who wanted to go home with him. If he fucked this up for himself, he had no doubt Scotty would come back from the dead just to kill him.
“Live a little!” Scott used to say, and Tyler would wave him away. But this was different. August nineteenth flashed through his head. His end date.
After that, he’d be out of here. Not like his mom, running from place to place, but on his way to a new, stable, full-time job somewhere. With the Gold Mountain firebreak under his belt, he’d be able to show he had experience doing something besides letting people down. This summer would be nothing but a memory.
So there was no possibility of getting serious now. This was just a chance for some fun. And it had been so, so long since he’d let himself have any fun. He left a twenty on the bar for an extra appreciative tip as he followed Abbi out.
They threaded through the crowded restaurant and stepped into the night. He breathed deeply, thinking for the first time that it was kind of nice to be out of L.A. The air was cool after the heat of the day, the sky clear and full of stars.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“Out of here,” she said.
“Okay.”
She looked at him, the trace of a smile on her lips. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
“Am I supposed to be here for talking?”
A burst of laughter rose up from across the parking lot. Russ and his buddies had come outside to smoke under a streetlamp. “Shit,” Abbi said, the light in her eyes darkening. “You-know-who is still here.”
There was only one thing to do. Tyler turned and pressed her against the side of a car, covering her body with his. “Good thing you have a boyfriend,” he said. A boyfriend who didn’t want to wait another second to start acting like one.
He knew he shouldn’t be getting caught up like this. He should have gone straight to the rental house, alone like he deserved. But she hooked her fingers through his belt loops and pulled his hips into hers.
And then he stopped waiting, stopped thinking, stopped talking himself out of what felt right. He kissed her hard until his mind went blank.
Her touch was firm, insistent, not at all shy. For the first time in over a month he forgot the blaze, the heat, the fear. How he’d kept shouting for Scotty long after he’d known his cries wouldn’t be returned.
It was like some kind of drug. One taste of her and he already needed more.
“Is this your car?” Tyler pulled away long enough to ask.
“No,” Abbi said breathlessly, her hand in the back of his hair. “I have no idea whose car this is.”
“My truck is across the lot.” He kissed the side of her neck, running his hands up her side and brushing the swell of her breasts.
“You want to fuck me in the parking lot?”
Holy shit. She didn’t sound opposed to the idea.
Tyler bit her earlobe. “I’d fuck you anywhere.”
And he meant it.
The rise of laughter came again from the other side of the lot. Tyler thought for a second that Abbi was going to drop to her knees right then and there. He wouldn’t have protested…but that seemed a little much for getting back at Russ. He didn’t want that to be the only reason she was interested in him.
But instead she said, “Not here.”
“I’d invite you to my place, but I just got in today. I haven’t even been to the house I’m renting to check it out.”
He should have stopped there first, brought in a few bags, made sure it at least had a bed. He should have shaved. Put on a better shirt before going out.
But then he might have missed his window here. And Abbi didn’t seem to mind the faded T-shirt, jeans, and three days of scruff from his drive.
She pressed a finger to the center of his chest and pushed him back just an inch. “I’m the red Subaru. Follow me.”
He watched her cross the lot, realizing too late that she was parked right next to where Russ and his friends were gathered. He should have walked her to her car, he should have gone over there, he should be doing something to—
Russ flicked his cigarette on the ground.
“There’s a trash can right over there,” Abbi said coolly.
“Bite me,” Russ said.
“I’d rather not.”
“That’s not what you used to say.”
Tyler’s fists clenched as Russ’s buddies roared up laughing.
But Abbi ran her hand through her hair and shrugged as though she honestly didn’t get what the problem was. It made Russ sputter not to get a rise out of her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was seeing someone,” Abbi said. “I’d hoped to do it differently. But now you know.”
Then she got in the car. Tyler’s fists loosened. She was okay. Everything was okay. He was going to learn how to relax, goddamn it. For tonight, at least, Abbi was going to teach him how.
He expected her to lead him through the town, to some central place where the houses were. But instead she turned down a winding side street and pulled in front of a building that said Gold Mountain Nature Center out front.
Tyler was surprised. It was exactly where he had to be on Monday morning. He had a meeting with the Forest Service representatives who’d hired him to oversee the firebreak, along with one of the naturalists at the center and whoever was in charge of construction. At least now he knew where the place was.
But it wasn’t where he wanted to be on a Saturday night. Especially not when he’d been anticipating pressing Abbi against the front door to her house while she fumbled with the keys.
He parked next to her and stepped out of his truck as she slammed her car door. “You live at the nature center?”
Abbi laughed. “Come on, stranger. Did I say I was taking you home?”
“Um. Do I need to be worried?” he asked.
“That depends. How’s your night vision?”
“It’s okay,” he said warily. It wasn’t a question he normally fielded on dates—first or otherwise. They were having sex, right? Had he completely misunderstood this whole night?
But when she grabbed his hand, her touch—and her grin—were anything but chaste.
…
She almost hoped he’d protest. Then, when she said good-bye at the end of the night, it’d be easy to keep moving without looking back. Oh well, she could say. Guess he wasn’t that great after all.
He could have at least asked for a flashlight, or demanded to know what she was doing. But when she took his hand, he followed.
She led him up a narrow trail through the woods. She’d walked it so many times, she knew where to point out the rocks and roots. Tyler didn’t have any trouble. He hooked a finger in her back pocket, the pressure on her ass making her almost wish she’d picked her bed because at least they’d be in it by now.
But then, after a short uphill stretch that Tyler’s long legs took as though it were nothing, they arrived at the opening and he stopped, yanking her back so she was up against his solid body, and she knew why they were there.
“Wow,” he said, one hand snaking around her stomach as his lips found the side of her neck. “I’m sure your house is nice, but…wow.”
They’d arrived at the edge of a clearing, a large field that sloped gently back toward where it disappeared into another copse of trees. It was where school groups came to play, and a place couples rented for weddings. They couldn’t see the view at night, but Abbi could feel it, the dark stamp of mountains rising to a starry sky.
“It’s my favorite place,” she said, and then revised her statement. “I mean my favorite place that doesn’t take three days to hike to.”
She pulled out of his grasp and took off, racing to the gazebo at the far end of the field. When he finally caught her, he spun her and pressed her back against the railing.
“No more running,” he panted.
“What’s the matter? Can’t keep up?”
His teeth found her bottom lip. It wasn’t a playful nip but a hard, possessive bite, so greedy it sent a rocket of flames to her core. “No more getting away from me.”
Tyler may have just scrambled her brain, but she still knew the answer to that. “Then don’t let me get away.”
He slid his hands along her stomach, drawing up her shirt. “Guess I’ll have to keep you wanting this.”
Abbi groaned as he tweaked her nipple, her whole body straining for him. Oh, he was good. He was very, very good.
His other hand moved down, working the button of her jeans, and slipped lower. He moaned in her ear when he found what he was looking for.
She tried to reach for his zipper, but he lifted her and sat her on the railing, her legs hanging over the edge. He unlaced her shoes and pulled them off, then yanked her shirt over her head and dropped it to the ground. Her jeans soon followed.
When he took off his T-shirt, Abbi groaned. The moon and shadows exaggerated the planes of his body, the place where the veins jumped across his biceps and the deep cut between his pecs and his abs. This guy obviously didn’t push papers all day. She shouldn’t have let him weasel out of that whole who are you, anyway? conversation back at the bar.
Or maybe she’d been the one doing the weaseling…
But it didn’t matter. That wasn’t why they were here. They were here so he could get down on his knees, right there in the dirt, and say, “Spread,” a throaty command as he ran his hands up her thighs.
Abbi shivered. Fuck, yes. His tongue teased her around the edge of her underwear and she hooked her ankles over his shoulders, trying to guide him where she wanted. If he turned out to be another Russ, who couldn’t find the clitoris even when she’d literally drawn him a map complete with the anatomically correct designations he’d slept through in middle school—
But oh God, oh God, Tyler knew what the clitoris was. He had the map. Hell, he’d drawn the map. He may as well have invented the map for the way he tongued her. He started over her panties, teasing, soft, getting to know her. Making her wait and wait.
And then, when she was about to grab his face and make him get there already, he slid her underwear to the side and sucked her throbbing clit into his mouth as though he couldn’t get enough.
She reached out to grab one of the poles supporting the roof of the gazebo. It was rough against her hand but she didn’t care. She used her other hand to prop herself up on the railing, giving her the leverage she needed to circle her hips in rhythm with his tongue.
He looked up at her position and frowned. “No splinters,” he said, and with the same strength he’d used to lift her, he picked her up again and laid her in the grass.
Abbi had brought men to the gazebo before. They usually shrugged and went along with it but made it clear they thought she was crazy—which, to be fair, they probably thought anyway, from her bright clothes to her ever-changing hair to her decision to spend so much time alone in the woods.
But whenever she’d done it, it had been in the gazebo. Usually bracing herself against the bench.
Not that she disliked that one bit.
But in a way, the gazebo was her compromise. Here’s a place that’s not a bed. But there’s still a structure, a roof, something to hold on to.
For Tyler, the gazebo was more like an afterthought. He put her right down on the bare earth and slid her underwear over her ankles, letting it fall somewhere behind him. She took off her bra and felt the unexpected sensation of her body in the grass, naked and open, the tickle of it on her back. The warmth as his mouth found her again. She ground her hips into him, cried out when he slid a finger and then another inside her, stretching her deliciously—but not nearly as much as she wanted.
She told him to find her pants.
“You want me to do something else?” he asked as he passed them over.
Abbi pulled the condom from her pocket. “I picked it up from the stash in the bathroom at Mackenzie’s.”
Tyler laughed and pulled an identical one from his pocket. “Great minds,” he said.
She’d certainly agree that something was great as she knelt in the grass and slowly, tantalizingly, pulled down his boxers and jeans.
The first boy she’d slept with after Cash, she’d met in a field at night. She’d sneaked out of her dorm to meet the guy—a senior, she remembered. She was sixteen. She’d just dyed her hair for the first time. He’d complimented her in the hallway. He’d noticed her, and not to whisper or point. He’d noticed her in that way only Cash had, that way she’d still believed only Cash would.
She’d lain down in the grass that night but it had been nothing like this. No boy—or man—she’d ever known had been like this. He stood before her, his erection thick and so fucking beautiful, she didn’t want the moment to end.
She kissed his shaft from the tip to the base, letting the length of him slide over her face, the smooth head satiny and soft against her cheek. She ran her tongue back up, stroking, teasing, swirling over the top.
And then more, moving up and down, making it nice and wet. She brought him back to her throat and felt the sweet, full stretch of him pushing in. She went as deep as she could, coming up for air with a string of saliva from her lips to his tip.
“Fuck,” he groaned, looking down at her.
“You like that?”
Even his laugh made her wet.
“Yes, Blue. I like that.” He gathered her hair as he brought his cock to her mouth again, pushing as close to too much as either of them could handle before he pulled back again.
She thought he was going to come like that, straight down her throat, and fuck if she wouldn’t take every last drop. But he unwrapped the condom and she knew he wasn’t going to finish without her. He slid it on, his hand wrapped around his cock. Her breath caught just watching.
Then he pressed his hands to her shoulders and tipped her back. Only he wasn’t done yet, because then he turned her over. Not so she was on her knees, but so she was lying in the grass on her stomach, feeling the pressure of his hand moving up her thighs.
And then he was on top of her, opening her, his cock sliding all the way in. His body pressed her into the ground, and all she could feel was sensation—the grass, his weight, the thrust of him hitting right where she wanted.
This wasn’t lying in bed, gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes. This was hard, rough, and so fucking dirty. She tightened her legs to feel the best kind of friction and he groaned in her ear, driving into her even harder.
He reached his hand around her so she could rub her clit against his fingers as her hips moved.
“You going to come like that, baby?”
She whimpered against the crook of his arm holding onto her. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded, and heard the low grate of his laugh in her ear.
“Not a chance,” he said.
“Fuck,” she exhaled as his fingers made tight little circles.
“There?” he asked.
“There.”
Sometimes an orgasm was less a wave that crashed over her than one she had to chase. She’d run after it, willing her body to catch the crest and tip over its edge. But Tyler filled her so completely there was no running, no sense the feeling might leave her behind. When she came it was with a cry, pulsing around his cock, grinding into his fingers, gasping and begging him not to stop.
He didn’t. Instead he grabbed her ass and, using her body for leverage, thrust even deeper within her. In just a few strokes she felt him tense and shudder. And then heat flooded her as he let everything go.
He lay on her, breathing hard, until at last he rolled off her body and collapsed by her side.
“I got you all dirty,” he said, using a tissue from his pocket to wrap up the condom.
Abbi propped herself up on her elbow. “We were both pretty dirty before we got here.”
He laughed, and from the way he looked at her, a mix of teasing and hungry, she was ready to find out just how much dirtier he could be.
She knew she shouldn’t get carried away. But satisfaction made her reckless. And anyway, Tyler had a time limit. Shouldn’t she take advantage of him while she could?
She snaked a hand up his naked thigh. “Any chance I can entice you into a shower to wash off those grass stains?” she asked, gesturing toward his knees.
Tyler caught her hand. Lifted it over her head. Pinned her back down in the grass. Pretended to think. “Do you have food?” he asked.
“Some.”
“Condoms?”
“Plenty.”
“An actual bed?”
“Provided you can wait long enough to get in it.”
“There’s always the floor,” he decided.
“The kitchen table?”
“It’s going to be a long night.”
“God yes,” Abbi said, straining against his hold on her. She hoped so.
They agreed he’d follow her to her house, and that although it was tempting, naked hiking back to the car and naked driving probably wasn’t the best idea. “I know the sheriff,” Abbi said. “It’d be awkward for everybody.”
Tyler laughed as he sat up, reaching for his pants. He had to remind Abbi there was round two waiting or else she never would have let him get away.
“This was a good welcome to Gold Mountain,” he said.
“Don’t get too used to it. Not everyone’s going to be as friendly as I am.” She flashed him a grin.
“I think I’d die of exhaustion. I’m supposed to be getting ready for this job.”
“The one you won’t tell me about?”
She had to admit, by now she was curious. They had all sorts of people come through for seasonal work, like lift attendants in the winter and trail maintenance teams in the spring and fall. Abbi’s office hired extra hands in the summer to help with outreach and projects like counting species or tagging. It could have been any number of things.
But when he asked if she knew about the firebreak the Forest Service wanted to build, Abbi’s heart stopped.
“Of course,” she said, everything inside her hoping he wasn’t about to say what she was afraid he was going to say.
He was one of the builders. He was part of the crew.
But it was so much worse.
“I used to work for the Forest Service outside L.A. Now I’m up here to oversee the project. Six weeks, in and out, we’ll get the new break built and keep you safe.” He smiled like that was a good thing.
Abbi swallowed. “And then what happens?”
“Then I use that to get another job somewhere else, probably in management or something.”
“You’re kidding.”
Tyler blanched. “What’s wrong with management?”
“Not the next job,” Abbi sputtered. “This one. You’re the one building the firebreak?”
“Overseeing the project.” He paused. “Did I say something wrong?”
Abbi was hastily getting dressed, as though the sooner she got out of there the sooner she could pretend this whole night never happened—even if that dark, sweet soreness between her thighs said otherwise. But Tyler was frozen, his pants half on, waiting for her response. Where should she begin?
“You don’t know who I am.” It wasn’t a question. Of course he didn’t know her. Because she hadn’t told him.
“I’m at the nature center. I’m the one whose job it is to make sure that stupid waste of time and money never gets built.”
She watched as realization dawned across his face. “You’re the head naturalist?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. But as soon as I stop the firebreak, I will be.”
There were a few things Tyler might have said to salvage the situation. A recognition that the firebreak was, in fact, a waste of time and money, designed to placate people in town who didn’t understand how wildfire worked, and that at best it would do nothing and at worst would actually be damaging. He could have acknowledged that the Forest Service’s aggressive protection policy might not be the best for this area. He could at least have suggested there was room for compromise.
But instead he laughed in her face.
“Oh come on, Blue,” he said, like this was all a joke to him. Like she was a joke to him. “You don’t actually believe that.”
It was exactly what her parents might have said. Dumb little Abbi, the great Haas disappointment. They’d sent her to the same prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire her family had attended for generations, and look what happened. She embarrassed them in the news and wound up with a job they were convinced didn’t matter.
Tyler’s words made a heat flare inside her. She was working her butt off to get this promotion—to be seen as competent, independent, and worth taking seriously. To be someone who wouldn’t be dismissed.
“You’ve been in Gold Mountain for five minutes,” she said. “And you’re going to tell me you know what we need?”
“I’m a wildfire expert, Abbi. I know what I’m talking about.” The implication being that she didn’t. “I’m not saying you don’t know anything,” he went on, and Abbi pressed her lips together. Any sentence that started that way wasn’t going to end well.
She thought about the meeting she had Monday with the Forest Service representatives—a meeting she could now guess Tyler would be at. None of them would think she knew what she was talking about. She had a whole new resolve to prove them wrong—and to show her boss, the hiring committee, and everyone at the nature center that she was the right hire for the head naturalist job.
She’d finished dressing while they were talking, but Tyler had been taking his sweet time, like he thought he had her in the bag. But just because he’d helped her out with Russ didn’t mean she owed him. Tonight, or ever.
She knew these woods like she knew her own body, its curves and dips. Its places to hide. “On second thought, I think I’ll shower alone. See you Monday. I’m sure it’s going to be…educational.”
He called for her to wait, told her again that she didn’t know what she was saying. But she’d already taken off across the field, looking for the break in the darkness that signaled where the path began.
Tyler took a few hobbled steps with his pants half on, but he was still carrying his shoes. And this was her land, her turf. He may have been bigger than she was and had the backing of the Forest Service, but Abbi knew the land, she knew the darkness, and she was faster. She was in her car while he was probably still making his way across the field, searching for the trail.
She didn’t feel bad about it, though. He thought he knew what Gold Mountain needed? Then screw him.
Her so-called boyfriend would do just fine on his own.