From Air (Wildfire)

Chapter Seven

CALVIN

I can’t relax in my own home.

Am I to blame? Sure. But this is getting ridiculous. Jamie’s taking “revenge is best served cold” to a new level, and she’s using her body and my attraction to her as new weapons.

It’s been a month since she threw down the gauntlet in the kitchen and two weeks since the bedroom incident. I’m mentally wiped from sleeping with one eye open. Is she going to deflate my tires? Short-sheet my bed? Put plastic over the toilet? Remove all the labels from my cans in the pantry? Or seduce me so we get kicked out of the house?

“Fitz, here are your clothes from the dryer. I’ve folded them for you. I’ll set them on your bed and hang your shirts so they won’t need to be ironed,” Jamie announces in a honeyed voice while toting a laundry basket up the stairs in her usual weekend leggings, pink fuzzy socks, and oversize sweater.

“Dude ...” Will drags out the word without taking his eyes off his game. “Are you sleeping with her? You’d better stay out of her pants, or Maren and I will fight over who’s going to kill you. It’s a rule. A hard line that can’t be crossed.”

I keep my head bowed to my phone. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Because she’s been cordial to you—dare I say flat-out thoughtful? If you’re not giving her regular orgasms, then it makes no sense.”

“Sometimes I do push-ups in the kitchen and let her watch.”

“You’re an idiot.” Will laughs.

“Maybe she’s more magnanimous than we give her credit for.”

Will grunts his skepticism.

He’s not wrong about Jamie. Not only has she failed to retaliate, she’s been outright generous to me. It’s disturbing. My distrust grows exponentially every day.

“Fitz, I noticed one of your shirts has a missing button,” Jamie chirps, skipping down the stairs. She has entirely too much bounce in her step for a Sunday afternoon. It’s unnatural. “I can find a button and mend it for you.”

Will snorts. “Jamie, Fitz spends most of the winter at a sewing machine when he’s not down south. I’m sure he can sew on a button.”

“I’m not following.” Jamie stops behind my chair and tucks in my tag.

I stiffen when her warm, delicate fingers brush my nape. What the fuck? She’s softening me up for the kill.

I despise her method of revenge. She makes me hard and soft at the same time.

“Smoke jumpers make their gear and repair their parachutes,” Will informs her before tossing his remote aside and grumbling about the game.

“Seriously?” Jamie rummages through the kitchen on a scavenger hunt for ingredients to bake something. It’s her weekend MO, along with wearing a light-pink apron that matches her socks and looks like something from 1960. She wears her hair braided down both sides when she bakes.

Goddammit! I need to stop noticing so much shit about her.

“No joke. If you need something repaired, just send it to work with Fitz.” Will heads up the stairs.

“That’s some sexy stuff, Fitz.” Flour puffs into the air when she plops the bag onto the counter beside her mixing bowl.

“Sewing is sexy?” I navigate to the barstool at the counter. It’s weird, I know, but I enjoy watching her work in the kitchen. Also, I have to make sure she doesn’t put something in the baked goods to poison me.

“In and of itself, no.” She measures the dry ingredients on the scale she bought a few weeks ago. “But sewing your gear, then jumping out of a plane to fight a fire ... that’s sexy.”

“So we agree I’m sexy.” I can’t hide my wry grin.

She keeps her focus on the scale. “No. Smoke jumpers are sexy. You’re my roommate—a brother of sorts. You’re disqualified from ever being sexy in my mind. Separation of church and state.”

“So much for Will thinking we’re sleeping together.”

Clunk!

She drops the measuring cup onto the floor. “W-what?” Fumbling to pick it up, she then rinses it off and dries it.

“He thinks I’m giving you orgasms, and that’s why you’re being so nice to me.”

“Pfft ...” She tries to blow off my comment, but her cheeks flush, and she can’t focus on me for more than a second.

“We both know you’re being nice to throw me off.”

She clears her throat and wipes her forehead with her arm. “Throw you off?”

Is she sweating?

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your threat.”

“My threat?” She cuts the stick of butter into cubes.

“ Payback’s going to be a bitch. Sound familiar?”

“Not really.” Vanilla fills the room while she pours it into a measuring spoon. “I’m a nice person.” She twists the lid onto the bottle.

“Nice people never have to say they’re nice people. They’re too humble to feel the need to put themselves on a pedestal by saying they’re nice.”

Jamie crinkles her nose like she has an itch before rubbing it with her arm. She mixes, scrapes, and lines the baking sheets with parchment paper. By now, she has streaks of flour on her face and hair.

I can’t turn away. I want to crawl onto the counter with a pillow and fall asleep while watching her. She could make a visual meditation app. This shit’s my crack.

“So you’ve been sewing this winter? Is that what you do in Arizona? Do they fly you all over the country to sew?” She ignores my previous comment.

She’s good. Too good.

“It’s not all I do. And no. We do prescribed fires in Arizona.”

An airy smile touches her lips as she stirs the ingredients. She’s up to something. “Don’t tell Will I let you lick the spoon.” She offers the spatula.

“Nope.” I hop off the stool. “I don’t want to lick the spoon.” Blowing out a breath, I shove my hands into my back pockets.

Jamie’s eyebrows lift into dubious peaks.

“Just do it. Whatever you’re going to do to me, just fucking do it, and be done.” I hate that she’s brought me to my knees on this, but I need some sound sleep again.

She wets her lips and saunters toward me, invading every inch of my personal space with her tempting body and sweet smell. I need a one-night stand. Hell, I need a string of them to get my goddamn roommate out of my head.

Her teeth scrape along her bottom lip while she ogles her prey, her gaze stretching from my feet to the top of my head. She runs her hand along my shoulder while her lips quirk into a sadistic grin. “I’d say it’s no fun because you’re too easy. But that would be a lie. It’s still pretty fucking fun.”

With my hand, I encircle her wrist, removing it from my shoulder. She has batter on her fingers, and I bet it’s now on my shirt. Her breath hitches, giving me a renewed sense of control, if only for a brief moment. A blush fills her cheeks again, revealing her weakness, which I believe is me.

With two quick steps, I pin her to the fridge door. Her eyes flare. Yep, I’m back in control. Guess who’s getting his first good night’s sleep in a month?

My grip tightens on her wrist as I suck on one of her fingers. Her lips part, and a tiny moan escapes. I have a game plan, and it’s all about control. That’s where my enjoyment lies. That and the promise of peaceful sleep.

Do I like sucking her dainty finger? It doesn’t matter.

Do I like her reaction to me doing it? I mean ... I’m a straight male in my prime, so yeah, it’s mildly satisfying but entirely beside the point.

The front door opens just as I prepare to lay down the law. My fake seduction screeches to a halt, and I lurch to the other side of the kitchen. Jamie hugs her hand to her chest as though I bit off her finger.

Maren’s gaze ping-pongs between us, hemorrhaging a fatal amount of distrust as she slides off her scarf. “What’s going on? It better not be—”

“It’s not.” I dismiss her absurd assumption. “I’m just taking back the upper hand because she won’t hurry the fuck up and poison me.” I’m a bona fide imbecile. I need to jump out of a plane and screw someone stat with no strings attached. Nurse Andrews is messing with my psyche. I bet she’s a pro at her job.

“Poison?” Maren echoes her skepticism.

Jamie peels herself off the fridge door and takes a few wobbly steps to the sink, where she surgically scrubs her hands. “Fitz is suffering from persecutory delusion. It’s more prevalent in men, and sadly, it’s treatment resistant. However, cognitive behavioral therapy and medication are worth a try. It’s definitely better than hospitalization.”

Maren kicks off her boots and shoots me the stink eye.

Resting a hand on my hip, I drop my chin for a brief second before lifting my stern gaze so she can see how uninterested I am in Jamie.

Maren points up the stairs. “I need to shower because I have a date. Yes or no? Have you two hooked up?”

While I say, “Christ, no,” Jamie dries her hands and says, “Never.”

Maren nods. “Cool. Then stop being an asshole to her.”

I don’t get in one word of my rebuttal before she’s halfway up the stairs.

My attention redirects to Jamie as she throws the towel onto the counter and crosses her arms. “Calvin Fitzgerald, if you think for a single minute that you can make me go weak in the knees and manipulate me into forgetting about what you did and what you have coming, then you are delusional.”

Walk away.

Nope. I can’t.

Instead, I grin, but I don’t speak. I step closer to her, but I don’t touch her. Her chin inches upward in defiance.

“If you’re so immune to me, so steady in the knees, then why did you moan when I sucked your finger?”

Her nose wrinkles. “I did not.”

“You did.”

Just when I think I have her, she takes the last step between us and uses the same finger I sucked to jab into my chest, reminiscent of the thing that started all this. “If I made a noise, it was a groan, not a moan.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes. A moan indicates pleasure. A groan indicates distress or suffering. Fitz, you could never make me moan.”

“You blushed.”

She shakes her head. “It was anger ... distress and suffering. You can suck all of my fingers and all ten toes if that’s what does it for you, but it won’t ever make me weak in the knees.”

“I bet there’s somewhere I could put my mouth that would make you weak in the knees.”

Why THE FUCK did I say that?

A plume of embarrassment spreads from her neck to the tips of her ears.

Oh, yeah. That’s why I said it.

“Look.” I run my knuckles along her neck, and she shudders. Although I’m sure it’s a frightened shiver. “You’re red again. I’d better leave you alone before you get any more hot and bothered. I mean ... angry and distressed.”

She wets her lips, eyes set in an indignant scowl, before whispering, “You’re going to pay.”

And just like that ... I’m back in the same sinking boat. Only this time, I didn’t merely poke the bear. I kicked her in the teeth and stole one of her cubs.