Free Rekindle the Flame by Kate Meader Page B

crushing heart out for Jack, who had taken a couple of proud steps back to assess the damage. A cocky smile spread over his reddening face. In that moment, Darcy hated her brother because he was so like their father. Sneakily striking at the good, reveling in the havoc he wreaked.
    The boy stood while the referee checked his face, shaking his head somberly. Blood blanketed his mouth; the word broken filtered through to her consciousness. Disappointment rose up to freeze her chest. It was over. One strike and it was over.
    An older man about her father’s age said something and threw a soaking rag into the ring. The boy picked it up, wiped his broken nose, and lobbed the rag overhis shoulder, past the ropes. Pretty hard-core. Darcy’s heart pounded wildly as the referee stepped back, looking shocked, but his retreat an unspoken agreement that the fight would go on. For twenty-three seconds, the boy let loose on Jack, a whirl of flying fists and unmoored fury until the referee was forced to stop it. Her brother lay on the floor, stunned, grudging admiration for his conqueror in his eyes. Darcy had wished like hell she’d had her sketch pad.
    “That guy’s an animal!” Shaz said, railing with indignation. Darcy wanted to sigh at that, but her skin felt too tight for something so casual.
    The animal wiped his bloodied, smashed nose with the back of his glove and speared her with another unstinting stare. There was no pride on his face, no joy in his brutal achievement. She wondered why he bothered and hated that she cared. Then he hooked one corner of his bloodstained mouth up, sending her stomach into a wriggle. Lower, too.
    Nine years on, and nothing had changed. Beck Rivera was still the boy who heated her from the inside out and forced her to hold on to a germ-ridden folding chair for the ride of her life. He excited her like no one else.
    Raise that sex point average, Darcy. Show him what he’s been missing, Darcy.
    You’re a grade A idiot, Darcy.
    “Last stop,” he said, yanking her back to the present and Engine 6’s shower room. Over the door a sign proclaimed “Old firemen never die, their nozzles just rust away.” Cute.
    She arced her gaze over the trio of single-use shower stalls. Not quite the stuff of her filthy fantasies, which were more on the level of communal showers with hordes of hot men soaping up and getting sexy-slick.
    “Is this where a fireman keeps his etchings?” Darcy joked, nodding at the tattoo sketch he still held clenched in his fist.
    Beck set the drawing on a side ledge. “Nah, it’s where this fireman learns about his girl’s.”
    His girl’s. Stepping in, he moved his palm over her collarbone, down over the crest of her breast to trace the cherry blossoms budding above her bustier. She quivered under his touch.
    “I want in you, Darcy. I want to feel you tight and hot and wet around me. But first I want to know every one of these tattoos, all the stories. Where you’ve been. Where you’re going.”
    And she wanted to tell him. Everything. She dropped her purse and shrugged off her jacket, the soft sounds of leather hitting the floor loudly resonant in the tiled shower room. Her bustier showcased her breasts to how ya doin’ levels, but the true beauty lay below the fold. His hands wandered to her back, seeking access.
    “Here, let me,” she said, unzipping at the side with trembling fingers. Her breasts spilled free, revealing the vibrant blossoms painted down the left side of her body, each stem ending in flames.
    With his lust-stoked gaze, Beck tracked the motions of his hands down her breasts to her hips. When his eyesfell on the stems, the licks of heat on her skin came alive under his laser-like scrutiny.
    “Fire,” he said, one finger tracing the orange curls of flame on her hip. “Beautiful. Dangerous.”
    He coasted his hands up her sides and rested a finger above her breastbone, the gentle motion enough to make the blossoms on her skin bloom brighter. Beck’s