Free Ignite (Firefighters of Montana Book 3) by Nicole Helm

explain it. He only knew instead of always being the one reaching out for her, he wanted to be the one she reached out for.
    Her grasp on his shoulders tightened and she licked her lips again, though this time it was unconsciously, not thinking about what he’d said about it being erotic earlier. No, he could tell this time she was thinking of nothing else except how exactly she was going to initiate the kiss.
    He had the brief thought he should be concerned about her lack of experience, but it disappeared the minute she leaned toward him. Her lips pressed against his, featherlight. He thought that would be all she would give him. Although he didn’t know her very well, he should’ve known better. Because she came back, kissing him again and again, lingering a little bit longer each time, slowly building up to drawing her tongue across his closed mouth. It ratcheted through him, a hard crank against his determination to let her initiate.
    But he kept himself still, he let her explore and ignored the heady pulse beating in his neck.
    It didn’t take him nearly as long as it had taken her to get the hint to open his mouth, to allow her tongue entrance, to touch it with his.
    Then he forgot who was leading who in the heat of her mouth, in the velvet press of her tongue. He forgot all about what he meant to do, because the demanding ache of want had taken over.
    He got farther up on his knees and grabbed the back of her neck in a tight grasp. He angled her head and levered himself even farther up. He tasted her, deeper and deeper, and she moaned against his mouth in response.
    After what felt like hours of hot torment, she finally loosened her grasp on his shoulders and her fingers drifted down his chest. He remembered vividly the efficient, controlled, and disconnected way she’d touched him in the emergency room. It had been nothing but an examination. Nothing but work.
    This was not that. Her touch explored and it learned. She somehow touched him deeper. He’d never been one for fanciful thoughts like souls or hearts. His life had been too hard and too rough, completely devoid of all of those things.
    But, somehow, in an evening, Lina McArthur made him believe in it all.

Chapter Six
    L ina felt like she was drowning. But instead of the scary kind of drowning, this was a different kind of drowning she had never even begun to understand or experience. It was a marvelous kind of drowning. It was exquisite. It was a hundred foolish words she had never in her life used to describe human interaction.
    This was like drowning and then resurfacing as someone else. Resurfacing as a completely altered person, who believed in something completely different than she ever had before.
    It was beyond foolishness—this whole thing—and yet it made her giddy. In all the years she’d spent decrying foolishness and irrational thoughts and feeling, this near-stranger was making it seem as though her reasonable science-based view of life was the foolish thing. The wrong thing. Because human connection didn’t have to be what she’d experienced with her family, it could be something right and altering.
    Ace’s mouth left hers and she whimpered against the loss. She couldn’t bring herself to care that she was whimpering, that she was desperate. Couldn’t begin to give a flip that she was needy and she wanted.
    This morning she hadn’t understood what it was to want something like this, and suddenly now she did.
    But instead of leaving her completely, Ace’s mouth streaked down her neck, pulling the high collar of her turtleneck with it. He tugged at the tight fabric with impatient fingers and pressed hot openmouthed kisses to her skin there.
    This was getting…out of control. And she craved the loss of control like she’d never craved anything in her life.
    “It’s your turn to take off your shirt,” he said, his voice raw.
    It sent twin shivers of excitement and… not exactly fear, but concern. Concern she didn’t know what