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

she thought she was getting herself into.
    He seemed to read her hesitation, her concern. “Just remember, this stops wherever you want it to,” he murmured.
    Yes. She was in charge. She didn’t need him to tell her she was in charge. With shaking hands and not any kind of certainty, she pawed for the hem of her shirt. In a quick, jerky movement, she pulled it up, over her head, and off her body.
    Since no one of the opposite sex had ever seen her underwear before, she’d never been particularly concerned about the design or the color, but the boring, tan cotton she was wearing seemed out of place, considering she was having the most exciting night of her life.
    Ace’s intense, heated gaze didn’t change, so she had to assume he had no opinion about it. His hand dropped from her neck to her abdomen. He spread his fingers along the short distance between her waist and her breasts.
    “This is insane,” he breathed.
    Honestly, something about him thinking this was as crazy as she did was comforting. They didn’t even know each other and she knew this sort of thing happened to other people. People who were not her. “Yes, it is.” Because she couldn’t possibly disagree.
    His blue eyes blazed into hers. “Does that mean you want to stop?”
    Stop? She’d never been insane in her life, she was going to relish in it. “I’ll tell you if I want to stop.”
    He grinned. “You have no idea how much I’m appreciating that ‘if’ right now.”
    “Just kiss me again,” she said, breathless and desperate and nearly giddy with both of those non-Lina-like things.
    “Oh, I’m going to kiss you,” he said, his grin arrogant, his tone certain. He dropped his mouth—not to hers, but to the skin right above her belly button.
    She made a sound, but she couldn’t even describe it. It was certainly not a sound she’d ever made before. No man had ever kissed her mouth let alone her belly button. No man had touched her bare waist before, let alone drawn his tongue in lazy circles up the length of her stomach.
    She had certainly been missing out.
    When he reached the curve of her breast, his fingers were suddenly at her back and unclasping her bra. She had the fleeting thought to stop him. Because how could she let him see her breasts? How could she let this stranger touch her this way? Except she was. And she was enjoying it. So if she was enjoying it, why was she going to stop?
    She felt her clasp undo and slowly Ace pulled the straps from her shoulders. How had she gone from the nervous, little girl, afraid to step into a smokejumper bar, to a woman, shirtless on her own couch with a man she barely knew shirtless at her feet?
    At her feet. As though she was worth some kind of worship.
    This was all some kind of amazing dream. It had to be.
    His rough hands touched her everywhere she was bare. It was almost unbearable how gentle, how meaningful it seemed to feel.
    “Damn, Lina. What…” He let out a strange kind of laugh. “I don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
    “What I’m doing to you?” she repeated, confused that he’d stopped, confused by his words.
    His blue eyes slowly rose to hers. There was a seriousness in them that scared her. More than the prospect of sleeping with a stranger, more than the prospect of just about anything of this evening, the intensity on his face scared the living shit out of her.
    She started to squirm and look away, but his mouth closed over her breast and the sharp burst of pleasure, the surprising heat as he glided his tongue against her nipple eradicated whatever fear or concern had been building.
    This was too much to be afraid of, too good. Something was building inside of her, and she had a bad feeling it was desire. The kind of desire that could only be assuaged by an orgasm. She wasn’t so repressed she’d never given herself one of those. But giving herself one, and someone else giving her one, seemed very, very, very different.
    “I should go,” he all but