Firewolf

She spread her legs until her sandaled feet were in place. Meadow tried and failed to ignore the pain of her burning toes.

“Stay there,” he called from outside the shield.

She heard the crunch of his feet on the scorched earth. Meadow’s legs and arms began to tremble from the effort of keeping the shelter steady against the constant wind. How had he held the shield down all that time? It seemed impossible. Again she realized that Dylan Tehauno had saved her life. She knew he had come back just for her, and, because of that act, everything in her life that was good was a gift from him.

Meadow’s eyes burned and she was surprised she had enough water left in her body to cry. But the tears came, sliding over the bridge of her nose and dropping into the dry sand. Even the tears were thanks to Dylan. The sobs came next. Meadow was so grateful and so undeserving.

How did a person like her repay a man like him? Money? Sex? A new truck? He said he was looking for a job. She could help him with that. Her father employed lots of people. Her brother Phillip, too. If she asked, her dad would give Dylan a job. Especially when he found out what he had done. She needed to call her father. But her phone was in her car. Or it had been.

The crunch of his boots signaled his return.

“Meadow. I’m taking off the shield.”

The foil wrapper lifted away and the hot air rushed past her. She pressed her hands over her mouth to cool the next breath as she rolled to her side looking up at him.

He stood shirtless, his skin smudged with ash and glistening with sweat. Dylan dropped his shirt over her naked body.

“Put that on.”

She drew to her knees, tugging the garment over her shoulders and holding it closed before her. The sand stuck to her skin and poured under her sandals. He offered his hand and, looking around, she rose beside him. The fire now raced far back along the road she had traveled, a line of orange glowing beneath the billowing gray smoke.

They were surrounded by a forest of tree trunks charred black and smoking. How many animals had died in that fire? She shivered at the thought. How many houses in the valley below them were now at risk? She’d driven through a new development that butted against the national forest. She remembered her father complaining about the expensive homes positioned with views of the sunset over the ridge. He’d called them hypocrites because they had objected to the mansion that broke the ridgeline for obstructing their views.

They were likely evacuating now.

Meadow glanced at the trench he had made. There lay the only patch of earth devoid of flammable vegetation. The only place the earth was not black. Her pink lace bra lay in the sand and a diamond on one of her rings twinkled. Then she spotted her GoPro. She stooped to recover it and paused. The camera was intact, but the tripod had not been wholly under the shelter and it had melted to a lump of black plastic. She stared at the evidence of how much hotter it had been outside the shelter than inside. Dylan crouched beside her and offered a wet bandanna, and she washed her face, horrified at the black soot that came away on the red cotton. He rinsed the cloth and used it to wipe off her throat. The simple act of kindness undid her.

She turned to him and fell into his arms, sobbing. He stroked her tangled hair. He whispered to her in a language she could not understand as she clung to him and wept. His hand stroked her back, rubbing up and down over the shirt he had given her. Everything she had and everything she was she owed to him. She lifted her chin to look up at him.

Why hadn’t she seen the kindness in his dark eyes or the strength reflected in his blade of a nose and the strong line of his jaw rough with dark stubble and sand? All she’d seen was a nuisance ruining her shot. His black brows lifted and the corner of his mouth twitched upward. That mouth was so tempting and she was so lost.

Meadow threaded one hand in his thick, short hair and tugged, angling her chin, and rose onto her toes, pressing her mouth to his.

* * *

DYLAN STARTLED AT the unexpected contact and the unprecedented wave of desire that swept over him. Reflexively, his arms contracted, drawing her tight to his chest. Only after the contact of her bare skin to his did he remember she had not yet buttoned his shirt and he had removed his T-shirt to check his back for burns. Her bare breasts molded to the hard planes of his chest, setting off a firestorm inside his body. Her tongue flicked out and he opened his mouth, allowing her to deepen the kiss that soon consumed them both. When her fingers scored his bare back, Dylan’s need overwhelmed him, but the fluttering in his belly and the stirring below that did not quite overtake the whisper of danger.

Bobcat growled a warning.

The overt. Her seeming desire.

The hidden. Her real purpose. Was this a distraction to give her people time to reach them? A way to make him forget his unease and take what she offered?

She had told him she was a party girl. Now he saw her provocative nature. Sex to this woman meant no more than choosing what dessert to eat. Dylan pushed her away, not because of the danger or the hidden agenda but because he did not wish to be the flavor of the month. For him, the intimacy shared by man and woman was sacred.

“We need to go,” he said.

She looked up at him with wide eyes, and a enticing pink mouth opened just enough to tempt him to kiss her again. But he wouldn’t, precisely because he did want to so much. She seemed bewildered. Oh, this one was good. Very, very good. If he did not know better, he would believe the innocence and astonishment he saw in her face.

“Come on. Now.”

He drew her away from him and then let her go. He allowed himself one long look at the swath of bare skin revealed between the edges of his shirt. His gaze stopped on the scrap of pink lace that covered her seemingly hairless sex. Then he met her gaze and saw the power in her eyes. She was used to men looking at her like this, completely comfortable now, as if she had regained her footing and stood on familiar ground. She stared at him with a kind of triumph melded with seduction.

He pointed at his shirt. “Button that.”

Meadow gave a mock salute that revealed the bottom curve of a bare breast. Dylan met her gaze.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, brushing the sand from his chest and tugging on his T-shirt.

“I just wanted to thank you.”

He shoved his bandanna in the back pocket of his jeans. “You don’t thank a man by having sex with him, Meadow.”

“Sometimes I do.”

“I’m not like you, then. I’m not casual about such things.”

“A real Boy Scout,” she said, pink lips curling.

“You should have more pride and respect for yourself.”

He saw his condemnation strike her. Her bottom lip quivered. Was this an act or real emotion? He rubbed his right shoulder, wishing Bobcat could tell him because his instinct was to take her in his arms again. Ridiculous. She was a wealthy, spoiled, lost woman-child and he was not interested.

Dylan dug in the sand, recovering her rings. “How many did you have?”

“Four.” She accepted the offering in cupped palms and slipped the trinkets onto her long fingers.

Meadow looked from her hand to the ground.

“Is that your ax?” She pointed at the metal head that was all that remained of the Pulaski ax after the wood had burned away.

He lifted the ax head and then dropped it back to the sand.

“Fought a lot of fires with that. Like losing an old friend.”

Meadow glanced to the road to the two burned hulls that had been his truck and her car. They were scorched gray and looked old, ancient, as if abandoned years and years ago.

She gasped, pressing one hand to her mouth as she pointed with the other.

“My car!”

“Totaled. But I suspect you have it fully insured.”

She took a step closer. “The glass melted. The seats. Upholstery. Everything.” Meadow gaped at him. “All the paint just... It looks like... Why is it on its side?”

“Gas tank must have been full.”

“I topped it up on Canyon Road before coming out here.” She lifted her digital recorder. All the acrylic nails had popped off her fingers in the heat, leaving small, ragged, natural nails glowing pink on her blackened, dirty fingers. She fiddled with the buttons and the screen illuminated. “It still works!”