“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 eyes fell 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 touch, the sun and the rain.

“Tell me about them.”

“This one I got in San Francisco about four years ago. In Chinese culture, cherry blossoms are a symbol of life and love, as well as sexual power.”

“Hmm.” Gently, he turned her and glanced his knuckles along her shoulder blades. “And the birds?”

“I know a guy in Madrid.”

“Sounds like you know guys everywhere.”

There was no snark in his tone. That wasn’t Beck’s style, but nonetheless Darcy imagined an undercurrent of jealousy. Reveled in it a little, if she was being honest.

“The birds represent freedom.”

He hooked a finger in the waistband of her leather pants and pulled her forward so her breasts grazed his chest. Her nipples tightened to pleasurably painful buds. Slowly—so damn slowly—he unsnapped the button and inched the zipper down, the scrape sending her pulse rate into overdrive and her core into a flood. Only when her bare skin met the tiled wall outside the shower stall did she realize he had walked her back.

“Did you ever think of me, Darcy? When you were traveling the world? When someone drew this on you?”

Her first tattoo at the age of nineteen was of a heart in flames, its trite symbolism cringe-worthy years later. Poor-grade artwork, it served as an introduction to a weird new world and sparked her interest in body art. Later she covered it up with the spectacular elaboration of blooms and fire along her torso—not for Beck, but for her. Still, he had always been there, a part of her she could never deny.

“No, I didn’t think of you.” Liar, liar, thong on fire.

He slipped a thick finger under her lacy underwear, through her damp curls, until he found what he needed. Right at the spot where she needed.

“Good,” he whispered. “I told you to forget and you did. That’s all I could have wished for, querida.”

Oh, Beck. Unbearably touched by the words that had once broken her heart, she gripped his shoulders and dug her nails into his skin, needing an anchor. The staccato of her beating heart thudded in her ears and telegraphed an unnamed need for more.

She moaned deep as his finger rubbed through her seam, every return hitting her clit with the perfect amount of pressure. Two fingers breached her body and found a hot, steamy haven. Heat coiled tight in her belly. He was watching her, waiting for her to go over, so she held on desperately because the longer he trapped her in his intense gaze, the better the release would be. His other hand curled around her neck in a possessive, wildly sensual spread.

“More, Beck. Please.”

A finger soaked in her slick heat circled the nerve-packed nub of her clit, just like before, just how she liked it, and she shattered. His hand cupping her sex and the wall at her back were the only things keeping her upright.

And then his hand was gone.

Which left the cool tile. Slumped against it, she watched in a daze as he did that one-hand-over-the-head thing with his tee and reached in to turn on the shower. The tightly loomed muscles of his back moved like cogs under chocolate silk. Everything about him screamed pleasure.

Her spine had dissolved, leaving her useless, so thank God he took over. Holding her steady, he pulled off her boots and socks, divested her of her pants, sinking to his knees as he pulled them down. On the journey back up, he kissed the blue roses along her calf, languidly running his tongue over her damp, heated flesh.

“Where did you get this one?”

“Wh-what?”

“The roses. Where?” He christened the cerulean flowers with scorching hot kisses.

“London,” she panted. “It was the first big piece I got. The first one I was brave enough to get.”

He rewarded her bravery with more brain-destroying flicks of his tongue.

“Beck,” she whispered into the vapor, feeling like she had entered a fevered dream. Feeling a reckless abandon she had never before experienced.

No, wait, she had. With him. Only with him.

Nudging her thighs apart, he splayed those blunt hands over her soft skin. Oh, God, oh, God. The throb built inexorably the closer he moved to the well of her sex.

“Just a little taste, Darcy. You always tasted so sweet.”

As if she could deny him a single thing.

Mouth set to torture, he tongued her blooming folds, scooping up the intimate moisture, creating more with every luxurious sweep. She was flagging, her legs weak as the steam, her body a quivering mess. Any moment now, she would be knocked out of time—

Damn. He stood, giving her a chance to catch her breath (not necessarily a good thing) and appreciate his glistening mahogany chest (most assuredly a good thing). Dark hair arrowed down to his groin, blazing a trail she yearned to follow with her fingers, her lips, her tongue. He was perfectly formed, all steel flesh, so beautiful that it simply hurt to look at him. But she suspected it would hurt more when she no longer could.

“I need a condom. I need to be inside you when you come again.” He stepped back with the intent to grab protection, leaving her boneless against the wall.

“My purse,” she pushed out. Now wasn’t the time for coy.

“Atta girl.” He handed over her purse and she rummaged for the three-pack among the rest of her crap. After what seemed like an eternity, not helped by Beck sucking the delicate juncture where her neck met her shoulder, she found the Trojans.

Within two seconds, he had shucked his shorts, smoothed the condom on, and lifted her off the floor with little effort apparent in his raw, fireman strength.

Then he dawdled.

Teased and rubbed.

Drove her mad with anticipation.

Only when she begged did he enter her slowly in one consuming thrust. Their united groan reverberated against the tile, such a satisfying sound.

Such a loud, satisfying sound.

Panic about how public this was warred with bone-melting desire. “Beck, someone might come.”

“I guarantee it.” He stroked her long and deep, massaging her swollen clit with every return of his thick, sleek length.

“I mean—”

His mouth fitted over hers, choking off her words. A brutal, uncivilized kiss. The steam from the shower—the one they were not taking—added a skin of moisture that made her hands slip off his shoulders. But she never doubted his ability to hold her safe as he took her higher and made good on that guarantee for both of them.

After her world had been rocked—two more times—Beck still held her close, protectively and possessively, wedged deep inside her.

“We just had hot shower sex outside the shower,” she said with a giggle.

“Find ’em hot, leave ’em wet,” he murmured. “Well-known firefighter maxim.”

A stray thought cut through her mind fog. “What’s CPF? Gage said it before he left.”

His grin was wry and about the sexiest thing she had ever seen. “City Property Fuckable. It’s against the rules, so if you’re going to do it, you need to make sure it’s worth losing your job over.”

“And I’m CPF?”

“You know it, querida. You’re my first.”

His first, just like he had been hers all those years ago.

There was that rare smile on his lips but, also, in his lake-blue eyes she saw his determination: the inner strength that helped him survive those early, dangerous years in a life he hadn’t chosen. The same strength that powered him in the ring and on every call in this life he had made his own.

Maybe it was delayed shock, or the power of the O, or the fact she was standing in a firehouse shower room with her hot Latin lover impaling her to the tile, but it suddenly hit her like a two-by-four.

He could have died.

And she would never have known.

She would have popped into Dempsey’s bar with Mel and assumed it was his night off. Might even have silently cheered the bullet she had dodged by not running into him. Only two days later, the idea of a world without him—her world without him—turned her blood to ice.