He was going to her. Now.
»»•««
Hanna mounted Jagger and eased down over his cock. Slow inch by slow inch, she delighted in the emotions crossing his handsome face. From his hooded eyes to the down and dirty love trail disappearing at the place their bodies joined, he was so gorgeous he should be illegal.
He palmed her nipples as she withdrew and then slammed back down on his cock. Groaning, he closed his fingers around her straining buds. She dropped her head back and rode him slow and easy.
Of all the things to wake up to, Jagger was the best. When her buzzer had sounded, she’d actually only been drifting in sleep, her mind waiting for him to come to her.
Damn, she was far too close to this man and she was beginning not to care. Times like these when he was buried in her to the hilt, she could overlook her feelings of unimportance.
Especially when he was looking at her as if she were a star just fallen from the heavens.
The dark stubble on his chin drew her fingers like an addict. She brushed her knuckles over his squared jaw and stared deeply into his eyes as she rolled her hips. His cock sank deeper still, and she cried out. Stretching around him, her body throbbing in time to her heart.
“Beautiful woman. Give me your lips.” Cradling her face with enough tenderness to raise tears in her eyes, he drew her down. The sweet flip of his tongue over hers was nothing she’d ever known before. Everything about Jagger was larger than life—and very quickly he was stealing her thoughts as well as her body.
Tearing away, he thumbed the corner of her lips, refusing to release her stare. “Mine. Tell me who owns these little nipples.”
He squeezed them so she cried out. “You!”
Gliding his hands down her torso to her slick pussy, he cupped her mound. “Who does this pussy belong to?”
She gasped as he ground her clit into her body. “You.”
Pulling his hand free, he brought his thumb, damp with her arousal, to her lips. “Taste yourself and tell me who these juices belong to.”
Snaking her tongue over his rough thumb, she moaned. A shudder of need washed through her, and suddenly she was shaking with the need to come. Collapsing forward, she stole his kiss while bucking wildly against him. “You, you, you,” she chanted.
Her body clamped down on his cock, and then she was coming hard. Riding the highs and lows of her bliss while he crooned dirty words in her ear. “That’s right, beautiful. You’re coming for me. You belong to me.”
He shoved high into her body, and she cried out once more as another wild contraction stole her sanity.
Barely able to process what was happening to her, she found herself flipped onto her belly and her ass in the air. Jagger gripped her hips and yanked her right into his cock, sinking to the root. His growl brushed her spine, and she thrashed to get closer to his extreme heat.
“My dirty girl. Sweet girl. You try to resist me, but your body knows what to do.”
God, yes. In the full light of day, she’d never admit it to herself, but here in bed with the man who mastered her completely, she was his and had no trouble saying so.
With his hand lightly around her throat, he lifted her head, making her back bow. His warm lips probed her temple. Finally, his kiss landed at the corner of her mouth. “Let’s call this something other than sex, Hanna.”
She froze, heart somersaulting. She wasn’t ready for this. No, she had to gain some thinking room.
He stroked her throat with a gentleness that he hardly seemed capable of given his size and strength. His powerful thighs cradled hers as he pulled her up against him. His words burrowed into her mind as his cock probed deeper with each thrust. “Let’s build this relationship. Let me call you mine.”
A shiver ran down her spine, and only half of it was need. The other part was liquid fear. “I can’t…give myself.”
“You already are. Your mind just needs to follow, my beautiful girl.” He pulled out, keeping only the swollen tip of his cock in her pussy. She ached to be filled again, but his mouth was at her ear again, coercing her. Begging almost. “Don’t be scared.”
“If it doesn’t work, you’ll leave me broken again just like…”
“Somebody hurt you, but I won’t. Trust me. If things aren’t working, we tear them down and rebuild them a new way. But understand this.” He punctuated his words with animalistic thrusts that rattled her core. Her orgasm was a bright orb inches away. “I. Will. Have. You.”
She came in waves. Each longer and stronger than the last. Her cries filling the air. Jagger’s cock stiffened and emptied into her with jerking twitches. His words never faded from her hearing. “Mine. Give yourself to me. Let me call you mine.”
And she drifted back to reality with the muscled fireman locking her to the bed and her mind far from where it had been a month ago. Her smile spread over the pillow and she felt his rasping breaths cross her skin.
“Is that a yes?” His gritty tone nudged her decision, as if she needed it.
It was a big step. One that scared the hell out of her. But she couldn’t deny that in a few short days together she wanted more. She wanted him to rule the thoughts that were his anyway. But giving him the power meant he could rip her heart out, just as Dominic had.
Jagger entwined their fingers and brought her hand to his mouth. His lips grazed her knuckles, and she let her eyes slip closed, listening to the patter of her heart. This wasn’t love yet, no. But her emotions for Jagger were strong.
She prayed he didn’t use them against her.
He rolled off and brought her with him, tucking her tight to his hard body. When she’d found him at her door, unscathed, her relief had been undeniable. “Hanna.” His warning tone raised all the hairs on her body. Her pussy squeezed, and more cream wet her folds.
“Yes?” Her voice was small but she stole a glance at his face.
The warrior was in place, his eyes fierce and his jaw set. “Are you mine?”
She took his hand and brought it to her breast, right over her heart. “Don’t hurt it.”
His eyelids fluttered, showing her the effect she had over him too. “I’ll protect it with everything in my power.”
Knowing what he was capable of, that was a lot of protection. She relaxed into his side and listened to her heart rate slow and his breathing grow rhythmic.
“I have to get up and work in an hour,” she murmured.
“Me too. You sleep and I’ll wake you.” He ran his fingers over her shoulder.
“You worked all night. It’s you who should be sleeping.”
He shifted, tensing enough that she opened her eyes and looked at his face. His hair dipped into one blazing eye. She pulled back.
The burning emotion she read in his eyes wasn’t passion—it was fury.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“The arsonist. I walked right past him.” His fingers closed into a fist on her back.
“How do you know it was the arsonist? That would be easy to miss, right?”
“I’m trained to read all the signs and I was too busy—” He tossed her a look, swallowing the end of his sentence. “I made a mistake and with this guy on the loose, it could cost lives and a lot of destruction of property.”
She stroked the hair off his forehead and leaned in to kiss the furrow between his brows. “What will you do?”
“I’m going to work day and night to find him.”
Her stomach went into a dead fall, plummeting to the tips of her toes. What had she done? She’d let her heart beat for Jagger. She’d cut her rope.
And there was no net beneath her.
“What the hell was that?” Corey’s angry tone cut through Jagger’s haze of fury. Gabriel and two other guys closed the circle around Jagger, hemming him in.
He met each eye in the group, refusing to back down. When he’d singlehandedly rushed into the latest arson fire to rescue an elderly woman, he’d broken protocol. Chief was gonna have his ass on a platter, but he’d deal with Chief and Chief alone. The rest of his teammates could go to hell.
“I’m not discussing this with you.” He flexed his jaw, biting back the roar building in his chest.
“You damn well are discussing this with us. You never leave your team. You, my friend, have a Superman complex.” When Jagger tried to move past him, Corey shoved him back with a hand on his chest.
“Did I save that woman?” he countered.
“Yeah, you did. But if you’d gotten cut off from us and we weren’t able to control the fire at your back, man?” Gabriel shook his head, and for a brief moment Jagger felt a pang of remorse.
“We could have lost a man today, Jagger. You’d better start realizing that you’re part of a team. What you do affects each and every one of us.”
Suddenly Chief strode into the locker room and rested his glare on Jagger. “Break it up, guys. Jagger, in my office.”
He gave his head one last rub with the towel in his hand and finished dressing. In minutes he was seated across from the fire chief, catching hell about his actions.
“I’m not going to apologize for my actions. I saved that woman when nobody else could.”
“You might have perished too. Then we would have had two victims on our hands. Gabriel is right—you’re part of this team now. Do you know what happens when a close-knit group like this loses one of their own?”
Jagger looked down at his hands. Son of a bitch. In doing his best, he’d still failed. Suddenly, he felt ten years old again, unable to get his father back to the house before the man passed out unconscious.
“I know your history, Jagger.”
He arched a brow at his chief.
“I know everything from childhood on up until the moment you lost that family on Roosevelt Street.”
Jagger’s stomach dropped out. He leaned forward and scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to get his mind around the reminder. “Fuck.”
Chief pushed out a breath. “It’s my business to know the background of every man in this house. I knew this when I brought you in. But I knew you were rock solid. Are you going to give me cause to question my decision?”
“No, sir.” He got up and paced to the door, a burning in his chest that he didn’t want to own.
“See that you don’t play Superman again, Jag.”
He gave Chief a salute and walked out. The world felt unbearably small with everyone in his business. He was fine. After the deaths of that family, he’d had appropriate therapy. He’d been cleared.
But there was no denying that he was more driven to save people since that night of horror. He walked outside and pulled a deep breath into his lungs. The minute his head cleared, he thought of Hanna. The one person he wanted at this minute.
But she deserved the best version of him, and this wasn’t it. He took off walking in the opposite direction of Hanna’s apartment. After he got his head into a better place, he’d go to her, and hopefully she’d be happy to see him.
»»•««
When Jagger walked into the big main room of the firehouse and saw Hanna wrapped around the fireman’s pole, her denim-covered crotch pressed to the metal and her T-shirt riding up her midriff, he stopped in his tracks.
Dammit, bringing her here was a terrible idea.
But she’d insisted on paying for her auction prize in person…and he couldn’t resist showing her off to the guys.
A growl built in his throat—part need, part anger. He was never going to look at that pole again when sliding down it, and neither were his teammates.
They cheered her on, and Jagger saw an all too familiar expression on her beautiful face. She was seeking a thrill here just as she had been at the end of a bungee rope or lying on a bar inviting strangers to take shots off her sleek body.
He stalked over to her and caught her as she did a rotation around the pole that made his balls clench with desire. He peeled her away easily, and she fell against his chest, laughing.
“I hope to God I never come in and see you doing that again.”
Tilting her head back, she met his gaze. “I knew you were about to walk in.”
His lips skimmed her ear. “The only pole you’ll be gyrating against is mine.”
She shuddered.
“Let’s go, guys. Fun is over. Time to work.” Chief waved the group to the piles of firefighting gear in a line on the floor. Once a week the guys fought for the title of quick draw. The fastest person to get into his gear got lunch on the house.
“You want a thrill, beautiful, that’s it.” Jagger motioned to his own pile. He’d intended to compete in front of her, but this was better. Earlier he’d taken her to his locker and shown her how to put everything on. Like everything she did, she nailed it first try.
“Me?” She stared at the gear.
“Yep. Get in line, rookie.”
Shooting him a grin, she did. But the longer the chief stalled, the more Hanna seemed to fidget.
“C’mon, Hanna. You can leap off a building but you’re worried about this challenge?” Jagger threw an amused look at her. She stood before the pile of firefighter gear on the floor. Gabriel and Corey flanked her, tensely waiting for their starting whistle.
“Ten bucks on Hanna,” someone called from behind.
“I’ll double that! Without Jagger in that lineup, my money’s on Corey.”
“Corey’s practically an old man. Look at all that silver in his hair.”
“It’s all real.” Corey ran his fingers through his thick hair he was constantly teased was a result of the Hair Club for Men and then grabbed his bulge. “Everything’s real, gentlemen.”
Laughter, and Hanna flushed as she stifled her own giggles. Jagger eyed the guys, hoping nobody got any ideas about making a move on her. If so, he’d end up on probation for fighting. He couldn’t seem to control himself where she was concerned.
Resisting the urge to throw her over his shoulder and get her out of the firehouse, he positioned himself closer, guarding her.
He’d never been this protective about someone before. Whatever she raised in him was earthy and primal. He had little control over it. When he met her gaze, something bright lived in her eyes.
She likes being mine.
While walking the streets thinking, his mind had automatically turned to Hanna. She’d been burned badly by a past relationship, but he had no intention of hurting her. In fact, he was working to tune into her needs more, which was how she’d ended up here. He needed to bring her into his world.