The Firefighter Who Rescues Me

Chapter 17 ♚ His Eyes

Not to sound creepy, but watching Pace sleep beside me made me fall in love even more.

His lips were slightly parted as breath rushed in and out while in deep sleep. We were both cooking under his bedsheets and the heat tinged his cheeks pink. Or maybe he was dreaming about what we'd done last night.

Even worse, he didn't need to have eyelashes so long but there they were, the final touch to the perfect creation he was. I brushed a strand of his short, light brown hair away from his forehead, silky to the touch just like his skin.

I'd been awake, watching him for a while. For a firefighter, someone who had to get up from his bed bunk and be ready to respond to emergencies in seconds, he sure slept like a log. I'd shifted in bed, rearranged the bedsheets, got up and come back and he hadn't stirred once.

Maybe he was tired from back to back night shifts at work, but I suspected his deep sleep was more due to the fact—well, he still didn't know how to pace himself when making love. He gave himself fully to it, as though it were the last time. Again, and again.

Being honest with myself, I didn't know it could be like this—and I didn't mean physically. The addicting part wasn't the way he kissed me, the brush of our skin or the way we laced our fingers as waves of pleasure hit us. It was the way he looked at me. Like he couldn't believe I was real. Like he feared I wasn't.

I drowned with impatience every second he didn't wake up, not because I wanted to feel him again, but because I needed to see those blue eyes of his again just so that I knew he wasn't a mirage.

Pace finally stirred, his eyes squeezing against the realization it was bright out.

"Good morning, gorgeous," I said, my voice coming out raspy without premeditation.

Pace blinked at me. "Wow, what I was just dreaming became true."

"And what were you dreaming about?" I ran my hand down his chest and under the sheets, all the way down to pull his bare hip toward me. "Hmm, it must have been a good dream, huh?"

Pace's eyes were dark with sleep but mostly with something else. He tossed the sheets away and shifted on top of me, settling against me in a way that made me sigh. He swooped down and I raised my face to join him in the middle, but at the last second he made a detour. His lips played with the base of my neck, leaving a hot trail that raised goosebumps all over my skin.

"Way tastier in real life," he murmured against my skin.

For someone with no prior experience with women, he sure had learned how to drive me over the edge fast.

I racked my nails down his back, enjoying the shudder it caused in him. Before I reached my goal of grabbing his butt we heard a sound that froze us.

Pace pulled away, eyes peeled open as though it would help him hear better.

"It's probably nothing," I said, caressing his jaw. The bristles of his morning stubble tingled. "Let's focus back on your dream."

But we couldn't, because we heard another sound, and suddenly there was a voice right outside the door, saying, "Hey, Pace. What do you want for breakfast?"

Faster than I could blink, Pace jumped from the bed, naked as the day he was born, and threw his body against the opening door. "Dad, hey."

That was when I sucked all the air out of the room. I pulled all the bedsheets up against me to cover my body.

"Is the door jammed?" His dad asked. "I can't seem to open it."

"Yeah, it's jammed." Pace's voice broke. The look on his face when he glanced back at me was pure panic. "Uh, listen I'll be out in a moment okay?"