Burning Love Read online

  Burning Love

  A Hot Aussie Knights Romance

  Trish Morey

  Burning Love

  Copyright © 2017 Trish Morey

  Smashwords Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-946772-50-3

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  The Hot Aussie Knights Series

  Excerpt from Hot Mess

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Adelaide

  Caleb Knight slammed his locker door shut and slumped onto the nearby bench, letting his aching head flop into his hands. Sometimes life just sucked, though ironically, that seemed an honour reserved for the witnesses – the ambos and emergency services who were first on the scene. Along with the family, of course, the ones left behind. The ones whose lives hadn’t just been prematurely snuffed out because of some stupid, senseless, and ultimately fatal act.

  He closed his eyes but he knew the images would stay with him. There was no way he could unsee what he’d witnessed today.

  Like the images of the fifteen-year-old unlicensed and unrestrained driver, her long, blonde hair matted with blood, the fear she felt when she’d realised the two cars would collide preserved for all eternity in her open blue eyes as she lay broken and lifeless on the bitumen.

  And of her cowardly nineteen-year-old boyfriend reeking of alcohol and protesting to the police officers questioning him that it had all been her idea to drive, and that it wasn’t his fault.

  But then the gut-wrencher, the female driver of the other car trapped and barely clinging to life in the small hatchback that had been crushed like tinfoil when the high-powered Subaru had run the red light. Even the Jaws of Life he’d wielded hadn’t been strong or fast enough to cut through the wreck in time to save her life, before her heavily pregnant body had been rushed to hospital in a desperate mission to save her baby.

  Yeah, sometimes life sucked.

  What a fucking mess. He sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck. He’d joined the fire brigade to put out fires, not to scrape people off the road. Although that was only half true. He’d joined because, going back three generations, that was what the men in his family did. From saving people and property, their pets and livestock from fires to demonstrating to the public at the annual Royal Adelaide Show how to use a fire extinguisher. And, sure, rescuing the odd kitten stuck in a tree. God, how he wished today had been all about rescuing kittens.

  “That was a rough one,” he heard Richo say behind him. “I sure could do with a cold one after that. You in?”

  “Maybe.” He nodded to get rid of his crew mate, to make it look like Caleb was on the same page, but he knew what he needed when he felt like this wasn’t a day off. It was Ava.

  He needed Ava.

  Chapter Two

  Ava Mattiske sensed the change in light behind her. Sunset, she registered with surprise, turning her head towards the big picture windows that ran one length of her studio and overlooked the steep creases of the Uriarra Gorge below to the city and sea beyond. It had been mid-afternoon the last time she’d looked out, the cloudless sky had then been an infinite blue, the air almost shimmering in the thirty-plus temperatures. Now the rugged gorge with its rocky escarpments and bush-filled slopes and ridges was alight with the golden red rays of the westering sun.

  Her favourite time of day.

  She turned back with a critical eye on the unfinished still life she’d been working on for days now. She’d been struggling to capture the poetry of the simple composition of lemons and blue and white striped jug she’d arranged against a snowy white-tiled backdrop. She thought she almost had it at one stage today, thought she could get it if she just persisted. But still it didn’t sing with the vibrancy it should. Something was missing.

  The light summoned her back to the windows, demanding her attention. There was no rush to finish her work, she decided, wiping her hands on a towel. No need to fight when she could finish the painting tomorrow. Right now it was the sun’s turn to paint. She cleaned her brushes, poured herself a glass of chilled sauvignon blanc, and pulled up a chair on the terrace outside to enjoy the show. The sunsets were just one more reason to love living here in this special place in the Adelaide Hills, where the sky went on forever and the land was richly textured, the ridges and valleys steep and rocky, and in stark contrast to the long flat plains of Adelaide below.

  She could never live down there on the flat. Texture was what she craved. Big sky. Shifting clouds. The sunsets were a bonus, just like the visiting wildlife, and the gully winds at night that came to banish the worst of the summer heat.

  Not to mention the isolation.

  She could work here. She could relax and let the ever changing landscape and the ever changing colours feed her soul.

  She was safe.

  Her glass was near empty, the sun a molten ball dipping its toes into the sea, when she heard a car approaching the house along the long driveway behind. She stiffened, cocking an ear, wondering at the intrusion. Caleb’s car, she realised, and a momentary spike of pleasure at his unexpected arrival was tempered by the knowledge he’d broken the rules. In the time they’d been seeing each other, they never dropped by without phoning first. They never intruded on each other’s lives without first checking it was okay.

  He knew that.

  She sat there, waiting, in the dying rays of the sun, wondering what had changed that he would do this and risk what they had, thinking she’d miss him if it had to end.

  But then, it had been a while.

  Maybe too long.

  Maybe it was time...

  She heard his footsteps crunch on the gravel driveway, and then he was there, standing awkwardly in the half-light, as if knowing he’d crossed some invisible threshold.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice unusually thick. “Rough day...”

  And suddenly she didn’t need an explanation to understand because his stumbled words and his tortured eyes told her all she needed to know. “It doesn’t matter,” she said with a reassuring smile, as she stood and wove the fingers of one hand through his.

  Because, even in the fading light, she could see the torment that was etched in his face and feel the pain that had brought him here. She pushed herself higher and pressed her lips to his.

  It didn’t matter that he’d broken the rules, not this one time.

  Not when she knew how to fix him.

  They didn’t make it to the bedroom. They didn�
��t make it inside. Her kiss was the trigger that unleashed something inside him, something untamed and wild. Primal. He growled and tugged her to him, his fingers tangling in the hair behind her head, his hot mouth meshing with hers, his tongue urging hers into the dance. She felt the knot at her nape come undone and the heavy tide of her hair roll down her back, while his hands – his big, beautiful hands – followed it, palming their way down her spine and lower, his long fingers squeezing the cheeks of her behind so she tingled with the press of his fingertips so close to her heated core.

  A flock of black cockatoos screeched their way across the darkening sky as the light around them shifted, the colour leeching out of the day as he rocked her hips against the swell of his erection. He made a sound low in his throat, half a guttural cry of desperation half an admission of need, and then his hands were working at her clothes, frantically pulling at the buttons of her painting shirt and shrugging it over her shoulders and letting it fall to the ground without letting his mouth lose hers.

  Her naked breasts firmed in the whisper of warm evening air, her nipples tight buds even before his hands found them. She sighed in his mouth as he cupped them, tweaking their aching tips, before his hands skimmed down her belly to find the snap at her waist and wrench the zipper, and her shorts and underwear were down before he began shedding his own clothing.

  He was like a blind man, a man lost in a dark room and searching for the light. Or a diver out of oxygen, desperate to reach for the surface before his lungs exploded. He wasn’t like the others. He didn’t need her entertainment or her flattery. He just needed to be inside her.

  And as she let herself lose her shorts and her sandals, she knew all she had to do was to be there until the storm passed and the tension in his body that was bending him into knots was gone.

  She felt herself pulled into his arms again, his seeking cock colliding with her belly, as his tongue plunged deep in her mouth, his fingers clenched tight in the cheeks of her ass as he lifted her from the ground and spun her around towards the studio. The sunset-warmed glass met her back as he pressed her against the glass, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his heated neck, while his hot tongue swept circles around her nipples and his erection pressing hard and insistent at her slickened entrance, until she was swept up in the whirlpool of sensations, and she whimpered with the conflicting pleasure and pain of it.

  He didn’t make her wait. His hands on her hips, he drew her down his length, each inch adding to the delicious fullness, and she shuddered at the sheer bliss of the connection.

  His tortured eyes collided with hers as he lifted her slowly upwards.

  “Ava,” he ground out, as he held her there momentarily, before he surged upwards at the same time he pulled her down hard. “Ava.”

  He was like a storm unleashed after the calm, wild and savage. Elemental. But even as he thrust into her, even as her blood turned to mercury in the rush of heat from that delicious friction, that look in his eyes sent that cold lick of fear down her spine again. This was not how it was between them. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  The realisation faded, increasingly blurred and indistinct until it was snuffed out by the sensations unfurling and blossoming inside her, sensations building as wave after wave of pleasure rolled through her, taking her with them, higher and higher. Until there was nowhere left to go, nothing there to hang onto, and one final powerful thrust of his hips launched her over the brink, and sent her spinning through a universe of sparkling lights in a velvet sky.

  Gradually the shudders subsided as she floated back to her world, her ability to detect detail returning. Bit by bit she became aware of her pounding heartbeat, of his fractured breathing, and of the puff of his hot breath against her heated skin; the whiskers of his jaw that rasped against her skin where he rested his head in the crook of her shoulder, his fingers uncurling from her flesh as she unwound her legs from his waist. Tentatively, she tested her land legs. Her knees wobbled but didn’t buckle. This was good.

  He lifted his head and pressed his hand against the glass behind her head, peeling his body from hers, the balmy night air rushing in to fill the void, whispering cool caresses over her scorching skin.

  Then he leaned back in, kissing her softly on lips now plump and tender from the punishing demands of his kisses, before resting his forehead against hers with a sigh. “God, I needed that.”

  She half laughed, remembering the desperate note of his voice calling her name and hoping that need was all it was. Needing it to be all it was. Defined. Contained. Manageable. “Apparently I needed it too.”

  He cupped her cheek with one hand. “Are you all right?” he said, his voice still choppy. “I didn’t give you much of a chance.”

  She shook her head, looking beyond his shoulder into the now inky night, wondering if she’d only imagined the note of caring in his voice and in his touch? Or was she looking for reasons to find fault now that she’d planted a seed of doubt in her mind?

  “I did fine,” she said. “Have you eaten?”

  “I came straight from my shift.”

  “Then come inside,” she said, ducking under his arm to gather up her scattered clothes, needing space and distance and a cool head to reason. She couldn’t think straight when he was naked and this close and he’d just blown her world apart when she’d thought she was the one in control. “I’m sure I can find us something.”

  His hand caught her upper arm. “Ava? Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “It’s just you seem – on edge.”

  “Do I?” She clutched her crumpled shirt to her chest and forced a smile to her face. She was probably imagining things. Probably just feeling frustrated because her painting wouldn’t behave. “Maybe just a bit tired. I’m going to have a shower. Help yourself to a drink.”

  He picked up her empty wine glass. “Top yours up?”

  “Thanks,” she said with a nod, and disappeared inside.

  Caleb fished himself a beer from the fridge in Ava’s self-described “French Provincial meets Rustic” kitchen. He leant against the timber benchtop that had been carved from a fallen tree and definitely had more to do with the latter than the former, even if she’d painted the cupboard doors below it in an antique white, and snapped off the lid, letting the cold liquid slide down his throat. Nothing beat a cold beer after hot sex.

  He heard the water turn off in the bathroom and poured a slug of wine into Ava’s glass, already anticipating her return. Nothing beat a cold beer after hot sex, that was, unless it was more sex. He’d been right to come. If he’d gone home to his one-bedroom flat, he wouldn’t have switched off. He’d probably be on his sixth beer by now, trying to blot out the events of today playing in his head in an endless loop.

  But Ava – Ava didn’t ask him why or press him for details. Ava didn’t complain about his job or pry into his life and his thoughts, searching for details she could turn around and use against him.

  She appeared then, wearing her blue robe lashed at her slender waist, shrugging her long hair over her shoulders with her hands in a way that accentuated the golden slice of skin exposed at her chest in the process and, damn, if he didn’t feel his cock twitch in appreciation.

  “What?” she said, her almond eyes narrowing as her bare feet slapped softly on the terracotta tiled floor as she came towards him.

  “You,” he said, handing her the glass of wine. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”

  She took the glass, taking a sip, her eyes above the rim, giving him and his bare chest a quick once over. He’d put on his jeans, even if he hadn’t bothered with the button, but that was it.

  “You don’t look so bad—”

  And then she saw it. She came closer, her eyes focusing in on his left shoulder, her fingers lightly tracing over the fancy cursive script across his upper arm.

  “Brothers forged in fire,” she read. She looked up at him. “When did you get this?”

  “T
he night of my grandfather’s memorial service. We all got one.”

  Her eyes flicked up again. “All?”

  “Well, there were a few of us, including Dylan and two of our firey cousins, Logan and Dare.”

  He was pretty sure he’d told her he had a twin brother at some point, probably when he’d told her about going to Brisbane for Leonard’s memorial service, but other than that, he couldn’t ever remember talking about his wider family. And, other than knowing her father was from Singapore and her mother an Australian, he didn’t know anything about her family, but that was the kind of relationship they had. When they got together, they didn’t waste time talking about family.

  “We went drinking after the service, and”—he sucked in a breath—“and, the old man was a real hero. Old school firey with the nous to take firefighting into the current age, without losing the core of what we do.” Even if the powers that be were so eager to find a scapegoat for last year’s devastating Victorian bushfires, they were willing to crucify him. shook his head at an investigation that seemed to have no good purpose and no end. “So we wanted to honour him somehow, something we could all be part of. A tattoo seemed like a good idea at the time.” And it was, although he’d woken up the next day with thunder in his head and a tongue that felt like he’d licked the bottom of a cocky cage and he’d wondered why the hell his arm stung so much. Three weeks on and it was mostly healed. Which meant more than three weeks since he’d seen Ava. Bloody night shift interfering with his sex life. No wonder he’d gone off like a volcano.

  She nodded approvingly as she put down her glass and turned towards the fridge door. “Something so permanent should be meaningful.”

  “Like yours?” he said, placing his hand on the back of her shoulder where he knew the stylized phoenix was inked.

  She stiffened under his touch. “Sure,” she said lightly – too lightly – agreeing too readily for him to believe he hadn’t just hit on a topic she didn’t want to discuss.