The Best Of Blaze - Six Sexy Romances

12

“WANT TO TALK?” Molly asked as they were sitting in the large tub in her bathroom en suite.

“No,” he said. “But we probably should.”

“That isn’t very reassuring,” she said.

He rubbed her arm, unable to stop himself from touching her. They’d gathered their clothes from the den and had run up the stairs and into her room like naughty kids. The bathtub had seemed a logical place to end up together. She was leaning on his chest, their feet propped up on the other end of the tub. Her feet with their purple toenails looked especially tiny between his larger ones.

Reassuring... He wasn’t sure he had ever known how to be that man, but right now he wasn’t feeling it. He was more lost than he’d been after the first evaluation.

“Good news first.”

“Okay,” she said.

“We might have won the bid for the facility,” he said. “I’m supposed to call Lynn. Dennis got some insider news that he’d be happy with the winner of the bid. He thinks that means us.”

“Good,” she said. “Jeb is getting pretty excited about the facility and the land’s ready for construction now.”

“Yeah. He told me that if he’d been better at science, he would have tried to become an astronaut. Flying’s in his blood. His old man was a fighter pilot in Vietnam.”

“Really?” Molly asked. “I never knew that.”

Jason knew he was stalling, but he didn’t want to say out loud that he might not make the cut for the program. That his space dreams might be over when they’d barely started. And he knew that wasn’t fair. He’d spent way more time among the stars than most other astronauts had, but he wanted more. He needed more.

Molly put her hand on his wrist, drew it up her body and kissed his knuckles. “Just say it. Whatever your bad news is. It’s not going to get better keeping it to yourself.”

She was right. He knew that, but once he said it... “Dennis is being pressured to name the commander for the first mission. He wants me, but I’m still grounded. He asked me to come to Houston and take a slew of tests to see if I’ve made improvements. If I have, he will push back, say he wants me and that I’m recovering.”

“If not, he’ll name someone else,” she said, filling in the rest. “That sucks. So when do you have to go?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve done everything I can.”

“I know. What’s the process?” she asked.

“Usually, they have us do a series of blood tests and then spend many hours in a specialized room where they can see how being in a zero gravity simulation affects the body.”

Molly turned in the tub so she could face him. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.

“At least you’ll know,” she said.

“I don’t want to,” he said at last. “I wanted the full three months so that I could be further along in my recovery from the yearlong mission.”

“What can you do?” she asked.

“Nothing. Dennis said it best—they don’t want to bring me back in pieces.” Jason was trying to make it sound like a joke, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to give up on being a part of the Cronus missions.

She shook her head. “It’s not funny.”

“I know. If I don’t laugh, I think I’m going to cry.”

“Do you want me to go to Houston with you?” she asked.

He hadn’t thought of bringing anyone along. All of his adult life he’d been on his own. By choice, he realized, because Mick might have been more involved in his life if he’d asked him. “I would like that. Can you be away from the ranch?”

“I don’t see why not. Jeb says I get in his way.”

Jason could imagine Jeb saying that, but they both knew how important her work on the ranch was. “I won’t be able to spend much time with you. I mean, I’ll be in the testing facility for the most part.”

“It’s okay. I want to see the space center and do some more research on the kind of training we’ll be providing if our bid goes through. When are we going to call Lynn?”

“Not until we get out of this tub. Are you excited about the facility?”

She turned back around, settling against his chest once again. “I am. It’s different and we haven’t done anything new here in forever.”

“Nervous at all?”

“I’m more nervous about going to Houston with you.”

He squeezed her close. “Why?”

“Everyone will know we’re together,” she said. “Or assume it. And you know how the ranch is...so gossipy. Once you leave—”

“If I leave. This is going to be the trip that makes the difference, Molly. This test will decide my future.”

She tipped her head back to look up at him. “You will decide your future. The test is going to just point out the possibilities.”

“That’s very wise,” he said.

“Dad said the same thing to me. When I dropped out of college, I said, ‘I guess I have no choice except ranching.’ He told me I had the same choices I’d always had. I’d simply eliminated one possibility.”

Mick had been such a good dad, Jason thought. As long as he’d known him, the older man had always had a long vision of the future. It was hard to imagine the world without him in it, but Mick lived on in Molly and in everyone whose life he’d touched.

“I miss him. I could use his advice right now,” Jason said.

“He’d say something ambiguous and make you think he’d told you something wise,” she said. “Then you’d make your decision and he’d nod like you were the smartest person in the world. God, I miss that. He could make me feel like I’d chosen correctly with one nod.”

“Because you knew he had your back,” Jason said.

“Exactly. Well, whatever happens, I have your back, Ace.”

* * *

“THAT MEANS MORE than you can know,” he said.

She didn’t elaborate. Didn’t tell him she wanted him to stay. Even when she’d been keeping her distance, every moment he’d been back on the Bar T had just made her fall a little more for him. There was something about Jason. It wasn’t good looks—though he was very handsome in a rugged, sexy sort of way. It was something deeper.

The way he’d jumped right in and taken on all the ranch’s problems and helped her come up with a plan. Granted, it was a plan she couldn’t have executed without him, but he’d done something. He hadn’t just stood by and waited to see what she could do.

She hadn’t needed him to save her, but it was nice to have him by her side. She guessed some might say she was projecting the feelings she’d had for her dad onto Jason. Though she didn’t really know him any better than she had when he’d left the ranch as a teenager, she knew that there was more between them.

A lot more. And it wasn’t just the sex, even if that was amazing.

“What will you do if you can’t go back into space?” she asked. His hands were moving restlessly on her body, almost as if he was absently caressing her.

“I haven’t thought much about it. I think Dennis would give me a role in management if I wanted it, or I could take on more responsibility training the other astronauts at the facility.”

“Would you do that?” To her it seemed like the worst kind of torture for him to be close to something he wanted but would never be able to have.

“I guess. I can’t imagine being grounded permanently.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. I haven’t taken the medical yet.”

* * *

THE WATER HAD started to cool, but Ace didn’t want to let Molly go. Not yet. He stood up, lifting her with him and put her on her feet next to the tub.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not ready to get out yet, but it’s getting cold,” he said.

He bent over to drain and then refill the tub. He felt her fingers tracing the last part of his tattoo, the word go. “You are very bold,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you test your limits in space, for everyone’s benefit. You don’t let anything stand in your way, do you?”

“Not for the things I love,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her.

She was gazing at his side, biting her lower lip, and her fingers were lightly moving over him. She looked...sad again. He had made it clear from the beginning that he had one foot in this world on the ranch and the other in his gravity boots, ready for the next mission, but that didn’t make it any easier for her, he imagined. He knew it wasn’t easy for him.

“You don’t love very much, do you?” she asked, glancing up, blushing when she realized he was watching her.

“No. I’m discerning. A bit like you, I’d say.”

She nodded, dropping her hand to walk over to the shelf where she kept the scented bath salts. He considered it lucky that he wasn’t going to Houston until tomorrow. Her salts and bubble bath were both lavender-scented. And while the smell was soothing, he didn’t even want to contemplate the ribbing he’d get from the other guys if he showed up smelling like flowers.

She dumped a small handful of the salts in the bath and then looked over at him.

“What?”

How could he put into words that just watching her move turned him on? The last five weeks had been long. Too long. He had dreamed of her each night and had then been tortured during the day as he’d watched her just going about her routine. There was something inherently sexy about everything she did.

He shrugged.

He didn’t want to say anything that would make the situation between them even more impossible than it already was.

He wanted her. He liked her. He wanted to protect her. But he was leaving. No matter what, he was going to find a way to go on the Cronus missions and if he let her get any closer, it would be harder to leave.

He flicked off the faucets as the water reached the correct level and then turned his back on her. Didn’t want to look into her eyes with that knowledge in his own.

He held his hand out to her and she took it hesitantly.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. If he said it enough, maybe the words would eventually become true. Faking it. He’d been faking it for so long, trying to be like the men who had inspired him. Like Mick, here on the ranch—acting like there wasn’t anything he didn’t know. Like Dennis at the space center—pretending that nothing about the universe and the unknown scared him. And...well, like every image of the perfect lover, for her. He wanted to give her everything when inside he wasn’t sure he had that much to give.

“Kiss me,” he said. He needed to be lost in her. Lost in her kiss, which had the power to make him stop thinking and just feel alive and complete. He felt like he was enough when she was in his arms.

She stepped closer, pressing her naked body to his and wrapping her arms around his torso. Leaning back for a moment, she kissed the center of his chest then moved to the left, tracing his tattoo with her tongue. Then she looked up at him. Their eyes met and he realized he wasn’t fooling her.

The expression in her eyes seemed as ageless as the land the Bar T sat on and as vast as the universe he wanted to explore. Sometimes he honestly felt like everything he’d ever been searching for was found in her.

“You boldly go,” she said. “Don’t forget that, Ace. You came from the streets and made it to the stars. Nothing is going to keep you grounded. Not your bone-density problems, not this ranch and, I promise you, not me.”

He couldn’t speak as emotions grabbed him by the throat. He tangled his hands in her hair and brought his mouth down hard on hers. The kiss was intense and powerful. A punishment, because she saw too much of him. Saw too clearly what he didn’t want anyone to see. But there was no hiding from Molly.

Holy hell. When had she slipped past his guard? When had that happened?

Her fingernails dug into his side and she bit his tongue lightly, returning the fervor of the embrace.

He pulled his head back, looked down into her eyes and wished he hadn’t. The intensity in her gaze made him realize that she already cared more than was wise.

He wished for a minute that he was a different person. The kind who could see this health thing as a chance to change directions, but he wasn’t that man. He’d given his soul to NASA a long time ago and he realized that Molly was okay with that. She knew who he was and she expected him to break her heart.

That should be enough to make him leave the bathroom en suite right now. Get dressed, head to Houston and never come back. That kind of unconditional acceptance would have scared him before—it still sort of did—but what Molly couldn’t know was that he felt an equal draw to her. So instead he put his hands on that tiny waist of hers and lifted her off her feet.

He put her down in the deep tub that was filled with bubbles and smelled like summer. Like a summer that wouldn’t end but was flying by. It had been just over six weeks since he’d first arrived at the ranch; in six more weeks this would be over. He got in, too, and sat down, the water rising to his chest and sloshing over the sides as he cradled her in his arms. She kissed his arm lightly. He wanted her, wanted the sunshine of Molly and not just the vastness he’d always used to define who he was.

She shifted more, but he held her where she was. He wanted this time with her to last forever. This moment when everything was still possible. She was curled against him and, when she moved her legs, he felt her thigh brush his cock and his blood started to feel as if it were flowing more heavily in his veins.

In response, she turned around to straddle him. She watched him with those serious eyes of hers. And he realized that, though she’d said she was lost six weeks ago, she wasn’t anymore.

She had found her peace in the land around them. While he’d been running and planning, she’d found her strength.

She put her hands on his shoulders and twined her legs around his body, locking her ankles behind him.

“This is better. I can see you,” she said.

“How is that better?” he asked.

“I want to know what’s going on with you. I want to see your face when I move against you. I need to know that I affect you the same way you affect me.”

With that, she took the loofah sponge from the pretty porcelain bath tray and submerged it. Bringing it up, she rubbed it over his chest, then from shoulder to shoulder and down his sternum.

She followed the line of hair on his chest until it disappeared under the water. Somehow the loofah got lost. Instead, he felt her fingers on his abdomen and then lower, rubbing his cock until it was hard and he wanted something other than her hands on him.