Jessa James - Hot as Hell

As she climaxed, she felt a rush into her. Cade’s hot release filled her with a satisfaction she’d never felt before.

As he gently lifted her off him, a drunken sleepiness washed over her, and in the dark Oregon afternoon it already felt like nearly evening.

“EJ?” she wondered aloud even as sleep overtook her.

“Don’t worry,” Cade said as he pulled her against him to spoon on the couch—the same couch she’d sat on countless times over the years. “He’s gone until tomorrow night.”

Lily drifted into sleep with Cade’s sturdy arm wrapped around her.

***

Lily fluttered her eyes open to the sound of a steady morning rush of rain. The surroundings were only somewhat familiar.

“Cade?” she asked groggily as the previous day’s events began to creep back into her head. Lily groaned and pushed herself up from the couch.

“Cade?” she called again.

She could tell by the stillness in the air he was gone. Her phone, nearly dead, told her it was almost eight in the morning. The heartache she’d felt earlier returned with a vengeance.

I guess that’s why EJ and Aiden call him Morningside Manwhore, she thought, her mouth twisting.

The weight of what she’d done, of what she’d let Cade do—wanted him to do—started to dawn on her.

I’ve had a crush on him for so long, and now what? she wondered. I’m just another notch on his bedpost.

“Well,” she said aloud. “What did you expect would happen?” In her fantasies, this would always be just the beginning. She’d never imagined what would happen afterward.

Slowly, she picked up her clothes, now dry, and got dressed. A small soreness lingered between her legs.

She used the last of her phone battery to call an Uber, a little glazed over. What really stuck in her mind, though, was how pathetic the situation seemed.

****

Cade

Montana, Six Months Ago

“Here we go,” Barron said as he slid into his seat on one of the fire choppers beside Cade. “My guess is cigarette. Got five on it. You?”

Cade shook his head and grinned. “I’m not betting with you after that last time. How the hell’d you know it was a kerosene lamp anyway?”

Barron shrugged. “Saw it on Facebook before we got there.”

“Bastard,” Cade said with a chuckle.

Dominguez and Fields each stuck to their sides of the fire rescue chopper, looking down at the terrain below.

“Ain’t seen the fire yet, maybe we’ve been called out for a false alarm,” Barron said.

He was the youngest on the repeller crew, just nineteen years old, and came from an all-boys military prep school where he swore up and down he hadn’t seen a girl for four straight years.

“Doubtful. I’ve worked as a hotshot for fifteen years, and this would be my first,” Fields muttered.

The helicopter pilot made his way north, and soon enough they could see the smoke and little bits of orange flame here and there in the trees.

They kept going north, almost ten minutes, and Cade’s concern level grew. Each minute north they went, the flames were more and more prominent.

“What the hell?” Cade said under his breath. He called to the helicopter pilot. “Hey, Sean, I thought the Captain said this was just a two alarm. This—hell, this is a full-blown wildfire.”

“I’ll call in to report that,” Sean said and clicked on the his radio. “Sean here, you hear me, Captain?”

It crackled, but there was nothing.

“Captain, you copy? This isn’t a two alarm, you copy?” Sean clicked it off. “Fuck, man, this piece of shit isn’t working.”

“It’s alright,” Cade said as he got ready to rappel out of the chopper. “We gotta go anyway. Just get back as soon as you can manage, and let everybody know. Where’s the other crew?”

Sean shrugged. Cade sighed and heaved the door open. The tiny chopper seemed to struggle to stay upright. Dominguez and Fields jumped out, their lines attached to the helicopter still.

“Well, let’s get it started. Guys, you know what to do. Barron, you’re with me.”

“How’d I get so lucky?”

Cade jumped, the feeling of freefall hitting him hard for a few seconds. Then his line caught, and he quickly began rappelling downward. In less than two minutes, he and Barron were on the ground.

The fire was everywhere .

Cade led the way into the thick of it, gear heavy on his back. He practiced his breathing without thought. It was built into him. The heat slapped at his face, and from his peripheral vision he could see Barron one step behind him. Twenty feet away, Dominguez and Fields forked off into the brush.

They needed to find someplace to start a firebreak, a big dirt trench that would essentially interrupt the fire, keep it from spreading. He surveyed the land.

This isn’t right, Cade thought. The fire’s too hot, it’s burning too fast.

He glanced back toward the chopper, but the air where it had been was vacant. His heart leapt into his chest as the ground began to writhe beneath him.

“Snakes! Snakes!” he thought he heard Barron yell. The com was acting weird, cutting in and out. It made it that much harder to communicate, stuck in the middle of nowhere.

But it wasn’t snakes at all, it was a nest of chestnut-colored rabbit kits with no doe in sight.

“Shit,” Cade said under his breath. The little balls of fur wriggled in fear, stuck in a nest they’d likely never been out of.

“Fucking hell,” Cade said. Everything in him told him to keep going, get that firebreak going before all hell broke loose.

What difference does two seconds make?

He leaned down and grasped the three kits in his gloves and tossed them behind him. On shaky, unfamiliar legs, they raced off away from the fire, freed from the fallen brambles that had pinned them down.

Cade didn’t want to see whatever look Barron might shoot him, so he immediately buckled down and started on the firebreak from his side.

But when he got to the point where he thought they’d meet, there was nothing there.

“Barron?” he called and looked up. He was alone, and the fire moved faster than it should have. “Barron!”

In the distance, forty feet away, he thought he saw three yellow figures through the smoke.

What the hell?

Cade grabbed the walkie talkie.

“Barron? You there? Dominguez, Fields?” Like Sean’s radio, his walkie talkie cackled, but nothing more. “Shit.”

Just like Barron to go running off like that. What, does he think he’s some kind of hero?

“Duke, you copy? Cade you copy? The fire’s moving fast—” Fields’ voice broke through the walkie talkie.

Cade looked around, but the smoke was so thick that he could barely see three feet in front of his face.

“1o-4,” Cade said, thankful. “Is Barron with you?”

“Cade? The fire’s moving your way fast. Cade?”

“10-4!” Cade yelled into the walkie talkie.

“Shit, man, I don’t think he can hear—” Fields said, then cut off abruptly.

Cade walked away from the trench, looking around desperately. The smoke shifted and Cade spotted three distinct figures in the gulch below.

What the hell are they all doing down there?

“Hey!” he started, but the fire boxed him in on two sides.

Forwards or backwards, he calculated. Either way, it was a fifty-fifty shot.

Cade leapt forward to make it out of the flames, but his heavy boot caught on the edge of the same pit that had entrapped the rabbits. As soon as he went down, he knew it was fractured.

He looked behind him, eyes wide. Somehow, the fire had missed him. It eagerly tore through the grass, brush, and debris behind him.