The Best Of Blaze - Six Sexy Romances

His hands were restlessly moving up and down her body. Caressing that scar on the inside of her thigh and then moving higher. He loved the way her hips felt as he used both hands to squeeze her and move her on his lap. The tip of his cock brushed against her center, but he took his time, not entering her yet. Finding the loofah floating near him, he picked it up and rubbed it over her shoulders and then down to her nipples, abrading both of them until they were erect. He carefully washed the soapy water off her breasts and then took the tip of one of them between his teeth, lightly biting down on it before sucking it more deeply into his mouth. Her hand on his cock tightened in response.

This was the one place where there was no confusion. When he had her in his arms, nothing seemed complicated. This was all he wanted. She was all he wanted.

He grasped one of her buttocks in his hand as he continued to suck on her nipple, feathering his finger along the crack and feeling her arch against him. Then she put her hands in his hair as she sank lower, rubbing against the shaft of his cock.

She reached between them, adjusting him until he was poised at her entrance. Then she put her hands on his face, forcing his head back, and brought her mouth down hard on his as she shifted and slowly took him into her body. She rocked forward, sinking down until he was deep inside her.

She continued to move her mouth over his and he felt like he did just before the rocket blasted off. Like he was going to explode if she didn’t move.

He gripped her butt in both hands as he drew his hips back and then pulled her back down again. They rocked together, both reaching for climax. The water sloshed around them, her wet hair stuck to his neck and their mouths fused together. He drove himself higher and higher inside of her. She rode him harder and faster until he felt her nails dig into his shoulders and she ripped her mouth from his to cry out his name.

Her cries made something tighten inside of him and everything in his body jerked as he started to come. He thrust into her harder and deeper until he emptied himself. As she collapsed against his chest and he held her to him, he knew he could no longer hide the truth from himself. Molly Tanner had changed him.

13

THIS TIME WHEN the water got cold, Molly got out of the tub before Jason. He followed her a moment later, wrapping a towel around his lean hips. He gave her a kiss and left the room, but she stayed in there for a long time getting dressed and thinking about Houston.

Maybe she shouldn’t have volunteered to go with him, but she’d heard the loneliness in his voice. He was used to being alone, had told her that he liked it, but this was one instance when she knew he wouldn’t want to be.

She took her small Nike duffle bag from the back of her closet and tossed some clothes into it before going downstairs to find Rina.

She was sitting on the back porch drinking a glass of iced tea and talking on the phone. She hung up when she saw Molly.

“What’s up, sunshine?”

“I’m going to Houston with Jason,” she said. “Just for a few days.”

“Well...is there something else you want to tell me?”

She looked over at Rina. She was the closest thing that Molly had to an aunt and she knew all of Molly’s secrets. “We’ve slept together. I...I care for him.”

“Obviously. What’s up?”

“I’m not sure what I’m doing. He is going to do everything he can to go back to space. There is no woman alive who can compete with that.”

“Don’t compete,” Rina said. “Why do you have to? You wouldn’t leave the ranch to permanently go to Houston, would you?”

“No. I can handle a few days, but my home is here.”

Rina sat up, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head. “I imagine it’s the same for him.”

“I don’t know how to do this. In my head...well, I always thought if I fell for a guy, he’d be the type to raise cattle and kids. Not leave the planet for more than a year at a time.”

Molly sat down next to Rina on the lounge chair and her friend hugged her. “The heart isn’t like that. You might think you want one thing, but you really want something else.”

“Why does it have to be that way?”

Rina shrugged. “Girl, you know I’m single and have the worst taste in men. You’ve seen me crying over a guy or trying to drink his memory away more than once.”

“I have,” Molly said. “But I always figured I was smarter than you.”

Rina lightly punched her arm. “Watch it.”

“I just hoped... Should I stay home?”

“Only you can decide. Why did he ask you to go to Houston?” Rina asked.

“Actually, I volunteered. He has to take a test earlier than he anticipated and if he doesn’t pass it he may not be chosen to lead the Cronus missions. If he does, I guess he won’t be around here too much longer.”

“Well, hell. You know how to pick the wrong time to fall for a guy,” Rina said.

“Tell me about it. What if I only fall for guys who can’t or don’t want to be with me? That would suck.”

“It would, but Jason does want to be with you.”

“You think?” she asked.

“I know. For the last six weeks, every time you entered a room he stopped what he was doing and watched you until you left.”

“I think that might have been lust. We were trying to keeping our hands off each other.” Pretending that they were fine with the status quo.

Rina slung her arm around Molly’s shoulders again. “I’ve seen attraction and it was more than that. He smiles when you laugh. Listens to your voice even when you aren’t speaking to him. He likes you.”

But did he like her enough? That was the question that kept spinning around her mind. And would Jason liking her even satisfy her? She wasn’t going to lie to herself. She was falling for Jason. Falling hard.

She worried that the time they’d spent together didn’t seem real to him. The ranch wasn’t his life. Being back here must feel like he was pretending. Was she just a diversion to help keep his mind off the outcome of his medical tests and his future?

She wanted him to be part of her future. To build something together that they could share. But she wasn’t too sure that was what Jason wanted.

Hell, she was almost positive it wasn’t. If he couldn’t go on any more missions and decided to stay on the ranch, would she always feel like his consolation prize?

* * *

JASON CALLED LYNN to find out if she’d heard anything from her sources. She had heard the same thing Dennis had, which she thought meant good news for their bid. But she said she’d been in the business long enough to know that anything could happen before the official announcement. Still, she felt confident enough to book a trip to Houston and the ranch in four days’ time to assess the property. She liked to meet the people she’d be working with in person.

Jason hung up and went to look for Molly. He couldn’t find her in the house and Rina was deep in conversation with Jeb and Andy in the kitchen, so Jason skipped going in there. He really didn’t want to talk to anyone. Just needed to find Molly.

He didn’t like that he felt that way and almost turned around and went back up to his room. He needed Molly now. He knew that this afternoon in the office and the tub had strengthened the tenuous bonds between them, but it was more than that. He’d needed her for a while. He depended on being able to talk to her and get her opinion.

He was using her to help him through this time when nothing was certain. He knew that wasn’t fair, but that didn’t change the truth.

Giving up on his search of the house, he strode outside. The Mule was still parked where he’d left it so he drove it over to the barn to park it properly and then sat there listening to the sound of the wind blowing over the fields. The cattle were all out to pasture, but the horses in the barn made some soft sounds.

He closed his eyes and stored this moment in his head. He was determined to go back into space, where it was cold and he wouldn’t hear the wind or smell the fields. Where he would be isolated again, from everything but his crewmates.

He craved that isolation. As much as he knew he’d miss this, too.

If he passed the medical.

And if he didn’t? Would it be enough to stay on the ranch, to run the training facility? Would he still feel whole?

He got off the Mule and walked over to the barn. He glanced inside, but Molly wasn’t there. Where had she gone?

He wondered if she’d changed her mind about going with him to Houston.

He’d be disappointed if she had. He shouldn’t let this continue, he knew. Shouldn’t let himself care for her. He needed to be the Ace he’d always been. And he’d always been on his own. Was he hedging his bets with Molly, keeping her close as a backup plan?

He’d wondered about that before and now it seemed more important that he try to answer the question.

He left the barn and walked back toward the house on the meandering path that took him past the bunkhouses. Only one was being used right now by the hands. They’d set up a basketball hoop to the left of the bunkhouse and three of the guys were playing a game of keep-away.

He remembered growing up here. Remembered playing basketball with the other guys who had found themselves living on the ranch. One of them had called it the ass end of nowhere. It had certainly felt that way to Jason. Mick had been the person who’d made it tolerable for him. Had given him books to read and nurtured his love of the cosmos. It was Mick who’d put the idea of being an astronaut in his head.

That was what he’d thought would happen this time—returning to the ranch would give him clarity, help him figure out what was next. But it didn’t. He wasn’t resetting. He felt too old to start over and he didn’t want to.

He knew what he wanted.

Space.

Exploring the universe, seeing comets, stars, asteroids and planets no other human had been close to.

But he also wanted Molly.

This afternoon had made him realize that he wasn’t on a solo mission anymore. Sometime in the last six weeks that had changed. And it wasn’t because of anything she’d been doing. It was because of his own actions—working on the ranch and making plans for a life that included NASA but wasn’t devoted solely to it. He’d never had this before and he felt like he had on his first space walk.

Scared.

Maybe a little bit excited, but unsure, feeling his way. A part of him was ready to hear that he was permanently grounded.

He was trying to convince himself it would be okay. Whatever Dr. Tomlin said he’d accept it. He had no choice.

He neared the house and noticed Molly standing on the porch, staring down at him. How long had she been watching him?

What did she see when she looked at him?

A man who was here for the long haul or someone who was using the Bar T the way he had as a kid? That would be a fair assessment since he’d been clear that that was what he was doing. But he wanted her to see something better in him.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her. Hell, he didn’t even know what he wanted from himself.

“Whatcha doing?” he called out when he was close enough for her to hear. Trying to be cool and casual. Not like a man who needed her more than he wanted to admit to himself.

“Watching the sky. I think we might get some storms tonight.”

He felt like the storm was already here. Raining and thundering through his soul and leaving him huddled and unsure. She watched him and it did nothing to help him. He knew he had to figure out what he wanted from his life and he needed to do it now before he fell any harder for her. Because once he fell in love his options would change. They had to. And he wasn’t ready for that to happen.

Why had he thought that he could sleep with Molly and it wouldn’t be anything other than physical?

She’d always been the one woman he’d never been able to forget.

* * *

JASON DIDN’T SAY much the next morning as he drove his late-model sports car through the Houston traffic. They’d left the ranch early but still hit traffic on US 59 as they’d approached the city.

“The last time I was here was for college,” Molly said, trying to engage him in conversation to take his mind off the tests.

“You never did say why you left.”

She nibbled on her bottom lip, looking out the window at the other commuters creeping along the highway. What could she say? “It was a relationship. That was the real reason. Annabelle’s messiness wasn’t actually that hard to live with.”

“What happened?”

She rubbed the back of her neck. She didn’t like to talk about it. Who did? Breakups were messy, painful and embarrassing. “I fell hard for this guy. He seemed to fall for me, and then...life happened. He got called back home because his mom was sick and while he was there he fell out of love with me. End of story.”

“That doesn’t sound like that’s all there is to it.”

She sighed. “He’d been gone from school for two weeks and we had been texting...and he was sort of being distant. I thought his mom had taken a turn for the worse.”

She remembered everything about that time.

“What happened?” Jason asked as he signaled to exit the highway.

“Well, I was worried so I went there to see him. He’d hooked back up with his high school girlfriend. He was going to tell me when he got back to Houston. Didn’t want to break up over the phone, blah, blah, blah. I just wanted to die. Not so much because of the emotions, though they hurt, but because I’d been so foolish. I misjudged him.”

“His mistake,” Jason said. “He missed out on something special.”

She had thought so at the time, but now, feeling what she did for Jason, she knew that the college boyfriend had never been right for her. He’d been someone new and different but not the love of her life. “It took a while for me to realize that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to trust myself and my judgment with a guy again.”

“Who changed that for you?” he asked.

“Do you really want my romantic history?”

“I guess not. I was just... I wondered how you got over it.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist and thought about it. “Going home was the best tonic for that heartbreak. Made me realize what was really important. Dad and Rina both let me have some time to figure things out and that was all I needed. I started to realize it was mainly humiliation I was feeling, not really a broken heart. That helped the most. What about you? Ever had a broken heart?”

He glanced away from the road for a moment to look at her. Then he turned his attention back to the traffic. “I don’t think so. I’ve been pretty casual in all my relationships. Didn’t want anything to interfere with my commitment to NASA.”

“What about now?” she asked. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished them back. She stared straight ahead and tried to pretend she hadn’t just asked him how he felt about her.

“I’m not sure. You’re different, Molly.”

He pulled up to the security gate at the space center and lowered his window to talk to the guard. Then he started driving again. She had more questions, but now wasn’t the time. She was disappointed, she admitted to herself as he parked the car in front of the program manager’s office, but she tried to shake it off. She tried to compare what she felt now to what she’d experienced back in college and it was impossible. There was no way to equate a crush and her first sexual experience with what she felt for Jason.

He looked over at her and she sensed he knew she was thinking about what hadn’t been said in the car.

“Want to meet my boss?” he asked.

Not really. But this was what she was competing against for his affections. She should learn as much about the program and the people involved as possible. If he was cleared to return to space, they were the only part of him that would be left here in Texas. And she would be working with them on the training facility.

“Sure.”

She slung her purse over her shoulder and walked up the steps, aware that she looked like a country mouse who’d come to the city. But it didn’t bother her. She was who she was. Jason put his hand on the small of her back as they entered the air-conditioned building and walked down the long hallway past crew photos and pictures of different missions. She tried not to look at them, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to see “Ace” in his element because then it would make it real that he belonged at NASA and not on the ranch with her. When she saw a large photo of Jason by himself in his space suit, holding his helmet, she stopped and stared.

She saw the intensity in his eyes and she knew then that she was being silly about a man again. There was no way a woman could compete with something that made him feel that way. It wasn’t just his career. It was his calling. Being an astronaut was who he was. He belonged in the space station or exploring a distant planet, not repairing fences on the ranch.

14

AFTER INTRODUCING MOLLY to Dennis Lock, Ace went to Dr. Tomlin’s office. She ran the blood tests as soon as he arrived. Then he was put through a battery of other tests, which included simulations of space-enforced gravity, zero gravity and pulling Gs. Ten hours later he was exhausted and felt as if he’d completed an Ironman triathlon and followed it up with a marathon. His body was tired and he ached. He had been running at the ranch, following the diet plan that Dr. Tomlin and Mona had outlined and doing other chores and the extra weight training Molly had interrupted. But he’d hoped for more time and more warning about the tests.

“I’m beat,” he said to the doctor when she came back in to take his blood again.

“Good. That was my intention. I want to create a good baseline for you before you train for your next mission.”

“Will I be going on another mission?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. But that’s the goal,” she said. “You can go home now. Be back here at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow for another round of tests and I should have more of the results then.”

“Will they be final?”

“We will see,” she said. “I still haven’t found anything conclusive. The raised calcium levels in your blood were alarming when you got back and I didn’t see them improving at the rate I expected after your intensive rehabilitation. But so far we’ve seen no development of kidney stones.”

“Was that a concern?” he asked. “I spent a lot of time on the ARED when I was up there. Way more than the recommended two hours a day.”

She put her hand on his arm. The ARED was a treadmill that was used on the ISS and equipped for the astronauts to use in microgravity. “I know. Believe me, no one wants your results to be promising more than me. A lot of your routine over the last year was based on my theories.”

He nodded. He knew everyone was anxious to see how he’d improve. “How do I match up with the other candidates?”

“I’ll need to see all the test results to get the full picture, but, based on what I’ve seen today, this is what I can tell you so far. Your improvement at the six-week mark...isn’t the same as theirs. In some areas you are way ahead.”

“Which ones?” Ace asked. He’d keep doing whatever worked.

“Muscle strength and stamina. But your blood work...that still has a long way to go. It could be due to the extra three months you spent up there.”

He wanted to punch something, like maybe the wall, but—given the state his bones might be in—that didn’t seem like a wise choice. “What can I do?”

“Continue with the diet and exercise program you’ve been following. I’ve invited Candice O’Malley to meet with you shortly. She is having a different recovery than yours. Maybe you two can share notes.”

“Sure,” he said, glancing at his watch and noticing he only had ninety minutes until he was supposed to meet Molly at Rocket Fuel. He figured he was going to need a beer after this day. “I thought I’d be done by eight.”

“You will be.”

“Okay. Where is she?”

“Get dressed and meet me in my office. We can talk there.”

Ace got dressed quickly, but didn’t want to leave the examining room. He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Molly.

Ace: Might be a few minutes late.

Molly: Okay. I’m at Rocket Fuel with Hemi and your other astronaut friends.

Hemi? Damn. He’d forgotten he’d told his friend to meet him there later. He wanted Molly to get to know the astronauts who would be using the training facility on the Bar T. He’d been feeling like he had everything under control earlier. Well, sort of. He’d felt like he was some sort of superman and not...broken.

Dr. Tomlin hadn’t said it, but he could tell she’d been disappointed with his results.

Ace: Don’t believe everything he says. He likes to exaggerate.

Molly: I noticed. You okay?

Ace: Not sure yet. Talk to you soon.

Molly:

He rubbed his chest. She’d sent him a kiss. He knew that sleeping with her was making them closer, strengthening the bond between them. But her texting him a kiss made things feel more real somehow. Or maybe it was just an emoji, he reminded himself. He sent her one back and then pocketed his phone. Health first. That was easier to deal with than his emotions.

* * *

SOMEHOW HER TABLE had become a gathering point for astronauts while she waited for Jason. Mostly because of Hemi, who seemed to know everyone. More and more people crowded in and around the booth. Hemi ordered wings, insisting that they were so good she had to try them. And she heard more stories about Jason’s missions.

Molly was surprised at the number of women in the group and learned that there was an equal number of both sexes on the team.

“Can I sit here?”

Molly glanced up to see a woman with thick blonde hair who could easily have been a model. She was of average height and her bone structure was good, and Molly knew from studying art that she had the golden triangle of proportions.

“Sure. It’s mainly astronauts coming and going, though.”

The woman laughed. “I am an astronaut. Isabelle Wolsten, but everyone calls me Izzy.”

“I guess I don’t really get away from the ranch much,” Molly said. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were one of the astronauts. I think most of my ideas about the NASA program are from reruns of I Dream of Jeannie and, of course, news coverage about the space shuttles.”

“NASA has had a low profile in the press for the last few years while they changed direction. Trainees are only accepted every four or five years and the training process takes a year and a half before the selections are made. My class was half men and half women. But we were the first,” Izzy said. “What do you do?”

“Cowgirl,” Molly said. “I grew up on a ranch about sixty miles from here with Ace.”

“You know Ace?” Izzy asked.

“Yeah.”

“What was he like as a kid?” Izzy asked, taking a sip of her iced tea. “He’s so intense. I can’t imagine him as a child.”

“I only knew him from the time he was fourteen. He was intense and brooding then. Kept to himself, especially in the beginning.”

Izzy raised both eyebrows at her. “Was he cute?”

Molly felt herself blushing again. “Sort of.”

Izzy laughed. “I had my suspicions.”

“About what?” Jason asked, joining their group.

“You being a cutie way back when,” Izzy said, sliding out so that Jason could sit next to Molly. Izzy sat back down, forcing Jason so close to Molly that she felt the tension in his body.

He reached for a wing, his arm grazing her side. “I don’t know about that. I didn’t spend much time looking in mirrors—I was too busy staring up at the night sky, dreaming of seeing the stars and planets up close.”

“Weren’t we all,” Hemi said.

Molly rested her shoulder against the wall and listened to all of them talk about how they’d come to NASA. She thought about what Izzy had said, that half of her group had been women, and how much things had changed.