On Fire by Sylvia Day Read Free Book Online Page B

as awesome as it smells. Thank you.”
    Returning to the stove, he started cooking for himself.
    She moaned, making his dick twitch with interest. “Jared. Wow. This is phenomenal. You’re as good in the kitchen as you are in bed.”
    He watched her lift a second bite to her mouth, her eyes closing as she chewed and hummed her pleasure.
    Swallowing, she went on. “Not that we’ve made it to the bed.”
    “Yet.”
    “Yet,” she agreed. “You know, I should get some credit for being concerned about scaring you off. I’m giving you credit for being offended at the possibility of a brush-off.”
    Jared stared into the skillet. Simple would be taking the out she’d offered him and heading back to the motel to sleep in a solitary bed. Simple would be keeping his eye on the job he was here to do and his hands off the smoking-hot inspector who flooded his system with so much testosterone he couldn’t think straight.
    Rubbing the back of his neck, he said gruffly, “Keeping things simple means not making things complicated. You’re overthinking.”
    Of course,
he
was hardly thinking at all. He was running on pure animal instinct when it came to her.
    Darcy laughed softly. “You can’t put this on me. I know how men work when they start off with the warning to keep it simple. That means don’t get clingy. Don’t expect me to be there for you when we’re not fucking. I get that, and it works for me. That said, I know all men have hot buttons, but I don’t know what yours are.”
    He grunted. As far as he was concerned, everything about her was a hot button. And this conversation had veered into a direction certain to drive him crazier than she did.
    “You know what I’m talking about.” She set her fork down. “Things that freak you into thinking the situation is becoming more involved than you want it to be.”
    He slid his own omelet onto his plate, returned the pan to the stove, and joined her at the table. Too late for the freak-out warning. It had been going off since he’d drilled her into the sofa. He had no control with her. No cutoff switch or throttle.
    Darcy leaned forward. “You can’t tell me that a woman assuming a sleepover when you’re in a wham-bam frame of mind doesn’t make things dicey.”
    Shoving a bite of his food into his mouth, he chewed through his frustration. He didn’t want to analyze this…
them
. He’d rather stick with orgasmic ignorance. “I can tell you that as long as we’re both in the same place at the same time wanting the same thing, I really don’t give a shit.”
    Darcy pushed back from the table. “All right. Excuse me a moment.”
    He scowled at the sight of her half-eaten omelet, then glared at her retreating back. He’d give her five minutes to get her tight little ass back in her chair or he was going to drag her back in to finish eating…
    She returned in a short white satin robe that revealed her bare legs and the lack of a bra. Jared forgot his aggravation.
    As Darcy resumed eating with obvious relish, he leaned back in his chair, watching her.
    “In a town of this size, with only one fire station, how does the city council justify paying for two fire inspectors?”
    When she looked up at him, her eyes were lit with amusement. “A combination of nepotism, being willing to work part time, and a good word from Jim.”
    Jim.
He reined in his irritation with a long, slow exhale. “Who’s the family member?”
    “My uncle. He moved several years ago, but memories are ageless in Lion’s Bay.”
    “And the rest of your family is gone, too?”
    “Yep. Although my parents didn’t go far. They bought a place on Lake Horton.”
    Which wasn’t all that far from his place in Seattle. “Why do you stay? What’s here for you?”
    Darcy pushed back from the table and picked up her plate. “Why not?”
    He studied her as she came toward him to collect his plate, too. “It doesn’t suit you,” he said. “The town. This house.”
    “You don’t know