The Hotter You Burn

Slowly she relaxed against him. As the Ferris wheel made its descent, it seemed as if half the town watched her and Beck’s cart. He received a few winks, even more thumbs-up. Giving everyone a show, Beck anchored two fingers under her chin, turned her head and kissed her.

The crowd cheered, and the wheel began another ascent, throwing Harlow’s stomach into her feet, making her light-headed and deliciously dizzy. At the same time, passion burned through her, white-hot. With Beck, passion always burned through her. He tasted so good, his heat a soothing balm to her tattered soul, and by the time he pulled away, she was panting, squirming in her seat.

He rubbed his nose against hers, his thumbs brushing over her cheekbones in a featherlight caress. “You’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?”

“I’d rather die,” she said, putting everything on the line.

A flash of relief in eyes now hot with more than desire. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we are open and honest with each other, so you need to know a different answer would have meant I started playing hardball and let you see my dark side.”

“You have a dark side?”

“Pray you never meet him. He spanks.”

She chuckled. “I’m beginning to think you’ve got a secret fetish.”

“Secret? Love, I’ve been thinking about it since the moment we met. Just been waiting for the green light from you.”

“Well, I will let you spank me the day you let me spank you.”

“So...today?” he quipped.

Her smile stretched from ear to ear. “You are incorrigible. You know that, right?”

“I believe the word is pronounced irresistible.”

“And you have no shame,” she added.

“But you love me anyway.” As the words echoed between them, he frowned and shifted away from her.

Did he not like the thought of her love? Despite the fact he’d used the endearment with her twice already?

Her stomach roiled so hard she gasped, and as the wheel continued to climb, the roiling only grew worse. In all her life, she’d only been sick only a handful of times. Her mom used to say she had the immune system of a champion. But the times she had gotten sick, she’d fervently prayed to be wiped from the planet forever; the fever, chills, sweats, and trembles so violent she’d looked as if she were having a seizure had been almost too much to bear.

This was somehow worse.

She clutched her stomach, beads of sweat popping up on her brow. She could actually feel the blood draining from her face and knew she was deathly pale, judging by the horror suddenly radiating from Beck.

“What’s wrong, love?”

“My stomach hurts. Bad.” Bile rose.

“Get us down,” he shouted to Sunny. “Now.”

The girl held out her arms, all what am I supposed to do? Pull you off with my she-strength?

Beck flattened his palm on Harlow’s belly and gently rubbed. “Just hold on a little longer, baby. I’ll get you home.”

Nausea churned faster, harder, and she gagged. She judged the remaining distance with dread. Not even halfway down yet. She wasn’t going to make it, was she?

“Beck,” she said on a moan.

He understood. He ripped off her cat-ears headband, tucked her hair under the collar of her shirt and held on tight to her waist, saying, “Lean over as far as you can. I won’t let you fall.”

At any other time she would have been humiliated. Right then she hurt too much. So she did it. She leaned over and vomited her guts out, spraying whoever stood below their cart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

BECK HAD NEVER been so scared in his life. Over the years, he’d been beaten, sexually used and manipulated by a foster mom, abandoned and forgotten. But this—this was far worse. He’d never had a woman of his own, and he’d never had to worry about anyone but himself. Jase and West had always been self-sufficient. If one of them had gotten sick, they’d sucked it up and yelled at anyone who dared approach. Only in the privacy of their rooms had they curled into balls of pain and rocked back and forth, moaning and softly begging for mercy. The manly way.

But by the time his friends returned home later in the evening, their laughing voices echoing all the way to the bedroom, Harlow had grown far worse. She’d begun to dry heave, too weak to make it to the bathroom or even hold herself up. Beck had to carry her and anchor her against his chest, afraid she’d drown in the toilet otherwise.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told her. “You have to be okay.”

She was too weak to respond. She could no longer even hold open her eyelids.

When a few minutes passed without another incident, he carried her to bed and tucked her into the softness of the sheets. Her face was puffy from strain, her skin waxen and clammy. Locks of hair clung to her damp cheeks and neck. He dressed her in a clean T-shirt but it, too, stuck to her skin.

Brook Lynn and Jessie Kay entered the room and flanked his sides.

“I heard she threw up on the mayor,” Jessie Kay said. “I thought it was the most awesome prank ever. I didn’t realize...”

“She’ll be okay,” he repeated. More to himself than to them.

Brook Lynn patted his arm. “Why don’t you take a shower, get changed. Let us take care of Harlow for a while.”

“No. I’m not leaving her side.” This woman was the center of his world. He’d let her in, or maybe she’d burrowed her way inside. Either way, she belonged to him and with him, and damn it, he needed her to get better, and he needed to see her do it.