Seeing Stars by Persephone Jones

A Love and Fireworks 4th of July themed story

Heat Rating: Fire

Content Warning: Graphic sexual content.

The flames of an old crush heat up during a fourth of July weekend

"Savannah Armstrong." She'd heard her name on the lips of more than one man in her life and none of them had ever made it sound like a dirty sweet-nothing panted in her ear. Like sex. The image of him working himself toward climax replayed like slow motion in her mind. Trembling, she had a hard time looking away, when she remembered that nothing more than a thin white towel kept his nearly naked body from being completely naked. She forced herself to shake her head and look at something else. Anything else.

"It's good to see you again, Payton." Impressed her tongue still worked, she took comfort in what little measure of calm she could manage. The vivid sight of him so close, so suddenly, made her shiver like a teenage girl.

"Likewise." He smiled a gorgeous smile. That damned smile. A heartbreaker's smile. It was like a flashing neon sign that blinked "Fuck Me."

"It's been a long time," she said, trying to turn off the x-rated movie playing in full surround sound in her head. He hadn't come. He was still hard.

"Two years. Eight weeks. Four days."

Oh. My. God. Had he actually counted the days since he'd left?

"Little Savannah Armstrong all grown up. I remember when I used to push you in the swing out back. A few years after that you pushed me because I was a—how did you put it?" He tilted his head in playful reminiscence. "A grody boy."

Oh dear. He remembered what she'd called him. That was a thousand years ago. Wasn't it? Regardless, there was nothing grody about Payton Sanborn now.

"Then you started runnin' and hidin' from me whenever I came around. Like you were afraid of me. You still afraid of me, Savannah?" He looked her in the eye when he said it and it was then that she got her first glimpse of a boy transformed into a fearlessly confident, take-no-prisoners soldier. What's more, he expected an answer.

"Afraid of you? Don't be ridiculous." Desperate to steady herself, she tried to laugh, her voice twanged with hysteria.

"Well, aren't you gonna give me a big welcome home hug and kiss?"

Hug? Kiss? He wanted her to touch him? A soft whimper escaped her lips at the mere thought of touching him.

A low throaty chuckle escaped his lips as he leaned in, penetrating what was clearly her personal space and whispered, "I'll make it easy for ya'."

Savannah pushed off the oak paneled wall and leaned forward. Lifting her arms slowly in the tight confines of the stairway, she weaved her arms under his and wrapped them around his bare torso. Her hands caressed the solid planes of his soldier's body, conditioned to perfection, lightly damp from his recent shower. She squeezed her eyes shut praying he wouldn't lean into her, touch her pelvis with his while he was so obviously turned on.

This close, this painfully close, an unexpected sensation took over. Suddenly time didn't exist. Scott and Payton had never left for Iraq. She hadn't left for college in Houston. They were still children and their days spent running, playing, laughing and talking.

Dear God, she remembered his smell. He smelled just like a man should, a mix of earth, wood, sweat, that wonderful musky male scent and Payton. Something so fleeting, so intangible, had come back in a flood of memory. She swooned against the wall in order to step back away from him.

He tapped his lean cheek with his index finger, his mouth curved in a mischievous smile, but his eyes, darker and deeper said something else altogether. They spoke of an insatiable hunger that raged on the verge of something dangerous. Not a threat but a simple fact. He could take her right where she stood and she would not resist him. "Right here." He whispered.

Standing on her toes, she used her new best friend, the wall behind her, for leverage. She didn't trust herself to use his body to hold herself up. The last thing she needed was for her mom, dad or big brother to find them tangled up in one another on the stairs. Her lips a mere inch away from his skin made her feel faint. Anxious to retrieve what little sense of sanity remained within her, she planted a quick peck on his cheekbone and glued herself to the wall where it was safe.

Or safer, anyway.