Hot Damn(2)

I look up at him as I take a seat on the bench. He’s still standing there, poised as if he thinks I might need more help, and our eyes lock. I clench my teeth, ready to rip him a couple more new ones, but then…

It’s a moment. I’ve had moments before, so I know them when they happen, and this is definitely one. His blue eyes are bright and sincere even in the near-dark, even through the face mask of his helmet. His lips part slightly as if he’s about to say something, then he closes them and his tongue slips out, moistening the top lip. Whatever he was about to say, it looks like he decided against it.

That doesn’t keep me from staring at his mouth, at the way his tongue strokes across it, and it doesn’t keep my thighs from slicking up, which is all I need while I’m sitting on a wooden bench outside in the dark in nothing but a towel. And that makes me really angry.

“So it was a tiny little fire, and you hauled me out of my apartment by my hair like some kind of goddamn Neanderthal for no good reason?”

Those eyes go from clear, open sapphire to a sparking fire-blue. “You were in an active fire zone.”

I look at the smoking apartment building. “Doesn’t look very active to me.”

“It takes seconds for a fire to get out of control,” he says with a growl, losing his professional monotone. “It was bad enough to set off the alarms—” He breaks off, eyes narrowing. “And why didn’t your alarm go off? Everybody else in the building had smoke detectors blazing.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s broken.” I snarl it out, beyond angry now, not sure if I’m mad at him because of what he did or because he’s so damned good looking it should be illegal.

“You don’t know?” He’s annoyed now. “You’re supposed to change the batteries when you change your clocks, in the spring and the fall. So you don’t forget. So you don’t get caught in a fire. How is that hard?”

“You’re also not supposed to drag naked people out of the shower!” It’s a weak counterattack, since we’ve already gone over that, but I’m still pissed about it. “How is that hard?”

“If your alarm was working, it wouldn’t have even been a problem. You’d have been out of there already.”

He’s right. Which makes me even more pissed. And the reason I didn’t change the batteries when the clocks changed is that they were fine when I tested them, and I didn’t see the point in spending money on new batteries when the alarm is working and I’ve got bills to pay and a kid to feed. But I’m sure Fireman Jesse doesn’t know anything about that kind of dilemma.

“It doesn’t give you an excuse to come charging in like some kind of caveman.” Weirdly, the thought gives me a not-unpleasant tingle.

“Actually, it does.”

Gritting my teeth, I grab the towel where it’s bunched together just above my breasts and hold it tight while I push to my feet. “I’m not standing out here in the dark and the cold in nothing but a towel when there’s nothing at all wrong with my apartment.”

I start to stomp back toward the building, but he interrupts my perfectly choreographed angry exit by grabbing my arm.

“You sit your ass down,” he snaps. “No one can go back into the building until we’ve checked everything and given the all clear.”

“Hey, Chief!” The voice comes from near one of the fire trucks, and Jesse’s head jerks up in response. Interesting. So he’s the chief? So that probably means it’s his fault the all clear hasn’t been sounded yet. He looks like he has, indeed, been caught out, and he half backs toward the man who called after him, still waving a pointy, judgmental finger in my direction.

“You stay right there. Do not move.”

“Right,” I say. I cross my arms over my chest and plop back down on the bench.

This is not the way I wanted my evening to go.





Chapter 2





Jesse




There’s still smoke in the air, the guys are waiting for me to tell them what to do, and all I can think about is the hot, naked girl I yanked out of her shower like it was no big deal.

Like a fucking Neanderthal. Yep, just like that. Not exactly the kind of thing that happens to a guy every day. Not even a firefighter.

I can still feel her glaring at me. Never mind that quick moment of connection we had—she’s still hella pissed. It’s all I can do not to look back over my shoulder at where I know she’s sitting, just to take in all that heat in her eyes. Okay, it’s more than all I can do, because I give in and look.

I can’t quite catch it, though. She’s half in the shadows where I put her so the other guys couldn’t gawk at her, and she doesn’t look like she’s going to move out into the light anytime soon. I don’t blame her. In fact, I’m glad. I don’t want those testosterone-fueled assholes I work with at the fire station ogling her.

Harsh, dude. Way to talk about your coworkers.

Okay, no, they’re not assholes. But there’s a protective streak about ninety-seven miles wide running through me right now. I don’t want anybody else seeing her.

I focus back on the courtyard where the fire truck sits, still flashing red light across the side of the apartment building. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the image of her that’s floating in the backs of my eyeballs. Completely naked, pale skin, brownish nipples. Reddish-gold hair, soaking wet, trailing down over her breasts. Nice breasts, too. More than a handful. More than a nice mouthful, in fact, and suddenly I’m feeling the hard, rough textures of a nipple on my tongue. Damn.

And yes, I looked. The triangle between her upper thighs matched the hair on her head. That reddish tint doesn’t come out of a bottle, that’s for sure. I’m not sure why that’s such a turn-on, except every damn thing about her is a turn-on. She’s like a walking Viagra bottle. Cialis on a stick.

It’s not like I haven’t carried naked chicks out of houses before. Usually, though, it’s been in my role as paramedic rather than fireman. Usually they’ve been unconscious, elderly, or both. This one was neither. I can almost still feel her wiggling against my chest. Damn. It’s enough to make me want to turn right around and go grab her, take her back upstairs, and fuck the hell out of her, fire be damned.

Not that she’d let me after I tore into her like that, though. I shouldn’t have done it, but it just seemed to happen. Like my brain was trying to find some way to distract itself from her body, and the only way it could come up with was to chew her out.

Interesting, since what I’d really like to do is eat her out.

“Chief King!” Whitaker’s running up to me. “Are we going in yet to be sure everything’s clear?”

It takes me a second to register that he’s talking to me. I’m still not used to being called “Chief.” I might not be chief long enough to get used to it, as a matter of fact. Especially not if I can’t start acting more professional.

I blink hard to get my thoughts refocused. “Yeah. You’re with me. Let’s go.”

Whitaker joins me at the front entrance, and we head into the apartment building.

“Best we can tell, it’s isolated to 2B,” Whitaker says. I nod and lead the way up to the second floor.

The smoke gets thicker as we move up the stairwell, so I know we’re getting closer to the origin of the fire. It wasn’t too thick on the fourth floor; I’d noticed while I was up there evacuating a certain shower. Maybe that was why her alarm hadn’t gone off. Maybe she hadn’t deserved to be yelled at, after all.

Of course she didn’t deserve to be yelled at. You were just mad at your own dick.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

I step back and let Whitaker precede me into 2B. There’s quite a bit of damage in this apartment, and it reeks of burned fabrics. It’s a plasticky stench—polyester and Styrofoam, I’d say. Sure enough, as we move into the living room it becomes immediately apparent that the fire started there, on the couch. The char patterns all point straight to it.

“This looks like the place,” I say. Whitaker nods, looking pleased.

“Right here,” he says. “There’s an electric blanket—or what’s left of one. Guessing it shorted out or something—”

“Wow, you’re a fucking genius, Whitaker.”

I turn, looking over my shoulder at the fireman who’s just entered behind us. I didn’t invite him along. My hackles pop up at the sound of his voice then pop up a little more when I see him standing there looking at Whitaker like he’s a pile of garbage. Whitaker’s dark face crumples vaguely, and I want to smack Phil Curry upside his head. Joseph’s just a kid—he needs encouragement, not the kind of old-school, boot-camp-style crap Curry dishes out.

“You got a better theory, Phil?” I snap.

Phil hates to be called Phil. It’s his name, but what he really wants to hear is “Chief Curry.” That’s not happening anytime soon, though, because when Chief Pilsner retired, I got the interim position.

Curry sneers. “No. But it doesn’t take much brainpower to put two and two together and get four. Obviously the blanket shorted out.”