by Dizzy Hooper
As is, with all the sweat and the cold air, my flesh is prickling, my nipples hard. The thrill of working a job always makes me horny. A good, hard fuck is one way to come down from the adrenaline high, and I've been wanting one bad all day.
That desire doesn't get tamped down at all as Walker comes up behind me. My back goes stiff, my breasts achy. The inferno between my legs kicks up another degree.
Oblivious to all of that, he mutters a gruff, "Hey," and reaches past me for a water for himself.
I step aside, giving him room, but it doesn't matter. He still brushes my arm, and ten layers of protective clothing can't guard me from the heat.
Water in hand, he plunks himself down on the tailgate of the engine. He cracks the bottle and takes a deep pull on it, throat exposed, Adam's apple bobbing. My entire body is enraptured, watching that motion, tracing his profile in the golden light of the street lamps.
Wanting to taste the smooth skin of his jaw.
When the bottle is half drained, he drops his hand, then wipes his mouth with the back of his other wrist. His gaze is on the remnants of the scene, clear eyes moving keenly.
So I practically jump out of my skin when his mouth opens and he addresses me.
"So you don't like spaghetti casserole, huh?"
6
For a second all I can do is stand there, blinking like an idiot.
That's what he wants to talk about?
We just came out here as a team for the first time. We responded to an emergency, and we provided a service, and he wants to talk to me about lunch?
After a second or two of me gawking, he takes mercy. His eyes swing around to look at me, and one corner his mouth rises.
Internally, I'm still panicking and taken aback. But there's something to his easy smile that's reassuring.
My throat unlocks, my muscles unclenching. I manage to shake my head, even as I scramble for a reply. "No, it's not—it's just—"
"I'm kidding." Walker rolls his eyes, but it's good-natured. He pats the space on the tailgate beside him. "Come on. Have a seat."
I glance around. "Shouldn't we head back, or…"
"In a minute. Have a seat."
It's like back at the station, when he kindly invited me to take my time and get settled in, then when I resisted, he made it an order. He's not going that far, yet, but the invitation feels a lot less optional.
Warily, I do as he asked, hefting myself up to sit on the metal edge.
It's not exactly cramped, here. Guys at my old station would hang out like this all the time, and there were never any issues. With all our bulky gear still half-on, it's not roomy, either, though. There's nowhere to sit without my jacket touching his. I can't feel anything, but I know.
The adrenaline from the job is more or less gone. The spike he gave me, cornering me this way, was mild. A new jitteriness slowly flows through me, though. It's his heat and his closeness. His implication that we're going to have a capital-T Talk.
For a minute, he stays silent, working through the rest of his bottle of water. I take a few measured sips of my own.
When he clears his throat, I'm calmer. Maybe he is, too.
"Meals with the crew are optional," he says. His gaze remains unfocused, pointed off somewhere in the distance. "I want to make that clear first, before anything else."
"Okaaay…"
"You always have the right to say no. None of the other guys get to pressure you or make you feel bad or whatever. You hear me?"
I nod. Where the hell is he going with this?
He turns, looking at me full on, and Jesus, those eyes. I could fall into them.
Or they could pierce me.
"So," he says, quietly, devastatingly. "Why don't you want to be part of them?"
Denials rise to my lips, but not one of them can find its way out.
And what does that leave me with but the truth?
I look away, twisting my water bottle in my hands, crushing the plastic only to release it and allow it to expand. "It's complicated," I hedge.
"Try me."
I shrug, but the motion hurts, a bitter stone lodging itself between my shoulders. "You know my history."
"I read the files."
Of course he did. I have to suppress my flinch all the same.
"Then you know everything you need to know."
"I know a lot of whatever happened didn't make it into the file."
Gritting my teeth, I cast my eyes skyward. He's damn right about that. My eyes prickle, but I'm not shedding another tear over that bullshit.
"So tell me something I don't know," he challenges me.
I twist my neck to look at him, and did he get closer in the last few minutes somehow? My breath stutters, and I swallow hard.
"I didn't get suspended for dereliction of duty."
He raises one brow. "I said tell me something I don't know."
And how can one sentence feel like a punch clear through my chest?
"You believe me?" I croak.
No one does. No one did.
He doesn't answer the question, but he doesn't have to. His steady gaze is all the confirmation I could ask for.
"You're not used to that, are you?"
The fist he shoved through my chest twists, exposing even more of the wound.
I try to shrug again, but even I know it comes off as anything but casual. "Haven't had a lot of reason to."
"I can understand that. Whatever happened to you back in Chicago, it doesn't follow you here, you get me? I may not know the whole story, but I reckon I know enough."
Who even says 'reckon' in this century?
But his gaze has me fixed so completely, there's no room for irony. There's no way for me to deflect or push him away.
"But here's what I put together," he says. "You had a perfect record. Spotless."
"Yeah." My voice grates. "I did."
"No one had a bad word to say about you. Perfect marks on all your exams, glowing reviews. Passed every certification, went out for every training program. Volunteered, put in the time. And then suddenly." He holds up his hands and snaps his fingers, and shit, this is worse than Thanos. "Your chief turns on you, and everyone up and down the department decides you were a lousy jake from the get go, and they always knew it, too."
My ribs hurt. "Sounds about right."
"That doesn't happen, Heidi. You got into something. Probably political, maybe not. But you crossed somebody. Probably that fire chief."
"Duke," I choke out.
Fuck. I haven't said his name out loud in months. But there it is, on my tongue and out on the air between us.
"Duke," Walker echoes. "And he burned you. Bad."
I want to laugh. How did he figure all of this out?
My files are covered in black marks. No one back upstate would have me, after it all went down. No one saw through the bullshit. No one read between the lines.
Except this man.
Walker leans in another inch, until I can feel the heat of his breath across my face. My whole body is tense, coiled.
But even though it's intimate, this position he's put us in isn't sexual.
It's more than that, somehow.
The rest of the world seems to disappear.
"Having your squad turn on you will fuck you up," he says, low. "You want your space, you can have it. The back loading area is all yours. The bunks upstairs, too, once we hit a cold snap. But mark my words, Heidi."
I sit there, enthralled.
"We have your back. We're a unit, now. You have our back, and we have yours, and someday, maybe you're going to realize that. I'm telling you right now—you're always welcome. Could be a week, a month. Could be a year. But the day you want to sit down and have a meal with us, I'll whip up my grandma's casserole again in a heartbeat. And you come right on in. The seat is always open at our table. You hear me?"
Numb, scarcely able to process, I nod.
He searches my gaze for a second. I feel naked in front of him,
even though I'm sitting there in my turnout gear, practically covered from the base of my neck to my toes.
But through all those layers of protection, whatever he finds in me must satisfy him.
He lets out a breath, then reaches over and gives me a literal pat on the back. He goes a step further, though, lingering. Holding onto my shoulder and squeezing me through my coat.
And God, how touch-starved am I that even that feels so good?
"Anytime," he reminds me.
With that, he lets go. He jumps down off the back of the engine, then looks back toward the scene of the fire.
The spell he had me under breaks, the bubble that had surrounded us popping all at once.
Just like that, the sounds and smells and sights of the job filter back in. I gaze past him to where the last of the other crews are cleaning up and clearing out. The whole area has been cordoned off. The family has been whisked away somewhere—a police station, or maybe a hospital. Maybe, if they're really lucky, a relative's warm, dry house.
"Looks like we're just about done here," Walker confirms.
I nod numbly.
"Let's pack it in, then."
He moves toward the side of the engine.
Just as he's about to disappear from view, a thought occurs to me. A question I probably shouldn’t ask, but I can’t stop myself.
"Hey, Walker," I call after him.
He stops, hooking a hand on the corner of the truck and peering back around it. "Yeah?"
"And what if it doesn't happen?” My chest tightens. “What if I never want that seat?"
Subconsciously, I glance toward the front of the engine. Toward our driver, who's been idling at the wheel this entire time.
The unspoken question hangs in the air. What if I really am another Street?
A dedicated loner.
Wounded.
Lost.
Walker's gaze goes distant. "Won't matter. You'll still be one of ours."
He glances at the front of the engine, too, and a pang fires off behind my ribs at the ferocity in his gaze.
It's only words, I want to remind myself. Me and my old crew swore all kinds of pledges to each other, too.
Didn't take much for them to crumble like so much dust.
But Walker means it, or at least he thinks he does.
With a nod, he looks back to me. "You've got our trust, Heidi. And mark my words. Whether you want to be friends with us or not, whether you can let us in…it doesn't matter. We're going to earn your trust, too."
Or die trying, he doesn't say. Because he can't—not in this line of work.
Trust is an easy thing to talk about. But when you have another person’s life in your hands, it means a hell of a lot more.
It's why losing the trust of my last crew hurt so much.
It's why I don't know if I can ever really trust again.
No matter how poignantly Walker asks me to.
7
The highlight of the ride home is finding out that Street can, in fact, drive like a normal person when he wants to.
Without all the wild turns and whiplash of our ride out—without the job ahead to focus on—I gaze out at the town going by.
After spending my whole life on Chicago's west side, the idea of moving out to the sticks downstate scared the shit out of me. I didn't have any other good choices left, though, so I packed what I had in the back of a rusted out, second-hand truck and went.
Evansburg, Illinois, isn't quite as sleepy as I feared it might be, but it's not that far off. The alarm we responded to was in a pretty average, lower middle class neighborhood—little houses reasonably close together. As we cruise back to the station, we pass through some of the more run-down sections of town. Forget that it's late night on a Tuesday and it's thirty degrees outside. People wander around, sitting on stoops, brown-bagged bottles in their hands. There are a couple of pretty rough-looking dive bars. A club where the bass is pounding so hard I can feel it even from here.
Doesn't matter where you are, I guess. People will always be people.
The buildings grow farther apart and the night air quieter as we approach the station. In the darkness, the strings of lights around the big garage doors stand out more cheerily. A strange sense of warmth creeps from my fingertips up toward my chest.
It only grows as we back in and disembark.
We move through the checks we need to do on the equipment in relative silence. I get some on-the-job training as we do, watching Street clean up the back of the engine. Watching Walker's big frame bent over equipment logs and inventories.
When the work is done, we haul ourselves inside. I linger on the steps long enough to grab the remnants of the sad salad I was eating alone when the alarm went off. In the harsh overhead light, I regard it. It's even sadder now. My stomach growls, but at the sight of wilted lettuce, my appetite sours. I pitch the whole mess. It's not that long until dawn. I won't starve.
The station is so small, there's only the one locker room, but at least there are separate shower stalls. Walker and Street hit their lockers for spare changes of clothes before heading off to wash the job from their skin, and I'm grateful. Really grateful. At some point, even if we never all grow to be friends like Walker suggested, the guys will probably end up wandering around the common spaces in a towel—or maybe less. But not tonight.
I don't know how I would have handled it if they had.
Blocking the image from my head, I grab my stuff and retreat to the final, center stall. To my left and my right, water is already pounding down. I close my eyes, trying not to envision the naked men beneath the spray. All that smooth flesh, those muscles. The scars.
My voyeurism with Street earlier returns to me—when I stared at the tattoos on his arms. I force my eyes open.
I'm breaking so many boundaries while still trying to enforce my own. It's not fair. I won't do it.
Ignoring everything around me, I strip down to my skin and turn on the water.
It's too cold, but that's for the best. I step inside.
Reaching up, I untie my hair. The scent of smoke still clinging to the strands assaults me. Black swirls around the drain as I scrub at my scalp, the slick foam running down my back and over my breasts. My nipples tingle, and my pussy remains a damp ache between my legs, but I'm not indulging either of them again right now.
Instead, I wash up with clinical efficiency. The shower to my left turns off, and the water pouring into my own little cubical redoubles, getting hotter as it grows. I hold back a moan as the pressure beats into my sore muscles.
The sound of a curtain being drawn echoes against the tile. I wait until the other shower is vacated, too. Then finally, I relax a fraction.
It's greedy, but I stay there for a while, trying to focus on nothing. Getting my head on straight.
Finally, I can't justify taking any longer.
I rinse my hair out one last time, then turn off the tap. The room goes eerily quiet, confirming Walker and Street really are gone.
Steam billows around me, and it's unfairly sensual, for all that I'm trying to ignore the pleas of my touch-starved skin. Every drag of my towel over my flesh sends pops of electric light flashing along my nerves. Even pulling on my clothes feels sexy, and it's not. They're sweats. Basic cotton, shapeless and unattractive in the extreme.
Exasperated with myself, I towel off my hair again, then drag a comb through the rough strands. I gather my things and shove the towel aside.
I make it all the way back to my locker before I realize I'm not alone.
Sal is standing before his own locker, face bent to the combination. He pulls it open.
I clear my throat, and he jumps.
No way he didn't know I was here. Seriously.
But he meets my gaze with innocent eyes.
Until they go…less innocent.
Almost as if he can't help himself, he looks me up and down. My curves are barely visible beneath the shapeless loungewear, but I swear to God he finds them
all the same, lingering on my hips, my thighs, my breasts.
He looks back up again. His eyes gleam with heat, and my pussy glows. The urge to fuck the stress of the alarm out of my system returns, making my breath quicken. My blood warms.
Shit—this isn't going to happen. I swore it wouldn't.
My willpower is evaporating quickly, though.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, as the case may be, the door to the locker room swings open before either of us can so much as move. As one, we swing our heads to take in the intruder.
Corey glances between us, his eyes widening. Dammit all, the sexual vibe in the room must be as thick as the literal steam. Corey's cheeks flush.
"Uh…"
I shove my stuff into my locker and slam it closed.
Without a word, I step past Sal. His warmth seeps through the inches of space between us, even with me meticulously avoiding contact. I'm not as careful as I stalk past Corey, but the kid and I weren't just making sex eyes, so brushing his arm isn't quite as devastating.
But it's close.
They're both staring and I know it, but I remember how I walked into this station. I project all the cold shoulders I can, walking with purpose and confidence down the hall.
And nearly running headlong into Jaquan.
"Jesus Christ," I let slip.
I have some presence of mind this time. Unlike with Street, I don't put my hands on his abs or lean in to—to—to kiss him or anything.
But seriously, the guys in this place need to wear fucking bells or something.
"Hey, hey," Jaquan says. It's the voice a veteran firefighter would use to calm a literal cat in a tree, and it grates at something in me.
"Watch where you're going," I grit out.
He holds out both hands in front of himself. "Sorry."
Ugh, I feel like such an asshole.
"It's fine." I reach a hand up to brush my wet hair out of my eyes. "You just startled me."
"Yeah, I can see that," he says, the words low and soft as they roll off his tongue.
It's not quite the same easy flirtation of earlier, but the guy apparently can't not be sexy, even when he's apologizing for running into someone.
My pussy gives another weak pulse of want. I swear to God, as soon as this never-ending shift is over, I'm going to go out and order the biggest vibrator money can buy and fuck myself silly, because this over-the-top attraction to my co-workers thing is getting out of hand.
