by Mari Carr
“The hunt for a roommate continues.”
“No luck?”
She shook her head. “I’ve met with three women in the last week, and the fact that every single one of them sounded a different alarm makes me think I’m probably going to have to take Jordan back once she gets sick of her new boyfriend.”
“What sort of alarms?”
“One woman asked about the hot water situation. Said she likes to take two forty-five-minute showers a day. What the hell could she do in a shower for an hour and half every day?”
Gavin wiggled his eyebrows. “I could probably come up with a list for you. How kinky do you want me to make it?”
“Gross. Pervert.” She threw one of the throw pillows from the couch at him. He caught it midair and placed it behind his head.
“Another one wanted to know what size clothes and shoes I wore because she just loves sharing clothes with girlfriends. Given the fact she showed up in mom jeans and an ancient, stained hoodie, I’m pretty sure that sharing means she plans to invade my wardrobe because hers is crap. And the last one asked if I would be annoyed if she practiced her clarinet every night. Not to be rude, but who still plays the clarinet after ninth grade band class?”
Gavin chuckled. “Maybe you could take up the flute and the two of you could march around the pub. Give us a parade. Everyone loves parades,” he said sarcastically.
“Everyone does not love parades,” she retorted.
“Parade?” Oliver asked, clearly missing every part of their conversation, except the last word. “Are you talking about the Christmas one? Because if so, I’m in. I love parades.” He picked up the beer Gavin had carried in for him as he sank down next to her, confused when she and Gavin cracked up laughing.
“I stand corrected,” Gavin said, once he managed to pull himself together. “Ollie loves parades.”
Oliver rolled his eyes, figuring out he was the butt of some joke, but he didn’t care enough to find out what it was. Instead, he reached for the remote and fired up the movie.
They’d decided to watch Christmas movies every Friday night in December, and tonight’s selection had been Gavin’s choice, Die Hard, which he proclaimed was the greatest Christmas movie ever made. In honor of the viewing, he’d changed into the Nakatomi Plaza 1988 Christmas Party T-shirt Erin and Oliver had bought him last year for Christmas.
“Everybody ready?” Oliver asked.
Erin and Gavin nodded, and Oliver turned the lights off as they settled in to watch.
After the first movie, the guys had been so pumped up—there really was so much testosterone in this apartment—they’d opted to go ahead and watch the second. It was after midnight, and Gavin and Oliver were actually debating starting the third when Erin stood up. “I’m out. I was struggling to keep my eyes open during that last one.”
Gavin shook his head. “You just don’t appreciate good movies.”
“Remember you said that when we watch my choice next week. Because contrary to what you think, Love Actually is actually the greatest holiday movie of them all.”
Gavin groaned, but she knew he was full of bluster. She’d made them watch the movie with her last year and both men admitted—albeit reluctantly—that they had liked it.
“Yeah,” Oliver said, yawning as he rose as well. “I’m tired too. Maybe we can keep the Die Hard marathon going tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a great plan,” she said. “I’m working the afternoon shift.”
Gavin snorted but turned the TV off, the three of them drifting down the hall that led to Gavin and Oliver’s bedrooms.
“Good night,” Gavin called out when they walked into Oliver’s room, and he continued on to his room at the end of the hall.
Oliver closed the door behind them, leaning against it, suddenly looking a lot less tired than he had in the living room.
“I thought you were tired,” she teased. They’d been together long enough that she could read all his moods. She knew what sleepy looked like, and she knew what horny looked like.
Oliver was currently horny.
“Take off your clothes,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. Just the sound of it had all thoughts of sleep vanishing from her mind.
And she had been sleepy.
Before Oliver, Erin had slept with four men, and she would have said she’d enjoyed sex with all of them. She’d been a fool.
Oliver took alpha to the next level in the bedroom, something she would never have suspected, given his laid-back attitude everywhere else. He’d introduced her to new positions, countless toys, bondage, sexy spankings, and a whole lot of other things that basically meant she was a raving nymphomaniac nowadays.
She reached for the bottom of her T-shirt and pulled it off. She had performed her bra-removal magic trick for the guys earlier, so with that one quick tug, she was completely topless. Oliver’s eyes drifted to her breasts, and she could feel her nipples tightening in anticipation.
“I love your tits,” he murmured, something he said to her pretty much every night.
She reached beneath them, cupping and lifting, giving him a little show as she slowly pinched her own nipples. Oliver was a big fan of her stripteases, so she always took care to make sure he got a good show.
Her eyes drifted closed as she pinched just hard enough to cross over the line from pleasure to pain.
“Eyes open,” Oliver demanded.
Her eyelids lifted, and her gaze met his.
“Take off your pants and panties, sweet girl.”
She loved when Oliver called her his sweet girl. She’d never really been a big fan of terms of endearment in dating—names like baby and honey and sweetheart always felt a bit sexist to her. And honestly, sweet girl definitely should have fallen into that same category, but with Oliver, it simply added to the sexual power exchange between them in the bedroom. She would never have pegged herself as a submissive lover before Oliver, but everything they did together turned her on in ways she couldn’t have imagined.
She slid her pants and panties off together, toeing off her fuzzy socks as well. She stood in front of him, letting him look his fill. There was no embarrassment between them, no shyness. There never had been.
Erin was curvy—okay, chubby—but Oliver had never made her feel self-conscious about that. Instead, he looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman on the planet.
“You get more gorgeous every single day,” he said, stepping closer.
She lifted herself up on tiptoe, tilting her head back for his kiss. Oliver had a good six inches on her height-wise. That, combined with his broad, muscular shoulders—his job working construction had honed his body until it was chiseled, rock hard, perfect—never failed to make her feel tiny, almost petite.
Oliver’s kiss was rough, hungry. Sometimes, he liked to draw the foreplay out, keeping her on the edge of her orgasm for hours, until she was panting, begging. Other times, like tonight, his own needs were too strong and he gave into them, taking her hard, quick.
“Go lay down on the bed. Legs open.”
She climbed into the middle of his mattress, giving him a bird’s-eye view of exactly what she was offering. He shed his own clothing quickly before crawling over her body. He ran his fingers along her slit, grinning as he lifted his fingers and let her see how slick they were.
“Always so ready for me, sweet girl.”
Erin wrapped her hands around his neck, trying to draw him down to resume their kisses, but he locked his arms, refusing to budge.
“Take my cock in your hand, Erin. Show me where you want me.”
She reached between them, guiding him to her pussy.
“Please,” she whispered.
He shifted until the head was lodged just inside her. “Need you so much tonight.”
“Take me.”
Oliver thrust deep, filling her in an instant. He didn’t give her time to acclimate, to adjust. Instead, he gave her exactly what she wanted. He pounded inside her roughly, grasping her legs
to lift her hips from the mattress, to open her even more for his passionate assault.
“God!” she cried when he stroked her clit with his thumb. Oliver knew exactly where and how to touch her, knew how to send her orbiting into space within minutes.
Her back arched and she saw stars as her orgasm exploded. Her climax didn’t slow him down. He didn’t miss a step, never paused for a moment, as he fucked her straight through it.
Erin used to insist she needed time to recover between, but Oliver had taught her differently, had shown her just how high he could push her. One orgasm morphed into a second, harder one.
She closed her eyes, cursing. “Fuck,” she said through gritted teeth. “Fuck me.”
Her nails scored his shoulders and she heard his hiss of pain. A drop of sweat rolled down his cheek and she reached up to wipe it away. He’d shaved during his shower, his face smoother, though it never really lost that rough sandpaper feel she adored.
Oliver’s brown eyes held her gaze, and she was blown away by the unadulterated love she found there.
Oliver was her person. Her forever person.
If only…
Gavin’s face flashed in her mind…just as it always did at this moment.
No matter how many times, how many ways she and Oliver came together like this, she always thought of him as they approached the end.
And she wasn’t alone.
“I know,” Oliver whispered. “He should be here with us. Say his name, sweet girl. Say it.”
It was becoming their ritual lately. The first few times Oliver had made this demand, she’d refused. Not because she didn’t want the same thing he did, but because she didn’t believe it would happen.
God, she still didn’t believe it.
It was easier for Oliver because Gavin did want him, did love him. She’d seen the glances the two men had exchanged, felt the longing between them.
Gavin didn’t look at her that way. He never had. And he never would.
Regardless, Oliver had worn down the part of her that knew better than to bet on a long shot, that was careful with her heart. And so she gave him what he asked for.
“Gavin should be here,” she whispered.
Oliver kissed her. “I love you, Erin,” he said as his body tightened, a sign that he was close. Very close.
He stroked her clit again, determined to ring a third orgasm from her too-sensitive body.
“Ollie. God. Ollie!”
They came together as he dropped lower, kissing her through it.
“Yippee ki yay,” he murmured, mimicking Bruce Willis from the movie, before withdrawing and shifting to her side. “I am never going to want to stop doing that. Gonna want to do that on my death bed.”
She laughed. “You’re insane. But yeah. Same. Can I go to sleep now?”
He kissed her on the cheek, turned off the lamp by the bed, and was probably asleep before she’d even managed to pull up the covers.
It felt like she’d just closed her eyes when the quiet, peaceful night was pierced by a painfully loud sound.
5
Oliver’s eyes flew open, his hands reaching over to the nightstand to slap his cell phone. It took a second or two more before he realized it wasn’t his phone that was blaring.
It was a fire alarm.
Erin was sitting up, looking around the room, as disoriented as him.
“What…” she said groggily.
He heard footsteps pounding down the hallway, and Gavin threw his bedroom door open so hard, it slammed against the wall, bounced off, and nearly closed on him again.
“Wake up!” Gavin said. “Fire.”
Oliver jumped out of bed, searching for his pajama pants. He and Erin had fallen asleep after sex, both of them curling into each other’s arms naked. As he pulled up his pants, he saw Gavin racing to the side of the bed, grabbing Erin’s clothing off the floor as he did so. His foster brother was in the lounge pants and T-shirt he always slept in, barefoot.
Gavin pulled Erin’s T-shirt over her shoulders as she slid to the edge of the bed.
“You gotta get up, Erin.” Gavin gripped her upper arm firmly, helping her stand, then kneeled to help her into her yoga pants. Erin held on to his shoulders for support.
“Shoes…” Erin said, looking around the room.
“No time. Too much smoke already.”
“Smoke?” Oliver had convinced himself it was a false alarm. He turned toward the hall and realized Gavin was right. The place was filling up with smoke…fast.
The three of them raced down the hall to the living room, the smoke even thicker in the large room. Oliver couldn’t see flames, but his eyes were starting to water, to sting. “The fire must be down in the pub.”
Fuck.
The fire was in the pub.
Oliver stood in the middle of the room as the reality of that crashed down on him hard.
“No time for this!” Gavin said, pushing Erin forward as he reached for Oliver’s arm.
Gavin led them all to the fire escape and threw open the window. Glancing down into the alley behind the building, he turned and nodded. “It’s safe. Come on. We’ll have to go out this way. Won’t make it through the pub if the fire is down there.”
Erin stepped out onto the fire escape as Oliver heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Finn had installed a state-of-the-art alarm system a couple of years earlier after a rash of robberies in the neighborhood. The system not only detected break-ins but fire as well, which meant in addition to sending a message to the fire department, it would have blown up the phones of most of his aunts and uncles, and Padraig as well.
The system was also supposed to activate the sprinklers. He hoped they’d come on, and that was what accounted for all the smoke, sending up a prayer that perhaps the fire had already been contained or, even better, put out. However, given the incredible, unbearable heat coming up from the floor beneath him, he didn’t hold on to that hope for long.
The moon shifted, peeking out from behind some clouds just as Oliver reached the window. He glanced over his shoulder—and his stomach sank.
“Ollie. Come on!” Gavin shouted to be heard over the alarm. He had one foot over the window ledge—half in, half out. Oliver could see Erin standing just behind Gavin on the landing. They were waiting for him.
Oliver shook his head at his best friend when he caught sight of the Christmas tree.
“Start down without me,” he muttered, quickly changing direction. He couldn’t leave Grandma Sunday’s ornaments here to burn.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Gavin asked, coughing in the thick smoke. “We don’t have time.”
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Gavin point toward the stairs that led down to the pub. Oliver followed that direction and saw the first hint of orange light, indicating the fire was making its way upstairs.
“The ornaments,” he yelled back, choking on the smoke as well. “Go! Go!”
Gavin shook his head, but Oliver wasn’t leaving this pub without the ornaments.
He stared hard at his foster brother. “Go now! Take Erin.”
Gavin must have seen the determination written on his face. Unfortunately, he didn’t react the way Oliver wanted.
“No!” Oliver yelled when Gavin waved for Erin to start down without them before climbing back over the ledge and into the apartment.
“Gavin, Ollie!” Erin cried from the window as Gavin ran over to Oliver, the two of them frantically trying to find the ornaments in the dim lighting.
“Where the fuck are they?” Gavin said.
They were both coughing hard now, the air a thick cloud of smoke. Seeing was hard, breathing harder.
“Here!” Gavin said, holding up two ornaments he’d found.
Oliver’s eyes watered and burned, his chest tight from lack of oxygen.
Fuck yeah—he had the other two. “Let’s go!”
He and Gavin raced to the fire escape. Erin was halfway down, only starting her descent when she saw the
m heading toward her. He’d give her hell later for not getting to safety immediately, but that would have to wait until he could breathe again. Right now, he was coughing so hard, he was afraid he’d drop the damn ornaments he could now admit he’d stupidly risked his life and Gavin’s to save.
They rounded the side of the building as a police car took the corner way too fucking fast, squealing its tires, the siren piercing the night. Slamming on the brakes and throwing the car in park, Aaron emerged from the cruiser, clearly ready to race into the burning building.
“Aaron!” Oliver yelled, drawing his uncle’s attention as they ran across the street to him.
“Call came through dispatch. I wasn’t far away,” Aaron said. “Thank God you three got out! No one else—”
“No. No one,” Oliver said, his voice tight, throat inflamed from the smoke. Speaking was painful. “Pub’s been closed for hours.”
A fire truck pulled up in front of the pub, the firefighters jumping down and rushing around to unroll the hoses.
Glass shattered, and Oliver turned at the sound. He saw flames shooting out the front of the pub through the hole where the large plate glass window proudly bearing the name Pat’s Irish Pub used to be.
“Fuck,” Gavin said, coughing hard. “Jesus. Fuck!”
Aaron put a comforting hand on Gavin’s shoulder, and then Oliver’s, as the two of them continued to gasp for air, their struggles for deep breaths broken up by hard, rib-rattling coughs.
Oliver’s gaze took in the entire building, and while the flames weren’t visible on the top two floors yet, he knew there would be no saving them if the firefighters didn’t get the hoses hooked up to the hydrant, the water pumping, and the blaze under control quickly.
As it was, the pub and Sunday’s Side were already engulfed in fire, and there was no doubt they couldn’t be saved.
He glanced to his side as Gavin continued to cough deeply. They’d both taken in too much smoke. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, unsure if his foster brother even heard him as more fire trucks and police cars arrived, Landon and Miguel climbing out of one of the cars and racing over to them.
