by Sylvia Fox
Things couldn’t possibly get any better…
My phone beeps. It’s a text from Carrie. We haven’t seen each other very much these past few months. She’s busy at the bar, and I’ve been busy with the kids and law studies, though we make time to text every day. She’s been complaining, furiously, about an asshole bar chain owner who swept in and bought the bar where she works. Everything she’s said has painted the man as conceited, arrogant, and rude as all hell. So, I’m surprised, to say the least, when I read her text.
“What is it?” Adrian asks when he catches my mood shift. He’s good about reading even the slightest of changes in my expression. “Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong.” I press my lips together to hide my smile. “She’s asking me for advice as obviously I have first-hand knowledge of a dilemma she’s facing. Apparently, she just realized she’s in love with her new boss.”
Want more of these hot billionaire bosses and the women who love them? Carrie’s story picks up in WORK ME, ALPHA, Book 3 in the Billionaire Boss series, out soon! Sign up to Sylvia’s newsletter to get notified on release day. Thanks for reading, Foxy Lady!
Until then, you can read all about Christopher McKnight in BOSS ME, ALPHA, Book 1 in the Billionaire Boss Series. Out now and only 99 cents on Amazon, or free with Kindle Unlimited. Enjoy!
Sneak Peek
Ignite Me, Fireman
Chapter One
This intimate party gathering had gone from boring to wild. The stereo’s bass pounded so loud that it shook through my entire body. Sweaty students pressed in close from all directions, and the scent of cigarette smoke hung heavy in the hot air. From somewhere down the packed hallway, I heard the unmistakable crash of glass exploding onto the hardwood floor.
My parents were going to kill me.
They were off in Paris for New Year’s Eve, enjoying some time away to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, leaving me home alone on my college winter break. I’d always been a good girl, always been a stickler for the rules, never so much as putting a toe outside the designated lines.
So, when they’d suggested I could have a few friends over while they were out of the country to celebrate the clock ticking over into the new year, I’d been relieved to have something more entertaining to do than watch the ball drop on TV in my flannel pajama pants. Adventurous, I was not.
Unfortunately, word about my tiny “party” had spread like wildfire in Timber Bluff. I’d grown up in a small town nestled in the mountains, surrounded on all sides by nothing but trees upon trees upon trees. And as it turned out, everyone my age within a ten-mile radius had nothing better to do than crash random parties they hadn’t even been invited to. In fact, it seemed like all the college kids from neighboring towns had even gotten wind of tonight.
I weaved through the crowd to find my best friend in the kitchen. She was appreciatively eyeing a muscled, tattooed guy I’d never before seen in my life. With a deep breath, I pulled my tight ponytail even tighter, my hair the only thing I could control right now. I tried to keep my voice calm and steady, even though my pulse was racing. “Rach, exactly how many people did you invite over?”
She held up her hands and shook her head, but she didn’t look too upset by the intrusion of all these random people. “Don’t look at me. For once, I am completely innocent. Though maybe not for long…”
She waggled her eyebrows at the guy, who was still pumping beer from a keg. A keg I hadn’t ordered. All I’d ordered were a couple of pizzas that had disappeared two seconds after the doorbell rang.
“Where did all these people come from then? And the keg?”
“Oh, Max brought that.” Her smile grew. “Isn’t that right, Max?”
Who the hell was Max?
“Damn straight,” the keg guy, Max, said in a slow drawl. He held out a cup to Rachel before shifting his gaze my way. “You want one?”
Irritation flared in my gut. Who did this guy think he was, bringing a keg to some girl’s house he didn’t even know? I balled my hands into fists by my sides and opened my mouth to give Max a piece of my mind, but Rachel elbowed me in the side. Frowning, I met her gaze. We’d been best friends for as long as I could remember and reading her thoughts was like reading my own.
And I knew exactly what she was trying to say. Play along. She wanted to do a thing or two with this guy, and kicking him out of the party was not on her list.
I rolled my eyes in response. My parents were going to lose their minds when they found out what had happened here tonight. They’d said I could invite a few friends over for wine and board games. Not hundreds of strangers over for beer pong. It would take days to clean up the mess, not to mention I was pretty sure I was going to have to pay for all the broken glasses and vases out of my own barren bank account.
“Max here has a friend.” Rachel nudged me toward a guy I hadn’t noticed, leaning against the kitchen counter with a sloppy grin on his face and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked wasted, his eyes and cheeks red, his t-shirt splattered with beer.
If he didn’t look so disheveled and maybe if he were a few years older, he might have been hot. He had the kind of hair that I’d always wanted to run my fingers through: thick, dark as night, and curling this way and that. And his strong jaw was covered in just the right amount of scruff to make him look right at home in the middle of the woods.
But the alcohol-laden eyes, the lack of lines around his eyes…he was just too immature.
I wanted a man who was a man, not a boy. The kind of man who could throw me over his shoulder while carrying a thick axe in his other hand, strong muscles rippling and throat growling like a rugged bear.
A man like Blaze Marshall.
He was like no boy I’d ever met before. Serious, confident, rugged, strong. I’d known him all my life, and I’d held him up as the ideal man for as long as I could remember. He was a Timber Bluff firefighter, chorded with muscle and covered in soot.
He was perfection in the form of a man.
And he was also my dad’s oldest friend.
Did I mention he was sixteen years older than me?
No one my age could compare to that. They all seemed so young and immature, too distracted by beer pong and video games to know exactly what a woman wanted. Their slurred speech, their glassy eyes, their fumbling hands when they went from girl to girl, hoping to find one drunk enough to fuck. How could I ever go for a guy my age, a guy like that, when they had to measure up to a real man, a man I knew without a shadow of a doubt would treat his woman like a queen?
I’d never so much as given any of these boys a second glance, especially not the drunk one eyeing me up like sex on a stick.
“How you doing?” He gave me a nonchalant nod as he took another drag of his cigarette. “Want to find a room upstairs?”
Wow. How subtle and smooth. I wrinkled my nose. Where the hell was the romance? The candles, the dim lights, the soft touches, and the whispers of seduction? Maybe it didn’t exist. If it did, I certainly hadn’t seen it. Guys my age were all about loud parties, muddled heads, and eager paws. I might as well be a petting animal at a zoo.
“No thanks.” I turned away, putting my back to the guy. Rachel rolled her eyes at me, clearly exasperated by my refusal to engage in any sort of illicit activity with a drunken frat boy. She’d tried to get me to loosen up for as long as I could remember. And I’d been just as stubborn as she was. If not more.
“Well, you might not want to have some fun, but I sure do,” she said in a low voice. “Mind if I…?”
“Go on.” I shrugged. “But don’t come crying to me when he passes out after thirty seconds of vigorous thrusting.”
She giggled and shook her head. “You’re the weirdest person in the world, and I love you.”
“Right back at you.” I pushed her toward Max and watched the two of them disappear out of the kitchen, arms slung across each other’s waists.
With a sigh, I glanced around at the m
ess. Beer bottles and plastic cups littered the floor, and a strange brown stain spread across the tile. The bass still pumped through the open door, and laughter and shouts joined the sound. Everyone was having a hell of a time, but here I was contemplating whether or not I should go ahead and get started on cleaning up. I pulled my ponytail tighter and frowned. Happy New Year to me.
“Hey.” Max’s friend stumbled in front of me, and I instinctively took a step back, my butt slamming into the countertop. Now that he was so close, the scent of stale beer and cigarette smoke swarmed into my nose. Gross.
“Hi.” I grimaced and tried to sidestep around him, but he scooted in sync with my feet. “Ah, would you mind? I have a mess to clean up.”
“Relax, Poppy.” His hand found its way to my hip, and I frowned as his fingers began to stroke my side. “You need to relax. Enjoy yourself. Get that stick out of your ass. Maybe replace it with something else, if you know what I mean?”
I blinked at him, irritation boiling through my veins. “Excuse me?”
“You’re wound way too tight. But I can help you with that.” He dropped his cigarette onto the floor and shifted even closer, so close that there was nothing but clothing between us. Sucking in a breath, I pushed at his chest, but he was far too strong and thick for me to move.
Panic started to grip my mind. I didn’t know this guy or anything about him, and he had me trapped against the kitchen counter with no one else to stop him if he decided to push things further. His smoky breath filled my head, making the nausea build in my throat. Wrinkling my nose, I tried to twist away from him.
And that’s when I saw it.
The flames licking the walls. The smoke billowing through the room.
The house was on fire.
Chapter Two
As the fire raged, I managed to get everyone outside. People began to flee, jumping into their cars and rushing down the sloping drive to get away before the cops and the firefighters arrived. No one wanted to get caught in this mess, leaving me to deal with the aftermath all by myself.
My eyes flicked through the darkness for Rach’s face, but her bright green eyes were nowhere to be found. Shit. She’d gone upstairs with that Max guy, and they probably hadn’t heard the commotion behind closed doors, doing…whatever the hell it was they were doing.
I threw myself back into the house, up the stairs, and down the hallway, choking on the thickening smoke with every step. My eyes watered and my throat burned, but I didn’t dare turn back now. When I finally reached the end of the hallway, I threw open my bedroom door. The two of them had passed out after all, half-naked and curled on top of the sheets, arms and legs sprawled in all directions.
“Rachel!” I yelled. “Wake up!”
Groggily, she opened her eyes and blinked at me. “What’s going on?”
“You need to get up!” I rushed toward her and dragged her up from the bed. “The house is on fire.”
Her eyes bugged out of her head. “Caught on fire? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Did someone say fire?” Max scrambled from the bed and whirled around as if he expected the flickering flames to have surrounded us already. But even though it hadn’t yet spread to the second floor, smoke seeped into the room, filling my nostrils and scratching my eyes. Sirens blared in the distance. The firemen would be there soon, at least.
“Come on,” I said quickly, grabbing Rachel’s elbow. “We need to get out of here.”
The three of us stumbled down the hallway toward the staircase. Smoke billowed up from below, the roar of the fire growing louder and louder with every second longer we stayed inside the house. A heavy lump clogged my throat as my heart skittered in my chest. We needed to get out of there fast. The fire had spread much more quickly than I’d expected, and the floor felt hot under my feet.
When we reached the staircase, the three of us came to a sudden stop. My eyes went wide, and I sucked in a sharp gasp, pulling more smoke into my lungs. The fire had clawed its way through the living room and blocked the bottom of the stairs. It danced beneath us, reaching its curling tendrils into the air as if it yearned to wrap its warm embrace around our bodies.
I pressed my hand to my throat and shook my head, feeling all the blood drain from my face. We were stuck up here with no escape. We could climb out of the window, but it was a long drop to the hard ground, and the entire house was surrounded by prickly trees that wouldn’t catch our fall so much as stab our skin with their rough limbs.
“Poppy?” Rachel’s voice was high-pitched and frantic, matching the fear I felt in my gut. “What do we do? How do we get out of here?”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of my thoughts, trying to figure out a way for us to escape the fire without getting burned, broken, or worse. But I had no answers. I’d spent my entire life following the rules, doing everything the way I was supposed to. And the first time I’d ever done anything outside of the lines, it had led to this.
My whole life rolled before me. I hadn’t had a chance to truly live. Not yet. So far my existence had been a series of classrooms, homework, and good grades. I was only twenty-one. I hadn’t even graduated college yet.
I hadn’t even had sex yet.
This was the first real party I’d ever been to, and it was looking as if it might be my last.
My last of everything.
“Poppy!” Blaze Marshall rushed through the fire in a whirlwind of speed and power. His steel body was donned in a black and white uniform to protect him from the heat, and he wielded an axe like a Viking Knight on a mission. A mission to save…me.
My heart swelled, and the panic in my gut disappeared in a whiff of smoke. If Blaze was here, everything would be okay. He’d get us out of here, safe and sound. Probably without even a scratch on our arms. He charged up the stairs with two of his fellow firefighters behind him, took one look at the three of us, and slung me over his shoulder without even a millisecond of hesitation. My hands clung to his back, and I could feel the rippling of his muscles as he moved back down the stairs. He was so strong it was criminal. A tank of a man who worked his body into perfection every day, making sure he had the strength, the speed, and the stamina to do his job to the very best of his ability.
When we reached the yard outside, I sucked in soothing breaths of crisp winter air. My lungs and eyes were aching from the smoke, and even though I couldn’t rid my nose of the smell, the air outside eased some of the pain. I craned my head to glance behind us and was relieved to see the other firefighters were right behind us with both Rachel and Max.
Everyone was fine. Everything would be okay.
Well, everything but the house.
Blaze dropped me to the ground and took my face between his rough palms. He leaned down, searching my eyes with his. He looked scared, something I’d never seen from him before. Had he been…worried about me? Of all people? Or maybe he was just worried about my dad’s home, the one I’d caused to burn up, taking all our precious belongings with it.
“Are you okay, Poppy?” His voice was rough as his hands began to roam across my body, searching for wounds or broken bones. “Are you hurt anywhere? Burned?”
I coughed before I could speak, both from my smoke-filled lungs and from my shock at feeling Blaze’s hands on me. My entire body felt as if it were covered in flames, but I was pretty sure that had nothing to do with the actual fire. “I’m okay.”
“What the hell happened, Poppy?” He waved at the house, now being sprayed down by the powerful hose connected to the bright red engine. Even though I was no expert on fires, I knew without a doubt that the house had taken on a lot of damage. The whole ground floor looked black, fingers of char spreading out on the walls. The upstairs looked fine from where I was, but no doubt the structure of the entire place had been hit hard.
My stomach sunk down to my toes. The house was ruined.
And it was all my fault.
Tears pricked my aching eyes, making them burn even more than they already did.
Blaze’s eyes immediately softened and he wrapped his strong hands around my shoulders. “Don’t cry, Poppy. You’re alright.”
I sniffled, nodding. “I know, but the house isn’t. Dad is going to kill me for this.”
“Why the hell were you throwing a party anyway?” he asked. “That’s not like you.”
“I know.” I rubbed my eyes with my palms, but that only made more soot get into them. “Trust me, this was not my idea. All I wanted was a nice, quiet New Year’s Eve.”
“Of course you did.” Blaze frowned before twisting his head around to survey the scene. All the party-goers had vanished, including Max and Rachel. The only people left were the firefighters still hosing down the house and the cops milling about, ready to investigate how the fire started in the first place.
“Listen,” he said, patting my knee. “The guys are going to be here awhile, and that house is, frankly, inhabitable for the time being. I’ll try getting ahold of your folks to let them in on what’s happened here, but you’ll need somewhere to stay for at least tonight. Possibly a little longer than that.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks. “I’m sure I can find somewhere. I think Rachel left with that guy, but—”
“There’ll be no finding somewhere.” He nodded his head, stood, and held a hand out to me. I looked up and slid my hand into his, enjoying the feel of his hot skin on mine. “You’ll come home with me and stay at my place, at least until your folks get back from Paris and we can figure something out.”
My heart went wild in my chest. Even though this night had totally and completely sucked ass, I was pretty okay with this part of it. I was going home with Blaze Marshall.
Want more? You can grab IGNITE ME, FIREMAN here on Amazon for free with Kindle Unlimited!
Also by Sylvia Fox
I’ve had my eyes on my best friend’s dad for years. Brett’s a pilot, but beyond that, he’s all man.
