BlowingitOff

by Lexxie Couper

  “Damon…” Phoebe whispered.

  Fuck a duck, she’s going to say—

  Someone bashed on the massive door. Repeatedly.

  “Phoebe?” came a shout from the other side. A male shout. “Are you in there?”

  “Damn it,” Phoebe groaned, squirming until she’d worked her way out from between Damon and Will. “It’s Harvey.”

  She scrambled off the bed, snatching her clothes from the floor. Stumbling toward the door, she didn’t look back at them, throwing a whispered “put your clothes on!” over her shoulder instead. Damon took his own step away from the bed, dragging his fingers through his hair, slightly disoriented by the interruption.

  “Please put some clothes on?” Phoebe mouthed, a second before she pulled her T-shirt over her head.

  Damon shot his discarded shirt a quick look. He didn’t want to put it on. He wanted to discuss his entirely unexpected but completely truthful proposition. He wanted to talk about their future together and then make love to her again. Thanks to Harvey banging away on the door, however, he couldn’t.

  Just who the hell was Harvey? This was the second time in one afternoon the bloke had been at Phoebe’s door.

  A rustling of material beside Damon jerked his attention from the puzzling question and he shot Will a look. His partner was dressing, a very disgruntled expression on his face.

  “Who the fuck is this Harvey guy?” Damon muttered.

  Will’s jaw bunched. “No idea. But I’m planning on finding out.”

  Damon nodded. “Me too.”

  “Phoebe!” Harvey banged on the door again, his voice high and excited. “Phoebe, I have to tell you something!”

  Damon narrowed his eyes. “Persistent bloody bugger, isn’t he?”

  Will didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Damon could see the tension twisting through every muscle in his friend’s body.

  With a low growl, and an uncomfortable sensation very close to jealousy wrapping around his chest, Damon crossed the room, collecting his discarded clothes from the floor. He donned his shirt and shoved his legs in his jeans just before Phoebe reached the door.

  “Phoebe!” Harvey called again, with another impatient bang on the metal. “I think I know what—”

  Whatever he was going to say next was drowned out by the heavy rumble of the sliding door opening. “Harvey,” Phoebe’s voice was friendly if somewhat exasperated, “calm down. You sound like you’re about to blow a gasket. What’s the problem?”

  Damon stood just out of Harvey’s line of sight, ear pricked, muscles tense. “Can I come in?” Harvey asked, the question fast and excited. “I think I know what caused your fire.”

  The equally fast and excited statement snapped Damon’s spine straight. He flicked Will a look, raising his eyebrows.

  Will’s nostrils flared. Jaws set, shoulders squared, in quick order he destroyed the distance between him and Phoebe, towering over her as he focused his attention on the mysterious Harvey.

  With a silent step, Damon moved until he could just glimpse around the door. He wanted to see how Harvey reacted to Will’s presence. Something about the situation itched at Damon’s gut.

  The reaction was instant and unmistakable. Harvey flinched, a deep red spreading up his throat to his cheeks.

  “G’day, Harvey.” Will leaned over Phoebe’s shoulder, extending his hand to the furiously blushing man even as he let his other hand come to rest on the curve of her hip in a very unsubtle message. “I’m Officer Will Bradley. Tell me what you know about the fire in Ms. Masters’ studio.”

  Damon watched Harvey. The man licked his lips. His stare flicking from Will’s face to Phoebe’s, down to Will’s proprietary placement of his hand and back up to Will’s face again. His cheeks burned redder. “I…” He licked his lips again. “I didn’t see a car out front…I didn’t realize Phoebe had…had company.” He cleared his throat. “You weren’t at…at her studio so I thought you guys had gone back to Newcastle.”

  Will shook his head and slid his palm up Phoebe’s rib cage. “Nope.”

  Phoebe, Damon was unsettled to see, tried to nudge Will’s hand away. “Will, Harvey is a firefighter with the Morpeth brigade,” she said, twisting enough to give Will a steady glare. “He’s also Captain Kilgour’s son.” She turned back to Harvey. “Come in and tell us what you know.”

  For the third time Harvey licked his lips, a nervous swipe Damon didn’t like at all. Something about the man put him on edge.

  “Captain Kilgour?” Will said, his hand staying resolutely on Phoebe’s body. “Very astute man. We interviewed him a few hours ago. Knows a lot. Was quite suspicious of the fire.” He paused for a short second. “What about you, Harvey? Do you think it was deliberately lit?”

  “I think,” Harvey said, shuffling his feet, “the fire was caused by a candle left un-extinguished. Phoebe burns vanilla candles often when she’s working in her studio. Not when she’s working with glass, but when she’s sketching at her drawing table.”

  Phoebe’s shoulders straightened. “How do you know all this?”

  Harvey stared at her. “Just things I’ve noticed when I’m there. Fire things, y’know. And sometimes you forget to blow the candles out.”

  “That’s some impressive noticing skills you’ve got there,” Will said, and Damon noticed his friend’s jaw flex.

  Harvey, it seemed, didn’t notice. He nodded, flicking Will a nervous smile before turning his attention back to Phoebe. “And sometimes you leave the back window open. Which means a cat or a possum could’ve jumped into your studio looking for something to eat—like the apples you keep in the bowl near your drawing table—and knocked the candle over. If the candle fell close to the newspapers you use to mould the glass, the fire would have plenty of material to burn.”

  Damon narrowed his eyes. Harvey seemed to know a lot about Phoebe. That in itself was disquieting, but added to it was the fact that close to everything Harvey had mentioned was conclusive with Damon and Will’s findings of the fire scene.

  They had found wax residue near a huge stack of partially burned newspapers, just as Harvey had hypothesized. They’d found an open window at the back of the studio, which meant the flames had all the oxygen they needed to burn, and burn quickly. They’d found the charred remains of fruit scattered through the debris.

  Everything rang true. Except for one thing…

  Ethyl alcohol.

  The Morpeth firefighter hadn’t mentioned the accelerant.

  Because he didn’t know about it? Or because he did?

  The question punched into Damon’s chest—heavy and cold. And by the tension stealing over Will’s body, Damon suspected the very same question had occurred to his partner.

  Most people didn’t realize that fire left a story—a minute-by-minute account of the burn. And most people assumed things like candles and paper would be incinerated in the blaze. No matter how hot the inferno, there was always residue, always tell signs. Candles would melt to liquid, and that liquid would boil, leaving an almost imperceptible film of wax behind, concentrated on the original location. Paper often burned to ash that was dispersed by a firefighter’s hose. But in Phoebe’s studio, the thick pile of papers contained an unburned center, turned to a pulpy mass by the thousands of gallons of water pumped into the space. Little hints all adding together to tell a story he and Will knew how to read. As, it seemed, did Harvey. And if Harvey knew how to read the story, then he also knew how to tell it. And how to begin it.

  Once upon a time there was an accelerant called ethyl alcohol that found itself splashed all around a glassblowers studio…

  Damon stared hard at the man gazing at Phoebe from the other side of the threshold, his mind racing. Harvey was a firefighter, which meant he would know all about the “fire triangle”, the three factors needed to create and sustain a fire of destructive force—oxygen, a fuel source and heat. It’s very likely he would know one of the most overlooked accelerants in arson cases was ethyl alcohol,
due to its deceptive alcohol smell. And any firefighter worth wielding a hose would know an open window meant a rapid burn rate.

  So, fuel source—initially paper, followed by wooden furniture. Oxygen from a window supposedly left window by accident, something Phoebe had never been guilty of when living in Newcastle. In fact, she’d been pedantic about keeping her windows closed and locked. And heat from the flames themselves. But in Phoebe’s fire, those flames were helped along by ethyl alcohol, and helped very effectively. The char pattern on the concrete floor indicated enough of the flammable liquid had been splashed about to ensure the fire would take hold quickly and devastatingly, but only on or beneath horizontal surfaces. Appearing for all the world like the result of spilled alcoholic beverages.

  But why would Harvey want to set fire to Phoebe’s studio? To what end?

  Damon narrowed his eyes again. Gut instincts suggested one reason. A reason that had everything to do with the thing hanging between Harvey’s legs.

  Then step forward. See what he does.

  He pulled his t-shirt up over his head, threw it aside, scruffed up his hair with his fingers and then stepped from his unseen position, rubbing one hand over his bare stomach in languid, contented strokes.

  “I didn’t know you two were already awake,” he murmured, making his voice sound sleepy as he ambled into view. From the corner of his eye, he saw Harvey jerk. He also heard Phoebe hiss in a breath, but kept his half-lidded gaze on Will. “Did you both shower without me?”

  He stopped at Phoebe’s side, ignoring her stunned expression. With a lazy grin, he lowered his head and nuzzled the side of her neck, running his hand up her belly to almost—almost—cup her breast. “Hmm, you taste good, Masters.”

  “Damon?” Phoebe’s throat vibrated under his lips, and for a split second the intoxicating scent of her almost made him lose his concentration. “What are—”

  “What the fuck?”

  Harvey’s croaked exclamation surprised all of them.

  “You can’t touch her like—!”

  Damon straightened, giving the man a steady look. Harvey snapped his mouth shut, eyes bulging, face redder than ever. He glared at Damon, hate burning in his gaze, hotter than any fire Damon had ever seen. Glared at him with baleful rage before sliding his stare to Will. He curled his lip, his chest puffing up. “I didn’t realize you city boys did such a thorough job of…questioning the property owner. We Morpeth guys just investigate the fire at the actual scene.”

  “Harvey!” Phoebe stiffened, but Damon didn’t take his attention off the man. Venom glowed in Harvey’s eyes. Venom and something far, far more primitive.

  Jealousy. Raw, unequivocal jealousy.

  Damon scratched at his stomach again, giving Harvey a bemused grin. “Sorry, who are you again?”

  “I’m the one doing the real work, being the real hero while you fucking big-shot city wankers take advantage of a poor distraught woman in her moment of crisis,” Harvey snarled. And there was no other word for it—it was a snarl, full of malevolent hate. He leaned forward and sneered at Damon again. “I’m the man who discovered what caused Phoebe’s fire, dickhead.”

  “Don’t you mean the one who started it?” Will asked, his voice low and calm and as cold as ice.

  Harvey’s face turned white. His mouth fell open, his stare locked on Will’s.

  And then he turned and ran.

  Damon let out a shocked laugh.

  “Ah fuck,” Will growled. “Now we’re going to have to chase him down.”

  Chapter Seven

  Phoebe held the accidental dildo in her hand, staring at the glass sculpture opposite her. Will and Damon had been gone for two hours.

  Two hours since they’d made love to her, asked her to move in with them, exposed Harvey Kilgour for the arsonist he was, crash-tackled him to the ground in front of her home and pinned him there, bucking and screaming and professing his love for her. Two hours since Damon and Will took turns holding the thrashing, writhing, love-professing Harvey so they could finish dressing.

  Two hours since Phoebe’s neighbors witnessed the whole God-awful, surreal thing, casting her curious glances as they whispered amongst themselves.

  Two hours since her whole life had changed.

  And the entire time, Phoebe sat in silence on her old, overstuffed sofa, alternating between gazing at the bed and its rumpled, messed-up duvet and staring at the dark glass sculpture once called Untitled Time, then briefly called Oh Fuck, Why Can’t I Get Them Out of My Fucking Head? and now called Damn It, How Can I Live Without Them?

  The last thing Damon had said to her as they’d stood side-by-side, watching Will and the Morpeth police sergeant bundle Harvey into the back of the squad car, rang in her ears even now. “Don’t say no, Masters.”

  He and Will had walked back to their own car then—still parked outside her burnt-out studio—and followed the sergeant to the Morpeth police station where, presumably, Harvey would be charged with arson.

  Two hours ago. Did it take that long to ensure a man be charged with a crime?

  The pit of her belly rolled and she let out a sigh. Once again, when she should have been freaking out about one thing, she was worried about another. When she should be beside herself because sweet, friendly, puppy-dog desperate Harvey had set her studio alight in some messed-up, deranged attempt to impress her—and his father, if his wild rantings about getting respect were anything to go on—she was fixated on the two men responsible for uncovering Harvey’s lunacy.

  Fixated on them and the question left unanswered between them.

  Another sigh slipped past her lips. Long and shaky. They wanted her to live with them. All three together. They wanted a happy-ménage-ever-after.

  It wasn’t her belly that reacted this time, it was her sex. Her breath caught at the notion of a life spent living with Will and Damon, of waking up between them every morning. Of coming home from her studio to their grins and boyish fun every day. Of grocery shopping with them, watching movies, visiting the beach and eating out and riding bikes and planning holidays with them.

  All three of them together. One big, happy, society-bucking family.

  She thought of making love to them, both of them. Whenever she wanted. Whenever they wanted. Of being impaled on one of them as the other worshipped her body. Of being impaled on both of them at the same time as she had been only a few hours ago.

  She closed her eyes and gripped the glass shard in her hands tighter, her pussy not just tingling but damn near convulsing. “Damn it, Masters. This was just meant to be sex. Goodbye sex. Ending-it sex. Not look-what-you-could-have-forever sex.”

  Have forever.

  The two words made her throat thick. Her and Will and Damon. Forever. She let out a shaky sigh. She’d never really given a toss about what society expected or demanded of her. She’d often joked with Sami it was one of the perks of being a professional artist—the rest of the population expected her to be unconventional. She could walk a busy street wearing nothing but oversized dungarees and a singlet, her hair brilliant purple dreadlocks, her nose pierced and her toenails painted ten different colors and no one would think anything of it except “weirdo artist”. In fact she had done that very thing back in her art school days.

  How she existed in the “real world” bared little impact on her. As long as she could create, she was happy. And then Will and Damon had come along, and how she existed with them in the real world became a pressing question.

  Their weekend of wild, uninhibited sex six months ago had planted a longing in her she’d tried to ignore. When the topic of what happened next came up, she hadn’t balked at the idea of continuing their threesome outside the bedroom.

  Will and Damon had. Damon had laughed the whole weekend off as “one of the things I can mark off my Bucket List”, and Will had, well… Will, ever the serious one, had calmly shaken his head and remarked that the weekend had been “interesting” and left it at that.

  Thirty minutes later
she’d walked out of Damon’s house wishing to hell she’d been an accountant, or a pre-school teacher or a…a…dental nurse. Anything but an artist who didn’t give a rat’s bum what society thought. If she gave a rat’s bum, she would never have dared believe for one wonderful, stupid moment that she and Will and Damon could have a happy-ménage-ever-after together.

  And the next morning she’d moved to Morpeth and set about forgetting that society-bucking HEA. That fantasy. That future.

  Six months later, after she’d finally achieved it, her world went up in smoke.

  Stomach churning, she opened her eyes and looked at the glass sculpture commissioned by the Prime Minister’s office—two forms of towering strength and impossible beauty. Will and Damon. She remembered blowing it, remembered the utter joy and perfect contentment that had thrummed through her while she’d created the stunning piece. She’d thought those emotions had to do with the artwork itself, but now she realized it was the subconscious subject matter.

  Damon Hunt and William Bradley.

  Once friends, then lovers, then figures from her past and now…what?

  Her future? The future she’d wanted six months ago that they had rejected?

  Her heart thumped harder.

  No, they had been right all those months ago. They were her fantasy and the fantasy was over. Even if they’d had a change of heart, that’s what they had to be. She could live with the backlash of such a fantasy fulfilled, but they couldn’t. Wild threesome sex. That’s all they had and all they could ever have. And that wild threesome sex was done and done.

  Even though her heart was telling her in no uncertain terms what Will and Damon were proposing was right and wonderful on every level—physical, emotional and psychological—she had to listen to her brain. For once in her life, she had to listen to her brain and her brain said it was wrong. The fantasy was just that—fantasy. When they walked back into her home she would tell them emphatically, before they could touch her and completely destroy her resolve, that it was over.

  She had to. It was the only sane thing to do.