A Low Blue Flame Read online

I rode back to Lil’s and down into the garage, taking a parking ticket. The elevator from the visitor level spilled me out into the lobby and I took the ticket to security and let them know who I was and all that jazz. They let me through the fancy electronic turnstile-thing and scanned a badge against the elevator bank to send me up to Lil’s floor.

  “Thanks, man,” I said, and he handed me back my validated parking ticket. I gave him a little salute with it and stepped onto the elevator, putting the ticket into my wallet.

  “Hold that for me, would you please?” a voice called out and I stuck my arm out to keep the doors from closing.

  “Thank you,” the man said and I looked up, right into the unfortunately-familiar face of the douchebag that’d tricked Lil into being his side chick before humiliating her at the 10-13.

  His loss, your treasure, I thought to myself, but it didn’t ease my wanting to punch him in his face.

  I gave him a tight-lipped smile and said, “No problem.”

  “Do I know you?” he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

  “Nope.” I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets, shoulders tense under his scrutiny. The doors had finished sliding shut and he scanned a badge on the inside scanner of the car. Floor twenty-one lit up.

  “Ah,” he said nodding. Good for him, he’d figured it out.

  “You live here now?” I asked casually.

  “Yes, with my fiancée.”

  “Lil know?”

  “Ah, no. I haven’t spoken to her.”

  “Keep it that way,” I said shortly and he blinked, taken aback.

  The rest of the ride to his floor went by in a tense silence, and when the doors swished open, he paused, as if he were going to say something. I gave him a cold look and he seemed to think better of whatever it was and stepped off.

  I struggled with how I was going to tell her. I mean, she deserved to know rather than to just be blindsided by this asshole in the lobby with his girl. Come to think of it, his girl deserved better than that too, but she wasn’t my concern as much as Lil, and I honestly didn’t know how to even let his woman know what was up. That was a dilemma in and of itself. Having been on the receiving end of that shit, I knew it didn’t feel good, but I was still glad my fire bros had told me.

  “What a shit-show,” I muttered, and the elevator opened up on Lil’s floor. I went to her door and took a deep breath, and knocked.

  The smile she opened it with was enough to knock me off my damn feet and just about all thoughts of that asshole disappeared. Hell, I might have even felt something along the lines of a little secret gratitude. She was the one for me, and him fucking it up put us together. So while I still wanted to kill him, I was also kind of grateful, in a fucked-up and twisted sense of ironic fate.

  “I missed you,” I said and stepped across the threshold, shutting the door before one of the cats could bolt.

  “Really?” she asked, like she almost couldn’t believe it.

  Fuck it. I pulled her close and kissed her soundly until the tension in her body from the sudden action eased and she melted against my chest. I smoothed my hands over the satin of her robe and her arms went around my neck. She pressed her body close to mine and I came unglued, for all the best reasons this time.

  “I’m taking you to bed,” I growled and she smiled.

  “You know where it is.” The way she said it, there wasn’t anything demure about it.

  She yelped and let out a joyous laugh as I picked her up in a fireman’s carry and strode down the hall toward her bedroom. The first time I had walked in here she’d been asleep in my arms and I had nearly dropped her, no joke, from how amazing the room was.

  Hell, I was turned on just thinking about making love to her in that bed, suspended as it was halfway between floor and ceiling, on its platform. Her bedroom, unlike the rest of the apartment, was two stories and yet remained floor-to-ceiling glass. Her bed, king-sized, was suspended on a cement platform half way between floor and ceiling, two short flights of steel, glass, and cement stairs leading up to it and the two nightstands to either side. The bed itself was a picture in peach and cream satin, a sharp contrast to the cement and steel surrounding it. I carried her up those two flights and set her on her feet in the plush white faux-fur area rug that sprawled beneath the bed.

  She laughed and reached up for me to come down, closing the gap between our mouths. I kissed her and she kissed me back and fuck, I was fired up. I made short work of our clothes, hers a hell of a lot easier than mine, that light satin robe and the long satin-and-lace nightgown that clung to her soft curves. She matched the bedroom, I realized, and that made me smile.

  She worked so hard at looking so put-together, but I knew that she didn’t feel that way. I also knew that feeling, and that she was honestly way more put-together and awesome at holding it together than she gave herself credit for. She was a strong woman, and she needed to be, if this whole thing was going to work. Loving a man in my line of work could be nerve-wracking and hard. I knew she could handle it. She’d already handled so much, given our conversations about her mother and what the douchebag I’d encountered on the elevator had done to her confidence and self-esteem.

  I put one arm around her and with the other, flung the comforter back on the bed so I could turn and lay her down.

  My beautiful girl thought of everything, there were already condoms on her bedside table. More of them with her author logo on them. I chuckled and didn’t go for them immediately. I wanted to taste every inch of her first. I got her onto the bed properly and covered her body with mine, starting with her mouth, her hands holding my face, smoothing down my neck, over my shoulders in a firm, but light, touch.

  I loved how she seemed to appreciate my body with those touches. Exploring, but at the same time, each movement reverent, in that exploration raised my skin in goosebumps after their sweep, every hair standing on end. God, the things she did to me, my cock was throbbing and aching to be inside of her but not yet. I didn’t anticipate I would last long this first go, so I was determined to make her come with my mouth before I even tried anything that could set me off.

  I trailed kisses and light flicks of my tongue all down her body, paying special attention to the pert globes of her breasts, the most perfect natural set of tits I had ever seen on a woman. She was so soft and warm, the satin sheets so slick under my knees as I worked my way closer to the petals of her sex.

  Her scent perfumed the air around us, which was another thing; I’d never encountered a woman whose very smell set me off the way hers did. She was absolutely divine, a mix of earthy herbal scent mixed with something floral, almost fruity.

  Her skin was petal-soft beneath my hands and lips. All of the contrasting sensations make my cock weep with pre-cum and my body tense as I refused to do what it wanted and instead focused on making her feel everything that I was and then some.

  I stared up at her from between her thighs and she stared back. Desire flickered in those stormy gray-blue eyes of hers like heat lightning and I felt a feral smile overtake my lips as I slid a finger inside her hot, wet, and waiting depths. She fell back onto the mattress and let out a throaty moan. I put my tongue against her body and crooked the finger inside her toward her roof and she took off like a shot, hips rising off the bed, writhing against my hand and mouth. I chuckled against her and she gasped and bucked a little harder this time, but that didn’t bother me. I just put my free arm over her hips and pressed her back down.

  She still tried to writhe but was held suitably still and I continued my attentions, reveling in her bright, clean taste and her soft little whimpering moans.

  One of the things I loved about her the most when it came to sex was how much of an enthusiastic participant she was. When things got real and she let down her barriers, she moved, she lost her shyness and the cool, calm front she put on when the clothes were on and was pretty much the definition of ‘angel in the streets and a siren in the sheets’, or however that phrase went.


  She let her hands glide over her skin, her body move, and really got into it, which I loved. When she stiffened, and her body pulled taut as if drawn by strings, it was pure magic for me. Her pussy crushed down around my finger and her orgasm milked it for all it was worth and I loved it. I couldn’t get enough of it, and I was pretty excited to see if I could get another one out of her before I got my own.

  I let her lay, chest heaving, in the center of her bed, languid, her body loose and liquid, like she was barely contained by her own skin, which honestly, she really wasn’t. She almost glowed with real light as she basked in the afterglow and I felt my own chest swell and puff up with more than a little pride that I did that for her. That I was the one here, loving her into such a state, and that I would be the one to do it again ‒ as soon as I got this fucking condom on.

  She smiled at me and reached out a hand lazily to draw me back to the bed and I smiled and took it, my cock screaming for some relief, even as my heart nearly burst from a happiness I think was safe to say I’d never really fully immersed myself in before.

  “God, you’re fucking unreal,” I growled and covered her body with my own, her mouth with my own, as she giggled into it and wrapped herself around me. I loved her so much in that moment I wished it could be a permanent thing. Her and me like this, all the air we needed to breathe, the water we needed to drink, the food we needed to eat a thing of the past. I swear, I could subsist on her and her alone. She was that incredible.

  18

  Lilli…

  “I want to be on top,” I whispered into his ear about two or three careful slow thrusts of his in. He kissed the side of my neck and I gasped when he hit that spot that sent shivers down one half of my body. He spent some more time there and rolled us both, his thick, hard length never leaving my body as I suddenly found myself on top, my one thigh aching a bit from the transition. That always happened, but it would be my secret because I never wanted for a moment for Backdraft to think he hurt me in any way.

  I slid down him completely, bracing my hands against his chest so that I could sit up, and biting my bottom lip at the depth of penetration and the change in angle. It hit all the right places inside of me, and I was torn between being selfish and grinding to get myself off one more time, and riding him more for his pleasure.

  He rolled his hips in that delicious way that decided me for me. I mimicked his movement and carried on with it, stabilizing myself against his chest as his hands found my hips and he ground me back and forth on him. I loved it, that heavy warm glow like sunrise pressing against the horizon starting low in my body. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back, my hair tickling the top of my ass, dipping further down my lower back, the sensation sending prickles along my spine even as he sucked in a breath at the sight of me.

  I looked at him, his hazel eyes devouring me from the crown of my head down, stopping at my eyes, a depth of emotion I’d never encountered with anyone else passing between us. That gaze of his swept my body, lingering on my tits with such an intensity I could almost feel the weight of it, and all it did was serve to excite me even more.

  I touched the side of my neck which slightly burned with the rub of his stubble on it from earlier and he watched me make the motion. I couldn’t help it, with a slight smile I made a show of trailing those fingertips along my own skin, slowly lingering between my breasts as the light inside me intensified. I swept a slow and tantalizing erotic path down my stomach, his eyes trapped by the web of my fingertips and dragging along my skin with them.

  I rolled my hips forward and closed my eyes, dipping those same fingers between our bodies and slicking them through the wetness I found there, touching myself lightly as I continued my erotic dance for him.

  He groaned, and gasped my name and I could feel he was close, twitching inside me slightly. His eyes closed and such a look of concentration crossed his face. I smiled, knowing damn well the image of me was burned on the insides of his eyelids and good god that gave me such a sense of power.

  I loved the sense of power he gave me. One look, one touch, and somehow it was as if I could bring this giant, beautiful man to his knees, and the euphoria and confidence that bestowed on me was another erotic sort of pleasure that I don’t think I had ever experienced before with anyone else.

  I felt the light inside me surge and I moaned his name softly. He encouraged me, and with a gentle swish of my fingers, that light spilled over my horizon and set me on fire in a beautiful and gentle rush, where fire flowed and imitated water, rippling over my surface like a brook rushing over round stones.

  He cried out with me, his big arms going around me as he sat up and crushed me to him, holding me firmly, protectively as our mouths found each other and it was a clash of fire and ice. His steady stillness quenching the fire inside me, the fire inside me bringing him to life to kiss me with a sudden and renewed fervor. I swear to god, the moment was so beautiful, so pure, so everything a tear slipped free.

  “Mm, you okay, babe?” he whispered.

  I sniffed and smiled down at him, “I’m perfect,” I whispered back.

  “Good, good,” he murmured and brought my lips to his again. I sighed against his mouth and relaxed against him, languid and complete, and he smoothed his hands against my cooling skin, warming me.

  “God, that was good,” he murmured a moment later.

  “Mm hmm,” I agreed happily.

  “Let me get cleaned up and come back.”

  “’Kay.”

  He took himself off the other side of the bed and I rolled onto my stomach, peeking around the headboard as he took himself through the bathroom doorway behind everything on the back wall.

  Mm, god, his ass was something perfect, putting Michelangelo’s David to shame. I sighed happily and turned onto my back, arching against the satin sheets, enjoying the tactile sensation of the slick, soft fabric against my nude body.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered from the side of the bed, “You’re fucking perfect.”

  I yipped and laughed and he jumped into bed with me, attacking me with tickling kisses and little nibbles against my skin. I laughed and thrashed against the onslaught; I loved this so much.

  “Oh, my god, I love you!” I cried and he backed off just enough to see my laughing face. His was so very serious and for a split second I felt a frisson of panic. Oh, shit! Did I really just say that out loud?

  “Shh, it’s okay,” he said and bent and placed his lips against mine. My heart calmed and he murmured against them, “When I’m with you, I feel like I’ve found my true best friend. My soulmate, my perfect match.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, my voice tight as I held my breath.

  “Yeah. I think I loved you the first time we really talked, Lil. You’re everything to me.”

  I swallowed hard and felt those happy tears return. It was everything I had ever wanted a man to say to me and was so raw and genuine I couldn’t help but feel something.

  He kissed me, and then kissed my tears away, holding me tenderly and sighing, such a content sound. He gathered me up and held me for a long moment before we let the emotions carry us both away into another long slow round of serious love-making.

  “I need to tell you something,” he murmured once we were both sated, the lights were out, and we were both comfortably nestled into bed.

  “Mm?” I asked drowsily.

  “I ran into that asshole from the 10-13 on the elevator.”

  I froze. There was only one asshole he could be talking about in relation to us and the 10-13. I groaned and relaxed against him, sighing out my frustration.

  “Did he recognize you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he lives on the 21st floor, babe, with his fiancée.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “I wonder if she even knows he cheated.”

  “Dunno,” I said. “My guess would be no.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “I know the type of guy,” he said. “Hell, my own firehouse mate, a guy o
n my own shift was banging Torrid behind my back. It was one of the other guys that caught them out and took photos to break it to me. Ackley still tried to fuckin’ deny it.”

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  “He was transferred, the guys at his new house are still giving him the cold shoulder, and the guys from my house are just now starting to talk to him again.”

  “You don’t sound happy about that,” I observed.

  “Would you be?”

  “No. No, I would not,” I said with a bitter laugh. He held me a little tighter and kissed the top of my head, sighing. I stared out the glass, far in front of us and out over the twinkling lights of the city at the lights along the Bay Bridge, glittering on the calm surface of the Chesapeake.

  “Thank you for telling me,” I said softly, after a time.

  “You bet,” he said, sounding relieved. I’d felt a moment of resentment, but it wasn’t aimed at him. It was aimed at Mark. I mean, seriously? How awful and awkward would that have been? Just running into him and his girlfriend or fiancée, or whatever she was to him, in the lobby? It made me angry that he knew I would be too embarrassed, too humiliated, to say anything. God, he’d picked a ripe target in me to have a fling with.

  I felt bitter and hurt all over again. Backdraft smoothed a hand up and down my back and I closed my eyes and sighed.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered.

  He chuckled, “No place I’d rather be, babe. No place I’d rather be.”

  God, I loved him so much. The sting of betrayal was replaced by another kind of hurt ‒ the good kind. I smiled and cuddled close and before I knew it, the sun was waking me and Backdraft was gone – but not without leaving a note.

  Dinner, tomorrow night at the firehouse. I want you to meet the other guys.

  I laughed gently and laid back, Jaspar jumping up on the bed with a querulous meow.

  “You’d better get used to him, guys. I think he’s here to stay.” My cat head-butted my hand affectionately and I showered him in love. I sighed and looked at the day through brand-new eyes.