Blaze
I don’t know why the fuck I just said that, but the words fell from my mouth before I had time to pull them back in. And now it’s too late. She looks at me for a long time before gifting me a beautiful smile.
“Flirting, and asking me out on a date,” she counters. “I must be one lucky girl tonight.” Her taunt doesn’t go unnoticed, and my body aches to show her just how lucky she is, but I refrain. This is a charity event that was created for the organization I started. I need to remain professional. But something about this girl intrigues me.
“I’m not sure my father would approve of me dating a man so old,” she finally winks as she once again mocks me.
“Old?” I arch a brow, tugging her closer and leaning her toward the door where anyone can catch us. It’s dangerous, but I live my life in the face of flames that steal lives and homes, so a little girl like her isn’t going to scare me off. “Do I look old now?” I question as my mouth stops inches from hers.
Those wide eyes, golden with specks of green, shimmering with both desire and defiance, meet mine. She doesn’t look away. Her lashes don’t flutter nervously like the pristine princesses I’ve had in my bed in the past. No. This girl is different. She’s fire, and I’m the ice that will douse her flames.
Her mouth falls open, her pouty lips forming a perfect O, and my dick throbs at the images of her wrapping her lips around my shaft.
“Blaze,” my partner calls to me, and I release the beauty, taking a step back before I glance up to find Michael stalking toward me. “They’re starting the auction.”
“Be right there,” I tell him. His gaze narrows as he regards me. A smirk turns his face from confused to knowing.
“Sure.” He leaves us without another word, and I close my eyes, inhaling a deep breath before I glance at the beauty before me. I didn’t realize she was the Crawford girl until she told me her father owns the property.
It’s a bad idea to get involved with his daughter. I should walk away and ignore the fire burning between us. She’s too young and far too innocent for me to pull into my destructive life.
“I’ll see you inside,” I tell her and stalk by her without turning back. She doesn’t call me to return, and I convince myself it’s for the best. Inside, I find my team all standing around watching the man in the center of the room as he calls out the bids for some painting that looks like it belongs in a museum.
“What was that out there?” Michael asks in a hushed voice.
Shaking my head, I fold my arms across my chest before I answer, “Nothing.” As the evening turns from a charity auction into a dance and get-wasted party, I decide it’s time to leave.
I haven’t seen the pretty girl since I walked away from her in the garden, and I’m thankful for the reprieve of my stupidity. I’m shrugging on my coat when I hear her laugh.
Knowing in my head I should walk out, I don’t. Instead, I turn for the living room and find her in the middle of the crowd with one of my team members. He’s just turned twenty-one, and even though I never wanted him to join up, I couldn’t stop him. He’s strong, he’s a hard worker, and he’s never shied away from a fire.
She smiles up at him as he twirls her. When she spins my way, her eyes flutter with mischief, and she sways sensually, causing my slacks to tighten in the front. Like a fucking flame, she dances, luring me like a goddamned moth.
I want nothing more than to walk out and leave her to have fun, but my feet don’t move. She’s taunting me with him. Her parents are outside, her dad laughing at something someone said, and her mother hanging on her husband’s arm.
Stalking into the crowd, I grip her arm and practically drag her from the party until we’re outside the heavy front door. Her chest rising and falling, causing her small tits to taunt me even more than her dancing did.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I bite out angrily. I know Miles is a good guy, but she’s too young to be dancing like a fucking stripper against one of my men. Even though I think it, I know it’s a lie. That’s not the reason I’m angry. I want her to dance like that with me.
“I was having fun.” She shrugs nonchalantly. I have no claim over this girl, and I shouldn’t want to have anything to do with her.
“You didn’t answer me,” I change the subject.
She crosses her arms, which only seems to make her cleavage all the more prominent in the scrap of material covering her chest. “You didn’t stay to hear my answer,” she challenges, throwing back her response with bite and sass.
Jesus, I want nothing more than to spank her ass.
“Then what is your answer?”
“Pick me up tomorrow night at seven,” she tells me then spins on her heel and leaves me on the porch of their fancy mansion with my cock hard as steel and my heart beating a hard-rock rhythm against my ribs.
My mind is still awash with confusion when I slip into the driver’s seat of my Jeep and start the engine. A text comes through before I pull out onto the road, and I find Michael’s name glaring at me in accusation.
Michael: I knew it! Man, you gotta be careful.
Yeah, don’t I know it. I pocket my phone before I head home. It’s been seventeen long years since I walked out of my burnt down childhood home and got adopted by the fire chief of Red Lake. The small town I grew up in was flooded with the news of the poor fifteen-year-old orphan.
I had a comfortable life after that. Judas gave me a home, he offered me schooling which I wasn’t expecting, and he told me if I wanted to follow in his footsteps, he would support me.
I did. I walked into the firehouse every day, learning from the best man I knew. When we were called out five years after I became a fully fledged fireman, I lost the man who was like a father to me.
Twice in my life I lost a man I looked up to. Living in Red Lake became too much. I moved cities, always unsure where I would call home next. That is until I met a woman who I thought could handle my PTSD over losing everyone I cared for. And for a time, I was happy. I even moved all the way to London to be with her because I believed we would make it.
A year after our relationship started, it ended in a fiery inferno. Not one that needed to be extinguished; instead, I walked in and overheard her talking to the man she was leaving me for. She wasn’t cheating in our bed, so I was thankful for that, but I knew why she was leaving. My past was too much to bear.
I didn’t blame her.
I wanted to run again, but when I met Michael, he offered me a job at the local firehouse, and that’s where the idea to start an organization came from. He confided in me one night after a bottle of Macallan that he suffered from PTSD as well.
The horrors we face each time we get called out are too much to bear at times, and that’s when I realized I should’ve gone for help a long time ago. In my drunken stupor, I wrote a contract with who I now consider my best friend, and we agreed to give this thing a go of it.
That’s where Mr. Crawford came in. We were called out to his office building, which had a small electrical fire in the top offices. By the time we got there, almost half the upper levels were ash.
Thankfully, we were able to contain it. Nobody was fatally wounded, and the few that were injured were taken to hospital. Nobody died. That was always my goal. I didn’t give a shit about the buildings; those could be rebuilt. It was the lives that could never be reborn.