It’s such a silly, absurd, unlikely thought, that Dominic Dallison, forty-two year old fireman and millionaire, would ever have any interest in me.
I remember crouching in my bedroom when Dad and Dominic would sit in the garden sipping beers, Dominic in a light summer shirt open to reveal a slice of his chest, his pectorals bulging and rounded, and maybe some light shorts that flowed against the taut surface of his legs.
Everything about him was – is – huge and tight and well-honed.
I would stare and stare and then, in my typical actor’s way, imagine an entire scene in which he came up to my room where he kissed me.
But I’m eighteen now and there’s nothing stopping us, nothing stopping him from sweeping me up in his thick, solid arms and holding me close to him, whispering in my ear that I’m his and only his.
His hand would smooth down my body, palm my breasts, and then snake down to my pants and find my sex.
I can feel him toying with my clit through my panties, rubbing softly at first and then harder, grinding his entire palm until my panties are soaked through and he’s got his bulge pressed up against my ass.
“Oh, he’s here,” Dad says, causing my eyes to fly open again.
There’s something about that he that sends electricity surging through me, my fists clenching and sweat sliding down my face and into my eyes.
I wipe at my forehead.
“Who’s here?”
“Dom,” Dad says, gesturing with his phone. “I’ve gotta say, I’m damn glad he came back from Australia in time for that fire. Obviously, I wish there wasn’t a fire. But if anybody was gonna be there, I’m glad it was him. He’s the best man I know.”
“Alright, man crush,” Finn chuckles good naturedly.
But when it comes to Dominic Dallison, Dad doesn’t even let shame ripple across his features. He just grins, reminding me of the boy he was when he and Dom were little terrors, of the pictures I’ve seen of them both at eleven years old, arms wrapped around each other.
“You want to know what sort of man Dom is, Finn?” Dad goes on. “He’s earned well over a million with some investments he made in his twenties, and yet he still works as a firefighter. Doesn’t have to. Could travel the world, screw supermodels, whatever he wanted. But nope, he’s still dedicated.”
“I’m gonna puke, old man,” Finn smirks. “Please stop.”
Dad flips Finn the bird and Mom meets my eye as if to say, These two, what are we gonna to do with them?
But I have to look away quickly just in case Mom, the one who has always been the best at reading my thoughts, looks into my eyes and sees the confused maelstrom that swirls around.
All too soon, there comes a confident rapping at the door that I know must be him.
It’s in the way he does it, not presumptuous but not at all nervous, just here, matter of fact.
Get it together, girl. Am I really analyzing a knock now?
The door swings open slowly and Dominic walks in, wearing a shirt tucked into suit pants, the sleeves rolled up to show his impressive forearms, tendons tight and taut and bulging, his torso a V-shape down to his hips, his legs thick and powerful in the pants.
His hair has turned completely mostly silver in the past few years, glistening slightly in the sun, but his face is all iron seriousness. Clean shaven and square jawed, his eyes pierce as they settle on me, and suddenly any notion I had that something could happen between us shatters.
He stares as though he hates me.
“I was just telling the kids how you’ve been fighting fires down under, Dom,” Dad says.
Dominic nods at Dad, his lips twitching with the suggestion of a good mood. “It was difficult work,” he allows. “But rewarding. Not to be rude, Mark, but why am I here?”
“Oh,” Dad grins, unfazed. “We wanted to say thank you, of course. Now you’re not only a friend of the family. You’re the man who saved my daughter. Come on, sit down.”
And he does.
Dominic Dallison sits next to my bed so close I can still smell the fire in his hair.
Chapter Three
Dominic
The urge to leap to my feet and walk from the room almost overwhelms me, roaring in every one of my nerves like a command I shouldn’t be ignoring.
The Thompsons makes small talk all around me, Finn talking about the course he’s studying in graphic design at the community college, and then Jessica complaining about her boss at the gym where she works as a receptionist, and then about the birds she keeps in her garden, and on and on, and I’m just sitting here trying not to let my mind roam to the sultry possibilities and all the carnal things I’d do to Lilah.
“What about the play?” Jessica asks Lilah.
She sighs and I see the concern flit across her features.
“I don’t know,” she says, seeming to look anywhere but at me, her eyes roaming from her father to her mother to her big brother. “I hope we can still do it. I mean, I’m playing the lead, which is just crazy. I know it’s just a small production but it still means a lot to me.”
“It should,” I say, my voice deep and unexpected even to myself. “Everything starts small, Lilah. It has to. But if you do a good job here, and I know you will, it could lead to any number of possibilities.”
Except I don’t say that.
Don’t say the words that rise to my lips.
Really they just bounce around my head, but the idea of actually saying them stops with jackknife intensity when I remember that Mark is sitting right beside me, Mark, the man whose family took me in after mine died.
I was never adopted. We were never brothers.
But I still lived with him for four of my teenage years, cementing a bond that had started before, when we were friends in school.
My best friend is sitting next to me and I’m struggling to hold back my primal desire for his daughter.
And – maybe this is the worst part – I’m finding it really fucking difficult to be ashamed.
She’s just too beautiful, even now in the hospital bed, her blonde hair tied back to reveal her expressive eyes and her full lips, making me want to part them with my fingers and have her suck, suck, suck, and then use the wetness to slide my hand over her nipples until they go hard and eager for me.
I clench my fist on my thigh, hard, feeling my forearm muscles surging as though ready to erupt.
But on and on, my mind gallivants, dreaming up a scenario in which Lilah is in the dressing room, only it’s not burning now and she’s wearing only her underwear, her hands squeezing her large breasts together, making her flesh compress and dance in ways that drive me to feral beast-like lust.
“Dom?” Mark is saying, pulling me from my traitor’s reverie.
“Yeah?” I murmur, tugging myself back to the present.
“I was just saying how you could’ve been a businessman, could still be one, but you chose to fight fires instead. Finn wanted to know why.”
I turn to the young man, the man whose sister I hungrily want to devour, and nod slowly.
“I guess I wanted to help people,” I say. “My family, my parents, they died when I was young so I’ve always had that desire. To do right. Even though sometimes it’s difficult.”