“You said this would be a piece of cake. No pun intended,” Asher says with a glare as he passes behind me to meet a customer at the cash register.
“Don’t be an ass,” I mutter and glance over at my partner, a fierce police detective, currently decked out in a white apron. I roped him into helping me cover my wife, Nic’s bakery for an hour while she went to a doctor appointment. Tuesday afternoons aren’t usually a busy time, but today seems to be an anomaly.
Oops.
Finally, there’s a lull in customers and we each take a deep breath. “Who knew that cupcakes were so popular in the middle of the work day?” Asher asks, eyeing the German chocolate in the case. “I think I’ve earned a cupcake.”
“Don’t you dare,” I warn him.
“We’re not getting paid,” he points out diplomatically. “I’m quite sure that Nic wouldn’t deny me one little cupcake.”
Before I can reply, a bus pulls up before the store and at least a dozen senior citizens pour out at varying speeds, their eyes bright as a child’s as they look at the pretty cupcake display in the window.
“Shit, we’re about to get invaded by grandparents.” Asher’s eyes are wide as the hoard approaches the door. “Too late to lock that?”
“Suck it up. You’re a cop, you can handle this,” I reply, shaking my head and smiling as a petite, slightly hunched over woman with silver-blue hair approaches the glass case.
“You got chocolate?” She asks abruptly, her gravely voice in direct contrast to her sweet exterior.
“Of course,” I grin. “We have German chocolate, mocha and chocolate covered cherry.”
“Who’s a girl gotta sleep with to get a plain chocolate cupcake?” she asks before bending in half to cough like a lumberjack.
“I’d sleep with that one,” another woman says, pointing to Asher. “He’s delicious.”
“Doris, he can hear you. He’s not deaf like the boys at the home,” a third says, nudging her friend.
“I’m too old to care if he can hear me,” Doris says with a laugh. “Are you on the menu?” she asks Asher, who blushes bright red.
“Not today,” he replies.
“They don’t have chocolate,” the first woman says, shaking her head.
“We do,” I insist and scour the case until I find the plain chocolate with chocolate frosting and point to them. “Right here, ma’am.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Have sugar buns over there wrap it up for me.”
“Sugar buns?” I ask and can’t hide the grin that spreads over my face.
“He’s got a nice ass,” she says and moseys down to the register.
“Here you go, sugar buns,” I say as I pass the cake to my partner, and then bust up laughing when he scowls at me. “You have a nice ass,” I inform him.
“I’m not deaf,” he reminds me.
“I want sugar buns to wait on me too,” Doris says, batting her eyes at Asher. “You’re something to look at, young man.”
“I can’t wait to tell the guys at the station,” I mutter, loving every minute of Asher’s sexual harassment.
“I’ll take the taller one,” the third woman says, eyeing me. “Did you get a look at his arms?”
“What is it with you and arms, Mary?” Doris asks.
“He can put me where he wants me with those arms,” Mary says, her large body shaking as she laughs hysterically. “And a girl could stare into those blue eyes of his all day.”
“Couldn’t she just?” Nic says, surprising me, as she joins us behind the counter. Just like it always does when she walks into a room, my heart stutters. God, she’s beautiful. “Since you guys seem to have this figured out, I’ll go get started on tomorrow’s chores.”
“We don’t have this figured out,” Asher insists, but Nic just laughs and walks back into the kitchen. “Your woman has a mean streak.”
“Tell me about it.” I grin. “Why do you think I married her?”
“Because she’s mean?”
“No, because she keeps me on my toes, friend.”
Playing With Fire
A NOVELLA
By
Kristen Proby
Chapter One
~Bailey~
“Bailey! Can you help over here?” A harried volunteer with wide, nervous eyes yells for me as she has three out of breath firefighters standing before her.
“Of course,” I reply and toss my clipboard on the floor, and begin to strip the closest firefighter to me.
My job doesn’t suck.
Today is the annual Seattle Firefighter Stairclimb. Men and woman come from all over the country to participate in climbing a seventy-four-story building in downtown Seattle. They have to wear all of their gear, as much as an extra eighty pounds, up all seventy-four flights.
By the time they reach us at the top they are overheated and have to shed their gear as quickly as possible. That’s where my volunteers come in.
“Get his helmet off, Molly. Yep, just like that.”
The man before me is panting, can’t talk, and sweating bullets.
He’s also visually stunning.
“Okay, here’s some water. Congratulations.” I smile and guide the half-naked man to the rest area where others are drinking water, stretching and coming down from the high of climbing over thirteen hundred stairs.
I can’t even imagine.
I’ve helped organize this event for three years in a row now. The charity benefits are large, which gets my own blood flowing. Stripping firefighters out of their gear doesn’t hurt my feelings either.
I hurry back to the stripping area and continue helping the volunteers with the heavy gear.
“Bailey, can you help me with this?” Molly is struggling with an oxygen tank that’s stuck on a coat, so I rush over and help her with it then pull the helmet off the out of breath man and feel my gut clench just as it always does every time I see Kevin.
“Good job, Kevin.” I smile at the handsome man as he grins down at me and nods his thanks. I push a bottle of water in his hand and lead him over to the rest area. He’s naked from the waist up, wearing only his firefighter pants and his boots. His torso is gleaming in sweat, his defined abs heaving with every labored breath.
Dear God, what would he look like while having sex?
“You okay?” he asks roughly, his green eyes bright with humor. I close my mouth with a snap, embarrassed that I was caught ogling him.
“I’m great.” I smile wide and pat Kevin’s shoulder. “Is Gray here too?” The two men typically enter the race together.
“Yeah, I think he ran ahead of me.” He swigs half the bottle of water in a few gulps and scans the area looking for his best friend.
“Well you did great, congratulations.” I move to walk away, but he catches my arm in his hand, pulling me up short.
“Are you heading over to the pub after?”
“Oh.” I shake my head and wrinkle nose. “No. I have plans later.”
He narrows his eyes and cocks his head, still panting, his blonde hair a sweaty mess, and dear God I’ve rarely seen anything as sexy as he is.
Except his best friend, Gray, who is equally as sexy.
And that’s the problem.
“You should come,” he says.
“I don’t think so.” He releases my arm, but continues to watch me with those amused green eyes.
“Come on, you know you can’t resist a bunch of drunk firefighters who just ran up all those stairs.”
Oh, I can resist them all right. It’s you and your best friend I have a hard time saying no to.
“Bailey!” Someone calls from the other side of the room.
“I’ll think about it. I have to go.” I wave and jog back to Molly’s side to help her as the bulk of climbers begin to pour through the doors.
The next fifteen minutes are a flurry of helmets, masks, coats, oxygen tanks and excited firefighters. They’re pumped and proud, as they should be. They just worked their as
ses off.
“Do it! Do it! Do it!” The chanting has begun to my right in the rest area. People are whooping and cheering and to my utter shock, about twenty men who just climbed seven hundred and eighty-eight vertical feet are now doing pushups.
Including Kevin, and right next to him, Gray. Where Kevin is blonde, Gray has jet-black hair and bright blue eyes and both men are currently shirtless and executing perfect push-ups, their arms and backs flexing with every smooth motion up and down.
Hello, incinerated panties. Is it even legal in the state of Washington to look like that? Because it’s seriously impairing for me to watch.
When they finish, Gray collapses onto the floor and Kevin pushes back on his haunches, laughing and panting and coated in a fresh layer of sweat.
“How do they do it?” Molly asks beside me, the last of the men having been stripped down and cooling off.
“I think they’re super-human,” I reply with a laugh. “I’m in decent shape, and there’s no way in hell that I could do it. Just the thought makes me nauseous.”
“Right?” She giggles and chews her thumbnail. “They’re hot.”
“Of course they are, they just climbed seventy-four floors.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Ha ha.”
I smirk at the younger woman. “Yeah, they’re hot.”
“Are you coming to the pub after?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head and consult my clipboard blindly. At this point, everything on my list is done.
“You have to! Bailey, you helped organize this thing. You have to come celebrate.”
I shrug a shoulder and bite my lip. I’d planned to go until Kevin asked if I’d be there. They have both asked me out and flirted relentlessly. They’re handsome and sweet, although very different in personality. But they’re best friends, and how does a girl choose between them?
She doesn’t. She steers clear, that’s what she does.
“One shot,” Molly says with a hand over her heart. “We will do one shot in celebration and then you can leave if you want. You’ve earned it.”
I glance back over to where Kevin and Gray are talking and laughing with the others and feel my heart speed up. “One shot.”
“Yes! I knew I’d talk you into it.” She jumps next to me and then throws her arms around me, hugging me against her ample bust line.
“One shot,” I repeat.
“If you say so.”
***
~Gray~
The pub is bursting at the seems with joyful firefighters, laughing and yelling, drinking and cat-calling.
It’s completely typical after the stairclimb event.
“Here’s your beer,” Kevin says as he hands me the long-neck and taps the neck of his bottle to mine. “Good job, brother.”
“Back at you.”
“My time fell about twenty seconds this year.” He winces and then shrugs.
I smirk and watch my friend as he scans the room, looking for Bailey I’m sure. We’ve both been looking for her. “I haven’t seen her.”
“She said she had plans tonight.” His eyes meet mine and I can read him as if the thoughts were my own.
She’s going to let another bastard put his hands on her.
“She has a life.” I try to shrug off my own frustration. Kevin and I have been enamored with Bailey since the first time we met her at a BDSM event she attended last year. We’ve approached her separately but she’s turned us down.
I can’t figure her out. I don’t know how deep into the BDSM community she is. She doesn’t attend the club, Temptation, that Kevin and I both belong to. I know she’s good friends with Matt Montgomery’s girlfriend, but that’s all I know.
And I want to know a hell of a lot more.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My eyes search the crowd, and land right on her as she swigs back a shot and high-fives the volunteer she’s been hanging out with all afternoon.
“Looks like she’s had a change of heart,” I murmur to Kevin and point her out to him, but his eyes are already pinned on her, bright green, and filled with lust.
I’ve seen the look on him many, many times over the years. We’ve shared women for years. I know what he looks like when a woman turns him on.
But I’ve never seen possessiveness mix in with the lust.
Not until this woman.
“She’s interested,” Kevin says with a half smile. “I caught her looking at us a few times today, and although her mouth said no when I asked her if she was coming here this evening, her body said hell yes when I touched her.”
“You touched her?” My head whips around in surprise.
“Just her arm.” He shrugs. “Like I said, she’s interested.”
“She’ll come around.” Kevin is a take control kind of guy. When an opportunity he wants doesn’t immediately present itself to him, he makes it happen. I don’t want him to move too quickly with Bailey and scare her off for good.
“When? When we’re seventy? I’m fucking sick of waiting.”
We both watch as two firefighters approach Bailey and her friend, flirting, offering to buy them drinks. The girls grin and nod, and I feel my blood boil when one of the guys wraps his arm around her shoulders and smiles charmingly down at her.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“I’m done waiting.” Kev sets his beer on the table and stands. “She’s not coming to us, and those assholes are coming on to her. You can wait until you’re seventy if you want, but I won’t.”
And with that, he takes off through the crowd.
Fuck. I grab my beer and follow him. The crowd is thinning as some of the guys have headed home, or to another bar. Bailey’s friend is laughing with the man who approached her, twirling her hair on her finger, giving off all the signals that if the guy plays his cards right, he’ll be getting very lucky.
I watch with amusement as Kevin approaches Bailey from the side and rests a possessive hand on her shoulder while glaring at the other man who quickly backs away. She whirls around and turns her surprised gaze up to Kev.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he murmurs with a smile. “What can I get you to drink?” He flags down the bartender as she shakes her head no, but licks her lips and glances at his chest, which is covered with a tight-fitting T-shirt.
Her friend vacates the stool next to her as she leaves with the guy who’s about to get lucky, so I snatch it quickly and grin at my friend then at Bailey who as turned those big baby blues over to me.
“It’s good to see you, Bailey.”
“Hi Gray.” She grins and offers me her hand, which I gladly take, but instead of settling for a simple handshake, I pull her hand to my lips and gently kiss her knuckles. Her eyes dilate as she watches and her mouth opens as her little pink tongue darts out to moisten her bottom lip, and it’s like a punch to the gut.
Fuck, she’s beautiful.
“You did a great job today,” I say and keep her hand in mine.
“You guys did all the hard work,” she insists. Kevin brushes her hair off her shoulder, and pulls his knuckle down the soft skin of her neck.
“You worked your cute little butt off,” Kevin replies with a smile. “I know, I was watching.” He winks and we both watch in fascination as her cheeks redden in embarrassment.
Interesting. She’s shy.
The bartender sets fresh beers before Kevin and me and a pink fruity looking drink for Bailey. She immediately reaches for her drink and takes a very unlady-like swallow, making me grin. Kevin and I share an amused glance.
We’ll get a drink or two in her to loosen her up a bit. Not enough to get her lit, just enough to relax her and bring her out of her shell a bit.
By her second drink, Bailey has relaxed quite a bit, laughing at our jokes, and chatting away about today.
“You guys did great,” she insists. “I saw the final numbers. How do you stay in such good shape?”
“It’s the job,” Kevin replies. “It’s hard work. Keeps us in sha
pe.”
“Some of us have to work harder than others,” I add. Kevin is naturally fit and lean, while I have to work out every day to stay in this shape.
“Well, whatever you’re doing, it’s working for you,” she replies and then slaps her hand over her mouth in mortification. I grin and take a sip of my beer. Kev’s right, she’s interested.
Maybe this won’t be as difficult as we thought.
“We carry a lot of equipment,” Kev continues, and I can see by the humor in his eyes that he has a plan up his sleeve. “Hoses, gear, people.” He loops his arms under her legs and back and lifts her off the stool, takes her spot and settles her on his lap facing me, so she sandwiched between us. Her arms are wrapped around his shoulders and she’s laughing.
“You just haul people around,” she says dryly.
“Haven’t you heard? We carry damsels in distress out of burning buildings all the time.” Kevin grins down at her then over at me. “Right?”
“Almost every day,” I lie easily, playing the game, but Kevin isn’t fooling her. She just laughs moves to stand but Kev tightens his hold on her, keeping her in place.
“You’re fine right here,” he says.
She glances uncertainly between us, then picks her drink up and downs the rest of it.
“Another?” Kevin asks.
“No,” I reply before Bailey can open her mouth. I shake my head but keep my eyes on Bailey’s bright blue ones. “I think she’s had enough.”
“You’re right, I should probably go home.” She opens her purse and digs around for a moment, but I grip her chin in my fingers and lean in, plant my lips over hers and kiss her long and slow, stealing the breath right out of her. She moans as the tension leaves her and she sags against Kevin. I feel him wrap his arms around her middle, anchoring her as she melts into the kiss, opening her mouth to me sweetly.
She tastes like strawberries and heaven. Before I get too carried away, I back slowly away and watch in fascination as her eyes flutter open and she stares at me with her jaw dropped.
As if she realizes what she just did, and that she might have offended Kevin, she glances back at him.
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