The Azar Omnibus: The Complete Azar Trilogy (The Azar Trilogy Book 0)

by Grace McGinty

  They ducked under the police tape that crossed the front door of the first apartment. Someone had decreed the remaining structure safe, though Azar doubted it was particularly safe before the fire. They strode toward the ignition point in the kitchen.

  Chief Fuentes was talking to Burt, a veteran Fire Marshal from way back. He was a nice guy, coming up to retirement, and she’d often seen him and his wife at FDNY functions. The fact that Reilly and someone from the Bureau of Fire Investigations were here meant there was something pretty bad going down. Reilly took control of the group.

  “The fire started here, but I can’t see any accelerant that would have caused such a fast growing blaze.” He indicated a spot in the middle of the tiled kitchen floor, where a charred pattern had seared into the tiles surface. “Plus the burn pattern is odd. I’ll get a sample to send to the lab, but this is the third strange arson case this month…” Keenan’s voice faded out until it was merely a buzz in the back of her mind.

  Azar stared down at the pattern. It was a design she recognized only too well. It was the pattern every Ifrit knew instinctively. It was the emblem of the Djinn.

  There was a serious embarrassment to being a fiery supernatural badass that could faint like a 1920’s silver screen damsel.

  When she came around, Keenan was staring down at her with what appeared to be concern.

  I must have hit my head on the way down, Azar thought, shaking the remaining blackness from her vision. She must have thought too loudly because the look on Reilly’s face went from one of concern to one of annoyance in an instant.

  “I may have inhaled more of that smoke than I thought,” she said weakly, forcing a cough. “I’ll be fine. Please continue.”

  She pushed herself up, ignoring Reilly’s outstretched hand. Chief Fuentes gave her a hard stare and she did her best not to quake in her department issued boots. Fuentes wasn’t a big man, but he knew people and Azar could only pray that he didn’t see straight through her bad theatrics. He wasn’t above kicking her butt all the way back to the station house if he thought she cheated on her medical check. She shuddered to think what he would do if he knew the real reason behind her momentary attack of the vapors.

  “You need to go home Nazemi, and don’t bother coming in for your shift tomorrow either. Just stay home and relax. My wife watches ‘Dirty Dancing’ in her pajamas and eats ice cream when she’s sick. Perhaps you should try it.”

  Azar tried not to laugh. The Chief’s wife, Natalia, was a former Russian Ballet dancer, and if she was watching movies and eating ice cream on the couch then she was probably as close to death as a person could get.

  “Sure, Sir. I’ll do that, right after we finish up here. Sorry for interrupting, Reilly. What were you saying?”

  Reilly was starting to look suspicious. He narrowed his eyes at her, but continued. “As I was saying, we’ve had three suspicious fires with no accelerants and unusual points of ignition. The Coney Island fire three months ago, a sorority house fire over at NYU district two months ago that killed two students, and then this one. I can’t find any correlation between them except they all have the same ignition pattern. I was hoping you may have seen something like this before, Chief. Both Burt and I have reached a dead end.”

  Azar’s vision went blurry again but she held it together. The blood rushed from her face and she could only hope that the other guys put it down to smoke inhalation. She’d heard about something exactly like this before and it wasn’t good. “Crap!” she muttered under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  Azar involuntarily cleared her throat. Shit, wasn’t that some kind of tell? Pull it together, she chastised herself. “I said crap. It seems like we have ourselves a serial arsonist, doesn’t it?”

  It was the Chief who answered.

  “Yes, it does. I hope you catch this guy soon, Detective. The death toll is already two lives too high. It would have been three today if Nazemi hadn’t found the boy. I’m glad the family who lived in this apartment were out.”

  Everyone nodded. Saving lives was the most important part of both of their jobs, and the whole service felt it when someone died on a call out.

  They quickly finished up the walk through as the crime scene guys wandered in with their latex gloves, and started snapping photos and gathering evidence. As they walked past the apartment where Azar and Joe had found the kid, Reilly looked through the door at the shell of the room.

  “You’re lucky you got out of there alive. From what Joe reported to the Chief, he didn’t seem to think that you’d have enough time to get out.”

  Azar shrugged and walked back towards the exit. “Maybe I have a little bit of the luck of the Irish in me too.” She gave him her most winning smile and hoped he’d just drop it.

  Joe had been right. If their roles were reversed and Joe had been stuck in the apartment with the boy, they both would have died before the team could have gotten the ladder truck to the window.

  As they left the building, the police were cordoning off the main entrance with police tape. Fuentes walked towards his First Response Vehicle. “Nazemi, do you need a lift back to the firehouse?”

  “No thanks, Chief. My apartment is right around the corner and I carpooled to work with Joe today. I’ll walk it.”

  Fuentes looked like he wanted to argue, but the stubborn set of her jaw must have dissuaded him. He merely nodded, got in the SUV and drove off. That was the most important thing about managing a group of people who risked their lives every day; you had to pick your battles.

  Unfortunately, Keenan Reilly wasn’t so easily dissuaded.

  “I’ll give you a lift home.” He ordered and strode off toward his car.

  Azar stuck her tongue out at his retreating back. Sure, it was juvenile, but who the hell did he think he was? She turned on her heel and walked off in the opposite direction. She didn’t take orders from his overbearing ass.

  She’d walked about fifty feet before Reilly’s car pulled up next to her.

  “Don’t be stubborn, Azar. I will get out and put you in that seat myself if I have to,” he said through the rolled down window. Azar stopped mostly out of surprise. Reilly had never used her first name. She didn’t even think he knew it.

  She leaned down and braced her arms on the door, giving Reilly her most withering stare.

  “Firstly, that would be abduction or false imprisonment or some other kind of felony. Secondly, you obnoxious asshole, I don’t want a ride from you. I’d rather stand on hot coals all day!” He didn’t need to know that standing on hot coals was actually rather pleasant for her kind. She pushed off the car and did her best to walk away with a ‘fuck you’ posture.

  Reilly’s car just rolled up next to her again. “You know something about that fire. Get in the car or I’ll tell my suspicions to Fuentes and my superiors.”

  Azar swore violently on the inside while maintaining a perfectly neutral face. At least she hoped it was neutral, or at least expressing the pure disdain she actually felt right now. She took a deep breath in and counted to ten. It was a technique that Joe had taught to his sons when they were feeling extra feral. Unfortunately, it didn’t really help right now. She was furious as she wrenched open the door and leaned into the car.

  “What the hell would I know about a serial arsonist? Are you trying to tell me that I light these fires, race back across town and then go out and fight them? I’m fast Reilly, but I’m not that fast.” She took a deep, calming breath. “It’s no secret that I don’t like you. Actually, right now, I loathe you, but I can tell you that I take my job and the protection of life very seriously.”

  Deep breaths, Azar. Deep breaths, she chanted to herself so she didn’t give into the urge to reach between the seats and punch him in his perfectly square jaw.

  “But fine, if you want to give me a ride home bad, then let’s do it. But you better make it fast, because I’m fairly sure my commitment to protecting life doesn’t extend to you right now,” Azar growled as s
he slid into the car and sat as far away from Reilly as she could. To her annoyance, he didn’t even look a little bit perturbed by her outraged soliloquy.

  She gave him her address and sat in the passenger seat silently cursing him in every language she knew. The silence grew heavier as they drove down the busy streets of Brownsville and when they got to the curb at the front of her apartment block, Azar leapt out of the car before it had finished rolling to a stop. She marched towards the security door and punched in the code. Someone pulled the door open for her and she looked back to see Reilly standing right behind her.

  “I’ll walk you up.” His tone was as stubborn as his expression. Asshole. Fucking chauvinistic, sexy as hell, asshole.

  “Whatever.” Azar set a punishing pace up the stairs to her apartment on the fifth floor, hoping that his cushy detective job had made him soft. Unfortunately, she had no such luck; he matched her pace the whole way and wasn’t even out of breath when they got to her floor. Azar ground her teeth in frustration. She needed to process what she’d learned today and then figure out what she was going to do about it. What she didn’t need was an audience to her soul searching moment.

  She stood outside her door and jammed her keys into the multiple locks. She turned to dismiss Reilly but he’d moved closer so her breasts were mere inches from his chest. She could feel the heat coming from his skin and her breath hitched a little. He smelled like soap and smoke; an intoxicating aroma if you are a half human/half Ifrit woman.

  “I’m here now, so you can go.” Her voice wavered as she tried to push words pass the lump in her throat. She went to turn away but one of his arms shot up to block her escape. His other arm landed on the opposite side of her, boxing her in between his strong, tanned forearms, the door and his body. He leaned forward, his face so close that she could feel his breath fanning out on her cheeks. She held his gaze, refusing to back down first.

  “I want you to tell me what you know about the fires. You know something, Azar, so don’t bother denying it. Your face is like an open book for the entire world to read.”

  She hoped he was reading the giant ‘Fuck You’ that was written across her face right now, and not the subheading that said ‘Please Fuck Me’ instead.

  It was the second time he’d used her first name in his slight Irish accent, and it sound sexy as hell. The skin on her shoulder burned where his forearms brushed against it. Her breaths came in choppy bursts as her body strained towards his like a magnet.

  Dammit, Azar. Remember he’s a giant jerk, she repeated to herself.

  “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. I think your cop instincts are on the fritz.” The words came out raspier than she intended. His blue eyes had her mesmerized and her arms reached up to rest on his shoulders of their own accord.

  “This is such a bad idea.” He ground out the words as their mouths and bodies crashed together. Her arms wrapped around his neck and his hands grabbed hold of her hips, pulling her against him. His lips were firm against hers, as demanding as his questions. He ran his tongue along her bottom lip before pushing it into her mouth. Their tongues thrust against each other as she tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling his head away slightly so she could tug on his lower lip, biting it hard.

  Reilly groaned, pressing her back against the door until their bodies were jammed together so tightly she could feel the hard outline of his erection. He grabbed hold of her ass and lifted her up so their hips met, their bodies fitting perfectly together. Azar groaned and wrapped her legs around his waist, holding him to her.

  Azar was vaguely aware of them moving into the apartment, as she buried her face in his neck. He pushed her against the wall of the entrance hall. He tore off his shirt, and she ran her hands over every angle and plane of his torso so she could commit them to memory. It was going in the spank bank, that was for sure. Still resting her against the wall, Reilly dragged her shirt up and leaned down to take one of her lace covered nipples into his mouth. Azar groaned, the sensation shooting straight down to pool between her legs. She didn’t know what it was about this brooding alpha asshole, but he made her wet. Even when they were fighting, there was a little part of her that wanted to fuck him as well. Usually she had great self control, but the sexual tension between them had been brewing for so long now, it was give into it or let it consume her.

  “Fuck, Reilly,” she moaned.

  “Call me Keenan,” he whispered back before gently nipping her hard nipple.

  “Fuck, Keenan!”

  He growled and turned, walking further into her apartment, moving them toward the couch. He laid her down on the soft leather and started unzipping his pants as she propped up her butt and wiggled out of her cargos. When she finished, she looked at the hard edges of Keenan’s naked body and momentarily forgot her burning need. His pale skin made him look like a marble statue, except for his pink nipples and the black hair that dusted his chest and trailed down to his very impressive dick.

  He ran a condom over it and Azar had no idea where or when he’d had time to retrieve one. He must have been a boy scout as a kid. Always be prepared. He dipped his fingers inside her, stroking her like someone had given him a cheat sheet to all her happy places.

  “Fuck, you're amazing,” she said breathlessly.

  “You swear a lot,” was all he mumbled as he knelt between her thighs.

  “Only when I’m frustrated and right now you’re driving me crazy.” He smiled down at her, the warmth in his face making her breath catch.

  “Let’s see if we can fix that.”

  He grabbed one of her legs and put it over his shoulder, then leaned forward and kissed her. When he gently rubbed his erection against her, she thought she might combust. She pushed back against him, urging him while her fingers dug into his impossibly hard shoulders. Keenan finally slipped himself inside. A moan tore out of Azar, as she matched the slow rhythm of his thrusts that built in speed and ferocity until they were slamming together almost violently.

  Her nails tore into his back and she pulled his body down to bite his shoulder. Keenan groaned, pounding into her and catching her moans with his mouth. Her heel wrapped around his hips, driving him harder and faster as the pressure built, his fingers pressing almost painfully into her hips. Her hands roamed over his body as his mouth licked and sucked at her breasts and neck. Azar felt the precipice coming and her moans got louder and louder until she screamed his name as she shattered; her body gripping him close as the waves of her orgasm washed over her.

  Keenan roared, buried to the hilt inside her as he came with her. They rode the waves of bliss together until he collapsed on top of her; his body as slick as hers and his breathing equally as erratic. Simultaneous orgasms? He really must have the luck of the Irish.

  Azar shifted over to give him some room on her couch and he rolled off her. The silence in the room was almost deafening. She’d never been able to deal with awkward silences. The sun had set sometime during their feverish fucking, and she could hardly see Keenan’s face.

  “Well, that was unexpected. Who knew you had it in you, Reilly?” she chuckled, hoping to ease the tension. She almost sighed with relief when Keenan laughed too.

  “Call me Keenan from now on, yeah?”

  Azar was relieved that this situation wasn’t going to get weird. Tomorrow she was going to pretend that it never happened. But tonight, the damage had been done so she was going to enjoy every moment.

  “I don’t know, Keenan. Now that I think about it, that time might have been a fluke. I mean, it had been a really long time for me, you know,” she teased. Keenan gave a mock growl.

  “A fluke? I’ll show you a fluke, but first, let’s find a bed. It’s where I do all my best work.” He smiled and winked, and she actually giggled. Giggled! A little bit of good sex and she turned into an airhead. She was sure that would be a key feature in tomorrow’s inevitable cringe-worthy post mortem of the night.

  She gave him a long, slow, burning kiss that made heat
pool in her abdomen and she could feel him harden against her thigh. She let her hand run down and stroke his erection, feeling it jump at her touch. She grasped it in her hand and stroked up, his groan making her grin.

  “Well, you definitely have stamina.” She stroked a few more times until his groans were almost whimpers. “Not so fast big guy.” She kissed him again and ran both hands up his chest. “I tell you what, I’ll race you to bed and the first one there gets to choose the position!”

  Azar jumped off the couch and raced down the hallway, Keenan’s heavy footsteps right behind her. She’d almost reached the bed when two strong arms banded around her midsection. Azar laughed as he spun around and fell backwards onto the bed, still holding her tightly against his body, his manhood nestled against her ass. She stretched and switched on the lamp on her bedside table so she could see his beautiful body.

  “I win. Now I get to choose,” he whispered against her ear as he rolled her onto her stomach, his hard body pressed behind her. He levered himself up, pulling her to her knees, running his tongue down the line of her back, down to the base of her spine and stilled over her… oh shit.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Chapter 2

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Her slave brand. The same six point sun symbol of the Djinn that was at the scene of the arsons. This one was going to be tough to explain.

  “Azar, what the hell is this?” He sounded angry and betrayed.

  “Would you believe it was just a really coincidental birthmark?” She smiled sheepishly, hoping that a little levity would help diffuse the situation.

  “This isn’t the time to be cute. I knew that you were hiding something. Did you sleep with me just to throw me off the trail?”

  It was Azar’s turn to feel angry now. “Are you implying that I’m some sort of slut for a psychotic serial arsonist and murderer? Because if that’s what you meant, get the hell out of my bed and my apartment. If it’s not what you meant and you would like me to explain, then keep your mouth shut and your insults to yourself.”