Scorchin' (The Hot Boys Series Book 2)

by Olivia Rush

  I yelled and threw my hands up in the air. I felt like I was being pulled in multiple directions, and all I wanted was to finish getting ready. I eventually decided on a sexy-but-not-too-sexy outfit of tight-fitting jeans and a thin, white blouse, finishing off the look with a pair of dark red heels. I wanted to send a clear message that this meeting—and it was a meeting, not a date—was for work purposes only. Mostly.

  Once ready, I grabbed my things and was off. The weather was a little chilly but pleasant enough for the walk up to Greenpoint. The bar Stone had picked out was a cute little place, the interior cozy with red brick walls and mild green neon signs that cut gently through the warm, dim lighting. Once inside, I scanned the scene for Stone, spotting him near the back at a small high-top table.

  “Good evening,” he said, standing up to greet me.

  He was dressed casually but stylishly, wearing a chambray button-up, dark, fitted jeans, and a pair of clean, white sneakers. His sleeves were rolled up, showing off his ropy forearms—the burn on his arm only somewhat visible in the low light—and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, giving me a little peek at the sculpted muscles it hid. Heat broke out on my face at the sight, and I did my best to compose myself.

  “Fireman Black,” I said, bringing myself into the quick hug that he offered.

  “Please,” he said, “just call me—ah, actually, you know what? ‘Fireman Stone’ has a nice ring to it. Let’s go with that.”

  I chuckled as I slid into the seat.

  I took out my notebook along with a pen.

  “Well,” I said, “here we are, doing another interview.”

  “That’s right,” said Stone. “I’m hoping the circumstances are a little friendlier this time. And more honest.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Surely you can’t blame a girl for trying to write a good article,” I said.

  “I guess not,” said Stone, his gorgeous green eyes locked onto mine. “We’re all just trying to do our job as best we can. I put out fires, you write articles.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And the world needs journalists just as much as it needs firemen.”

  Stone raised an eyebrow.

  “Is that right?” he said. “You think the world needs people writing articles for gossip magazines as much as it needs people to put out fires?”

  “Of course it does!” I said. “I mean, society needs more than just safety to function. It needs enrichment and entertainment and all that good stuff. And I provide them with that.”

  Stone smirked and let out a little chuckle.

  “What?” I asked. “You think that I’m talking nonsense or something?”

  He said nothing, instead pouring me a glass from the bottle of wine on the table.

  I took a sip and so did he.

  “You’ve got a pretty high opinion of yourself, is all I’m saying.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Oh, so unless we’re not leaping from burning buildings with kids under our arms, we’re not doing jobs that are worth a damn?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “I’m just saying that if you’re going to have a job that involves writing gossip then you ought to embrace it. Especially when you have to be dishonest to get that gossip.”

  I took a long sip of my wine.

  “It sounds to me like you’re saying I should just accept that I’m a writer for a trashy magazine and not pretend that I’m anything else.”

  Stone said nothing, instead taking a drink of his wine.

  “Did it occur to you that I wanted to write the article because I was looking to do some actual journalism beyond what my magazine normally puts out?”

  “And that’s great,” he said. “But you still lied about why you came to the station. And how do I know you’re not lying again right now? I mean, I’m not saying I have the most important job in the world, but what I do is pretty straightforward. I don’t have to tell the fire that I’m coming in to check out someone only to put it out while I’m in there.”

  My blood pressure rose as I felt that same combative tone take hold of the conversation. Stone was handsome as hell, but he sure could be totally impossible.

  Then again, the half-smirk on his face seemed to suggest that he wasn’t being entirely serious.

  “Are you just busting my balls?” I asked, taking my wine glass into my hands.

  “Maybe a little,” he said with a small smile.

  “Stone Black,” I said, shaking my head. “What am I going to do with you?”

  He raised his glass to his dark, red lips.

  “I guess you’re going to have to find out.”

  8

  STONE

  I couldn’t get over how goddamn good Callie looked. It was clear that she wasn’t going out of her way to look sexy, but with a body like hers, it was hard not to. Her tight jeans hugged her every curve, and the blouse she wore matched the fair, cream color of her skin. Just looking at her was enough to make my cock harden a little bit.

  I felt a little bad for busting her chops, but she had lied to me, after all, and I never had liked reporters much, or gossip for that matter. Teasing her just a bit didn’t seem like the worst way to get it out of my system. At least it kept her talking. Not to mention she got the cutest expression on her face when she was scandalized. It was hard to resist.

  “OK,” she said, “now that we’re on the same page, let’s talk. I got the basics from you back at our first interview—you were in the Navy, you’ve been with your station for a few years, and now I know you have a kid.”

  “That’s right,” I said, taking the bottle of wine off the table and topping off our glasses.

  “And you have a very high opinion of yourself,” she said, a teasing tone to her voice. “Maybe a little too cocky and arrogant for your own good.”

  I raised an eyebrow, a grin on my face.

  “Is that going in the interview?”

  “Depends on what angle I go for,” she said. “I mean, it’d deconstruct the ‘firemen as heroes’ mystique a little bit.”

  “How about this,” I said. “You and I both accept that we like to view our jobs in particular ways and leave it at that?”

  “Fine,” she said. “But I can’t help but wonder just what it was that got you into this line of work. Like, how about you tell me a little about your past, give me some idea of what made this Stone Black with whom I’m currently enjoying a very delicious bottle of wine.”

  “Shoot,” I said. “But keep in mind my past isn’t exactly an open book.”

  “Then I’ll tread carefully,” she said. “How about…high school? What kind of guy were you back then? I mean, you told me a little about what you were like in college.”

  “Hmm,” I started. “You were right about what you said before, that I was about as all-American as they come. I grew up in upstate New York, a little town called Evergreen.”

  “And a total player,” she said. “Our last interview’s starting to come back to me.”

  “I should hope so,” I said. “But you know what? With all that I’ve told you about myself, I think it’s only fair that you share a little about you.”

  An expression of mild surprise took hold of Callie’s features.

  “You want to know about me?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “You know—tit for tat.”

  My gaze dropped down a little as the word “tit” passed my lips. I refocused my thoughts to make sure I wasn’t getting sidetracked.

  “Um, well, there’s not really much to say,” she said. “I’m a Midwestern girl and proud of it.”

  “Not one of those new-to-New-York types who moved here looking to start fresh?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I’m proud of where I came from.”

  “And something tells me that being proud is how you’ve been since you were little.”

  “You could say that,” she said. “I was one of those precocious kids, the type who always had her homework done
on time and filled out with perfect penmanship. Every ‘A’ I got was a little badge of honor I was happy to wear.”

  “This is all starting to make a lot of sense,” I said.

  She reached across the table and gave my arm a smack. I instinctively flexed my muscles while her smooth fingers lightly lingered on my skin a second longer than expected. She and I held eye contact for a very long moment before she withdrew her hand.

  She cleared her throat then went on.

  “Anyway, I got into the news game well before college.”

  “Really?” I said. “I mean, I know internships are getting competitive these days…”

  “No,” she said with a smile. “I mean, when I was in middle school I noticed how much people, especially girls, loved to gossip. So I figured I could put together a little online newsletter with all the who’s-dating-who stuff I heard around school, charge a buck or two for access to the website, and make a little extra money. Not to mention how much I loved writing about that sort of thing.”

  “A gossipmonger from when you were a preteen,” I said. “You know, I’m not really surprised in the least.”

  “And it didn’t help my popularity that I was always sort of an outsider with the girls who started the gossip.”

  “You’ve got to tell me more about this,” I said.

  Callie looked a little shocked for a brief moment, as if she’d shared something that she didn’t really want to reveal. It looked like the wine was already doing its thing.

  “Oh god,” she said, a red flush appearing on her cheeks. “I was such a mess in middle school. I mean, I was such a cute kid but then once puberty hit, the hormones just did a number on me. I was all gangly and skinny, my hair was this frizzy mess, and my eyesight got terrible out of nowhere and I needed these big, ugly glasses.”

  Looking at Callie now and trying to picture her as some gawky kid was quite the thing. I almost didn’t believe it.

  “You look a little surprised at that,” she said.

  “Of course I am,” I said. “I mean, you’re gorgeous. Hard to picture you any other way.”

  Another slight flush of red appeared on her cheeks, and she quickly went in for another sip of wine.

  “Oh, thank you,” she shot out awkwardly, tucking a few strands of her flame-red hair behind her ear.

  “Anyway,” she went on. “I was the girl on the outside of everything, so I reported on the gossip other, more popular girls had going on. It was fun for a while, until…”

  “Until…”

  “Until I got found out,” she said. “All the popular girls eventually wanted to know just who’d been airing their dirty laundry, and all it took was me leaving my blog account logged in at the library for someone to put two-and-two together and figure out who was behind it all. Needless to say, once that went around, my reputation went from bad to worse.” She went on. “But I got the reporting bug, and that was that. When high school started, I joined the school paper, writing on more ‘legitimate’ topics, and before too long, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

  “And were you still the same unpopular girl in high school?”

  “Things got a little better for me once I went through the worst of puberty. My figure filled out, my skin cleared up, and I figured out how to get this mess under control.”

  She grabbed a handful of her hair to illustrate her point.

  “Guys started actually paying attention to me, and that was weird in its own way. And then I met Bryce…”

  A surprised expression crossed her face.

  “Wait,” she said. “I’m supposed to be the one interviewing you here—how the hell are you prying all this out of me?”

  “Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work,” I said with a smile.

  We went through the bottle of wine and ended up having a couple more glasses on top of that. Before I knew it, I was a little tipsy. And what’s more, I noticed that my and Callie’s bodies had been slowly moving closer and closer together over the last hour.

  “I’m thinking I could use a change of scenery,” I said. “Want to have a drink back at my place?”

  I knew just what the implication was as soon as the words left my mouth. But I didn’t care—I wanted Callie bad, and I could hardly stand it.

  “Sure,” she said. “But just for a drink.”

  I called for the check, slipping the waiter my card before Callie had a chance to reach for her purse.

  “Hey,” she said. “I was going to pay. You agreed to the interview, so it was going to be my treat.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “We firemen tend to be the chivalrous type.”

  She gave me a teasing expression, and we were off. I took Callie’s arm in mine as we strolled down the city streets, part of my brain yelling at me all the while, telling me that it was clear where this was going, and that I should know better. But the combination of the wine and the clear mutual attraction was too much to take.

  Soon, the two of us stepped into my loft apartment.

  “Damn,” she said, looking over the spacious interior of my place. “Pretty swanky for a fireman.”

  “I lucked out,” I said. “The fireman I replaced moved out of the city, and he let me move into his pad.”

  “You could fit three of my apartments in here,” she said, glancing up at the high ceilings and the factory windows that looked out over Brooklyn, the gleaming towers of Manhattan visible beyond.

  She took off her coat, putting her gorgeous body on display again. I’d always prided myself as the kind of man who could keep his base urges in check, but this girl was really making me feel like I might lose control at any moment.

  I stepped into the kitchen and cracked open a bottle of wine. As I poured a couple of glasses, I glanced up at Callie. She was standing in front of the windows, her slender frame backlit by the lights of the city.

  “Where’s the kiddo?” she asked as I approached her with the wine.

  “Sleepover,” I said.

  “Must be nice to have a night to yourself, huh?” she asked, taking the glass I handed her.

  “Nah,” I said. “I barely see the guy as it is. But he’d been planning this for a while.”

  Callie’s body and mine had managed to close the distance between one another again. We stood only a few inches from each other, and I could almost feel the sexual tension between us. My cock hardened with each beat of my heart—my body was telling me in no unclear terms just what it wanted.

  “Well then,” she said. “Cheers to an adults-only night.”

  I smiled.

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  We tapped the rims of our glasses, a chime sounding through the apartment. I sipped my glass and Callie did the same. My eyes were latched onto her, unable to look away. I noticed the smooth curve of her neck, the brilliant blue of her eyes, and the rich red of her lips, the color made deeper by the wine. Once she’d taken her sip, she dragged her tongue slowly across her mouth, leaving her lips glistening and inviting.

  “What?” she asked.

  But I didn’t want to say a single thing.

  I put my free hand on the side of her face, the skin soft and warm. And then, with a smooth, fluid motion, I brought her lips to mine.

  Callie’s body locked up at first, and I got the impression that she wasn’t expecting my kiss. After a few seconds of my lips on hers, however, I felt the tension leave her muscles as she fell into it. The taste of her rushed into my mouth, sweet and inviting. We both set our wine glasses down at the same time, and our hands clamped down onto each other’s bodies now that they were free.

  “Wait a minute,” said Callie, pulling her mouth away from mine long enough to talk. “Is this a bad idea?”

  I looked down at her. “Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

  “I mean, it’s a bad idea, but it’s also a really good idea, you know? And—”

  I kissed her again, feeling a smile spread across her lips as I did.

  Callie and I mov
ed away from the windows and toward the nearest couch. As we made our way, we pulled off articles of clothing. I worked on her blouse, undoing the buttons one by one, and she grabbed my shirt by the hem, yanking it up over my head so fast that I worried it might rip. Once her shirt was off, I glanced down at the lacy blue bra she wore, her full, milk-white breasts looking ready to burst out of it.

  We kissed and kissed, eventually falling onto the couch. I felt totally unrestrained, like something had taken ahold of me, something that cared about nothing other than having Callie right then and there. My hands moved over the soft curves of her hips, making their way up her back and undoing the clasp of her bra. Once undone, her full, perfectly round breasts came tumbling out, her nipples rose-pink and hard as stones.

  I took one breast into my hands and brought her nipple to my mouth, sucking and licking it with ferocious intensity. Callie moaned, running her hands through my hair as I lavished her nipples, one after the other, with attention. Her hands moved from my hair down the muscular triangle of my back, her fingertips taking in the lines and angles.

  Her fingers settled on my belt buckle as I took my mouth from her tits, and within seconds she had my belt undone and my zipper open. I did the same, and soon the two us were in our underwear, me in my gray boxer-briefs that clung to my thick, powerful legs, and Callie in nothing but a skimpy pair of panties.

  And I needed her in less than that.

  I stuck my thumb under the waistband of her panties and yanked them down her legs so quickly that I almost ripped the delicate fabric apart. Once she was bare, I took in the sight of the neatly trimmed triangle of hair above her pussy, as red as the hair on her head—that answered that question.

  We kissed more, and I moved my hand between her warm, creamy thighs. She happily spread them open for me, and I now had a clear view of her glistening wet pussy. Whatever sexual hunger I had before was now ten times as intense—I needed to be in her right that second.

  Callie continued to gasp and moan as I kissed her, moving my lips over her collarbone and up the gentle slope of her neck. I dragged my right hand slowly along her inner thigh, feeling the heat radiating off her cunt. She was wet and ready for me, and I didn’t want to waste another second.