March Heat

by Chase Jackson

  When he got to my breasts, he took turns taking sucking each one between his lips. Now the heat was bolting through me like lightning. I was on my back, but somehow out of breath…

  He pulled away, and I felt my body turn cold in his absence.

  “Duke—” I begged.

  “Be patient,” he reminded me sternly. He kneeled on the bed in front of me and he kept my legs locked together as he raised them straight up into the air, until I looked like a ‘L.’

  The strain in the back of my legs was enough to make me moan, but when I felt his lips against the back of my calves, my entire body shuttered.

  Keeping my legs perfectly straight, he kissed his way down from the backs of my calves to the undersides of my thighs.

  The closer he got to my pussy, the harder it was for me to remain still. I started squirming and writhing on the bed, and I was pinching my lips together to stop myself from moaning.

  “Breathe,” Duke reminded me.

  When he reached the base of my thighs, he folded my knees down and pressed my bent legs into my chest. My pussy was the only part of me left untouched, and I could feel my need for him dripping from my throbbing slit. He pushed my legs down further, exposing more of my slit.

  Then he leaned forward and I felt his tongue slip along my lips. The sensation was like a jolt of pure electricity.

  I had never been quite sure how close I had come to orgasm before, because I had never known what an orgasm was supposed to feel like. But now, as I felt the contractions tingling through my walls, I knew.

  “Duke…” I moaned.

  The sensation was completely foreign and strange, and every instinct in my body tried to resist the swarming rush that was building inside of me. My muscles tensed and my legs went stiff.

  “Stop trying to be in control,” Duke said. “Let go. Trust me…”

  He slowly spread my legs apart, and I felt myself shiver as I was opened up completely in front of him. For a split second I felt bashful, but then I saw the hungry look in his eyes.

  He wanted me… he wanted me just as much as I wanted him.

  He dipped his head between my thighs and I felt myself start to relax and give in as his tongue lapped up all of the juices that had flowed from my slick mound.

  “Oh fuck…” I muttered, burying my head into the pillow as the contractions building up inside me grew stronger.

  Duke responded, lifting his tongue up to my clitoris and giving it a stiff flick. My hips bucked up and I gasped. I was teetering on the edge, panting for breath, and I had no idea what would happen to me once he gave me that final push…

  He lifted his head and replaced his tongue with his fingers, gentling pinching and tugging at my lips. It was a completely different sensation than his tongue, but it drove me wild just the same.

  Desperate for something to wrap my hands around, I reached up and gripped the towel that was tied around his waist. One yank and immediately it crumpled down.

  His stiff pink cock sprung free, and I caught my breath in my throat as I blinked at his rod in awe. It was thick and engorged and I could practically see it pulsing as he towered over me.

  I gulped and he cracked a crooked smile.

  “I don’t think you’re ready for that yet,” he told me. Then he pushed me back down onto the bed, then he spread my lips apart and slid one of his fingers into my hole.

  “Fuck, you’re tight,” he marveled, pulsing his finger in and out. My head started to spin again and I sunk down onto the bed. He plunged a second finger into me, thrusting in and out.

  I felt my walls contract around his fingers, sucking him deeper inside of me. If my pussy was a tight squeeze for a couple of fingers, I could only imagine what his cock would do to me.

  I felt my hips rising as waves of pure bliss spread lower and lower…

  This time, I gave in. I sunk back into the bed, letting the rush of heat overpower me completely.

  “That’s it,” he told me, thrusting even deeper. “Come for me, baby…”

  I dug my fingertips into the bed, and my other hand reached up and wrapped around his cock. I expected him to scold me again, but instead he let out a husky grunt as I started to stroke his thick shaft.

  I couldn’t get my hand wrapped all the way around him, but I still pumped up and down, following the rhythm of his fingers thrusting in and out of me.

  The weight and warmth of his cock in the palm of my hand was what pushed me to the brink. I felt my body start to tremble and I tightened my grip around his shaft.

  Duke pinned himself on top of me, pressing even deeper inside my tunnel, then bending his fingers into a hook. He lifted me by the pussy, then he shoved his thumb down over my clitoris.

  And then I was falling over the edge.

  A rush of heat poured through my body, exploding in shimmering pangs of bliss. I had never heard myself moan before, and the sounds that I was making were completely foreign as they slipped from my lips.

  The room was spinning around me as I fell slowly back down to earth. Then I heard the sound of Duke sucking in a breath, and I felt his cock stiffen in my hand.

  He glanced down at me in surprise as he caught his breath, and then he grinned.

  “Wow,” he huffed breathlessly.

  My thoughts exactly. Just… wow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | DUKE

  “...and then I took her back to my place and she rode me like I was a bucking bull at the Houston Rodeo!”

  Walker Wright concluded his sordid account of last night’s date with a proud whistle as he strutted across the firehouse kitchen and cracked open the fridge, adding: “That’s what I like to call the cowboy experience.”

  “The cowboy experience?” I glanced up from the sink full of dirty dishes that I was scrubbing. “What does that mean? Picking her up on horseback and keeping your boots on when you take her to bed?”

  “Very funny,” Walker muttered behind the refrigerator door. Then he emerged with a cup of strawberry Yoplait and added: “For your information, I know how to properly wine and dine a woman.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I teased. “If by ‘wine and dine’ you mean homemade moonshine and dinner at the Texas Roadhouse.”

  “You can make all the jokes you want, Williams,” Walker shrugged his shoulders indifferently as he peeled back the foil lid on his plastic yogurt cup. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about northern women, it’s that they love a southern gentleman…”

  He swiped his tongue suggestively over the yogurt lid and I rolled my eyes. Walker’s Texas drawl and cowboy demeanor might have made him an exotic novelty north of the Mason-Dixon, but all the southern charm in the world wasn’t going to turn a New England woman into a rodeo queen.

  “Speaking of gentlemen,” Walker was still practicing that cowboy-style cunnilingus on the foil yogurt lid as he crossed the kitchen and leaned back on the stretch of countertop next to the sink, “You’ve been acting awfully domesticated lately…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Since when does Diva Duke wash the dishes?” he nodded at the sink, and I glanced down at the dirty plate that I was scrubbing.

  “Someone’s gotta do it,” I shrugged.

  “I know that,” Walker whistled in amusement. “But I never thought I’d see they day when that someone was Duke Williams.”

  He cocked his head to one side and watched me with a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “You know, it seems like that new roommate of yours has had a good influence on you,” he said sincerely. Then he grinned as he slapped me on the back and added jokingly: “Or maybe she just cracks a sharp whip!”

  My head started slipping back to Beck. I could only imagine what Walker would say if he knew about our upcoming weekend getaway to the Hamptons…

  Before my mind could wander too far, I was suddenly startled by the sound of Logan Ford’s shrill voice barking through the firehouse intercom system:

  “ATTENTI
ON, ALL FIREHOUSE 56 PERSONNEL!”

  I immediately jerked my head up from the sink, and my eyes shot towards the intercom speaker that was mounted on the brick kitchen wall.

  “REQUESTING BACKUP FOR A 10-89 IN THE VEHICLE BAY. I REPEAT, A 10-89 IN THE VEHICLE BAY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”

  “10-89,” I glanced at Walker, “Isn’t that code for a bomb threat?”

  “You’re damn right it is!”

  In all my time at Firehouse 56, I had never responded to a code 10-89. I had also never responded to a call that came via the station’s private in-house intercom system, but neither of those things crossed my mind as Walker and I both bolted for the stairs that led down to the firehouse vehicle bay.

  We had no idea what to expect, but we definitely weren’t prepared for the scene that awaited us at the bottom of the stairs:

  Troy Hart and Logan Ford were both standing in the vehicle bay, fully attired in turnout gear from head to toe. Troy was standing with his back to us, but I could see that he was holding something in his outstretched arms.

  Logan was approaching Troy cautiously, armed with an aerosol can of Febreze. He had the spray can pointed directly at whatever Troy was holding, and he had his gloved finger resting on the trigger.

  “What’s going on?” I asked urgently.

  Startled, Logan jerked up and aimed the can towards me. His finger pressed down on the trigger, and I was blasted with a stream of lavender-scented Febreze.

  “Fuck!” I choked as the sticky room spray flooded my lungs. “What the hell was that for?!” I waved my hand through the air to fan away the cloud of sticky room spray that surrounded me.

  “Hey!” Troy glanced over his shoulder. His voice was muffled behind the faceplate of his helmet, but his tone was stern: “Don’t say ‘fuck’ in front of the baby!”

  Then he spun around, and I saw that the ‘bomb’ he was holding in his outstretched arms was actually a squirming baby.

  “What the--” I sputtered through the Febreze residue that coated my lips, then I craned my neck forward to get a better look at the baby that Troy was clutching in his leather gloved hands. “Is that Thomas?!”

  I immediately recognized Josh Hudson’s son. As if to confirm my suspicions, baby Thomas stretched his mouth into a giant toothless grin and made a gurgled chuckle.

  I took a step towards the baby but Logan intercepted me, waving the can of Febreze in my face.

  “It’s not safe!” he insisted. “Don’t come any closer until you’ve geared up.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, I was hit by the pungent stench of baby shit. I felt my eyes start to water as I gripped the neck of my t-shirt and pulled it over my nose.

  Thomas just giggled.

  “Jesus,” I grunted through my shirt as I glared at the baby. “What’s he doing here, anyways?!”

  “Josh had some errands to run, so he asked us to babysit,” Troy explained through his mask.

  “It was just supposed to be for an hour, maybe two at most,” Logan corroborated with a nod. “The kid was knocked out cold in his car seat. Josh said he’d probably sleep the whole time… and then the bomb went off.”

  “I thought something had died. Then we realized the smell was coming from his diaper,” Troy muttered. Even through his mask, I could see the horror in his eyes as he glared down at the baby in his outstretched arms.

  “He didn’t even wake up,” Logan reported grimly. “He slept right through it…”

  “A sleeper shit,” I nodded solemnly, recalling the term that Josh had used to describe the phenomenon.

  I felt my phone vibrate, and I reached for it in the back pocket of my jeans. The screen was lit up with a text message from Brie Wallace:

  ‘Hey stranger...’

  I was still reading the words when, almost instantly, the phone vibrated in my palm and a second text message appeared on the screen:

  ‘Surprise! I’m here. In the parking lot.’

  Fuck. A lump formed in the back of my throat, and I forced it down with a dry swallow.

  “Hey guys,” I glanced up, “I need to step outside for a sec…”

  Walker had been prodding at the baby’s diaper with a pair of grill tongs while Logan stomped around the vehicle bay shooting clouds of Febreeze into the air, but they immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to glare at me.

  “What?! Are you kidding?!”

  “You can’t just leave at a time like this!”

  But I was already making my way towards the rear exit door at the back of the vehicle bay.

  I pushed through the door and stepped out into the gravel parking lot behind the firehouse. Brie’s bright white Lincoln SUV was idling at the back of the lot.

  Deep down, I knew that this conversation was long overdue.

  I hadn’t spoken to Brie since that night at my apartment, but the truth was that we had been drifting apart for awhile now.

  While it wasn’t unusual for us to drift apart or go weeks -- even months -- without speaking, things just felt different this time.

  I had always known that our unspoken ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement wouldn’t last forever, but I hadn’t contemplated how or when things would end until we ran into each other at the Fairy Godmother Beauty Salon grand opening. Brie’s words had stuck with me, and being called a ‘bad habit’ had opened my eyes.

  Even though all the pieces were there, it had still taken me awhile to make sense of everything.

  Then Beck had come along.

  What had happened between Beck and I had been crazy and unexpected, but it had also been a moment of clarity. Everything had fallen into place and made perfect sense…

  I knew what I had to do.

  Brie popped the locks when she saw me coming, and I opened the passenger side door and slid into the SUV. I was immediately greeted by the arctic A/C blasting from the air vents, and the overpowering aroma wafting from a New Car air freshener that dangled over the dash.

  “What the hell happened to your face?” Brie wanted to know, blinking at me from behind a pair of oversized Marc Jacobs sunglasses.

  “Bar fight.”

  I glanced up at the car’s rear-view mirror and inspected the purple splotchy bruise that circled my eye. Then I added: “This is actually an improvement. You should have seen it a few days ago--”

  “Maybe I would have, if you had returned my calls,” Brie snapped, cutting straight to the chase. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were avoiding me.”

  “I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, and I’ve been--”

  “It’s fine, I forgive you,” Brie snapped. “I don’t have time for chit-chat. I have to meet a client at 1:30, so hurry up and pull your pants down--”

  “What?! Brie, I’m not having sex with you!”

  Her manicured eyebrows shot up over the rims of her sunglasses in shock, then she rolled her eyes and slunk back into the driver’s seat.

  “Oh my God,” she groaned. “You’re still hung up on that joke I made, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things--”

  “It was a joke!” she rolled her eyes. “Stop being so melodramatic about it.”

  “I’m glad you said it,” I told her honestly. “Otherwise, I might have never seen what was right in front of me this whole time.”

  Brie pursed her lips into a duckbill and shook her head.

  “I know what this is really about,” she decided smugly. “You’ve got a crush on your new roommate, don’t you? I saw the way you two looked at each other--”

  “Leave Beck out of this.”

  “Does she know that she’s just the flavor of the week?” Brie demanded. “Does she know that as soon as you fuck her, you’ll get bored and move onto the next pretty little thing with blonde hair and a pulse?”

  “It’s not like that!”

  “Of course it is! You haven’t changed a bit, Duke. The only person you’re capable of loving is yourself.”
>
  “I know that,” I admitted. “I know that I’m a piece of shit, but I want to change. Beck makes me want to be a better person.”

  “Jesus, Duke. How original. Which Hallmark card did you pull that line out of?”

  “It’s the truth,” I insisted. “I don’t want to be that guy anymore. I want to be better.”

  “Have fun with that,” she rolled her eyes. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you next week, when you realize that the only thing you have to offer a woman is a pile of false promises and a ten-inch dick.”

  There were so many things that I could have said in that moment, but I realized that there was only one thing that actually mattered:

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what? You were nothing more than a bad habit.”

  I popped open the door of the SUV and stepped out onto the gravel. I had made it halfway back to the firehouse when I heard Brie’s SUV roll over the gravel as she punched the gas gunned it out of the parking lot, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | OLIVIA

  “Ugh, this place is terrible!” I grunted, twisting my face into a disgusted grimace. “Why did I let you talk me into this?!”

  “That bad, huh?” Duke grinned as he stepped out onto the balcony, juggling a pair of silver beer cans between his hands.

  “Horrible!” I wrinkled my nose. “I hate it!”

  “You always have been a difficult woman to please,” he sighed wistfully as he leaned his elbows on the metal balcony railing and glanced out at the ocean.

  From the balcony of our hotel room, we had an unobstructed view of the Hamptons coastline: caramel sand and sky-blue ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. The sun was setting to the west, and the sky was stained pastel pink.

  The air was salty and warm. A refreshing sea breeze fluttered in from the coast, tickling my skin and rustling through my loose blonde curls. The fake expression of disgust immediately faded from my face and I let myself smile.

  This moment was summertime at its finest; the only thing missing was a--