Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 128(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 128(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
Over my dead body.
The Russian is elusive, though, and moves around between several hideouts to avoid law enforcement. My first attempt to find him yesterday at an underground gambling den just past the city limits brought me up empty. He’s on the move. I just have to find him. And I won’t stop until I do.
I realize my hands are racing over Penny’s hip and ribcage, as if to reassure myself that she’s safe. She stirs in her sleep and nestles closer to me, making my heart boom like a dropped microphone. When my phone starts to buzz on the nightstand, that’s what I think I’m hearing. But…no. Zeke’s phone goes off seconds later, rattling right and left behind him.
We’re trained to wake up and be clear-headed on the turn of a dime and that’s exactly what happens. We each sit up in twisted sheets and answer our phones, a dispatcher’s voice filling my ear with fire codes and an address. I can tell by Zeke’s expression that he’s hearing the same exact thing. A look passes between us, both of our gazes dropping to Penny immediately after.
She’s already stretching sleepily, her unclothed body on full display. Her smile dims when she sees our faces. “Is something wrong?”
Zeke cups her cheek. “There’s a large structure fire downtown. Ten-story building. It’s not our district, but they’re calling in trucks from all over the city.”
Penny sits up slowly, her face white as a ghost. “Are you going to be in danger?”
Neither one of us says anything, which is answer enough.
I press a kiss to her forehead, then climb out of bed. “You stay inside this apartment, sweetheart. Door locked.”
“Don’t leave for any reason,” Zeke says, pulling on jeans, zipping them up over his erection with a wince. “Promise us.”
I’m in the same state of arousal, because there’s no way around it. Penny is kneeling naked on the bed, eyes wide as silver dollars, her lower lip trembling. An insanely beautiful angel, covered in moonlight. My protective instincts are bashing against my insides, howling at me to comfort her. Lay her down and slide into her cunt real slow, fuck her with deep, long pumps until she starts to hiccup my name, while I whisper in her ear that I’m never leaving her. Not fucking ever.
I open my mouth to ask Penny one more time for her promise to stay put, when she bounds out of the bed and throws herself into my arms. My cock protests the confines of my pants, my hands roaming down to her bare ass out of necessity. “Everything is going to be fine. We’ll be home before you know it.”
“You better,” she mutters, stepping back, turning and walking face first into Zeke’s waiting embrace. “I’m not happy about this.”
Zeke and I laugh. “Trust us, baby,” he says. “Neither are we.”
I walk forward to join them, wrapping a hand around the nape of her neck. I’m hot as hell to kiss her myself, but I put myself to the test, fighting my possessive urges and sharing instead. Like she needs. I have to give Penny what she needs. “Give him a kiss goodbye.”
Energy snaps in the air between Zeke and Penny, Zeke swooping down with a groan to molest her little pink mouth with a hunger I recognize in myself, although it’s far more untamed. A young man’s urgency. When I sense Penny is running out of air and Zeke has no intention of giving her oxygen, I tug her away and feast on that mouth myself. My kiss is meant more to calm her than rile her up, though. It’s slow. A promise of things to come. As I feel it working, her body sagging into me, a sense of rightness fills me so completely, I’m shaken by the time I pull away.
“Come back to me,” she whispers a moment later, closing and locking the door behind us. And I’ve fought fires my entire adult life, but I’ve never been so determined to live through one, knowing the kind of happiness waiting for me on the other side. Penny.
* * *
Zeke
It’s bad.
Catastrophic.
When our truck arrives on the scene, it’s mayhem. The streets surrounding the out-of-control fire are littered with cops trying to corral pajama-clad tenants behind caution tape, EMTs treating burn victims and giving oxygen to others. Trucks are in haphazard rows, ladders raised, hoses drilling water into the building from all sides. There is no organization whatsoever.
I’ve barely stepped out of the truck and opened the equipment compartment when a woman in a fuzzy pink robe rushes toward me, grabbing me by the front of my turnout coat.
“Please…” Her eyes are wild, the fire reflecting in their depths. “I can’t find my mother. I-I…she’s older and moves slow. I was in a rush to get my kids out, but when I went back for her, she wasn’t in her bed.”