“You come here to interview them or me?” he growled.
Her eyes smoldered, a barely banked fire. “I think I’ve got all I need from these gentlemen.” She glanced around. “Thanks, Bulldog, Johnson, Tony. It’s been a pleasure.”
Then those sultry brown eyes came back to him. “Is there someplace private we can talk, Scott?”
Private. What exactly was she asking?
“Yeah, we can take a hint,” Little Man said. “We’ll put the engine away and let you two talk in private.”
Jenny snapped a few more photos as John-Boy backed the engine into its place inside the bay of the fire hall.
Then she turned to Scott. “All this Softy and pisser stuff really, if you’ll pardon the expression, pisses you off, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“They’re testing you.”
“I get it. But, fuck, I’ve wanted to be a firefighter since I was six. I did all the right stuff to get hired, though it took years and years. I aced training. I’d never let these guys down.”
She’d been watching him carefully as he spoke. Now she said, “I believe you.”
His heart warmed and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “Thanks. But so should they.”
“It takes a while to build a team,” she said neutrally.
He gave a wry chuckle. “Damn, you keep nailing it. Thing is, I feel like I’ve been part of the firefighting team for a long time. When I was a kid, growing up out in Chilliwack, I hung around the fire hall. I was, like, their mascot. They even took me along to some little fires. They let me do stuff, like wash the hose.”
She was smiling, as if she liked the picture he was painting.
“One of the guys out there, he joined up with Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services. He’s battalion chief now for this battalion.”
“That must be nice for both of you.”
He grimaced. Chief Boychuk was great, but…“Sort of. But there’s a downside.”
“What’s that?”
“Give you an example. When we finish training, they give us our assignments. Most of us want the real busy fire halls, like Main and Powell. We want to fight fire, get out there as much as we can. But me, the guy who aces training, gets this fire hall. We don’t get so much action here.”
“The chief wants to protect you?”
“Yeah. He figures he’s watching out for me, but he’s not doing me any favors.”
“Ah. The other guys here know about your connection?”
He nodded grimly. “He even told them to look out for me. So they get back at me by being even tougher than they’d be on the average probie.”
She was quiet a moment, then she said, “Yeah, but the more they test you, the stronger you get.”
“Why don’t they test me in fires? They do stuff like mess up the bathroom and make me clean it, send me out to buy cartons of toilet paper when it’s on sale, steal the box spring from my bed and prop it up on soda-pop cans.”
That last one made her raise her eyebrows. “You jumped into bed and…?”
“You can imagine.”
Obviously she could. She was chuckling.
Reluctantly he joined her. “Okay, sure, some of this stuff is funny. I don’t mind a joke. But it’s one-sided. Rank is totally respected. I can never get back at them.”
“You’ll get back by passing it to the next probie. Carrying on the grand old tradition.”
Suddenly he realized the guys had all gone in, the engine was tucked away behind a closed door and he was standing in the driveway talking to a cute, sexy lady about pranks played on the pisser.
Was he out of his fucking mind?
“You look really nice,” he said. Not the most brilliant come-on line in the world, but it was all he could think of at the moment.
It seemed to do the trick, because the sparkle in her eyes changed from laughter to awareness.
“So do you. Even wet.” She glanced down his body. “Especially wet.”
He groaned. “There’s something about the way you say wet.…”
Her head—which barely reached his armpits—tilted down so all he could see was the black silky crown and those wings of cascading hair. “The way I say wet makes you hard.”
And so did the way she said hard and the knowledge that she was watching him grow. The damp uniform pants were getting really uncomfortable.
“I want you,” he told her.
“Right here and now?”
“Yeah.” Man, he sounded like a horny teenager with no control, but it was the truth.
Her head tilted, the glossy hair slid back and she lifted her face to his. Her eyes glowed like embers all ready to spark if you blew on them. “Me, too.”
He was wondering if her pussy was all set to spark, too, when she stepped forward so their bodies touched. She reached between them and right there, within view of a whole bunch of West End apartment windows, latched onto his cock.
It jumped, and he let out another groan. “Damn, Jenny, we can’t do it here.”
A sparkle of humor crossed her face. “Maybe not right here, but there’s got to be someplace. My car? We could put the top up?”
The Jeep was small but he was game to try. Until a better idea occurred to him. “You wanna see the engine?”
“Engine? I was thinking,” she snickered, “more like your hose.”
“Fire engine,” he said softly. “You ever make out in a fire engine?”
“Jesus! Like in Backdraft?”
“Up top, on the hose. Wanna try that?” Man, what a sexy thought.
Praying everyone else was inside and would stay there, he led her to the bay where Engine 7 stood, sparkling clean, beside the Ladder 12 truck.
Thank God the bay was deserted.
He pulled Jenny against him and bent to kiss her. Damn, their height difference made this awkward. He had to hunch down and she was stretched up on tiptoe.
Impatiently he heaved open the door to the back compartment of the engine, where he always rode with one of the other firefighters. Then he picked up Jenny—couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds—and planted her on the bottom step.
They moved toward each other like magnets. Then her arms were twined around him; his were buried in that lush hair. God, it smelled of flowers and spice. And their mouths were going at it, hot and heavy.
The girl sure could kiss. Her lips were wet and wild and tasted of something pink and fruity like strawberries, and her pointy tongue was flirting like crazy with his.
Her hips ground against him as she fitted herself to his erection. Oh, yeah, the body parts were matching up just fine now.
But they’d match even better without all the clothes on.
He’d been going to take her up top, but now his need was too urgent. When he pulled away and fumbled with the button at the waist of her white pants, she didn’t object.
Doll-sized clothes on a very grown-up woman. Somehow that made the whole thing even more sexy.
Once he’d worked her zipper down he couldn’t even wait to pull down her pants, he just had to get