New Recruit

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Published by The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,

Hartwood Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona

www.hartwoodpublishing.com

New Recruit

Copyright © 2016 by Em Petrova

Digital Release: March 2016

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

When East Street Firehouse’s new recruit Jagger wanders up to the bar at the local firefighters haunt, he finds a half-naked woman pouring rum on herself. He can’t resist doing a body shot—or six—and a fiery night leads to a morning filled with questions. Like who is she and where can he find her again?

Following a bad breakup, Hanna works hard to keep men at arms’ length, but she can’t get Jagger out of her head. Showing up at firehouse’s building repairs fundraiser definitely isn’t a good idea. Neither is winning his services, which happens to be a day of yard work. Or maybe she’s made the right decision after all—she
does
have a bush to be trimmed.

Two nights with Hanna leads to more, and he’s distracted enough to make a critical error in judgment on a five-alarm blaze. He walks right past the arsonist, believing the man a victim. Throwing himself into finding the criminal means Hanna is back to feeling neglected and unimportant in the only relationship she’s taken a chance on forever.

As more and more arson fires pop up over the city, Jagger has no choice but to fight them. Which leaves Hanna worried for his safety and wondering why she took a chance on a fireman of all people. But he can’t ignore the blazing inferno of lust raging out of control between him and Hanna either. Can he strike a match of understanding in her before she runs out of his life, or will his superhero ways sever his chances forever?

“Hey! New Recruit! Buy you a beer?”

Jagger looked around and spotted the table of his fellow firefighters from the East Street Firehouse. He lifted his chin in acknowledgement. The place was slammed, and he waited for a waitress and two giggling young women to pass before angling toward the table. One of the guys flagged down the waitress and ordered another pitcher.

“Hey, buddy. Welcome to Tricky Dick’s,” Gabriel said, lifting the nearly empty pitcher and sloshing the beer into his own glass.

“Looks like you could raise some hell in here,” Jagger said. An electrical charge hummed in the air. A big group was gathered around the bar, and as he looked on, somebody gave a woman a hand in climbing onto the surface. Two women were already standing up there dancing. It looked like a scene from a movie.

Jagger folded his arms over his chest and leaned back to listen to the talk of his fellow firefighters. Their calls of the day had been stressful ones—they’d all agreed to have a drink or two after their shift to blow off steam. Between the five-car accident downtown and the bomb scare after a suspicious bag in front of a daycare was reported, their stress levels were high.

The waitress brought a new pitcher but when Gabriel offered it to Jagger, he waved him off. “I need something stronger than beer.” He got up and skirted a few tables, headed for the bar where people cheered on the two dancers. Just then the crowd shifted, and he was given a clear view of a body lying on the surface.

A glimpse of pale skin made him blink. Jagger stopped in his tracks, and his new buddies hooted behind him. What did they know that he didn’t?

Using his size, Jagger shouldered through the crowd and nearly choked. He blinked down at the woman spread on the wooden bar top.

Naked.

Well okay, she was wearing a pink bra and a tiny pink thong that barely covered a thing and concealed nothing. Christ, he could see the plump outline of her pussy lips.

Of course, her thong was drenched and when the bartender upended a bottle of rum over her body, Jagger understood why. She was giving body shots.

She’s asking for trouble, putting herself in such a position.

Damn. If she was too drunk to make good decisions, somebody should step up and get her to a safe place to sober up. He knew too well how alcohol clouded judgments. Dragging his dad home from the bar night after night as a kid had hammered that into his head.

He stepped closer to the bar. At his approach, the woman looked at him. His mind careened off one of the zigzagging roads surrounding this city and leading up to the ocean as he stared into warm brown eyes as sweet and dark as chocolate.

She’s not drunk.

He studied her more closely, his jeans growing tighter by the second. She looked at him expectantly. Behind him his fellow team cheered him on, and he
was
in need of something stronger than watered-down Coors.

“I’ll take a shot,” he said without removing his stare from the woman’s eyes. The bartender sloshed some rum in the hollow between the woman’s hip and smooth stomach.

Jagger’s balls clenched tight at the sight of the Bacardi pooling against her unblemished skin. He hadn’t had a woman in too long—his career came first, and he’d been training and battling for a position with the best house for many months. But she looked too good to pass up.

Bracing his hands against the bar, he leaned in, his gaze fixed on the woman’s face. She might have been the girl next door in his old neighborhood. Honey-blonde highlights in her hair, freckles on her nose.

And a body that was slaying him.

His jeans grew tight in the crotch.

“I’m ready,” she said throatily, sending another white-hot lightning bolt through him.

Heart pounding, he very slowly lowered his head. Drinking in the scents of liqueur and underneath that an earthy female note that made his mind spin. She watched him with her lower lip caught between her square white teeth. His cock surged violently against his fly, demanding exit.

Was it his imagination or was her gaze urging him on?

He opened his mouth over the hollow of her hip and slurped the rum. A ripple ran through her, and he met her gaze up the length of her body. He drank in all the alcohol and dragged his lips over her flesh to get every drop. Her breaths came faster as he lifted his head.

“Another.” He dug more money out of his pocket.

A soft smile appeared on her lips—full lips he wanted to taste.

“Where do you want it?” the bartender asked her, holding the bottle over her body.

She arched a brow at Jagger and then pointed at her navel.

Need seized him. Rum trickled over her warm flesh and pooled in her navel. Jagger’s cock throbbed in time to his heart. Holding her gaze, he dipped his head.

When his tongue met her skin, that shudder vibrated through her again. He swore he heard her breathy sigh above the din of the crowd surrounding them.

He lapped a trail over her delicious skin, collecting alcohol and a hell of a hard-on. When he sank his tongue into her navel, a soft hand curled around his nape. Desire slammed him and he drank from her.

As her fingers tangled in his hair and her gaze burrowed deep into his psyche, he realized his addictive personality wasn’t letting him walk out of here anytime soon.

“Another.” He backhanded his mouth.

More cheers from his team, but Jagger only had eyes for the woman spread before him. Suddenly he was dying of thirst.

∙•∙

As the gorgeous man’s lips hit her flesh again, Hanna shuddered. He had a face like a model’s and the body of a personal trainer, but something about the way he looked at her—looked
into
her—sent her skidding out of control.

His hair was soft beneath her fingers, and she clung to the sensation, her mind working furiously around the differences between the hair on his head and that on his jaw.

Spikey, dark, and delicious. When he raised his head, she missed the contact.

“Another,” he rasped. His eyes were bright with a fever that had little to do with alcohol.

“Where do you want it?” The bartender and her good friend Joey asked her.

Unable to resist the idea of the guy’s rough beard on her breasts, she pointed to her cleavage.

A visible shiver ran through the man. Cool liquid splashed over her skin.

He grabbed her hands and pinned them to the bar as he burrowed his face between her breasts. Screams and hoots echoed in her ears, drowned out by the noisy throb of her heart as the gorgeous guy cleaned the rum out of her cleavage with slow devotion.

His beard seared her skin, and she gasped, cupping his head to her chest. With his tongue he drew patterns over her skin, driving her insane.

“Jagger! Jagger!”

She focused on the chant. Was that his name? She stared at his rugged features, and it wasn’t hard to mesh that name with this man.

When he raised his head and flashed her a wild grin, her pussy clenched—hard. She could barely breathe as Joey gave her a wink and asked where she wanted the rum poured.

Her gaze locked with Jagger’s. The burning light in his hazel eyes sent a flicker of power through her. He wanted her. She let her focus roam from his longer brown hair tumbling around his angular face to his broad, sculpted chest stretching an East Street Firehouse T-shirt.

Oh God. A firefighter? She had some flames he could douse.

She looked into his eyes and told Joey, “My pussy.”

The crowd went crazy. Jagger shot her a wicked, dark grin that curled her insides like smoke. Then the rum was poured very slowly over her mound. She arched as it soaked her thong, and she realized the cloth was probably transparent, revealing the seam of her pussy.

Jagger eased his big hands under her ass and pivoted her on the bar top. She fisted her hands as he spread her, ducked his head, and covered her pussy in one open-mouthed bite.

Scorching heat flooded her, and her own juices mingled with the rum. When she’d climbed onto the bar, she’d only thought to get a little entertainment out of a boring Friday night. But until this man had put his mouth on her, she’d lay here without feeling much of anything.

He sucked her pussy. Then capturing her gaze, he wagged his tongue back and forth over her swollen clit, which must be distending the fabric of her thong. She cried out, trying to follow him as he severed the intimate kiss.

Tearing away, Jagger pointed at Hanna’s mouth, and she knew she was a goner. Everything about this encounter was backward—she knew what kind of lover he’d be without ever having kissed him.

I’m about to find out how he tastes.

She was leaving here with the hunky fireman tonight. The blaze of lust was too strong and she had no resistance against him.

As the bottle of rum tipped onto her lips and Jagger swooped in, she couldn’t stop her moan from escaping. She threw her arms around him, wrapped her legs around him. He plunged his tongue into her mouth and lifted her off the bar, kissing her with primal need as he bore her out of Tricky Dick’s to the noise of cheers.

When the sticky night air surrounded them, he broke the kiss. She dragged in a breath. Living so close to the ocean, the city always had a salty tang in the air that she loved.

“What’s your name?” His voice sounded as if he’d guzzled much more than a few sips of rum.

“Hanna.” She stared at his mouth—a hard line of thin lips she wanted all over her body, rum or not.

“I’m Jagger. Chris Jagger. You’re not wearing clothes.”

“I know.” His erection bulged against her pussy—wet and narrowly covered by her soaked thong. Her nipples were hard pebbles against his muscled chest.

“I live around the corner. If you trust me enough to come with me, I can give you a shirt. Or I can go back inside and get—”

She silenced him by leaning in and tugging his lower lip with her teeth. An animalistic growl left him. It was a risk going off with a man she didn’t know but he tasted too good to walk away. Besides, she hadn’t had so much excitement in a year, and that was saying something when she collected thrills like some women collected shoes.

“Your place is fine.”

Slowly he let her slip down his body to her feet. She still had on the heels she’d worn nine to five, simple black pumps appropriate for the non-profit organization where she worked for. She’d chosen this bar because it was out of the way and the fuddy duddies she worked with would never set foot in the place. Which was good, because she wasn’t acting very reputable tonight—not when a gorgeous hunk of man flesh was standing in front of her.