Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44188 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44188 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
I stop because, what am I going to say? I don’t want them thinking the same thing I am about her? How much they’d love to feel that tight little body squirming underneath theirs? How they’d love to give her a little personal training?
“I don’t want anyone to fuck with you, that’s all. Because then I’d have to pound their faces in.”
This time I succeed in wringing a real grin from her—one that stays on her face and makes her big eyes crinkle. She’s unbelievably pretty, with flawless skin and a pair of dimples. It takes all my willpower not to drop my gaze to her breasts, because I’m dying to see if I made those little nipples hard again.
She rolls her eyes. “So you’re playing big brother, not boss? I already have four of those, so it’s not really a role I need filled.”
Oh, sugar, my thoughts are anything but brotherly.
“Yeah—I’m Big Brother with the capital Bs. Always watching.” I do the two fingers at my eyes, two fingers at her eyes gesture and she laughs. Something that buckled down across my chest when I walked in on the guys’ shenanigans releases. “I see you can take care of yourself, Sparks. Just don’t make me sorry you got placed here.”
“Okay, there it is.” She’s fully in my office now, hands on her hips. “I knew there was something you were trying to say to me. So what is it?”
Her show of defiance makes my cock ache. I want to take this girl in hand so badly my palm twitches. I can’t stop myself from advancing on her until we’re toe to toe. Nose to chest.
I’m dying to wrap my fist in her hair, tip that saucy head back to keep her eyes on my face. Fortunately for her, she lifts them of her own accord.
“Enough, little dragon.” I tower over her, hands on my hips. “You don’t march into my office breathing fire and throwing out attitude. You have something to say to me, you show some respect.”
She swallows and takes a step back. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Christ, yes. The nipples are hard. Even through a sports bra and t-shirt. Her eyes are dilated, too, and the way she rubs her lips together makes my cock chubby.
“That’s better.” I pin her with an authoritative stare and let the silence stretch between us before I go on. “I didn’t say anything to you I wouldn’t have said if you were a man.”
She rolls her tongue around in her cheek. “You call the other guys little dragon?”
I fight a smile. “Did that offend you?”
She cocks a hip, her posture turned seductive. “Nah.”
“Good. Are we okay?” I automatically reach out to thump her shoulder the way I would one of the guys after a talk in the office. At the last second, I pull the thump part back and just touch her. It’s just a shoulder—it’s not like I have hands on her face, or her waist, or anywhere intimate—and yet it’s like time freezes the moment I touch her. Our eyes lock, heat races through my limbs. I have to force myself to drop my hand but when I do, my gaze falls on those full, pouty lips.
Damn.
“Yeah, we’re good.” She’s lost most of her tough girl attitude, her expression more wondering now. It’s amazing how badly I want to see her stripped bare to me—the facade gone. I want to know the real Lia—what makes her tick.
But that won’t be happening. No stripping—of clothes or otherwise. Not for me or any other asshole in this station.
Chapter 2
Lia
I hop off the Staten Island Railway a couple blocks from my parents’ place and hoof it over, a pan of triple chocolate brownies in hand. It’s my nephew’s birthday, which means the entire house will be packed with family—my brothers and their wives and children, parents, uncles, aunts and then any neighbors who feel like stopping by and enduring the mayhem of the Burke family.
I know I’m not always up for it, that’s for damn sure. Still, there’s comfort in the known. The predictability of how the afternoon will play out. Every annoying comment has already been said before.
Of course, this is the first time I’ve seen everyone since I got the job at the fire station, so I have to brace myself for the millions of questions that will entail. I look up at the house, rebuilt to look exactly the same after the fire destroyed everything ten years ago. Given the chance for something new, my mom chose the known. Like her life could only be imagined one way and anything different would be wrong.
Me—I never wanted to come back here. Certainly not after the fire. Not now after being on my own for five years. I took off the second I graduated high school to ‘find myself.’ But I’m used to the familiar ache in my chest at returning. The heaviness of being back with everything so familiar and foreign at once.