Page 26 of Christmas with Three Firemen

My hips buck against my hand as the pressure builds. I hate him. I hate how he makes me feel small and powerless. I hate how my body responds to him, secretly melting even when I’m trying to stand my ground.

“Spread your legs,” he’d order me, then probably lose his patience a half-second later and do it himself.

My fingers work frantically between my legs, and my orgasm builds like a storm. My back arches off the bed and my toes curl as the pleasure crests, washing over me in waves that leave me gasping and shaking.

For a moment, I lie there, body still tingling and mind blissfully blank.

Then, just like it always does, reality crashes back down.

“Fuck!” I hiss, rolling over and burying my face in the pillow.

Captain Hale, of all people. The man is controlling and infuriating and has made it abundantly clear that my presence here is an inconvenience he is barely tolerating.

And yet.

Mateo, who actually makes me laugh and brings me coffee and looks at me like I’m something worth looking at. Wes, who sat beside me on a rooftop in the cold and asked nothing and gave me the first genuinely peaceful moment I’ve had in weeks. Either of them would make infinitely more sense than this.

But it’s Grant’s face behind my eyes right now and I can’t do anything about that except be furious at myself for it. Except it isn’t only Grant, and that’s the part I can’t say out loud. When I shut my eyes it’s Mateo too, the easy warmth of him, and Wes, quiet and certain, watching me like he already knows. Three of them. As if one impossible complication weren’t enough.

What’s wrong with me?

I’m supposed to be strong and independent, not a submissive little idiot who gets turned on by being ordered around. I’m a girlboss! Or whatever.

“Ugh,” I cringe at myself.

Tomorrow, I’ll face him again with my head held high and pretend this never happened. I roll onto my back and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force myself to fall asleep by pure force of will alone.

Eventually, by some miracle, exhaustion wins. Embarrassingly, it’s probably thanks to the orgasm.

Yet, even as I slip away into a fitful slumber, I remain furious.

At the captain. At myself. At stupid Christmas.

And, perhaps most of all, at the undeniable fact that sometime between arriving at Firehouse 23 and right now, the people of this station have begun getting under my skin in ways I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

Which is deeply inconvenient, because I don’t have time for things to get under my skin. Those are the sorts of things that become important to the heart and soul and all that crap. And important things are exactly what I’ve spent most of my life trying not to cling too strongly to.

Chapter seven

Chapter Seven: Noelle

The Delaney name surfaces for the fourth time at eleven forty-seven PM, and I sit back in my chair and stare at it.

Delaney Urban Partners.

I’ve been at this desk for four hours. My second cup of coffee went cold somewhere around the third hour, and I didn’t notice until just now, when I reached for it and took a sip that tasted like regret and room temperature disappointment.

Outside my little window, snow is falling again. It hasn’t really stopped since I arrived here. Manhattan in December is relentless like that. It commits to a thing and doesn’t let up.

I set the mug down and drag my attention back to the screen.

The pattern isn’t dramatic. That’s the thing about financial trails. The guilty ones rarely are. They don’t announce themselves. They just sit there in the data, quiet and patient, waiting for someone irritable enough to keep pulling threads at midnight instead of sleeping like a normal person.

Delaney Urban Partners acquires a condemned building in the Bronx. Eighteen months later, the neighboring structure, a city-owned property, sustains significant fire damage and is condemned. Delaney acquires that one, too, at a fraction of the assessed value.

Three years ago, a similar acquisition occurred in Washington Heights. A renovation permit was approved for a building two doors down from a historic firehouse.

The firehouse undergoes a city-funded infrastructure review shortly after. Delaney’s name appears on the peripheral contractor list.