Play With Fire (The Men of Fire 1)

I look back through the open door, and my eyes instantly rest upon her as she makes herself busy in the kitchen. Knowing she’s heating me up something to eat has me wanting to puff out my chest like a fucking possessive asshole. But the thought of her possibly doing that for children of our own … shit.

Maybe I’m jumping the gun here a little. No, I’m definitely jumping the gun. I need to reel it in before I scare her away.

I’ve never thought about having kids of my own before. I have my niece, Ashlee, whom I watch every now and then when my brother is away on club business; that has always been enough. I’ve never had that need to parent, and I can’t explain why it would suddenly pop into my head like that, but now that it has … I don’t know, I kind of like it.

Walking through the door, I stop and unplug the welder before wrapping up the cord and tossing it out front with the rest of my stuff. I close the door behind me, and her eyes lift with the sound, instantly locking on mine.

As I make my way towards her, a noise pulls at my attention.

What the fuck is that?

Reluctantly, I pull my eyes away from Amelia’s and take in the body sprawled out across the couch. The girl’s shirt is riding up, her face smooshed into a cushion, and a god-awful noise sounding something like a two-stroke dirt bike is tearing out of her. I look back at Amelia in the kitchen. “Zoey?” I inquire.

“Uh-huh,” she chuckles as her eyes roam over her friend. “I don’t know what your friend saw in her.”

Looking over the girl and taking in her face while trying to ignore the snoring, it’s pretty damn clear what Jet sees in her. She’s fucking gorgeous with her honey blonde hair and sun-kissed skin. She’s got a body that would draw every eye in the room, and I’d bet anything, a smart-ass mouth to go with it. But she’s not my Angel.

“She should probably see someone about that,” I grin, looking back up at my girl.

She laughs and shakes her head as though I’ve touched on some kind of inside joke. “I know,” she says. “I’ve been telling her that for years.”

I leave the sleeping girl be and stride towards the kitchen as Amelia finishes up reheating the leftover spaghetti. She watches me from the corner of her eye, and I resist smirking at her. I love how I affect her. She’s hyper-aware of me. Every step I take within her home, she knows about it.

I lean forward on my elbows, content to just stand here in silence, watching her move. She looks up at me before nodding towards the door. “That was quick,” she murmurs before nervously flicking her gaze back to the microwave.

“Yeah, there were only a few small welds to make,” I explain. “I hope I didn’t wake your girls.”

She scoffs. “Nah, don’t worry about them,” she laughs. “Those two sleep like the living dead.”

“Damn,” I smile, loving how talking about her kids seems to put an extra sparkle into her beautiful eyes. “You’re lucky. My brother’s kid is nearly three, and she’ll wake if you even breathe in her direction.”

Amelia looks up horrified. “Are you serious?” she gasps. “I wouldn’t be able to survive with that. If my girls did that to me, I’d probably die.”

“Why’s that?” I murmur, watching her pull the dish out of the microwave and check that it’s warm the whole way through. “You’re a fan of sleep?”

“Well, yeah, but apart from that, I walk around this place like an elephant,” she explains. “I think they’ve had to adjust to my noise, otherwise, they’d never get any sleep.”

“Oh, come on,” I laugh as she grabs and fork and stabs it into the bowl before walking around to the dining table and placing it down. “It couldn’t be that bad.”

“Really,” she laughs, waltzing straight back into the kitchen. “I wish I was exaggerating.”

I take a seat at the table and instantly dig in. She wasn’t wrong, she definitely burnt it, yet I find myself annihilating it, forkful after forkful. I’m not usually one to enjoy a burnt dinner, but right now, this is going down pretty well. “Not bad,” I tell her as she dives through her freezer and pulls out a tub of ice cream.

“You’re kidding me, right?” she scoffs as she grabs a spoon, clearly thinking I’m fucking with her as she raises a curious brow. She must think I’m a fucking moron enjoying her burnt spaghetti.

I watch as she pulls herself up on the counter and crosses her legs before peeling open the tub of ice cream. “Not at all,” I tell her. “The crispiness really adds a little texture. Something I’m not quite used to when it comes to spaghetti.”