Ashes - Book 1 (9 page)

I’ve always loved the feel and precision of a firearm. I place both hands on the metal for proper control and raise the gun to shoulder level. “You’ve seen the movies,” I begin and glance over at Ken. “They hold the gun sideways with one hand, like this.” Ken nods, still looking wary, but a little more curious. “That’s the movies. This is real life. You want control, not show. A slow squeeze.”

The first round was slightly off center, but still pretty damn close. “Not bad for the first round in a few weeks.” I squeeze off another and watch the center of the target widen.

Three more rounds and the entire center is punched out.

Ken stares at the target and then back at me. “How’d you learn to shoot like that? I honestly thought it was luck when those thugs were after us, and as the saying goes, better lucky than good.”

I step back to reload. “I didn’t always want to be a firefighter,” I tell him. “In fact, that wasn’t even on my radar until a few years ago. I wanted to be an army ranger or in Delta Force or some other special ops.”

He cocks his head to the side. “No shit? I never even had a clue you wanted to join the military. I guess I just thought you always wanted to be a firefighter. What made you change?”

I put down the 9 mm on the table. “It’s kind of a long story and I want you to do some shooting.”

“Just give me the short version. I’m curious.”

“My parents got divorced when I was fourteen and I lived with my mother. I was always tall, but lanky. I wanted to be like my cousin, the football player, but I ended up with a swimmer’s body, so the opponents pushed me all over the place. I was lifting weights every day. I wanted to gain weight, so I was drinking protein drinks by the quart. I remember watching a movie on TV about the Rangers. Those guys were all buff and I decided to join the army. I went to the recruiter – my mom still doesn’t know about that – and he gave me some advice. Of course I was too young to join anyway, but I had laser focus.

“I wasn’t so worried about bulking up huge. I would run in the hills around my house. I made my own obstacle course and one of my friends had a bunch of guns. His dad taught us about gun safety and, as crazy as it seemed, just let us go out and shoot. We even reloaded our own bullets and I learned about hunting and shooting. We would spend every hour shooting or pretending we were Rangers.”

Ken removes his goggles and hangs them on his shirt. “I sense something coming up.”

“No, not really. Of course, as time went on, other things came up, but basically I stuck with it. I hated my step-dad and I couldn’t graduate fast enough. I wanted out of my house and made plans with my buddy to move in together. He had the firefighter bug, but still loved shooting and losing ourselves in the hills.”

Joe walks up and grabs the gun. “Ken, is Gage telling tall tales again?”

Ken laughs. “You know Gage better than I thought. My fault, I egged him on.”

Joe mock glares at him. “Oh, so you were trying to distract him, huh. You aren’t getting out of here today until you are comfortable shooting. You don’t have to go buy a gun, but I want you to at least learn to be safe and be able to protect yourself. I’ll be back after Gage finishes his old wives’ tale.”

I look at Ken, trying to deflect the story. “How about you? When did you decide to become a firefighter?”

He shakes his head. “Another day, Gage. Now finish, I don’t really want to be here all day. I have some ‘business’ with Steph, if you know what I mean.” He smirks at me.

“You know you can’t do any ‘business’ with her for at least twenty-four hours, right?”

He looks at me in disbelief. “You shitting me?”

“Nope. Google it if you don’t believe me.”

The poor guy looks crestfallen. I laugh and continue my story. “Well, after I graduated, I moved in with my buddy, Paul. I decided to wait a year to join the army. I wanted to have a little freedom. Paul took me to the training center a couple of times while he was taking some classes to get him ready for training. He ended up not making the cut, but I realized I loved the adrenaline rush and decided to join. The rest is history.”

Ken scratches his chin. “That can’t be it. How could you be so committed to the army and then become a firefighter? Something’s fishy.”

I start to load some bullets into the magazine for Ken to use. “I don’t think it was a split-second decision. It more or less evolved. Like I told you, Paul knew he wanted to be a firefighter for many years and we also practiced some of that stuff on our outings in the hills. One time when we were both fifteen, we hitched a ride to Carlsbad with Paul’s older sister, Paulette. She was in college and was meeting a couple of her friends for a few days of partying at the beach. She didn’t want us to go, but we told her we wouldn’t bug her. Whoa, she was hot.”

Ken takes a seat on the chair off to the side. “This is getting interesting. Even if it’s bullshit, I want to hear it.”

I grin and polish the fingerprints off the gun with my shirt. “It isn’t bullshit, I swear. You already know what happened. I became a fireman. The end. Let’s just get to shooting.” I push the magazine into the gun.

Ken holds up a hand and settles back in his chair. “You aren’t getting off that easy. What does going to the beach have to do with becoming a firefighter?”

I lift a shoulder. “Nothing, I guess. Thinking about Paul made me think about Paulette, which made me think of that trip. Her friend was my first. Actually, they were my first. She had more than one friend.”

Ken raised an eyebrow. “No shit?”

I raised one back. “No shit. But it was more than being laid. I kinda grew up. Started looking for direction. Looking back, it really changed my life.”

“I bet,” he laughs. “A night with two girls … older girls at that. Every boy’s dream, right?”

“I’ve never told anyone this, not even Beth.”

“Beth? Why would you tell her? You keep telling me she’s just a fuck buddy.”

I shrug him off and go back to the story. “The girls — women — were drinking and offered me some. I’d had some beers before, but this was vodka and juice. I got pretty drunk and Paulette’s friends were doing everything but jacking me off on the sand. Rubbing my body, both laying on my stomach. I was feeling them out while they were lying beside me. I’m sure Paulette could see it all, but she ignored them.”

Ken’s mouth was wide open. “Holy shit, you hit the jackpot the first time. I would’ve done anything for that to be my first time. Hell, my
now
time.” He points a finger at me. “Don’t fucking tell Steph I said that or I will kill you.”

I kick his chair leg, hoping to make him lose balance and fall on his ass. He doesn’t. “You know I’m kidding,” he adds. “At least the now time part. I’m perfectly happy with Steph. But a man can’t help thinking of what he missed.”

Yeah. That’s my greatest fear. Missing out on something. Living with regrets.

“You have to realize these girls were all four or five years older than me. They convinced me to go back to their room with them, against Paulette’s objections. They were drunk and I should never have driven anywhere, but like I said, I was young. What the hell did I know? I was nervous and anxious. I could only hope this was my shot.

“When we got to their room, they pulled some wine out and we started drinking again. They kept asking me if I was going to be a cop or a firefighter. They said I had the perfect body for either and that they just wanted to taste every part of me. I told them I wanted to go in the army. I felt a hand grab my cock and squeeze. One of the girls told me she was an army brat and she got tired of moving every two years and that I should be a cop or fireman instead. She said I could save lives and have a stable life, then she stuck my dick in her mouth.”

Ken rears back in his chair again, head thrown back, howling in laughter. “So you decided to be a fireman because some girl sucked you off?”

“Why not? She gave mighty good head.” He roars again, wiping the tears from his eyes. I look at him and am struck with an evil plan.

“Of course it wasn’t just the blow job,” I go on, intent on tormenting him with the details of that night. I’ll make him suffer knowing he’ll never have that kind of freedom again.

I wait until he stops laughing and I have his full attention. “You should have seen this one girl’s tits. Easily double-D. I put my hand under her bikini top and just played with them. Squeezing them softly at first, but she moved my hand to one of her nipples and I felt it get as hard as my cock. She started moaning and whispered for me to squeeze them hard. I was afraid of hurting her, but she kept moaning, ‘harder, harder’.”

I glance at Ken. Yeah. I have his full attention. “The other girl gave my cock a hard squeeze and she put her hand on her other friend’s tit. Then she pulled off her friend’s top and bit on her nipple. The groan was unlike anything I had ever heard. My first experience with pleasure with pain. The smell in the room was intoxicating. She grabbed my hand and put it down her bikini bottom. I was overwhelmed, but she moved it over the soft hairy mound and right onto her clit.”

Ken is leaning forward now, forearms on his knees. I decide to go for the triple-X version of this story.

“One girl was slowly licking and kissing her way down her friend’s stomach. Just as soon as she got to her belly button, she gave a quick lick and would run her tongue back up to a nipple. The girl was moaning and lifting her head off the carpet, almost banging it back onto the carpet. Her eyes were rolling back into her head as her friend bit the nipple just right.”

Ken kicks back the chair on two legs. “Holy fuck, dude. This is better than porn. You ought to write a book.”

I pretend to ignore him. “So my hand is still inside this one girl’s bikini bottoms while she starts going down on the other one. I tentatively put a finger in her wetness and started feeling her insides. When she groaned and pushed back against my hand, you’d have thought I was king of the mountain. My mind was racing. Finally, the forbidden fruit.

“I’m so intent in what I’m doing, that I don’t see the other girl get up and pull the strings on the bikini of the girl I’m fingering. They fall off and this girl puts her hand on the back of my neck, and pushes my face down between her friend’s legs… and then joins me!”

I laugh at the memory. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and there I was, in the middle of a wet dream. I watch what the other girl is doing and start doing it myself. I’m sure I was awful, licking more like a dog would lick a bone, but she seemed to enjoy it.

“At first I hated the taste, but soon I couldn’t get enough. I didn’t want to stop. I pushed her friend aside and spread her legs slightly so I could lay between her and get my face right into the action. I had a bird’s eye view of what I only saw in the magazines my step-dad tried to hide from me.”

Ken reaches into the cooler beside him and grabs two bottles of water, tossing one to me. I hide my smile as he pours about half of it over his head.

“After what seemed like hours, they both told me to get on the couch and lay on my back. I did as I was told, and they ripped my trunks off me. One of the girls started sucking me off again while the other was kissing me. To be honest, I thought I was going to come too soon. I was singing nursery rhymes in my head to stop from shooting off.

“Out of nowhere, one of the girls is rolling a condom down my dick and hopped on, grinding her pussy into my groin so hard I had a bruise for a week from that. Her friend jumped on my face and started twirling her hips, getting my entire face wet. I didn’t know what the hell was going on or what to do next, so I just lay there like a two by four.”

Ken’s laughing his ass off again and I can’t help but join him. It’s a long time before I can finish the story, what was left of it anyway. “Needless to say, the nursery rhymes didn’t help and I blew my load way too soon. The girls didn’t seem to mind, they just took care of each other while I lay there and watched.”

I stand up and take a little bow. “And that is the moment I questioned everything, and thought that being a firefighter instead of a military guy wasn’t such a bad idea.”

Ken stands up as well, clapping his hands together. “Did you hook up with them again?”

I shake my head. “Nope. That’s when things went to shit. Paulette was so pissed that she’d driven home and left me and Paul there at the beach. Paul found me the next morning and we had to call our parents to come get us. His mom and dad refused. My mom was livid and it was my asshole step-father that came and got us. He forbid me from ever hanging out with Paul again. Of course, I snuck out, but it wasn’t the same for a while anyway. They never suspected that I banged those chicks, well I guess technically they banged me. I tried to have Paulette hook me up with them, but she never would. She was probably more pissed at them than me. I don’t know though. Once I got my motorcycle I went down to find where I thought they lived, but I never did find them.”

Ken grins. “And now look at you. A firefighter player.”

“Yep. A single firefighter player who is still free and clear to have many more threesomes in his future.”

Ken scowls at me.

I grab the .22 and move next to Ken. “Now, let’s start shooting. Enough of the stories.”

Chapter 10 – Beth

The day after our waxing episode, I get up early and take Onyx on her daily walk. Steph is still barely talking to me and wincing dramatically every time she has to sit down.

Back at the house, I jump in the pool and swim a few laps and, just like magic, Stephanie is there with a towel and two large glasses of green smoothies. I’ve been forgiven. She’s even smiling a little.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better, and I hate to admit it, but this morning it really feels smooth.”

Squatting down in front of her, I look at her legs and run a hand up her shin. I’m looking for bumps, ingrown hair or places where her skin might need some ointment.

I look up at her and she’s laughing down at me. “You know, we really do know each other entirely too well.”

I point at her crotch. “Need me to check there too?” I kid her, grinning. “Or a little anus investigation?”