Lights to My Siren (5 page)

What the fuck was wrong with me?

“Luke said he wanted to take Katy there soon. Do you live there or here?” Baylee asked sweetly, jolting me out of my daydream.

“Uhh,” I said smartly. “Neither. I live in Benton, Louisiana now. I don’t visit home very often. My mom’s there, so every other Christmas my sister and I head down there to show our faces, and then come right back.”

“Then what are you doing here?” She asked, confused. “Is this where your sister lives?”

“Yeah,” I pointed at Shiloh. “That’s my sister right there. Shiloh.”

Shiloh let out a wave when she saw me pointing at her, and I smiled before turning back to Baylee.

“I didn’t know she was your sister! How often do you all visit each other? I moved down here because my brother was here. We’ve always been very close.” She smiled.

Oh, I wasn’t there for anything much. Only to meet with the parole officer in Shreveport, check on my sister to make sure she wasn’t being mistreated, and then kill someone. Well, maybe not kill someone per say, but a broken kneecap or two wasn’t out of the question. Every day work for the VP of Dixie Wardens MC.

Elliott’s snort said he caught my diversion from the fact of why I was really here.

Then my sister had to go ruin my high by acting like a lovesick fool.

Shiloh squealed like she’d been branded on the ass, and launched herself out of her seat, throwing her body into her husband’s arms. James caught her easily, and curled her into his chest, his eyes closing.

I still didn’t know what to think of them being together. I’d met James before Shiloh even knew he existed. Our paths had crossed on numerous occasions, but it wasn’t until Shiloh had shown up to the fight night that took place at one of The Dixie Wardens’ warehouses, once a week, that I knew they were serious about each other.

He’d protected my sister with his life when I didn’t; so, in my book, James was allowed to have my sister, under the condition that he treated her like the precious jewel that she was. One-step out of line and I’d feed him to The Dixie Wardens, who considered her their princess.

My lip curled when I saw the man that came in the door behind James, and the only thing keeping me from exiting the restaurant right then and there was the man’s sister that was sitting across the table from me.

Luke looked to be in a good mood until he spotted me sitting next to his sister, and then he stomped over towards us, a scowl fixed on his pretty face.

“What are you doing here?” Luke barked once he reached Baylee’s side.

“My sister invited me to eat with her, why?” I replied innocently.

Luke’s eyes narrowed on me, and it was everything I could do not to burst out laughing. It must really chap the man’s ass to see the two of us sitting so close.

Leaning back in my chair, I stretched my long legs out from under me, and accidentally bumped Baylee’s chair, causing her to jump at the contact. Luke’s eyes narrowed even more.

“There were no more chairs when I got here. This was the only spot.” I finally answered.

“Do you two know each other?” Baylee asked.

My eyes left Luke’s murderous ones, and connected with Baylee’s beautiful smoky blue ones. She really was fucking beautiful.

“Yeah, we met about two and a half years ago.” I confirmed.

Baylee smiled. “How nice! Where’d you meet?” Baylee asked.

Luke looked to me and waited for me to answer, wondering how I’d get out of revealing that I’d killed my pregnant ex, but I sidestepped.

“I was in a motorcycle accident, and your brother was the officer taking statements.” I explained.

“Well, that sucks. Although, I’ve seen plenty of those in my time. Glad you’re okay.” Baylee said sweetly.

The girl just had no clue. She was an innocent; probably never been exposed to anything bad in her entire life. Which was why I wondered how the hell I was going to play this. There was no way that Luke was just going to stand by and let me get with his sister.

Baylee wouldn’t know what to do if she ever got around the club and saw all the shit that went down. I’d be better off just fucking leaving this one alone; yet, my body and my heart wouldn’t let me There was something about the girl that made me
feel
again.

I hadn’t had these kind of feelings in....well, ever.

I didn’t want to have feelings. Feelings led to sex. Sex led to love. Love led to Fucked-up-ville.

“Yeah, it wasn’t very pleasant.” I agreed solemnly.

She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the edge of the table; eyes animated as she listened to me explain the accident in detail.

“So you coded? Any internal bleeding?” She asked eyes wide.

“No, the internal bleeding was minimal. Chest hurt like a fucking bitch for months though, after they did CPR. Or that machine did.” I admitted. “Had a circle printed bruise for nearly a month.”

“They put the Geezer Squeezer on you?” She gasped.

I grimaced. Even remembering the pain after that made my chest hurt. Absently, I rubbed my chest, remembering the explanation for the round circle on my chest when I’d woken up.

The nurse had explained that I’d had quite a bit of bleeding, and while they’d put me on an automated CPR machine, a “Thumper” a.k.a. ‘geezer squeezer,’ to take over the CPR while they got the bleeding under control. The lovely gash down my side one of the main sources of the bleeding. However, once that was closed up, I’d gone into shock from loss of blood, eventually stopping my heart.

Her brother decided that he didn’t like how animated Baylee was getting, and pulled up a chair, situating himself at the very head of the table, and efficiently putting distance in between the two of us just by that one maneuver.

“So that scar under your arm...was that from the accident?” Baylee asked, ignoring her brother’s obvious attempt to break up the conversation.

I nodded, taking a sip of my beer. “Yeah, not really sure what I caught it on. Maybe the bike, I don’t really know. Was about an inch deep all the way down my side, from armpit to hip. The doctor that worked on me in the ER said he could see bones and muscles. It was really not fun. Fucking hurt. Chest hurt more though. They broke my sternum.”

“Yeah, that’s normal. Freaked me out completely when it happened to me with my first patient. When you’re doing CPR and that first bone breaks, there’s this god-awful crunch, and then with each push down from then on you can hear the bones scraping together.” She explained before Blaine made a gagging sound.

Luke’s face was impassive, as was Elliott’s, as well as the rest of the table that was now listening to our conversation. Blaine was the only one not in the medical field or the police/military occupation, and looked horrified and disgusted.

“Oh, my God. Please, I’m trying to eat here.” Blaine gagged.

“Oops. I’m sorry. It’s a pretty normal conversation for me.” Baylee apologized sheepishly.

The rest of the table had seen it, heard about it, or experienced it all before. I had seen enough of that shit while in the Marines that hardly anything affected me anymore. Not to mention in my career.

“I guess I should be thankful you weren’t talking about a STD or something.” Blaine murmured as she stuck another dip-covered chip into her mouth.

“Maybe next time. Although that conversation won’t have anything to do with me.” I teased.

“You get around enough that it could be about you.” Shiloh yelled from her end of the table.

Reaching my hand into the roll basket, I picked one up and launched at my sister, hitting her in the chest. “Keep that shit to yourself.”

Shiloh’s eyes were filled with laughter as she picked the roll up and took a bite of it. “If the shoe fits, brother.”

The rest of the night was moving along smoothly until my pager started going off. Yes, a pager. Benton Fire Department didn’t believe in modern technology. Well, to be truthful, they just plain couldn’t afford it.

I worked at the Benton fire department, as did quite a few of the other members of The Dixie Wardens MC.

When the club had first formed, it had been mostly dirty. However, once my father had arrived and became an influential member, they started to turn around. Slowly, the good started outweighing the bad, and most of the newer members were upstanding members of the small town and the surrounding community, such as police officers, ex-military, and firefighters.

The club slowly turned from illegal money to completely legitimate businessmen. That’s not to say that everything we did was legal, but that was all moral code. Everything we did business wise was upheld in the eyes of the law. The old timers that didn’t like it either left, or got the fuck over it.

The pager squawked again, the same urgent message, and I knew it was bad. “All right, I’ve gotta go. Thanks for inviting me sis. See you around, Baylee.”

Throwing down a fifty-dollar bill, I headed to the door quickly.

“Be careful!”

My sister’s concerned words from behind me made me throw a smile over my shoulder.

“Always, little sister.”

Chapter 4

Firefighters find them hot, and leave them wet.

- Why you should date a firefighter

Baylee

“Holy crap. That man is so sexy.” I heard a woman say as I passed her on the way to the donut counter.

“What can I get you, ma’am?” A pimply faced teen asked.

“Uhh,” I said, surveying the selection. “I’ll have a cinnamon roll, a kolache, and a bag of donut holes.”

The teen worked quickly and handed me the bag with my receipt, before gesturing to the cashier at the side of the store. “You can pay over there.”

Walking up to the cashier, I could still hear the woman chatting animatedly about the sexy fire fighter on the front of the paper.

“Will that be all?” The cashier asked as she rang up the price of the donuts.

On a whim, I went over to the paper, grabbed a copy, and had the cashier ring it up, too. “That’ll be nine fifty.”

Handing over the money and receiving the change, I made my way out to The Beast and sank down into the sweltering car. I’d planned to take my donuts home, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I snatched the paper up and quickly scanned the article that dominated the front page.

“BENTON FIREFIGTHER TOWN HERO”

The name of the town, Benton, caught my attention, and I unfolded the paper. My breath caught in my throat as I saw the object of my fantasies for the past week in vivid color, dominating the majority of the front page.

The picture was of a burning building in the background, with a very dirty, sweaty, and mad Sebastian standing beside a fire engine. The coat that protected his upper body from the high heat and flames was tossed down haphazardly at his feet. The bottom portion of his body was encased in the bunker gear, with the suspenders bisecting his t-shirt clad chest. His body was just covered in soot, with the sweat he was producing running freely down his chest, arms, and face. The look on his face was murderous, most likely from getting his picture snapped when he didn’t want it to be taken.

The caption underneath the photo read:
Benton, Louisiana firefighter, Sebastian Mackenzie, rests after rescuing a man and his wife who lost their home to a fire late Saturday evening.

“Holy shit.” I whispered.

I didn’t know if it was the fact that Sebastian was a firefighter or the fact that I thought he was just a criminal. I’d automatically assumed he was bad when I’d seen the biker cut he’d worn each time I’d seen him. That hadn’t stopped my body from reacting to the man.

It surprised the ever-loving shit out of me that he actually had a legitimate job, instead of selling E and pot to teenagers. Of all the possibilities I’d pictured him doing, firefighting just wasn’t one of them. Who would’ve thought?

Especially how Luke carried on and on about him being a bad guy. Luke was full of shit.

“I’m going to beat him.” I declared as I started my Cutlass and headed back towards my house and my day off.

***

Three days later, I was still thinking about the man. I’d wake up drenched with sweat, and doing things under my sheets that I’d only done in the deepest, darkest nights.

The first day I’d woken with my fingers buried in my slick heat, I’d immediately withdrawn them and acted as if things didn’t even happen. However, by the end of that day I was positively vibrating with need, and when I’d woken on the second day doing the same exact thing, I’d masturbated to memories of him.

On the third day, I woke up spent and knew I needed to do something to get this shit out of my system. I couldn’t function like this. It was affecting my work, and the damn man hadn’t even made a move towards me. It was especially awkward doing it in the shared room I stayed in at work. At least there were bunks and not twin beds side by side. It was thoroughly embarrassing.

“What are you thinking about, Roberts? Your face is flushed.” Bowe teased me as he walked past to the kitchen beyond where I was sitting.

“It’s this freakin’ show you all have me watching. Jesus, do you see his mother lovin’ abs?” I said, fanning my face and hoping that he didn’t look into my eyes.

A commotion from the main entrance had us all turning and watching as the other firefighters, the ones not in charge of dinner or bathroom detail, came in from playing kickball along the side of the building. They were sweaty and nasty and, of course, every
single
fucking one of them had to pass by me and run their sweaty arms or faces along my back.

Nasty little fuckers. “Quit!” I wailed trying to dodge the sweatiness.

“What the hell are we watching this for?” Taima sneered as he saw what we were watching.

Tai was a hoot. He was a very easygoing person, and I knew for a fact that he didn’t really have a problem with what we were watching. He’d sat there and had a conversation about all the books with me, even though it was targeted for the female persuasion. He was, however, an instigator to the extreme. He was the type of person who’d throw in a comment here and there, inciting the growing argument that he’d instigated in the first place.

He was fucking gorgeous.

He had deeply tanned skin, regardless of the season or sun exposure. His hair was silky and black with a spattering of gray at the edges near his ears, even though he was only twenty nine years old; most of the time it was styled short and spiky. His eyes were a nearly translucent green that were positively hypnotic. His muscles were not overly large, but defined and honed to precision. He was around six feet and so freaking smart it was hard to keep up with him sometimes.