The Druid Series 9: Baird (A Druid Novel) (21 page)

Zoe slowly raised her round eyes to Dara's, the pupils dilated; her full lips slightly parted to take in the oxygen she must need.

Just thinking about him.

“
Fireman,” she whispered.

Dara got wet just thinking about it.

Then another thought occurred to her,
Maybe he could put the fire out.

Maybe he would.

2

“He's as vanilla as they come,” Zoe said as Dara tacked up the last curl into a casual up-do that was actually complicated to execute. Not that Dara eschewed complicated. If it was easy, Dara didn't want it. Challenge seemed to follow her wherever she went. Zoe watched Dara's intense scrutiny in the reflection of the mirror and grinned.

“
He won't dump you, not after tonight,” Dara said with the conviction of experience as she surveyed her handiwork on all sides.

Zoe nodded, if a little too quickly. “I'm going to spring my full lust at him tonight.”

Dara's lips quirked. “So it's only been half-lust before?”

Zoe rolled her large eyes, now kohl-smeared in a sexy eye line around her large peepers. “No, we bang away like bunnies but he still hasn't done my ample ass. He's like,” she swung her hands up in the air, then grabbed her ass cheeks through her midnight-colored skirt- “holding back or something.” Zoe blows a tendril into the air and it falls down on her cheek. “How could he resist this?” Zoe asked, jiggling her booty around.

How indeed?
Dara agreed mentally and another Mona Lisa smile ghosted her lips.

Dara moved in and began to dust an iridescent body powder with tiny gold flakes on the skin that peeked through the slits and run neck to wrist on Zoe's long sleeved top in a deep cream. “You'll win him over,” Dara replied, finishing up. Her own ensemble had been carefully put together before Zoe arrived and she needed nothing else but some lube and keys in her small rakish silver clutch purse. It glittered as she put the screaming scarlet lipstick inside with a definitive snap of the clasp.

“Listen,” Dara said, raising her brows, “if things go south, you can always pillage my parts.”

Not that they would, if things went according to plan
, Dara thought.

Zoe's anxious face cleared and she gave a slow, sexy nod, wetting her mouth with the tip of her pink tongue. “That I can, sister, that I can.”

Dara smiled back at Zoe and slapped her ass as they walked out. Zoe whirled and got right in her face. “You've gotten so bold, girlfriend.”

They looked at each other and Dara's smile widened. Zoe had no idea just how bold Dara had been.

It was all she could do not to let her secret leak out on her features.

*

Balls of fire

Hand on the long bronze door handle, Dara slid her head through the vestibule door, the first of two doors and stepped inside the compact greeting area. She scanned all around her and saw nothing but deeply carved panels of dark walnut. Dara looked above and saw the ceiling was similarly adorned with polished inset wood squares and almost missed the interior door opening she was so taken with the imposing foyer.

Darrell wore a suit that set his jet black skin to ebony fire. It stood out in a sea of a brilliant white shirt that was split by a tie so clear a crimson his face appeared to float above the vibrant colors.

“
Hey,” Dara said in a husky whisper.
My oh my
, Dara thought.
Zoe caught herself a fine one here.

“
Does she know?” Zoe's boyfriend asked and Dara shook her head to the negative.
Not yet.

“
Good,” he smirked, straightening the tie knot. His cuff links winked in the low light cast from the sconces that were head height and lined the walls of the mansion where the fireman's ball would be held. Dara came forward into a larger foyer, leaving the compact vestibule behind.

Darrell leaned down next to Dara's ear, inches taller than she. He turned her hand over, hers very white in his black one and leaning over Darrell kissed the inside of her wrist. “I'm going to enjoy fucking you,” he said as Dara's pulse began to speed under the caress of those fingers.

Dara was not some young girl that became flustered because a gorgeous man stood before her, telling her how he thought it would go.

Darrell simply was not well enough acquainted with her to know better. Ignorance was her friend.

Dara knew how it would go. And with Zoe involved, though she wasn't absolutely certain- it should go their way. So Dara just smiled and leaned closer, allowing her breasts to push against Darrell's muscular chest. “And Zoe will enjoy sharing me with you,” she murmured and had the satisfaction of watching his brows pick up in surprise.

“
Well you're full of surprises, Professor Nichols,” he said, those dark eyes searching hers, hoping for clues. Her cool eyes gazed back, revealing nothing. The blessing of experience.

“
You have no idea,” Dara replied and he let her hand fall, his eyes taking on that look of dark anticipation where ownership and surety had been moments before.

“
I'm getting that.”

Zoe walked through the door and saw the two of them, her eyes assessing, missing nothing.
Stupid she isn't,
Dara thought. It made her pussy wet just thinking about Zoe's form of punishment. What she'd do to Dara's body when she found how she'd conned her.

It was so hot to contemplate that Dara pressed her thighs together.

Darrell watched the interchange between the two and licked his suddenly dry lips.

He didn't know how he'd get through this part of the evening without fucking them both. And Zoe had been worried about him being vanilla. He'd been with his share of women.

He didn't think they could surprise him.

Darrell was so wrong.

3

Zoe had consumed too much punch. She knew this because she was tottering outrageously on her heels, maintaining a balance that was usually automatic. Shoes were her weakness and Zoe collected them like she did men.

But her hunk-o-love firefighter was there to hold her elbow so she didn't face plant.

Dara was in a little better shape, those cat green eyes of hers watching Zoe covertly from across the room as a gaggle of tall firefighters loosened their ties and took their dates and wives out into the middle of the polished wood floor that had been meant for ballroom dancing at the turn of the last century, but was being used for barely better than a grind fest as the night wore on.

Strobe lights had been affixed in shadowed corners of the large hall, splashing their pulsing light in a random swirling pattern of dots of light. They fell on the swarming bodies of those who danced. Zoe didn't dance, though she could move with the best of them, but instead caught the random glances of men that looked her way. There was something that being only slightly drunk did: it heightened senses that were normally dull. Too drunk, and life slid by, washing over you. Too sober and it was a tedious tide of everydayness. Zoe was in that wonderful zone of the delicious chasm of hyper clarity and abandonment. Where every detail was there for her to see, to assimilate.

Her eyes narrowed. In her tipsy stupor she felt those surreptitious glances weren't so random and her gaze shifted to Dara again. Their eyes locked and Dara raised a slim white hand and fluttered perfectly manicured nail tips her way.

That bitch!
Zoe fumed,
She's up to fucking something.

Or fucking a lot of something
, Zoe huffed. Dammit, she was used to calling the shots. She orchestrated all their bullshit shenanigans expertly.

But clearly not this one.

“More punch, baby?” Darrell whispered in a lilt, his full lips planted at the intersect where her neck met her collarbone and she kinda shoved him. “No! I don't want any more punch!”

“
Hey baby, don't get like that....”

She turned toward him, her hands on her curvy hips and leaned forward into his personal bubble that she now owned. “Don't you 'hey baby' me; you and Dara have something going on?” Had Dara fucked her man?
God- damn
, Zoe spun on her heel, beelining for Dara. The alcohol fueling her like cold fire in her gut.

It was a bad combo. But Zoe wasn't thinking about that.

She was thinking about nailing Dara to the wall.

*

Dara's eyes widened when she caught sight of a volatile Zoe coming toward her, the heels of her stilettos stabbing the wood floor without mercy. Dara's eyes flew to Darrell's and he had that helpless look that guys sometimes get when they're not sure how to proceed in the minefield of females.

Maybe if Zoe was a guy he could have taken it in hand in a physical way. But Zoe was all-woman and on a warpath. Dara barely had time to admire that curvy figure strutting toward her before Zoe was in her face in a barely contained rage.
Maybe too much punch.

“
Something is going on, Dara- and I want to know what!” she all-but-howled over the beat of music that rained down around them.

The loose circle of firefighters, Darrell's close friends, tightened around her. “Come on Zo, let's talk about this somewhere else.” One of them said.
Kurt
, Dara remembered.

Dara dared to glance at Darrell again over Zoe's shoulder and she caught the look that passed between them. “See!” she shrieked, vindicated.

“It's not what you think, Zoe,” Dara began. But Zoe caught her arm, nails digging in. “Then what the fuck is going on? I've seen the looks between you two tonight, the looks from these other cock jugglers...”

Dara couldn't help it, a chuckle bursting out of her mouth and Zoe's lips twitched in response. It was damn hard to be pissed at Dara. There was just something about her that demanded attention. Usually of the sexual variety. But it was so fucking unfair. Dara had told her to go for it with Darrell. No holds barred. She was confused, her skin flushed, just enough booze down the pipe to muddle her senses, that weird clarity flashing in and out. And right now Dara was looking at her with barely contained lust.

Zoe's eyes shifted to Darrell.

Same look.

Suddenly, the wheels of her mind came to a grinding halt. She scanned the faces of the firefighters that weren't dancing. The only ones who weren't grinding out their bedroom moves on the strobe-lit dance floor.

Their expressions were a mirror of the half-burnt lust of her best friend and boyfriend.

Ah.

Zoe began to smile and a hesitant one lifted the corners of Dara's lips. A low, sexy chuckle erupted out of Zoe and she waggled her finger at Dara. “You're a very naughty girl.”

Dara could only nod, that treacherous smile hanging around her sexy red lips. “Takes one to know one,” she replied smoothly.

4

Darrell took Zoe's arm and she let him, a little flutter of excitement lighting in her chest as he exited through the back of the mansion. Dara followed, along with the four guys that trailed after them.

The music slipped away as the night embraced them and a building rose up on top of a knoll as it came into view. It was an old-fashioned firehouse. It wasn't in use anymore, Zoe knew, but she could see a low light flared inside one of the multi-divided windows. The cross-hatching of the quartzite was a subtle shadowing at the corners of the building and the only definition against the dark sky.

Darrell towed her toward the wide, barn-style doors and flipped the heavy bar off the brass clamps that held it closed and pushed them apart.

Zoe moved through and her eyes took in the space.

Everywhere she looked there were hoses. They hung from brass pegs embedded in the solid stone walls, the nickel worn through to the buttery brass that glowed softly in the low lighting. They were long. Like cloth ropes.

Sturdy.

Tie-able ....

Zoe turned on Darrell and his grin was a slash of white in the barely-there light of the huge building.

Dara came next and ran a nail lightly down Zoe's cheek, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I guess you're not the only one who likes a little tie-me-up.”

Apparently not
, Zoe realized.

*

The men came at them like prowling tigers, each one a different height, a different color. All muscular.

Like unique flavors of ice cream.

Who could stand just one kind?

Zoe heard the tinkling sounds as the metal of cufflinks hit the hard floor of the firehouse, the ties softly falling to join them like dismissed jewel-toned flags and she waited, her palms sweating.

Not feeling in charge at all.

Feeling totally in charge.

The alcohol made her loose, boneless. Her personality made her bold. Zoe never lost sight of that as she went for Darrell like a starving animal, latching onto the tie he hadn't discarded yet.