Chapter Six Noelle
I hate him.
I decide this approximately three times over the next few hours.
Once while reviewing photo evidence of the accelerant residue.
Again while pretending to listen to Mateo explain why Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie ever made.
And a third time while lying awake in my bed later that night, staring up at the stupid string lights still taped over the headboard.
He is the single most infuriating person I have encountered in my professional career. And that is saying something, because I once spent six weeks working alongside a federal agent who chewed with his mouth open and took credit for my evidence.
The problem is that my body doesn’t appear to have received the memo, because every time I close my eyes, there’s his face, looming so dangerously close to mine. His voice, rumbling deep with a challenge. His gaze, so dark and heated.
He’d been standing so close to me in the conference room earlier that I could feel the warmth radiating off him.
My barren little bedroom is dark except for the merry illumination winking at me overhead, casting a rainbow glow across my bare legs as I spread them.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be sleeping or preparing for tomorrow, literally anything but lying here with my fingertips gliding down between my thighs.
But I can’t stop thinking about him, and I’m afraid the only solution might be to simply allow myself to take the edge off.
And God I hate how he looks at me. Like I’m something he owns, something to be commanded, rather than someone who depends on his willing collaboration.
The way he towered over me just to force my chin to tilt up, as if he wanted nothing more than remind me how much bigger he is.
The audacity of it. The fucking arrogance.
My fingers slide beneath the waistband of my sleep shorts, and I’m already wet.
I think I hate myself, too.
In my mind, he’s here now, standing at the foot of my bed with that infuriating smirk playing on his lips.
“Look at you,” he might say, his voice low and commanding. “Already desperate for me, aren’t you?”
Stupid handsome beast. Know-it-all control freak.
I bite my lip as my fingers find my clit, circling slowly. I’m not desperate. I’m just a little stressed out.
“You think you can ignore me?” he’d probably growl. “You think I don’t know what you need?”
My fingers move faster, matching the rhythm of my quickening breath. He’d be rough with me, I think. Not cruel, of course, but definitely demanding. Taking what he wants without apology, without asking twice.
“You’re going to look at me when I speak to you,” he’d command, maybe gently wrapping his fingers around my throat with the barest hint of a sexy threat. “You should answer when someone asks you a question.”
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.