Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (11 page)

Everybody thought he was shallow. With very few exceptions, he let them think it. Even people he loved. What he was, though, was careful. He wasn’t good at losing what he loved. It made him an asshole. More than that, it made him dangerous, and not in the controlled way that was his job. It was much easier and safer not to let his feelings sink in deep.

So, feeling rocked by the way he and Cordero—Pilar—were talking, the ease and depth of their conversation, knowing that they were on the precipice of something significant and afraid to make that jump, he responded to her thoughtful explanation of her career choice with his oiliest grin. “Well, it makes you a badass bitch, that’s all I know.”

Her gold eyes darkened, and she sat back abruptly.

And they were back where they belonged.

~oOo~

Cordero’s friend, Kyle or Moore or whatever, was almost as big as Connor was. And he knew how to fight; he’d proved that last time. But Connor was leaving the ring tonight one of only two ways: a winner or unconscious.

The Deck had a ref in the ring who’d call a fight if it got too intense, regardless of whether anyone had tapped. That was how Connor had lost to Moore the last time—he’d had his legs kicked out from under him and then been caught in some bullshit submission hold. He wasn’t that kind of fighter, he was more of the ‘keep hitting them until they stop moving’ school, but he felt sure he would have been able to break the hold if he’d been given the shot. He hadn’t tapped. The ref had called it.

Tonight, he’d paid the ref off to let the fight go to tapout or knockout.

The fight started out like any other. They’d come into the ring barefoot and stripped to their jeans, their hands taped and gloved. Cordero had his clothes and boots at their table. She was sitting there in that sinful little dress, looking gorgeous, her face lit up with amusement. He winked down at her just before the ref set him and Moore loose on each other.

Moore did a little flitting like a butterfly, but that wasn’t Connor’s style. Especially this time. Knowing that the guy liked to use his feet, Connor went in fast and hard, taking a combination to Moore’s gut. He put his back into it and laid the fucker out.

Flat on the canvas, gasping, Moore glared up at him. “What the fuck, man?”

Connor grinned. “It’s a fight, asshole. You out already?”

“Blow me.” Moore rolled to his knees and stood.

Connor waited until Moore faced him and then took the same combination right back to him. This time, Moore kept his feet and came back with a hard uppercut to Connor’s face. His jaw cracked dangerously, but he could tell it hadn’t broken. It would swell, though.

Moore obviously had expected that blow to stun him, and tried to capitalize on that. He spun, bringing in some of that Jackie Chan shit he liked so much, but Connor caught the leg coming at him with both hands. He pulled and put Moore on the mat again, so hard his head bounced.

“Told you, asshole. All you had going for you last time was surprise.” Too smart to follow Moore to the mat and set himself up for one of those holds, he waited for him to get back up to his feet.

And then Moore abandoned his flashy tricks and flew at him. Connor didn’t take the time to laugh, but it was exactly what he’d wanted: to piss the shithead off. Make him stupid.

After that, it was a mutual bludgeoning. Moore got his shots in, and Connor was feeling it, but he knew he had the advantage. Cordero’s bestest buddy’s face was ground meat. Still, neither of them showed any signs of letting up, and the ref was giving them what Connor had paid for.

It was Cordero who stopped the fight. She came up to the ring and started yelling at the ref, and when that didn’t get her anywhere, she started yelling right at them. Connor, who was well trained to pay attention to what was around him even when he was taking blows to his head, noticed and disregarded her.

“Stop, you fucking idiots! Moore, you have to work in the morning! Connor, back the fuck off! What are you doing? STOP!”

Moore stopped. They were on their feet, so he said, “Yield. I yield, motherfucker.” And Connor backed off.

“Good fight,” he said, spitting blood onto the canvas.

“Fuck you.” Moore’s words had gotten pretty mushy.

Okay, then. There was no fanfare to winning a fight at The Deck, and none of the Horde were there—it was a Friday night; they were all at the clubhouse. So he just nodded and climbed through the ropes. Cordero was right there, and he grinned and reached out, but she turned from him and went to Moore instead.

Connor stood there and watched as Cordero went to her friend and took his face in her hands, checking his wounds. She brushed her fingers over his profusely bleeding eyebrow.

Connor had taken his share of blows, too, and it pissed him off to be standing there bleeding, on their date, while she fussed over her friend.

Fuck this shit. He took a cheap towel from the stack at the side of the ring and wiped his face and chest, then threw the bloody, sweaty towel into the plastic bin provided for that purpose. Then he went and pulled his shirt back on.

She’d driven, so he didn’t have a ride. He’d have to call his father; his brothers would be too wasted by now to pick him up. Great. Fucking great.

“What the hell, Connor?” She was standing right behind him.

He turned and faced her. Behind her, Moore was headed to the table full of firefighters. “It was a fight. We were fighting.”

“You were fighting like it mattered.”

“All fights matter.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

He was too tired, and sore, for another fight. “Whatever. You know what? This is a bad idea. Go tend to your buddy. I’m out.” He left his shirt unbuttoned and bent to pull his boots on.

“Out where? I drove.”

“Yeah, and that was a mistake. Don’t worry, puss. I can sort myself out.”

If she reacted to him calling her ‘puss,’ he missed it. “Your kutte is in my car. You at least have to go out there with me to get it.”

Fuck. “Fine. Then let’s go get it.”

~oOo~

When they got out there, he reached for the door handle, but she hadn’t unlocked the doors yet. He turned and stared at her, waiting.

She walked up to him. “What the fuck happened?”

“You pitched a bitch fit. Think that sums it up.”

Balling up her fist, she popped him in his right arm—which was feeling the effort of the fight. Ow. “Fuck you. If anyone was a bitch in there, it was you. Why’d you go at him so hard?”

“It was a rematch. Payback. That’s how I fight.” He forced himself to laugh. “What, you think it was about you?”

She didn’t take the bait. “Wasn’t it?”

“We’re just messing around, right? Why would it be about you?”

Of course it was about her. Before he’d gotten in the ring, he’d known it was about her. He’d known standing outside her station that he wanted to fight the guy again not just to win but because he’d had his hands all over Cordero, and that had pissed Connor off.

Instead of answering, she grabbed his head. In those crazy high heels, she was only a couple of inches shorter than he was, and when she pulled him close, she was right there to plant one on him.

He was still reeling with adrenaline from the fight, and with anger from what had happened after. He was jealous—and mad about that, too. He was fucking hot for her even as he was furious. So when she kissed him, he grabbed her and turned them both around, shoving her up against her car.

With a gasp he caught in his mouth, she yielded to him completely, and her body softened and molded to his. This was a thing he was figuring out about her—she was a tough bitch and fought tooth and nail with him at first, but it was like she was making him fight for the right to have his way with her. She was a bottom who came on like a top. It was electrifying, the fight and the surrender.

And he could not have cared less in that moment about the anger he’d been feeling. All he wanted now was to be inside her.

His shirt was still open, and the feel of her writhing against his chest made his balls tighten. Pushing his hand between their bodies, he dragged the top of her dress down; she wasn’t wearing a bra, and when her firm, naked tits pressed to his chest, he groaned and turned the heat up on their kiss, knowing that he was being rough, and knowing, too, the way she was responding to his demands.

Then he moved his hand and dragged the bottom of her dress up until it was bunched at her hip. She was wearing a wisp of a thong; he pushed it out of the way and plunged his fingers inside her.

She was so goddamn wet.

She tore her mouth from his and cried out, but she didn’t stop him—far from it. Instead, she flexed on him, picking up his rhythm, and sought his mouth again, her nails digging into the back of his neck.

His face was sore from the fight, and he knew his lip was bleeding freely as they kissed, but he didn’t care, and neither did she.

Nor did they care that they were in the middle of The Deck’s brightly-lit parking lot, leaning against her car, all but fucking right then and there. He had every intention of actually fucking her right then and there.

He took his fingers out of her and grabbed a condom out of his pocket. Without breaking their kiss or even slowing it down, he opened his belt and jeans and pulled himself free.

Once the condom was on, he grabbed the backs of her thighs and lifted. She helped right away, hooking her legs around him. And then he shoved into her. Again, she cried out, but he didn’t let her mouth go, so he took all the sound into himself. Those studded heels pushed at his loosened jeans and dug into his ass, and he pounded into her, grunting into her mouth, slamming her body into the side of her car again and again until it rocked on its wheels.

There was too much intensity, too much heat, too much need. It wasn’t going to last long, and they both knew it. She wanted it as fast as he did—he could tell because even pinned as she was, her body rocked and writhed, urging him on.

Pushing his hand between them, he found her clit and worked it until she arched back and went stiff and still. Recognizing her finish, he let himself complete, too, pounding wildly until pleasure burst in his gut and he tore his mouth from hers and practically howled.

Before he could catch his breath, she was squirming to get loose from him. He obliged her, pulling out fast enough to make them both wince.

She started pulling her clothes back to rights quickly, and she didn’t look at him. As he pulled off the condom and tied it off, he asked, “You okay?” Maybe she was regretting the direction their fight had taken them.

“Yeah. Just—let’s get in the car.” She looked around the parking lot, something like guilt or shame playing over her face.

Ah. He got it, and he grabbed her hand before she could pull away. “You don’t like fucking in public.”

“Not my kink.” Then she looked up at him, and her expression calmed. “It was hot, though.” She smiled and brushed her fingers over his sore lip. The touch moved him more than it should have.

“What
is
your kink, Cordero?” What he’d seen of her drawer of toys was too much of a cornucopia to have offered much insight.

“Come home with me and find out.”

CHAPTER TEN

They didn’t talk at all on the ride back to her place.

Pilar’s brain was grinding its gears, trying to make sense of the night—the strange dinner, which had been fun and illuminating and irritating and confusing, all in a disorienting cycle; the bizarre scene at The Deck, with Connor and Moore trying to kill each other, and the ref letting it happen, as if he’d been paid off or something.

Oh, fuck. That was it. One of them had paid him off.

Connor. It had to have been Connor.

Stopping at the end of the off-ramp that would lead them to her home, Pilar turned and studied the man in her passenger seat. Mostly, she saw the back of his head, because he was staring out the side window. But she knew his face was pretty messed up. Moore looked a lot worse, though. Only one man had gone into that ring with an agenda beyond competition.

Why?

Because of her. He’d denied it, but it was true. He was jealous. She’d known it at the station, and she’d liked it. Well, tonight had been the consequence. And she still kind of liked it.

Hence the rabid fucking in the parking lot. Public sex was a line for Pilar. She didn’t like it, she didn’t think it was hot, she didn’t want to see or do it. Getting walked in on was one thing. She wasn’t shy; half her life was spent living with men who saw her naked often enough that she no longer cared. But she wasn’t looking for an audience. Sex, even casual sex, was intimate, and it deserved at least a semblance of fucking privacy. Something in her life should be private.

But she’d loved what they’d done, at least while they’d been doing it. It had been all dark need and fire, and for that it was one of the hottest encounters she could remember. She’d never had even the slimmest thought to stop.

They needed to talk. Like, real talk.

He turned, his brow creased with a frown. Yeah, his face needed some attention—in addition to the swollen jaw and bruised cheek, there was a cut over one eye, blood smeared and caked around it, and another through his bottom lip. She’d tasted that one in the parking lot. For all she knew, her own mouth was streaked with blood, too.

Okay, first things first: she’d fix him up, and then they’d talk.

And then, depending on how that went, maybe she’d show him her kink.

“Problem?” he asked, and she realized she’d been stopped at the intersection for too long.

She checked for cars and then made her left. “We need to talk.”

He didn’t answer, just turned back to look out the window.

~oOo~

The garage door was open; Mrs. Lee had a tendency to forget. They shared the two-car space, Mrs. Lee’s old Ford Taurus on one side and Pilar’s Element on the other. She parked her Victory against the back wall—and usually left her Element on the side skirt of the driveway, because as a two-car space, that garage was a joke, and Mrs. Lee had to open her door all the way to get her arthritic legs out of her car.

She parked in the driveway now. As they got out, she hit the remote for the garage door, and the door began to roll down. Connor looked over and then sort of tilted his head.

“Who rides?”

“What?” She met him at the back of the Honda.

“There’s a bike in there. Whose?”

“Mine. I ride.”

The way his expression shifted told her that he’d been set to be jealous again. There was an uncomfortable second as that feeling warred with the one brought on by her answer, and then he smiled, wincing when his lip spread. “Nice. Didn’t catch the make—but not a Harley.”

“No. Victory Hammer.”

“Nice.”

He seemed impressed, maybe even pleased, but Pilar didn’t want to talk bikes. “Come on. I’ve got first aid stuff inside.”

Once inside, she led him to her kitchen and sat him down on a chair in her little dining nook. Then she got her kit and some other supplies. When she came back, he was sitting with his elbows on her table, resting his head in his hands. He looked up as she set the kit in front of him.

“You feel dizzy?”

“Nah. Just tired.” He reached for the kit, but she brushed his hand away.

“I got it. Just be still.” Stepping between his legs, she lifted his head. He never had buttoned his shirt, and his broadly cut, perfect chest was right there. It made her mouth water.

First she wiped his face with a wet washcloth. He closed his eyes and let her, his face relaxed even as she pressed down to clean the blood from his cuts.

“You paid the ref or something didn’t you? To let you fight as long as you wanted.”

He opened his eyes but didn’t answer. Not saying ‘no’ was answer enough.

“Because you’re jealous of Moore.”

He shook his head.

“Bullshit.”

“Pretty high opinion of yourself, puss.”

She pushed his chin away and dropped the washcloth. As she rifled for an antiseptic wipe, she snarled, “I fucking hate it when you call me that. I could tell the first time I heard it that you call all the women you don’t care about that—and the waitress at dinner proved me right. It’s just short for ‘pussy,’ isn’t it? Because that’s how you see all women.” She was wiping his lacerations with the antiseptic, and this time, as she dug at the cut over his eye, he winced and pulled back.

“Not all women, no.”

Guessing what he meant, she rolled her eyes. “All women but your mother, then.”

“What does it matter? Why do you care?”

She shied away from that answer and instead asked another question. “Why did you come home with me?”

“What? You invited me.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from his face.

“Yeah, but you got your fuck, and we’re pissed at each other. Why’d you come?”

He stared. “I’m not pissed.”

“Well, I am.” She set the wipe aside and got a butterfly bandage from her kit. As she affixed it over his eyebrow, she asked, “What are we doing, Connor?”

Again he stared, but this time his eyes moved, scanning back and forth over Pilar’s face, as if he were looking for something she was hiding. But that was the point of her questions—she didn’t want to hide. She’d decided she wanted something—someone. Him. And not just for fun. She could feel their chemistry, their connection, and it fed something inside her. Maybe a guy like this would get her and would give her room for the life she lived.

Then a mask seemed to slide over his face, and he answered her latest question. “I thought I was here to fuck you.”

That hurt. As at dinner, when just at the moment she’d been feeling most connected, he’d said something cavalier and a little bit shitty, she felt almost like he’d literally pushed her away.

There was going for what you wanted, and there was throwing yourself into an emotional blender, and Pilar knew that the line between the two was coming up fast. But she was just figuring all this out herself, and she knew she was changing the terms, terms she’d been the first to set up. It had been
her
pushing
him
back until tonight.

She brushed her fingertips over a cheek that was swollen but not cut, and his eyes fluttered closed for a second. “You don’t want more than that?”

His hands grabbed her hips, and for a second, Pilar thought he was going to pull her onto his lap. Instead, he pushed her backward and stood up.

“I told you. I don’t like complications. I like you. I like hanging out, and I love fucking you. But no. I don’t want more than that.”

She knew that was bullshit. She
knew
it, could feel the truth of it. But she didn’t call him on it. He was going to leave. When he buttoned his shirt and pulled his kutte off the back of the chair, she simply watched.

She wasn’t surprised when he said, “I’m going. I’m sorry about the parking lot. I don’t make a habit of fucking women in ways they don’t want.”

“I wanted it.”

He chuckled without humor. “Okay, then. Thanks for the medical attention. I’ll see you around.”

I’ll see you around
. He was done. Fuck, Pilar did not want that. She wanted to explore what they were feeling, why they were feeling it. There was something between them. There was, damn it! “Connor, wait.”

She reached out, but he grabbed her hand before she could touch him. “I thought we understood each other, Cordero.”

For the first time, her last name sounded wrong in his voice. “We do. That’s my point. I think we understand each other.”

“Not what I meant.” He dropped her hand and turned from her, and he headed straight to her front door. She followed him to the doorway between the kitchen and her living room and saw that he didn’t even pause before he opened the door and went away.

She was still standing in the same spot, gripping the jamb with one hand, when she heard his big Harley chopper roar and then fade away.

There’d been a window somewhere in the little time they’d known each other. Maybe it had been the morning here, after he’d spent the night, when he’d said he wanted to see her again. Maybe if she’d done something other than back away from him, the window between them would have stayed open.

But she hadn’t. What she was feeling had surprised her, and that morning had been too early to see what she really wanted. She’d let the window close.

Fuck.

~oOo~

“Station 76 on two-story stucco residence, heavy fire and smoke, multiple exposures, heavy brush twenty feet. Report of two missing, assumed at risk. Using super booster, next company in bring a line.”

Pilar heard Guzman’s call for backup in her headset and filed it away in her head. It was nothing she didn’t already know. She and Moore prepared to enter the structure, a house at the end of a cul de sac. Off to the side of the scene were a mother and two children, getting medical assistance from Nguyen and Perez. They were distraught. The father was in the house; he’d been trapped by the fire while trying to get their third child out.

This was a hot one, but unless it was fully involved, a fire could usually be navigated by someone who understood it and had the right gear. The mother had reported that the little boy had been in the kids’ bathroom upstairs. Her husband had gone for him.

Now, the staircase and hallway were engaged. And that was the puzzle. Every rescue had one; the thing that kept a citizen trapped was the thing that the rescue team had to solve. In this case, it was getting to an interior room on the second floor when the only staircase was already involved. They’d tried a ladder into a second-floor window, but the involvement blocked that option completely. They had to climb.

And there was no human sound coming from above, no sign that anyone was hoping for help. That could be a good thing—the father could have had them on the floor away from the heat, knowing to save their oxygen.

Or they could have been incapable of calling for help.

While Moore called for a line, Pilar stood at the foot of the stairs and watched the fire. She put her hand on the wall; her gloves had sensors in the fingertips and palm that read out information onto her face shield about the environment—temperature, oxygen content, etc. The data glowed green and seemed to float over the wavering reds and yellows and whites in the fire.

“I see it. I’m going up.” She tightened her grip around her Halligan and put her boot on the first step, right against the wall.