Scorcher

Resplendence Publishing, LLC

Edgewater
,
Florida
,
32132

Scorcher

Copyright © 2009, Celia Kyle

Edited by Tiffany Mason

Cover art by Rika Singh

Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-074-3

Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Electronic release: October 2009

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter One
.
4

Chapter Two
.
13

Chapter Three
.
18

Chapter Four
20

About the Author
26

Brant’s girlfriend was going to be the death of him. Again. Oh, she hadn’t meant to blow him up that one time before… But it’d happened, and he’d had to pretend to go on some “vacation” while he spent a day or two rising from the ashes. Folklore was not entirely accurate in that respect. Sure, phoenixes came back from the dead…eventually.

Right now, he was feeling that telltale ache in his gut, letting him know that a fire was eminent. Something he’d been able to do since he was knee-high to his grandpa. Some three hundred years now.

Long ago he’d broken from tradition and decided to live alone, working fires and saving lives with his ability, living as a human and searching for his fire mate at every turn. By now, he’d figured that a mate wasn’t in the cards for him, and he’d found himself a gal that made his heart nearly stop every time he saw her.

Half the time it stopped from her beauty both inside and out. The other half of the time his heart nearly disintegrated was because something else around her old ranch house had caught fire or blown up while she stood inches—sometimes less—from the flames. She was unlucky as all get out in some respects, and the luckiest woman alive in others.

Thank fire.

Brant took a break from his paperwork, endless paperwork since he’d become the chief and fire investigator for the town, and stepped outside. The wind whipped around him, caressing his face, warming and cooling him at the same time, calling to his bird. His back tingled, wings fluttering beneath the surface, and he ached to take flight, searching for the fire. Then again, he knew exactly where it would be. He could feel a pull toward the north and west of the station. Open fields of dirt, rock and brush, as well as Phoebe’s place, laid out that way. He didn’t think the brush spontaneously combusted, which meant his Phoebe had gotten into trouble. Again.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, tugging on the long ends. He needed a haircut, needed to tidy up, but after he made sure his girlfriend survived this newest round of Phoebe versus catastrophe.

Brant ambled toward his truck, noting how the house’s badge, along with the big black words that proclaimed him chief and investigator, contrasted with the four-by-four’s pristine white paint.

Brant’s right-hand man, Damon, was lounging on the picnic table, reading a book and seeming to enjoy the cool weather. “She at it again, Chief?”

Dang, he hadn’t realized he was that predictable. “It seems so.”

“Gut got you headed out that way, or is your dick doing the talking?” Damon cackled, his laugh carrying through the yard.

Yeah, predictable. “Gut this time,
ya
jealous bastard.” He smiled good-naturedly. He hated talking about Phoebe like that, but boys would be boys and he didn’t want to alienate his crew. They depended on each other when they went into fires and harmony was essential. “I think she’s busted something else, and knowing her, she’s mad as a hornet.”

“And mad sex is the best sex…”

Brant scooped up a rock from the ground and tossed it Damon’s way, making sure to miss the idiot. “Shut it, fucker.”

Damon dashed out of the way, laughing, a smile on his face. “Just
fuckin
’ with
ya
man. Just
fuckin
’ with
ya
. Tell Phoebe I said hi.”

With that, Damon returned to his book and Brant continued his trek toward the truck, Phoebe on his mind. The woman just had the worst luck in the world, but at least it let him come to her rescue pretty often. And any time spent with her ultimately led to time in her bed. He just wished her heart would follow through.

Damn, but he loved that woman. If only…

Thoughts of fire mates and the penalty of mating with non-
firekin
occupied his thoughts while he backed out of the station’s parking lot. Part of him thought Phoebe might just be worth mortality.

With her pale brown skin that seemed to glow in moonlight and reminded him brown sugar, her shoulder length dark brown hair that he loved to run his fingers through regardless of her screams, and her ass that he liked to squeeze and grasp whenever he could… Yeah, she was worth dying for. Permanently.

* * * *

Frozen pizza could not be that difficult to cook. Seriously. Only, for Phoebe, it seemed equivalent to cooking an eight-course gourmet meal.

She read the directions again. The oven temp was set to three hundred degrees. The pizza was placed directly on the rack and the oven door was closed. Yet the damned oven wasn’t HEATING. Everything was plugged in, power running, doing its “power” thingy. What more could she possibly do?

“
Gah
!” She threw her hands up and stomped toward her living room. Calm was a necessity. Maybe she just needed to give the oven more time. Electronics, especially those related to cooking, didn’t work well around her. Perhaps she just needed to give the oven some “personal space”.

In the living room, Phoebe snuggled into her favorite 1970’s plaid corduroy chair and clutched the matching pillow to her chest, watching the clock as the seconds and minutes ticked by. Who would have thought that little Phoebe Williams would end up in the middle of
Arizona
, a zillion miles from her family and friends? Well, obviously, her grandma did or Phoebe wouldn’t be living in the dead broad’s home.

She rubbed her cheek against the pillow, the worn fabric sliding easily against her skin and soothing her with scents of her grandmother. The woman had been exactly like Phoebe in so many ways. They’d been two peas in a pod when she was growing up, and her heart still ached, two years later, with the loss.

Phoebe glanced at the mantle clock and noticed that a good fifteen minutes had passed since she’d sat down. The stupid pizza was supposed to take eighteen, so she figured she’d pop over to the kitchen and take a gander.

She padded down the hallway, fingers stroking the retro wallpaper that she couldn’t quite gather the courage to change. Everything about the house reminded her of times past and she still hadn’t been able to remodel. The old pictures of her parents as teenagers still hung on the walls, as did the baby pictures of her mother and aunts and uncles. Images of Phoebe also lined the hallway, the family’s brag wall.

The slapping of her feet against the old cherry wood flooring was the only other sound in the dilapidated farmhouse. Again, cause Phoebe and electronics didn’t mix too well. No TV or radios. Didn’t matter though, she had her books and plenty of time to wander the plains of
Arizona
in the early evenings to keep her occupied. Plus, occasionally she made her way into
Winthrop
for some
personal
stimulation of the man-I’d-like-to-marry-but-just-fuck kind.

Okay, he was a fuck buddy. There.

But damn, what a buddy was he. And then there was the whole, “in love with him” thing she had going on. Damn it.

If only…

Inside the kitchen, Phoebe approached the stove carefully, as if it were a wild animal just waiting to pounce and devour her like its mid-day meal. And for all she knew, it was.

She eased the door to the oven open slowly, careful of any heat that could come rushing out and felt…nothing.

She poked her head into the oven and a burst of flames came spitting at her, singing her tank top. Thank God for her fiery nature. Instead of getting mad at the darned thing, she got even.

Phoebe opened the door fully, making sure it’d stay ajar, and brought her palms together, rubbing them back and forth and curving her hands until they formed a ball in which flames began to build. Faster and harder she rolled her hands together, and bigger and bigger the ball grew until she held an orb of fire within her outstretched palms.

Then she threw the ball at the appliance. And blew up the stove.

“Take that!”

No pizza for her tonight.

And she’d have to come up with another reason to have a stove delivered from the Sears in town. Unless she ordered it online. But having a
UPS
truck out to the ranch would cause just as much talk as the hot Sears man. Yeah, better to have people thinking she’s lusting after the Sears guy than having them figure out the truth.

Phoebe was a lousy excuse for a Salamander.

Only, no one but she and the family knew about her inability to do even the simplest fire maneuvers. Their nature was a secret to all but those that were
firekin
, and since no one in
Winthrop
or the nearby cities qualified, that meant that she lived a more solitary life than most of her family. Then again, for all she knew, a
firekin
could be under her nose and she’d never know. She had the worst ability to scent another
firekin
, and most of the kin could mask what they were. Phoebe’s sense seemed to be permanently in the “off” position, and her own abilities were so whacked out that even her parents couldn’t scent her as kin. And they did the whole “birthing” thing to have her! At least they had each other and she had…a broken oven. She also had a fuck buddy that had turned into more of a boyfriend and less of a plain buddy.

Maybe it was time to put him out to the trash along with the stove. She couldn’t afford attachments to a human. Not when she lived forever.

Phoebe glanced out the kitchen window that faced the road and noticed a high dust trail coming toward her. Great. Think of the devil with the biggest cock west of the
Mississippi
and he shall appear.