Sweet Sizzle: A Red Hot Valentine Story Read Free

proper shuteye for the third straight day in a row.
    Only she felt all too substantial. Soft. Enticing. A luscious wonderland waiting to be explored. Or re -explored, as the case may be. He slipped his hands underneath the cuffs of her down jacket and circled his fingertips over the delicate curvature of her wrists. She definitely smelled real too. Plucking the olive green plaid cap from her, he ducked and buried his nose in the shiny blonde cascade of her hair, inhaling a greedy lungful of that fancy floral scent he’d always screwed up the name for. Forsythia? No, that’s a bush, ya dumb ass . Freesia. Yup, that was the one.
    A stinging slap came out of nowhere, knocking him back a step. He wagged his head again, this time a bit more forcefully as he attempted to clear the stars spinning in his eyes. Okay, that’d sure as shit felt real.
    “You have a lot of goddamned nerve, you son of a bitch.”
    He blinked at Rory’s furious countenance as she snatched her cap from him and angrily tugged it back in place over her lush, golden waves. Realization crashed into him with a heavier wallop than the time he got T-boned by a passing ladder. “ Ro ?”
    “Oh, gee, so you do remember me. Guess that’s something .” Fire flashed in her eyes, and the unspoken “ mother fucking dickbag ” that he suspected she longed to tag onto the end of her reply sat like an elephant between them.
    Not that he blamed her if she did despise his guts. He was more than deserving of any knee-to-the-groin scheme she might have in the planning stage. On the off chance that was about to become a reality, he cautiously angled his hip away from her, lessening the odds of a direct nail in the family jewels. Yeah, he rightfully had it coming, but he was no damn idiot. At least not when it came to shielding his privates from a justifiably pissed off woman. “Of course I remember you. For shit’s sake, I damn well asked you to marry me.”
    Judging from the scariness of her expression, that might not have been the most intelligent comeback in the history of ever. Stupid ass lack of sleep. One way or another, it was bound to get him fit for a body bag.
    “Thank you so much for reminding me of that. Oh hey, while we’re skipping down nostalgia lane, how about that time I had to get my appendix removed? Or no, wait; we can’t forget Mr. Fluff’s early retirement to the cat convalescent home in the sky after the neighbor’s Jeep squished him. Good memories!”
    He winced. Before he had a chance to stick his foot farther down his throat, Michael, Dallas, and Nev rounded the corner. All three men grinned when they spotted him and Rory. Michael was the first to speak. “Don’t be getting any sneaky ideas, bro. Those cookies are already spoken for.”
    The appreciative glint in Michael’s eyes while he smiled at Rory made it crystal clear that it wasn’t the cookies he was salivating over. Out of all of the guys at the station, Michael was the one Ben most considered his best mate. The other men loved to routinely razz the probie—not that Ben didn’t indulge in the pastime now and then. He was a card-carrying member of the Y Chromosome Club, after all. The difference with Ben though was he and Michael had been friends long before they started working together, so Ben had six plus years of accumulated credit in the heckling department. But right now he possessed zero interest in good naturedly ribbing Michael. Nope. Cold cocking  Michael and busting a few of his teeth? That held some potential.
    Instead of giving into the primal urge, Ben settled for another. Though he no longer owned any claim on Rory, it didn’t stop him from scooping her against his side and resting his hand on her hip. Michael and the other men’s expressions clued Ben in that they’d gotten his Back the Fuck Off message in glaring surround sound. The way Rory nearly dislocated his shoulder socket when she wrenched out of his hold hinted that she’d intercepted the memo