How Do Firemen Make Love (Flame On) (2 page)

How Do Firemen Make Love?

by

Dr
é
a Riley and Laura Guevara

Dréa dropped her head to her hands and swung her feet. The stocky bald guy was grilling her like she was a prime steak, and the rest of the crew were staring at all the hunky firemen going to and fro. Today was never going to end. What a fucking time to try to quit smoking.
Shit
. This was supposed to be fun, not another episode of “Dréa did it.” But it wasn’t her fault—this time.

“Ohmigosh, dude, I keep telling you, it wasn’t my fault,” she said on a deep, soulful sigh.

Jeanie and Jayha must’ve had those sonic big sister ears on, because at that point they both looked over at her askance. Their ability to sense her distress never ceased to amaze her. As big sisters went, they were the best.

Jeanie cocked an eyebrow and flicked her cigarette before rolling her neck and making a move to stand. It was only Jayha’s slight throat clearing that stopped her. Clearly, Jeanie was about to intervene and find out why the LVFD wasn’t taking Dréa’s story at face value.

“Dréa, are you all right?” Jayha called in that deceitfully calm, accent-less voice. She enunciated each of the words in a way that let any listener know she meant business, no matter that the words themselves weren’t threatening.

The rest of the crew continued with their perusal of the hotness parade that was more commonly known as the Vegas fire department. To the untrained eye, the women were merely milling about. But Dréa knew they were all waiting. Ready to come to her defense, kick ass, do some serious cussing, whatever the situation required. These folks didn’t really seem to understand who they were messing with. Though you’d think they’d remember that time a few years back when a certain toupee-wearing mogul had gotten cussed out right out on the Strip in front of God and everyone.

“I’m on it.” Laura bounded from her position in the middle of the seven other women. The Posse tended to rally around Shara and Laura, considering they were so short—er, vertically challenged. Couldn’t risk losing them in a crowd.
 
Laura and Dréa were the two youngest members of the Posse’s inner sanctum, so they were normally stuck together like glue. Laura was sometimes able to use the difference in their ages, a mere few months, to pull rank on the Posse cannonball and talk her out of a few of her more dangerous endeavors.

Laura made the short walk to Dréa’s side look like it was a mile-long runway. Several of the firemen stopped mid-stride to watch the curvy Latina sashay to a beat only she could hear. Dréa would have laughed out loud if she wasn’t concentrating on which one of the firemen she wanted to hook her best friend up with. None of the gawkers really seemed worthy.

“
Hola
,” Laura’s slightly accented voice tinkled as she drew near.

“Hey,
chiquita, ¿qué pasa?
”

“Oh my God, you just damn near blew up a hotel, and you’re gonna ask me what’s up. Dréa, I swear.”

“Hey, can it! First, I didn’t almost blow it up. It was just a small gooey fireball thingy. And second, it wasn’t like I was trying to do it. And third, it wasn’t my fault, must be some shitty wiring or something, ‘cause I was a good foot from the damn thing. I was just playing with that new lighter Jeanie scored me and wondering when we were gonna eat. I heard Jayha saying how it was hot, so I went to adjust the thing; I had to look at it for a minute. I mean who has things like that anymore? How come it didn’t have any buttons?
 
Or a digital readout?
 
I was using my lighter to read the little numbers, then WHAMO! Flaming alien snot all up on my boot. Man, I loved these boots. Those were originals. One of a kind! What am I gonna do, and when are we gonna eat? Go ask Jeanie if I can have a cigarette.”

“NO!”

Wow, seven sets of voices rang out. Dréa should have known the other ladies were listening. Funny, they let Jeanie smoke like a freight train, because that’s what Jeanie did, but she wasn’t allowed. In fact, Dréa thought, she wasn’t allowed to do a whole helluva lot.

“Which is so not right.”

“What’s not right?” Laura asked, her gaze trained on the back of a really hunky guy in a pair of dark blue dress pants that were caressing a nice high, round ass.

“The fact that you understand everything she just said” The short stocky man cut in.

“I swear I’ve been listening to her for fifteen full minutes and she isn’t speaking any language I’ve ever heard of. I just need to know how the fire started. Can you ask her that and then translate please”

*****

“Uh Oh” Reid whispered as the six other women tuned into what was going on.

“Bet you ten bucks Laura kicks his ass” Yazmin added. “You know how she and Dréa are together.”

“Nah,” Came Jeanie though she didn’t turn to watch, “He’s old, she’ll just cuss him a little bit”

“Twenty and a trip back to that purse store.” Yazmin countered.

Reid waivered, but she saw what no one else did. Laura wasn’t really paying attention to the short investigator. Someone behind him held her attention. Reid watched as Laura tipped her head to the side to peer around the older man in order to keep her eyes locked on the official-looking hunk. Reid also noticed Dréa toe off her remaining boot while pulling her shoulder-length braids into a ponytail.
 
Reid was sure Dréa would have pulled her earrings off as well, had she actually been wearing any.
 
From her perspective she could see things going awry—well, more than they already were—but she doubted Laura would be physically involved in the action this time. Nope, this was totally shaping up to be another Dréa smackdown kind of incident.

“Forget about the money—make it a bottle of champipple and you’re on.”

Laura never took her eyes off the hunk once he caught her attention. She was tempted to ignore the man who’d been asking Dréa questions, but he wouldn’t stop talking. He was like a gnat, and she just wanted to swat him.

“She said she didn’t do it,” Laura spat in the general direction of the little man.

“Huh,” he replied.

Laura sighed. The hunk she was watching made his way toward the hotel, and despite all her mental willing, he never turned around so she could get a look at him from the front.
 
 
Dammit!!
 
Laura was ticked off now. She was totally trying to see if hottie looked as good from the front, but no. Short and surly was just tall and round enough to block her view. What -
 
was he still talking? God, why was he still talking? He was lucky Dréa hadn’t already throttled him. Laura really was contemplating just letting her best friend punch him in the mouth. And Lord, did he just try to insinuate that Dréa wasn’t smart. That did it. She was going to set him straight, then leave him at Dréa’s mercy.
 
Angrily, she turned back to Dréa and the man who was now aggravating them both and repeated herself. Laura hated repeating herself.

“You said you couldn’t understand her. I translated. She. Didn’t. Do. It.”

Laura gave up attempting to keep herself between Dréa and the current object of her irritation.
 
Really, she thought to herself, why do people look at all the barely restrained energy that is Dréa and think to themselves,
Today, I want to risk getting cussed out in a made up mix of several languages and get my ass kicked all before lunch?

“Actually,” Dréa cut in after having secured her hair and tossed her much abused boot into a nearby trash can, “What I said was—” She began calmly and in a perfectly timed, eloquently drawled, husky timbre. Her voice was much more raspy and sultry than her usual hyper-excited meter, causing the whole crew to go on alert. Dréa was only ever truly understandable and calm when she was about to intentionally start or, in this case, finish something, “that I didn’t
fucking
do it. I am not really sure what part of that you can’t seem to grasp.
 
I’ve been saying it since you walked over here.
  
But if you ask me again, I’m going to do it.
IT
just won’t be the
IT
you keep asking me about. Then we are going to have ourselves a whole ’nother
IT
to worry about.”

By the time Dréa had finished speaking, she was less than a foot away from the investigator. For a moment he seemed to think he could hold his ground, but something about the way she’d put herself all up in his space daunted him. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that there were eight other sets of female eyes watching him, waiting for him to make one misstep. Or maybe it was the fact that the female directly in front of him had lost all of her childlike exuberance and had advanced on him so quickly he hadn’t had time to think she was anything less than barely restrained danger, much like the mercury that had burned through one of Vegas’s most luxurious hotels.

Laura was about to just let the man get what he had coming, but she heard Jayha’s feigned voice of reason ring out.

“Oh my God, someone stop Dréa, No, she did not just threaten that man. Out loud. In public. Lord, Shara, stop ogling the fire chief.”

“CHALLENGE!!!!!” Shara’s voice rang out so loud that firemen and guests alike stumbled to an abrupt halt and turned toward their merry little band of rogues.

“Oh Lord,” came from RaeLynn, who had thus far been quiet, but watchful. “No, Shara, we have to get this settled first, plus we have a lot of other challenges to do…just no.”

RaeLynn ended her plea on a sigh, knowing this was about to get deeper. There was about as much chance of stopping Shara on a challenge as there was of the Posse keeping Dréa out of trouble.

*****

Dréa crossed her arms over her ample chest, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her investigator all but slobbered over her boobs, and decided to dismiss the aggravating man. Shara had just issued another challenge, which was far more interesting than trying to talk herself out of yet another mess. Plus, she had to keep her eye on Jeanie.
 
Jayha didn’t care which one of them did it—if one was in trouble, the other automatically got put on lockdown.
 
She backed into position against the wall she’d previously occupied and listened to the rest of the Posse discuss fantasies. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the investigator shuffled from foot to foot before deciding to give up. He had apparently realized that he had a) just been granted a pardon on a mauling and b) wasn’t about to get another explanation. He threw his hands up in despair and made his way toward the hotel, mumbling about crazy women and hormones and the Fire Marshal taking over. Dréa kind of felt bad for the man. It was obvious he was disgruntled with his job.
 
But that, just like the fire, wasn’t her fault.

Bringing her attention back to the rest of the crew, she heard Laura suggest that instead of writing a new story based on all the cute firemen, they could maybe take turns spinning a tale just to entertain each other. It was obvious they weren’t going to be allowed to roam too far from their new digs for little while, so they may as well entertain each other.

“Fine,” Dréa said, shrugging her shoulders. “We’re in,” she volunteered herself and Laura. “As long as we get to eat; I am getting hangry.”

“What the hell is hangry?” RaeLynn asked.

The rest of the crew laughed. Though Dréa often spoke her own language and made up words to describe things, she’d opted to borrow one from her big sister Jeanie’s dictionary. Everyone knew that if Jeanie said she was hangry, things were about to go downhill quickly. Applying that word to Dréa could only be worse. The entire Posse agreed; for all intents and purposes, Dréa was definitely unstable, and it wouldn’t do to jostle her too often.

While Reid explained to RaeLynn that hangry was a combination of being angry and hungry at the same time, Shara claimed dibs on the fire chief—and Dréa had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t just for the fantasy challenge either. Jeanie and Yazmin fell in to a conversation about the MGM Lions and gondolas, and Jayha took a moment to call the Posse lawyers.

Dréa sighed and looked over at Laura. “Okay, freakazoid, what’s our fantasy, are we dominating or being dominated, and do you think we could fantasize in some food, ’cause really, I am freaking starving.”