Crave for Me Read online

  A Firefighter Bad Boy Romance (Book 3)

  Rayman Black

  Jacob Allen

  Contents

  1. Katie

  2. Chris

  3. Katie

  4. Chris

  5. Katie

  6. Kevin

  7. Katie

  8. Chris

  9. Katie

  10. Chris

  11. Katie

  12. Chris

  13. Katie

  14. Chris

  15. Katie

  16. Chris

  17. Katie

  18. Chris

  19. Katie

  20. Chris

  21. Katie

  22. Chris

  23. Katie

  24. Chris

  25. Katie

  26. Chris

  Epilogue: Katie

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  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

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  1

  Katie

  We were only two hours into a six hour flight, and already I had a headache. For a group of women celebrating the impending marriage of one of their own, my friends were actually pretty quiet. They talked low and stifled their laughter, doing their best to be considerate of the other people on the plane, who maybe weren’t on their way to an impromptu bachelorette party weekend. But to me, these women might as well have been shouting through bull horns.

  Lori stage-whispered, “Hey Judith, do you think we’ll get her into a strip club? You know, whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?” She brushed her golden hair out of her eyes and waggled her eyebrows suggestively, leaning over Sabrina Norris to look at Judith Bowes, who sat by the far aisle. All of us were crammed elbow to elbow with each other in the middle row.

  “Lori Westwell-Dixon,” hissed Sabrina, our bride-to-be, elbowing her back. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to a strip club. Is it a rule somewhere that because I’m getting married I have to watch other people take their clothes off for money? Because I think that’s pretty stupid. I would be so pissed if I found out Kevin was in one this weekend. It’s completely disrespectful.”

  I spoke up without thinking first. “I don’t really see what the big deal is. If it’s all in good fun, and you trust each other, what’s the harm?” Three heads turned to look at me, eyes wide. Oh, shit, I thought belatedly. I forgot to smile and make it a joke. I should have just kept that one to myself. It was harder to remember to cloak everything in humor with this headache screaming in the background, but the last thing I wanted was everyone’s attention on me. I wasn’t up for pretending to be the life of the party yet. My heart was too close to the surface. It required time and privacy to put on all the party girl layers.

  I tried a forced smile. “I mean, it’s just tits and ass, right? You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” Good Lord, I needed to just shut up. Staying quiet was drawing less attention than talking normally, without my usual sarcasm and banter.

  Lori and Judith smiled uncertainly, unsure of what to do with me right now. I tried not to glare at them. I wasn’t the one changing everything. If anyone had the right to be unsure, it was me.

  “Are you alright, Katie?” Sabrina asked, her dark eyes worried. “You’re not acting like yourself today.”

  No, you wouldn’t think so, would you? I thought bitterly, but I smiled a little brighter. “Sorry, honey. I’m not trying to be a drag on your special trip. I’m just a little out of sorts, I guess. I don’t fly well,” I lied. Actually, I was a fine traveller, but no way was I getting into the reasons for my headache. Or my mood. Not with Sabrina, and not when the focus was meant to be on her. “I’ll be fine once we land and get to the hotel.”

  Sabrina exchanged a look with Lori, but nodded and let it go. She turned to say something I couldn’t hear to Judith, her dark head bent close to Judith’s lighter brown. Lori looked over at me, concern clear in her eyes. My heart twisted. It was good that she still felt concern for me, right? But then why did it feel so crappy to know?

  “What’s up with you?” she asked, nudging me with her elbow.

  My stupid heart lifted and I scowled, annoyed to be so touched that she was worried about me. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I just have a headache.”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “For three months?” she asked. Her tone had a bite. She immediately held up a hand, closing her eyes. She shook her head. “Never mind, forget I said that. I don’t want to rehash stuff this weekend. It isn’t the time. Do you want some Tylenol? It might help. I think I have some in my bag.”

  I bristled, but took a deep breath. She’s trying to be nice, said the reasonable part inside me. Arguing hasn’t helped anything.

  It might help this time, countered my darker self. Anyway, it’ll make me feel better. I felt my irritation flare, but it was mostly with myself.

  “I’m fine,” I answered tightly, ignoring both devil and angel. I looked away from Lori. “I’m just going to try to sleep a bit before we get there. I’m sure it’s just the pressure or the altitude or something.”

  I tucked my jacket under my head against the seat and closed my eyes, turning my shoulder on her. I could feel her watching me but I ignored her, keeping my face turned away. Eventually she returned to the other women. I heard her low voice rejoin the conversation with our friends, their quiet laughter as bubbly and frothy as champagne.

  I felt an enormous wave of loss and loneliness wash over me. I hated feeling so separated from these women who meant so much to me. But what could I do about it? They had made their own choices, just like I had. All of those choices had brought all of us to this uncertain place, and I hated it.

  But Lori was right about one thing. This wasn’t the weekend to get into it again. This weekend was about Sabrina, so newly our friend but already our sister. I thought about our friendship, of the tenuous lines that connected the four of us. There was Boston University, where Judith, Lori, and I studied together since our freshman year. We were all in the psychology program. In just a few months, we would graduate with our bachelor’s degrees and take our next steps, whatever they were. I wasn’t quite ready to figure that out yet, and I felt the time counting down. Sabrina had attended Boston U, too, but she graduated two years ago with a degree in early childhood education. Our paths never crossed at school. Nevertheless, it was a tie we all shared.

  Then there were the men. Thomas Dixon, Lori’s new husband, was a firefighter and first responder in the city. They met when he saved her life, but I pushed away the mental image of it. I didn’t want to think about Thomas resuscitating my friend on the cold, hard floor of a dirty bar a year ago. Actually, I didn’t want to think about Thomas at all, the bastard, or about the way I helped him win Lori. I had practically pushed her into his arms. In a way, it was all his fault that Lori and I weren’t really talking right now.

  Yet in all fairness, even I had to admit that if it weren’t for Thomas, we probably wouldn’t have Sabrina, either, and for that alone I couldn’t quite hate him. Her fiance, Kevin York, worked with Thomas at the station. She had been his date for the surprise engagement party Thomas arranged for Lori last summer. The four of us spent a lot of time in the months since texting or calling or hanging out when we could, until no one could remember when we weren’t in each other’s lives.

  Now it
was just six months later, and all of it was different. Kevin left the station and opened his dream restaurant just before Christmas. Thomas took his place, learning to work with a new team. He and Lori married right after Thanksgiving, and now I never saw her anymore. In truth, I rarely saw any of them. Sabrina was busy with her job teaching tiny kids at a play school, and being mommy to Kevin’s toddler daughter. Judith, Lori, and I were swamped with mid-term papers and exams, among other things. But really, if I were being honest, I would admit that this thing with Lori started well before her marriage. It was more like around the time she got engaged last summer.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Why was I going over all of this in my mind again? It wasn’t new ground. It was well-worn, actually, with deep grooves from all the mental pacing. Still, I couldn’t help but think about it. What happened to my friend? Once she agreed to marry Thomas, it was like she disappeared. She showed up for some of the girls’ nights, but usually it was if I didn’t see her in class, I didn’t see her. Period. When I asked her about it, she told me she was busy with the wedding details. Okay, that made sense. But I offered to help, and she turned me down every time. She didn’t need the help, she said. She and Thomas wanted to do it all themselves.

  Maybe it was just me, but that made it seem like more than just “busy with details.” It seemed more like she was avoiding me, and it reminded me too much of her spiteful, evil ex. He kept her away from her friends, too.

  Or maybe you’re jealous and you’re looking for a reason to be offended, said the voice of reason inside me. You know Thomas is nothing like Jack. You know that she’s been telling the truth, not avoiding you. Thomas is good for Lori, and she’s happy with him. You see how happy she is with him, and you can’t stand that you don’t have something like that, too.

  No, I argued with myself adamantly. I’m not that petty or mean-spirited.

  Am I?

  I didn’t want to think so, but maybe I was. I couldn’t deny there was some truth to my inner self. I did want what Lori and Thomas had, what Sabrina and Kevin had. Didn’t everyone want someone to understand them, to really see them? To know them? I wanted someone I could know, too. We would have our own silly traditions and inside jokes, and I wouldn’t have to pretend anything at all.

  I shook my head, listening to the constant mechanical whine of the engines as they moved us over land at an incredible speed. I knew there wasn’t a man in the world who would look at me and see anything more than a living doll to play with, a pretty possession. Hadn’t I tested that theory with a large enough sampling of the Boston male population? I learned early that if you were pretty, you could smile, and laugh a little, and say almost anything you wanted. No one took you seriously. If the person you were speaking with didn’t like it, they would treat it as a joke. It worked on men best, of course, but it was surprisingly effective on women, too. No one questioned you too closely or thought much about what you had to say when you had an appealing face and a nice figure. They mostly just wanted to look at you. Own you, maybe.

  I didn’t want to think about those things anymore. I didn’t want to think about Lori anymore, either. The truth was, it hurt when she didn’t have time for me or want my help planning her wedding. Shouldn’t friends stay friends through all the changes in life? Isn’t that what marked us as more than friends, as sisters?

  More than that, worse than that, I knew there was a lot of fear behind my anger. Fear that Lori didn’t want to be my friend anymore, maybe because I wasn’t what she expected me to be. It made me feel dark and empty. I hated that feeling. I hated how familiar that feeling was.

  I stifled a sigh, shifting in the narrow seat. Maybe Lori was right. Maybe I overreacted to her distance, and maybe I was jealous, dammit. But I still had all the fear and anger inside me to deal with. I couldn’t just make it all go away. It had to be dealt with, and maybe I was making progress dealing with it. Maybe Lori and I would have worked it out eventually, or agreed to disagree and found a way around it with our friendship intact. But then Judith got involved, too. She sided with Lori and told me I was being oversensitive and unfair. It felt like betrayal. I didn’t handle it well. Now the three of us were barely speaking.

  Great setup for a fun weekend in the desert, I thought sourly. I was only even here because of Sabrina. It wasn’t her fault that the rest of us were in a stupid argument. When Lori called and invited me to this girls’ only weekend she arranged, I couldn’t say no. I was determined to not be the reason it wasn’t a fantastic memory for Sabrina.

  No more slips, I reminded myself sternly. I had to be on the ball from the time we touched down until we dropped our friend back off at home. I would make her weekend fun and memorable and everything a bachelorette weekend was supposed to be. Just the thought of all that effort was exhausting.

  Thank God I only had one day of classes next week. All the other days I could pretend I left Boston and just lay low at my apartment. Maybe I would turn off my phone for good measure. I could read Eat, Pray, Love for the fiftieth time and picture myself in India. I imagined it to be peaceful there, in the yoga ashram. All your days held a rhythm, and everyone expected you to be quiet.

  Lori had booked rooms for us right on the Strip, so quiet wasn’t likely to be part of this weekend, and any rhythm was probably going to be coming from a DJ. I kept my eyes closed, breathing deeply and slowly like I learned in the yoga videos I streamed in the privacy of my apartment. In through the nose, out through the nose. Feel the path of the breath through the body. Okay, it felt a little hokey to mentally coach myself like that, but it did help. My shoulders reversed their slow creep toward my ears. I felt my belly softly rise and fall as my chest fully expanded. The pain lessened, subsiding to the back of my head like a buzzing insect.

  Judith’s voice floated to me. “-amazing that you two planned weekend adventures for the guys and us, but are you seriously telling me you don’t know where Thomas is taking the male contingent for three days?”

  “Nope, not a clue,” Lori confirmed cheerfully. “We thought it would be more fun if we kept our plans separate and secret. We’ll have better stories to tell on Monday.”

  I opened my eyes, but kept my head angled away from the bright, boisterous laughter to my right. The sky outside the window showed a clear, pale blue, but in my mind I was far away, sitting quiet in an ashram in India.

  2

  Chris

  I followed my friends into the restaurant, walking slowly to let my eyes adjust to the dim interior. Everything about Las Vegas was bright, from the crazy wattage powering the hotels and casinos lining Las Vegas Boulevard last night when we got in, to the desert sunshine beaming down this morning. Well, afternoon, I mentally amended, glancing at my watch. When had it gotten to be so late?

  Thomas Dixon led the way, giving his name for the reservation and his card for the check. I made a mental note to pull him aside later and make arrangements for the rest of the weekend. He may have organized the logistics for the four of us, but that didn’t mean he should be footing the whole bill.

  Kevin York followed him, deep in conversation with Joshua Watson. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, trailing behind them like I was, but I heard Kevin laugh and it made me smile to myself. Good. He should have some great memories with his bros before he tied the knot. Not that he wouldn’t hang with us anymore after he married the lovely Sabrina, but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. It was already different, since he left the station to open a restaurant. We didn’t see each other at work anymore, and he spent most of his free hours with his two-year-old daughter, Kim, and his bride-to-be.

  I couldn’t blame him. It must take a lot of time to make a family like they were trying to do. But still, I could admit that I missed him. It’s why I was so glad when Thomas called me, asking me to clear my weekend and jump on a redeye from Boston to Las Vegas to celebrate Kevin’s upcoming wedding. Three days of drinking, take out, and hotel maid service sounded good to me. What amazed me is how
Thomas managed to swing the whole deal with our boss, Chief Jeffrey Roberts. I wasn’t sure what price we would have to pay when we showed up for our first twenty-four hour shift next week, but Chief had worked some kind of magic to get the whole team off for three days in a row for Kevin.

  The hostess led us to a booth with high backs and cushy seats, handing out menus before discreetly disappearing.

  “Well,” said Thomas, clapping Kevin on the back and sliding into the booth. “What do you want to do first? Casino? Club? What’s your pleasure?”

  Kevin shook his head, sitting on the end next to him. “What are you supposed to do in Vegas when you’re looking to stay out of trouble?” he joked. “I’m starting to plan a wedding, and still hope to marry the woman afterwards. The last thing I need is trouble.”

  Joshua grinned. “We’ll just have to get in trouble for you,” he said, his blue eyes mischievous. “And if there are women around, so much the better.”

  “There’s got to be a place that has something for everyone,” I said reasonably. “I mean, what do we need? Drinks are a must, of course. Good music. That shouldn’t be hard to find. We can just roam later, walk around until something looks good.” I grinned. “And Joshua’s got the right idea. We might find lovely women. You two can keep each other company, right?”

  Kevin chuckled. “I’m wounded, man. You guys bring me all the way out to the desert to party, and within hours you’re already making plans to leave me with this guy?” he asked, pointing at Thomas.