Chasing Fire

for . . . Aren’t you getting dressed?”
    “I’m not putting that stinking mess back on. I need to borrow your towel.”
    She thought of the state of the clothes they’d both dragged off. “Just hang on a minute. I’ll get you some clothes.”
    “Really?”
    “I know where your quarters are.” She breezed out, strolled into his room.
    He kept it tidy, she thought as she pulled open a drawer. Inside spaces, too. She grabbed what she figured he needed, took another quick look around. When she noticed the photograph, she stepped over for a closer study.
    Gull, she noted, with what had to be his aunt and uncle, his cousins, all arm in arm in front of big, bright red doors.
    Great-looking group, she thought, and the body language spoke of affection and happy. In front of the arcade, which, she realized by what she could see of it, was a lot bigger than she’d envisioned.
    She took the clothes back, pushed them into his hands. “Hurry up and get dressed before I start gnawing on my own hand.”
    “Hurry up and get undressed, hurry up and get dressed. Orders, orders.” He sent her an exaggerated smoldering look. “Dominant females make me hot.”
    “I’ll see if I can find my whip and chain later.”
    “Ah, a brand-new fantasy to explore.”
    “Don’t forget to call me ‘Mistress.’ ”
    “If you promise to be gentle. By the way, I like the tat.”
    “Good-luck charm,” she told him. “If I wear the dragon, the dragon doesn’t wear me. How about yours?” She walked around to tap the letters scrolled over his left shoulder blade. “Teine,” she said.
    “It’s pronounced ‘teen,’ not ‘The-ine.’ Old Irish for fire. I guess if I wear the fire, it doesn’t wear me.”
    “It just gets to try us both on from time to time. How’d you get that one?” she asked, gesturing to the scar along his left ribs.
    “Bar fight in New Orleans.”
    “No, seriously.”
    “Well, it was, technically, outside the bar. I went down for Mardi Gras one year. Have you ever been?”
    “No.”
    “Not to be missed.” His hair, still damp from the shower, curled at the collar of the shirt he pulled on. “I was in college, went down with some friends. After the revelry, we hit a bar. This asshole went after this girl. Sort of like the asshole who hassled you, but this one was drunker and meaner, and she didn’t have your style.”
    “Few do,” she said with a grin.
    “No argument. So, when I suggested he cease and desist, he objected. One thing led to another. Apparently he didn’t like the fact I was kicking his ass in front of witnesses, so he pulled a knife.”
    The grin changed to openmouthed shock. “Well, sweet baby Jesus, he stabbed you?”
    “Not exactly. The knife sort of skimmed along my ribs.” Gull motioned a careless finger over the spot. “He didn’t get much of me, and I had the pleasure of breaking his jaw. The girl was really grateful, so a night well spent.”
    He tied his sneakers. “I have a spotted and unruly past.”
    “You’re a puzzler.”
    “Okay.” He held out a hand. “How about I buy you dinner and a couple of cold beers?”
    “I say since meals come with the job, that makes you a cheapskate, but what the hell.”
     
     
    LATER, AFTER GULL PROVED he did indeed work well horizontally, Rowan gave him a sleepy nudge. “Go home.”
    “Nope.” He simply tucked her in against his side.
    “Gull, neither of us is what you’d call petite, and this bed isn’t exactly built for two.” Besides, sleeping with a guy was different from sex.
    “It worked pretty well so far. We’ll manage. Besides, you saw the jump list. We’re first and second man, first stick. If we get a call, all we have to do is put on the clothes currently strewn all over the floor, and hit it. It’s efficient.”
    “So you always sleep with your jump partner for the sake of efficiency.”
    “I’m trying it out with you first. Who knows, if it saves enough time, it might become regulation. If we’re clear, do you want to take a run in the morning?”
    His hand, trailing lightly up and down her back, felt good—soothing. It was late anyway, she thought, she could make an exception on the sleeping rule this one time. Except she’d already made an exception on the sex, and now . . .
    “Are we going to keep doing this?” she wondered.
    “Okay, but you’re going to have to give me about twenty minutes.”
    “Not tonight. I think we’ve rung the bell on that.”
    “Oh, you mean as a