CHAPTER FOUR
PAYTON
Our little meeting in the girls’ bathroom was no coincidence. I thought for sure the ‘dick in face’ routine would work the second time around, exposure is key, but it seems Lacey Nelson doesn’t adhere by the teachings of the Bro Bible. Hell, she might even have standards, all of which is new and all of which is making my cock hard.
I sit on my bed and breathe out, looking down at my swollen erection. “Sorry, bud. We’re going to have to get creative.” It twitches back in response.
I look over to the desk in the corner of the room where an assortment of notes and course textbooks lie abandoned. I can handle the physical side of things here, but I never counted on the homework being so fucking difficult. Community risk reduction, codes and systems, exit protocols, incident response… My head’s spinning already and we’re only two days in.
Only one hundred and ten more to go.
‘Application’ was the issue at Brown as well. Dominating on the field was easy. I was destined for the NFL, “as sure as the sun rises,” Coach told me, but then my grades started to slip. Being balls deep in cheerleaders twelve hours a day didn’t help, and then there was the Incident That Shall Not Be Named. That fucked up any chance I had for good. The look on Dad’s face… Almost as good as the one that followed when I told him I was off to fire academy.
“You want to be a what?” he asked, his face a muddle, like I’d just driven a knife into his gut. His great son wanting to take up a common occupation, not wanting to become a Brown football star like his grandfather or Wall Street douchebag like himself. I should have doubled down and become a janitor. He would have been exiled from the family for good.
Maybe it’d be better that way without this stupid surname and its many unwanted attachments.
Then again, it does have its perks—private jets and apartments all over the globe, service at a snap of your fingers, not that any of that matters here with Captain Kick-Ass breathing down your throat.
Lacey’s different. I have a feeling she comes from the other side of the spectrum. I could play that to my advantage, but something tells me she wouldn’t go for it. If I want to get with her I’m going to have to rethink my strategy.
Later, the campus is all quiet and I try to sleep, but it’s fucking impossible. Each time I close my eyes I’m picturing Lacey’s sweet, fuckable curves, her pouty pillow lips. I want to wrap my arm around her, her taunt nipples stabbing into the underside of my arm, her pussy hot and wet around my cock. I’ll fist her hair in my hand while I pound into her, and then she’ll scream my name, beg me for more, for all of it. And I’ll give it to her—all ten, rock-hard inches of Cox.
I consider knocking on her door, maybe kicking the fucker down and storming in caveman-style, but brute force is the wrong approach. A special case requires special measures, so I lie awake staring at the ceiling planning, my erection refusing to abate.
Come midnight I can’t take it any longer.
I knock on the wall…
…and receive silence in return.
*
“You’ve met the Tower,” barks the Captain. “Now meet the burn room.”
There’s a murmur of wonder, but my attention’s being pulled away by Lacey. She yawns wide, covering her mouth. “Big night?” I query.
She turns to me, eyes flecked emerald. “I’m just tired.”
“Less drinking, more sleeping—that’s my motto.”
She laughs. “I thought it was ‘bros before hoes,’ or is it ‘sky’s out, thighs out’?”
“You will crawl inside in full PPE gear following the hose line and cuddle up real cozy to the fire inside,” the Captain says. “You will wait crouched there until instructed out. Simple, right? Let’s get going.” The Captain points to us. “Romeo and Juliet, apparatus on. You’re up.”
Even with my BA gear on, I can smell smoke. The burn room’s basically a concrete bunker with a lit fire in the corner, the flames licking over the roof.
I crawl through the doorway behind Lacey, thankful for yet another glorious view of her ass in those bunker trousers. She stops for a moment, hesitates, before continuing on towards the fire.
That’s my girl.
We crouch together close to the flames.
It’s fucking hot, that’s for sure. I’m thankful when the Captain waves us out.
I take off my apparatus and breathe in, my suit more or less a swimming pool, I’m sweating so hard.
Lacey’s golden hair is matted to her forehead and the side of her face when she removes her mask, her cheeks flushed and lips parted. I’m betting that’s exactly how she looks after she’s come.
“Hot enough for you?” I ask.
She’s breathing hard. “Nothing I can’t handle,” but I sense she was struggling in there.
Not as much as my good friend Ryan Fielding, though. He was in there for less than a minute before backing out.
He’s bailed up by the Captain as soon as his mask is off. “You going blind, Fielding. Did I wave you out?”
“No, Captain. Sorry, Captain.”
The Captain lets it slide, but from the clip of his voice I know I’ve found Ryan’s weakness. He was scared in there, shaking in his fucking bunker boots.
Jackson, however, spends a little too long inside, seemingly hypnotized by the flames. Eventually, the captain has to send in Hernandez to pull him out, a big, goofy grin on Jackson’s face when he takes off his mask. “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!” he bellows… to mutual eye-rolling all ’round.
I sit with Lacey and a group of others in the cafeteria. She’s earned a certain respect from the guys over these last few days, proved she’s more than a cute face. She’s even been showing me up, which is un-fucking-acceptable, but I’ll let it slide if it means I get to slide into something else.
I shake my head at Hernandez, who’s busy shoveling food into his face at an alarming rate. His hair has been clipped short, inky eyebrows always up. “You all right there, Hernandez?”
His fork stops mid-air. “Hey, I’m from a big family, bro. You learn to eat fast or not at all.”
I look around. I’ve established myself as the alpha without even trying. It’s always been that way. For better or worse, I’m a people magnet. I think it’s a Cox thing, the power of persuasion, not that it’s winning me over with Lacey.
Fielding sits with another group loudly boasting about his Porsche 911 back home.
Fuck him.
“Where you from, Lacey?” asks Manners.
She places her water down and brushes her hair back behind her ear. “This tiny mining town, barely a blip on the map.”
“So what are you doing all the way out here? You click your heels together three times?” laughs Manners.
The group laughs, Lacey smiling along with them. “Something like that, but Dorothy I am not.”
“You’re fucking GI Jane is what you are,” notes one of the others, a burly individual by the name of Dunn.
She looks at me. “It’s just what I do.”
“The fucking Captain, man,” adds Hernandez. “He’s breaking our balls,” noticing Lacey, “or ovaries or something.”
I nod with the sentiment. “The academy’s basically a military institution. You didn’t think there would be a drill instructor?”
Hernandez pushes his plate aside. “I just didn’t expect to feel like tenderized meat when I hit the sack.”
Nature calls. I stand. “Just as long as you’re not tenderizing your meat when you hit the sack.”
The laughter at my back is nice, reassuring.
I round the corner and enter the men’s bathroom, about to pull down my fly when I’m reefed backwards against the wall. “What the fuck?”
It’s Fielding, a hand against my chest. “You and I have to talk, Cox.”
I swipe his hand away and shove him back. “So fucking talk?”
We’re the same height, a similar build.
He smiles. “I did my research on you.”
I hide the moment of fear I feel. “Should I be flattered you want to suck my dick?”
The smile grows, lifting at the corners. “Oh, yeah. I bet that shit was real funny at Brown.”
Fuck. He knows. “You going to let me piss, or you want to hold it for me?”
“Stay the fuck away from her,” he says. “She’s mine.”
“Who?”
“Nelson.”
I laugh in his face. “Are you for fucking real? What are we, in junior high here?
“I’m serious,” he says, stepping closer. “I get what I want, and I want her. She’s spoken for.”
“She’s my partner. Didn’t you hear the Captain? We’re going to be spending a lot of quality time together.”
He steps back. “I played ball too, you know, quarterback.”
“Is that so?”
“Held the state yardage record two years running.”
“Which state? Fucking Delaware? Good for you.”
I go to walk past him, but he pushes me back. I should break his fucking arm.
“Do not fuck with me, Cox.”
“Really, ’cause last I checked you were shitting your pants in that burn room back there. My spidey senses say you’d run if I pulled out a cigarette lighter right now.”
The same, smile comes again. “I’ll see you round, Dream Machine.”
He turns and leaves.
He knows alright. Question is, what’s he going to do about it?
*
Dante’s is quieter tonight. It took a bit of persuasion to get through the front door after my small tussle last night. A greasy Benjamin for the Dwayne Johnson lookalike seemed to do the trick.
Most of the class is here, though I can’t see Fielding—thank fuck.
I notice, with equal surprise, Lacey is back at the bar, but tonight she’s flanked by fellow recruits. She’s laughing, a string of empty shot glasses on the bar.
I walk over and stand behind her. “I see you started without me.”
Hernandez gives me a fist-bump. “Next round’s on you, bro.”
One of the other guy’s shifts down. “Here, take a load off, Cox.”
I settle in beside Lacey. “That I will.”
Lacey looks to me with a wry smile. “Howdy, partner.”
I tilt my head at the shot glasses. “I thought you were a club soda kind of girl.”
She taps one of the glasses. “I’m twenty one, and you seem to think I’m a lot of things I’m not.”
I can’t tell if she’s flirting.
Maybe she’s drunk?
Time for an old-timey showdown. I place my hands on the bar. “Okay, partner, given you’re such a badass, how about a drink-off?”
She looks around. “We’re not in college, Stifler.”
She doesn’t know how appropriate that name is given the state of my dick right now.
The others are quiet.
I lay it out for her. “Tequila, shot for shot. I win, we go on a date.”
Her left eyebrow lifts high. “And if I win?”
I laugh, looking to the others for support. “In that unlikely event, I’ll do any damn thing you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” I reply.
“You’re very confident,” she says. “What’s to say I’m not a hardcore drinker?”
I laugh at that. “You’re a lot of things, Miss Nelson, but a hardcore drinker you are not.”
She shrugs. “And there you go again. Alright, you want to be embarrassed in front of the entire class, be my guest.”
“So that’s a yes?”
She nods, straightening her shoulders. “It is, but we’re doing vodka, not tequila.”
I nod back. “Sold.”
She stands. “Let me use the bathroom. Then it’s on.”
I draw my hand out. “Be my guest.”
While she walks off Hernandez cups his hands around his mouth and announces, “Drinnnnnk-off!”
People start to close in around us.
I take out my wallet and lay a couple of hundreds on the bar, looking for the Britney lookalike bartender.
Jackson pushes his way up to the bar, flicking a Zippo lighter on and off. “Someone’s going to puke tonight.”
“Sure as hell ain’t going to be me,” I reply, cracking my knuckles. “I’ve got this shit.”
“You ever seen those eating competitions?” says Hernandez. “It’s always these small, tiny girls who take them out, fool you straight up, don’t judge a book by its cover and all that.”
But I think I’ve got Lacey pretty well sorted. This isn’t my first rodeo.
She emerges from the bathroom and takes her seat.
Britney the bartender comes out from the back.
I place a finger on the bills. “Vodka shots,” I tell her. “Keep them coming.”
She looks to Lacey. “You sure about this, hon?”
Lacey continues to stare at me. “I’ll be perfectly fine. It’s him I’m worried about.”
I have a great laugh at that. “Let’s play,” I tell her, focusing in on those cock-crushingly beautiful eyes.
“Let’s play,” she agrees.