Singe (10 page)

Eli shakes his head, exchanging glances with Addie. Every firefighter he knows loves this question. “Nope,” he says lightly. “Firefighters.” The line of people behind them, previously wary, lights up on cue, lots of
nice to see you
’s and
thanks for your service
’s. Everyone loves a hose monkey. He and Addie trip out the door triumphantly, with a twenty percent discount.

Back in the car though, Addie clams up. Eli watches her fuss with her presets before she puts the car in gear, head ducked down away from him. She seems shy all of a sudden, maybe tense, her shoulders drawn up around her pretty ears. She’s switching stations too fast for Eli to catch a single bar of music.

“Ready to head back?” he asks finally, yanking once on the end of her ponytail.

Addie bites her lip. Then she shakes her head.

Eli’s heart does a weird thing inside his chest, unfamiliar. He grins to cover, leans in. “Come here, you,” he says, getting a hand on the back of her curly head and pulling her across the gearshift for a long, wet kiss. She’s not wearing the perfume today, and her skin smells warm and yeasty. Kissing her feels like a relief, like an exhale, although Eli isn’t a hundred percent sure why. “Been thinking about this for days,” he tells her, before he can stop himself.

Addie laughs. “No you haven’t,” she counters, lowering her lashes and kissing him again.

Eli frowns against her mouth. He
has
, actually, her quick tongue and her lush, surprising body, but then he remembers Karen the lab tech and thinks it’s better not to argue. Besides, Addie’s nipping at his bottom lip and he doesn’t want her to stop, one of her nervous-feeling hands on his shoulder, then his chest, then his stomach. The radio’s blaring, Timberlake now maybe. When her fingertips brush his belt buckle, Eli makes a quiet sound.

It’s like breaking a spell. Addie pulls back then, cheeks flushed, shaking her head. “Oh my God, you are such a bad influence,” she says, sounding gratifyingly gaspy. Eli feels a little gaspy himself. “I’m not doing this in the Price Chopper parking lot, absolutely not.”

Eli laughs. “So,” he says, taking a chance. He wants to keep kissing her. Jesus. He wants to do way more than that. Her mouth is nice and wet. “Let’s go somewhere.”

Addie narrows her eyes, those straight-thick eyebrows drawing together. “They’ll notice if we’re gone too long.”

Which is not, Eli notices, strictly a no. He runs his hand over her ponytail again, makes a fist around the base. “So we’ll be fast,” he promises, tugging gently. He lets go and gets his hand on her neck instead, rubbing up through the curls with just the tips of his fingers, slow and coaxing. “We
know
we can be fast.”

Addie woofs out a breath as his nails dig into her scalp, a sound Eli would call a moan if it came from any other girl. “Shut up,” she hisses, shrugging out of his grip. She throws an elbow into it too, sharp. But when they pull out of the parking lot, it’s not in the direction of the firehouse.

Eli smiles. After a second, he lets his hand drift over to her thigh.

His fingers are wedged deep between her legs by the time Addie yanks them over behind a high school, some brick-and-trellis Catholic academy. She picks a spot in the shade, breathing hard through her nose as she throws the car into park. “What?” she says off of Eli’s look. “It’s summer. Classes at St. Pius finish the first week of June.”

Eli blinks. “Shit, was this your school?” he asks, grinning hugely. “You seriously took me to make out behind your old high school?”

“Who said anything about making out?” Addie snaps, pushing him back until he’s sitting up fully in his own seat. Then she ducks across the gearshift, fingers making a beeline for his zipper. Her face is practically in his lap before Eli realizes what she’s going to do.

“
Shit
,” he repeats uselessly, his voice cracking in a way that ought to be embarrassing, but Addie’s already got his cock in one warm hand, wide mouth around the head and a hard, sloppy suck. Eli groans. “Shit, Addie,” he says again, and when she laughs at him he can feel the vibration clear into the base of his spine. His head thuds back against the seat.

Addie hums again, her teeth scraping along the ridge of his dick in a way that might be purposeful and might not be; it’s hard to tell. Knowing her, she might just be trying to keep him guessing. “See,” she murmurs, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. The motion gives him more of a view than he’s had so far, that wet pink tongue, and Eli feels himself twitch. “Now this is a thing I’d believe maybe you thought about.”

Fuck, she isn’t wrong. He never imagined it like this though, in her car in broad daylight twenty yards from a building topped with a giant fucking crucifix. It’s sort of kinky. Eli’s not a guy with a Catholic schoolgirl fantasy—or, okay, he’s not a guy with a Catholic schoolgirl fantasy more than any other guy is—but he’s thinking about it now, that’s for sure. He wonders if she wore the knee socks.

“You’re a trip, Manzella,” he tells her, instead of asking. He wants to touch her, her flushed hollow cheeks or her curly hair, but politeness makes him reach for the underside of her arm. He pets her silky wrist, runs a finger across her curled knuckles. Addie hums.

“See?” she says, slurring the words. She lets her mouth get nice and sloppy, which Eli appreciates in a blowjob. “Manzellas repay their debts.”

The next time she swallows, Eli lets his finger trail across her bottom lip, right where it’s stretched out around him. Chelsea used to roll her eyes when he did that, how she knew he was doing it to feel big. “Never questioned you,” he promises Addie, shifting his weight. Chelsea’s Protestant. He’s not thinking about Chelsea. Knee socks, and a tartan skirt, and a tie you could grab, and— “Shit, yeah.”

Addie laughs, pulling off him. “Warn me,” she commands, making eye contact. Eli’s dick twitches again at the sound of her voice. When she leans back down he touches her ear, then her cheek. Before his finger can reach her mouth again, Addie grabs his hand with an iron grip, curling it around the back of her scalp.

“Don’t be a pussy,” she tells him and ducks her head one more time.

Fuck. “
Fuck
,” Eli says, tangling his fingers in her knotty hair, everything about her warm warm warm. He closes his eyes, opens them again. Watches. She hasn’t been taking him too deep up to now so he doesn’t push or anything, is real gentle about it—he doesn’t want to hurt her, obviously, on top of which he just wants to be able to convince her to do this again. Like. All the time. “Oh my God, Addie.” It’s not going to take him much longer, how she’s definitely got an end goal now, speeding up and sucking harder. It’s right on the edge of being too rough. “Addie, baby. Gonna come.”

“Mmm.” She nods and pulls off then, replacing her mouth with her wet, slippery palm, stroking in circles over the head of his cock until Eli jerks up into her hand. He comes
hard
, all over her fingers and everywhere, wave after wave of the feeling. Addie rests her head against his rib cage while it happens, both of them breathing hard. Eli holds on tight.

“Okay,” she says once he’s finished, huffing out a laugh and sitting up slowly. She looks dazed. “I’ve got—here, wait.” She reaches across him and opens the glove compartment, produces a stack of Dunkin’ Donuts napkins. “Here.”

Eli takes them and wipes off her palm first, scrubbing each individual finger. She’s got pretty hands, Addie, tiny and quick. The tops of her forearms are tanned a deeper olive than the rest of her. “Crap,” he swears as the napkin balls up, pieces sticking. “Sorry.”

Addie rolls her eyes and reaches up under his uniform, wiping her palm off on his T-shirt. “You mind?” she asks belatedly. Her voice is as bright and fake as artificial sweetener.

Eli grins and hauls her close by her ponytail, biting his way into her mouth. Addie lets him go for a good minute, minute and a half, holding her own with an aggressive tongue and teeth. Then she pulls away. “We better go.”

Eli really,
really
doesn’t want to move anywhere that doesn’t involve her mouth, his dick and this car. “Okay.” He rubs at her thigh, warm through her uniform pants. “You sure you don’t want…?”

Addie shakes her head. “Uh-huh. We’re even now, remember? That’s it.” Before Eli can say anything else, she’s turning the key in the ignition, throwing an arm up over the back of the passenger’s seat to back out of their shady spot. “Better zip up,” she adds, nodding toward his lap.

Chapter Seven

“So okay,” Addie tells Jenn over drinks. This Thursday’s family dinner was steak with blue cheese butter, and when Diana skipped her wineglass again, Addie went ahead and poured half the bottle for herself. “It wasn’t a one-time thing.”

Jenn, who had been describing her fiancée Liz’s wedding shoes—sparkly white slip-ons, the company that donates sneakers to little kids—blinks. “Umm.” She laughs. “Okay. What wasn’t?”

“The thing with the work guy,” Addie clarifies, feeling suddenly nervous. She takes a big gulp of her beer. “The guy from work.”

Jenn’s eyes widen. “The good sex guy?” she asks.

“Oh my God, shut up,” Addie hisses, even though the bar is mostly empty. They’re at a brew pub in Stockbridge tonight, Addie picking at Jenn’s fries even though she just had dinner. She shoves one into her mouth now, like she can keep Jenn quiet that way also. She’s not a prude, okay, she’s
not
, but that doesn’t mean she wants the details of her sex life announced to all of Berkshire freaking County. Especially when those details involve Eli.

“Nobody can hear me,” Jenn says mildly. Then she raises her eyebrows. “So okay, what, are you seeing him?”

“Oh God, no, nothing like that,” Addie says immediately. “We’re just—” She breaks off, unsure how to explain it. It’s been more than just a few times, even. After the day in the car she thought she could just be finished, but the next night they made out in the kitchen for close to an hour completely undisturbed, Addie up on the counter and Eli grinding himself against her through her work pants until she shuddered. Two nights after
that
he put on a repeat performance in the locker room and only barely missed getting caught by Jill, who was on her way back from a call and ripped Eli a new one for being a creepy lurker. Addie hasn’t slept with him again, but she wants to. She thinks about it all the freaking time.

Jenn lets her work through it, taking a swig of her beer. “Just what?” she prompts, when Addie comes up with a fat lot of nothing after two minutes. “Just hooking up repeatedly?” Then, off Addie’s reluctant nod, “Oh my God, Adelaide.” She grins hugely, slapping both palms down on the table. “Do you have a fuck buddy?”

“Shut
up
,” Addie repeats, looking around again. Jenn has always been so much cooler about this kind of thing, ever since they were kids. Addie still remembers how she wore her uniform in high school, kohl eyeliner and her skirt not just hiked but hemmed. Jenn’s chunky jewelry never seemed to get confiscated, even though Addie’s plain gold hoops were removed every day. “I guess? Apparently I’m a slut now.”

Jenn rolls her eyes. “Oh please.” Jenn took Gender Studies in college, and now she doesn’t believe in sluts. Addie tries not to believe in them either, but it’s turning out to be just as hard as trying not to believe in God. Eli’s mouth between her legs certainly
feels
like it should be a sin. “Are you having fun?” Jenn demands, as if that’s the only thing in the breathing world that matters.

Addie thinks about that. “I mean.” She pictures Eli’s scarred chest and the easy way he sunburns, his solid stomach. How he looks sort of doofy when he smiles right at you but if you catch him from the side, say, chopping onions, his dark hair curling along the back of his neck and his thin, bizarrely elegant lips and— “Yeah,” Addie says. “I am.”

“Good girl,” Jenn pronounces, wicked as a queen. Her eyebrows are perfect, two dark arches framing her face. She does Addie’s too, but they’re never as good. “God knows it’s about time.”

Addie shoots her an irritated look, blushing in spite of herself. “Whatever. It’s not going to last. It’s a summer thing, if even. It’s dumb.”

Jenn shrugs, grinning over her beer glass. “We’ll see.”

Addie’s phone buzzes with a text from Jill as they’re finishing their round:
At the Pint w the guys,
it reads.
Come have a drink
.

Addie appreciates the heads up. It’s a one-of-the-boys thing, their job is, and she and Buono try to help each other out when they can. Jenn’s got to get home to Liz anyway—they’ve got a date to watch
Chopped
, their nerdy couple’s thing—and the Pint’s within walking distance of Addie’s place, so she texts back a quick
Sure thing
and heads over there once she’s hugged her cousin goodbye.

She pauses in the parking lot, smudging on a bit of lip gloss in the rearview mirror. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt of Jenn’s printed with a vintage naval flag, her hair still down from dinner. It’s frizzy from the heat but not terrible, all things considered. She looks, Addie thinks to herself, like the kind of girl who could possibly be convinced to go home with a dumb dark-haired firefighter with a truly excellent mouth.

So of course, the first thing she sees when she swings the door to the bar open is Eli with his arm slung around some baby-faced blonde in a halter top.

Oh God in his golden heaven, she’s so stupid.

She almost turns around. She almost turns around, heads back to her ancient Jetta and drives clear across to the other side of the county, but Jill Buono spots her first and waves. “Ads!”