Ladder 54: Five Firefighter Romances Read online

  But still… embarrassment.

  Another car pulled in and parked, not next to Rylee who preferred sheltering under the warped boughs of the mutant Douglas fir that bent and bowed over the farthest corner of what was otherwise a neatly manicured circular parking lot. Even in her car, she was always in the corner. But, no. That new arrival parked among the twenty or so other vehicles that lined up side by side as close to the patio walkway as it could get.

  Three people got out of the car. Rylee recognized two fellow members. She had no idea who the third woman was, but the instant they started walking, she jumped out of her car and hurried to catch up. Better to be part of a group than to make this journey alone—even if the rest of the group had no idea she was tagging along.

  Sophie knew, though. Standing sentry at the cabin door, she smiled in greeting. But then, she smiled to everyone, and gave them each a cheerful hello as she held open the door.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” she said to Rylee, but Rylee tried not to take it personally. Nothing if not a good hostess, Sophie did this at every play party too.

  Still, to be polite, Rylee smiled back and murmured a shy, “Thanks.” Once she was in, however, she detached herself from the group and quickly ducked into the nearest shadowy nook to stop herself from hyperventilating.

  She had this. She had this, damn it! Strong! Fierce! Don’t weaken now, you can do this!

  She jumped when a man she didn’t know tapped her elbow. “May I take your coat?” He smiled, his gray eyes warm and inviting. Rylee didn’t take that personally, either. If he was taking her coat, that meant he must be working for Sophie. Being friendly would be part of the job.

  “Thanks.” Feeling even more awkward than usual, Rylee relinquished her coat. Snagging her black sequined wallet out of the pocket, she quickly made sure the glittering skirt of her minuscule cocktail dress was tugged down over everything that ought to be covered, then made herself stop fidgeting. It was the only little black dress she owned and she’d had to go all the way to Missoula to get it. Every bit as sequined as her wallet purse, the V-neck collar was low, the shoulder straps were spaghetti-thin, and the skirt was cut so high up her thigh that if she wasn’t careful when she sat, she’d be showing off her panties. Something that happened all the time here at the cabin, albeit usually only on party nights. This was not a party night.

  Tonight was special. Something that would likely never happen again, not in all the history of the BDSM group that called Big Banks home.

  Tonight, they were going to auction off some of the group’s most eligible doms, each for a night of private play right here at the cabin, with all proceeds going to help Sophie’s husband, Walt, the fire chief of Big Banks, as he battled cancer. Like most people here, for a cause of that magnitude, Rylee would have donated anyway.

  Big Banks wasn’t a huge town. Everybody pretty much knew everybody else. Most smiled and waved, and it wasn’t uncommon to see two vehicles stopped side by side in the middle of the road just so the drivers could chat for a while. Rylee had lived here all her life, she’d never once locked her front door—she wasn’t even sure the hardware store sold locks—and she still remembered sitting in the gymnasium during her eleventh-grade year when newly made fire chief Walt Lassiter had come to her school to instruct them on the dos and don’ts of fire safety. Even without the auction, she’d have donated money to help defray the costs of what she was sure were about to become massive medical bills. She might not have donated as much as was currently stuffed into her fancy, glittering wallet, but she would have given something.

  That donating tonight would also win her one full day and night of Walker Daniels’ undivided attention was beside the point. It was, quite possibly, the only way Rylee would ever play with the ruggedly handsome dom who had caught her eye for the first time way back in high school. Now that he was divorced and back from Los Angeles, he’d caught it all over again. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one looking his way.

  Walker was a service dom. Attending almost every party, he spent those nights jumping from partner to partner and scene to scene. Over the last year, that had made him one of the most highly sought-after doms at the Crystal Cabin Club. He played with anyone. Everyone, even… except Rylee. He didn’t even have to do the asking anymore. From the moment he arrived and descended the stairs to the basement dungeon, submissives flocked to him. And there he’d be, laughing, chatting, negotiating scene after scene until his dance card was full, and there she’d be, lurking in the shadows like some B-movie stalker, wanting him desperately, and just waiting for a chance to move in for the kill.

  Except that chance never came, because every time she worked up nerve enough to head his way, something always happened. Most of the time that ‘something’ was her chickening out and veering off into the bathroom where she could quickly lock the door and hyperventilate as quietly as possible in a corner of the black-and-white-tiled shower. But once, that something had been Tammi Lou, falling off the cross where she had been receiving a relatively minor flogging. She’d landed practically at Walker’s feet, causing one hell of a commotion. For ten minutes straight, Rylee had watched in shadowy, stalker-y, simmering resentment while Walker and another of his fireman buddies gave Tammi Lou first-aid-style aftercare, much to Tammi Lou’s current sugar daddy’s ill-concealed annoyance.

  Much to Rylee’s, too. She hadn’t said two words to Tammi Lou since that night, something that might have had greater impact if only Rylee could have worked up the nerve to talk to her before then.

  Or if Tammi Lou had noticed.

  She was such a mess. Resisting the urge to rub her face and ruin her makeup, Rylee fled to the quiet end of the bar. There were so many beautiful women here, what chance did she possibly have against so much competition?

  Except, a quiet voice in the back of her head whispered, tonight it isn’t up to any of those women or even to Walker. Tonight, Walker’s undivided attention would go to whomever had the nerve and the cash to win it.

  “Tequila,” she said, just as soon as Lance wandered down to her end of the bar and placed two used glasses in a bucket bound for the kitchen.

  He poured one for her, then headed back to the busy end of the bar, where—true to past scene-hogging behaviors—Tammi Lou stood surrounded by fellow club members, laughing and absorbing all the attention she could, like the emotionally deficit sponge that she was.

  “There’s only one man up on that stage I’m interested in,” she boasted, accepting the drink Lance passed to her. Waggling her shoulders to show off her boobs—even Rylee looked; Tammi Lou had great boobs—she settled in against the bar, smirking up into the eyes of an admiring dom. “I’m a bad, bad girl, and I can’t wait to do some really bad, bad things to him.”

  “You might not be able to afford him,” another man said coyly. “Who will you be bad for then?”

  A shiver of cold washed over Rylee, sparked by the other woman’s throaty laugh.

  “Of course I can afford him, darling,” she said, letting her fingers do the walking right up his tie and adjusting the lay of the knot at his throat. “I’ve got my sugar daddy’s MasterCard. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

  Ducking out of her group of admirers, she left them all shaking their heads while she left the bar in search of an unoccupied bathroom. An experienced party girl, she took her drink with her.

  From her quiet end of the bar, Rylee watched as Tammi headed her way. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to Tammi Lou, but if she didn’t, she might as well go home right now.

  Tipping back her head, Rylee drained her shot. It burned all the way to her stomach, but she’d have taken two or three more just like it if only there were time. There wasn’t. Courage, she told herself and, when Tammi Lou walked past her, Rylee slipped seamlessly into the perfumed breeze of her passing and followed her all the way to the powder room.

  Tammi Lou glanced back over her shoulder as she pushed open the door. “Oh.” She startled when she
saw Rylee. “Sorry. I didn’t see you.”

  Rylee made herself smile. “That’s okay.” She was used to it, and it wasn’t likely that Tammi Lou would notice anyone… unless she thought they might give her something.

  “Here,” Tammi Lou said, pushing her drink into Rylee’s hand. “A girl can never be too careful, but taking a drink into the bathroom is disgusting. You don’t mind holding it for me, do you?” Her smile was as fake as it was catty, nor did she give Rylee a chance to refuse. She simply went inside and closed the door, leaving Rylee with nothing to do but stand there, staring at the first aid kit attached to the wall and holding that stupid drink.

  “So,” Tammi Lou called through the door, ever willing to be the center of attention, even if she had to strike it up herself. “Are you planning to bid in the auction tonight?”

  “Yes, I am,” Rylee made herself say, which would have been the perfect moment to segue into what she really wanted to say, which was: “I know you really want Walker, but between the two of us, we both know you can get him at the snap of your fingers. So why not be nice just this once and let me have him?” Heat burned her face and, though her mouth opened, the pathetic plea refused to come out.

  “Who are you bidding on?” Tammi Lou pressed, but with a smirk in her voice that Rylee could hear right through the wood.

  Tammi Lou had access to more money than anyone with her self-centered, twelve-year-old, selfish-whore mentality ought to. She had men lined up to be her sugar daddy, and she ran through both them and their bank accounts with the kind of wild abandon that nobody except kings and presidents could afford for very long. Rylee didn’t have that kind of money. She was a day-trader with a trust fund, a few careful, long-term investments that kept her monthly bills paid, and a part-time job at the Big Banks elementary school library. There was no way she could outbid Tammi Lou if both their hearts were set on the same dom.

  “Walker,” Rylee answered, staring at the first aid kit on the wall. Her voice sounded odd. As if it were someone else speaking from a tinny distance.

  Tammi Lou laughed. “How funny is that?” she snickered, that audible smirk of hers deepening. “I guess we’ll be competing for the same man, then.”

  “I guess so.” Rylee’s shoulders sagged. Tammi Lou was going to bid. No matter what Rylee did, she was going to bid and she was going to win.

  It wasn’t fair. That horrible woman could have anyone she wanted, whenever she snapped her glossy-pink manicured fingers. Rylee had one chance. One. If she lost it tonight, deep inside her heart she knew there would never be another. She would never know what it was like to have a man like Walker put his hands on her, touch her with those same practiced strokes and caresses that she watched him use on the other submissives in the club. She would always be just another voyeur in the shadows.

  “Well,” Tammi Lou said brightly. Behind the bathroom door, the toilet flushed, followed by the spraying sound of water in the sink. “I guess the only thing left to say is, let the best woman win.”

  She laughed again, that throaty chuckle that said Rylee wasn’t even in the same competition much less Tammi Lou’s caliber of winner’s circle. She was right, too. Rylee wasn’t.

  The door unlocked and Tammi Lou swung out, a mean little smile of victory twisting her perfectly painted lips. Rylee’s own face felt like brittle plastic and yet, somehow she still managed an answering smile when the other woman plucked her drink from Rylee’s numb fingers.

  “I wish you luck,” she smirked. “You’re going to need it, honey.”

  Knocking back her drink, the bombshell blonde rolled it victoriously across her tongue and swallowed hard just before her face screwed into a grimace. She gagged. “Ugh, word of the wise, sweetheart. Stay away from the tequila. I knew Sophie was desperate, but if I’d known she was cheap, I’d have brought her a bottle or two from home.”

  Shuddering, she thrust the now empty glass back at Rylee and walked away, leaving the shorter woman to stare morosely at the wall.

  She ought to just go home. At this point, why stay if all she was going to do was watch Tammi walk away with the hottest, most popular dom in the club?

  What happened to fierce, a little voice in the back of her head whispered. What happened to strong? What happened to being willing to fight for what she wanted? If she thought for one second a poke in the nose would win her Walker for a day, Rylee would happily chase her down and slug her one. But this wasn’t about fighting. It was about money, and no matter how much she wished it differently, Rylee just did not have enough.

  Her hands dropped despairingly to her sides, but Rylee had forgotten about Tammi’s glass until she felt it slip from her fingers. She jumped when it shattered all around her feet.

  “Oh crap,” she dropped, guiltily scrambling after the broken pieces. But between the noise from all the cooks working in the kitchen, the music from the orchestra, and all the guests laughing and talking around the bar, nobody noticed what she had done. Pain lanced her fingertip. “Ow!” Yanking her hand back up, Rylee sucked back a curse as blood welled around the jagged piece of glass she’d stabbed herself with. No one noticed that, either.

  Hissing softly, she plucked it out and immediately released a flow of crimson the likes of which neither the floor nor her dress would escape for very long.

  “Damn it.” Pushing into the bathroom, Rylee washed her bleeding finger in the sink and hoped for a quick clot. When that failed, she wrapped her finger in toilet paper and hurried back out to clean up the broken glass before anyone else got hurt. Her throbbing finger soon bled through the toilet paper wrap, but fortunately, the CCC was a safety-first kind of club. It had first aid kits everywhere, including right here.

  With one hand full of broken glass for the garbage, she unhooked the kit from the wall and went back into the bathroom. Throwing the former away, she set the latter on the counter by the sink and dug into it in search of a Band-Aid.

  Funny, the things one’s eyes fell upon in moments such as this. It might have been a Band-Aid Rylee was looking for, but as soon as she propped the kit open, it was the little brown bottle wedged among the other ointments that she saw first. Syrup of ipecac.

  A shudder moved up her spine, tickling at a distant memory of the one time when, as a very little girl, she’d eaten a mushroom from the yard and her panicking mother had shoved this very stuff down her throat.

  If she couldn’t outbid Tammi Lou, that treacherous little voice in her head whispered, then she would have to make sure Tammi Lou was in no condition to bid at all.

  Her finger throbbed. So did her conscience, but neither of those stopped Rylee from snatching that bottle from the kit and quickly stuffing it into her sequined wallet of a purse. Stuffing it down beneath her envelope full of cash—down to the dollar, every bit that she could afford to spare on a venture such as this—Rylee snapped it shut again, so no one else would see what she had done. No one else was in the bathroom, but from the moment Rylee raised her gaze to lock with that of her reflection in the mirror, all she could see was the guilt in her stare.

  And the blood she was dripping all over the sink, her little black purse, and the outside of the first aid kit.

  Shit.

  It took almost ten minutes and four Band-Aids to staunch the flow. By then, she had a plan in her head that made the guilt growing on her face shine like a neon bar sign. She would have to get close to Tammi Lou. But if she could, then sometime before dinner ended and the auction began, all she had to do was slip the ipecac into Tammi’s drink. Ten to twenty minutes after that, if she got the dosage right, the effects would kick in and Tammi Lou would be too busy in the bathroom for another half hour after that to bid on anybody.

  I wish you luck, Tammi Lou had snickered, right before she’d walked away.

  Avoiding her own guilty face, Rylee drew herself to stand a little straighter. This was not her proudest moment, but she set her shoulders the way a strong and confident woman should.

  “Good luck to you,
too,” she belatedly told Tammi. She was about to need it more than she knew.

  * * *

  “How did I get talked into this again?” Walker asked, shrugging into his heavy fireproof work coat. Standing behind the massive show screen with the others who had volunteered, all he could hear was the beating of his own heart and the sounds of the women filing into the room on the other side of the screen. The dinner portion of tonight’s event must be done; he was dessert. Despite his own building excitement, he couldn’t believe he was doing this.

  Beside him, Declan, arguably his best friend of all the guys who worked at Ladder 54, shrugged his eyebrows and said, “You wanted to do something to help bring in a lot of money and, like me, having nothing else of any real value, you decided… what the hell.”

  To Walker’s left, Troy tipped back his head and prayed, “Please, dear God, don’t let me be bought by Tammi Lou.”

  “Amen,” everyone grumbled at once.

  Declan snorted. “She’s not after you, bud. She’s fixed on Walker.”

  Walker wasn’t as annoyed by the acknowledgement as much as he was by the way his friend sang his name. “Tell me how to get rid of the problem and still keep my membership, and I’ll be happy to send her packing.”

  “Just say no.”

  “I ha—”

  “Shh!” Blake shushed from the edge of the screen. He continued watching the audience for a moment, then came back to finish getting ready with the rest of them. “Boy, it’s packed out there. I never knew there were this many man-hungry submissives on the CCC roster.”

  “There’s not,” Theo said with a grin. “Remember, Sophie said she sent those flyers out to every major BDSM group in Montana.”

  On the other side of the screen, the microphone came on and Sophie Lassiter’s voice crowed her welcoming greeting over the loudspeakers.

  “I feel like a piece of meat,” Declan said, flexing his neck and trying to relax as the men assembled into a ready line.