It's a Wonderful Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novella (The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel) by Jennifer Bernard Page B

in his hand, pert and perfect, except for the covering of cloth keeping him from her flesh.
    He could barely hear over the roar in his ears and the constant purr of the generator, but he caught her moaning sigh. It warmed him like a shot of whiskey burning away all common sense. He dragged down the neckline of her shirt. She wore a purple bra that pushed her breasts together and raised them in a diabolical way clearly designed to leave a man begging on his knees. The sight of the plump little mounds cresting over the purple fabric made his cock clamor with need.
    “Lizzie,” he breathed. “I want you so bad. But it’s not right. I’m no good for you. Every time I’m with you I lose my shit. You don’t even know me. If you were smart you’d have nothing to do with me.”
    Helpless to stop himself, he traced the skin of her cleavage along the cups of her bra, dying to dip inside to touch her nipple.
    Her eyes were dark, pupils dilated. “Touch me. Go on.”
    So he did. He reached under the purple bra and stroked her nipple, using his thumb and forefinger to bring the tender point of flesh to a hard peak.
    “Oh my God, Mulligan,” she gasped. Color came and went in the peachy skin of her chest. She was so lovely he wanted to drop to his knees and worship her.
    “There’s one good way for me to get to know you,” she murmured, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed in dreamy pleasure.
    “What’s that?”
    “You could ask me out. We could go on a date.”
    “A date.” He didn’t “date.” He hooked up. He had sex. He screwed. Always careful not to create false hope or put himself at risk. But . . . “date”? As in, take a girl out and talk about their lives? The last time he’d done that, the girl had turned into something of a stalker. She’d moved into his apartment, and they’d launched into the kind of trauma-drama relationship that gave him hives.
    But instead of telling Lizzie what a crazy idea a date was, he found himself nodding. “Will you go out with me this Saturday night?”
    She nodded, a wide smile lighting up her bright little face. “I’d love to.”
    His heart seemed to swell until it felt nothing like the hard, shriveled organ he was used to.
    “Y OU REALLY MADE me work for that date,” Dream Lizzie commented from her perch on the pile of smoldering concrete, where she sat tailor-style. “I couldn’t understand what was taking you so long.”
    Happiness bloomed in his chest, and suddenly he barely felt the weight of the tree. “You’re back.”
    “You know me. At your beck and call.” Her naughty wink made him smile.
    “Yeah, right. I think you’ve been calling the shots all along.”
    Her smile disappeared. “If that was true, we wouldn’t be broken up. You called that shot.”
    “I’m sorry.” God, was he sorry. It seemed so stupid now. “Breaking up with you was probably the biggest mistake of my life.”
    “It took you long enough to see it,” she said with a saucy smile. “And you’re supposed to be so smart.”
    “I thought I was doing the right thing for you. I love you, Lizzie. I think I loved you from the very first second I saw you. You skipped through the firehouse and that was it, boom. I never even thought about another girl after that, not seriously.”
    He thought that confession would make her happy, but instead it infuriated her. “ Why did you never tell me? Why?”
    “Because . . . you deserve . . .”
    She jumped off the counter, a blur of red velvet, and stomped her foot. “Don’t say it.”
    “Better.”
    “Oh, Mulligan. You still don’t get it.” She gave a heavy sigh. “Fine. If I have to do this all night, I will. It took Clarence a few tries too.”
    Alarm coursed through him. He couldn’t take another trip down memory lane. “Oh no. Not another flashback, Lizzie. Please—”
    But she snapped her fingers and Under the Mistletoe disappeared.
    “M ULLIGAN .” C ALEB H ART nodded at him as he slid onto the adjacent bar