Chapter One
Dominic
I lie down on the bench and reach up for the bar, the metal creaking under the strain of the weights secured onto the ends. My body is coated in a cool layer of sweat as my brothers workout or play cards or watch the game in different areas of the room, but nothing exists for me except for the bar, the strain of my body.
I grab it and slowly lower it down to my chest, gritting my teeth as I feel all the muscles inside of me twitching and priming, and then I hold it close, breathing slowly. I don’t let it touch my chest, because that’d be cheating.
I just hold it there.
And keep holding it.
Finally, after thirty seconds, I push it in a controlled motion back to the brackets and then continue with my sets, pumping it faster now, feeling everything in me go taut and powerful and ready to do serious work.
“Hey, Dom,” Max calls over, his Boston-Irish voice out of place in the sweltering confines of this Miami station. “What’d you prefer, redheads or blondes?”
“You’ll never get that out of him,” Sonny says, his voice a deep guttural grumble from where he sustained some smoke damage a few years ago. “He’s real secretive when it comes to his business with the ladies.”
I sit up and smirk good-naturedly at the two men, sitting around a small table playing cards. Sonny is tall and dark skinned with brown eyes and a cheeky, almost boyish smile. Max is tall as well, but as thin as a beanpole and with a shock of red hair contrasting sharply with his snow-pale skin. But his thinness is a lie, because he’s got a wiry strength to him.
“What’re you playing?” I ask.
“See,” Sonny grins. “Always changing the subject. I bet you got enough down under to last a lifetime, eh? See, Max, that’s what happens when you take off to Australia for three years.”
I chuckle deeply and wander over to the table, feigning like I’m about to smack Sonny across the jaw. He lifts his hands in mock horror and everybody laughs, and then I drop into the seat and play cards with them, but my mind drifts to what they said, about women.
I could tell them the truth, could let that unusual fire spew like a geyser from my mouth, that I’ve been waiting all my life for the woman I’m going to claim when she enters my life.
I’ll know her when I see her, I could tell them, but until then, I don’t see the point in just moving from woman to woman.
I’m sure they’d laugh and shake their heads like I was joking if I told them that, because we’ve been out to bars and clubs together – retirements and birthdays and things like that – and they’ve seen the women that throw themselves at me.
I feel a note of distaste rise in the back of my throat when the memories carve into my mind.
The way they prostrated themselves, leaning forward, battering their eyes lashes, telling me in all but words – and sometimes in plain words – that if I wanted I could whisk them home and do whatever I wanted to their bodies, it doesn’t excite me.
I want a woman who’s mine, just mine, all mine.
I want a woman who I can shoot my hot seed into, watching as it sprouts into a child in her belly, a woman I can support and be with forever.
But that has never happened to me and, at forty-two years old, the idea that it might never happen has settled like an uncomfortable truth over the surface of my life.
I’m jolted from my thoughts when the alarm blares through the station, immediately leaping to my feet and letting the cards drop on the table. We move in the well-orchestrated chaos of the fire department, grabbing coats and gear and heading for the truck, not even having to talk, just gliding into position and waiting for another slice of hell to become our world.
In the truck, I sit with the new kid, Craig. He must be only twenty and he looks even younger, like a small insect almost being stifled in the fire jacket, his helmet askew, his eyes with that wild, panicked look some of the new guys get.
How the fuck did he get through training?
But training and the real thing are two very different realities, and perhaps the notion of actually facing the real thing will be too much for him.
I sit down beside him as the truck rumbles to life and the sirens wail like mythical creatures. He’s got big green eyes and, despite his muscular build – a necessity in our business – he still seems tiny next to my six foot seven frame.
“Craig,” I growl over the sound of the truck. “You won’t have to get out today. You’re here to learn. But you also need to remember that people’s lives rely on us having our shit together. Can you do that, kid? Can you get your shit together for me?”
He blinks up at me and his eyes are watery, and, goddamn, he looks like a scared lost little lamb.
Something like regret punches me in the chest when the realization that he won’t make it hits. Some people simply aren’t made of the right stuff.
I clap him on the shoulder.
“You’ll be alright,” I say.
“Do you think so?” he whispers, sharp weakness infusing his words. “I’m trying, Dominic, I’m really trying.”
I grit my teeth and suppress a groan of annoyance, because trying doesn’t mean much when there’s a family who needs you to brave smoke inhalation and searing heat and burns and all the rest of it to make sure they’re safe. In that situation, trying is the same as failing.
But there’s no use in making this poor bastard feel worse than he already does, so I just clap him on the back again and sit with my head resting on the surface of the truck behind me, feeling the thrum of the road in my body.
Strangely, an image comes to me, a vignette biting into my mind.
It’s her, the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life, and even if I can’t make out any physical features, I can feel her essence, whatever the fuck that means. It’s like there’s this force calling out to me, perhaps her womb telling me it’s ready for everything I have to give, to start a life together.
But then it’s gone.
And it’s time to go to work.
The fire has already spread over a large portion of the theater, a squat detached building with a rustic look about it that looks out of place against the Miami skyline. The flames lick and hiss and before I know it – after the hoses and the taming – it’s time for me to don my gear like a soldier in post-apocalyptic wayfarer and brave the remaining heat and smoke.
I’m practiced at switching off my emotions as I hack away at the charred door, smashing an opening and striding into what was once the lobby, but is now a wasteland of burnt-out nothings and the detritus of destruction.
I head toward the back, the place where we were told the dressing rooms would be. Max and Sonny move silently beside me, communicating via nods and gestures, ignoring our radios because it’s just too damn loud.
Like a thousand hailstones falling at the same time.
That’s how one of the men described the sound of flames crackling all around you once, and it’s true, it just never stops.
Quiet screaming reaches my ears through my helmet the closer we get, and I pick up my pace, having to stop to throw aside smoldering beams more than once, the heat pressing through my gloves, or trying to.
I unsheathe my axe, feeling for a moment like I’m on a beach a thousand years ago and I’m about to charge into battle, and then head for the door to the dressing room.