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  Burn

  Lauren Milson

  Copyright © 2020 by Lauren Milson

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Thank You!!

  Playlist

  Burn

  1. Flint

  2. Cindy - Ten Minutes Earlier

  3. Flint

  4. Cindy (now Bug)

  5. Flint

  6. Bug

  7. Flint

  8. Bug

  9. Flint

  10. Bug

  Flint

  Bug

  All His

  1. Olivia

  Thank You!!

  About the Author

  Also by Lauren Milson

  Playlist

  Bee Gees - “More Than A Woman”

  Red Hot Chili Pepper - “Dani California”

  The Trammps - “Disco Inferno”

  Lana Del Rey - “Video Games (Club Clique For The Bad Girls Remix)”

  Thursday - “Paris In Flames”

  Beach Boys - “Good Vibrations”

  Bruno Mars - “Versace On The Floor”

  Burn

  My obsession has reached a fever pitch so hot I could explode.

  When I save an innocent young beauty from a fire engulfing LA’s grimiest pawn shop, she tells me she owes me her life.

  But I don’t want her life.

  I want her.

  When she’s torn away and put in the back of the ambulance, she took my heart along for the ride.

  I won’t be able to breathe again until I find her.

  All I know is that she has a cute little white car, adores hula dancers, and lives on the wrong side of Sunset Boulevard.

  I vow to find her, even if I have to burn this city to the ground.

  I’m a possessive beast who will stop at nothing to claim my woman.

  And when I do?

  It’ll be nothing but scorching, white-hot love forever.

  Leave all expectations of any semblance of reality at the door.

  No cheating, because once Flint sets his sights on Bug, he will never have eyes for any other woman again.

  HEA, because Flint’s little love Bug deserves the world, and he’ll make sure she gets it.

  If you want a crazy over-the-top insta-love romance to add a little fun to your day, jump on in - the fire’s fine.

  Enjoy!

  xx, Lauren

  1

  Flint

  The fire is big and getting bigger by the second. Black plumes of smoke curl up between the swaying palm trees and it’s so thick that I can taste it.

  There’s only one car in the parking lot - a white Volkswagen Beetle. It whips past me in a blur as my boots hit the hot summer pavement, but there is no mistaking it.

  A white Beetle. It’s like a bullet’s ripped through my chest. The only person I ever knew to own a white Beetle was my mother back in the sixties. A sudden, overwhelming, blood-thickening sense of purpose washes over me.

  When I get to pawn shop with bright fluorescent tubes twisted into dollar signs in the windows, I pull the door open like my life depends on it.

  The entire place is engulfed. Flames are curling with thick clouds of smoke at the low ceiling and the display cases of cheap jewelry and outdated cell phones are cracked up and burning.

  I spot a door in the back corner of the place and charge through the smoke and flames, carrying my heavy axe along with me. When I get to the door, I kick it with the bottom of my heavy boot. The door splinters at its edges but the center doesn’t move.

  With all my strength, I slam my shoulder into the door. One slam makes the wood splinters crack. A second slam makes the hinges break. The third makes the door burst open.

  That’s when I see her. An innocent beauty in a pink pushup bra and a pair of daisy dukes. Long blonde hair frames her face, matted with soot.

  This woman is sexy for days. For a second time stands still and my eyes travel from her smooth, milky white stomach up to her round breasts. They’re spilling out of her bra and they look soft as feathers.

  Her pink bra sucks all of the oxygen from my lungs.

  She’s wet from the sprinklers on the ceiling. Droplets of water paint her thick lips and her smooth belly. Her jean shorts are soaked through and look like they’re painted on her. The curve of her ass is wet against the cheap, cracked linoleum floor.

  I swallow thickly and I nearly lose my tongue down my throat.

  I’ve never seen a girl more beautiful than this.

  A relentless need to have her crushes through my body and settles into my bones.

  She’s doing something to me I can’t explain or even understand.

  But I don’t have to understand it. She is mine.

  My pulse thickens in my neck. It beats double-dutch and for a moment time stands still. My body is as hot as the fire raging around me. My forehead is covered with a sheen of sweat as thick as the obsession growing inside me.

  My cock I strains inside my uniform at the sight of this girl. I’m harder than the wooden handle of the axe in my hands and there’s already precum dripping down my cock. I’m harder than the axe’s steel blade. If I don’t have this woman, I will never be able to breathe again.

  She is too beautiful for this earth.

  She belongs in outer space, using Saturn’s rings as hula-hoops.

  I drop my axe, kneel, and take her in my arms to cradle her against my chest. I push her hair away from her forehead with my gloved hand and peer down at her heart-shaped face. I hold her chin softly and one of my fingers traces a line down the curve of her cheekbone, memorizing it.

  Her pink, bare lips are like a bow and her breasts are spilling out of her tight bra. The rings of her nipples are nearly visible and it makes my heart hurt. I spot a shirt on the floor next to her and grab it to put it over her perfect, smooth tits.

  No one sees this girl but me.

  I inhale her scent like it’s my salvation. I feel my jaw clench up. I need those sweet pink bow lips against mine. I need to be inside her as much as I need my next breath.

  And if I don’t get the hell out of here soon, there won’t be many more breaths for either of us.

  I need to get her out of here.

  I hear the grimy window behind us shatter as powerful gusts of water spray the flames. I kick the door closed behind us and spin around. There’s another door on the other end of the small room and I charge toward it, flipping my girl so she’s over my shoulder.

  I charge toward the door and kick it open. We spill out into the alleyway behind the shop and I keep my arm wrapped around her thick thighs.

  I inhale deeply as the smell of smoke fades away, replaced by her scent. My heart pounds in my chest at the fact that her pussy is wrapped up in these shorts, and being so close to it is making my head spin and my mouth water. Her wet, long blonde hair is swinging down my back and I put my fingers through it to keep it safe.

  No one hurts her again. No one touches a hair on her head.

  I charge onto the street and when I give her over to the waiting paramedics I feel my heart nearly bust clean through my ribs. When a paramedic puts her on a gurney in the back of the ambulance I feel my mind start to reel.

  Then she stirs awake and I watch her eyes open. Tw
in, bright blue moons shine at me.

  “Don’t leave,” she begs. She tries to crawl toward me on trembling knees and I erase the distance between us. I grab her shirt from the floor next to the gurney to cover her.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, rubbing her back, “I’ve got you, it’s okay.”

  “I’m fucking dead,” she says, drawing her knees up to her chest and putting her hands in her face. “I am so fucking dead.”

  I feel my fist clench up at my side while I keep rubbing her back. Whatever trouble she’s in ends now.

  She looks up at me with pleading eyes. Her bright blue eyes have specks of gold in them and the setting sun is paining her hair in orange and red, making her look like she has a secret. She’s the most magnificent woman I’ve ever seen.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her plainly.

  “No,” she sobs, “it isn’t. Ray is going to fucking kill me.”

  “He isn’t,” I tell her. “I will make sure of it. You have me now. I will take care of it. Whatever is wrong, I will help you. I will take care of you. You don’t have to worry about anything anymore. I am taking you away from here and you will be taken care of.”

  She looks up at me and shakes her head.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she protests, shaking her head and putting her fingers to her temples.

  I can tell this is a girl who is used to making the best of a bad situation, and now that I’m inviting her into a good situation, she doesn’t know what to say.

  “And it made sense for you to be in there?” I nod my head toward the shop burning down before our eyes.

  Her eyes flicker between mine and I watch as softness settles into her expression.

  “How will I repay you?” Her voice lowers to a trembling whisper. “I owe you my life.”

  A fire tears through my brain. I can think of so many ways she can repay me. She can repay me by being my woman. She can repay me by allowing me the honor of taking care of her. She can repay me by slipping between my sheets tonight and letting me hold her. By being my partner. By letting me own her, possess her, claim her, and have her forever.

  Before I can speak, a paramedic climbs aboard.

  “Hey,” he says to me. “You. Out.”

  My blood thunders between my ears as I watch him take the shirt off her chest to put a stethoscope to it. Her eyes dart between us frantically like she’s begging me to cover her up again.

  Something inside me snaps.

  “Take your fucking eyes off of her,” I snarl at the medic. His expression fills with fear and his bottom lip trembles, and then I feel two sets of strong hands grab my shoulders and pull me out of the ambulance.

  “You have a job to do,” one of the men on my crew says, hitting me upside the head.

  My girl lunges toward me on the gurney and she puts her hand out as if to capture me.

  Her milky breast are covered in soot and ash and are heaving up and down. Her outstretched hands look so pure and innocent. Her eyes are shining and clear despite the chaos swirling around us.

  I lurch toward the ambulance again and try to climb aboard. I’m gripping the doors and I’m about to put my boot on the floor to pull myself up when two sets of hands again grab me and pull me back. With all of my force I try to peel myself from their grasp.

  This isn’t a fair fight. It’s two on one. And they’re keeping me from her. I’ve always thought of them as my brothers, but now I’ll destroy them - and anything else keeping me from her.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” another guy on my crew says as he marches past me.

  Nothing’s wrong with me. There’s something suddenly right about me. And it’s her. This is the woman I can’t live without. It’s her. It’s my queen. I’ve found her.

  She scrambles to dig a set of keys out of her pocket and tosses them to me as the doors are about to close. I catch them with one hand and my chest rises and falls as I watch the doors of the ambulance shut and a storm of fury erupts inside my chest.

  Nothing less than scorched earth will work here.

  I will burn everything between me and her down to the ground.

  I need to know who she is. I need to know her name. I need to know her.

  Because she is mine.

  That’s when I erase the distance between me and her cute little white Beetle.

  2

  Cindy - Ten Minutes Earlier

  I grit my teeth and smile through the pain in my jaw.

  “Can you please just go take a look in the back, sweetheart?” the guy in front of me asks again. His words are dripping with condescension.

  “There’s nothing else in the back, sir,” I tell him, “what you see is what you get.”

  What would be the purpose of a pawn shop keeping their good stuff in the back, wherever the hell that’s supposed to be. This isn’t the Neiman Marcus shoe department. Everything we’ve got is out here in these crummy, fingerprint-smeared display cases.

  Why else would we have a display of old, cheap, outdated flip phones in the window? To lure customers in?

  He pushes a calloused hand through his greasy hair. I’d feel bad for him if he wasn’t being such a jerk to me. He’s clearly fallen on hard times, but then again so have I, and if feeling bad for someone actually results in good luck for the person, I should probably start with feeling bad for myself.

  It’s like when your plane is going down and they tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before helping the person next to you.

  I don’t know how I know that. I’ve never been on an airplane. And anyway, I don’t have space in my schedule to carve out any time to feel bad for myself.

  “Are you sure you don’t have anything else in the back?”

  He scratches his temple.

  I’m starting to feel like a broken record.

  As a matter of fact, I think we have some broken records lying around in this glorified garbage can somewhere.

  “What was your name again, sir?”

  “Randy.”

  He smiles. I smile.

  “Randy,” I tell him, “I am sorry, but unfortunately we don’t carry anything other than what you see here.”

  I wave my hand over the display of gold jewelry like I’m one of the girls on The Price is Right.

  Tell ‘em what they’ve won!

  How 'bout….a newwwww caaaaar!!!!

  Randy argues with me for another few minutes. His patience is wearing thin. My patience is wearing thin, too.

  At least at the end of this transaction he gets to leave this freaking dump.

  My eyes catch the clock over the entrance and it’s like time stands still. Oh my god, when I was a kid I thought my life would be filled with vibrant colors, amazing experiences, and a new day every morning when I woke up.

  It didn’t turn out like that. My mom passed away two years ago and left me with her flavor of the week. Now every day is the same. Broken record.

  It’s like having the soup of the day, but it’s the same soup every single day.

  It’s too salty, it’s too watery, and it just tastes like garbage.

  Finally I’ve had enough arguing with Randy so I grit my teeth and tell him I’ll go see what we have in the back.

  Once I’m in the supply closet, I shut the door behind me, put my back against the wall and make the sign of the cross. I’m in need of a prayer. No, more than a prayer. I need an entire rosary beads’ worth of Hail Marys.

  And I know praying for specific things is not the way it works. I know that I can only ask for the strength and wisdom to deal with whatever situation I’m in, not pluck me out of it on his own.

  Even still, I say a silent prayer that I can get the hell out of here.

  And it almost feels like I’m going to be out of this situation one day. I feel like I’m on the edge of something. I feel like there’s something just over the horizon, and if I just keep moving, I’ll catch it.

  It’s just around the corner of the dump I live in with the
dude my mom happened to be dating when she passed.

  It’s just on the other side of the road from the technical college that closed down right after I handed them half of the meager sum of money I got from my mom’s life insurance.

  It’s right outside my window like a hummingbird in a tree, singing me a sweet serenade. A bedroom that’s barely wide enough to fit twin bed. I think it’s literally a closet. I mean, I’ve never heard of a closet that has a window, but I’ve also never heard of a bedroom that can only be accessed by passing through a different bedroom.

  It’s a feeling starting at the edge of my mind and bleeding into my soul. It’s there. Something’s out there for me.

  With my eyes squeezed shut, I feel the sharp hint of tears gathering in the corners. I can’t cry. I won’t cry. I won’t allow it. I put my arms around my shoulders and wish that I could just walk the hell out of here and get in my little Buggy, drive away, and never look back.

  When I open my eyes and wipe the tears away, I reach for the door handle so I can go back out to Randy and tell him that we aren’t hoarding the good shit back here.

  But my heart sinks into my butt when I feel that the usually-cold metal doorknob is hot.

  It shouldn’t be hot. I feel my nostrils burn. I look down at my feet and see dark smoke curling up under the door.

  My heart kicks into gear and starts galloping like one of the ponies my mom used to bet on. The back of my neck breaks out in a cold sweat. I try to swallow, but my throat feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls. I go to grab the doorknob again but I’m pushed backward by the force of black and gray plumes curling around my feet and then my calves and my knees. I can feel that the fire is right on the other side of the door.