Page 32 of Found Through Fire

We drive for about an hour, until we pull up to a gate in the middle of the rural area of town. We stop and wait, after a second, it starts to open. We take the circle driveway, and Smoke parks in front of the girliest looking house I have ever seen.

We get out of the truck, and there is even a fuckin’ flower garden. I wasn’t expecting a badass assassin lair or anything, but certainly not a house where it looks like furry woodland creatures come out of the trees to help her get dressed in the morning.

We walk up the porch steps, and Smoke knocks on the door. I can tell he’s nervous by how stiff he is. “Door is open, go aheadand come in,” comes from a speaker somewhere on the porch. I’m assuming it’s one of those doorbell ones.

Smoke looks around and opens the door, and we’re greeted with a warm entryway. I look around and feel comfortable immediately. You can tell only a woman lives here from the little decorations scattered throughout the house that look like some of them came from a grandma, but not in a tacky way. There are also plush rugs, pillows, and throw blankets on every chair and couch in the living room, tempting you to snuggle up with the beautiful girl that lives here. Well, to me; probably not to anyone else…or at least they better fuckin’ not.

“Fuck! Ouch, you stupid mother fucker!” A screech comes from down the hall, pulling me from my jealous, possessive thoughts. Smoke and I look in the direction of the yelling. We rush towards the sound, alarms sounding in our heads. We start down the hallway with me leading the way and Smoke right behind me. I collide with something, and it bounces off me. I go to catch it before it hits the floor, but I’m too slow.

“Ouch. This is not my fucking day, and I haven’t even left the damn house yet,” she says with her eyes closed, staying on the floor for a second before opening them and looking at Smoke. Then, her eyes turn to me.

Looking down, spread out on the ground, is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She is older than the picture that I saw of her in the box, so I’m guessing it was taken a few years ago. She has a mane of blonde, curly hair and beautiful, huge, almost ice-blue eyes. They pierce something in my chest when they make contact with mine. She has a small nose with freckles that spread to the tops of her cheeks, and the most sexy, fuckable lips that I have ever seen.

When she looks at me, I notice her cheeks begin to turn pink before she looks back to Smoke and raises an eyebrow inquestion. I doubt the dumbass told her he was bringing someone with him.

“We heard you yelling and thought something was wrong. We were coming to check on you,” he says as he holds out his hand to help her up. I probably should have done that since I’m the one that knocked her over, but I decided to stare at her instead.

I never get nervous around women; I’ve really never had to since club girls and the rest of the women I fuck come tome. They just want to be able to say they fucked a biker and go on to find their banker or doctor that they can marry. I never had to worry about starting a conversation with a woman.

Shit! I just realized I’m in over my head, and she is way the fuck out of my league.

“It’s okay. I was rushing to get the rest of my shit together and smashed my toe on the leg of my bed. I’ve only had one cup of coffee so far, so I’m not awake yet. Actually, the fact that I am speaking in complete sentences at all should earn me a fucking hostess of the year award right now,” she rambles as she stands up with Smoke helping her.

Seeing how delicate she is, I question how she has survived doing what she does. I saw the video, but I didn’t know she would look this breakable. What if something happens to her when she goes in with no back up?

She tries to get ahold of her wild hair and grabs it to put it over one of her shoulders. That’s when I see it: her birthmark on her jaw, just in front of her ear, that creeps a little down her neck. Smoke has the same one, and so does Griz.

I stop that train of thought there. I don’t need to think about the similarities between my best friend and the girl I’m going to marry. That would be weird.

She turns down the hall, and we follow her to the kitchen. She grabs the coffee pot, which is almost full, and tops off acoffee cup that was sitting on the counter, almost empty. “Do you guys want some? I can make another pot, but I don’t have cream or anything for it,” she says over her shoulder, only looking at Smoke. That’s when I realize he hasn’t introduced me yet.

This is definitely not the smooth first meeting that I had in my head, where she falls in love with me the second that she sees me. Technically, there was falling, but not in the way that I was hoping for.

I smack him in the back of the head, and he turns to glare at me. Neither of us answer her coffee question, and she turns back around to put the coffee pot back on the warmer. I think I hear her mumble a “boys are fucking weird,” and “it’s too early for this shit.”

I glare back at Smoke, who is still staring at me, not understanding why I hit him. When the “smart one” doesn’t catch on, I mouth “introduce me,” to him, and he looks surprised for a second before we turn back to her. But it looks like during our quiet conversation, she decided to sit on the kitchen counter to watch us.

She smirks at us while holding her coffee cup in front of her face. It’s covering her mouth, but I can see that she’s smiling behind it as she studies how fucking strange we are acting.

I finally have a chance to take all of her in. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says “I support local caffeine dealers” that is so loose on her it hangs off one of her shoulders and makes her look even smaller than she is. She has cutoff jean shorts on that should be fuckin’ illegal, showing off her short but sexy toned legs and the ugliest knee high fuzzy socks that I have ever seen. They have Harry Potter characters on them, and I fall even more in love. I should probably get my shit together and talk to her at some point.

“This is my friend Knox, or Flame, in the club. He is going to take over as Pres when I get the VP position,” Smoke finally says. I still don’t know what to say. I’m blowing this, and I’ve only been in this house for less than 15 minutes. What am I going to tell our future kids?!

“Hi, Knox, it’s nice to meet you. The coffee question has expired, but do you want anything else to drink?” she asks as she turns while sitting on the counter and grabs the biggest to-go cup that I have ever seen from the cabinet behind her head. She fills it with the remaining coffee from the pot. I haven’t heard anyone call me by my actual name in years. I usually prefer it that way, but hearing it come out of her sexy lips is going to have to be a regular thing that is reserved only for her.

“Nice to meet you, Willow. I’m good on the coffee, though.” Why did that sound so weird? Have I lived my entire life being so fucking awkward and I never knew it? Smoke was the awkward one, not me.

She smiles at me, and anything else I was going to say to make it less weird dies on my lips as my brain malfunctions.

“Do you need help with your bags?” Smoke asks, raising an eyebrow at me, probably noticing how fucking strange I’m being.

“I already have them by the door. If it’s okay with you, though, I need to stop by Dad’s real quick. Gig got me a new body cam for my trip so I can have a backup, and I forgot to grab it,” she says while hopping off the counter. I almost rush over to help her so she doesn’t get hurt. Smoke is already giving me questioning looks, trying to figure out what is wrong with me, so I stay put. Obviously the girl can hold her own.

“That’s okay with me, just tell me how to get there. Are we going to make it in time for your flight?” Smoke asks as we follow her back down the hallway that we came in and reach a door that she left open. And, damn it! We’re in her bedroom.

It’s fuckin’ massive. It has a fireplace, and a reading nook set up next to a large window with a bench in it. She has a dark wood king-size four-post bed in the middle of the room, and I look away from it before I can picture all of the positions I plan on putting her in on that bed. The last thing I need is for my best friend to notice that I’m hard as fuck thinking about doing dirty things to his new sister that could possibly be illegal in some countries.

Willow comes out of a walk-in closet without the crazy socks, holding a pair of red high-top converse instead. She hops up on the bed that I realize is a little too tall for her, and puts on normal socks and shoes.