Flaming Desire - Part 2 (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Read Online Free PDF

sound in my throat.
    “Tell me about it,” he said.
    His body was so close to mine now that I almost felt his voice rumble from deep in his chest. I had never told anyone. Not even Serena or Melody. Why Matt? I had never talked about it, not since that day I walked out of that last therapy appointment when I was seventeen years old.
    “There was a fire,” I began softly. My head nestled against his shoulder, facing his neck. I'm sure that he felt my breath on the base of his throat where it met his shoulder. For some reason, I had the sudden urge to kiss him there, to taste his skin, wondering if it would taste salty, smoky, or both. I shoved that thought to the recesses of my brain. I had to get a hold of myself. This reaction to him… I wasn't sure what I thought about it. Should I indulge it? Fight it?
    He leaned slightly back, gazing down at me with that endearing concern. As darkness settled over Santa Fe, the interior of the cab was lit only by the dashboard lights. He turned off the engine, plunging the cab into near darkness.
    “Will that make it easier?”
    Easier? In the bright light of day or in the deepest depths of night, it would never be easy to remember that horrible night. Still, if there was anyone in the world I could share it with and who I knew would understand, I believed that person was Matt. Not only did we share the same career, but our backgrounds in firefighting. We had seen what fire could do, the devastation left behind, not only on landscapes, wildlife, and homes lost, but on the people left scarred, physically and emotionally, forever in its aftermath.
    So, slowly, softly, I told him about that horrible night, that night that I had snuck out of the house to meet a boy. The night I had come home in the middle of the night to find my house on fire. The night I listened to my little sister screaming for my mom, my dad, me, to come get her, to save her.
    I had been laughing as my boyfriend turned the corner to my street, but my laugh died instantly when I saw the flashing lights, saw the neighbors gathered in their front yards in their pajamas and bathrobes, all of them staring... at my house. My happy-go-lucky life had ended that night; the moment I saw my mother lying on her back in the middle of the lawn, the first responders giving her CPR, forcing air into her lungs with an oxygen mask attached to an Ambu bag.
    A short distance away, on the other side of the driveway, lay a body that was already covered under a yellow plastic sheet. My dad.
    I had jumped out of the car, shocked inside a silent scream, trying to race past the policeman and the firemen who grabbed at me, snatched at my arms, trying to keep me from running headlong toward my mother. Two firemen in full gear, oxygen tanks on their back, were just entering the house when I heard my little sister screaming. Seconds later, an explosion blew out the back side of the house where the kitchen was located. I managed to pull myself away from the policeman holding me back and raced along the side of the house, my heart pounding in terror toward my sister’s bedroom, screaming her name. Sandy!
    She was only twelve years old. In a matter of seconds, her screams stopped, just as I reached her bedroom window. I slammed my fists against it, trying to break the glass. The policeman rushed up behind me, tried to pull me away, warning me of additional potential explosions.
    I hadn't cared.
    Watching through my sister’s bedroom window, I saw the two firemen try to get into her room, now fully engulfed in flames. They were forced to retreat by a falling ceiling beam and the literal collapse of half my house into her bedroom, right onto her bed. The rumpled bed instantly erupted into flames.
    Shrieking my sister's name, I fought the policemen holding me back until one of them literally picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder, much as Matt had done this morning. One of the only other things that I remembered from those desperate moments