The Rookie (manxmen)**Hothouse Book 1**

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

**A/N- just so you know the first part of this chapter is in the chief's POV, when you see the page break ****, then it returns to Thad's POV.**

**Warning**although the song is clean the video I chose for this chapter contains adult mature content, you have been warned. **SEVERE NOSEBLEED MAY OCCUR WHILE READING THIS CHAPTER!!!**

(A friendly game of poker-------->)

 

They were trying to slowly but surely kill me, I am sure of it now.  My crew and my friends weren't going to outright and come out and pick me off out in the field, no they were testing my will power. They were going to drive me out of my mind by shoving Thad with all his alluring wide eyed innocence, and his hard to resist personality in my face at every chance they got. I knew they were all upset about the disastrous encounters I had  with Kelly and his subsequent stalking. I knew that they thought  my decision to keep to myself and out of the group's unmentioned activities stemmed from that  debacle, and even after trying to convince them otherwise, they still wouldn't beleive me.

Kelly had been a frigging nightmare, and it had pained me to force my hand and make him transfer to another station, but he had left me no other choice. Especially after his off the wall reaction to Thad's arrival on the team. Breaking the news to the him had caused him to rage, and then weep all  over my office begging me to love him as much as he loved me. But I know that what he was feeling was far from love. It was lust, and the fact that he bragged that he was the one to bag the chief, and that didn't sit right with me either. He turned something private amongst the team into a power play and tried to create a rivalry amongst the men, and I refuse for it to happen again. But God, looking at him sitting there laughing with the rest of the guys as they got into the poker game made me fucking hard as a rock. He was absolutely stunning, from the first day he walked into my office, I knew then that it was going to be a challenge to keep my hands off of that delectable body.

And after getting a feel of him a few nights ago in my truck, I wanted more. He tasted just as sweet as he looked, and the way he just melted into my touch had left me panting like an inexperienced teenager with my body racing uncontrollably towards the finish line, my cock had literally exploded in my pants. And with that vivid memory haunting me, I had to get up from the bar stool I was perched at the counter as I watched the game progress and walk around the counter to hide my raging erection. The scent of sandal wood and clean laundry that always clung to his flawless skin was drugging my senses, and the memory of his face and how his body felt as he wrrithed..."Shit!" I inhaled heavily through my nose and breathed out through my mouth as I willed my twitching cock to behave.

"Everything altight there, Lance?" The one voice I didn't want to hear right now inquired from behind me.

"Everything is fine." I muttered, still facing away from him.

Xavier swirled the beer in his half finished bottle, and his dark brown eyes bore holes into the side of my face as he leaned a hip against the counter and silently studied me a second or two. "Come on man, it's me you're talking to."

I regarded him for a moment, and I recalled the very day we met. It was the first day at the fire academy, introduction day. I thought he was the sexiest thing on two legs until opened his obnoxious mouth and it was over for me. I spent out entire time in and out of classes wanting to either kill him or love him to death. We had become fast friends, and he knew me, just as I knew him. It's been too many years and thank God we have survived battling fires, explosions, dive and rescues, and even little old ladies with the cats named Fluffy hiding from the overzealous attentions in trees and on rooftops.