Page 16 of Controlled Burn
The bunkroom was cold, washed in a blue fluorescent spill. She lay tangled in the sheets, heart thrumming, skin still sticky where his hands had left her marked and trembling.
Her throat was sore, every swallow a reminder. Her collarbone bore the ghost of his grip.
She'd never been used like that before—never wanted it, never thought she would.
She pressed her knees together, feeling herself throb in the dark.
She tried to conjure up guilt, to let shame fill the space he'd left, but all she felt was wild, electric want.
And something meaner, sharper: fear.
She didn't do this. She didn't fuck with married men. Not ever.
Her father drilled that into her—don’t mess with what isn’t yours. She believed in loyalty. She was a girl's girl, the kind who’d step between her friends and creeps at bars, the kind who’d burn the world down for another woman.
After her dad died, she hadn't let anyone touch her. Nobody. Not for a year. Maybe longer.
And she damn sure never set out to break up a marriage. She didn’t want to be that woman—the homewrecker, the scandal, the cliché. She’d never even wanted anyone’s leftovers. She wanted something real, raw, hers.
But she couldn’t stay away from him.
Dean Maddox was everything she shouldn't want. Older, unavailable, haunted. Yet she was drawn to him like fire to oxygen—always knowing she’d get burned, craving the pain anyway.
She tried to imagine him happy at home, some perfect wife in a tidy kitchen, but the image never fit.
Not after tonight.
She replayed the way he looked at her, hunger stripped raw. The way he trembled when he touched her. The way he lost control—just for her, just for a second.
Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it was something darker, hungrier—a need that made them both reckless.
She should run. She should cut it off now, before anyone gets hurt.
But she didn’t move.
She lay there, shivering, wanting him all over again.
And somewhere in the dark, with his name still bitter on her tongue, she wondered if maybe ruin was the only thing she’d ever been good at.
Chapter 8
Damage Control
Maddox
He didn’t speak to her the next morning.
Stale coffee coated his tongue, mixing with diesel-laced station air, undercut by the faintest trace of orange and bergamot—her perfume, sharp and out of place in all this grit.
Not when she passed him a steaming mug, eyes daring him to flinch.
Not when she checked her gear with clipped precision, every movement sharp as a scalpel.
Not even when she clipped on her radio and vanished into the bay, her scent trailing behind—a whisper meant for him alone.
But fuck, he felt her. Everywhere. Her warmth clung to his uniform, like embers trapped in a cold hearth. The curve of her neck. The way her messy bun exposed the ink spiraling up her arm. That gloss, catching the light like a secret only he knew. He kept seeing her and hearing her. The way she moaned for him, breath ragged and unashamed.
Maybe she didn’t regret it. Perhaps, it hadn’t been a mistake. But every time she moved—brushed past him, laughed too close—he felt it burning under his skin, begging for oxygen.
