"Just in case."
Kelly Severide smiled half-heartedly at the curvaceous woman wearing too much makeup who had boldly slipped her number into the chest pocket of his jacket. She headed back to her table of girlfriends, sashaying her well-endowed backside in the process. Kelly noticed, but he turned back to face the bar just as quickly.
He never had a problem attracting female companionship. In fact, an outside observer might gape at just how effortless it was for him to catch a woman if he wanted to. Kelly Severide could never really be in need of a date. Usually too focused on putting building fires, he never noticed the sometimes smoldering looks he'd get from bystanders, or even unscathed victims once the adrenaline of the emergency faded away. If anything, the heroic glow that would emanate from him after his often daring rescue stunts only amplified his allure.
This is all the more reason he felt unmoored as he covertly glanced at the scene behind him in the reflection of the mirror-back liquor shelves of the bar. He was so clearly caught in the riptide of the breathtaking woman whooping and hollering away on a mechanical bull.
Stella Kidd could never be a party wallflower. In reality, she was front and center, easily stealing the attention of everyone in the bar. With voluminous curls flying wildly around her face, strands of hairs sticking to her forehead, she wore a glisten that would never be deemed sexy on anyone else but her. It was the kind of sheen that's like dewy skin after hours of world-shattering lovemaking.
At the far too intimate thought of his trainee, Severide subtly touched his cold beer to his cheek: one part, to appear like the detached, but amiable superior he needed to be in this crowd, but another part, to cool his brain with a shock to his nerve endings. No matter how tempting and, quite honestly, criminally beautiful the cowgirl on the bull was, there was no need from him to be entertaining such steamy thoughts about her.
He fingered the label on his beer bottle, still feeling live to the touch. It should have been his last drink of the night, but his other hand itched to order another if it would stifle his thoughts. Rolling bits of the torn-off label paper between his fingers, he reconsidered just was made Stella Kidd so damn sexy. Sure, there are few female firefighters who come through the academy; however, there are enough that meeting one doesn't automatically means a guy would need to salivate uncontrollably like a hungry dog. But, he'd never trained one with as much passion and heart as Stella. Save for Dawson, maybe. But he never trained Gabby directly while she was at the academy, and her fierce and exacting brilliance was already evident in his years knowing her as an EMT. With Kidd, there was hardly the level of take no prisoners, laser-like determination that Dawson carried. Kidd put anyone at ease. Made everyone smile. Double over with laughter even. She had a sense of humor like one of the guys.
Severide couldn't help turning in his stool to face Stella still cheerfully riding the mechanical bull. Watching her out of uniform, though, she could never be mistaken for one of the guys. Her body screamed woman everywhere that mattered most to him, which let's be real, was all over. Model stature, but with thick muscular curves. Hips and thighs that could cushion his head for hours. Long legs that would anchor him tightly if he...
"Bartender!"
Beer wasn't going to slice it anymore. One dirty shot of whiskey might burn off his wandering thoughts and hopefully dull his senses so he could focus, blurry-eyed, on anything other than Stella riding that bull: lithe arm waving freely above her head, hair whipping over her shoulders, back arched to keep balance, ass in the air when the bull suddenly dipped.
"Shit," he muttered.
He turned back to the bar to find his shot waiting. He only hesitated a mere second before pounding back the shot. As the liquor burned his throat, he grunted to himself, "Damn, you're in trouble."