Book Title: Fire & Ice
Author: Robin Lynn
Publisher: Idle Winter Press
Release Date: December 1, 2022
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance
Tropes: Friends to lovers, mutual pining, firefighters, workplace romance
Themes: BDSM, self-acceptance, communication, trauma processing
Heat Rating: 5 flames
Length: 160 000 words/433 pages
It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
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Fire & Ice is the queer exploration of domination and submission, friendship, love, and lust you’ve been waiting for! Grab your safeword and come along for the ride as two best friends discover BDSM, themselves, and what it really means to burn.
Blurb
“What’s your safeword?”
Firefighter Tripp Truett has somehow tumbled headfirst into a whole new kind of relationship with his quirky paramedic best friend, Leander. What was only meant to be mutual relief from their high-stress jobs is quickly developing into something more, but with all the missed signals and crossed wires, can these two ever figure out that they’re so much closer to being on the same page than they think?
Leander registers Marley and Tripp engaged in a visibly heated discussion, glancing over just in time to see Tripp smack Marley’s arm away, snatching and tossing the pulse ox she’s been trying to slide onto his finger to the ground with a worrying crunch.
“I’m fine,” Tripp snaps, and Marley recoils.
In an instant, Leander’s between them, carefully curling an arm around Marley’s body to push her behind him while he glares down Tripp.
“Oh, don’t you start too,” Tripp scoffs, throwing his hands up before folding them across his chest, and Leander has had enough.
“Sidebar,” he growls, curling a hand around Tripp’s sweaty, t-shirt-clad bicep, only possible because his bunker jacket is currently shed, slung over the back of the camp chair he’s been occupying. “Now.” Tripp sighs heavily but doesn’t resist as Leander yanks him roughly around the side of the ambulance, where they have at least some semblance of privacy.
“What’s wrong with you?” Leander demands.
True to form, Tripp just rolls his eyes and tightens the way he’s hugging himself, but Leander detects a flash of—something behind the arrogant facade. They’re at an impasse—Tripp is silent, and Leander is seriously concerned. A distracted Tripp is a reckless Tripp, and he can’t send him back into an active fire like this. He has two choices right now: get through to Tripp, or bench him. While Tripp would deserve it, Leander doesn’t think that making him angrier will serve anyone in the long run (himself included), so he softens.
“Tripp, this isn’t you,” he tries. “Marley is one of your best friends. At the very least, you owe her an apology. And you owe your work focus.”
“Fine, I’ll apologize,” Tripp replies shortly, staring intently at the gold lettering on the side of the truck and not at Leander at all.
Time to bring out the big guns.
“Tripp, please,” Leander says softly, stepping forward into Tripp’s space, close enough that their chests are nearly pressed together. “You’re scaring me, this fire is not something to trifle with.” He trails a hand tentatively up Tripp’s arm and Tripp grumbles a little but dips his head, as close to Leander as he’s allowed himself to get all night long. If Leander tipped his chin up, he could kiss him. “I understand that you’re off your game, that I made a mistake earlier, that you’re angry with me—”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Tripp rips himself away like Leander is the fire and he’s just remembered that flames burn. “Tripp,” Leander tries, but Tripp holds out a hand: stay back. His fingers curl slowly into a fist, except for one that stays pointed somewhat menacingly in Leander’s direction.
“Not everything is about sex and submission,” he says icily.
Leander furrows his brow. “I know that.”
“Yeah,” Tripp replies, nodding tightly. “‘Course you do. You know so much about me,” he says, and Leander can’t figure out whether he sounds more angry or hurt. Neither are good signs. “Just—” Tripp ducks his head and shakes himself off. “Lemme do my damn job, Lee.” His radio crackles, and Leander sees wetness shining in Tripp’s eyes. “I gotta go.”
Before Leander can say another word, Tripp is stalking off and taking the rest of his team with him. Leander could pull rank, could call him back and demand that he stay, but he saw Tripp’s vitals earlier and there really wasn’t anything concerning. It would be a power move, and one that he has no doubt would go over like a lead brick in a pool. After he wanders back into his makeshift camp and exchanges a look of disbelief with Marley, Leander lets Tripp go.
More firefighters cycle through for checks, and Leander goes through the motions of his job but his mind is elsewhere. He should have proceeded more carefully, should have predicted that Tripp would be hyper-sensitized over a perceived rejection. Of course, he perceived Leander’s reply earlier as a rejection.
You idiot, Leander admonishes himself.
The fact that Tripp won’t even give him the opportunity to make it right smarts, but Tripp’s mocking of him was fair. Leander does know Tripp that well, and he should have followed his instincts. Bereft over his shitty decisions, Leander struggles to focus on simple tasks like taking a pulse, never mind paying attention to the fire scene as a whole.
It therefore takes a moment to register with him when panic erupts over the radio. Marley rushes to his side, cranking the volume high on the portable at Leander’s hip so that they can listen in. The ominous sounds of multiple emergency buttons activating drowns out all other noise as several radios with hot mics war for air priority, waiting for the dispatch center to make sense of the cacophony. Marley’s nails dig into his bicep, pinpricks of pain keeping him grounded amidst the crashing sounds and screams echoing over everyone’s handheld devices.
When the words hitting his ears finally begin to make sense, Leander goes numb from head to toe, unable to feel his limbs any longer as he struggles to process what’s happening.
“Structural collapse second floor… backdraft… multiple firefighters down… trapped… no visual… RIT team activation… “
Around him, firefighters are jumping into motion, swarming the building with all sorts of rescue gear and intent. Mickey is yelling, Leander can hear him without aid of the radio, and Assistant Chief Walter is standing on top of an SUV, directing squads and acting like a human repeater.
All Leander can do is stare blankly as the whole world seems to grind into slow motion. Only one thing really sticks in his mind, and that’s Ezra’s voice filtering over the wire through the chaos.
“Firefighter down! Lieut—Tripp, Tripp Truett, he fell through the floor, Mickey! He fell through the fucking floor!”
Robin Lynn is a 36-year-old queer, autistic mother of two, an unabashed fangirl sometimes known as “Wings,” and a disabled former firefighter, paramedic, and registered nurse. She writes for queer audiences with the goal of reflecting and centering the lgbtqia2s+ community in more media, because everyone deserves to see relatable, imperfect main characters who mirror themselves simply existing and getting their happy endings.
Find out more and follow Robin for additional content and future projects
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