Taken by Two Firefighters

by Celia Styles

  “Olivia, would you like me to take you home?” Bart asked, sending his charming smile her way. Olivia let her mask fall away for the first time and glared at him.

  “No, I can call a car.”

  “Please, I insist-“

  “I do not think that I am going to need to work for you anymore, Mr. Cromwell.” She continued, her mask firmly back in place as she stood and pulled her phone from her bag, “Mrs. Cromwell, would you please show me how to get to your front door, I don’t believe I will be able to find it with ease on my own.”

  Angela raised an eyebrow, but stood and lead the girl to the front door as she called for a car. Angela stood with her in the entryway for a long tense five minutes before Olivia looked down at her phone and indicated that her car had arrived. Angela opened the door for her and followed her out, somehow knowing that she wanted to speak in private.

  The blond woman spun around and looked Angela in the eye, “Leave him, Angela. You need to leave him. You have no idea. He told me that your marriage was open, that you are both polyamorous and you are simply trying to keep it quiet so the press does not catch wind. I don’t know why he would bring me here knowing it was a lie, but I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused you. Had I known…” She took a deep breath and shook her head, “I am not that kind of a woman, Angela. I hope you can believe that one day.” She went to slide into the car, and before she closed the door she looked back up at Angela, “I am not the only one. He has… a network of women. All believing that what he is doing with them is within your knowledge.” She closed the door and the car disappeared from the driveway.

  If Angela was expecting something to happen with Olivia, that was not it. Honestly, it did not surprise her that Bart had a “network” of women at his beck and call. She suspected as much, and at this point, she was too numb to feel anything more than numbness. The marriage was over a long time ago, she should have known that. But the foolish woman still felt the need to talk to Bart about it all, to give him a chance to explain it away. Again.

  When she entered the house Bart stalked out of the living room, blond hair a mess around his head, green eyes blazing.

  “What the fuck was that, Angela?”

  Angela just shook her head, releasing a breath that deflated her body. “Is your mother still here?”

  “She’s leaving now.”

  Angela nodded, “Good. We need to talk.”

  “Yes! We do! You just cost me a good secretary!”

  “No Bart,” Angela scoffed, “I cost you a good fuck.” She rounded on him once she reached the living room and pressed her finger into his chest, “How could you? How could you bring her here? Did you expect me to react any differently?”

  He rolled his eyes and shoved her hand away from him, “I expected you to be courteous to our guest, and not so offend her that she quits her job!”

  Angela laughed humorously, voice rising to a higher velocity, “Oh don’t kid yourself, Bart! She quit because you told her I was okay with an open marriage, and when I didn’t roll over and take the humiliation you attempted to throw at me tonight, she figured out that she was manipulated! Don’t you dare twist this to be my fault! How many other women are you fucking under the same lies?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t cheat on you anymore, and you accuse me of this?” He took a step back, face a mixture of anger and hurt, “I promised you I would do better, how could you accuse me of this?”

  Angela was accustomed to this. She saw right through it. This was not a situation where there was any doubt in his infidelity, so this particular tactic of manipulation was not going to work. And he saw it in her face. He sighed, deflating the same way that Angela had in the entryway, and fell to the couch with his hands over his face.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Angela. I really don’t know.”

  Angela rolled her eyes, “You are a cheating whore, Bart. That’s what’s wrong with you.”

  He looked up and frowned, “You know I love you, right?”

  “You love me? Really? You expect me to believe that, especially after tonight?”

  He nodded, reaching out for her hand and pulling her to sit on the couch next to him, “Angela, I do love you. Why would I have married you if I didn’t love you?”

  “I don’t doubt that you loved me, but there is no love between us anymore. You have made sure of that.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “I do.”

  His handsome face drew closer to her face and his big hand slid from her knee up to the hem of her dress, “We could always re-kindle. We haven’t had a sex life in so long, Angela, maybe if we fed it things would get better. We used to have such good sex.” He leaned closer and spoke into her ear, “Let me show you how much I still love you, Angela. We can fix our relationship; we just need to work together. I haven’t worked with you, but I am willing to try now.”

  Angela felt herself crumbling. She did still love him, or at least loved the man she fell for all those years ago. She wanted nothing more than to allow herself to fall into his arms and build their relationship up together.

  One more chance, she thought as his lips covered hers and he pressed her onto her back on the couch; just one more.

  Angela ignored the fact that she woke up alone the next morning. She also ignored that the house was as empty as Bart’s side of her bed. Knowing that if she gave herself too much time to think she would make herself miserable, she quickly got ready for work and left earlier than usual. She did not have to be at work until seven O’clock, but she found herself making her way down the familiar route to the elementary school at six in the morning anyway. There was plenty she could get done before her classes started.

  She did not want to think about how untrustworthy she still believed Bart to be. She did not want to think about her suspicions that the night before was meant to disarm her, and that the sweet nothing he muttered into her hear while he rode her were empty. She was not ready to consider how horriblyover her marriage really was. And when she began to think about all of those things anyway she thought about the hallway.

  That bright blue hallway that she worked so lovingly on the day before; the hallway that proved Bart still cared for her. That hallway was what made her stop and look at the whole situation in a different light. Bart was trying, and he did care even if it didn’t seem like it sometimes. She just had to be strong and allow him to work some of his issues out himself. He promised to be more active in their marriage; to work with her toward a solution rather than against her. She had to give him a chance to make that effort.

  Maybe then she would have the marriage she always wanted. Maybe then she would finally trust him again. Maybe then he would love her and cherish her the way a husband was meant to love and cherish his wife.

  And maybe the sex would get better.

  She felt terrible thinking about their sex the night before as unsatisfying, but there it was; the thought that made her cringe with guilt and disappointment alike. She was so wound up when he pressed her back into the couch that she would have done almost anything for release. Unfortunately the lack of foreplay- or any sort of preparation- made his first handful of strokes into her painful enough to put her out of the mood.

  She tried to get into it because she wanted their first time in seven months to be memorable for him. She wanted to give him something that the other women couldn’t; a chance to make love rather than just have sex. The only way she could get into the moment was to take her mind out of it.

  The memory came to her eagerly. She was laid out on her bed, each limb tied firmly to each bedpost, naked as the day she was born. Again, she was blindfolded- one of her favorite sense-enhancing tactics. But instead of being shared with multiple men, she was laid out for only one man that night; one passionate, rough lover with a toe-curling gentle side that came out when she begged for release.

  She felt his hand on her ankle, and her ample chest heaved fasted as its heat trailed agonizingly slowly up t
o where her thigh met her pussy. Pussy. He loved to hear her say it. He demanded that she describe what he was doing as he did it, making her use the word “pussy” every chance she had. The word was no longer vulgar to her after he came into her life. It was dirty; naughty. She loved it.

  “Don’t stop talking now, Angela, my mouth being busy does not excuse yours.”

  Angela moaned, crying out to the heavens, crying out to hell, crying out for the world to hear and take heed of the miraculous tongue at work on her gushing pussy. She told him what he was doing, she told him how it felt, she screamed in excitement when he roughly shoved two fingers into her and curled them forward to press hotly into her G-spot. She trembled, whimpered, and released sounds that she did not know were possible. His arm pumped furiously, relentless in his attack on her G-spot; his tongue just as unyielding against her clit. And with a rebel scream she released on his face, causing him to chuckle and lap at her even though her flesh was too sensitive to take it, and she begged him to stop.

  He finally relented and she felt him crawl up her body, dragging his hard cock along her stomach, and then her chest, until he straddled her face. “I want you to hum God Save the Queen, now Angela. Be a good girl and don’t stop humming.” His cock was just big enough to stretch her throat. Once he found his rhythm and she could properly breathe, she began to hum. The vibrations caused him to groan in approval as he thrust in and out of her mouth, causing her to salivate. How was it that even his moaning was accented? It was near dangerous that he spoke with such a deep Irish accent, but it was lethal that his moans were just as exotic. They were addicting. And the moans from later that night were even more guttural as he pounded into her from every angle imaginable until they were both so spent they could not even move to put the blankets over themselves before they fell asleep.

  Angela was jerked out of her fantasy when she realized there was a smiling face before her. She kept herself from jumping, but her heart raced in her chest anyway. When did she get to school, let alone into the building?

  “Happy Monday, Angela!” The amount of enthusiasm that Georgia always has in the mornings should be illegal. She was a twenty three-year-old, blonde as can be, blue-eyed explosion of pep. And an explosion is the last thing anyone wants when they go into work.

  But she was harmless, and Angela adored her deep down. When Georgia left for her classroom, Angela felt much less wound up, but she wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing when the guilt flooded her heart again. Why couldn’t she fantasize about her husband like a good wife? Never once had she strayed, not from the moment Bart asked her on their first date, but in her mind her past sex life was still thriving.

  Was she just as bad as Bart? Could she be the cause of all of this?

  But of course, she knew she wasn’t. She loved her husband for much longer than she liked to admit; even after countless affairs. Even when he stopped trying to hide them. She stayed true to him, loyal to him, supportive of him. She cherished him in ways that he took for granted, exploited, and cast aside like a used condom. And she let him because she didn’t know how to fix it.

  But he told her that he wanted to help her fix it. He told her that he wanted to take the steps together.

  There was finally color in their home.

  Angela was at her desk when her phone alerted her to a caller, and she smiled when she saw her mother’s picture on the screen.

  “Hola, Mami,” She smiled into the phone. She hadn’t seen her mother in two years, and she missed her dearly. She and her mother had always been very close, even in Angela’s teen years. Angela made many plans to travel to see her mother over those two years, but they were always shot down by Bart for some reason on another.

  “Angela, you never call me anymore!” It was good to hear her voice, even if she was lecturing, “After all of the years I spent raising you, you repay me by treating me like I am dead!”

  “Ma, I’m so sorry that I haven’t called you lately. I’ve had so much on my mind.”

  “Cuéntame la historia, Angela.” Her voice was soft now, heartfelt as she implored her daughter to talk to her in such a nostalgic way. When Angela was little, she had problems expressing her feelings, and her mother found that if Angela explained them in form of a story it was easier for her. So instead of asking her to express herself she would say “cuéntame la historia”. Tell me the story. As Angela grew up, expressing herself became less of a problem, but her mother never stopped using the phrase.

  “Mami… I just don’t know what to do anymore. I am so tired of being hopeful, but I just can’t stop myself from feeling it when he promised me he will change. Me duele.”

  “I know it hurts, baby. You have a home here, mija. You know my answer to your troubles with that man. I want you here where I can protect you from any more pain from him.”

  “I know, Mami.”

  “Querida, why do you hold on? I don’t understand.”

  Angela felt her throat swell with emotion when her mother’s voice broke, and she squeezed her eyes closed to keep the tears at bay, “I don’t know. I don’t understand anything anymore.”

  “Well, you know your father and I love you. And your brothers love you too. That much you should understand, mija, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  “Te extraño tanto.” She told her mother, voice wobbling terribly.

  “I miss you too, Angela, more than you know.”

  After a long moment of getting herself together, Angela noticed the time and told her mother she loved her before letting her go. It was time to work, maybe that will keep her from thinking.

  As always, her work made her crazy. She loved children, but working with such young ones and pain in the same room was enough to make her want to walk off the side of The Space Needle. And she’d never even been to Washington.

  That particular day was harder than most because she had the youngest three grades to deal with. Luckily each class was only thirty minutes long. Unluckily, she had a total of six rotations of this. The two Kindergarten classes were first, as they left earlier than the students of other grades, and those were never as difficult as one would assume. At that age, little humans are much easier to control. Of course there were challenges, but after four years of working at the elementary school, Angela was a pro at handling them.

  After the Kindergarteners’ two classes were over, the first graders shuffled into her classroom and she set them to painting sunflowers. Angela was roaming the classroom and peeking over the shoulders of the kids when it happened.

  There is no readying a person for tragedy. Even if Angela had a warning of what was to come, she was not sure she would have reacted any differently. One moment she was laughing with a little girl over a paint splotch that looked like a sheep, and the next there was nothing but chaos.

  She wasn’t sure what exploded, but she could not think of anything else that would make such a thunderous noise and shake the walls and ground the way it did. Children screamed, cried, crawled under tables, ran for the door. Angela panicked.

  She screamed when she noticed the flames licking at the ceiling, and her reaction brought the attention of the kids. Terror clawed its way into the six-year-olds and suddenly all they could do was cry, staring at the fire that was beginning to engulf the room.

  Angela wasn’t sure what it was that kicked her ass into gear, but before she realized what she was doing, she was tearing at her skirt- leaving herself clad in nothing but her blouse and her white slip- and creating squares and strips of cloth that she wet in the classroom sink before handing them to the kids. She told them to place them over their mouths to help keep the smoke from their lungs, and to lay face down on the floor.

  She made sure they did as they were told before she worked at breaking the faucet on the sink and trying to direct the spurt of water towards the kids to keep them too wet for the fire to catch their clothes. All hope of putting the fire out died when she realized that even the sprinklers were doing nothing to stop the sp
read of the flames.

  She cried helplessly as she watched the flames creep closer to the cluster of children in the room, all laying face down, unaware of how close death was to them.

  Angela had never wished for windows more than she did at that moment.

  And at that moment was when the figures clad in yellow suits burst through the wall of flames. Through the smoke, she noticed them lifting the children and wrapping them in blankets before taking them from the room. Angela fell to her knees and gasped for air, finding that it was easier to breath now that she was closer to the ground. She tried to cry, but inhaling hurt so badly she was sure she inhaled the fire.

  Hands grasped her under her arms and pulled her up. She was wrapped in a blanket, head to toe, and carried in strong arms from the burning building.

  When the blanket was taken from around her, she noticed she was outside, and the air was cleaner. She could breathe here, and she took advantage of it, tears spilling from her eyes. She thought she would be placed with the Paramedics right away, but instead she was gently set on the ground and flanked by the two firefighters that took her from the burning building.

  She was sure she looked like hell- soot and tear-streaked face, tangled hair, slip burnt up to her knees- but when they took their masks and helmets off she felt even more ghastly. Never in her days of living did she see such beautiful men. They both regarded her with clear, concerned eyes, and strong features, and Angela felt like she was looking into the faces of her own personal Angels.

  “Can you speak?” The one with Grey eyes asked. His features were longer, more slender and elegant, but there was a strength in his jaw line that belied his dominant nature. She stared at him openly, eyeing where his neck disappeared into the rest of his fire-proof suit and wishing she could see more.

  “What is your name?” This question came from the other; the one with green eyes. He was more rugged, masculine to a fault with thick brows and squared features. There was a hint of stubble on his face that she wanted to rub her hand along, and she reached out and did just that. She blamed it on the lack of oxygen.