“We can’t go out that way,” shouts Ryan at me. I can barely hear him above the noise of the fire and the alarm.

“What are we going to do?” I say.

“Is there another exit?”

This is his office, and he doesn’t even know the layout. He really doesn’t come to work often.

It’s weird to have this thought in such a crisis situation.

For a moment, I feel calm.

But now I’m panicking again.

It’s a fire! We’re going to burn alive.

Shit, this isn’t the way I wanted to go.

My whole body feels like it’s freezing up.

I haven’t even had sex yet! I can’t die a virgin.

How ironic, if that’s the right use of the word, to die, burnt alive, with the sexiest man in San Francisco, who I rejected just a couple nights ago.

I have a sudden urge, despite my full-body anxiety and panic, to jump his bones right now, to thrust myself onto his rock hard cock.

“Lily! Listen to me, do you know where the exit is?”

He snaps me out of it.

We’re not going to burn alive. There’s another exit!

“There’s another exit!” I finally say. It feels like my brain isn’t working properly, and I don’t know whether it’s thinking about Ryan and his cock that’s distracting me, or the fire.

“Show me,” says Ryan, in an understanding, yet commanding way.

I take him by the hand, finding it strange to be leading this huge man by the hand, and we rush down to the other end of the hallway.

The smoke is a little less dense here, but by the end of the hallway, we’re both coughing almost comfortably.

I feel like I might vomit, and I actually bend over once, thinking that I’m going to puke, but fortunately, nothing comes out. He may be a prick, and this may be a serious fire, but I still don’t want to puke in front of Ryan Hudson. What does that mean? Probably nothing, right?

“We’ve got to get out of here,” says Ryan. There’s urgency in his voice, something I’ve never heard from him, but there isn’t a hint of panic.

“I…” I start to speak, but I start choking again.

All I can do is point to the other exit, which is hard to find, near one of the back closets. It’s not something Ryan would know about, since apparently he never comes here. I only know about it because I spent so long reading the employee manual, which covers fire escapes very carefully, as well as all other emergency procedures.

I feel like I’m about to pass out, but his strong arms suddenly embrace me and pick me up as easily as if I were a rag doll.

He carries me through the smoke, and I’m barely aware of what’s happening.

There’s smoke and heat, and I’m still coughing intensely, a rough, hurried cough, feeling like I’m on the verge of blacking out.

Next thing I know, we’re standing in the back alley by the rear parking lot. I’m still in Ryan’s arms, which are huge and strong. I can feel his hard muscular chest pressed against me. My breasts are against him, and so is my face. I look up, and see him looking down at me, smiling.

“You survived,” he says, his smile cracking, growing bigger.

I cough right into his face.

“Sorry…” I manage to say.

“I’m just glad we got out of there,” he says.

“My laptop?” I say.

“I’ve got it,” says Ryan. “Tucked into my pants.”

“I thought I must have dropped it…”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” he says.

I take in deep breaths of the fresh air. It’s a strange sensation, being able to breathe properly for the first time… in… I don’t know how long all of that took. It felt like an eternity, trapped in all that smoke. But it probably wasn’t more than a few minutes.

“I think I figured it out…” I say, trying to speak, but my voice is crackly and hoarse.

“It’s OK,” says Ryan. “You can tell me about it later.”

He’s carrying me around the building, walking at a safe distance from it. I can see smoke coming off the building roof. The fire turned out to be much, much worse than we’d thought.

The sound of fire engine sirens is close by, and wailing.

We’re almost around the corner of the building, where even in my state I know that the rest of the office will be waiting, looking at the building in awe, as they watch their workplace burn to the ground. Can the firemen still save it?

Despite what just happened, barely escaping with my life, I feel safe in Ryan’s huge arms. I feel completely protected, and I let my head fall to the side and rest against his chest, feeling his breathing as his chest moves up and down.

He looks down at me, gazing into my eyes without saying anything, and I look back up at him.

We’re around the corner now, and everyone from the office is gathered, just as I thought they would be, standing a safe distance from the burning office building.

There are two huge fire engines parked here, with the firemen in their suits and boots already shooting huge streams of water on the building’s roof. Other firemen are standing by the front door, apparently considering if they should enter or not.

There’s an ambulance by the fire engines, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see someone sitting upright with a blanket around them, inhaling deeply from an oxygen mask. A huge cylindrical oxygen tank is sitting nearby.

“Is she hurt?” says someone, an EMT rushing up to us. He’s outfitted in a navy blue uniform, with all sorts of gear hanging off his belt. He’s got a wide face, close cropped hair, and a bit of a belly.

“I don’t think so,” says Ryan. “She inhaled a lot of smoke.”

“What about you?” says the EMT.

“I’m fine,” says Ryan, his voice deep and powerful. “You’d better check her out. I’ll take her.”

With the EMT trailing behind, Ryan walks me over to the ambulance and sets me down ever so gently.

The EMT starts checking my vitals, hooking up various gadgets to me that I can’t keep track of.

“You’re going to be fine,” says Ryan to me, his voice deep but gentle.

“I didn’t know you were like that,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

I do know, but I don’t want to tell him. I didn’t realize there was another side to him. I thought he was just the douchebag billionaire, the tough alpha, the muscular badass, the guy who didn’t take shit from anyone, who just wanted money and didn’t care about anyone but himself. I didn’t realize there was a, dare I say, tender side to him.

Ryan just shrugs.

“Looks like you’re fine,” says the EMT after several minutes. “But you’d better use this.”

He hands me an oxygen mask that I gratefully take in my hand and breathe in from.

Instantly, my head starts to feel clearer. I didn’t realize how foggy headed I’d become.

I’m grateful that I’m not able to speak without taking the mask away from me, because I don’t want to tell Ryan that I’m seeing this new side of him. I don’t want to tell him that I… have feelings for him.

Do I, though? Maybe it was just all that smoke that I breathed in. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly.

But as I watch the firemen and the burning building, I’m actually focused intently out of the corner of my eye on Ryan, staring at the side of his head as he watches his building with folded arms. My head’s clear now, but I still see something in him that I didn’t see before.

The firemen seem to have put out most of the fire. A few of them have entered the building now. I think that means it’s structurally intact to a certain level.

Ryan gives me one final look before walking away, towards the office building.

He doesn’t ask if I’m OK, but I can see it in his eyes. I can see something else… something like caring for me. But that’s absurd, right? He’s the douchebag billionaire, and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself and his money.