Lilli…
The police found me in a curtained-off area of the emergency room. I’d been given a breathing treatment and had coughed up some nasty phlegm with grey and black streaks in it. They’d given me some IV fluids and some medicine to calm me down, too. I guess they were concerned I would go into shock.
My robe was toast, soot-stained beyond saving and reeking of smoke. My hair, too. I had black smudges on my feet, chest and hands. I was assuming there was some on my face, too, but I couldn’t see it so, yeah. I was in a hospital gown and one of the nurses said she would scare me up something to wear home.
The police came into my little curtained-off area before she came back, one of them peeking into the curtain saying, “Knock, knock. How you feeling, Ms. Banks?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Up to talking with us?”
I nodded, and he slid into the little area with me, a female officer behind him. They were both in uniform and I wondered if that was normal.
“I’m Officer McKernan and this is Officer Hart, we’re here to take your statement.”
I told them everything and they were patient with me when I found myself tearing up again. They told me that they would pass my statement along and if there was anything else needed, someone would contact me. I swallowed hard and nodded, keeping it to myself but thinking, That was it?
The nurse came in as they were finishing up and set a set of folded green surgical scrubs and a pair of those hospital socks with the grippy bottoms on the end of the bed.
“By the time you finish putting these on, I’ll have you ready for discharge,” she said kindly.
“Thank you,” I said hollowly. My throat hurt, but they assured me that was normal and would go away.
I put on the clothes on offer and was surprised they fit. When I pulled the curtain aside, I figured out how they managed to know my size.
“Y’okay, baby?” Pasquale asked me.
“Been better,” I said and was fishing through the plastic personal-effects bag looking for my phone.
“I have to get back up to the upper floors now, but I heard through the grapevine you was here. What happened?” I told him and his face, strangely ordinary devoid of makeup, fell into lines of ‘You can’t be serious’.
“Fucking bitch,” he said flatly and I smiled, but it held no humor.
“I just need a ride back to the Echelon.”
“Well, your chariot has arrived,” he said and waved behind him. I looked up and blinked in surprise as much to see if I was seeing things right. Everyone from Backdraft’s firehouse, his whole shift, was standing around the nurse’s station looking at me expectantly.
“Wow,” I said, blushing hotly. A collective laugh swept through them and I went forward.
“Don’t suppose I could get a ride home to the Echelon tower?” I asked meekly, taken aback by their presence.
“You surely can; c’mon, this way,” the captain said, and steered me toward the emergency room doors.
“Your discharge papers!” my nurse called out and ran forward. She got my signature on a couple and I let Backdraft’s team take me home.
Security let me up to my apartment. I thanked them, and they assured me they would have new keycards made for me and brought up.
I threw my ruined robe down the garbage chute and took my phone with me into my condo, grateful for the biometric locks. I paused at the laundry in the hall and tossed what I was wearing directly into the washer, pausing only to set my phone on the dresser as I made a beeline to my bathroom. I just wanted the stink of fire and near death off of me.
I don’t know how long I huddled in the bottom of my shower in the corner, crying, but it was a good cry, cathartic, and that was where Backdraft found me. He didn’t even hesitate. Just opened the glass door and got in with me, fully clothed, sitting on the tile floor with me and pulling me tight to his chest. I huddled there and let it out and it was the perfect thing. Just what I needed.
He tipped my face up to his and I gripped his face between my hands, surging up to press my mouth to his. He kissed me back, his arms crushing me to him, our tongues lashing against each other, the desperation we both felt, the fear and gratitude, mixing into a heady cocktail, carrying us both away on a storm surge of passion.
“Off, off!” I ordered between impassioned breaths, and he hauled his wet shirt over his head while I worked at his belt and the button fly of his standard issue indigo-blue uniform pants.
He had his back against the wall and lifted his hips for me so I could pull his pants down. His cock sprang free of its wet cloth prison and I straddled his hips, rising up on my knees. He pushed his cock down so it was at the right angle and I settled over him, moaning as I took him into me in one single, hard fluid thrust.
It was too quick, almost too rushed, too much, but it was exactly what we both needed. I rode him, rising and falling steadily, and dropped my forehead to his, murmuring in a breathy voice, “You saved my life.”
“I saved our life,” he growled, kissing me. When the kiss came to its natural conclusion, he drew back to look me in the eyes and said, “My life is nothing without yours, Lil, so I saved our life, baby.”
I bit my lower lip and closed my eyes and let the power of his words renew me. They shook me to my very core, unmade me, and then carefully put me back together again into a new, better, stronger whole. Our mouths met again and his hands found my ass, gripping, pulling and pushing, rocking me on his cock. I got back into the swing of things and cried out, close, so very close, ready to die the little death for him, with him, with absolutely no regrets.