Fun With a Fireman (2 page)

Down below, I saw an old man with a dog staring up
at me. He looked a little puzzled.

‘Are you in need of some assistance, madam?’ he
called up. Now is that British understatement, or what?

‘Help!’ I said, weakly.

The man lifted his hand to his ear. ‘Sorry…didn’t
catch that. Hard of hearing, you know.’

I composed my shaking body, took a deep breath and
yelled.

‘HELP!!!’

He got the message that time.

***

I have to say the fire
service was quick off the mark. I had only been clutching at the
twisted metal for a few minutes when a fire engine showed up in the
street. It was one of those ones with the extending platform on the
back. A few moments later, the cab doors opened and six firemen
spilled out. They all stared up at me, and I did my best to cover
my boobs and my ass with one hand, whilst holding on for dear life
with the other. Of course, by this time, quite a crowd had gathered
in the street. Most of them appeared to be teenage boys who were
taking advantage of the opportunity to inspect my assets. I just
hoped to God none of them had a camera-phone handy. The last thing
I wanted was to become the star of a YouTube viral video. My Dad
would have a heart attack.

The firemen didn’t hang around. Within what seemed
like seconds, one of them had climbed into the platform basket
thingy and was being raised up in the air to meet me. It seemed to
take forever for them to maneuver near to me, but it was such a
relief to see the basket inching closer and closer. As soon as the
fireman was close enough, he reached out his hands and put them
under my shoulders.

‘Don’t worry love, you’re safe. You can’t fall now
that I’ve got a grip on you. Are you OK?’

I nodded dumbly, transfixed by the sight of my new
hero. Girls, if you have never been rescued by a hunky fireman, I
would highly recommend it. Especially if your guy turns out to be
as hot as mine. I couldn’t see much of his body, due to all the
gear he was wearing, but he had a classically handsome face. Better
still, he had a disarming smile that somehow said ‘don’t
worry…everything is going to be just fine.’

‘Bloody hell, you’ve got yourself into a right mess
here,’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you usually walk around in your
underwear?’

I managed a weak smile in return. ‘No, not usually.
I had to leave in a bit of a hurry.’

‘Ahh!’ my hero said knowingly. ‘I hear an accent.
You’re Australian.’

‘American.’

‘Oh, yeah. Well miss, I’m going to lift you over
onto this platform with me. As soon as you are in here, you will be
as safe as houses. So are you ready?’

The fireman put his arms around me and lifted me off
my feet. I felt a moment of panic as I realized I was dangling in
the air four floors above the ground, but the firmness of his grip
reassured me. A moment later, I was relieved to feel my feet
touching the base of the platform. I was safe. The fireman let go
of me and gave me another of those winning grins, making me weak at
the knees.

‘Well, I must say I’m glad we got you off that fire
escape. Someone is going to get into big trouble over that. Never
mind, no harm done. What’s your name, Australian lady?’

‘American…I’m American. My name is Angel.’

‘Good to meet you, Angel. I’m Duke. Now in a moment,
we’ll go down to ground level. But before we do, let’s get you
covered up.’ Duke shrugged off his fireman’s jacket and slipped it
around my shoulders. It was way too big for me, and weighed a ton.
But at least my tits and ass were covered up. Duke nodded his
approval at my new look. ‘You won’t win any fashion shows in that,
but at least the boys in the street will stop gawping.’

I was the one who was gawping now. With his giant
jacket removed, Duke looked like a normal human being…and a very
impressive specimen of one, too. Working for the fire brigade seems
to give guys muscles in all the important places. If Duke wanted to
inspect me all over to look for fire damage, he was very welcome to
do so. A few minutes later, we were down on the ground. And when I
put my feet on terra firma, I was so happy I could have cried.

***

I won’t bore you with
all the details of what happened next. I ended up spending ages
giving statements to the fire service and the police, while they
tried to pretend they weren’t laughing at the lurid details of my
story. I had to tell them about Ben, of course, to explain why I
was hanging outside his building in my underwear. I tried to tone
it down a bit for his benefit, but the last I heard they were going
to take a statement from him, presumably with his wife listening
and taking notes. Serves him right for cheating – heck, he never
told me he was married.

I had to give Duke back his fireman’s coat, but
instead he offered me his personal leather jacket from the cab of
the fire truck. I protested, but I couldn’t really refuse. I could
hardly walk away in my bra and panties when the place was crawling
with police. Duke wrote down his phone number, and asked me to call
him when I was ready to return the jacket.

Perfect – I now had a legitimate excuse to call on
my handsome hero and demonstrate how American girls show their
appreciation.

Awesome!

***

As it turned out, Duke
was very much a local boy. I rang him the next day and arranged to
drop the jacket off at his place in the evening. I looked the
address up on Google Maps, and found it was also in Battersea, but
on the opposite side of the park to Ben. We agreed that I would
call in at eight, so I was able to spend most of the afternoon and
early evening getting ready for the big event. Ben had called in
and told my London Editor that he was sick. I guess he just didn’t
want to face me. Either that or his wife had made him sick with a
rolling pin…who knows. I was given the day off while they flapped
around to find a replacement.

By seven, I was all pimped up and ready to rock and
roll. I tried to strike a note somewhere between sexy and slutty,
and when I looked in the mirror, I was quite happy with what I saw.
Heck, Duke would have to be gay not to be interested. My editor
back in the States is always telling me that feature articles
should be like a woman’s skirt – long enough to cover the subject,
but short enough to be interesting. That pretty much sums up the
skirt I was wearing. The skirt was topped by a blouse that had one
too many buttons undone, revealing enough cleavage to park your
bike in. I was wearing sufficient perfume to anesthetize a small
army.

The shoes I had lost outside Ben’s flat never showed
up. So earlier in the day, I had gone out and bought the tallest
pair of stilettos I had ever seen. They were just what I needed to
impress Duke – the kind of shoes designed to fell a man from fifty
paces.

In other words, I was dressed to kill.

I grabbed the leather jacket, took a cab round to
Battersea, and spilled out onto the pavement outside Duke’s
address. I adjusted my hair, plumped up my boobs and strutted up to
the flat with his number on it. I pressed the bell and waited
expectantly with a smile plastered all over my face.

There was no answer.

I pressed the bell again.

Still nothing. I double-checked the address to make
sure I was in the right place. Yup, this was it. We did say eight
o’clock, didn’t we? Yes, we sure did. Hmmm. I was about to press
the bell again when I heard sounds behind the door. There was the
rattle of a lock being undone, and then the door opened.

Duke stood there in the doorway, looking at me
open-mouthed.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten you were
coming.’

Well, that sure made me feel good. Here I was,
dressed up like I was going to the Ritz, while Duke was standing in
front of me in an old T-shirt and shorts. His hair was ruffled and
his eyes were bloodshot. He looked a real mess.

‘I’m so…so sorry’ he stuttered. ‘Something important
came up, and everything else went clean out of my mind. You’d
better come in.’

So there I was with my tits sticking out like fresh
melons on a fruit stand, and Duke didn’t even notice. Hmmph. I knew
where I wasn’t wanted.

‘Oh, no…I don’t want to interrupt. I just came to
return the jacket. Here take it, and I’ll be on my way…’

Duke raised a hand to interrupt. ‘No, please – don’t
go. I could use the company, to be honest. I’ve had rather a bad
day. Come on in.’

A few moments later I found myself sitting on a sofa
in a small but pleasant living room. Duke excused himself to go and
get tidied up, which left me with nothing to do but try to figure
out what was going on. Something had clearly upset Duke, but I
couldn’t tell what it was. I had no idea whether I was intruding by
being here, or helping.

I looked around the room and realized that it was
surprisingly feminine. The sofa and armchairs were covered in a
pink, floral pattern, and there were scatter cushions everywhere.
Even the carpet was a dusky pink. The conclusion was inevitable –
there must be a woman on the scene somewhere. My heart sank. I
couldn’t seem to take a step these days without falling over a
married man.

Duke came back into the room looking a whole lot
better. He had ditched the T-shirt and shorts in favor of a
crisp-white shirt and blue jeans. The shirt didn’t do that much to
hide the muscles beneath, and I had to remind myself that he was
already spoken for.

There was an awkward silence for a moment, and to
fill it, I said the first thing that came into my mind.

‘Your wife has very good taste.’

Duke looked at me as if I was stupid.

‘Wife?’

‘I mean the choice of furnishings. Very feminine,
and very tasteful.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Duke ran his hands through his hair as
if he was embarrassed. ‘Actually, I don’t have a wife.’

‘Your girlfriend, then.’

‘No, I don’t have a girlfriend, either.’

‘Fiancé?’

‘Nope. No woman of any kind.’

‘Oh.’

Before I could add anything else, Duke sat down on
the sofa next to me. ‘Angel, I’m so sorry I forgot you were coming.
That was very rude of me. But you see, today I got some bad news
about someone who is very close to me.’

‘Really? I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It’s Charles, you see.’ He was clearly on the verge
of tears. ‘He’s lived here with me for nearly three years. He means
more to me than anything. Apart from my sister, he’s all I’ve got
in this world. And today, he got rushed to the hospital for
emergency treatment.’

‘Oh, gosh…that’s terrible!’

And it was terrible, too. Here was me thinking I was
going to spend the evening sliding down the fireman’s pole, as it
were, and instead he turns out to have a male lover. Now I
remembered what I had thought when I looked at myself in the mirror
earlier…

Heck, Duke would have to be gay not to be
interested.

That had turned out to be much more prophetic than I
expected. No wonder he didn’t notice my boobs…maybe if I had been
able to flash a pair of testicles at him he would have been more
interested. It explained the flowery furnishings and pink carpet,
too.

Bummer. For a moment, I thought Charles might be his
gay brother, or some kind of relative. But that glimmer of hope was
crushed as Duke continued.

‘I can’t stop worrying about him,’ he said,
fidgeting with his fingers as he spoke. ‘Tonight will be the first
time for a thousand nights that I will go to bed without him. It
will be so strange not to have the big guy cuddling up beside me.
I’ll really miss him.’

Too much information, Duke, too much information.
There’s nothing wrong with being gay, of course, but I didn’t feel
the need to know the intimate details of how he and Charles cuddled
up together. I was a loss to know what to say. I had this vision in
my head of Duke and Charles prancing down Oxford Street hand in
hand, picking out floral scatter cushions for their pretty new
sofa. So as all this rattled through my mind, there was another
awkward silence. But this time it was broken by the sound of Duke’s
tummy rumbling.

‘Oops!’ he said apologetically. ‘Sorry about that. I
haven’t eaten since breakfast…I’ve been too worried.’

‘Duke, it’s gone eight in the evening. You must be
starving.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll eat tomorrow
probably.’

‘No way – you have to eat now, or you’ll get ill.
Come on, show me your kitchen. Let’s see what we can fix up.’

I was glad to have something useful to do, and to be
able to switch the conversation away from Duke and Charles’ private
sex activities. Duke protested politely, but there was no way I was
going to let him just sink into depression. He was still my hero
after all, even if he wasn’t quite the lady-killing hunk I had
imagined. If I couldn’t impress him with my body, maybe I could
impress him with my cooking. I scoured the contents of his fridge
and found enough to make a Spanish omelet. At least it started out
as a Spanish omelet, but by the time I had finished, it was more
like Spanish scrambled eggs.

Duke found a bottle of white wine and poured us a
glass each. Then we sat at the tiny table in the kitchenette and
scoffed the lot between us. It all went very well. I made sure that
we kept away from the topic of Charles and his hospital stay.
Instead, we talked about Duke’s job, my career, his sister, my
parents …all the usual kind of stuff.

The trouble is, I’m not that good with wine. One
glass and I’m OK. Two glasses and I get tipsy. Three glasses and I
fall asleep.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Usually, I’m more careful about how much wine I
drink. But seeing as the evening of passionate sex I had envisaged
was no longer on the menu, I cheered myself up by having rather
more of a tipple than I should have done. The last thing I remember
of the evening is slipping to the floor in a state of
semi-consciousness.