by Brandy Ayers
The flames licked at her clothes, turning them to ash but leaving her skin unharmed. Trey pushed his fire gear to the floor and stood in his naked glory, the bright orange and red tongues of fire billowing around him as he tugged on his enormous cock. Without saying a word, he climbed on top of her and thrust home.
As his hips thrust wildly, smacking into the apex of her thighs, the fire continued to wage around them, dancing on the edges of the bed like an inhuman audience. Heat radiated from the flames and Trey’s skin, overwhelming her until she screamed from the pleasure he forced upon her, and the pain from her overheating skin. Mid-thrust, Trey removed himself from her throbbing pussy and slid to the foot of his bed, so his face rested between her legs. He then proceeded to kiss, lick, and bite every inch of her untouched sex.
Oral sex fascinated Charlotte. Intercourse seemed like it could be fairly clinical and impersonal, depending on the parties involved. But oral sex existed on another level of intimacy. Your partner’s face was literally planted in your most private of places. There would be no hiding while being eaten out. Her fantasies often revolved around both giving and receiving oral. Just one more of the many things she would most likely never experience in real life thanks to her debilitating shyness.
Just as her cored spiraled tighter, preparing for her impending release, the stupid phone had interrupted. How could a dream at once be so erotic and yet disturbing? The flames had threatened to eat her alive, but she never fought them, instead she laid there and let the fire and Trey do as they wished.
Charlotte groaned and rolled over, groping the bedside table for her cell. Just as her fingers clutched the damn thing, it shut off, the call dumping into voicemail finally. No doubt it would start ringing again any second. There were only two people who could be calling, the first being someone from work with breaking news which required reinforcements being called. The second, and more likely, was her mother.
Sure enough, Charlotte hadn’t even been able to find her glasses to check the missed calls before the phone started ringing once more. At the moment, running on only a few hours of sleep, she seriously started to question why she had picked the damn antique phone ringtone. Oh, right, it was the only one guaranteed to wake her from a deep sleep. Well, it had done its job very nicely then.
Bringing the phone close to her face so she could make out the name without the aide of her high strength prescription glasses, the fuzzy letters took shape into her mother’s name. The inevitable dread spread through Charlotte’s chest, and a low throb crept up the base of her skull. She loved her mother, she really did, the unpredictability of their conversations never failed to put Charlotte on edge.
Steeling herself for what might be on the other end of the line, Charlotte sighed, slumped back onto her pillows and accepted the call. “Hello, Mama.”
“Hello, Charlotte.” Her mother’s thick Russian accent hadn’t softened over the years, despite immigrating to the country in her late teens. “You sound tired. Are you sleeping?”
So, it would be one of these conversations. Each call focused on one of two things, Charlotte’s failures in her mother’s eyes, or the new and exciting things happening in her mother’s life. Today would be a pick on Charlotte day, which for some reason comforted her more than her mother’s manic happiness.
“Not much today, Mama. A co-worker called in sick, and I had to stay a few extra hours.” Charlotte blushed as she thought of the other reason she had gone to bed so late.
“You should get a job that does not require you to live like a vampire. Awake all night and sleep during the day.” She sighed in exasperation, a sound Charlotte had become well acquainted with over the years. “And for what? To be a glorified secretary.”
The often-repeated slam on her job never stopped rankling her, no matter how many times her mother had shown disdain for her chosen profession. Her rarely tapped anger began to rise hot in her chest. She doused it before it could take hold. “Mama, you know I’m not a secretary.” Charlotte adopted her most even tone of voice, striving to feel that same level of calm spread in her belly. “I’m a journalist. Just because you don’t see me on camera doesn’t mean I’m any less important to the news than anyone else involved in the shows.”
“You answer phones and make calls. Glorified secretary. You could be on camera. You are much prettier than that plump girl I see so much of at night.” Again, that well-rehearsed sigh buzzed through the phone line, making Charlotte’s neck stiffen with irritation.
“Mom, Bekah is not plump. She is curvy and gorgeous. And she is an amazing reporter, regardless of her looks.”
Her mother barreled on as if Charlotte had never said a word. “Such a shame. You could have been a wonderful ballerina had you stuck with it. Gave up such a promising career, and for what? I weep when I think about the wasted potential.” Right on cue, her mother sniffled, as if her throat went thick with the downswing of her emotions. “And would it be so bad if you would give me some grandbabies? But you’ll never find a husband working those hours.”
They were hitting all the old favorites tonight. Usually, her mom only harped on one flaw per phone call, but she pulled out all the stops this time. Along with the tears that grated on Charlotte’s nerves, making her feel like the worst daughter on the planet. “Mama, I stopped taking ballet lessons when I was six and threw up on stage at my first recital. There was no promising career. I was never going to be like you.”
Her mother had been one of the world’s most beloved ballerinas in the eighties and early nineties. She came to America at the height of her fame to dance with the New York Ballet Company. But one wrong move by her partner in practice at twenty-four meant a career ending knee injury. One year later, she met Charlotte’s father, a well-respected engineer from Hong Kong, at an English as second language class. And the rest was history.
They married six months later, and ten months later, Charlotte was born. All of mother’s dreams of ballet greatness transferred to her daughter. Unfortunately for her, Charlotte turned out to have a terrible case of stage fright and hated people looking at her. The nonstop interest and obsession with her daughter had been quickly extinguished after the stage vomit incident. Her daughter had largely gone ignored for the next fifteen years until Charlotte turned twenty-one, and then the once famous Adrina Orlove started insisting on grandbabies. Another thing made impossible by Charlotte’s issues.
But little would be accomplished by arguing with her mother further. In her mother’s eyes, Charlotte would never be enough. A fact that would depress Charlotte if she ever entertained such extreme emotions.
Fed up with the course of their conversation, she turned their talk to her father and his upcoming retirement from the energy think tank that had brought him over from China. Another ten minutes of talking, and Charlotte finally succeeded in getting off the phone. She glanced at the clock to see her alarm would be going off in a half hour. No point in trying to get more sleep.
She reached to her bedside table and scooped up the e-reader that sat there. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well squeeze some reading in before work. There was nothing she loved more than escaping into her fantasy worlds full of imaginary creatures and battles. Usually. But they weren’t doing their job distracting her at that moment.
No matter how hard she tried to focus on the words, her concentration kept drifting to a certain muscled firefighter. Without even trying, she felt needy and wet between her legs. An ache began to form so deep inside her, she wasn’t sure her fingers would be able to do the job. There had been several times over the past few years that she’d thought about buying some sort of toy. But every time she had been ready to click check out, she began thinking about the mailman delivering the package to her door.
The same man who delivered her bills and postcards would also be handling her vibrator. Sure, the websites always say that they ship the toys in discreet packaging under a different business name, but surely the mailman would know. They deliver so many pac
kages, they must have figured out which ones came from the dirty toy companies, and which don’t.
Charlotte would never be able to look in the guy’s eyes ever again. Not that she did now, but still. Not to mention if her mother ever found the toys during one of her random drop-bys. Just the thought made her queasy.
But at that moment, lying in bed thinking of Trey, Charlotte desperately wished she had gathered the courage to buy a battery-operated helper to ease her growing hunger.
***
The newsroom buzzed with the energy of a crew rushing to get the show together while time wound down faster and faster. Since Charlotte had arrived at work, everything that could go wrong had.
First a massive pile up by the Liberty Tunnel had shut down traffic for most of the south side of the city, making it near impossible for two of their crews to get to their story locations. One crew, they redirected to the accident scene, but the other still fought their way through traffic. Then the internet randomly went down to the entire neighborhood. Their engineers were frantically working to get it back up, but in the meantime, everyone was working off their phone’s networks, which did not make for speedy access to the web.
As if those two things hadn’t been enough, now both the dayside assignment editors had called in sick for the next day, meaning Charlotte would be stuck at work for twelve hours minimum. She would also have to run the dayside assignment meeting, which she hated. The meeting was triple the size of her overnight one. Just thinking about having to talk in front of everyone, hand out assignments to eight reporters and their photographers, and interact with all the people she never saw during her schedule made black spots swim before her eyes.
The only thing that kept her going was the thought that she might get to talk to Trey again. The amount of time she’d spent thinking about him since first hearing his voice the night before bordered on obsessive. Twice, she had brought up his Facebook page on her phone, just so she could look at that sexy as hell calendar photo.
A crash echoed through the newsroom, and Charlotte looked toward the noise to see what could be going wrong now. A photographer had been running out of the newsroom to load up his vehicle and race to the scene of a potential break-in at the same time a production assistant was rushing back into the newsroom to deliver the eleven o’clock scripts to the anchors. Both were sprawled on the floor with papers scattered, and most importantly, the photographer’s camera in pieces.
“Shit! Watch where you’re going, you idiot. My fucking camera better not be out of commission, or you are paying for it.” Harris was known as one of the station’s most angry photographers. He did nothing but complain about the poor pay, horrible hours, and bitchy reporters.
Charlotte often wondered why he had gotten into news in the first place if he hated it so much. He plucked two of the pieces of equipment from the ground, and Charlotte could tell from across the room that there would be no fast fix for the camera. “Goddammit! It’s fucking ruined. You need to get out of my face right now before I do something to get me fired.”
The poor PA scrambled around on the floor, scooping up the scripts and trying desperately not to show how flustered she was. But Charlotte knew all too well the tension in her body and flush which spread across the girl’s face meant that she would break down at any moment.
“Harris, shut your trap and get your camera into engineering. They should have a spare for you to take.” Michele’s voice rang out from the door to her office. Charlotte hadn’t known the news director for very long, only a year since she took over the position from the asshat before her, and even then, they only interacted through phone and email conversations due to their opposing schedules. But she had proven herself to be tough and fair in the few meetings they had together. “And next time you watch where you’re going. You are the one carrying a five-thousand-dollar piece of equipment like it’s a dirty diaper.”
The photographer picked up the rest of his scattered belongings and stormed through the door, mumbling something under his breath about Michelle being a bitch.
“In the wise words of Tina Fey, bitches get stuff done,” Michelle yelled after him.
Charlotte rose from her seat at the assignment desk and went to help the production assistant with gathering the scripts. “Erin, right?”
The girl nodded, her face to still bright red from the encounter with Harris.
“Don’t pay attention to that asshole. He seriously isn’t worth the stress.” Charlotte had had more than her fair share of run ins with the dickhead. The first few times had left her near panic attack, but with each interaction, she cared less and less about what he thought of her. The knowledge that she didn’t care about his opinion had been freeing, and he was one of the few people she could stand up against without feeling like she would pass out.
“Thanks, Charlotte. I’m just flustered that’s all.” The papers now off the floor and straightened, they both stood from their crouched positions.
“Trust me, I get it. Better get a move on. Only ten minutes to showtime.”
Erin nodded and hustled from the newsroom to the dressing rooms where both anchors would be applying their make-up.
As Charlotte made her way back to the assignment desk, Michelle waved her into the news director’s office. The two very rarely saw each other since Charlotte typically didn’t get into work until ten at night and Michelle left around seven. But once in awhile her boss would make sure to stay later, so they could touch base.
“How are you doing, Charlotte? I know you’ve been working a ton of hours with this damn flu going around.” Michelle sat in one of the chairs across the room and studied Charlotte intently.
“I’m fine. I’ll admit I’m a little tired. But nothing I can’t handle.” Being called into Michelle’s office used to freak Charlotte out. Her heart would pound, and her brain would work overtime trying to think of what she did wrong to warrant being called into the boss’s inner sanctum. But it didn’t take long before she figured out that Michelle truly just liked to keep in contact with her employees. She seemed to care about each of them, and that put Charlotte at ease. Or as at ease as she ever could be.
“Good, good.” Michelle took a deep breath and seemed to be working up towards something, but Charlotte couldn’t figure out what that would be. “Listen, Rich came to me today and let me know he’d like to retire.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened in shock. Rich had been with WQUZ for longer than Charlotte had been alive. First, as a lowly reporter in the seventies, then, working his way up to anchor in the eighties and nineties. About fifteen years prior, he had decided he’d had enough with the on-air life and transitioned to be the assignment manager, running the assignment desk. He was old school in a way which sometimes annoyed Charlotte, refusing to train up on new technology and never taking well to having women in the newsroom be anything other than eye-candy. But still, his retirement came as a surprise. She had been sure he would work until the day he dropped dead.
“Wow, I’m not really sure what to say.” Truly she didn’t. The news was interesting, but not something she felt warranted a sit-down meeting with Michelle. The change didn’t really affect Charlotte, since she only saw Rich once in awhile, less than she saw Michelle in fact.
“Well, I’m hoping you’ll say you’ll take his position.” The expression on Michelle’s face was equal parts determination and hope.
Charlotte’s mouth gaped open for a moment before shutting it again. Then opening to respond before snapping it shut once more. Surprisingly, her first reaction was overwhelming happiness, which Charlotte quickly dismissed and centered herself. Realizing she looked like a fish flopping around gasping for breath, she looked down at her hands resting in her lap and tried to collect her thoughts.
“You know I can’t do that.” The words hurt exiting her lips. On the rare occasion Charlotte dreamed of how her life could be without the debilitating shyness, the fantasy often included working during daylight hours, tracking down and fine-tuni
ng story ideas until they were all but ready to be cracked open by reporters she would guide in the field. Being in front of a camera had never been her ambition but finding great stories and getting them to the viewers always was.
But that would be impossible. She could barely look at the woman across from her in the eye without having a panic attack, and it had taken her months to get to the point where she was comfortable handing out assignments. The idea of having to be assertive and act confident day after day in front of some of the strongest personalities in the city almost made her laugh, if it didn’t make her lungs constrict.
“What about Annabel? She already works alongside Rich everyday. I’m sure she would jump at the chance. Plus, she is great at bossing people around.”
Michelle chuckled, obviously amused at Charlotte’s characterization of the day time AE. “That she is. But she’s also a single mom, and as much as I want her to advance in her career, the longer hours and increased responsibility won’t work with her schedule, at least not until Kaleb is a little older. Though I would delegate more duties to her if you decide to take the position.”
“How so?”
“Well, we’d basically split Rich’s job in half. Anna would be in charge of telling the crews their assignments, changing crews midstream, and keeping track of their updates throughout the day. You would oversee the day-to-day story ideas. Cultivating them and presenting them in the meeting. You would do all research on stories before they ever even see the light of day in the meetings. You would help reporters fine-tune their pitches and help them find the best hook.
“You know that’s where you excel. You can find an angle on a story that no one else will think of. Something in your brain just sees things differently. I want that kind of creativity running the desk. Of course, Anna would get a raise for the increased responsibility, as would you. Your title would be assignment desk manager, her’s assignment coordinator. So, you would both be getting promotions. We’ll also be hiring two new assignment editors eventually.”