Her Savior

by Sarah J. Brooks

He walked into the bedroom and whistled lowly when he saw me.

  “You look gorgeous,” he said. “I love that dress on you. It highlights your beautiful red lips.” He walked over and brushed his finger tip across my mouth, then he leaned in and kissed me softly.

  “Is everything set with Raymond?” I asked. “How are you going to get us out of here?”

  “It’s a little extreme,” he said, his face flushing. “But, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “What are you planning?” I asked.

  “You’ll see. I’m not going to tell you because, odds are, you’re going to try to stop me.” He smiled. “I don’t want you to stop me.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not illegal, is it?”

  “Nah,” Oliver said. “There’s been enough of that.”

  I nodded. “I’ll say.”

  We brought our things downstairs where Raymond was waiting. He greeted me with a friendly smile, then nodded businesslike at Oliver.

  “Everything is all set,” Raymond said. “The car is in place, the drone is active, and our car is running and ready to go.”

  “Drone?” I asked, looking at Oliver.

  “Not yet, dear,” he said. “The car we’re taking is parked behind the kitchen. Let’s go—that way, we’ll be able to watch everything as it unfolds.”

  I shook my head but said nothing. Clearly, Oliver and Raymond had a plan to get us out of the house without being spotted by the press, which had been camped outside the front gate around the clock. I was anxious to see if it would work.

  We walked out the back door, and, to my surprise, a limo was parked right on the lawn. It was a small, private limo, not one of Oliver’s regular cars. I nodded approvingly; the press had memorized all of Oliver’s cars and would know immediately if one was in motion. Raymond packed our bags, then opened the door and escorted me in.

  “Comfortable, ma’am?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Comfortable and curious,” I said. He let a larger than normal smile slip. I liked Raymond. He was relatively new to Oliver’s team, but so far he had proven to be incredibly loyal and resourceful, especially with everything that had been going on lately. I wondered how much of Oliver’s plan, the one he wasn’t telling me about, had Raymond’s influence.

  Raymond took the wheel and slowly pulled the car around to the side of the house. Just as I began to see the throng of reporters, he stopped. He took out his phone and began to push buttons on the screen.

  “All ready, Sir?” he asked.

  “Ready,” Oliver said, and squeezed my hand. “Hold on,” he said to me.

  All of a sudden, there was a large booming sound, a sound that reminded me of train cars crashing together. The reporters all looked to their right, startled, then began to titter amongst themselves.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Just wait,” Oliver said.

  Another boom sounded, and this time there was a crackle like fireworks immediately following. Someone shouted, and all of the reporters began to run toward the sounds.

  “Go!” Oliver said, and Raymond gunned the engine, driving across the lawn and through a side gate I had never seen before. The gate opened and closed, and we were on the road, driving in the opposite direction of the reporters.

  I twisted around to look in the rear window of the limo. “What the hell?” I asked. All I could see was a black mass of metal that looked like it had once been a car, smoke rising from it, and the reporters tripping over themselves to get as close as they could without injury.

  “Raymond decided that the only way for us to get out of the house unnoticed was to create a diversion,” Oliver explained, smiling. He clapped Raymond on the shoulder. “Splendid job, my man; it worked perfectly!”

  Raymond let a small smile slip toward Oliver. “My pleasure, Sir. I’m proud to be of service.”

  “What was the diversion? You didn’t cause an accident, did you?” I continued to look back at the plumes of smoke rising into the sky.

  “Kind of, but not really,” Oliver explained. “Raymond took an exact copy of one of my more recognizable cars, the Lexus, and parked it behind some trees a mile down the road. We used a drone packed with fireworks, set the car to start and drive based on commands from Raymond’s phone, and, when we were ready, we had the drone connect with the car.” Oliver clapped his hands together. “I can’t believe it worked!”

  “You two are like Mission Impossible come to life,” I said, shaking my head. I realized my hands were shaking, too; my anxiety had been high over leaving the house. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes.

  “You look like you need a drink,” Oliver said. He leaned over and grabbed a bottle of champagne. He uncorked it and poured me a flute, then handed it to me. I sipped it gratefully, feeling the bubbles move through my mouth and down my throat.

  I sighed in relief. We were on our way

  ***

  I didn’t know that Raymond was also coming to Paris with us, but, once I found out, I was grateful. That meant that I’d have another familiar face in a strange city, and it meant that I could have more of Oliver to myself as we would have Raymond to run errands for us and handle some of Oliver’s business elements.

  Our plane landed without incident, and Raymond, who had been sitting in coach, took off to collect our luggage and get the car. We took our time as we moved through the airport.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. I was, so we stopped at a restaurant in the airport and had a bite to eat.

  “We should grab something for Raymond, too,” I said.

  “He can eat later,” Oliver said. He squeezed my hand across the table, his eyes crinkling with affection. “I love that you’re so compassionate and caring. You’re the most thoughtful woman I’ve ever met.”

  “He’s going to be hungry,” I pointed out.

  “I’ve taken care of Raymond,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about him or about anything else now that we’re here in Paris. I want this week to be calm and relaxing for you. The only thing I want you to worry about,” he dropped his voice to a low rumble, “is how many orgasms your body can handle back to back.”

  “Oliver!” I exclaimed, looking around to see who was in ear shot. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any other Americans around us that could have heard him. Still, I felt a blush rise in my cheeks.

  “Becka!” he mimicked me, squeezing my hands and laughing. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too, you goofball,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  ***

  Our week in Paris, by the time day three had rolled around, was magnificent. The condo belonging to Oliver’s friend was actually a rustic cottage on the outskirts of Paris. Each morning, I woke up in a bedroom well-lit by the rising sun, to a view of vineyards. The city was an easy drive away, and I was enjoying a blend of the rustic life along with the ability to go into the city basically any time I wanted.

  “What do you want to do today?” Oliver asked, over our usual breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate. We’d also added mimosas to most of our meals, and, though I hadn’t gotten drunk yet, I had the feeling that all of the wine and champagne I was having with meals was giving me a fairly consistent blood alcohol level around the clock.

  “I’d kind of like to go into Paris tonight, I think,” I said. “Tonight is their International Day of Music festival.” I had been to Paris as a teenager to study for a few months, and I’d been there during the Day of Music fest before. It was an incredible night of music celebration; Parisians would play their instruments right in the streets, whether they were professional or not. Artists would perform in all of the available venues, and all the concerts were free. It was a great night to walk around and see the true culture of Paris.

  “That sounds like a lot of fun,” Oliver agreed. “Do you want to get a hotel and stay in the city?”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I definitely want to come back.” I had gotten very acclimated to and comfortable wi
th our cottage. I felt like it was becoming home. I looked around. The living area was small and very cozy. The kitchen, living room, and dining area were all mingled together into one space, with both a front door and a back door across from one another. There was a small bedroom and bathroom off the dining room. The upstairs was a beautiful loft and was the master suite. A small spiral staircase in the corner of the living room led to the loft. Upstairs, the loft was open, overlooking the rest of the house. A master bathroom had been built right above the downstairs bathroom and took up nearly the same amount of space as the downstairs guest room and bathroom combined. A large Jacuzzi tub was the centerpiece of the bathroom, and Oliver and I had spent a fair portion of our time enjoying it. The king sized bed was a four poster, with plush blankets and pillows. It was a bed fit for a king, indeed, and we had also spent a fair portion of our time enjoying that.

  I blushed as I remembered the lovemaking we’d enjoyed the night before. I was still a little sore from it, as I shifted in my seat, feeling warmth spread through me. I smiled.

  “What do you want to do today?” I asked.

  He looked at me as though he could tell exactly where my thoughts were heading.

  “You,” he said, taking a sip of his mimosa as if he had just been asked a very simple yes or no question. “I want to do you on that couch. Then I want to do you in the Jacuzzi.” He smiled at me. “Then, I want to carry you to the bed and do you there. After that, I suspect we’ll be hungry, so I’ll cook you dinner. Raymond is out now getting groceries. After we eat, I’d like to take you out into the back yard which, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, is quite isolated, and I’d like to do you there, on a blanket on the soft lawn, while we watch the sun set.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That sounds a lot better than some silly music festival,” I said, blushing and grinning at the thought of us making the beautiful cottage our sex den for the next twenty-four hours. “You win for ideas today.”

  “I think your idea is a good one,” he insisted. “Let’s do that.”

  I thought for a moment. The idea of going into Paris was appealing; the music festival was quite an amazing spectacle. However, the thought of not going anywhere at all, and, instead, spending the day holed up in the cottage with Oliver seemed equally appealing.

  “How I can want two completely opposite things equally, I’ll never know,” I said. The weight of my words caught up with me and I glanced at Oliver to see if he’d read into it the same that I had. Fortunately, the smile and the expression in his eyes suggested that he’d not thought of Ethan in that moment in the same way I had.

  “Festival tonight,” he said. “That’s final.”

  I agreed, and we began to get ready. The trip into Paris proper was a little over an hour, and it was already nearly noon. The festival had already begun, as it went all day and all night, so the sooner we got there, the sooner we’d be able to enjoy all of the different types of music.

  An hour later, Raymond was waiting outside the front door with our rental car in park. He opened my door for me and I stepped inside, pleased to see that he had packed us a picnic lunch and had equipped the car with a large blanket and cooler.

  “Raymond, you really are a wonder,” I said.

  “I’m glad you like it, Ma’am,” he said. I had insisted several times that Raymond call me Becka, not just because I liked him, but because I considered myself far too young to be called “ma’am” by anyone, least of all by someone nearly my own age. But, he had insisted, and Oliver had concurred, saying it was a measure of respect to me.

  “What will you do while we’re in Paris?” I asked Raymond. Oliver slid into the seat next to me and grabbed my hand. As we drove, he ran his fingers along the top of my hand, a motion he knew both comforted me and excited me.

  “I’ll probably enjoy some of the music myself, Ma’am,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “This is my first time in Paris, and I’m quite excited to check out the festival.”

  “Raymond was actually the one who suggested Paris as our destination, much as I’d like to claim it,” Oliver said. “He said the city of lights, the city of love, was the perfect place for us to get away. I think he picked very wisely.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” he said. He turned his attention back to driving, and I sat back, leaning my head against the seat and snuggling into Oliver. I napped a bit, and, before I knew it, we were in the central heart of Paris.

  “Raymond is going to drop us near the Eiffel Tower,” Oliver said. “We’ll take our lunch with us, then we can go wherever we want from there.”

  “That sounds like a great plan,” I said, smiling as I looked out the window. The traffic was a nightmare, and it was obvious that there was something exciting going on in town. There were people everywhere. Crowds had gathered along the sidewalks to watch the musicians perform. There was a palpable energy moving through everything, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the car and check it out.

  We found a spot near to the Eiffel Tower to have our lunch. Others had had the same idea, and there was a small patch of a park that had been taken over by picnickers and other people lounging around, drinking beer and listening to the echoes of music from sometimes several blocks away.

  We ate our bread, meat, and olives, drank champagne, and basked in the sunshine. I looked at the Eiffel Tower and wondered how something seeming so majestic in pictures and movies could actually be so small and relatively ordinary. I smiled, thinking that it was probably because everything else in Paris was so historic, so incredibly significant, that even something as amazing as the Eiffel Tower just couldn’t stand up to the rest of the art and architecture seen all around.

  I shared my thoughts with Oliver. He smiled. “This is why I love you so much,” he said. “You have a level of appreciation for both the grand and the simple. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I never plan on letting you go.”

  We cleaned up our lunch, and Oliver called Raymond back to pick up the things we didn’t want to carry around. We then began to walk around the city, hand in hand, stopping to listen to musicians who were standing, in some cases, just a few feet apart, barely a respectable distance, but as far apart as they could be given the crowds.

  “There’s a concert tonight,” Oliver said. “An INXS cover band. Do you want to go? They must be really great; the amphitheater they’re playing at is huge.”

  “That sounds like a lot of fun. When does it start?”

  “We can start walking now,” he said, checking his watch. “The concert starts at five. It’s four now, so we should get there just before it starts.”

  As we walked, we picked up a few more bites to eat. I was starting to get a little worried about my waistline, but I reminded myself that I was on vacation, and, also, that I was surely burning off far more calories at night than I normally did at home while I slept.

  We walked toward the concert and, from a distance, we could hear the band warming up.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “They’re really good! They sound exactly like INXS.”

  Oliver agreed. “INXS was one of my absolute favorite bands. I saw them in concert a number of times growing up and each was better than the last. This group sounds pretty authentic.”

  We came upon the concert. A huge mob of people stood watching the band on the stage of the outdoor amphitheater, cheering and singing along.

  “Let’s get closer!” Oliver shouted, and he grabbed my hand, leading me into the crowd.

  I followed him and, when the group started to get tightly packed together, I took the lead and lead him through. By the time we couldn’t go any further, we were just three rows from the stage, and we could see the band up close.

  “This is awesome!” Oliver shouted over the music and the cheers of the crowd. I agreed—I felt the rush of music moving over me, the energy of the crowd, and I felt an excitement bubbling up within me that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was truly happy. I danced and sang, jumped up and down and chanted with the crowd. I
kept an eye out—we were in the mosh pit area, and I knew that could be a dangerous place to be, at least in America.

  Parisians seemed mildly more civilized, though, and the worst thing I saw was a few bottles of wine being passed overhead where Americans would normally be passing humans. At one point, Oliver grabbed one of the bottles of wine and took a sip, then handed it to me. I burst out laughing at our craziness and took a long swig. A cheer went up around me, and I blushed, then passed the bottle along.

  Nearly an hour later, I was buzzing happily from wine and the music. During the slower songs, I would lean into Oliver and we would dance. During the fast songs, we would jump up and down, cheer and sing loudly. It was during the band’s rendition of ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ that I turned to lean into Oliver and, instead, found myself leaning into a complete stranger, an ugly Frenchman that leered at me. He slid his hand between my legs and pressed upward, sliding his hand against my crotch. I yelled, kicked him in the balls, and moved away in the nearest available direction.

  “Oliver!” I yelled. I looked for him, but we’d gotten separated. I couldn’t see him. I waved to get the attention of Security, hoping they would be able to figure out a way to reconnect me with Oliver. Instead, when I got the attention of one of the guards, he misunderstood me. He pulled me out of the crowd and brought me to the first aid station. I tried to explain, in my complete non-French, that I was fine, that I just needed to find my boyfriend.

  I reached to my pocket to take my phone out to call Oliver; my phone was gone.

  “Fuck!” I exclaimed. “Excuse me!” I called the attention of one of the first aid workers. “My phone was stolen.”

  The woman nodded sympathetically, but she said nothing. I left the tent after signing some sort of paper I assumed was a release, and searched for Oliver. I knew he would be looking for me, too. I started out very hopeful, retracing my steps back to the Eiffel Tower. But, it was dark, and it was getting harder to see. I had my backpack, but I didn’t have any francs; all I had was American dollars. I looked for a payphone. I looked for open restaurants. Everything had closed early for the festival.