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.
I woke up the next morning and found myself in what I guessed to be Duke’s spare room. Like the rest of the flat, it was decorated in delicate pastel shades, and the bed was covered with a bright, pink bedspread. At least Duke and Charles weren’t shy about coming out. The whole flat shouted GAY in capital letters. Good for them, I thought. They were obviously very comfortable with who they were.
The sun was already well up in the sky. Duke had apparently carried me into the room when I fell asleep, and covered me with a blanket. I forced myself off the bed and was rewarded with a thumping in my head.
Wine gives me crap hangovers.
I was still dressed, so I staggered into the kitchen and ransacked Duke’s cupboards until I found some painkillers. They were called Anadin, but they sure looked like Anacin to me. I took a couple with a glass of water, and began to feel a little better. There was no sign of Duke, but there was a Post-It note stuck to the kettle. It said:
Gone to the park. Back soon.
Duke.
Gone to the park? Well, I didn’t fancy hanging around the flat on my own, and I thought I could use some fresh air to clear my head, too. So I found my shoes and staggered down the road to the park entrance. I did up a couple of buttons on my blouse as I went. No point in trying to impress Duke with my assets.
Battersea Park is a beautiful spot – like a big chunk of the English countryside landed in the middle of London. I took a path that led towards the lake, figuring that there was a reasonable chance I would bump into Duke somewhere along the way. There were a few people around the park - walking their dogs, jogging, skateboarding and so on. But I was the only idiot tottering around on stilettos. And these were no ordinary heels. Like I said, they were the tallest pair I had ever seen. I felt like I was walking around on stilts, and I had to focus to stop myself falling head first into the rhododendrons. I was so busy concentrating that I didn’t see Duke. The first I knew he was there was when I heard his voice behind me.
‘Hey, Angel - you’ve woken up at last!’
I turned to see Duke walking towards me, looking sexy and handsome in his blue jeans and a gray shirt. Charles was a lucky guy. I could imagine why he would want to cuddle up to Duke. But what surprised me was the big grin plastered all over Duke’s face. This wasn’t the depressed and tearful Duke of yesterday. This was the happy-go-lucky fireman who had rescued the damsel in distress.
‘Duke…you look so happy! What’s happened?’
‘Wonderful news!’ Duke grinned back at me. ‘Charles is fine, and he’s out of hospital. It turned out to be something of nothing.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad to hear it.’ And I was pleased, too. Duke was positively beaming. I beamed back at him. ‘I’m very happy for you. So will I get to meet Charles?’
Duke laughed. ‘Of course! In fact, you can meet him right now. Look out…he’s coming up behind you…’
I turned, but not quickly enough. I was vaguely aware of a large grey shape accelerating towards me at a rapid rate, and the next second something crashed into me. I tried to keep my balance, but I didn’t have a hope in my skyscraper heels. I just keeled over and landed flat on my back on the grass. The fall knocked all of the wind out of me. I gasped and opened my eyes to see an enormous dog’s face staring at me and panting. Then the head descended and I felt a huge tongue licking all over my face.
I screamed.
Duke was shouting, too. ‘Charles!...Sit…naughty boy. Leave her alone, she doesn’t need a wash. Sit Charles…SIT!’
Eventually, the monster dog relented and did as he was told. I sat up and looked at Charles – a big, healthy hearty Great Dane who sat and panted with his tail wagging like crazy. His head was about twice the size of mine, and even sat on his haunches he towered over me as I sat up.
Duke looked at me with concern written all over his face. ‘Are you OK? I’m afraid Charles gets a bit boisterous when he meets a new friend. He’s big, but he’s harmless, honest.’
I turned to Duke and blinked.
‘Are you telling me this is Charles?’
‘Yes, that’s
right. He’s my best buddy.’
‘But…but you said he was rushed to hospital?’
Duke nodded as if I was the most stupid person he had ever met. ‘Yes, the veterinary hospital in Balham. Yesterday he started getting convulsions, so I rushed him to the vet. She couldn’t find anything wrong, but she decided to keep him in overnight for observation. Then first thing this morning, Charles sneezed out a giant grass seed that had been stuck up his nose.’
‘You mean that was the cause of the problem…just a grass seed?’
‘Yes. The convulsions were basically him trying to sneeze it out. Now that it’s gone, he’s fine. Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Yes, it is.’ Now I had a hundred different thoughts spinning round in my head. I was only just beginning to catch up. ‘So wait a moment…are you telling me you’re not gay?’
That wiped the smile off Duke’s face in a second. He sat down on the grass beside me. ‘Gay? Why on earth would you think I’m gay?’
‘Dude…you put out all the signals!’ Duke just looked at me in total confusion, so I had to explain. ‘I showed up last night dressed to kill, and you didn’t so much glance at my boobs. I’m not vain or anything, but when I dress to impress, heterosexual guys usually can’t keep their eyes off my chest.’
Duke’s eyes opened wide. ‘Angel, believe me, I am very interested in your chest, and the rest of your body. But yesterday I was so worried about Charles I couldn’t think of anything else except him. You could have shown up stark naked with pom-poms on your nipples and I still wouldn’t have noticed.’
Pom-poms on my nipples? I had never tried that. I made a mental note to give it a go some time. But now I had more pressing things to worry about.
‘OK. But then you said you had been living with someone called Charles who meant the world to you…and that you and he always cuddled up in bed at night.’
Duke was blushing a little now. ‘Oh, I get it. That did sound a bit weird, I suppose. Charles always sleeps on my bed. He has ever since he was a puppy. Bloody hell, I can see now what you must have thought.’
Candid Confessions Bundle #2 Page 7