The Abduction

by Nichole Allen

  “No, Karla, that was just a spoiled rich kid doing what he knows best, getting in between my legs as soon as I gave in,” she said, remembering the way that Chris had been all over her just a couple of weeks ago.

  She did not know why he had not excited her and yet he seemed to charm all of the women around him. He flashed his father’s money without thinking twice and would take women to the destinations of their lives, buying them things that they had never imagined they would own. To her, that did not excite her at all for some reason that she could not quite figure out. As a matter of fact, none of the men in her social circle seemed to excite her at all because they just wanted to entice her using their wealth and not the sweet words or sweet things that she actually wanted.

  “Well, I guess you’re the one that has the final say in that, but please make sure that you make it to the party. I'm pretty sure that it is going to be pretty fun, and also a good change from the busy week that you’ve had,” Karla said into the phone.

  “I will. Anyway, I gotta go, time for my Jacuzzi,” she said, stepping into the water as she hung up the call.

  The water felt good against her body, almost as if the warmth was massaging her. That was the thing that she liked the most about the Jacuzzi, and also the fact that it overlooked her backyard, where she could watch birds playing as she read her book. She poured herself a glass of wine and reached for her book as she sat in the tub. She loved reading love stories even though her own life could not seem to get the same thing. She wondered if she would ever end up happy like the characters in most of the books that she read. Maybe Karla was right and the best thing would be for her to try and fit in with the other people of her social class. She knew that life would probably be way worse with the men that did not fit in her social status, and so it was important that she started prepping herself for what was coming.

  She buried herself in the novel and she did not even smell the scent of the burning becoming more. It was not until she saw the billowing of smoke coming from one of the rooms that she quickly jumped out of the Jacuzzi, tossing her book aside. She pulled a robe around her body and made her way into her bedroom, slipping on her sandals. In the bedroom, she could see smoke filtering into the room from under the door, and it made her freak out. Her heart was racing as she pulled open the door and dashed out of the room, heading down the stairs quickly so that she could set off her alarm and also trigger the fire sprinklers in the building. She could not believe that she was going to lose everything that she had worked so hard to build, her beloved house and everything in it. She hit the alarm button and then turned on the fire sprinklers in the house. As she walked into one of the corridors that led to her in home office, she realized that there were flames coming from the office. Fishing out her cell phone from the pocket of her silk robe, she called 911. She then went about trying to save as many of her things as she could, before the fire spread out to the rest of her house.

  *****

  Adrian Walsh brought his team of firefighters together quickly. It looked like there was a fire outbreak in Manhattan’s Upmarket area and they needed to get there to put it out and save anyone, if there were any casualties.

  “Faster, Brian,” he urged the driver as he sat in the front of the truck with him, both of them fully clad in the department’s firefighter uniform, and the rest of the team in the back.

  “Right on, boss, let’s hope that the fire will be an easy one to put out because the rest of the firefighters went to the other side of the city, where the New York Marathon is taking place,” Brian said, turning on the siren as he accelerated through the streets of New York.

  “I wonder what could have caused a fire out there. The lady who called in did not give much information,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Well, many of these types of fires have got to be electrical, although we can't never rule out arson. Most of these rich folk have enemies that want them dead,” Brian said.

  “I guess you're right. Those are also the only two possibilities that I could come up with,” he said, sitting back and feeling his adrenaline pumping through his veins as the truck sped along.

  Adrian had always wanted to be a firefighter right from the time that he was a little boy. As soon as he had graduated, he had applied for the firefighter training academy and then joined the New York Fire Department. He had gone up the ranks steadily, and now he was the head of his own unit, being the one that assigned duties. He loved his job and spent most of his time either in the office, or in the field. When he was not working, Adrian spent his time with Malaika, his girlfriend who he had been seeing for the past couple of weeks.

  She had been after him ever since he had moved into a new neighborhood in the Bronx, and in the ending, he had decided that maybe she could be the key to even further happiness. He was still in the process of getting to know her habits and all and he was hoping for the best with her in the end. If there were people that he did not trust at all, they were women. All his adult life, he had been hurt in many different ways by women. Either they would play him against other men, or they would abandon him for men with more money. To Adrian, if a woman was in a relationship, it was for one reason or the other, and once she got what she wanted, she was gone before you could even blink. Despite the fact that he was dating Malaika, he was still very careful not to fall in love with her, not until he was absolutely sure that she was with him because she genuinely loved him.

  The truck finally pulled into the compound where the fire was. There was a huge Victorian mansion in the center of the compound and there were clouds of smoke coming out of the windows. He jumped out of the truck as soon as it came to a stop and started issuing out orders.

  “Alright, folks, Dave, you and Mike take the back of the house and see the extent of the damage. Byron, you and Brian will take the front of the house, start spraying water into the house through the open windows. Steve and I will enter the house to see if there are any people trapped inside. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lady that called 911 is still inside,” he said, pulling on his helmet as everyone swung into action.

  He and Steve dashed to the door and he was just about to barge in through the door when he realized that it was not locked. Pulling a mask over his nose, he entered the house, wondering where to begin their search.

  “Hello, is there anyone in the house?” he called at the top of his voice. “Hello? You take that side and I'll look this other side. Radio me in case of anything.”

  They split directions, each one of them calling out. Steve took the stairs while Adrian took a corridor leading somewhere into the house. He broke into a run when he realized that there were huge flames coming from one of the rooms at the end of the corridor. He kicked the door open and checked out the level of damage that the fire had caused. Almost everything in the room had been burnt to ashes, and one could tell that the fire had to have started in here. It was an office of sorts for whoever lived here. He radioed the men outside to inform them so that they could put some focus on putting out the fire in here before he entered the room, using a piece of metal that he found to break the windows open.

  Showers of water soon entered through the windows as Adrian looked around the smoky room to see if there was anyone in it. He was just about to make his way out of the room and go search other parts of the house when he noticed a door that was closed. He hurried over to it and kicked it open, sending it flying into what looked like a washroom. It was filled with smoke and on one end of the room, there was a woman lying on the floor. He dashed quickly to where she was, lifting up her head slightly and checking her pulse to see if she was still alive. There was a faint beat under her wrist and so he immediately put his gas mask over her nose. She coughed, sexy green eyes that were filled with fear fluttering open.

  “Am I dead yet?” she said amid the spattering coughs.

  “No, and neither are you dying, because I'm going to get you out of here,” he said, leaving her with the mask as he got up and grabbed a towel, shoving i
t under a tap and turning on the water.

  He was relieved to find that the water was still running as he soaked the towel and then put it over his own nose.

  “Come on, we have to get out of here,” he said, lifting her easily onto his shoulder and carrying her out of the room. “Breathe through your mouth and do not remove the mask.”

  *****

  She was feeling lightheaded from all of the smoke that she had inhaled, but she could still feel the strong body that carried her out of the house. Christie coughed to clear her aching throat as they came out of the house, the strong man taking her to a waiting stretcher and placing her gently onto it.

  “I think she will be alright, she just chocked on the smoke, but nothing serious at all,” he said to the EMTs that hurried to her side.

  As she looked through her hazy eyes, she saw the man that had rescued her removing his helmet, brown eyes looking into hers. There was something vaguely familiar about the man, although she could not quite make out what it was. What she did know was that he was one of the hottest looking men that she had ever seen. She was madly attracted to him in a way that she could not understand, despite the fact that she was in a bad situation.

  “Ma'am, my names are Adrian Walsh, the chief firefighter here, and I hope that you don’t mind if I ask you a couple of questions. First of all, can you hear me?” a sexy voice said to her, the name sounding so familiar, Christie was sure that she must know the man from somewhere.

  She nodded her head, her eyes still looking into his brown eyes, Christie finding that she could not stop herself from looking at him. It was almost as if there was some sort of pull that attracted her to him in the most intense way.

  “Yes,” she managed to say weakly, not sure if she was weak because of all the smoke that she had breathed in, or because of the hunk of a man that was asking her the questions.

  “Perfect. Now, in the house, is there anyone else inside, or even pets?” he asked, his eyes never wavering away from hers as she once again nodded her head. The man then turned to the other people around. “She was the only one in the building, forget the rescue and focus on putting out the fire now. Are you hurt anywhere, ma'am?”

  “No, I got out of the room in time before the fire became too much,” she responded weakly.

  “What were you doing in the office, why didn’t you just get out of the house instead? Don’t you realize that you could have died in there?” he said to her with concern as an EMT walked over to her to check her pulse using a stethoscope.

  She noticed the way that his eyes swept over her bare body as her gown fell apart by mistake, a soft blush washing over her cheeks as he looked away quickly, the EMT covering her up quickly.

  “I would like you to give me a full update on her status before you leave,” he said to the EMT before he walked off, this time not daring to look at her again.

  The EMT went about with her regular drill of checking her out and asking her about how she felt as she touched her in different places. The whole time, Christie's mind was on the hot fireman that had caught her eye. She pondered where she’d heard his name mentioned before, although she knew that it wasn’t from her circle. He was just a fireman, while she rolled with the wealthy circle of the city. Maybe she had read the name in one of the numerous novels that she had read. Putting it at the back of her mind, she laid her head back and wondered about the extent of damage that the fire had caused, also wondering what could have been the cause. It was almost twenty minutes before the firemen got the situation under control. Adrian broke away from the rest of the team and came back to where she was now standing with the cops and the EMTs.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” she said to him weakly as he came right up next to her.

  “Anytime, ma'am, that is what I do for a living. I'm just glad that you weren’t hurt and that your family was not here with you,” he said to her, and for some reason, she felt the need to tell him that she was single, and available too.

  “I actually live alone here since I have no family, and over the weekends, I usually tell my workers to take the days off to do their stuff,” she said to him, noting the awesome physique as he stood next to her, the pure definition of maleness.

  “You’re kidding, you live in this big house all alone?” he sounded surprised, more like shocked. “I mean, you must get pretty lonely, unless of course, you enjoy being alone.”

  He stood there in silence beside her, watching as the other firemen began putting away their equipment. He was right, she did get lonely especially when her only friend Karla was working, but there was nothing that she could do about it. Not until she found herself a man that could occupy the space with her and keep her company. A man like Adrian Walsh. She needed to get the fireman out of her mind because there was nowhere that she could go with a man like him. He just wasn’t her type, or was he!

  “Well, if you're okay then I guess that we can get going,” he said to her as he removed the fireproof overalls that he was wearing, his body coming into view.

  He had to have one of the most inspiring bodies that she had ever laid her eyes on. Inside the overalls, Adrian was wearing a tight fitting polo shirt that showed off all of his muscles, since it held onto him firmly. He was also wearing a pair of lacks that brought his body out in a sexy way, and it was not hard to try and imagine what he looked like without his clothes on. This was definitely someone that she would not mind getting freaky with any day, his social status notwithstanding.

  “I really don’t know how to thank you, Adrian,” she said to him, not really knowing what to say. He now looked more familiar than ever, although she still wasn’t sure where she could have seen him. “Will I get to see you again?”

  No way, she just didn’t ask him that, did she? It had never been her nature to ask a man, and least of all a stranger, such a question. The fireman had an effect on Christie that she could not even begin to describe. She was supposed to be thinking about all of the things that she had lost to the fire, but instead she was standing here thinking of Adrian in a sexual way. Could it be that she had gone for too long without having sex? Christie had been through a number of sexual flings, but those barely got rid of the itch that she felt in between her thighs. She had never felt attracted to the men the way that she felt about Adrian. Looking at him more closely, Christie realized that she actually knew him from somewhere.

  “Wait a minute, you look very familiar, don’t tell me that you are the Adrian from Jonathan Wolfe School?” she said excitedly before she could stop herself.

  “I thought that I also knew you from somewhere, although I just didn’t know from where. Wait a minute, you couldn’t be Christie Allen, could you, the chick who hated me with a passion for some reason,” he turned to look at her, his gaze so intense, she wondered if he could see right through her robe, and especially since she was wearing nothing underneath.

  “Don’t you think that hate is an overstatement. Maybe we just didn’t get along for some reason,” she said, wishing that she could turn back the hands of time and amend her behavior.

  She had been very mean to Adrian when they were in school, having been in the same class from the time that they were in the 10th grade. She could not quite understand why she had behaved that way towards him, probably because once when they were adolescents, he had tried to make a hit on her, asking her out on a date. At that point, Christie had her eyes on other boys from some of the upper classes, and she had warned him against ever making such a mistake, threatening to take action by reporting him to her parents if he ever tried doing that again. Christie could still remember the hurt and dejected look on his face as she had walked away from him before announcing to the whole class what she had just done. Adrian had become the laughing stock of the school, and that had even prompted him to change schools at some point.

  “I guess I'll see you some other time, it was nice meeting you again, Christie Allen, and I'm glad to see that you're doing so well,” he said as his fellow firefighters ca
me and joined him. “That was a job well done boys, we had better get back to the department just in case there are more jobs before our shifts come to an end.”

  There was so much warmth in the way that he communicated with his fellow workers, Christie felt a tinge of guilt. How she would die to have that sort of relationship with those that worked under her, but instead, they treated her like an iron lady. She had built some sort of wall around her, always too scared to let anyone too close to her. She found herself following the firemen to the truck and noted the way that Adrian made sure that all of his men were onboard before he himself made for the passenger door of the truck.

  “Adrian,” she called out to him before he opened the door, spinning around to look at her with that sexy gaze.

  “What is it, Christie?” she could still sense the anger in his voice now that he had discovered who she was. It made her feel bad about the sort of woman that she was.

  “I'm really sorry about what happened between us in the past, and I was hoping that maybe you and I could make up and at least become friends,” she said to him pleadingly. “How about you pick me up and take me to a place of your choice for dinner so that we can make up?”

  “Wait a minute, are you actually asking me out on a date or something of the sort?” he sounded a little surprised as he arched his eyebrows to look at her.

  “Maybe, something like that, only, you get to pick where you would like to go for dinner,” she said to him as he looked at her skeptically, almost as if he could not believe what she was telling him.

  “I really don’t know about this, Christie. You know what they say, once beaten, twice shy,” he said to her.

  “Come on, Adrian, stop being such a pussy and take her up on the offer. Dinner with the lovely lady won't hurt at all,” the driver seated in the cabin of the truck said to Adrian, leaning over to the passenger window inside the cabin.