Page 45 of StoryTeller's Tale

With that swift kick up the ass, I grab her hand and lead her to where the others are waiting. Bravely, Sheri wraps the damp towel around her head, leaving just a slit for her eyes. With one last lingering look on the woman I hope to see on the other side, I wrench away the blankets which had been inadequately blocking the gaps, immediately allowing for a thick cloud of hot choking smoke to enter under the door, and then pull the door open.

The roar of the fire amplifies and while Sheri bravely steps through with only the slightest hesitation, I have to physically push and prod at the other women to encourage them. Despite her earlier assertion, Carole falters halfway up the stairs and makes as if she wants to go back down.

“Be my guest.” I, too, have a cloth covering everything but my eyes, though that gap is sufficient for me to glare at her. “You want to take your chances and go back down, I ain’t gonna stop you.”

She looks up at the flames I’m asking her to walk through, and then to the basement we so recently left behind.

“Go on.” I gentle my voice. “I got you.”

And then we’re in the thick of it, burning beams cluttering the ground and glowing embers floating around. It’s hard to hear, but I can make out men yelling.

“Go.” I push hard at Carole, sending her forward.

She screams as the heat hits us like a physical force.

My lungs burn as there’s no oxygen to inhale, just the fucking smoke that’s trying to kill us. I keep my eyes trained to where I can see bodies moving ahead of me and wipe everything else from my mind except for putting one foot in front of the other.

I’m in some kind of trance when hands reach for me, unceremoniously dragging me out by my collar, away from the flames, away from the heat, away from the house and, eventually, finally, letting me drop to the ground.

There I lie, my lungs heaving, screaming for life-giving air. Once I start coughing, it’s a while before I stop, but I’m not the only one. Rolling over onto my stomach, I anxiously look around, only relaxing when I see Sheri.

Is she curled over trying to recover? Fuck no. She’s up and about and checking on everyone else.

My lips curve.

Yeah. She’s my one. I’ve found her.

Now I’ve got to hang onto her.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

SHERI

There were a few moments there when I genuinely didn’t think we were going to make it.

I thought I knew what it was to be scared when the Dominators snatched me from the parking lot and transported me God knows where. But that was nothing compared to making myself walk through flames with the only hope that StoryTeller’s brothers would be waiting on the other side to help me.

My arms and legs feel raw from the heat. I have a particularly nasty burn on one side when I’d avoided falling beams and careened into red hot pipework. I don’t know whether my lungs will ever be the same again, but I’m alive. I’m out, and apart from the poor girl who took her own life, it looks like all the others have gotten out safely.

I know I’ll have nightmares where I’ll dream that I didn’t make it, probably even PTSD, but for now, all I can concentrate on is that the burning house and that torture chamber of a basement are behind me.

For some reason I feel responsible for the women who were with me, even though I’d been the last to arrive. I check on Carole. Like me, she’s got a few burns, and is finding it hard to breathe, but she doesn’t seem to have any immediate threat to her life. I look to the other women, sparing a moment and a comforting hug for each of them. Apart from the breathlessness, sore throats and minor burns, we all seem to have escaped relatively unscathed.

We’re free.It takes a moment to sink in. Then, as I look around, seeing StoryTeller being hugged and backslapped by other men, for a moment I worry whether we’ve left one dangerous situation, only to land in another.How do I know his club hasn’t the same nefarious purposes?

I tense as I see StoryTeller walking toward me. As he gets closer, he gives me a concerned, assessing look, then opens his arms. “Come here.”

I’m emotionally drained, sore, hurting, tired, and running on fumes, but his deep voice still somehow has the ability to make the core of me start to throb.

My immediate impulse is to throw myself at him, but I hold back. Behind us the building is still burning, in its death throes for sure now, creaks, crashes and sounds like sighs as it slowly comes crashing down.

No one needs to tell me we got out by the skin of our teeth.

Everything goes through my mind in a flash—my abduction, imprisonment, StoryTeller appearing on the scene, the threats Knuckles had made, followed by the weird seduction and very public loss of my virginity, then, the break for freedom.

Out of the corner of my eye, I regard the man of my dreams. His hair has started to come out of the bounds of the bun that he’d put it in. His face is dirty and must reflect mine, darkened with soot, and red patches showing overheated skin. His clothes are tattered and charred, but he’s still the most magnificent being that I’ve ever seen. It’s that that makes me cautious.He’s too much of a man for me.

In the broad light of day, he’s given me hopes that normality is within my reach. I can return to my day-to-day life and keep him as a memory. Anything else that he offered had surely been only to keep up my spirits when all had appeared lost. He can’t really have any special interest in me.

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