Page 33 of In Stockings
“I think we’d better go and have a word with her.” Archie grins.
Samson slides back the sleeve of his jacket and peers at his watch. “It’s the end of our shift and hers.”
I jerk my head, and we set off towards the hospital's foyer.
Somehow the crowds have already regathered after the evacuation. It’s even more chaotic than the last two times I was here. People are squabbling over their places in the queue, and there’s a hell of alot of shoving and pushing going on.
All that stops as we come strolling through, though, dressed in our boots, protective clothing and helmets. People actually turn and watch, the room falling silent.
“Look, Mummy,” one small child says in the quiet, “it’s real-life firemen.”
The crowd parts to let us through, and there she is, our little omega, staring back at us from Santa’s cabin. Her mouth hangs open, and fires are burning in both pupils of her eyes.
“Did you call us, Ma’am?” I ask her.
“Me?” she squeaks.
I bend a little, so we’re at eye level.
“Yes, you.”
“No, it was –” she cuts off when I give her my best smouldering look. She gulps.
“Well, called us or not, we’ve come to rescue you.”
She laughs. “I don’t need rescuing.”
I peer around at the crowd. “You most certainly do.”
“Let them rescue you!” one mum screams from the back.
“Hell, yeah,” another agrees, and soon all the women in the crowd are cheering.
I lift my eyebrow. “May I, Ma’am?”
She covers her face with her hands, but nods and then I’m flinging her over my shoulder.
The crowd goes wild as I march her out of the foyer and onto the street, my packmates following.
Samson opens the truck door, and I place her neatly inside the cab.
“We’re riding in this truck?”
“You bet,” I say, swinging up into the cab. “Want the flashing lights, sweetheart?”
She bites her lip and sighs. “Fuck, yes.”
I take the drive back to the fire station at a more steady pace than the one we arrived at, but Astrid still loves every minute of it.
“Where are we headed?” she shouts above the roar of the siren.
“Home.”
“In this?”
“No, unfortunately, we have to return this bad boy. But if you have any firetruck-related fantasies you’d like to fulfil, you have ten minutes before we return to the fire station.”
“Ten minutes is long enough,” Samson yells, flinging Astrid across the seats and dropping his face under her skirt.
