Where We Found Our Home by Natasha Bishop
Lincoln
Thank God it’s been a quiet shift so far, because my mind refuses to venture far from Ciara.
She already had me hooked with her smile, sense of humor, and vulnerability, and now I’m just a full-blown goner. Sinking inside her was like coming home. I’ll never get enough of her.
I already created the schedule for next month’s shifts and did a bunch of other administrative stuff, so I might as well have some fun. I pull out my phone and send a text to Ciara.
Me: Miss me yet?
I’m excited when I see she starts typing back immediately.
Ciara: *eye roll emoji* You’ve been gone for four hours. Don’t get a big head just because you’ve got a big head *wink emoji*
Me: *crying laughing emoji* Oh come on can’t you stroke my ego just once?
Ciara: Nope
Ciara: I can stroke something else though *2 wink emojis*
Me: It’s gonna be real awkward when the Big Guy jumps up in front of everyone at the station
Ciara: OMG, do you call your dick The Big Guy? Really?
Me: Hey you said yourself he’s big, why fight it?
Ciara: So unoriginal
Me: You got something better??
Ciara: It’ll take some research but I’m sure I can come up with something
Me: Oh I’m happy to sacrifice my body in the name of research
Ciara: I thought you would be
Ciara: I’m thinking Jay or Khal Drogo but I’ll refrain from making my final choice until I do more research
Me: LOL ummm do I even wanna know why those are your top 2 contenders?
Ciara: To match me, of course
Umm, what?
Me: Do you…do you call your pussy Beyoncé and/or Khaleesi?
Ciara: Sure do! I switch off whichever one I’m feeling in the moment
Me: But…why?
Ciara: Because she’s a goddamn queen and she should be treated as such
This woman. She’s going to be the death of me, and I’m loving every minute of it.
Me: *crying laughing emoji* I can’t argue with that
Ciara: Of course you can’t it’s perfect logic
Ciara: I gotta go, Nina is begging me for details about your dick
Ciara: *inserts gif of Larry from Curb Your Enthusiasm with the words ‘I knew that big penis was nothing but trouble’*
Me: Make sure you tell her about that thing I do with my tongue too
Ciara: Impossible man. Stay safe, okay?
Me: Yes ma’am
Ciara: Told you about that ma’am shit
I send her a gif of Beyoncé in full queen attire right as the alarm goes off. Time to get to work. I have to push Ciara aside for now.
My unit arrives to the scene of an apartment fire, and I take command. The crew gets the pipe hooked up to the apparatus and gets to work. I’m giving an order to a probie when a tiny voice yells in my direction.
“Excuse me!” A girl who looks to be no older than twelve calls out to me. I wave my hand to keep her from coming any closer and jog to see what she needs.
“There was a man over there. He said he saw someone run inside the building!” She’s winded from running over to me, so I’m piecing together her words.
“Woah, slow down. Sorry, did you say someone ran inside the building?”
“Yeah! I overheard a man say he saw a guy run in there after you guys came out because his daughter was crying about her cat still being inside. I turned around to tell him to tell you guys but he was gone.”
“Okay, okay. Did he say where he saw the man run in?”
“He pointed over there.” She points to the north side of the building.
“Okay, thank you. We got it. Stay here, okay?” She nods, and I run off to my crew.
While my crew and I have contained the flames enough that we aren’t concerned about it spreading to other buildings, the blaze is still going strong. We were told the entire building was evacuated, and we did a primary search and found no one, but if a man ran in after we came out, we could’ve missed him. It seems odd to me that he would do that instead of just telling us about the cat, but I can’t risk shrugging it off. I’d never forgive myself if someone died in a fire and I could’ve prevented it.
I make the decision to be the one to go inside the building with two other guys from the crew to look for the man while the rest of the crew focuses on getting the fire under control. We need to be quick and efficient.
“First floor clear!”
“Second floor clear!”
We continue to radio to each other through the five floors of the building and have turned up no signs of other life in the building. I start to head back down to meet my guys when I hear a deep voice call for help. I rush into the room where I heard the voice, but before I can radio to the guys that I located our target on the fifth floor, something slams me in the back. The wind is knocked out of me momentarily, but I scramble to turn over on my back just in time to see a figure dressed in all black throw a two by four on the floor and then throw a burning rag on top of a pile of clothes and curtains that are drenched in what I assume to be gasoline. I can’t see his face at all, but his stature tells me it’s a man. The only part of his body showing is the hand he used to toss the rag. I can see he’s got scars covering it. I commit that to memory as he runs out of the room and slams the door behind him. The flames from the pile of clothes spread quickly. I run over to the door, but the man somehow locked it from the outside. What the fuck is going on?
“This is Lieutenant Cole. I’m trapped in a room on the fifth floor on the north side of the building. The fire is spreading quickly, and the door is locked from the outside. Need RIC ASAP.”
“We need RIC to the north side of the building now. Fifth floor.” I hear my command echoed through the radio, and I take a minute to observe my situation. The flames are spreading fast, but they aren’t blocking the window yet, so I should be able to get out when my crew arrives.
Who the fuck was that man and why did he do this? Was he targeting me? Was the man lying about what he saw? Was the girl who came to me lying? So many questions are swirling around in my head.
“Lieutenant!” Peters, a member of the Rapid Intervention Crew sent to retrieve me, calls for me. I grab his hand, and he pulls me onto the ladder back to safety.
“PAR!” I call over the radio. I need to make sure my other crew members made it out of the building and there were no other run-ins with the man.
“Engine 1 has PAR,” they call back. We’re all accounted for. Time to get some answers.
The fire is under control now, and a secondary search was completed, but no one saw the man I mentioned run in or out. I’ve given the Austin Police Department my statement about what happened so they can investigate, and I’ve been cleared by the medical team to leave the scene, so we head back to the station.
Ciara.
Images of Ciara pop into my head, and I realize how badly I just want to be with her right now. Will she be okay if I tell her what happened today? Memories of Erica begging me to quit my job threaten to drown me, but Ciara’s words pull me back. “It takes a special person to accept that.” Could she be that special person for me? She said that being loved and cherished by someone like me would be an honor. She also said it’d be cruel to ask me to step away from what I’ve dedicated my life to. She said all the right things.My head wants to dismiss what she said as impossible to believe, but my heart is telling me to trust her. To lean into her. To stop letting the past hold me back.
“Make a choice, Lincoln. Between your past and your future.” I choose my future as I make my way to Ciara’s apartment.
She answers the door wearing shorts and a tank top that I want to rip off of her. “Hey, you. You’re early,” she says. I lean in to kiss her. It starts soft, but when she wraps her arms around my neck, I deepen the kiss. I kick the door closed behind me and flip both locks without ever taking my lips off hers. She moans into my mouth but then pulls away.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I rest my forehead against hers.
“Then why are you early? I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow. Did something happen?”
I sigh. “They sent me home.”
“Why?”
I start to fill her in on what happened on the scene, but for some reason when I go to tell her about the man, my brain freezes. I don’t feel right telling her about it. I want more answers about that before I loop her in. I can barely wrap my head around it, so how could she?
Her eyes are wide with concern. “Jesus. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m all good. My chief just decided to send me home, but I’ll go back on my next shift as normal.”
She eyes me skeptically. I know she doesn’t believe me. She knows me better than that by now, and I don’t fully understand why I’m not giving her the full story, but in my heart of hearts I know I’m making the right choice.
She seems to decide to let me be shady for now, and I’m grateful. “Okay, well, what do you need? How can I help you unwind?”
“I just need you.” She gives me a sexy smile and wraps her arms around my neck again. What’s crazy is that when I said I just need her, I didn’t even mean sex. I mean, of course I’m going to take what she’s offering me because I’d be dumb as hell not to, and I do want to, but being here, in her arms, with her checking to make sure I’m okay and rubbing circles on the back of my neck is more than enough.
She kisses my neck, and it snaps me back to the here and now. I squeeze her ass, and when she giggles I’m immediately rock hard for her. She pushes me down on her couch and straddles me. I cup her through her shorts, and she starts grinding against my hand.
“Stop trying to distract me,” she rasps.
I smile. “Distract you from what?”
“You’re the one who had a long day, so this is for you.” She slides down on her knees between my legs and pulls my cock out of my pants. Before I can even register what she said, she strokes me from base to tip twice, and I rock forward on instinct, my dick glistening with pre-cum.
“Baby, you don’t have to.”
She cuts me off. “You had me for breakfast. I’m having you for dinner. Now hush.” Ma’am yes ma’am. In the next moment her mouth is on me, and all coherent thought leaves me.
“Oh, shit,” I moan. Her tongue traces the vein in my dick, and I am powerless to this woman. When she relaxes her throat and takes me in deep, I’m lost looking at her. Before long, my hands are in her hair, and my hips are driving forward so she can take me deeper. Her mouth is so wet and warm, I could stay here forever. She snakes her hand up her thigh and starts rubbing lazy circles around her clit and moaning. The hum of her throat against my dick and the sight of her being turned on by pleasuring me brings me so close to finish, but I’m not ready for this to be over so I force myself to tame it down. Her mouth is like ecstasy, though, and soon I can’t hold back anymore.
“Oh fuck. I’m gonna come,” I warn her, but my words only spur her on more until I spill my release and she drinks me down. She looks up at me with mischief in her eyes, and I swear the Big Guy, or excuse me, Khal Drogo or Jay Z, is ready to go again.
She stands up between my legs and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, looking completely satisfied with herself. “Feel better?” she asks as she kisses me.
“I’m not sure I could possibly feel any better.” Yes, I could. If I was sinking inside her right now I would feel ten times better.
“Perfect. How do you feel about leftover chili for dinner? I just made it yesterday.” She whispers, “it’ll be my second dinner” to herself and quietly laughs to herself. What a fucking nerd. I love it so much.
But umm…if she thinks we’re going anywhere but her bedroom right now she’s lost her mind.
“Do not look at me like that, Linc. I know your ass hasn’t eaten yet, so let’s eat. You’re gonna need your strength for the plans I have for you later anyway.”
The thought has me laughing and getting hard at the same damn time. “And what plans would those be?”
She tosses me a playful shrug before walking over to her fridge and pulling out her chili.
“Okay, wait a minute. Please tell me you’re lying.” She throws her head back in laughter. We’ve been sitting here eating and sharing old stories.
“No, I swear on my mama that happened.”
“So three of Shane’s exes end up at the same party, and his solution to dealing with all of them confronting him was to pull the fire alarm? At a work function? In a fancy hotel, surrounded by his bosses and important clients?”
“Oh, yeah. In his mind that made perfect sense,” I say with a chuckle. “Shane is great at what he does, but he hates personal confrontation and especially with women. His brain usually short-circuits so he ends up doing dumb shit like dramatically pulling the fire alarm to get away from them.”
“But isn’t falsely pulling a fire alarm illegal?”
“That’s the best fucking part. He knew that so he went into the bathroom, started a literal trash can fire, and then ran out and pulled the fire alarm so when the cameras showed he was the one to do it he had a legitimate reason for doing so. The hotel actually fucking thanked him for being so quick to pull the alarm and call attention to it. Believe me, Dom and I reamed him the fuck out when our crew got there and he told us the whole story, but when we think back on it, it’s damn funny.”
She has tears in her eyes from laughing so hard, and I’m right there with her.
“Your friends are something else. How did you all meet again?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
She laughs again but blinks when she realizes I didn’t actually follow that up with the story.
“Are you guys secret agents or something?”
“Ha! No. We met nine years ago, but the story is so wildly stupid and unbelievable. We swore that night we would never tell anyone the real story. Not until each and every one of us were married and settled down.”
“Why the hell was that your criteria for telling the story?”
“Because at the time we were all convinced we’d never actually settle down and get married. At least not all of us, so we’d never have to tell the story.” It was Isaiah who suggested that be the criteria. He was nineteen at the time and was solely concerned with getting his dick wet at any given moment, so he never imagined himself settling down. Kai immediately agreed with the plan, and to this day I don’t know why he was so quick to accept it. The rest of us took some convincing but then we just sort of thought Isaiah and Kai would be our holdouts so we’d never have to deal with it regardless. It’s been working so far.
“Men are so fucking dumb,” she says as she doubles over with laughter. “I wish Simone was here. She’d be frothing at the mouth to meet your friends.” Ciara has told me all about her childhood friends Simone, Sarah, and Brittany. They’re her extended family like the guys are for me. Every time she speaks about them, she has a layer of sadness in her voice which makes me want to know even more why she left home, but I won’t push her on that. I have faith that she’ll tell me when she’s ready, and I’ll be here for her whenever that is.
“Which one do you think Simone would latch on to?”
“Oh, I mean all of them. So I guess the real question is which one would she latch on to first.” She takes a minute to think. “Definitely Shane.” She brings her finger up to her chin in thought. “Yep, Shane. He’s got this arrogance about him, but he’s also kind of shy, and she would eat that shit up. She lives for making guys blush.”
“I would love to see that.”
She chuckles at that. “Do you ever feel like your entire life is an out-of-body experience? Like you put this husk version of yourself on display for everyone to see, but inside you’re slowly dying but you don’t know how to stop it?” I tentatively reach for her hand. When she doesn’t pull away, I grasp her hand in mine and squeeze. She turns to me with a fragile smile and squeezes back.
“Yeah, I have. When Erica left me, I was hurt, and I didn’t think I’d ever be myself again, but when she died, I really lost it. I kept up appearances like everything was fine, but inside I was questioning every single choice I ever made and regretting everything and just losing more and more of myself.”
“How’d you fix it?”
“Honestly? I didn’t realize I hadn’t truly dealt with it until I met you.”
“Me?” Her mouth is agape in shock, and I curse myself.
Shit. I did not mean to say that. I don’t think Ciara is ready to hear how deep my feelings run for her. Hell, I don’t think I’m ready to say it. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s true. I have not felt this way about a woman since Erica, and the really scary part is that these feelings might even surpass that. I didn’t think I was capable of these types of feelings anymore, so this is just making me realize how much I haven’t dealt with my shit.
“Yeah. I just…I care about you. I care about you more than I thought possible.”
She blinks. “I care about you too.” She looks away and curses under her breath.
“Is that not a good thing?”
“I don’t know. You are so unexpected. You were never part of my plan, and I’m just worried that—” She cuts herself off.
“Worried that what?” Come on, Angel. Give it to me.
She tries to blink away a tear, and I reach out to wipe it off her cheek. “Ugh, nothing. This is too much. Please.” She cuts herself off again, but I know what she’s asking. She’s not ready. That’s okay.
I lean in and kiss her, and she deepens the kiss. She stands up and grabs my hand. I let her lead me to her bedroom, and I show her with my body everything I’m not saying with my words. I just hope it’s enough to get her to trust me with her pain.