Page 15 of Fury

“F… Fury,” she stammered, her voice still an octave higher than what I knew it sounded like.

“Aye, doll. Fury. You’re safe, ok?”

I bent down a little, just to drop into her eyeline. She was a tall woman, slightly above average. But at 6’4” I still dwarfed her. She was out of breath, sucking in huge lungfuls of air as she tried to calm herself down.

“I’m ok. I’m ok,” she muttered, and I wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

“What’s happened? What’s going on?”

“I…I. There were footsteps. Someone is in there,” she whispered the last word, like it might alert them we were on to them.

“Do you want me to go have a look?”

Heidi shook her head, her blonde hair falling about her face, then she nodded.

“I…I…dunno. Yes?”

“Ok. Wait here. I’ll go have a look.”

I stepped round her, my boots crunching heavily in the gravel, and she jumped, the tiniest of squeaks leaving her throat.

“No. Wait,” she said suddenly, grabbing at the leather arm of my jacket. “I don’t want to be out here alone.”

“Ok. Well, come with me.”

“I don’t want to go back in there, either. I just want to go home.”

“Ok. I can take you home.”

“No. No. It’s ok. I have a taxi coming,” she glanced around, staring away into the darkness.

I watched her arms shake. From the cold or the shock, I did not know, but she was shivering.

“Right. Well, we can wait in my truck.”

The blonde woman looked at me, surveying my face, and slowly the hardness I’d seen earlier today returned to hers. The slowing of her heart chasing away that fragility I’d just seen on her. And I didn’t know which one I liked more.

“I’ll just wait out here,” she said, her voice lowering, losing the waiver of earlier.

It was growing colder, any residual heat from earlier in the day now quickly disappearing into a cloudless night. I shrugged out of my bike jacket, wrapping the leather around her shoulders, the three crowned skulls now at her back, rather than mine.

“Ok, we’ll wait out here then,” I stood next to her, not sure whether draping my arm across her shoulders was a step too far and then deciding it was.

“Fury,” my name sounded delicious on her lips, in her London accent. “What are you doing here?”

And now I didn’t know how to answer that, because any I gave would sound creepy as fuck, and I had no excuse for what I was doing.

“I was just passing by,” I lied. “Thought I saw a light in the windows, which was weird at this time of night, so pulled back round. Next thing I knew, you were charging through those doors.”

“Hmm,” she answered, not challenging me, and maybe I’d got away with that pathetic excuse of a lie.

Suddenly we were lit up by bright lights, a gentle rumble of a car engine close behind.

“My taxi,” she said, peeling the jacket from her shoulders. “Thank you, Fury.”

And there it was again. My name on her lips. And this time my dick twitched in my pants and thoughts of frightening her away were long gone.

*****