A Merry Match

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Frankie

“Talk slower, Fireboy. I wanna come to the sound of your voice.”

The words slip out half-whispered, as if he’s physically in the room to hear them.

He’s not. He’s somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area, probably still in uniform based on how quickly he messaged me after what appeared to be the end of his shift.

And I’m here—knees spread on my mattress, hoodie rucked up, one hand between my thighs and the other gripping my phone.

My voice note sits there, unread for thirty-two seconds. When his reply appears, I stare at it for a beat, heart drumming against my ribs, then hit play.

His voice is rough and ragged, fucking devastating.

“If I were there right now,” he says, dripping like molasses and twice as filthy, “I’d pull those panties off with my teeth and make you beg before I even touched you. You want that, Red? Wanna come from just my voice while I tell you how I’d ruin that pretty pussy?”

A completely undignified sound leaves my throat.

“Yes… please.”

Send.

This time his reply is immediate.

“Mmm, I love it when you beg.”

I’ve never seen his face, don’t know his real name. He’s just Fireboy. A string of messages and late-night voice notes, spiraling from flirty to filthy with alarming ease.

We don’t talk about anything heavy. Just work stress, music, food, and all the ways he’d wreck me if we were ever in the same room.

I sink back into the pillows, enjoying the heat blooming behind my ribs, and hit record.

“Please,” I whine. “I’m wet and desperate and all alone—tell me what to do.”

His response pings back fifteen seconds later.

“You wanna come, baby? Take those fingers and put them between your legs.”

Jesus. I squeeze my thighs together and let the ache roll through me. My body knows him. Or the version I’ve built from snippets—dry humor, heat-soaked breath, the way his voice gets deeper when he’s horny.

“They’re already there,” I breathe, hips shifting as I record my message back. “You gonna tell me what to do with them, or should I just put my phone down and imagine instead?”

I hit send again and don’t have time to overthink it before my phone buzzes.

Voice call. No video, no warning. Just Fireboy lighting up my screen.

I swipe to answer.

“Spread those legs wider for me, Red,” his voice rumbles with no preamble the second the line connects. “Fuck yourself exactly how I tell you. Start with one hand circling your clit, the other tugging slowly at your nipple. I want you aching all over.”

I do exactly as he says, breath catching as my fingers slide through the mess he’s already made of me. Biting my lip, I ease my phone down a little to make the slick slide of my fingers audible.

“Mmm,” I moan, letting the sound hit the line. “You mean like this?”

“Fuck,” he groans. “You always this wet for me?”

“Only when you talk like that,” I whisper, stroking slow. “Tell me more, Fireboy. Tell me how you’d fuck me if you were here.”

“I’d have you bent over the couch,” he grits out. “One hand in your hair, the other slapping your slippery clit. You wouldn’t last five minutes.”

“Neither would you,” I tease. “You’d be so deep in me, you’d forget your own name. And I’d be so loud you’d have to cover my mouth just to keep me from waking the whole damn block.”

He swears under his breath, and I grin. I love it when I get him like this, the sound hits me deep.

“Keep talking, Red.”

I prop my phone against the pillow and slide two fingers inside me, curling and fucking myself slowly. My other hand trails back to tweak my nipple, sending jolts of heat straight to my core.

“I’d ride you so good, baby.” My breath hitches high. “Real slow at first, just to tease you. Just to feel how hard and big you are as I slide down you. Then I’d grind and bounce on that cock, begging you to let me come all over you.”

His breath shudders down the line.

“You close?”

“Uh-huh.” I can barely speak. “Tell me I can come.”

“Fuckin’ do it,” he moans, and my hand moves faster at the sound. “Make a mess for me, baby.”

“Mmm…” My voice catches. “I’m—fuck—”

“Come for me. Right fucking now.”

It hits hard, and my whole body arches, breath caught on a gasp I can’t swallow. I can hear him losing it too, his voice ragged as he lets go, both of us crashing into it at the same time.

Silence stretches for a moment after, just the sound of our panting filling the phone line.

“Jesus Christ,” he finally mutters. “You just made my fuckin' night.”

I laugh, lazy and satisfied, still catching my breath as my body melts into the blankets.

“You’re so much trouble,” I whisper. “I’m gonna have to start pre-stretching.”

“Pre-stretching?” he echoes. “Babe, I’m the warm-up and the main event.”

I groan. “You did not just say that.”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

I roll to my side, clutching my phone and smiling like an idiot, blanket half-twisted around my legs.

“So is that your main personality trait, Fireboy? Being wrong?”

“My main traits are voice, mouth, and stamina. Personality is a bonus.”

“You forgot cocky as hell.”

“That’s implied.”

I laugh, breath still short, my body warm all over in that smug, toe-curling way only he manages to pull from me.

I don’t know how he does it, how he can be cute and funny while also telling me exactly how he’d fuck me into next week.

His voice is both a hand around my throat and a blanket around my shoulders.

“Do you talk to all your internet girls like this?”

“Only the ones who come as pretty as you sound.”

I scoff, and there’s a beat.

“Besides… you’re not just an internet girl, Red.”

My heart does something it shouldn’t. It’s dangerous. Stupid. The kind of skip that happens when you start wondering what color someone’s eyes are even though you’ve told yourself it doesn’t matter.

“You know I don’t even know you, right?” I tease, keeping it light. “I could be getting off to the sound of a 65-year-old paramedic with a smoker’s cough and a foot fetish.”

“Are you calling me seasoned or kinky?”

“Both. Respectfully.”

He chuckles low, and I want to bottle the sound and tuck it under my pillow.

“You’re lucky I like you.”

“Yeah,” I say softly. “Guess I am.”

There’s a pause where he doesn’t say anything, and nor do I. It’s a silence that feels like a softening. Respite. The way he might hold me after he’s finished doing every filthy thing he’s told me he wants to do.

“I should go clean up,” he says eventually. “Shift in ten.”

“Day shift or overnight?”

“Morning. We do twelves. I’m off-night—for now.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “You ever sleep, or are you just powered by caffeine and chaos?”

“Mostly chaos. Definitely caffeine. And recently, a very good girl in my ear.”

I snort. “Gross.”

“Accurate.”

We've been doing this for about a month. Safe, anonymous cyber sex with just enough realness tucked in the margins. I know he’s a night owl, and that he’s got a scar above his eyebrow from falling out of a tree when he was a kid.

That he listens to old rock on long drives, and likes the sound of my laugh.

He even told me it was one of his top three favorite sounds.

But he’s still just a voice on the end of a line.

With a stretch, I wiggle my toes beneath the blanket. There’s a spark under my ribs that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. Not a flame, not yet. But something warm. Something I’m not quite sure how to acknowledge.

I want to ask him more, what his days look like. Who he spends his time with. Whether he’s already thinking about the next time I’ll beg for his voice in my ear telling me to come.

I want to ask him so many things, but I don’t.

“I should let you go,” I say instead. “You’ve got things to do, I’m sure.”

“You offering to supervise?”

“Only if it involves a uniform.”

I can practically hear his responding smirk.

“Thinking about me in it, or out of it?”

God. This man.

“Mostly out.”

“Smart girl.”

“Smart mouth, too.”

“Jesus. Good night, Red.”

“Night, Fireboy.”

I don’t hang up right away. I wait until I hear his quiet chuckle, the soft rustle of his pants, the faintest sound of his breathing still steady on the line.

Then I hit end call and stare at the ceiling for a while, wondering why this anonymous, disembodied voice makes me feel more seen than most people I’ve actually met.

The glow from the streetlamps outside is enough to spill across the hardwood floor, catching on the mug I abandoned on my windowsill earlier.

I pull my hoodie over my head—one of those worn, oversized ones with a stain on the cuff—and pad barefoot toward the window, still feeling a little lightheaded.

It’s snowing again.

Big, fat flakes drift through the glow of traffic like they’re not in any hurry to hit the ground. It’s the kind of snowfall that makes the city feel quieter than it is. Like everything’s holding its breath.

I curl into the corner of the windowsill, cradling the mug in both hands, and let the last of its warmth bleed into my fingers. The tea’s lukewarm now, but I sip it anyway.

Something about the quiet and the hum still thrumming beneath my skin makes everything feel suspended.

A self-aware moment in time that needs to be enjoyed.

I get these sometimes, these moments when it feels like the world stops spinning and I can look at myself in the exact moment I stand.

They’ve happened sporadically ever since my parents died four years ago.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a weird little glitch in the space-time continuum—like my mom’s actually here, ghosting a kiss onto my shoulder. Just like she used to when I was younger.

Other times I wonder if I’m just fucking miserable and it’s my brain alerting me to the need for serotonin.

But this time, I wonder if it’s my brain taking stock of all these interactions with Fireboy, and trying to tell me something else. Maybe to stop, maybe to keep going, I haven’t decided yet.

We met on one of those apps.

A match-making thing. Not one of those big dating ones—a newer app called Banter, where you use text and audio first instead of judging someone off a photo. 'Where banter comes before bullshit', that's their tagline.

I’d set up a profile on a dare and used the handle RedRiot, because apparently sarcasm and ginger hair are my two core traits. I wasn’t expecting much beyond a few cringe intros and maybe an ego hit.

Then he messaged.

Fireboy, with a string of perfectly timed one-liners and a wicked sense of humor. We flirted in texts for days, an endless circle of joking and teasing, until one night, he sent a voice message. Just ten seconds, but something in me lit up.

His voice was husky mixed with mischief. Warmth crackling through winter.

We’ve kept it light and anonymous—just voices, late-night messages, nothing that asked for anything real. He’s careful not to tell me where he works, just somewhere in emergency services, somewhere in the sprawl of the GTA.

I don’t push, but I’m not stupid. Between the talk of shift rotations, the mention of smoke smell in his hair, and how he once accidentally divulged the exact weight of a damn axe, I know he’s a firefighter.

And okay, it’s not like I don’t have some context.

My sister Tamara married pro hockey player, Elijah Parnell.

Hometown hero, general overachiever, and alternate captain for the Colorado Storm, where he and my sister are now based.

They were high school sweethearts, back when we all still lived in Maplewood—a small town on the Oak Ridges Moraine, about thirty minutes north of Toronto.

His dad used to be the fire chief there, and the whole station is basically stitched into their family tree. I’ve spent enough years in that town, and enough dinners around the Parnell’s table, half-listening to dispatch stories and gear jokes, to know when someone’s speaking fluent firefighter.

And some of what Fireboy says lines up a little too well, not to mention he’s not exactly been subtle with his username.

But I’ve never asked him outright. Didn’t want to know too much, didn’t want to scare him off.

Didn’t want to scare myself off.

I scroll through our text thread, smiling at the mess of it. Half filth, half unfiltered thoughts. Every message is teasing and cocky, but a little soft around the edges if you know where to look.

I tap on one of his older voice notes, the one where he called me Red for the first time.

It wasn’t even sexual, just a reply to something ridiculous I’d said about hating oatmeal raisin cookies.

“Careful, Red,” he’d said through a laugh. “That’s the kinda talk that’ll get you blocked.”

I must’ve replayed that one a hundred times, and I let it echo through me again as I press the mug back to my lips, and stare out at the snow-dusted street below.

My phone buzzes loudly in my lap.

Ana: Tell me you’re not bailing. Xmas cocktails @ Clementine’s. Mariah is already playing!

Another message buzzes in my hand when I don’t reply.

Ana: Francesca. Don’t make me come over there and personally shove a candy cane up your ass.

I snort into my mug, lips twitching despite myself. Ana’s been trying to drag me into the festive spirit since Halloween. She means well, but the idea of forcing myself into a crowded bar tonight, wading through tinsel and tequila shots while pretending to be merry?

Hard pass.

Me: Appreciate the enthusiasm. Declining the rectal peppermint. Rain check?

Ana: You are the worst.

Ana: But also my favorite.

Ana: I’ll bring you leftover curly fries and a cookie the size of your face.

Me: You know my love language.

I toss the phone gently onto the couch, the grin fading as I lean my head against the cold glass. Outside, the snow’s still falling. Inside, it’s quiet. Except for the voice still echoing in my head.

Spread those legs for me, Red.

Fuck yourself exactly how I tell you.

My thighs squeeze together involuntarily, and I close my eyes on an exhale.

I don’t even know his name.

But god, I think I want to.