Blazed (13 page)

Esme, Daniel and Jonathan collectively sighed with relief when the comment made me laugh and inexplicably comforted me in a way it probably shouldn't have. Rather than respond to the threatened intrusion with a dramatic breakdown or a swift sprint down the path leading to the hills, I rolled my eyes at him with a smile on my face and made lustful eyes at the cupcake I didn't want to save for later. Just the fact that he said he planned to stick around for the long haul made me feel good
— special. I may well have been the worst woman for the job, but nobody else could say that they'd been offered the chance, and I would have been crazy to not be grateful for the opportunity to hang on to a man like him. I might have even dared to say like I felt like a concubine to a prolific king, my purposes singular, indecent and terminable, but I'd been picked from many as the best. I doubted that he felt the same way.

Chris did eventually rejoin us, still looking downtrodden but forced enough polite conversation to make it obvious that he was putting himself out to be civil for my sake. I loved him for it. To our surprise, we learned that Blaze was somewhat well versed in our nerdy persuasion, owning an extensive comic book and graphic novel collection that would have made Stan Lee weep. He even carried some street cred destroying pictures of said collection on his phone, and pinpointed exactly where
 
Syncretic Sciences
 now took residence. Naturally, everything was ordered alphabetically, then by year, issue and language— comics and novels separately stored. My mother would have loved him and his anally retentive organisational habits.

"Shame you haven't done more, really. I'd like an Emmeline White shelf. Autographed first editions, obviously."

"Obviously. But my imagination is a little limited."

"To
 garrotting wire?" Blaze gave me a knowing wink and topped my glass up from a bottle of wine he'd ordered that I'd never tried before but had gotten a taste for. Too much of a taste. It was hard to fall into my usual depressive drunken slump with him around, knowing what mischief lay in wait after the bar closed. But the bad mood threatened.

"Speaking of work being 'limited'
—" I barely caught the spiteful smirk on Chris' face before it faded, "you're not exactly fighting off the paparazzi for a man with his fingers in multiple pies and your portfolio isn't all that impressive.  You're not filling your days filling Emmy, so what do you do exactly?"

"Chris!"
 
Oh my god...
 Wincing, I thrust my hands into my hair and peeked up at Blaze through my fingers. "You don't have to answer that." What he did in his own time was his own business, just as my 'extra-curricular activities' were mine. Whether he taught the word of God to small children or murdered whores in brothels, it was none of my concern.

"It's fine," he assured me, wrapping an arm around my back and turning to address the question, "you're asking me what keeps me away, aren't you?" Away from me. Did I really want to hear his reason 'why'? "I'm a carer."
 

My head jolted up, not nearly attached to my ability to form words. A carer? When he wasn't looking out for me, he was looking out for someone else, someone sick or disabled. I hadn't put much thought into what his complication was, but something like this would never have crossed my mind. It wasn't nearly as bad as the other ideas that might have plagued me given half the chance, and it just seemed so...
 
him
. 

"They're not completely
 incapacitated, but accidents happen and concessions have to be made. Job opportunities come and go— being on standby compromises my time. I can't take work outside of the city and I don't like to start something I can't finish. If there's a risk of anything interrupting the little time I get with Emmeline, I'd prefer to sacrifice seeing her rather than give her just half my attention through phone-watching."

AND THAT WAS how it would always be. A watered down version of my role in Hunter's life. He too only called when he could give me his undivided attention, so the concept didn't distress me too much. How could it when I knew that Blaze's motives were much more honest and noble?

The gaps were shorter, a few days at most. Whether it was just lunch or a night out, I knew that the flying visit was always good for at least one cervix-destroying orgasm that sent me searching for a place to catnap. Mrs Reynolds didn't object to my post-lunch snoozes when I found my way to and from them smiling.

Blaze was like my own brand of Prozac. The all-encompassing woe that usually drove me subsided and the fat girl disappeared from my mirror in the mornings. By no means did I love myself, but I could bear to be me. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn't think about Hunter and how I lacked the qualities he desired the moment I woke up. I stretched my arm across my bed and remembered who'd been there, talking to me as I nodded off. Complicated or not, whatever we were doing worked and it worked well.
 

It worked through the scorching heat of June that had us peeling our sweaty, replete bodies off the leather interior of the goblin car on occasion. It worked through
 impromptu lunch dates and nights out at 
Esme's.
 I wore the clothes he'd chosen for me and my hair loose on the off chance he arrived because I liked to imagine what he thought when he opened the door into 
Double Booked
 and saw me looking just how he liked me. For some reason, he was attracted to me and made no effort to hide it, kissing me when he saw fit and making vulgar yet endearing propositions regardless of the company we were in. We didn't talk about it, but we both knew that we felt too much for each other. Neither of us cared as long as the other was still on the same page of our bizarre 'don't ask, don't tell' understanding. We were inextricably bound by our denial, a bond so honest that it might have been devalued if we'd forced I love you's like everyone else.

We were functionally dysfunctional and not even the summer heat could compare to how moltenly hot I burned for him at every given chance.

A few days became a week, and a week became ten days. The space that we left for him at our table in
 Esme's
 grew cold but stayed open for him to warm up when he could. My friends fussed, sure that I'd crack in his absence. They saw how close we'd grown but were so negative about the outlook of our 'relationship' that they didn't believe in my blind conviction. 

"Aren't you worried?" Esme walked home with me through the side-streets after lunch in a quiet little bistro I'd discovered near my flat during a walk with Blaze early the week before. The world hadn't found it yet, which meant that the beastly Saturday crowds had yet to taint it's
 Mediterranean serenity with popularity. London was in full flow with older children enjoying their summer holidays after exams, students shopping for university essentials and tourists absorbing the fascinating landmarks we natives took for granted. My fear of that mania remained. 

"Worried?"

"That he's not coming back." Her reluctance to say the words manifested in a whisper, pausing me for only half a beat.

"No, I'm not. He told me that he'd always come back for me and I believe him."
 

"Oh, Emmy. Even you aren't this naive." That stopped me for a moment longer.
 

"You think he was lying?" I challenged her with a raised eyebrow. She immediately relented, knowing that the man was despicably honest to the point of it sometimes being too
much. I wasn't sure that he knew 
how
 to lie. "He'd tell me if he wasn't coming back, Esme. He wouldn't just leave me flailing."

We scaled the staircase up to my flat on the first floor in silence before she sighed and held up her hands. "I just don't want to see you throw yourself under the metaphorical bus here. You're setting yourself up, but I'm not sure which direction the
punch line will take yet. Don't be foolhardy. He may not have been lying at the time, but you don't know how or when the wind might change direction."

"I'm prepared for this to all go wrong. I know that it will so I'm at peace with it." I shrugged and pulled my keys from my pocket. "I'm a realist, you know that. Ask me how I'd cope if it all went right, well that's a different mat
—" My sentence was cut short by the door swinging open and hand shooting out to pull me inside. The door kicked shut behind me, putting an abrupt end to my conversation with Esme.

I was tugged so quickly my head spun, eyes barely clear of stars when a familiar mouth closed around mine. I'd never been kissed so passionately before, like I was so essential and life-defining. I shivered at how mighty I felt
— an evil harpy done hexed this poor unsuspecting man. Hexed him like he'd hexed me.

My feet left the ground, my legs were wrapped around his waist, and I smiled against his lips.
 
I knew you'd be back.
 Not only did I have him here, but I also had the satisfaction of a big 'I told you so' for my friends.

"Blaze,
 
quelle surprise
. Have you been working hard or hardly wo—" My back swiftly found the fabric of the couch the same moment his mouth found mine again and kissed me hard, quietening my satire to a needy moan into him. God, the ten days had been too long. All the craving I'd been able to block out while he was gone flooded back into me in a deluge of heat and lust. My face flooded with colour and my eyes with life, reigniting a flame he snuffed out every time I woke up alone. I never knew how much I'd miss him until he came back, and this time was almost painful. Just because I didn't feel the hole he left expanding didn't mean I didn't feel it being plugged up. My fingers raked across his back and held him until he shifted, breathless and flushed. "That was one hell of a greeting."

"I was checking if I was still damned." Like he needed it to breathe, he pressed his lips to mine again and moaned softly. I felt his longing surge through me and aggravate that volatile little flame that burned for him.

"And?"

"Very damned." His lips trailed across my jaw to my ear. "I missed you, cupcake."

"I..." Had never been 'missed' before. Not like this. I didn't know where the boundaries lay in an association like ours, but I was certain that they were being pushed with pet names. Still, I couldn't deny that I was right there with him, though maybe a little less confident about it. "I missed you too. Especially when you call me sweet names like that but I'm really turned on right now and your erection is digging into my leg."

He laughed softly and kissed the frantic throb in my neck. "It's a shame you'd just fall asleep if we made love." My mouth dried. I could tell that if I looked at him, he'd be regarding me with that almost carcinogenic glare I felt so guilty about evoking in him, but if it came with the sweet nothings reserved for treasured lovers and long term partners, was I misinterpreting it? I was so confused, and so reluctant to let myself get carried off in a pipe dream fantasy.

"Actually I could really go for a power nap. I've been awake for a whole two hours."

"Oh. Well then." He sucked and nipped at my skin as he pulled me up to sit and wrestled me out of my clothes, carefully folding the arms of my glasses and putting them safely on the coffee table. This, I could deal with. I never felt more certain about my actions where sex was involved, particularly sex with Blaze. I'd quickly learned that it was impossible to make a wrong move with him because he was just so hungry to be inside me. He was still selfish but liked to feel me writhe beneath him, careful to take his time and drive me crazy. He did so quite capably and in more ways than he knew. Small stupid things like the noises he made and the way his back beaded with sweat when he was close to his limits made the experience for me.
 

We seemed to fit so well together that I swore the mould used to make him had somehow been turned inside out and fitted inside me. Not a single one of the casual encounters I'd had in Blaze's absence could compare or satisfy the lust that took over. I'd started to leave feeling short changed and a little dirty, wondering if I was acting habitually or keeping up appearances. I'd fashioned myself a protective cocoon during my four years in
London and Blaze was starting to find the cracks in it. He could exploit my weaknesses the way only one other could— someone who had no business being in my thoughts when a mouth-watering male stood topless in front of me. He'd undressed me in record time and was quite openly ogling me, tongue trapped between his teeth.

"I went to the bookshop first. You weren't there." Blaze scrunched his t-shirt up into a ball and threw it at my face, promptly scooping me up and carrying me into my bedroom. Somehow, the space seemed bigger and tidier. How long had he been there and what the hell had he been doing in my absence?

"Day off. It happens sometimes."

"You need a mobile phone."

"I have one."

"I need your number."

"I don't give men my number."

"I'm not 'men', am I?" I inched back to look down at him from my almost prone position across him and frowned. No, I didn't suppose he was 'men',
 but I'd promised myself that I wouldn't break trends for him. "Am I?"