Blazed (9 page)

"Quite." The stranger spoke with enough apathy for it to be obvious that he was ignoring Blaze. I could feel his gaze raking me, mentally undressing me. "You're not from London?"

I opened my mouth but Blaze answered for me. "
Cardiff." Hiding my irritation, I nodded and fiddled impatiently with my own fingers. Being spoken for like a child was more annoying than being cock-blocked.

"How will you get back?" The man's eyes glinted when I shrugged and his hand delved into the pocket of his crisp blazer. "Here," he passed me a money clip engraved with a lavish 'R' holding an
 indiscernible amount of money wrapped up in a business card.

"You just happen to carry this around?"

"No, I just woke up feeling lucky, actually. With good reason apparently. You call me. I'll come running to that Cardiff of yours for my money clip." 

I was as aware of the man smiling as he walked away as I was of Blaze seething next to me, practically vibrating with cataclysmic ire next to me. Waving the money clip in his face, I elbowed him in the ribs, still watching my new 'friend' slink down the street with almost feline grace.

"What's your problem? You get your free lunch— I did what you asked."

"What?" I glanced up at him and rolled my eyes at his denial. "What the hell was that, Emmeline?"

"I believe 
that
 was a pick up line. And it's going to work on me. See?" My fingertip tapped the business card. "You get free food and he gets laid tonight. My good deeds for today and tomorrow are covered."

"I meant you." Blaze pulled my hair free of the elastic tie and tried to restore some order to the straggled locks with his fingers. "One minute you're running like the Grim Reaper is on your heels, collapsing into a heap into some
New York stiff, then you turn into Miss Sex Appeal."

"What?"

He glanced down at me in disbelief and shook his head wistfully. "You don't even realise, do you? Your posture completely changes— you straighten out and swagger, and your voice goes all husky. That guy didn't stand a chance against you." 

Me, swagger? That was hard to believe. I'd never really questioned how I'd managed to coerce so many men into bed before, presuming it was more to do with a bad reputation of being a sure thing than genuine attraction. Miss Sex Appeal? No, that wasn't me. If that was me, I'd have Hunter.

"So where do you want to eat?" I grunted downwards and shoved the money clip into Blaze's pocket. The rush of snagging the hunk in the suit had quickly faded and left me back where I was before— in the middle of a crowded street and centre of unwanted attention. "A snap decision, please. People are staring."

"Well, you
 
are
 bleeding. Again." My fingers reached up to the warm throb I'd forgotten about until he mentioned it and came away coated in crimson. "I'm beginning to think I might be something of a danger to you." 

He had no idea how true that was.

AS I'D CHOSEN not to get into a deep discussion about my food preferences or lack thereof, the location of our lunch ended up being identified as a quaint pizzeria that boasted a broad selection of Italian delicacies prepared specifically for groups and parties. While I gazed lustfully over the oil and dressing free salad options, Blaze took command of our order, insisting that he was well versed in the virtues and fortes of that particular menu. 
Whatever,
 I thought,
 he's going to be eating alone anyway
. Despite his threat that I might, I was no more hungry than I had been when he'd interrupted me at work. Even if I had been, my messy friend was lingering in the background ready to rebuke me or stand at my shoulder barking insults and criticisms if I indulged Blaze's feeder tendency.

The staff had swarmed around me when we walked in, Blaze being the notorious jack-of-all-trades demigod he was and me being scruffy and blood streaked. It was hard to tell if they thought he'd dragged me in off the street after saving me from a mugging, which he supposedly had, if they were trying to win his favour, or if they were just being
 conscientious human beings. Either way, their fussing rendered me immobile and sparked some uncomfortable memories of being in a similar situation before. So much noise. So many people forcing me to be someone and something I didn't want to be, namely alive.

Almost as though he sensed my unease, Blaze dismissed the huddled crowd around them and took over the duty of tending to the small but deep cut on my forehead. His touch was gentle and tender, like he'd cared for someone else the same way like this before. I leaned into him, feeling weak and helpless, fending off the small part of me that wanted to cry. In a move I think shocked us both, he dropped the cloth spotted with crimson and cradled my head against his chest, nuzzling my hair.

"Your blood smells like whiskey," he muttered quietly, trying to inject some humour into a dire situation. I felt guilty that he was starting to get a look at the Emmeline roller-coaster in all it's depressive finery, but it wasn't like I'd forced it. He had, for want of a better word, harassed me, and I'd caved every time. 

"I should definitely call a doctor then," I joked, pulling back from him. His tendency to make me reciprocate his smiles worked in full force, but there was something hollow about his this time. He looked almost lost. I could relate. "My poisons of choice are all clear spirits."

"Ah." Blaze shuffled back into a seat, leaning over to drape a napkin over my lap as our meal arrived. 

It was like looking at a murder scene in food form. An enormous pizza sat in the centre of the table in a metal pan, surrounded by several plates of brightly coloured and gloriously spiced side dishes. Not a lettuce leaf in sight. My fingers locked around the glass placed down next to me and my brain struggled to contemplate the foodageddon in front of me. Ten years ago, I might have cleared that table alone. Now, I didn't know that my stomach didn't just cooperate with the old adage 'eyes bigger than your belly'.
 
I hope you're hungry, Blaze.
 My fat friend smacked her lips while my insides roiled at the collaborative aroma. 

"So, you're a speedy little thing. How did you get so fast?"

I blinked up at Blaze as he served a slice of the pizza onto my plate, glad of the distraction. "I used to spend a lot of time at the gym, mostly on the treadmills."

"Used to?"

"I was effectively banned five years ago after collapsing."

He paused mid-movement before proceeding to spoon some sort of pesto concoction onto my plate. "Do that a lot, do you? I'm not sure that I would have caught up with you if you hadn't hit the deck in front of that guy all of a sudden. You're lucky that you don't have more grazes."
 

"I fainted?"
 
Oh dear.
 "I had no idea." I could just hear my mother's words echoing around in my mind. 
'Please Emmeline, no more of this. I can't bear to see you this way.'

"You wouldn't. You were unconscious." Blaze stuck his tongue out and tucked into his own well stacked plate. "Why did you get banned from the gym? Did you screw a personal trainer or something?"

"Not when I was seventeen, Blaze. What do you take me for?" 

"You're only twenty-two?" He stared at me, surprised. "Well that explains the baby face but you seem much older. More mature." He frowned. "Too mature."
 

I considered probing into yet another asinine assessment of my personality, but decided against it when he shoved the first fork full of food into his mouth. That seemed to be a good indication that the conversation was over for now, but would probably crop up again somewhere down the road. Regardless, the reprieve was welcome, unlike the food, which I picked at unenthusiastically. It almost certainly tasted divine, but that was something I preferred not to find out.
 

Blaze, however, had no qualms about eating to excess.
 He ate like a man starved though he clearly wasn't, evident from the tightly packed muscles I'd felt on the few occasions I'd been close enough. There would be none of that if he didn't eat well and work for it, though I imagined him being the type who was lucky enough to be blessed with a hot body regardless of his holistic decisions. I still wanted to see that body, almost as much as I wanted to see Mr Money Clip out of his suit. 

I watched Blaze with utmost fascination as he savoured every morsel like the meal had been prepared by gods. Food wasn't just a necessity to him, it seemed like a passion he enjoyed almost as much as he enjoyed causing trouble.
 And he was looking right at me. "Come on, Emmeline, I can hear your stomach rumbling from here. It's not a lunch date if I'm eating alone." Lunch date? The dirty D word was news to me.

"Sorry, I'm just a little calorie conscious," I picked one of small olives from the pizza topping, held it up between my fingers and grimaced, "I can feel myself expanding just thinking about the trans fats."
"Calorie conscious!" He snorted the words and wiped his face on a paper napkin, then his hands on his trouser leg before he folded his fingers under his chin and seemed to size me up. I suddenly felt more self-conscious than before, if that was even physically possible, and shrank down a few inches. "I don't know why you're bothered with nutritional value. You could stand to gain a few pounds. You're in a what? A size eight?" The raging insecurity got worse with his estimate.
"I'm a size twelve. A big twelve," I muttered quietly, discretely discarding the olive in a napkin, "I'm honestly a little chunky." 

I'd come to expect any number of reactions to those five words over time. Laughter was the overruling response, followed by eye rolling and a failure to acknowledge. By no stretch of the imaginati
on did I imagine he'd be angry.

"Chunky? You think you're
 
chunky?
" If I'd told him I thought I was the Antichrist he might have looked less annoyed. "I thought you had at least half a brain. Come with me."
Before I could say anything, his long fingers had wrapped around mine and I was on my feet, away from the busy dining room, in a vacant side room left open for customers waiting for taxis. Momentarily mesmerised by how fast we'd seemed to have moved, I barely noticed that Blaze was urgently tugging at the hem of my shirt. "Hey!"

"What is
 
this?
" He jabbed at the buckle fastened at my middle.

"A belt and a gross violation of my personal space? Are you not familiar with the saying 'noblesse oblige'? You're supposed to be a celebrity,
a role model or... something." He ignored the complaint and pressed on, brow creased into three deep lines. "And why might you need to wear a belt? To stop your trousers falling down around your ankles? Might that suggest your clothes are too big?" He continued to mutter his rhetorical questions in a grumble as he foraged around for the size label in my linen trousers. I batted at his hands pointlessly and tried to pull my shirt down further than it could possibly cover. "You put extra holes in this belt...? My god, Emmeline..." And then he stopped completely still in his tracks and lifted my shirt an extra inch or two. The moment I realised what had caught his eye, I tried to twist away, but he snapped my name in a way I couldn't even imagine disobeying. 

His fingers traced over the faded silver lines set into my skin from my left hip up, then followed the prominent ridges of my ribcage. Every touch felt like gentle and well-meaning torture, like slapping a child's hands for playing with knives, and it was the shame that paralysed me into place. What would he think when he saw my damage? Would he scold me like so many others and offer an endless stream of pity and bullshit encouragement? Would that be the end of our friendship, because I was just too much of a liability? Or was I now a pet project for him to 'cure'?
 

I still had no answer when he lifted the fabric further to see more of my ribs and sucked in his breath between his teeth. "Oh Emmeline, who made you feel this way?" It was another unusual reaction and made no way to dragging me from my stupor. The question everyone had failed to ask when it mattered came from a man who didn't know me from Adam, but yet seemed to know me better than anyone.

He regrouped far more quickly than I did, diverting his search for the label to a search for the fabric of my underwear and taking a quick peek under my shirt to check out my bra. "Hey!" 

"Relax, I'm just checking they match. I'm taking you shopping."

"I can't affo—" The lie wouldn't come. If I swallowed my pride, I had enough money in a separate bank account to buy a fairly large and needlessly luxurious townhouse. Allowing Henry to siphon some of his wealth into an allowance was one of the few concessions I'd made to get him to agree to me moving out without torturing my mother over my financial situation on a daily basis. He'd gone over the top, obviously, and the account was bound to have accumulated interest. I might not have wanted to touch his blood money, but I couldn't deny that I had it. Not to Blaze. "I really hate shopping."

"Well tough." He grabbed my hand again and pulled me back to our table, pushing me down by the shoulders into my seat. "But first you're going to eat. You're not even a size eight. If I see you calculating calories, I'm just going to pin you down and feed you that way."