Burnt (Blood and Fire Book 1)

by Michelle Wheet & Lyn Lowe

to make him start gibbering. So, once more, his loneliness won out over his better sense. He grinned. “Thanks.” He held out his hand. “Kaie.”

  The boy smiled, a true smile that lit his light blue eyes, and took the hand. “Vaughan Talus de Vilde.”

  Kaie managed not to roll his eyes at the long name. What was it about the barbarians that they felt a need to tack on so many more parts to the names their parents gave them? It was like adding extra feet. But mocking the boy for it didn’t seem a great way to start things off. “So. Vaughan. Now that you’ve risked life and limb for me a couple times, sticking me in this perfectly miserable situation, I figure you owe me a favor. Want to make amends?”

  The boy blinked owlishly. “What?”

  “You’re going to help me figure out how make things better for Amorette.”

  Nineteen

  “What do you want from me?”

  It took some work. Vaughan stayed longer than his allotted time, helping Kaie gather branches and pebbles from around the compound. The boy didn’t stay to arrange them around Kaie’s sleeping space, but that was for the best. It took him four tries to get them looking the way he wanted before he gave up on perfection and settled down beside Amorette’s blanket. He was finished moments before she pushed her way inside, her arms red and her lips turned down in a scowl.

  Her purposeful stride hitched and faltered as she took in the state of their home. For a second, he was pleased to see a bit of the girl he knew flash into her eyes. Her surprise, her enjoyment of the humor. But then the other look slammed back into place. The look he saw in Ren and Silvy’s every night, and the one Vaughan wore when they first met. The one he thought of as the dead look. Her scowl returned with ferocity.

  He attempted a grin, but that was a challenge facing such an unappreciative audience. “Your attention.”

  Amorette closed her eyes for a moment, letting out a slow sigh. When she opened them again even her anger seemed to drain away, leaving her looking empty. “Ok.”

  It wasn’t the resounding acceptance he hoped for, but it was an allowance and Kaie was going to take it. “This is bad. I know that, and I know it’s worse for… him…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the name out loud. So he pushed on. “And I know that’s because of me. I should be punished. I get that. But I can’t lose you, Ams. I don’t have anything else. Yell, scream, hit me if you have to. But don’t just quietly slip away. Please.”

  She stared at him for a while. He searched for some sign of acceptance, something he recognized, in her flat hazel eyes. But there was nothing. After a time, she sat down with her back to the cloth doorway and stared into the dead fire pit. He let the silence stretch on for as long as he could stand it, hoping this was simply her considering his words. But he was terrified this was her answer.

  “Say something.”

  Amorette’s eyes never lifted from the ashes. “What would you have me say?”

  “I don’t know.” Kaie let out a slow breath of air. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me what I need to do to get you back. Anything. Just talk.”

  Finally, so slowly he felt each agonizing second, she looked up. Her eyes darted over to his creation then back to him. “I don’t know what to say. I think of things, while I sleep, while I make the bread and wash the dishes, and then I see you and I forget them all.”

  His jaw clenched for a moment. “They have you making bread? The best hunter in our family and they waste you with bread?”

  Her right brow twitched. But she didn’t respond. After a while she dropped gaze back down to the floor. The silence stretched. Kaie sighed. Vaughan warned him not to expect much. He knew it would take more than one conversation to fix what was broken, if there was any way of fixing it at all. But he felt intensely disappointed.

  He moved over to his side of the room and looked down at the sparrow he outlined with sticks. Pebbles for the eyes and beak, as well as a little in the body in his miserable attempt at making it look more colorful. He was so proud of his idea earlier. Now it looked pathetic. He reached down to knock it aside, lacking even the energy to take apart and arrange it in the pit Amorette found so damn fascinating like he planned.

  Before his hand connected with the construction, her small one wrapped around his wrist. “Don’t break it.”

  She was so close he could feel the tickle of her breath. They were never this close. Not when it was just the two of them. His skin tingled where her air brushed him and burned where she touched. He swallowed hard against an old longing that was so much worse than shameful. But he could smell her, underneath the scent of dough and soap, and could almost imagine the sound of her laughter ringing in his ears. And there was no one else there to remind him of how she could never be his.

  “You like it?” He tripped over the words, awkward in a way he never was with her.

  “You remembered.”

  His smile fell apart almost the moment it touched his lips. He was too nervous to hold on to it. But the warmth of the memory gave him back some measure of speech again. “Of course I do. I’ll never forget it. I fell half in love with you that day.”

  She looked almost as surprised as he was that he said it. But Kaie noticed the twitch of a smile at the corner of her lip, and that almost made the deeply embarrassing confession worth it. “At six years old?”

  He chuckled, half hoping she would take the whole thing as a joke. Or maybe that she wouldn’t and that something would come of it. But that was something he couldn’t want. Not ever again. “Oh yes. You underestimate how sexy you were back then. Every six-year-old boy in the tribe was falling for you.” The twitch grew until it was on the verge of being something real. His own grin returned in force.

  It was truer than she would ever believe. He and Sojun never fought over her, not really, but they fended off more than a few other boys who were desperate to win her attention. That she chose them to be her closest friends was a boon neither could quite understand and one they were more than willing to blacken a few eyes to protect. They both knew that ultimately it would be only one of them who won her, and for all that they never faced it, it was the first and deepest crack between them.

  “I threw a stone at the mother.” Amorette’s voice snapped Kaie back into moment. Where the only girl he ever fantasized about was still incredibly close and clutching his wrist in her cool hands. “I never told anyone that. It wasn’t an accident that she left. I thought it was funny, and I thought she’d come back. I was the reason he was all alone.”

  “It turned out okay.”

  She dropped his wrist. He dropped his hand. The two of them knelt there in silence once again. This time Kaie didn’t try to end it. He got the sense that if he did he would lose her.

  When he felt cool fingers threading between his Kaie thought he was imagining it. He glanced down at their clasped hands in surprise. She squeezed, just a bit, and then pulled her hand loose.

  Kaie thought that was it. She would go back to her side, he would clean up his. But it would be better. Because some of it would be better between them. A start. Except it wasn’t it.

  She placed her hands on either side of his face and lifted his head until they were staring into each other’s eyes again. And then she kissed him.

  Soft. Tasting a bit of the bread they had her making. Hesitant at first, then more insisting. His heart thundered in his ears. His arms slid around her, snaking up her back and tightening around her waist, pulling her forward until there was no space between them. She came willingly, her every movement yielding. More than that.

  Then her cool fingers were slipping under his shirt and tugging at the drawstring of his pants. Kaie drew in a sharp breath as a shudder ran through him. He leaned back and caught up her hands quickly, before his body could make an idiot of him. “What are you doing?” he muttered.

  She pulled her hands free gently. “I thought that would be obvious.”

  “It…yes.” His head spun, his body screaming for him to shut up. To let her do what sh
e wanted. What he wanted. But this was wrong. This wasn’t for him. “But Sojun…”

  She hissed and pulled away, wrapping her arms across her chest. “I don’t want to think about him now.”

  “He’s my heart’s brother, Ams. What he did for me…This is wrong. He’s not dead. He’s not here, but he’s alive.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He chose. I’m not his anymore.”

  Kaie sucked in a breath of air and let it out slowing, trying to calm the blood pumping through his him. “It does matter. So this…”

  “This is me saying,” she interrupted, sliding her arms around his neck and pulling his head back to hers, “he gave me up. And I want you to make me forget. Just for a little while. Please. Make me forget him.”

  Kaie knew he needed to push her away. Every second he didn’t he was betraying his best friend. But then her lips were on his again. It made it almost impossible to think. Her hand slid down his chest, to his pants, and every bit of him was determined not to stop, to let her do as she pleased, to forget himself. Just for a little while.

  With a moan just as much desire as it was regret, Kaie stood up. Amorette reached up for him, reached for his pants at least, but he knocked her hands away. There was something deeply, terribly wrong with him that he was refusing this beautiful woman, one he loved since he was six.

  “I can’t do this. Jun…”

  “Don’t! I told