by Ashley Black
“I’m just so fucking broken,” he wept. “And she ain’t no lady, Thorn, she’s a witch, and she’s going to fucking kill you.”
“No,” Thorn disagreed. “You’ve got it wrong, Jimmy. Come on, let her go, put the blowtorch down. Do you want to go to the carnival again? Remember that time we had your birthday there?”
“Yeah, me and all my friends,” he blubbered as he pulled harder on my hair, and I gritted my teeth. His finger was trembling on the trigger of the blowtorch.
“I am your friend, buddy, Cellrager is the only friend you need,” Thorn’s tone had turned pleading. “Come on, I’ll fire up the carnival now.” He held out a small black device that looked a bit like a walkie-talkie, and hissed something urgently into it.
My eyes widened as lights flared behind Thornton’s castle. Of course he had a carnival at his residence. Why the fuck not? The man was irretrievably over the top.
“It’s not enough anymore,” Jimmy moaned, and I screamed when he placed the end of the blow torch in in his mouth.
“No, Jimmy! No, please don’t do this!” I heard the desperation strangle the delicious timber of Thorn’s voice, and then impossibly, the crazy ass motherfucker ran through the flame and hurled himself at us.
“NO!” Tears were spilling from my eyes. This was a nightmare. If we lived through this, and I thought I was being arrogantly optimistic even framing that as an ‘if’, I would have to tell Thornton Darko to get some new fans. This was beyond fucked.
Thorn roughly shoved me aside and I went flying, I looked up just as Jimmy’s finger flexed on the trigger, Thorn roared and yanked the blowtorch from him, except it was too late. My hand rose to my mouth as it lit up Thorn in a whoosh of flame that leapt off onto a startled Jimmy, who started screaming. Thornton howled and pushed them both down to the sand. By this time, my rock star was completely covered in flame. Behind Aaron, I noticed a sea of little lights as folk filmed the appalling atrocity with their phones. Of course, stand there, do that, do nothing, you are all nothing, I screamed silently. Undeterred, even though the man was on fire, Thorn was tumbling along the sand, pulling Jimmy with him into the water. After some loud desperate thrashing and splashing, they disappeared beneath the foaming waves.
I don’t think I had screamed as long and as hard as I did then. I was crawling. I don’t remember when I started moving again. I had been frozen where Thorn had thrown me clear, but I kept going. No one had resurfaced. The water was eerily silent. He couldn’t have survived that. My heart felt empty. Thornton Darko was dead.
Ten
What felt like an eternity later, Thorn emerged from the foaming surf, very much alive, and rather unscathed, with Jimmy dangling unconscious in his arms.
Cheers exploded around me, and a chant ensued, annoying and relentless. “Cellrager, Cellrager, Cellrager.”
Medics shoved past me to relieve Thorn of Jimmy, who had suffered some minor burns, and I heard the distant wail of fire trucks in the distance. Meanwhile, some more folk dressed in head to toe black and gimp masks that I could only presume were Thorn’s minions were attempting to put out some of the fires that had broken out along the beach.
I ran to him. The man had saved my life. I was overwrought and overcome, I wanted to hold him.
He was getting checked out by the medics, and had obediently removed his mask - which had partially melted away in places - to reveal his beautiful face that was a dark storm of sorrow and disbelief. He was bleeding beneath his eyes, some soot smudged across his right cheek, but otherwise, that gorgeous face of his was perfectly intact. They were helping him out of his rather scorched coat.
“I knew Jimmy was bringing fire so I used my fire-resistant mask and coat,” he was explaining hollowly to the medics. They stared at him as if he were quite insane. Which he was, but I was beginning to love him for that exact reason. He was as loyal and devoted to his fans as they were to him, but this shit had to stop; it had gone too far. These stupid ass fans had to know their place, and that place wasn’t messing with Thorn’s head anymore.
Thorn looked up. His dark green eyes were filled with tears, and a faint smile touched his lips as I watched them move over my name. “Elena.”
I approached shyly. He shrugged off the medics who had started fussing about the cuts beneath his eyes. “I need to go now,” he said, dismissed their looks of disapproval, and held out his hand to me instead.
“I don’t want to feel any of this anymore, Elena. Come and get numb with me,” he insisted, his fingers curled around my wrist and he slammed me hard against his body.
I felt my arms rise up around him. I buried my face in his chest, enjoying the simple embrace, the heat of his body, the glorious beating of his heart.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
“Please stay with me awhile,” he murmured into my hair, as his large chin rested atop of my head. “I need you tonight, Elena.”
“I will stay,” I agreed. “Of course. It’s the least I can do for saving my ass.”
“I will always want to save your ass,” Thorn’s hand moved to my rear and squeezed the right cheek hard. “It is a thing of beauty.”
I leaned back, arching my brows slightly as I scruntinized his rather serious face. “Really? You’re going to flirt now? After what just happened?”
“Always,” Thorn leaned into me again. “And especially now, when I have witnessed the person I want most in the world almost die on me, that is some incredibly life-affirming shit right there, Elena.”
Wow. A little intense, I liked it.
Then his nose twitched, he bent his head, sniffing and inhaling my neck, and blinked at me dazedly. “You smell like kerosene. Don’t you know I’m highly flammable?”
Shit! I freaked. Of course. Jimmy’s kerosene coated body had rubbed off on mine, I pushed past him and started tearing off my dress, and ran into the water, I pressed my lips together to prevent a cry of surprise, it was absolutely freezing. The shock of it punched me to the core. I flopped back, a little dazedly, staring up at the night sky, just floating there on the waves.
“There is a place we can bathe,” Thorn shouted. “Come out of there before you catch a cold.”
I came to standing position again, and shakily, arms folded protectively across my black push up bra, I reluctantly exited the water.
Thorn was holding out one of his black coats to me, he did not look at me, as he wrapped it securely around my shoulders, but I noticed the little smile that was turning his delicious mouth up slightly at the corners.
“Elena!”
I whipped around at once. “Aaron!” I called happily. Amid the insanity and the near-death experience, I had completely misplaced my friend.
“Gorgeous!” He pulled me into a hug, burying his tear-streaked face in my neck. “I nearly had a fucking heart attack. I thought you were dead, I-”
His voice fell away as he appraised Thornton with a rather sheepish smile. “Thank you for saving my friend,” he said sincerely. “It was absolutely reckless and insane of you, but thank you nonetheless.”
Thorn nodded, smiling faintly.
“Daniel’s not far now.” Aaron couldn’t look at me as he kicked the sand.
“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said.
“You’re staying the night…” Aaron squeaked, eyes widening. “With him?”
“I didn’t say that, buddy,” I reassured gently. “Just that I will see you tomorrow.” I looked at him pointedly to drop it.
“I love you, Elena Wallis,” my friend declared, wiping at his eyes.
“I love you too buddy,” I squeezed both his hands in mine. “I mean this. Please don’t worry.”
“I do.” He pulled me closer, whispering urgently. “I don’t trust Thornton Darko, babe, I need you to be very careful around him.”
“You are a very loud whisperer,” Thorn smirked. “I heard everything you said just then.”
Aaron’s phone started ringing. Daniel.
“I’ll
be fine,” I reassured. “Go on.”
“Call me!” Aaron demanded.
A few minutes later, stepping across the threshold of Thorn’s castle, I blinked a little stupefied as silver-masked figures relieved Thornton of his gloves and rather mangled mask. I wondered if he kept spares, like some superhero. I was greeted by quite a scene.
Holy shit, there was another party going on in here, and they seemed quite oblivious to the drama that had unfolded outside the castle walls. There was a massive ballroom with grand ruby-colored chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings. A masked DJ was playing on stage, and there were huge screens mounted simply showing different video clips of Cellrager. I saw Thorn’s dark dramatic brows sweep down in a frown as he was confronted by his masked visage, larger than life upon the screens. After looking briefly into my eyes, the frown fell away, and a smile lifted his lips instead. “Let’s get numb,” he said thickly, and fell against me, pushing me unsteadily into a wall. His large hand flew flat to it, and I saw his eyes widen in surprise. “Oh,” he muttered, he appeared to suck in a deep, steadying breath, and shakily ease up off of me. “Sorry about that.”
“Thorn, perhaps you should sit-”
He drew close to me again, trapping me between his arms as his hands appeared to grip the wall behind me for dear life, his lips moving soundlessly over unspoken words.
“You’re delirious,” I realized. “We should get help.”
He straightened, shaking himself. “I was dizzy, that’s all. It has passed.” He sounded annoyed at me now, so I dropped it.
“Thornton Darko.” A tall woman wearing a silver mask held out a phone. “It’s the hospital. Jimmy has no insurance.”
“I will cover it,” Thornton said, waving her off. “And please call me Thorn, Cecelia.”
“Of course,” she said softly and left us at once.
I wanted to punch him in the face for his stupid generosity. That crazy asshole had almost killed us after all, and yet Thorn still did this for him. As far as I was concerned, he owed him nothing.
“I wasn’t enough this time,” he said, staring into nothing. “And you almost died, Elena.”
The devastation in his voice broke my heart. “You are always enough,” I murmured, reaching for his fingers and squeezing them gently. His bottom lip trembled, making the ring beneath it bob on his chin, and he turned his anguished and haunted gaze on me. “You are almost too much, Thorn,” I breathed.
“Tell me,” he said, his dark green eyes flared with cheekiness and warmth. “Do you have a problem with confined spaces?”
Before I had a chance to answer, he had lifted me up into his arms. “Because my favorite place to get numb happens to have a nice place to bathe; we both smell like him, you realize? The fucking memory of Jimmy. Let’s wash it off, yes? Besides, I think my spirits, my mouth, and your body will go rather well together.”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “I agree on one condition.”
He arched a brow.
“You put me down, you damn fool.”
He lowered me reluctantly to the ground, and offered his hand to me instead. I ignored it, he bristled a little at my rebuff, but we fell into step and conversation easily, as he led me to ‘his little hideaway’ as he called it.
He was just so fucking magnificent. He was everything I had ever dreamed. He ignited my imagination.
As I learned more about his tragic past, his missing wife (Thorn claimed she was an alcoholic, and after an incident where she hit him over the back of the head with a bottle, her clothing had been found strewn along the beach, and she had presumably drowned), his magical ancestry (not that it relaxed me any, but he claimed he was not some all powerful Warlock; it was just a stupid fairy tale his little adopted family had bestowed upon him as their King), and his rather unconventional creative process inspired by some satanic rituals (I shivered a little… I would not be getting some of those images out of my mind for a very, very long time), or the sound of his indignant outrage when I had asked with a forced casualness about his devil worship, and he had reproached me in a voice that trembled with the threat of a roar when he said, “My entire family were killed because of a misguided cult, do you seriously think I would be turned on by mindless worship like that?”
He had laughed bitterly, and said whilst he only dabbled in Satanism in terms of what was useful for his creativity, it was for him, in the main, about freedom of thought and the pursuance of pleasure.
He was just so deliciously fucked up. He honestly believed his soul had been sold by his family to the devil.
“I am just trying to fill the void with as many holes as possible every day, perhaps yours could restore my soul. I’ve never done it with an enchantress before.”
I discovered that Thornton Darko was much darker, twisted, and messed up than I could ever have hoped for with all my demented little heart. He was a monster. My monster, and I was falling in love with him. I was as good as fucked.
Eleven
Are you still alive?
I rolled my eyes at Aaron’s dramatics, and fired back, “Yes, I am very warm” in response to his text, and then tossed my phone on top of the towels that had been promptly delivered efficiently and unobtrusively by more silver-masked helpers.
“For our bath later,” Thorn had promised with a wink. I was more than a little overwhelmed at the prospect of getting naked with this man.
I hugged his coat closer to me instead, and turned in a slow circle, taking in the gleaming black marble spa that was sunken into the floor of a beautiful cavernous red lantern-lit grotto. Beyond the spa stretched an expanse of water that disappeared into an inscrutable murk of the cave that shone blood red. Thornton was fussing over a bar, his brow furrowed in concentration as he prepared a little game for us to get numb to. Something told me that with Thornton Darko, this would not be your usual drinking game. Hells no.
“You will find some lingerie you will wear for me on the day bed near the spa. I am fairly certain I got your sizing right from all those Skype calls,” Thorn called out to me, not looking up from the focus of his preparation
“You brought me underwear?” I asked incredulously. “A little presumptuous, don’t you think?”
He laughed softly as I clumsily shed myself of his coat, and scrambled into a pair of white lace panties and matching bra… hmmm, interesting choice for a death metal rocker. Then again, he had probably seen himself his fair share of tacky black and red numbers if the filling of ‘holes’ talk was anything to go by, not that I thought we would get to that, or that I was in the wake of Brett’s betrayal even ready for that, I congratulated myself for having a condom or two in my clutch purse, that I had spent some time freaking out over finding on the beach.
“I never presume anything when it comes to you,” he said quietly. “All right,” I said slowly, processing what he had said. “So you don’t presume anything, but do you ever fantasize about me?” I strode right up to the bar, pushing my still-wet hair out of my face, and slid onto a bar stool, resting my chin in one hand as I peered up at him through my lashes. He towered over me behind it, considering me with a look that made me forget to breathe.“I don’t fantasize; things I think about, are things I make happen.”
“Am I a thing you want to make happen?” I couldn’t help myself.
His mouth turned up slightly at the corners, but did not commit itself to a full smile. “You are a thing that I am happening to.”
I felt my face fall. Shit. That is something Brett used to say to me. I pushed the sad thought right out of my body, and instead focused on the wonderful prospect of enjoying the sampling of a variety of spirits from Thorn’s hot mouth. He had suggested the little game with an almost shy look in his dark green eyes.
“I have a wonderful selection here from all across the world,” he had winked. “But I think it would be much more fun if you guessed what they were. I will take a sip of one of these spirits-” he waved his large white hand across the selection of bottles. �
��And you see if you can name each offering my lips bestow upon yours.”
“You weren’t kidding about wanting me to do whatever I please with your mouth,” I laughed, thinking back fondly to one of his messages.
He nodded. “I have many plans for my mouth, and for you,” he murmured, staring straight into my eyes. “I mean this, Elena. There are many ways it can be used for you. My mouth is your servant.”
“Of course,” I smirked.
He held up a blindfold.
I freaked out a little, leaning back on the bar stool, feeling my eyes widen at the sight of the black piece of material. Then I gasped in surprise finding we were not alone. Mr. Hostile was back, the very same burly dude who had confronted Aaron and I on the beach with his crazy ass theories of me me being the death of Thornton Darko. His mask shone in the red lantern light. He was just standing there, staring at me.
Thorn frowned, looking incredibly irritated. He excused himself, vaulting over the bar, and gently pulled the man aside. I heard them speaking in urgent tones. I overheard the word ‘witch’ and flinched. The mood, though, seemed to lighten with the two of them now laughing, as Thorn sent Mr. Hostile away.
“Now for our little game,” Thorn sat beside me this time on a bar stool. He reached out, his expression flaring with excitement, and my fingers caught his and squeezed.
“What was that about?”
“He was worried about me.” Thorn looked uncomfortable.
“Worried about you?”
“Well, sure,” he sounded confused. “Who else?”
“How about me?” I laughed.
“You have absolutely nothing to fear from me. Ever. You understand this, don’t you?”
“Shit.” I bit my lip. “Are you always this intense?”
“Yes.”
He waved the blindfold at me. “Time to taste me.”
“Wait,” I held onto his fingers longer than planned, I stared up into his rather haunted eyes. “Are you sure this is what you want to be doing, after what you have just been through?” I asked gently, feeling tears rise again. “It’s been a terrible night.”