by Corri Lee
Sensing his mistake, Blaze pulled me up against his hot, firm body, taking advantage of my furious silence. “Henry’s battalion is poised and ready to set to work, and I really need you to be with me when I tell her so, so she understands that this is no flash-in-the-pan decision. It’s one night out of your whole lifetime with me, Emmeline. I need you there—I want her to see that I need more in my life than a nice car, big house and healthy bank account.”
“To be fair, your gremlin car really isn’t that nice. Why don’t you see that this is making me miserable?”
In the next second, I found myself pinned to the wall by my hips, being kissed so violently it almost hurt. No matter how much I beat at his arms and chest, Blaze didn’t let up, eating at me until he felt me relax regretfully.
Fighting him on anything was pointless when he could so easily sedate and seduce me into surrender. Really, I knew that I stood nothing to lose by putting on a brave face for the evening.
But I also still believed that I stood nothing to gain. It was a selfish way to look at it, but if I couldn’t rationalise it with the offer of incentive and potential personal gain, what was the point of putting myself in the middle of an uncomfortable situation?
But of course I’d go, because I was pathetic against him. I’d go along with it even if I didn’t want to because it would make him happy and I couldn’t stand the idea of him spending time socially with the bitch. Not to mention I wanted her to know that she couldn’t break us. We were once untouchable apart and we’d be untouchable together.
Natasha Valentine’s home made me want to throw up in my mouth. I had always lived well in nice houses but she really took the piss with her luxury mini-mansion right on the edge of Canterbury. We’d had to spend over an hour in Henry’s chauffeured Jaguar to get there, so not only was I enlightened as to just how much of an inconvenience Blaze’s morning commute was, I appreciated the extent to which he’d gone out of his way to travel to me in the early weeks of our relationship.
After vowing to stay by my side all night, Blaze’s mood took on a hardened edge I hoped wasn’t directed at me. His eyes darkened, as though deep in thought, and he wore an almost permanent scowl. It didn’t do much to reassure me.
I hugged my jacket around me, feeling cut off and neglected when he really should have been looking after me. If I’d asked to be held, I probably would have gotten a barely-worth-having one armed hug with no real affection in it. When he stepped out onto the driveway and held out a hand to help me out of the car, I stared at it, giving him one final chance to let me turn away from this nightmare with my sanity intact.
“We’re here now,” he snapped, plunging his hand inside to grab me. His face was set the same way Calloway’s had been outside The Mary Rose—unfeeling and demanding compliance. I dodged it, skirting back across the benched leather seat until my back was pressed against the opposite door.
“Why don’t you care enough about me to keep me away from this kind of stress, Blaze?”
His jaw clenched the same moment his eyes closed. “It’s because I care about you that I’ve brought you here. You don’t understand. You can’t understand—”
“Why do you always say that when it comes to Natasha? You’re honest with me about everything else, but when it comes to this you’re only honest by evasion; keeping me in the dark completely and refusing to talk about it at all so you don’t have to lie. I’d prefer the lies, Blaze. Prefer to think you loved me enough to invent some bullshit excuses than make me feel like you don’t trust me.”
“Trust doesn’t even come into it.” He circled the car, opening the door behind me so abruptly I almost fell backwards out of it onto the white gravel chippings covering the driveway. “I can’t say her name without you seeing red and you want me to give you more reasons to get upset? You want me to provide the ammunition to hate her, knowing you’ll be hurt by the recoil?”
“I don’t—” I hadn’t looked at it as him protecting me before. No, I didn’t really want to know about her, just hated that there was any part of him I didn’t know when he knew all of me. “You have all of my secrets, Blaze.”
“And I promise, you’ll have mine. But for tonight, can’t it just be enough that you have my veritable truths?”
The inside of the house was as sickeningly fantastic as the outside. Both were Neo-Renaissance in style, with the lavish traditional French furnishings and decor to match. There was no doubt about it; Natasha lived in magnificence in every way, from her home to the stunning man she’d leashed. No wonder he wanted her estate.
Music and laughter blared out from a room beyond a wide archway to the right—odd since our friends were twenty minutes behind us in a separate car. Blaze’s groan was barely audible but still, it was there. “What?”
His grip around my hand tightened. “I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news...”
“But?”
For a second it looked like he might throw me over his shoulder and run back out of the door. I wished he would. “But she’s invited her own coven.” I’d once used the same collective to describe my own friends, but somehow he turned it into an insult. “Her mother, Mona, and sister, Patrice will be in there, along with the friends she’s claimed are our mutual kin. They’re not. I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”
“Oh my God.” I clutched onto his arm, needing anchorage. “I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Don’t give her the satisfaction.” Blaze tipped my chin up towards him and dipped to give me a maddeningly slow, enticing kiss, almost like he was making love to my mouth. “She’s threatened by you, so she’s trying to intimidate you. The best thing you can do is pretend this is one of Henry’s functions and don’t let her see that it’s working.”
I stuck my bottom lip out, hating that I let him manipulate me after I’d battled for my independence so fervently against Calloway. Apparently his ring only inspired me to hold my own against others. “I think this proves that I love you more.”
“I would agree—” He kissed me again. “—but my loving you far too much is why we’re here. Really, this is all your fault.”
He was saved from an ass kicking by the sound of footsteps and voices approaching from the archway. The echo of them shot right up my spine and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, making me shiver because I knew who’d they belong to. I’d spent months wondering what Natasha looked like, but now she was on the other side of that wall, I’d never been less interested.
An older woman with a short shock of burgundy hair cut into a severely angular bob stepped out into the threshold, sheathed in an ivory satin evening dress that skimmed her toes. On her arm was the woman I presumed we were here to see.
Natasha was a stunning slender blonde with soft yet bright grey eyes. Her hair fell in waved layers to her waist, her colouring emphasised by the exquisite claret dress she wore that clung to every lithe curve down to her knees.
I hated her almost violently. She looked like a fucking megamodel, never mind supermodel—probably would have been with all the airy sex appeal she had if not for the fact she walked with a pronounced limp, an antique walking cane supporting the leg that almost dragged behind her as though it were too heavy to lift.
“Blaze!” I hated her more. Her voice was husky and cultured, dripping sex. Sex she’d once had with my fiancé.
“Tasha!” Blaze released me suddenly, rushing towards her to hug her somewhat more enthusiastically than I was entirely comfortable with. I looked away, unable to stand the affectionate abbreviation of her name and the way he’d left my side without thought, though he’d promised not to. If I hadn’t made that damned promise to never leave him again, I’d have been out of that door and on a plane back to New York before he even knew I’d gone. Which he probably wouldn’t realise for a while, seeing as he looked so happy to see her. Gah.
“You look much better.”
“I feel it.” Natasha splayed her hands out across his chest, almost possessively. “Anot
her clean bill of health—would you believe it? You’re stuck with me for a while longer.”
“Each day is blessing.” The older woman pawed at her fondly. It had to be her mother, they looked so alike, though I imagined the tender sentiment to be as real as her hair colour. “The more you defy death, the less interest it has in you.”
Give me a break. She was going to die some day, be it through illness or age. The damn woman wasn’t immortal.
“Blaze,” Natasha looked at me over his shoulder, giving me a helpless smile. “You’re being an awfully bad partner to your lady. I walked in and you just divested her like an unwanted wife.” Oh, great, so she was sweet, conscientious and satirically funny, too.
Ruefully, Blaze crept back up to me, apologetically biting his lip. It would have been easy to walk away from him. I was well within my rights to argue that by him breaking a promise and, consequentially, lying to coerce me into something I hadn’t want to do had given me an out, and I could leave him with my conscience clear. My friends would arrive any minute in another of Henry’s cars; I could hop into it and have it drive me right to an airport.
But then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching him see how much he was making me hate him, and witness the subsequent breakdown when I told him we were through. I felt wounded and vindictive enough to seriously entertain thoughts of breaking up again.
“Please don’t hate me.”
I sighed. One small plea and I was won over. Why couldn’t he have been that pliable for me?
Natasha hobbled over to us, looking peaceful and beautiful despite the transverse obviously being hard work. When she was in front of me, she tucked her cane under her arm and grabbed me by the shoulders, air kissing both of my cheeks. Her mother slinked expressionlessly back off into the house as though this whole evening was completely fucking normal. I think it bothered me more that nobody was screaming ‘home wrecker’ in my face and sealing the insult with a slap.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Emmeline. You certainly have this big goof smitten.”
Which he’s never been with you. I let the snide thought fuel the smile I returned. The sentiment, I did not. “Your home is lovely.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Her hands clasped together in front of her chin.” It’s technically my father’s house but he turned the deed over to me last year.”
Blaze cleared his throat loudly. I could feel the irritation come off him in waves. Obviously the propriety of the building was news to him; he’d spent nearly seven years thinking he’d be granted a house that hadn’t even been hers until recently.
Natasha ignored him and went on. “You’ll understand if the word ‘party’ falsely advertises the evening. I scraped together what I could at the last minute. Honestly, I was surprised when Blaze said you wanted to meet me.”
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t have wanted to meet her less if I’d tried. Natasha grimaced, shooting daggers at the big fat liar to my left.
“It was rotten of you to fib. You think I would have invited Mummy if I’d known she wasn’t comfortable here?”
“Why the hell would you invite her anyway?” Blaze glared back at her, all the initial affection gone and replaced by a cold impassiveness I hardly recognised. “You think Emmeline would be impressed by Mona’s tales of smearing Sevruga caviar on pound notes and using it as toilet paper?”
“Actually, Mummy prefers Beluga...”
The new tension between them made me feel ill. In comparison to the warm way he’d abandoned me for her, Blaze stance had become hostile, eyes hard as steel. The frostiness had fallen as soon as the mother was out of earshot and yet Natasha stood sweetly, cajoling and completely tolerant. Even a blind man could see that she felt herself to be in a position of power over him—which strictly speaking, she was. And she lapped it up, knowing she owned him, and knowing that he knew it, too.
My stomach lurched. “Sorry to interrupt, but could one of you point me in the direction of a bathroom?”
I must have looked as sick as I felt because they both snapped out of their venomous verbal spar and practically fell over each other trying to impart directions to the closest facilities. They both pointed upstairs, so ignoring their garbled instructions I headed for the staircase that wound around the outside of the entrance hall, gripping onto the Baroquian balustrade for dear life. I really felt like I might fall and almost wished for it so I’d have an excuse to leave.
But I knew how powerful my wishes were, and how much it would suck to fall down a set of stairs. I wasn’t so attached to my need for escape that I’d die for it.
The class differences between this home and my own were astonishing. I’d even go as far as saying it was like I was walking in an alternate universe where old time traditions and values met modern technology.
The guest room doors that were open revealed more antique French furniture and embellishments; the walls were covered in expensive looking oil paintings of landscapes and scenes from William Shakespeare plays, small varnished mahogany stools dotted around holding large, fresh floral arrangements in glass vases. Somehow, that aged elegance contrasted beautifully with gleaming top range televisions and stereo systems, like somehow it made perfect sense that the Normandy nobles would want to watch daytime television from the comfort of bed.
I could imagine Blaze hating it there. His mother’s house had been very basic and rustic, much like the flat had once been. He considered the unspectacular robustness of both environments to be part of the charm. Natasha’s house was full of an impatient fragility with a definite hands-off aura.
I knew he was uncomfortable in needlessly showy places, preferring to be hands-on and exploratory. It seemed strange that he would specialise in an area of science that was so theoretical and inaccessible to touch.
Why, and more confusingly how, could he be so rigidly fighting for something that made him so unhappy? If it was principles alone, was that the reason he fought for our relationship? Had I become some sort of challenge to defeat and overcome?
I eventually found the bathroom; a wet room completely tiled with sea foam green ceramic. The door was barely locked when it rapped loudly behind me. “Emmeline, let me in.”
“I’m peeing, you ass.”
“No you’re not. You just got in here and you’re wearing stockings. It takes you more time to get your pants down.”
“You’d fucking know.” Pacing the length of the wet room back and forth, I heard his fingers tapping on the door frame outside and knew he was trying to plan out his grovelling apology. He’d have to tread carefully, knowing that I was already in the same frame of as a caged animal. One wrong move and he’d be dinner.
Finally he said, “Am I in for an ass kicking?”
I scoffed, finding my pissed off reflection staring back at me in triplicate from a trio of shaving mirrors. “Blaze, I’m going to kick your ass so hard you’ll still be feeling it in the afterlife, wherever that takes you.”
“Would it help if I said I’m sorry?” It was stupid for him to even ask. Of course it would help, so long as he worded it right.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Damn it. For the second time that day, he’d given me the wrong answer, and it was such a simple fix, too. Apologise for bring me here. Apologise for leaving me standing there like a spare part. Apologise for leading me here under false pretences. Apologise for making me doubt you.
“I told her you were excited to come to disarm her. I didn’t want her to believe that she had any kind of advantage over you. That’s why her family are here; she would have felt outnumbered.”
“Well, I shat all over that for you, didn’t I?”
Blaze kicked or punched the door gently. “Damn it, Emmeline. I don’t want to argue with you and I don’t want to spend an extended period of time away from Natasha where she knows we’re arguing. But given the choice of her knowing we’re arguing through a door or knowing we’re arguing in the same fucking wet room, I’ll take
the—”
I snapped the lock open and stepped back for him, pinching the bridge of my nose. He could win any row by bringing up her name and I hated it. “Make it quick and effective. I came to pee.”
He caught my hand and pulled me to him, his front to my back. I tutted, feeling how blatantly and inappropriately turned on he was. The slightest hint of conflict got his blood pumping and made him crave me because he knew he could calm me that way—knew that I would never fight it.
Unless it was here. Not here. Not now. “Not in your god damn wife’s house, Blaze.”
“Cupcake...” His left hand gripped my hip, the right splaying out across my stomach. Nose at my neck, he suckled at the sensitive skin and purred, “Don’t be mad at me. Not here. Don’t let her see that she can do this to us. Lock your anger away and tear strips off me tomorrow.”
The idea was so tempting it made my chest ache, my heart along with it. How I would have loved to watch him schmooze with his wife and pretend wasn’t happening, just to release it all the next day in a deluge of expletives, violence and aggressive sex.
“You left me standing there. She walked in and I didn’t exist to you.”
“It’s Mona. She makes me act crazy.” Pulling me to the floor with my back still to him, Blaze urged me into his lap and crossed his legs over mine, making sure I wouldn’t be able to pull away. “Henry paid for me to go to a top private school when he saw I was ‘gifted’. I didn’t fit in—me in the middle of a bunch of toffs with inherent stiff upper lips and blue blooded families. I was just a scruffy little Welsh country boy with a rocky past and Natasha picked me up like a pet project.
“I met Mona early on, when Tasha asked me to tutor her in Maths. From the word go, Mona made me feel worthless and odd. It became more a matter of pride after the wedding. It’s always been my decision to keep it hidden, which she obviously hates. Despite all I’ve become, she maintains that I don’t have the right to be embarrassed about her daughter. I’m still lower than her in her mind, so when I’m around her—”