Cradle the Fire

by Milana Jacks

  Damn. I hadn’t even realized they’d closed. When I opened them, blue eyes from above locked with mine.

  “Usually,” he said and continued with the scalp massage, “when a man walks in on a naked woman, she screams bloody murder unless she wants him to see her naked. I’m gonna take your reaction as the latter.”

  “Don’t. You misunderstand.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t physically throw you out.”

  “Damn right.”

  “And I can’t ask you to leave.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s your house. I’m here on a loan.”

  Briefly, he looked out the window, then back at me. “Can I borrow your body?”

  “Are you asking me to sleep with you?”

  “Not yet. Maybe I’ll ask you tomorrow.”

  “I’m surprised you asked.” I spun around and dunked under the water to wash out my hair. When I came up, Nentres hovered over me, one hand resting on the tile near my head. Water dripped down his torso, and I had this inexplicable urge to lick it. I didn’t lick him, but I did touch his chest. Under my palm, his skin burned. It was a miracle the water droplets hadn’t already dried. “You’re hot,” I told him.

  “I know.” On his knees, he inched toward me, and I spread my legs to let him come between them. Nentres took my wrists and held them apart, his eyes on my breasts. “B cup.”

  “A full B cup,” I corrected.

  “Do you mind if I touch them?”

  I shook my head.

  One hand left my wrists and palmed my left breast. A thumb rubbed over my nipple. I pinched my lips so as not to whimper. The fingers of his other hand traveled up my arm, over my shoulder, and cupped my other breast. This one, he lifted, then bent his head and licked my nipple.

  I parted my lips. A mistake, because a whimper escaped. I didn’t want to feed his ego. Nentres was a hard man to resist, and I couldn’t come up with a good reason to resist him. He was handsome and single. I was single. He would pick a bride this coming Saturday and free me from my duties. I didn’t care that he’d pick another bride, because I hadn’t come here for commitment.

  Nentres had come in here and washed my hair, made sure I was nice and comfortable, which told me he could be attentive. He’d likely be an attentive lover, the kind of man who made sure I came first or at least twice as many times as him. I could fall head over heels in love with him, but having known the loss of both parents, I avoided getting attached at all costs. I would rather go through my life never knowing love than have to live without my other half.

  My dad had tried replacing my mom with Stepmother. When it didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped, he’d ended up replacing Mom with alcohol, which killed both his sorrows and him. Late one night, he’d driven into a high-rise and died on the spot. Nobody said anything about alcohol, but we all knew he’d been drunk that night. He’d been drunk every night for the past four years.

  I closed my eyes and let the outlaw kiss me. His lips burned mine, and the heat of them made me want to pull away. I tried retreating, but Nentres’s palm rested on the small of my back and pulled me closer while his tongue sought mine. I hooked my hands around his neck and kissed him back, enjoying his clever fingers working my nipple, then traveling lower to rub my entrance.

  “You’re wet,” he said at my lips.

  “You make me wet,” I told him.

  “You confuse me.”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “You don’t seem attracted to me.”

  “I am. But it doesn’t mean I want to marry you.”

  His eyebrows drew down, and he lifted his head. “A fling? You want a fling?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  Nentres gave me a hard stare. I wanted to look away but couldn’t, as if he held some sort of power over me. Two fingers entered me, and I gasped, tightening my grip on his shoulders. He worked his thumb over my clit, and I hitched breaths with every stroke. He pressed a hand onto my chest and pushed me back so I leaned my head on the back of the tub, never taking my eyes from his.

  My arousal built and built, and when Nentres put a hand over my throat and squeezed, my walls fluttered, my belly tightened, and I came still trying to gasp for air.

  Nentres released my throat, and I swore by all things holy, I saw a flame ignite in his eyes. My limbs relaxed, and Nentres sat back on the other end of the tub. He licked his fingers.

  Had I imagined what I’d seen in his eyes? Sure. I chuckled.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “That you made me see stars.” Or flames, for that matter, but I didn’t want to make this awkward moment any weirder.

  He showed me his dimples when he smiled. “I can fly you to the stars.”

  “Your ego has wings?”

  “Something like that.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t mind flings.”

  Nentres snorted. “Of all the women I have ever wanted to say that very thing, it had to be you.”

  I shrugged. Karma.

  5

  Nentres

  In my house down here in the South, the breakfast of champions consisted of biscuits, sausage gravy, pork chops, and eggs. Mary, our cook, had been making me this breakfast since I could read, and I missed it when I’d left the house to pursue an acting carrier in Hollywood, a little over a year before Yellowstone erupted. My parents had since moved out of this home and into a new home in Austin, Texas, where they’d lived for the duration of the Ice Age. I came and went, never really feeling at home out there.

  Early last year, I’d flown over Louisiana and thought about returning. After Lance had told me my spirit would show up at my ball, it solidified my decision to move back home to New Orleans. It was good to be back. Nothing but an easy life down here, as easy as my spirit should be. Hot damn, but she was hard.

  Since I hadn’t told my spirit the time Mary served breakfast—which was whenever I got up—I waited for Amy in the dining room. I twirled the fork, attempting to play with the fire in the fireplace, trying to split one flame into two or have it do something, anything. It did nothing, so I poked the wood with the fire iron. And as I poked and poked, I daydreamed about my dicks stuffing Amy’s small holes. In my daydream, Amy moaned in excitement and pleasure, so it wasn’t until after my eggs got cold and brown, after I stomped out the flames that burned the corner of my rug, about an hour into waiting, that I spotted a black pen on a piece of red paper in the middle of the table.

  I leaned over the table, read the note, scrunched it up, and tossed it into the fire. It sparked just like my mood would ignite when I cracked my palm over Amy’s ass. Her note excused her from breakfast. Apparently, she’d found more important things to do with her time, like preparing for the damn ball. I should tell her to cancel the fucking thing. But then she couldn’t attend a nonexistent ball, not to mention we had agreed on a fling, a doorway to the heart via the pussy route.

  A fling, by definition, lasted until it ended, and when it ended, she’d move on. I’d be damned if I’d let Amy move on. A ball and a fling would give me an opportunity to show her what she’d be missing out on if she decided to unfling me. Which she wouldn’t. Having a pair of cocks to pump into her cunt would make her beg for it five times a day every day for the duration of her stay here. Which would amount to forever.

  I returned to my seat and ate my eggs, wondering what Mary had cooked for my little vegetarian. I uncovered Amy’s plate. Empty. All the food eaten. But there was another note. I read it.

  Three things I like to eat for breakfast:

  1. Grolaplus

  2. Balarana

  3. Spinner

  “What the hell are those things?” I smelled the plate, wondering what Mary had served her. Fruit. An apple, I believed, and maybe some baked wheat, so I settled on some sort of oatmeal. I clicked my fork on my plate, thinking. Amy had come, eaten, written me notes with her damn pen, and left. She hadn’t even bothered to wait for me, or eve
n, hell, called me to join her. “Cindy!” I called out and bit into my biscuit. Mmmm. Gravy and biscuit melted on my tongue. Mary could cook with the best of them. I’d practically stolen her under my mama’s nose and taken her with me. Ol’ George came along with his wife, as I knew he would. My household ran like a well-oiled cyborg.

  “Cin-dy,” I hollered.

  “Ain’t here,” Mary hollered back from the kitchen.

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Out.”

  Hell. I finished my breakfast and brought the plate into the kitchen, where Mary worked on three cakes.

  “Whose birthday is it?”

  Mary was in her seventies, with chubby, wrinkled hands, large brown eyes, and an afro she hid under an elaborate turban while working around food. She looked pointedly at me.

  “What?” Had I forgotten someone’s birthday?

  Mary shook her head. “It’s for the ball. I’m testing.” She forked a piece and stretched out her hand. “Tell me if this one’s dry. Looks dry.”

  I batted her hand away. “I’m full.”

  She stuck it back out. “Taste the cake, boy.”

  I ate the damn thing. It tasted the way Amy’s pussy would taste. Fluffy and moist. “It’s fine.”

  “Sweet enough?”

  “Yes. Listen, Mary, where did Cindy go?” Amy, I meant, but wherever Cindy had gone had to be where Amy went too. George had appointed Cindy as Amy’s guide around the property that held my mansion and the surrounding wolf pack homes.

  “The girls went out.”

  My patience cracked like the whip I would crack over Amy’s ass. “Out where?”

  “Out and about.” Mary waved her hand as if to shoo me away, her thoughts on the cake’s frosting as she bent to draw little hearts on the side.

  “Goddamn it. Would you listen to me?”

  She put her hand on her hip. “We don’t use the Lord’s name in vain around here.”

  “I ain’t twelve anymore, Mary. Tell me where they went.”

  “Out the gates and out there somewhere with them invitations. That girl’s a worker. Got up with the rooster and spent all morning wrapping invitations with ribbons before you even opened your eyes.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You would if you stayed with her in your room. Mm-hm.”

  Oh hell. “I’d have stayed with her in my room if she let me. She threw me out.”

  “How can she throw you out?”

  “She opened the door and asked me to leave.”

  “Did you tell her she was staying in your bedroom?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you ought to tell her.”

  “I will.”

  “She thinks you an outlaw.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s gonna happen when she figures out you’re a Creature of Earth?”

  “By then, I’ll have her dancing around me like a little flame.”

  Mary tsked. “Lyin’ ain’t a good way to start a marriage. You’ll remember me.”

  I needed a pep talk like I needed a nail in the head. One of the reasons I’d left my parents’ house in Austin, Texas, was so that I could court my spirit without my mother’s interference. She was sweet and all, but Lord Almighty, she butted her nose into everything. I hadn’t expected Mary to meddle in my business, but I guessed she couldn’t help herself.

  I couldn’t control fire if I didn’t impress my spirit, and the Ice Age would end only when all four dragons gained control of their elements. Mary knew the stakes if Amy refused. Which, of course, she wouldn’t.

  I walked across the courtyard and outside the gates, where I stripped and took to the sky.

  We lived in the part of New Orleans called Audubon. Before the Ice Age, people had called it one of the nicest areas of New Orleans. Though my family was old money, I’d spent my youth scouting the French Quarter for tourists who’d tucked their wallets in the back pocket of their jeans. Besides pickpocketing, a bunch of us underage boys would get together and con tourists into getting us booze so we could party like rock stars.

  I loved this city. I wished I could return it to the old New Orleans. I missed the music, the diversity, and especially the smell of jambalaya, po’boy, and Mary’s own shrimp gumbo she hadn’t made in over a decade. But mainly, I missed the vibrant life.

  Now the city was all but rubble, the busiest place my mansion and everything else all but appearing deserted. People still lived in the city, hiding inside the ransacked homes, sleeping in the abandoned restaurants and shops, but rarely, they came out on the streets. So where the hell could Cindy and Amy have gone?

  I flapped my wings and sniffed the air as I flew. The smoke from one garbage can drew me, and I struggled to ignore the call of fire and focused my attention on a pair of slender humans strolling down the middle of Bourbon Street.

  I landed silently on the roof of one of those corporate hotels that used to steal business from the locals. I didn’t miss the corporations that tried to make bank on the city’s life, and if—when—we restored Earth to her natural state, I would not allow a single corporation into this city.

  I stretched my long neck past the roof’s edge to be sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Sure enough, Amy pushed a wheelbarrow cement trolley, Cindy happily walking with her and chatting, pointing at the buildings as if strolling through a pre–Ice Age New Orleans with her newly found BFF.

  My talons dug into the roof’s edge, and a crack sounded. If I wasn’t careful, I’d collapse the fucking building.

  A red seven-hundred-count cotton sheet Amy must’ve taken from my bed covered the unknown contents inside the wheelbarrow. The women rounded the corner and walked into an alley. I lost the visual, so I changed my stakeout place and landed on top of one of the local residences that used to sell fake voodoo dolls, praying it didn’t crumble under my weight.

  This outing must’ve been Amy’s idea. Cindy knew this area hadn’t been a safe place for unarmed women (or men, for that matter) before the Ice Age. Now? It was no place for anyone. When we’d made our move back into the mansion, even I, with a pack of wolves at my back, avoided the city. Cindy knew better. Jason would deal with his wolf, and I had just the thing for my little disobedient spirit.

  Amy stopped and dug into her pocket. She retrieved a pouch that looked suspiciously like the one her stepmother had given me. Hot damn, I got robbed last night. After our lovely bath, Amy had gotten out first, and I clearly remember her picking up my sweatpants from the floor and folding them. The pouch must’ve slipped out, or she deliberately went after it.

  But the jewels didn’t matter right now. A man walked out from one of the homes. He wore a long black coat and a beanie. I narrowed my vision on his face and the scar on his left cheek. My wolves patrolled our neighborhood, so I knew some outlaws by description if not by name. This one was Eddy, the gang leader. How in the Lord’s name had Amy connected with him, or had she gone out here in an attempt to attract attention?

  I tapped my talon on the building.

  Eddy chatted with the women.

  Five minutes passed, and Amy’s laughter pierced the silence.

  Though Eddy and I went way back, I smiled at the prospect of consuming my competition.

  Eddy lifted the blanket and revealed a bunch of papers, then covered the invitations back up and accepted my pouch of jewels. He opened it, nodded, and took over the wheelbarrow. Amy and Cindy high-fived each other and spun around, presumably intent on making their way back home.

  Men came out of the homes. They moved slowly, with predatory grace learned from a decade on the streets. When you go into an alley flashing jewelry or money, you better be armed and know how to handle yourself in a fight. I bet this was Amy’s first trip to the streets. No way she knew shit about the street life.

  The men closed off the alley’s only exit, and the women stopped dead in their tracks. Cindy backed away, probably gearing up to shift into her wolf, an instinctive response, while Amy sto
od there, appearing surprised. Since I’d been stalking them, this was the first time Amy had taken in her surroundings, and still she didn’t see me, a monster on the building a block away. Though I tried to blend in and assume a low profile, if she’d only paid attention, she would have seen me. I was a two-ton dragon, not a fucking hummingbird.

  Cindy glanced up, just then noticing me, and I shook my head vigorously, trying to tell her not to show the outlaws her wolf. I’d take care of this. The outlaws would rob them at best, rape and kill them at worse.

  They rushed the girls. I flew and hovered above the alley but couldn’t flap my wings inside it without damaging them on the buildings. This meant I couldn’t land inside the alley and pick up the girls. Amy screamed, “Creature! Creature!”

  Really? I was her biggest problem?

  At the sight of me, most of the outlaws scattered, but two stupid ones snatched Amy’s hand and dragged her with them. Something burned inside my chest and climbed up my throat. I coughed. A ball of fire flew out of my mouth at the same time that the men pushed Amy in the path of the fireball and ran for cover. I couldn’t stop the fire. I roared as flames engulfed her, spreading down the alley and climbing the walls of the end building. I tried to descend and scraped my wing. I screeched until the fire trickled down to nothing as if it had never been.

  It left a naked and stunned Amy standing on the street.

  If I’d had any doubts that Amy was my spirit, I didn’t have them anymore. She was fireproof. Cindy placed a hand over her heart and walked back to Amy. My eyes locked with Amy’s as I descended, then finally parked on the roof of a small house with my tail resting on the building behind it, my wings cramped between two concrete walls.

  I wagged the tip of my tail over the top of the building, thinking of all the ways I would punish my spirit for putting her life in danger.