Blazed

by Lee, Corri

  "Thank you." I nodded stiffly through the open door at Blaze, who jumped into action as spritely as ever. He looked like he'd already won his forgiveness. He certainly hadn't.

  WE WALKED THE distance to my flat in a wary silence, Blaze trying to match my slow pace while I trailed behind trying to plan out how the conversation would go. I could hold it together as long as he didn't touch me again, so I planned to position furniture between us, the biggest object possible with a clear run to the door. It felt more like making vigilant plans to go into a bull fight or a lion's den.

  It amazed me how uncomfortable I could feel in my own home because he was there after all the other occasions he'd been in that space with me had been some of my best, and near impossible to fend off the feeling of relief that we were there again when I was certain that the previous Saturday had been the last time.

  Before he could open his mouth, I pointed at the couch until he sat and remained standing. The kitchen was too much of a hazard to both of us because there were too many sharp objects. The couch was a hazard to me because it would be too easy for him to trap me there. I had to be standing with him in a position of inferiority, somewhere that would hinder his access to me.

  "Before you say anything," I rasped hoarsely, so coughed to clear my throat, "I think you should know that this might have gone differently if you'd had the balls to tell me yourself, and it was pretty shitty of you to keep it secret after I spewed the finer details of my life. That said, I think you owe me some simple 'yes' or 'no' answers to some pretty reasonable questions. Yes?"

  "Emmeline..." Blaze whined and made to stand up, but I shot him down with a look. "Yes, alright. I do owe you that."

  "Okay, good." Sighing, I began to pace the hardwood floor, trying not to pay attention to the rhythmic clacking of my heels. It was too like me to find a reason to let my mind stray and let the delusion pretend there was no problem, but

  I needed these answers. "Were you ever planning to tell me?"

  "Yes. I promise, I was going to, I just—"

  "It was a 'yes' or 'no' question!" I snapped at him, forcing myself not to grace him with a look in his direction. "Were you... have you been going home and... do you share a bed and..." My eyes narrowed at his raised eyebrow. "You know where this is going."

  "You think you leave me with enough energy to go home and service a wife?" He rolled his eyes and slumped back into the couch with his arms crossed. "No, Emmeline. We share a house, nothing beyond that. We've never had sex."

  "Oh." What? How the hell was that possible? How could he have been married to her for so long but never... I shook the question out of my head and jumped back onto my own track. "Were you really going to marry me?"

  Blaze sucked in a quick breath. "Yes."

  "So you were going to leave her for me?" Silence. "Blaze?"

  "You want a simple answer and I don't have it." He shrugged, raising his hand to his mouth to brush his fingertips across his lips. It was distracting and he knew it. He couldn't lie so he was looking for a way out.

  "Answer the damn question."

  "I can't in accordance with your 'rules'." I gaped, fuming. It was a childish side of him I never imagined could possibly exist. Far from acting like a child, actually, he was being downright snotty about it.

  "You're a smart man. You have a fucking doctorate. It wasn't a problem before, so know when to make like Galileo and break the rules because either way, you're condemned." Stiffening, I waved a hand and sneered, waiting for a half decent answer. Not that I hadn't already made my assumptions based on his attitude.

  He ignored my glare and stood, jaw clenched. "No, Emmeline. I wasn't leaving her for you. But it's not as simple as a man just cheating on his wife. She knows about you."

  "What?!" Horrified, I stumbled back until I was against a wall. "Is she coming to break my legs?"

  "What? No. It's complicated, but she encouraged me to be with you."

  "Does she want me to join in or something?" My hands shot to my mouth, then my hair, then my neck, and kept moving while the worsening compendium of nightmarish possibilities gathered in my mind. Maybe she couldn't keep him satisfied and sleeping with me kept them somewhat functional. Maybe she was fixated on a fantasy. Maybe she was one of those crazies who liked to watch their partner fuck other people and get her rocks off to it. Maybe it was all part of some sick scheme to lure me in and make me their slave. Shit! Maybe she was one of the people Henry had screwed over and they wanted to get back at him through the bad publicity that would come from his daughter openly screwing a married man.

  The growing list made me feel physically sick. "What the hell have you dragged me in to?"

  "Nothing! My god," Blaze rushed at me, stalling at the hand I raised to make him keep his distance. "There's nothing suspect about this, I swear. I just wanted to have all my ducks in a row before I told you. I never planned for this, I just let my heart think for me. I'm non compos mentis around you so I had to start thinking on my feet."

  "So why the hell didn't it occur to you to engage your god damn genius brain so I didn't get hurt?"

  "Because this wasn't supposed to happen!" He grabbed both of my shaking hands in one of his and caged me against the wall, pinning me by the hips with his feet on either side of mine. I saw the frantic throbbing of his pulse in his neck and knew that I was going to be forced to hear him out whether I liked it or not. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I thought we'd spend some reckless times together terrorising the streets of London. You looked like you needed that kind of mischief in your life."

  "I did."

  "And I thought I might end up drilling you into a few mattresses on occasion. The only reason I didn't at first is because I didn't think you'd appreciate the advance. Sex is usually important to a woman and you're a bigger commitmentphobe than I am." He stopped to draw breath and whimper, visibly battling the impulse to throw me over his shoulder and show me how much of a coward I'd made him, and make sure I damn well liked it. "So this wasn't supposed to happen, Emmeline. We weren't supposed to fal—"

  "Oh god," I made a futile attempt at twisting out of his trap, tugging at his grip on my hands urgently, pleadingly. This conversation wasn't welcome, we'd avoided it on purpose. I hadn't planned for it to come up in my inquisition so I wasn't prepared to hear it. "Please don't say it."

  He caught my face and stroked back the hair from my eyes. His gaze was intense and turbulent, all of his fears mirroring mine and roiling there. His thumb traced the outline of my lips and he tensed like he was bracing himself for my volatile reaction, leaning away just fractionally. "We weren't supposed to fall in love." A shudder I made no effort to hide shook through me. "I know. You're angry at me— you didn't plan for this either— and I never intended on..." he shrugged and flicked his gaze over me, "... this." His voice softened in surrender. "I never dreamed that it would be both so painful and so... amazing."

  Sighing, he rested his forehead against mine and released my hands, which fell bonelessly to my sides. My mind was too tired to go on with the charade. "The fact remains that you're married. I won't be the other woman. You know who I am now, you know it's too much of a scandal. You're friends with my dad— he won't allow it."

  "Nobody will know. I don't even know how Tallulah knows, but I won't give you up. What I have is a marriage of convenience— it means nothing to me. I don't love her, never have. I love y—"

  "Then why the hell did you marry her?" He looked at me severely for cutting him off and stepped back to free me from his confines. I didn't care if he was annoyed; I couldn't hear those three words. They were too much far too late with way too much heavy baggage. I'd walked through my life believing that marriage was a holy sanction between two people, meaningful and with a view to be permanent. We had no future if his attitude towards a tradition I respected so much was dismissive at best.

  "I didn't know that you were going to walk into my life one day. If I'd known, I would have waited for you."

  "I
thought we had an unspoken no bullshit rule, Blaze. Why did you marry a woman you didn't love?"

  "You won't like it," he warned me, posture suddenly hesitantly rigid and almost repulsed. His grip on me slackened and that was the only clue I needed to know that I didn't want to hear it.

  "You're right. I won't. So don't say it and go home."

  "She's dying." I stared at him blankly for a moment before twisting away from him. He let me, resigned to my disapproval, and stood there with his eyes closed. Those two words were enough. "She's dying and I get everything if I stay with her. All she wanted was to own me for a while when she found out she was ill— she's been crazy about me since school. I'm like the only item on her bucket list. It doesn't matter to her if I don't love her as long as I'm there until the end. The money, the car, the house— I lose that if I walk away now. It's just a matter of time, then we—"

  "Stop talking!" Breathing through the burn of tears in the backs of my eyes, I wrapped my arms around myself and sank down to the floor. His wife and the woman he cared for were the same person. I couldn't believe that I hadn't made the connection before. He'd married a sick woman, motivated by her monetary value. No wonder he got on so well with Henry.

  For the first time, his behaviour sickened me and there was no way I could work my mind around it in good conscience. The clarification and dirty details hadn't been necessary, but at least he had the decency to look ashamed of himself.

  "You're staying with a dying woman just so you get her money? Do you realise how corrupt and selfish that is? She loves you and you look at her as nothing but a cash cow— a pending pay out like all you've been doing is babysitting her. And you expect me to sit around with you waiting for her die so you can marry me and we can spend her money together? I'm rich too, Blaze— at least I'm supposed to be. Will you do the same to me?"

  Blaze dropped to his knees and crawled towards me. If I'd been a stronger person, I might have taken some sick satisfaction in it and demanded he dropped down and crawled on his belly for my forgiveness. Really milked it and made him feel like shit on my shoe. But I was too caught up in feeling awful for the poor woman he was scamming.

  "Of course not! I don't know Emmeline Tudor, the billionaire's daughter, I know Emmeline White, the piss poor girl too principled to touch dirty money. I gave you that ring before I knew, didn't I? Emmeline, my life is made and secure. I don't have to worry about paying my bills, I sleep in a comfortable bed every night, there's no concern over where my next job comes from... Natasha plays no active role in my life beyond being a job. She's just something I have to do. The only thing that would make my life better would be sharing it all with you— sharing that security."

  "Oh god." Natasha. She had a name. That meant she was a real, honest to God, flesh and blood human with a heart, soul, conscience and feelings just like me. The dying victim of a selfish liar. "You have to leave. I have to leave. I have to go to Daniel."

  "That bad?" I nodded too much, trying to shake off the warm feeling that threatened to dull the hurt because Blaze knew me well enough to understand Daniel was my Good Samaritan in my darkest moments. "Give me time, please. It won't be much, I promise. She doesn't ha—"

  "You want me to sit around waiting for you because she's on death's door? Jesus!" I scrambled to my feet, slapping away his hands when he approached me. "Sit around waiting until you can spare me a minute of your precious uninterrupted time? You're as bad as Hunter."

  "Don't you dare say I'm like him!" I gasped at sudden searing flare in Blaze's temper and held my breath— a breath that was knocked out of me when he lunged and dragged me back to the floor. As soon as I recovered from the tumble, he closed his mouth over mine and kissed me with suppressed violence, grinding his hips against me so I could feel how hard he was. How much he wanted me. Needed me. I hated that I needed him too, not just enough to not fight him off, but enough to make me kiss him back.

  "I earned your love, Emmeline." He growled against my lips and pushed a hand down beyond the waistband of my trousers. I answered with a moan and felt all the blood in my body push up to my skin and flush me all over like I'd been thrown into a fire. He was slow and deliberate, teasing the soft flesh between my legs with his fingertips. "You need to give me time. I'll make you understand that this is necessary, but I have my ways, Emmeline. This can and will go the way I want it to, and you're the reason why it will. Understand?"

  I clamped my teeth down on his lip and didn't let go when I mumbled, "I'm having no part in your warped scheme. You can't make me." It was a challenge. Right then, I was so blinded by my libido that I really wanted to see how he planned to make me fall into line.

  "I earned that money. You don't understand why— you can't understand. You just need to accept it."

  "No. Ah, god!" Two fingers drove into me and twisted, making it too hard to think. God, I needed him there inside me. I'd needed it since Tallulah had dropped that bombshell on me. He had to catch me and make me see. There was no way he couldn't. I'd have wanted him to chase me until he did.

  "I can make you trust me. You know that, don't you?"

  "Yes," I breathed, pushing down onto him, "you can push your point across by fucking the hell out of me, then abuse the fact that I let my guard down to make me admit how much I want you to make me see it your way. You can manipulate me into going against all my morals just to hang onto you by my fingernails and spend the rest of my life wondering if I'm just another wealthy woman on your bucket list. So do it already. Make me hate myself."

  He left me panting when he pulled away from me and rocked back onto his heels, staring at me like I'd given him proof that the world was flat. The only other time I'd seen him look so lost is when we let ourselves get caught in this nightmare together in that dressing room. We should have parted ways then.

  "Cupcake, no. That's not what I'm doing. Is it?" Scrubbing one hand over his face, he held the other out to me to pull me up from the floor, rising when I did. The tormented way he said my pet name made me want to cry again. "I'm not trying to manipulate you, Emmeline. I just want you to stop feeling like what we're doing is wrong."

  "It is wrong. You're married."

  "The marriage is what is wrong."

  "Yes, because you're cheating a terminally ill woman in more ways than one!"

  Blaze sighed and held out an arm, giving me the choice to curl up against his chest. I didn't, and I could have kicked myself for it, but he had to know that my morals were a sticking point. That was part of the reason why I would never tell Hunter how I felt. I didn't mess with anyone's relationship, no matter how much I could justify it afterwards.

  "You want to forgive me, don't you?"

  I nodded and strode over to the couch, slumping down onto it. "Yes. But I can't. I don't get involved in my dad's business so I can deny accountability when he gets caught screwing over the wrong person. I hate anyone who thinks that money is the be all and end all, worth everything and nothing— that everything should come with a price tag and anything should be sacrificed for it is perverse. If you'd betray a friend to make a quick buck, you have no place in my life. And I think that's what you're doing."

  Blaze shook his head and sat down next to me. I didn't resist when he took my hand and pressed it to his lips. "I earned that money, Emmeline. I lost my band, my freedom, six years of my life and now I'm losing you for it. Except you might be the one thing I'll regret losing."

  "That's because I'm the only one of those things with a voice. Your freedom can't tell you how cold-hearted and sick it is to take advantage of a dying woman who obviously just wanted to love you."

  "You don't understand—"

  My fingers shot out to pin his lips shut. "I do. I get it. You need the security and stability. Your youth was a fucked up muddle of suffering from your dad's murder, and conflicted interests between your family and your ambitions. But I'm sorry, Mr Secure; I'm Miss Unstable, and I can't spend an indeterminable amount of waiting in the wings and wishing death on someone
who already hurts enough knowing she's cared for by a man who loves her money more than her."

  That shred of honesty stung him. It was obvious from the way he seemed to take an inward look at himself and grimace. I might have been proving to him that his motives were all wrong, but he was proving to himself that his beauty theory was right. He was ugly inside, so ugly. I never could have imagined that there was someone so calculating and callous inside him. But he was seeing it for the first time, and I could tell that he didn't like it.

  His eyes dropped down to the floor. "If I give up now, every day I've spent caring for her was a waste."

  "Was it such a waste if it led you to me?" My finger traced his Cupid's bow and my breath caught.

  "... why do we have our scars?"

  "Because we're not beyond hope."

  He wasn't beyond hope either, that small scar was that tiny glint of light at the end of the tunnel.

  I just knew for myself that I couldn't make him walk towards it. That was a journey he had to make for himself.

  Seventeen

  I SAGGED BACK and pulled my hand out of Blaze's. "I have to go."

  "What?" He made a grab at me but I stood to evade him. I'd made up my mind and was certain that I'd judged the situation well enough to feel some conviction in my decision. "I thought you were starting to understand."

  "I do understand." My fists clenched against the urge to stroke his panic-stricken face. "I understand that there are things you just have to do, but I know from experience that you can't make people do them with you. If I grabbed a knife and started cutting myself again, would you do it with me even if you didn't feel the compulsion?"