

## BLAZED

The first instalment in the 'Blazed' trilogy

Corri Lee

Copyright 2013-14 by Corri Lee

Smashwords Edition

'Blazed: The Ashes first published March 2013

This Smashwords edition published September 2014

Copyright 2014 by Corri Lee

The moral right of Corri Lee to be identified as the author and owner of the cover artwork of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Design and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

In honour of my twenty-fifth birthday, I send this e-book out into the world for my fellow nerds and beautifully broken.

You are, invariably, one and the same.

You are all my Big Bang.

Corri Lee – March 2013

#  contents

#

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

AUTHOR INFORMATION

#

I wanted nothing more than a distraction. A diversion, a bolt from the blue—whatever you want to call it, I wanted it. Too much time had passed with no event; endless months of the same routine, days and days of the same old thing, over and over until I could swear I was going grey with boredom. Nobody else could see the strands of silver, of course, and were too fast to label me a drama queen. Nobody saw it from my side—that there might just be something missing from my life.

In my wildest fantasies, I met a tall dark stranger who swept me off my feet and turned my humdrum life upside down in the wildest and most amazing ways possible. But I did always have an over-active imagination. Even if he was out there, I stood in the wrong secular circle of social rejects to find someone that... spontaneous.

I had always felt like I was somehow different from everyone else. Not in a latent superhero or paranormal kind of way, but in that I was just extraordinarily mediocre. Everywhere I turned there were people of notable ability or beauty. In every direction there was extravagance and the exceptional. It seemed like every possible flaw that those flourishes might have deflected and centred on me.

Despite everything, in my eyes, I would always be just a bit little ugly, a little bit frumpy, a little bit socially stunted, a little bit fat and a whole lot boring. I sucked misery in like a vacuum, digested it until it was mulch, and then found a fresh supply. It wasn't even intentional, it was the damn apathy that did it.

And that's why I needed the distraction. A radical break in my woeful little cycle of self-pity to pull me out of the downward spiral that made me so pathetic. It didn't even need to be something big, just something... new. A tiny spark, a flickering flame in the darkness to encourage me in a new direction.

But it would have to find me itself. I was so stuck in my depressive little oubliette that I couldn't even make the easy reach up to the trapdoor only inches above my head. Truthfully, I didn't know how to change, and the prospect of finding out was terrifying.

No amount of dislike and empty threats to escape it could really dispute the fact that my boring life was comfortable. My humble hovel of a flat was comfortable. My aforementioned circle of social rejects were comfortable. My job at Double Booked _,_ a pun of an independent book shop that made promises to keep two copies of every publication in easy reach—honestly, they thought this was a unique selling point and a 'hook'—was comfortable. Even the well known but seldom mentioned cat naps I took on the toilet there to nurse my hangovers, were comfortable.

I was stuck in a catch twenty-two and too damned comfortable to pull myself out of it. I really couldn't be pleased.

My sister said I just liked to feel sorry for myself. My friends said that there was nothing wrong with my life. My father said something irrelevant that centred around money and greed, and my mother said I needed to let her set me up with a stud.

Now that... that was the most ludicrous suggestion of them all. Not even the knowledge that lightning rarely strikes the same place twice gave me the confidence to risk that my mother didn't, either. She was too perceptive for her own good and always had been, and that uncanny ability to match make like Cupid's disciple was a particularly bothersome point in my life.

She'd matched me up once before with a man I swore was my soul mate. But rather than set me up for happiness, all she'd done is given me an excuse to stay miserable. The more free time I had to lament my dull existence, the more time I had to think about him.

Hunter had been perfect for me from the moment we'd met at a dinner party my mother had set up when we were both thirteen. I always lived under the impression that there were some people who just made you smile for no reason when they were around, and he was one of them. He affected everyone the same way and any room he stood in was a joyful place to be, right up until he left and the withdrawal immediately set in.

Any light-hearted insult was delivered with no malice and a cheeky smile that absolved him without question. Without even trying, he was the whole world all at once and, like Atlas, I carried the weight of him on my back.

His crystal blue eyes and daringly long waved strawberry blonde hair made him beautiful without being androgynous, his extensive knowledge of just about everything but ability to admit he was often clueless made him a modest genius without being an insufferable know-it-all, and his unfailing love and compassion for everyone might just have been the flaw he deflected into my vacuum.

For me he had compassion and love of the wrong kind. The man who completed me wasn't interested. I was his best friend and always would be. It was impossible to tell if I might have been happier never knowing him at all because I was a masochist where he was concerned and never dared to question who I'd be without him.

So I'd doomed myself to this weary life of what if's and bathroom reprieves, and was inactively waiting for divine intervention.

"Emmy, love? Come on, go home so I can close up shop." That wasn't it, but it said a lot about the state of my environment when my boss was more eager to close four hours early to escape than I was. Mrs. Reynolds, a portly and kind faced woman with soft brown eyes and tumbling burgundy ringlets, stood patiently outside the bathroom door when I finally emerged, making no excuse for my slacking. As long as the shelves were fully stocked and no customers were waiting, I could have slept in the children's corner for all she cared.

"It'll pick up in September," she promised, forcing a smile even she didn't believe, "when the new freshers pile in." It was true enough that students made up the bulk of our custom, swarming in with their anarchic attitudes towards the mainstream high-street book shops stealing business from us, the fiscal underdogs. They'd be all about independent this, organic that and vegan the other until their student loans were gone and they realised that being a conformist carnivore was logically far cheaper.

But there were still a few months to go before we got to bask in their blissful ignorance and reckless spending habits while they lasted.

"By the way," she sneaked up on me again when I was collecting my basically redundant jacket from the stock room cum staff room. "You have a visitor waiting outside."

The word 'visitor' was always ominous, and my day was that much worse when my 'visitor' arrived in a shiny black Mercedes. Rarely, they came in a silver BMW that was almost as bad to see as the Merc, or more often in a lipstick red Jaguar—one car I didn't mind seeing.

But I knew which 'visitor' was bating for my blood by the car they rode in, and today it was the worst of them all. My father.

It was a great source of embarrassment for me to be Henry Tudor's daughter, not just because of the ridiculous ripped off historical name I never really trusted he hadn't purchased online, but because of all he stood for.

Academic excellence wasn't enough for my so-called father. He would argue that he hadn't amassed his success with just maths and a keen knowledge of geography and economics. No, he was all about force of will, networking and the micromanagement of just about anything with a pulse. More disgustingly for me, he was also pretty hot for a splash of nepotism.

Until I left home, my life was all about following my parents and my sister, Tallulah, around stuffy popularity seeking events promoting anything from golf courses to children's charities. Normally, nobody would object to the latter, but Henry didn't attend to be charitable. He went there and dragged us with him to set up some kind of ruse that he was a genial family man who cared deeply for the human race.

From this sick deception, he forged business associations and put out new roots, made friends he would betray for the smallest sniff of credit, and expanded what was already a vast multi-billion pound empire across three continents. I didn't know of anything he didn't control and, as impressive as that was, the man was a monster and I truly hated him for it; almost as much as I hated him trying to drag me into his soulless facade.

Mercifully, my mother let me use her maiden name for everything and never insisted that I visited home. Instead, she came to me in the chauffeur driven Jag that always turned heads in the streets, straining at the leash Henry had so firmly in place around her neck. She was a trophy wife and as damned as a snowflake in a firestorm, but she liked to live vicariously through me and my friends.

It was no secret that Henry hoped I'd come out of my geeky shell and become his second in command but I was resolute in my decision to have nothing to do with him and his atrocities. I didn't want his name, I didn't want his business and I didn't want a single penny of his money. As much as he tried to throw the benefits of being part of what was easily one of the richest families in the world at me, I never accepted a single thing. My life was frugal and at times strained, but I preferred to spend a few days living off week old takeaway left-overs until pay day than let him think that he'd won for a single moment.

But every time that Mercedes pulled up in front of Double Booked with it's black tinted windows and narcisstically personalised license plate, somehow it always felt like a victory was his.

I stared at the car for a full two minutes, debating escape routes and perfect murders, before the driver's side door opened and the chauffeur, Oscar, stepped out to impart a brief precursory greeting. He reached gracefully over to the back passenger door and pulled it open, exposing me to the untethered beast inside.

I was glad that I looked nothing like Henry. My eyes were subtle olive green like my mother's, rather than the murky brown of his that reminded me of wet clay. He was paunchy and bulbous, the rosacea in his cheeks and nose emphasised by the mop of receding ochre hair that sprouted wildly from his scalp. He was more monster than man, and more Bugsy Malone mobster than monster. He even had the barely-worth-growing pencil moustache to complete the cartoon villain illusion. I couldn't think of a one single uglier man.

"Emmeline!" He greeted me warmly when I begrudgingly took the empty seat next to him, folding his newspaper in half and tucking it away into the door's side pocket. He at least had the decency to still treat me like a human despite the fact I was the only person who refused to fall under his command. "How are you, sweetheart?"

"You don't need to spare me the pleasantries, Henry. Just tell me what you want."

The almost genuine smile fell from his face in an instant. To my knowledge, I was the only person both immune to Tudor charm and able to disarm the mighty business beast.

Without any kind of prompting, Oscar set off in the direction of my flat, so I knew the conversation would be graciously short.

"Well, I've come to try and sway your decision to attend the wedding."

"No." He could have arrived on the back of Cerberus or a loaned stallion from one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, taking me home via the fiery gates of Hell, and I still wouldn't have changed my RSVP.

"Don't you think you're being a little selfish? Obviously he couldn't have you as a best man, but—"

"Surely it would be more selfish for me to attend and make a scene?" I had absolutely no intention of provoking drama, but the threat was all Henry needed to seriously rethink his request. Any misbehaviour of mine reflected badly on him and he knew it.

And he obviously knew how to pick his battles, because he nodded once to himself and shifted to a new, just as undesirable topic. "Then maybe I can convince you to reconsider taking over from your degenerate sister? Honestly, she's a total liability and appears to be single-handedly turning my office into a grooming parlour. If I hadn't been at the conception, I would honestly think she simply sprang into existence like a germ."

The way Henry spoke about his eldest daughter might have seemed callous and cruel if you didn't know Tallulah directly. While I had no will to network but a keen mind, Tally had little more than a bad laugh and an Oedipus complex. The business was wasted on her, but honestly, I thought that was a fair price to pay for being corrupt. There was a fair chance that she would be the person who made the single off-hand comment to one of Henry's associates that might ruin him, and nothing would have made me sadistically happier.

"Still no."

"You won't even come down to The Parr and sit in on a few meetings?" I didn't let him see me roll my eyes. He owned six buildings worldwide as business centres and named each after a wife of Henry VIII. Of course, he worked in the building named for the wife who survived...

"No."

He sighed and nodded again, casting a weary eye out through the window. "I'm not giving up on you yet, Emmeline. And when I do wear you down, you'll be glad for all of the exposure you have."

And there it was. His true reason for turning up was subtle but detectable to the trained ear.

"You want me at an event," I groaned, sagging back into the soft leather interior, which creaked a little under the strain. I'd have sooner gone to the wedding, at least that wasn't about him and his damn networking. "No, Henry."

Even though I refused, he still pressed on with details I tuned out like white noise. I got that it was a mixer being held by a Cornelia Alexander—a woman I knew only as a model and an impressive drinking partner. Nothing drastic, and even less necessary for me to put myself out for, so the finer points of his monotonous droning went unheard. I could have wept with joy when my building slid into view. I let myself out of the Mercedes before it had even fully stopped.

"Just consider it, Emmeline."

"Non, nein, bu, nej, den, nai, aniyo, nie, niet, nema, NO!" I somewhat childishly slammed the door behind me and set off into a ramble of expletives, not really caring whether he heard. There was no way that eleven languages of 'no' would mark the end his pestering, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing that it was four more languages than he knew. Working in a book shop had it's advantages.

"Your round." Chris smirked at me across our usual table in our local bar, Esme's, and shook his head with a slow growling criticism of a laugh. "Lightweight."

I thought I was doing quite well considering I'd been drinking for three hours longer than usual and was still standing, or rather slumping. Past the point of feeling just fuzzy enough to forget all my problems, I was well into the realms of wanting to cry over them. This was nothing new, it was just happening three hours earlier than usual.

I threw my purse at him, trusting him to not take advantage of the credit cards I refused to touch, and collapsed face down onto the table. Every sensible bone in my body told me to stop drinking when another work day stood on the other side of midnight, but those bones appeared to be the smallest ones in my body. The ones in my fingers, maybe. Or in my toes. More likely the bones in my ears. Any time I tried to let them take conscious control, I was met by a roar of objection from the rest of my body, which far preferred alcoholic escapism to waking up sober.

In keeping with comfortable patterns, my company was made up only of the social rejects who had a very different outsider impression of my life. Three fifths of that circle sat with me—excluding myself—with our spare, Esme, choosing to extricate herself from our pity party to attend to some pressing 'business' in her office.

What that really meant is that she had a private bathroom, had consumed her weight in the brightly coloured cupcakes and liqueurs she insisted on selling, and preferred to save face in front of her customers. Her shock of red Veronica Lake hair and Bette Davis eyes somehow kept her enigmatically charismatic through being absolutely trollied, and she rarely had any will to dispel the illusion that she carried herself with anything other than utmost grace and poise by being caught worshipping the porcelain throne in the ladies bathroom.

Chris, on the other hand, was a hulk of a man with a stocky build who might just have had an unfulfilled wanderlust to rival my own. He, too, craved change he wouldn't actively seek to discover and overcompensated for that lack of motivation with relentless cynicism and sarcasm. He would be at his finest and most resentful right around the time I hit the full blown depressive drunk zone and we would have tremendous rants about the state of the world, and how our misery was everyone else's fault bar our own.

The other two fifths of our circle were definitely more of a completed part than two separate segments. Daniel had been my best friend since I was five and, consequentially, had a fairly good idea of exactly who the real Emmeline Tudor was. He was his usual bitchy self, dripping in designer threads and too much sparkle. His outlandish approach to 'casual' came less from his excess of wealth and more from the fact he had a civil partner who preferred him to be the femme, and dressed him as such.

There was no 'too much' for the man who wore what should have been a women's charm bracelet between neon leather strapped wrist bands; the man who could name more shades of pink than an interior designer. It had taken a long time for him to accept his sexuality but as soon as he had, he embraced his right to be flamboyant. Women loved him for it, and so did his preferred type of man. As a result, the first gay partner he met turned out to be the one he kept.

Jonathan was good for him, and maybe my third-most favourite person in the world because he was the embodiment of everything I loved about the city. He was a sweet Asian cartoon aficionado wrapped up in a suit, topped with purple tipped spikes and the smell of dirty business and cigarettes—diversity capped professionalism with a penchant for the unusual and a flagrant disregard for anyone with a shred of an orthodox lifestyle. He encapsulated the modest snobbery and paradoxical individuality I lived for. He was so liberal and yet so disciplined; nothing ever seemed to phase him. He was everything I envied in almost plush toy form, and he loved Daniel just the way he was. Even better.

What strange company I kept. When you looked at the five of us—the dowdy billionaire's daughter, the relative supermodel, the mismatched _Brokeback Mountain_ replicas and... Chris—it hardly seemed likely that we'd be friends, let alone that we'd be united by the one quirk that made us compatible...

We were all nerdy by nature. Beyond the bar, Esme was a voice actress for numerous video games and cartoons, and had an obvious extensive knowledge of everything she'd starred in. Daniel and Jonathan were computer programmers, Jonathan a little less 'legitimately' so, and considered a _Star Trek_ marathon to be a date night. Chris was a writer for an international nerd-based website and reviewed all manner of obscure media with one eye firmly on everything zombie.

And me... well, I was just the little nerd who could. I'd dabbled here and there, working in character design within the same company as Daniel, chasing comic conventions around the country with my sketches and occasionally bingeing on video games when the right one came along.

But now I was the odd one out, the one with no ambition. I was happy working by the Dewey Decimal System and doodling in my lunch break, not looking to make it big, just to comfortably exist. Still, we had some interesting conversations about teaming up to create some kind of geeky monstrosity.

A piercing whistle from the bar forced me to look up and search for Chris' fuzzy silhouette. The suppressed violence in his wave and grim expression meant only one thing.

"Your card bounced again," he hissed at me when I approached. Really, this happened far more often than it ought to. I sighed and mouthed an apology, knowing that he resented how I wouldn't dip into my Tudor fortune. He understood why, but that didn't mean he agreed. The way he glared at me was a challenge to let my principles go just once to make sure he didn't remember getting home. That was our routine, and he was damned if that was going to change, even if just for one night.

Dismissing him with a scowl, I stared into the meagre contents of my purse and debated just how much of my soul was hardwired into that credit card. Henry would know the minute I used it and that would be just one slip that led me into his own privately purchased sector of Hell. Was one night of inebriation worth it? Really?

"Don't do it, don't jump." Esme's voice sneaked up behind me in a whisper, knowing that using that credit card was like throwing myself off a jagged cliff face. Her eyes were bloodshot and shining with tears, a tell-tale sign that too much wine and sugar had made her ill, but somehow she was still austerely beautiful. She pulled the card from my purse and whined longingly; she, too, wished I'd indulge but was a little more accepting of my financial ethos.

I tried to explain my empty bank account with a foolproof excuse—"We drink too much"—which earned me a nod and a murmur of agreement.

"I'll cover your rounds for the night if you do me a favour." I hated to admit it, but she had my attention riveted. I spent my life returning her favours, and with no pay day insight for another week, I'd be looking at seven more, at least. "I need a place to... hang out."

"Again?"

"Just for a few days. She's searching the area again. The woman just won't give up."

I couldn't even begin to understand what Esme was going through. After running away from home and her abusive mother when she was fifteen, she'd made an impressive way up from the London gutters just by way of pure dumb luck. Even then, she had an irresistible, husky voice that turned the right heads.

Now at twenty-one, just a year younger than me, she had this: her own speakeasy type establishment with a glass topped bar, war-time styled glass decanters lining the mirrored shelves, and deep seated red Chesterfield booths and armchairs circling the candle lit mahogany tables. It was her own romantic vision of perfection and she was in no hurry to share it with the woman who never stopped looking for her. Any news that she was in the area sent Esme into hiding and rightly so—her mother was a gargoyle who was only looking for a pay off.

"Of course. 'Misery loves company'." She half-laughed and kissed my temple, waving a hand to one of the bartenders dressed in black braces and a bow tie to fit the theme. He smiled at her indulgently, far too blatantly displaying his soft spot for the self-made beauty, and put together our drink order without even really stopping to think about it. He might have been disgusting if his affection hadn't been so entirely justified.

Then, for the first time, I saw something I'd never seen before. Esme whimpered and blushed as crimson as her hair, looking at something over my shoulder bashfully, then coiling up into a spring of uncharacteristic nerves. When I opened my mouth, she shook her head severely and composed herself before stepping past me to address whatever issue had her crippled like a gawky teenager. I turned with her, mystified, and felt like I'd walked smack into a brick wall.

I missed his name because I was too busy replicating her initial reaction, cringing in embarrassment at just the split-second glimpse I caught of what definitely qualified as six foot three inches of screaming distraction. From behind my arm, I stole a better look of the man too beautiful to be human—a look I didn't feel worthy of stealing.

Swept back dark hair framed a gorgeous bronze face that would have looked more at home on a god or an angel. Thick lashes edged eyes of the most intense emerald that shouldn't have been at all obvious in the dim light of 'Esme's', but all my attention centred on his lips.

Lips that looked like they needed to be kissed and bitten—definitely bitten. He gave off the impression that he was a selfish lover who needed to be put in his place. I had to look away before I let my loosened inhibitions rule me and have me jumping up onto the bar, pouncing like a wolf-child.

Too grateful for the silver tray that arrived on the glass bar, I refused the offer of table service from the smitten bartender and made a cautiously slow and unsteady way back to the three men. Just a small look at that man had knocked my mind back into sobriety, but my body didn't follow suit. I was jelly-legged, maybe more so for knowing I'd shared air with the demigod.

"Stunning, isn't he?" Jonathan sighed dreamily and hooked an arm around Daniel's. "I wonder if he's gay. Bisexual would do."

The idea of him being dragged into the gay entourage made both him slightly less attractive and me slightly pissy. With no good reason, I felt strangely territorial over the stranger and totally resistant to the idea of anyone else having him.

That alone was a disaster waiting to happen; I felt exactly the same way about Hunter. Daniel caught the flicker of ire in my eye and pursed his lips. Whatever he thought, he didn't vocalise it. He probably knew it would cost him his life.

I wrangled with my impulsive reaction to look back at the bar. The fact was I didn't feel deserving of the chance to stare disgracefully at a man so viscerally magnetic. No amount of connections to the wealth and popularity of the land could ever put me on par with _him_ —he who exuded raw sex appeal and absolute recklessness.

So I sought solace in seeking the bottom of my glass and swore blind that I wouldn't look up, knowing that there were another four rounds between me and having to face that bar again, by which time he would hopefully be gone.

He wasn't. I was fall-down-drunk the next time I reached the bar and used the excuse of being completely detached from my decency to shamelessly ogle him. Maybe it was the haze, but he looked even more edible than before. The low lights made it harder to distinguish any flaws that may have been hiding in that diamond of a face, so I made believe that he had none.

Intoxication brought to light new things I wouldn't have thought to notice before. He chatted animatedly with the bartender in a warm baritone purr that made all my nerves stand to attention. On occasion he laughed a satiny caress of a chuckle that was genuine and throaty, rumbling deep down from his stomach. I only wished I had a hint of his body to complete the mental image I was almost definitely taking to my dreams.

"Wow," I breathed, biting my lip to contain a strangled giggle when I realised I'd said it out loud. I was aware of my cheeks being too rosy and eyes too bright, but stared blankly ahead as a denial that I'd spoken.

But I heard him shift to face me, hyper-aware of his gaze on me and the fact that his eyes were laughing. So I took the most brazenly illogical path by turning back to him and cocking my head. If I had his attention I would have been a fool not to try my luck, and I had needs—ones I hoped he'd volunteer himself to satisfy for just one night. Certain aspects of my life afforded a lazily relaxed attitude and I never went home alone, but then I never approached men so entirely out of my league. I usually knew how to pick my battles. Not tonight apparently.

Enough raven hair had fallen loose of my drunkenly dishevelled chignon for me to look coyly from beneath it. Batted lashes and pouting lips aside, my approach was just sensual enough to not be embarrassing. I lifted my glass from the bar and locked eyes with him while I took small silent sips, hoping he might break the silence first.

He leaned in towards my ear, surprisingly sweet breath breezing past my cheek, and purred, "You're on fire."

Twisting just enough to make eye contact again, I arched a brow and said, "I haven't done anything yet."

"No, you're literally on fire."

The moment he spoke, the searing pain of being burnt registered in my elbow. Without realising, I'd positioned myself over one of the mosaic glass candle holders and drooped slowly closer into the danger zone until the flame caught my shirt.

In a flurry, the bartender had a damp towel over my arm and Esme had rushed me over to an ice bucket. It was obvious that she was trying not to laugh at my expense, but the rumble of titters around me suggested that I might have just unwittingly provided their entertainment for the evening. I laughed along with them and left early to change into something a little less singed, confident that my mishap would be old news in the morning, and that at least I'd be memorable to the demigod as the woman who tried to win him by setting herself ablaze.

I had no idea that it would be the first time of many.

#

The great thing about the gargoyle-mother sweeping the streets was that Esme attached herself to me like a barnacle. This invariably resulted in pleasant wake up calls with my morning coffee, hair almost professionally styled, clothes laid out and company to keep me sane. Hell, the woman even cleaned my glasses within an inch of their life when they looked a little murky. By her way of thinking, my vision was imperative to my line of work—somewhere she insisted on following me to.

That was another advantage of working in a book shop. Esme looked most like an immaculate marble sculpture when she was curled up in an armchair reading, and that really was the only option of entertainment in Double Booked. The WiFi connection was atrocious and the host computer nearly always in use by Mrs. Reynolds, so it was read or work.

Esme helped me with the work side of the day on occasion, pacing the aisles of books and noting where the gaps and single copies stood, and ably playing the part of sexy tea lady. Too afraid to leave the shop without me, she was definitely what my mother would have called a 'trooper' when it came to the listless silences. Fortunately, Mrs. Reynolds appeared to be her biggest fan, so when the suggestion of playing background music into the shop was made, she rallied around and had her son come in to hook up a speaker system.

That son? Chris.

"There," he announced jubilantly, spinning a screwdriver artfully around his fingers. "Consider yourselves Chinese pan-pipe music ready."

Scoffing, Esme rifled through the sparse in-house CD collection until she found what she considered to be gold dust. "I think not, Christopher." She brandished a _Frank Sinatra_ CD and ignored his groaned protest. "Hush, metalhead. You don't have to work here."

"Neither do you," he snapped in response, childishly plugging his ears with his fingers. The clash of preferences between them had been known to get ugly, Esme stuck on forties jazz and Chris a dedicated rocker. My own tastes were a little more liberal and eclectic, though maybe not stretching as far as pan-pipes.

I left them to argue over the music, armed with a trolley of books to re-home on the shelves in the art section, my packed lunch courtesy of Esme, and a dull throbbing hangover. The further away I was from the debate, the better. They would duke it out, settle it over the toss of a coin, Chris would leave to go trolling on some internet communities and we'd listen to Sinatra anyway. Like Mrs. Reynolds, I knew how to pick my battles where her son was involved.

Even though I could hear it clearly, I tuned out the argument and worked one-handed while I ate. When the battle was eventually won and Ol' Blue Eyes began to croon, I hummed along quietly and danced between the shelves, enjoying the peaceful tranquillity of my surroundings. The place others might call stuffy and boring was somewhat of a utopia for me, guarded and almost segregated from the bustling metropolis just streets away. It was like my own Shell Island stood in the middle of London, my very own peninsula accessible by foot but cut off from the world when the tide rolled in.

It wasn't until I heard the swell of an MP3 player breaking the lilt of _Mack The Knife_ that I remembered, realistically, how public my peninsula really was. I made out strains of muffled _Fallout Boy_ and my feet stilled beneath me, sure that whoever was visiting wouldn't sweep me up into a swing dance when they saw me prancing. The other three voices in the shop silenced, so figuring their conversation hadn't been appropriate for public spaces—Mrs. Reynolds was definitely a cougar and had the dirty mouth to back it up—I chastised them with an eye roll they wouldn't see and felt my gaze fix on one, or two, books in particular.

'Syncretic Sciences' razzed at me from it's shelf, the way it had every workday for two years. My pet project had become a fixation and a challenge, one I didn't really care to defeat. I liked to chase the unobtainable but drop the tail when I got too close to catching it. I didn't know what my life would become if I actually achieved something, and that uncertainty made me keep a safe distance between me and my aspirations. I had, after all, seen how success could make a person ugly.

Henry hadn't been a prestigious business man when I was born; I saw exactly how to do it and how I could replicate it, but like GI Joe said, 'knowing is half the battle'. I wasn't a fighter, I was a dreamer. So much so my mother often called me 'Sleepy Jean.'

The buzz of _Thnks Fr Th Mmrs_ got closer and had me chuckling to myself at the thought of monkeys in directors chairs. The buzz became a roar the moment it was next to me.

"Hi, sorry." I tried not to audibly groan at having to associate with the customers. "Can you point me to the direction of the graphic novels?"

"Right in front of me." I plastered on my 'good employee' smile and side-stepped to look at the owner of the voice.

My brain stuttered to a complete halt. It felt like I'd walked right onto a Hollywood movie set and ended up face to face with the sexy bad boy in some corny rom-com. With his hair falling down to his temples and skimming the tops of his thick dark brows, he looked like a fucking poster boy—the kind-hearted rebel who never found the love he always craved. The kind of man school girls wrote their names with in a heart and swore blind they'd marry him. A walking wet-dream.

_Him_. The man from Esme's.

And he looked almost as surprised to see me. His face broke into a mind-numbing smile mid-examination of me and his weight shifted onto one leg. With no visual impairment, I could fully appreciate the finer details I'd not been able to see in the dimly lit bar with an astigmatism handicap.

The slight surprise in his eyes made them wider and greener, almost inhumanly vivid in emerald hue. He wasn't cleanly shaven like he had been the night before, and the light muzzle of dark prickles spread up to his perfectly sculpted high cheek bones. A small scar marred his Cupid's bow, maybe a souvenir from a drunken battle over a lovelorn woman. One small flaw in the face I'd considered a diamond.

_Wow_. I was careful not to outwardly express that opinion again. It hadn't been until I locked eyes with him I realised just how much I'd wanted to run into him again and apologise for my less than verbose greeting and unimpressive display of pyrotechnics.

"Well—" I damn near flinched when he finally spoke, "—that's a much better reaction than last night's self-harm."

Not knowing what he meant, I forced focus back onto myself and realised that I was grinning like a fool. Not my customer service smile, something genuine and deceptively soul exposing. And probably manic and shit-eating. He was one of _those_ people who pure exuded joy, someone you couldn't help but smile around. Just like Hunter.

"Sorry, it's not intentional. The little man running auto-pilot in my head decided that was the appropriate response to your pheromones." I cringed and mouthed _'What?!'_ at myself, blushing violently as I turned back to the shelf in self-defence. What the hell had possessed me to say something so obtuse? "So, any graphic novel in particular?"

The amusement in his voice provoked goose bumps. "No, just browsing. Unless you can recommend...?"

"Nope." Straightening, I rounded him to make an escape. "I'll be at the desk if you need any more help."

I could have kicked myself for moving quite so hastily. Any remaining blood that hadn't rerouted to my cheeks flooded to my hands and made them shake relentlessly against the old world cash desk, so hard that the rose quartz friendship bracelet Daniel had given me rattled against the wood. Esme, Chris and Mrs. Reynolds all stared at me, apparently still locked into the state of total noiselessness that they'd been pushed into when _he_ walked through the door.

Eventually, Chris choked a laugh and shook his head at me. "'Appropriate response to your pheromones'? Only you could dweeb up a chat up line like that." My blush got impossibly deeper at the realisation they'd been listening in on the brief conversation and that they could be easily heard now.

"It wasn't a chat up line," I hissed, feeling like I might pass out if I didn't get a grip. Chris muttered something about thinking I had better taste as he excused himself and left the shop, the exact moment the demigod slid into view and started walking towards us. _Christ, give a girl a chance,_ I thought, willing some of the colour to drain from my face. His pace was leisurely enough for Esme to give me a thumbs up, assuring me that I didn't look like a crazy person.

"Did you find everything you were looking for?" I asked too cheerfully, tensing every muscle out of his view. What the hell was he doing to me? I wasn't the type of woman who got hot and hormonal over men. Man, maybe. Just one.

"Sort of. I found something. Independent author, right?" He threw a book down on the desk in front of me and somehow Esme's and Mrs. Reynolds' silence thickened.

I swallowed hard at the sight of 'Syncretic Sciences' staring up at me. _Of all the books in all the bookshops..._ "That's right."

"Did this Emmeline White do anything else?"

"Uh... no. Just that novel and we have the only two copies that got printed."

"Huh..." I kept my eyes fixed on his hands sinuously stroking the spine of the book and felt the movement all over my body. He leaned closer towards me, forcing me instinctively back like a repelling magnet. "Shame, really. Did she come to you to sell them?"

"Oh, yes." Mrs. Reynolds chipped in, granting me a precious second to reassemble my brain cells. "That's how most of our independent works make it here."

"Oh, so would you have means of contacting her? I'd like to petition for her to expand her bibliography."

"No need." The last ounce of blood in my body pooled in my face when she laughed and nodded in my direction. "Why go through the desk monkeys when you can go straight to head office?"

Meekly, I lifted my head to meet his scorching hot gaze and forced an almost apologetic smile. He hummed inquisitively on an exhale.

"Emmeline White, eh?" His voice caressed my name with aggressive sexuality. The fantasy of him growling it while he was balls deep inside me made my mouth dry. "That's much better than what I've been calling you in my head." He smirked at my raised eyebrow and clarified—" _Lisbeth._ "

_"The Girl Who Played With Fire_. Very clever." I pulled my eyes away from his, needing to dispel the sunspots he left in my field of vision. "And you are?"

"Blaze."

I immediately looked back at him and scowled. Giving a name like that seemed like a poor joke at my expense. "Are you trying to be funny?" For a moment it didn't look like he understood, but then the dazzling smile crept back onto his face. His laugh was satiny and not even slightly patronising like it could have so easily been. He quickly gave off the impression that he'd never lied once in his life because his face could soften even the most brutal truths.

"I wasn't but if it happened that way, that's fine by me. Tell me, Emmeline..." The way he said my name again like we were familiar made my stomach knot. "... This is 'Double Booked', right? Hypothetically, if there are only two copies of a graphic novel and you sell just one, what happens to the other?"

"Um, well..." Coughing away the lump in my throat, I turned to find something arbitrary to distract me from his intense green eyes. "Usually, we take the spare off the shelf and contact the supplier or author to order more. If there are no more prints, it ends up in the book graveyard next door."

He craned his neck to look at the adjacent unit. "The charity shop?"

"Sure. 'One man's trash is another man's treasure' and all that jazz."

He seemed to bristle at the word 'trash' and stalked back off beyond the shelves without a word, leaving the three of us to admire him from behind. That view was almost as impressive as the front from the shoulders down, and for the life of me, I couldn't get past the primal urge to strip him bare and stare at him until the image of his naked body was permanently imprinted on my mind. Now there was a sight I wouldn't forget in a hurry.

Too quickly, he came back and tossed the other copy of 'Syncretic Sciences' down, free hand digging into his back pocket for his wallet. "I can find a happy home for this," he promised. "What the proverbs don't tell you is what happens after that trash becomes treasure. Other people see it as treasure, too. Just look at any aspect of modern economy for proof. All it takes is one man's idea and another man's faith."

Recognising Henry in that statement, I faltered just slightly in my reply. He was the ideas man, and there was no doubting that his unfathomable charisma was how he'd conned—... I mean _convinced_ , people to put their belief in him. But I refused to believe that I was capable of anything like that just by paying for a couple of prints of my doodles.

"I expect my fan club to converge every Friday and send me love notes every month," I joked.

"Well, today is Friday. No time like the present. This place closes at six, right?" He didn't pause for a reply. "So I'll head off now to get a start on those love notes and swing round to collect you later."

My forehead knit into a frown while I scoured his comment for sarcasm. There was none. Even his seraphic face looked deathly serious—about fetching me from work at least, possibly not the love notes.

"Isn't there a pick up line missing from this conversation?"

He ducked down to my eye level, scrutinising me as I rang the books through the till and stuffed them into a paper bag. "You don't look like you have a desire to be wined and dined before you're sixty-nined..."

"I don't." My obsession with Hunter went deep enough to earn me a reputation as a heart-breaker for anyone who wanted anything more long-term than the time it took to find a vacant bed or sofa, take care of business and see me safely into a taxi. If a sordid screw was what he was after, he'd have done better propositioning me outright. I did, however, feel my pulse quicken at the dark promise in his observation.

"Well, then." Blaze straightened, scooping his purchase up from the desk. "I'll see you at six."

Esme quickly pounced on the computer after we'd watched him leave in an awed muteness you'd probably only see on a playground after a childish brawl. There was a sudden and instant gush of nightmarish teenage gossip between her and Mrs. Reynolds the moment he slipped out of sight, followed by a rapid fire line of questioning I had few answers for.

"Do you think he knows who you are? He would have mentioned if he'd seen you pictured with your dad, right? Oh, but you never wear the specs when you're out drinking, so maybe it didn't click. Oh, wow, can you imagine the press coverage of you two?"

"Hold up." I raised a hand to silence the onslaught. "Are you thinking he's pursuing me to score a rich chick?"

"Oh, please." Esme scoffed and navigated to a search engine over my shoulder, fingers flying so fast they were almost a blur. "Blaze has been in everything. Modelling for major labels, acting, he was the Monday's Miracle front-man before they got big, and..."

A music video pinged up on the screen and blared The Bystander Effect's cover of _Weak_ into the shop. One of my favourites.

"He was the anti-CJ. He's been near Amelia Marsh's mouth." I had more than a little girl crush on the woman who was more tattooed leg than body.

"Uh huh. That hot tamale who just 'didn't' ask you out is already a big deal. And... well..." She sighed down at me ruefully. "As gorgeous and smoking hot as he is, he doesn't date. He's never pictured with female company despite obviously constantly beating them off with a big stick, and barely associates with anyone attached to a vagina. God knows I've tried."

"Gay?" The question had to be asked.

"Implicitly no. He's been asked in numerous interviews and nothing he says is anything other than the veritable truth."

I felt slightly smug that I'd correctly identified that trait, but then frowned at the information Esme was laying in front of me in the medium of news clippings and online gossip blogs. "So what the hell was _that_?"

"For both our sakes, I'm hoping it was pillow talk." She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard enough to blanch the skin in my fingers. "Please, Miss Untouchable, tap that. I need to live vicariously through you."

I didn't believe for a moment that 'Blaze'—God, even his name did wicked things to me and described his visceral effect on me perfectly—would turn up in that threshold at six o'clock. Articles of how untouchable he was had been pushed under my nose all day and I couldn't come up with a single good reason why I might be the woman he broke a pattern for. The more super-talented and gorgeous I found out he was, the more convinced I became that our verbal spar had been nothing but bravado. Even if he did secretly know which family I was really a part of, he had to be worth a lot of money himself. If he wasn't after the millions I refused to touch, what the hell did he stand to gain?

I pushed the thought of him to the back of my mind with copious amounts of coffee and random reads from the Double Booked science-fiction shelves, and eventually Esme and Mrs. Reynolds forgot about him, too. The afternoon passed in what was essentially an audio-described flashback for Mrs. Reynolds' benefit; Esme recalling the tales of her dire childhood to explain exactly why she was seeking asylum with us. At times it looked like they might both cry, so totally engrossed in the woe, and these were the times I dozed covertly, having heard the montage of memories often enough to no longer empathise.

My head and elbow leaned against the window, cooling the throb of both the hangover and the burn enough for me to feel drowsy. On my lap laid a battered old sketchbook full of the more decorative pieces that had been too detailed for my graphic novel.

_God_ , at least one person was going to read that book and have a damned good laugh. Of all the graphic novels in this shop, and we had a pretty extensive collection, why did he have to pick mine?

I was toying with the idea of him using the other copy for toilet paper when a peculiar little bug of a maroon car pulled up to the kerb outside the shop and idled, engine still running but no signs of life inside. The windows were tinted enough to reveal that the lone occupant was male but little else.

"Looks like your sexy visitor came back after all," Mrs. Reynolds quipped, pulling my attention away from the window long enough for the driver to step out onto the street and lean up against the side of the vehicle, casual as anything.

Once the disbelief melted away, horror struck me. Turning to Esme, I opened my mouth to insist that I'd see her home safe before I even entertained putting my safety in the hands—and car—of the man standing outside.

"If you blow him off, I will kill you. I know where you sleep," she muttered, staring lustfully through the window. "But if you're not at the bar by nine to gossip, I'll send out a search party."

"Thanks," I said wistfully, wrinkling my nose at the spectacle outside. "I appreciate it."

The minute the clock ticked around to the hour, Blaze was on that threshold looking divine and almost hopeful. He'd shaved and styled his hair back, looking more like the hot stud I'd seen at the bar and less like the ruffled bad boy I'd seen in the shop earlier that day. I couldn't possibly decide which side of him I preferred because both were equally as delicious.

He greeted me with a purr and took my sketchbook from my hand. "Ready to go?"

"Almost, I just—" Esme appeared with my bag and draped it over my shoulder, discernibly whimpering with need for the demigod. "Okay, so I guess I'm ready."

With a smile, Blaze lead me out to the path and paused at the passenger door, pulling it open for me to climb in.

"Seriously?"

"You don't like my city car?"

I scoffed scornfully, the unwillingly well groomed feline in me unleashing fully sharpened claws. "That's not a car. It's a _Cygnet_." My form had graced the back seat of many fine vehicles over the past twenty-two years, and his boxcar didn't make the grade.

"It's an Aston Martin," he objected.

"It's a gremlin car." Shuddering, I resigned myself to my fate and stepped past the open door to get it, flinching when he slammed it behind me.

Climbing into the driver's seat, he started the engine before I had chance to fasten the seatbelt. "Do you have something better than this tucked away?" I bit my lip. I'd never confess to anyone that I had an untouched cobalt blue Bentley hidden away in a private garage. It was another token of Henry's 'affection' that I refused to touch. "Don't worry, I don't fill her up after midnight, so she won't mutate and eat you."

"Unless 'she' secretly transforms into _Optimus Prime_ in the dead of night, I'm withholding any hope that this thing won't put me in a coffin." He stopped to look at me and laughed before pulling out into the dense city traffic, tutting at my white knuckle grip on the seat either side of my legs.

"So how's the elbow?"

"Fine, just stiff." A blatant and pitiful lie. The amount of analgesics pumping around my system might have just been the reason why I could string coherent sentences together around him, but there was still a searing pain in my elbow every time I moved. Luckily, I think I'd cried so much over my teenage years that my tear ducts were paralysed through over use.

"You need an aloe vera plant," he mused, tossing an arm around my headrest to bridge the gap between our seats. I wanted to scream at him to keep both hands on the steering wheel but fear for my life kept me quiet. "Don't worry, I checked our route and there are no open flames."

"Our route?" There was a glint of mischief in his eye that he didn't put words to. I shuffled uncomfortably, hands moving from the seat to my bag where I had a better grip on something—anything—to steady my nerves.

"So... you don't hang out with women." Shrugging apologetically, I tried to not get preoccupied with the way his eyes darkened like something bothered him.

"You've been doing some research?"

"Well, you know. A guy you meet in a bar strolls into your workplace and bluntly tells you that he's picking you up when you finish without really asking if it's okay. It pays for a girl to be armed with information. 'Knowledge is power'."

"I suppose you're right. How very prudent of you."

"Ah, well..." Scratching the back of my neck, I lifted one shoulder in an awkward shrug. "I kind of had it forced on me the minute you left. I'm really more a fan of blissful ignorance. But for curiosity's sake, uh... Why?"

His gaze flickered over me then settled back on the road ahead. "Why don't I hang out with women or why you?"

"Yes."

He sighed, almost amused by my response and shook his head. "I made you set yourself on fire. I suppose this is the least I can do."

"That's all it takes? Stop the presses, I need to let the entire female population of Great Britain know it's that easy."

We drove in silence for the next ten minutes, my unease with travelling in the gremlin car fading with each mile. My gaze stayed fixed out of the window, watching the stop-start rhythm of the sea of cars around us. Despite living there for a little over four years, I didn't know London well enough to take it's chaos for granted like the other suits and stiffs roaming the streets between dinner appointments. It still amazed me that anyone could live comfortably in the middle of all the noise.

I'd not once perused the crowded arenas of Piccadilly Circus or Trafalgar Square, so I was daunted enough by being so close to the action _before_ Blaze pulled into a small private car park and retrieved another nightmare mode of transportation from the boot of his 'car'.

"Rollerskates?" I snapped, crossing my arms defiantly as he pulled off his shoes to slip on a pair of red and white skates of his own. "This had better be your bad sense of humour at play."

"Nope. It's rush hour, this is faster."

"You're fucking crazy, man." He shot me a sterling grin and pulled my door open, swiftly crouching to pull my feet from the foot-well. I was horrified when I realised that he was genuinely serious. "Oh, God. I'm going to die today. Without a doubt, this is my last day on Earth."

"I've got your back." He looked up at me and winked, pulling my shoes off and replacing them with the ludicrously clowny skates. "I had to guess at your size, so I went for a five." I tried not to focus on the fact he'd guessed right. He was turning out to be weird enough without the words 'foot fetishist' flashing over his head in neon lights. "You ever been on a pair of these bad boys before?"

"Sure, when I was about nine." And I'd felt like an idiot then.

"Great! No tutorial necessary, then."

Grabbing me by the waist, he hauled me to my feet and tossed my bag down on the seat behind me. It seemed like I was totally at his mercy in the middle of a relatively alien place, separated from familiar company and any way of contacting them. On rollerskates. Why wasn't I feeling a little more apprehensive than I should have been?

"For interests sake..." I murmured, testing the stability of the wheels underneath me. "... You know how to keep under the press radar, right?" My question had less to do with his lone wolf reputation and more the fear of being identified as a Tudor.

"Why, are you camera shy?"

"If I say I'm camera shy, do you promise not to ask questions?" His eyes narrowed with suspicion but he nodded, agreeing to play along. "I'm camera shy."

"Righto. Ready?" _No._

"As I'll ever be."

With one of his hands wrapped around my wrist, Blaze pulled me along behind him at unnerving speed, weaving between the pedestrians that filled the pathways. Occasionally, he glanced back at me to laugh at the hand I had firmly clapped over my eyes and called back insults based around me being cowardly.

Watching him move so confidently and fluidly, there was really no way to avoid being envious of how comfortable he was in his own body—completely refined and controlled in a hectic environment like it stemmed off from him and had been constructed specifically for his enjoyment. He was more 'London' than Jonathan and the thrill of being literally dragged along for the ride distracted me from the fact that we were being an absolute nuisance.

"I thought you said we had a route," I yelled after shouting an apology to the fifth person finding themselves on my collision course. Blaze spun around and ground to a halt in front of me, cheeks flushed and pupils wide with adrenaline.

"We do, I just wanted to see how many times I could take you around in a circle before you noticed."

Stepping back to look at the surroundings, I realised that I was looking at Nelson's Column for the third time. "Oh! Bastard."

Grinning, he grabbed my hand and pulled me in front of him, pushing me forward at a much slower and safer pace than before. His fingers innocuously thread between mine like it was the most normal thing he could have done, and somehow that encouraged me to move my legs. I might have thought it was because I wanted to escape if I couldn't feel the goofy smile plastered to my face.

Everything in my life at that moment felt askew, turned upside down on it's head and showing no signs of righting itself. There was no way that we would actually avoid the media when Blaze, of all people, was circling the capital on rollerskates with some ragtag brunette beside him, but that was okay. The time for bitter retrospect and mourning my mistakes would be later. It was impossible to think logically when he had such a stupefying effect on anyone who looked at him. As soon as we parted ways, I was sure I'd be instantly plunged into a deep regret for being so foolhardy, but when he looked so urbane and free, it was hard not to get a little carried away in the moment.

And then I remembered an old cliché I'd heard so often before but never really put value to: 'Be careful what you wish for'. If I really thought about it, Blaze might just fit the description of the tall, dark and handsome stranger I'd wanted to mess up my life, and maybe I'd dreamed of him so hard he just sprang into existence. Hardcore _Buffy The Vampire Slayer_ fans might call him my 'key'—a complete fabrication of something else moulded into human form, creating false memories of his fame and popularity for everyone else but me. Admittedly, I probably wasn't subconsciously protecting him from a psycho goddess, but my being there with him seemed just as unlikely.

But why the hell was I complaining? I'd wished him, so if he was going to send me down in a blaze of embarrassment and public humiliation, it was my own damned fault.

#  THREE

#

Our route led us to Hyde Park, where skating seemed to be far less bizarre. Girls in daisy dukes and tank tops spun around skilfully with their bandana wearing boyfriends to the music pounding from portable CD players, swirling around us like we were no real obstacle. Masses of people called Blaze's name when they saw us, proving to me just how notorious the man was, and their curious frowns at our linked hands were a confirmation that _this_ was not his usual means of association.

Like I had any doubt. I shook my grip free and folded my hands securely under my arms, painfully aware that I didn't fit in wearing tattered grey slacks and a style-less work shirt.

Apparently sensing my insecurity, Blaze pointed at my shirt and shook his head authoritatively. "Off."

"Excuse me?"

"Okay, not off as such. Undo the bottom buttons and tie it up like a bolero."

Sparing a quick glance down, I rolled a foot away from him and turned my back on him. Revealing my midriff in public was possibly a bigger anxiety trigger than if he'd asked me to strip naked. At least all eyes would have been fixed on my chest that way. The way my body looked was a secret shame.

"Come on, Emmeline. You'll burn up like that. I know that's your specialist area, but—"

I spun back around to him, hands on my hips. Would he ever let that go? "It's Emmy, not Emmeline, and I'm not doing shit to this outfit. Let me sweat or take me home."

"Interesting set of options," he murmured, trying not to laugh at the fact that I'd been unwittingly suggestive and had the blush to show that I knew it. "But seriously, whatever your beef is with your body, nobody cares what you look like here. Check it." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at a seriously overweight man wearing less clothes than decent. "You could be seriously disfigured and nobody would care with this guy hogging the vista." I froze, numbed by his unintentional perceptiveness.

He arched a brow at my expressionless face and took advantage of my stillness. "Okay, I'll just sort you out myself."

Before I had any time to object, he had the bottoms of my shirt tied off low enough to not reveal flesh and my sleeves rolled up. Surprised by his swiftness and embarrassed by the fight I'd put up over nothing, I stared at him, struggling to muster the smile he'd so easily caused before.

If he sensed my inner turmoil about being so dangerously close to being exposed, he didn't give it away when he turned me back around and began to pluck the bobby pins from the French knot styled into my hair. "So how long is this mane of yours?"

"Very. That's why it was tied up." He must have ignored the blatant vehemence in my voice, too, because he kept on pulling at the pins until there was nothing to stop it tumbling free. His fingers sifted through the strands of raven from root to the tips that ended at my waist.

_"Jesus._ " Something in his tone made my stomach flip. It was carnal and raw—something which had no place being directed at me. I'd been object of enough men _and_ women's affections to hear lust in a voice, but Christ, this was so primitive that I half expected his teeth to sink into me. "Why the hell don't you wear it down all the time?"

"It gets in the way," I whispered, scared to turn around and see if his face matched his sultry growl. "You'd find out how much if you backed up enough for me to stop feeling like your prey."

Immediately, he stepped back out of my personal space, but I could still feel his intensity permeating off him in waves. I was sure my brain was starting to bleed from how severely sexual he was, and I decided in that minute that, as popular and gorgeous as he was, I wouldn't grant him the privilege of being treated any differently from any other man who was drawn to me. If one night in my bed was what he was looking for, he'd get it without this charade.

"There are easier ways to score a lay than with disingenuous flattery and outlandish dates, you know."

My fists clenched at my sides as he closed in on me, grabbing me by the hips to pull me right up against him. His hands so close to my bare skin made me sway—I wanted them lower, tensing and flexing, nails biting into my skin as I rode him... My head tipped back to catch a first time glimpse of the twining flecks of copper coursing through his irises. "Wow." _Ugh, damn it..._

"Cute," he laughed, "but I've got you pegged, Emmeline. You'd be surprised how much you give away without even knowing it, and trust me, I'm no enabler. If you think I brought you here as part of some juvenile mating ritual, you're wrong."

"So why _did_ you bring me here?"

He frowned, slowly releasing me. "I don't know. I didn't even think about it. But I'm not an idiot—I know that if I took you home and screwed you now, I'd never see you again."

"So?"

Scowling, he ducked down and planted a quick kiss right on my lips. I jerked back in surprise, baffled by the passionless advance. "No. I'm not nearly done terrorising you."

His rejection didn't hurt as much as it should have, unlike my palms and knees after repeated impacts with the concrete. An hour in the baking June evening sun proved that I wasn't half as graceful as he was and not nearly as reflexive. Every time I fell, he darted over to me to save me but ended up on the floor with me. While he laughed, I sulked, feeling like an uncoordinated no-hoper.

"We're not doing that again," I huffed, rolling my eyes at being carried around like a sleepy child. There was no denying that being that close to him was a treat for all the senses—he smelled divinely of shower gel, sweat and himself—but the blood soaking through the fabric of my slacks made me feel more idiotic than the rollerskates did.

Pain didn't bother me, but it seemed to bother Blaze, who insisted on carrying me back to his silver bug car en route a pharmacy so he could clean me up when I winced uncontrollably with every step.

"Agreed," he nodded. "I should have guessed that you were too accident prone for something my seven year old nephew does quite capably."

"Don't mock me. I know people." Throwing his head back to laugh, Blaze set me down on the bonnet of his car and lifted my trouser legs to survey the damage. His laugh was almost as silken and seductive as his voice—a good distraction. "Is it bad?"

"You'll live. Though judging from the state of these kneecaps, you're no stranger to falling over."

"Occupational hazard. I'm a professional wino." He ripped the packet of an antiseptic wipe open and seemed to look up for signs of life when I didn't flinch on it's contact.

"So you're kind of self-destructive?" What the hell kind of question was that to ask a woman he'd just met?

"I got in a car with a total stranger and you're only just realising this? Sure, I'm 'kind of' self-destructive like the Pope is 'kind of' Catholic."

He didn't answer until he'd finished cleaning my grazes. "What would it take to change that?" _Why the hell do you care?_

"Crack." As much as he tried, he just couldn't resist laughing at the dark joke, making it somehow clear that he knew I wasn't that kind of person.

"You always drink at Esme's"

"Yup. The five of us; we're a coven. We call the corners every night and substitute the virgin's blood for red wine because we're strict vegetarians."

His brow arched with wry amusement. "Do you ever stop being 'on'?"

"No, I'm like a wind turbine. Or a solar powered calculator."

After removing the skates and replacing my shoes, he pulled me up to my feet and guided me to the passenger seat by the small of my back. In just ninety minutes, it had become like he'd been in my life forever. He was easy to be around, too easy. His little touches and secret smiles felt special and gifted to only me, and he was going to have to knock that right off. There was no space in my head for another man. Hunter, Chris, Daniel and Jonathan had my 'platonic penis' quota covered.

"You never actually told me why you don't socialise with women."

Blaze looked at me like he'd known the question was coming and was glad I'd finally cracked. "Honestly? Without sounded conceited, it's impossible to find a woman out there who doesn't want me to fall in love with her and whisk her off to my ivory tower. Better to steer clear of temptation. I can't get attached."

"Can't or won't?"

"Can't. And neither can you." He turned to me, catching me in a gaze so shimmering hot it was like watching magma bubble, and it burned right through my resistances to the truth inside me. I'd never felt so much like an open book to someone. "I told you, I've got you pegged. I don't know the why's, what's and who's, but I knew last night that, when you looked at me, you wanted nothing more than to screw me senseless and send me packing. Not a single white picket fence in sight in that scorching hot fucklust stare of yours."

"Fucklust?" I settled back in my seat, impressed by the new expression I was definitely going to add to my vocabulary when he was out of earshot. "So why all this rollerskating bullshit? Why not just invite yourself back to my flat and have done with it?"

"Well, for a start, you set yourself on fire and left pretty quickly." He smirked and started the engine, pivoting in the car park to head back in the direction of Double Booked. "And I'm not a misogynist. I have no objections to forging friendships with women who don't pose some sort of threat of wanting 'more'. But you know, with this face,"—he pointed—"it's difficult to avoid running into complications. Better to steer clear completely and avoid the stress."

Nodding to the sentiment, I rested my head back and narrowed my eyes at him. "That doesn't explain the rollerskate torture. Are you seeking petty vengeance on the inherently clingy womankind through me?"

"Shit no. I like rollerskating, it's fun. I like to have fun with friends and the people I hope will become friends. I get the impression that you're at your best before you've swapped bodily fluids. I'm in no hurry to become disposable to the first woman I've felt comfortable being around in a long time."

That hurt because it was true. With a few minor exceptions, my attitude towards a lover had a tendency to cool significantly after I'd kicked them out of my bed or made a dash for their front door. It wasn't intentional, just a method of self-preservation that stopped me from getting too close to anyone who wanted to chase a commitment. Blaze couldn't have been more right when he said I _couldn't_ get attached to someone. It simply wasn't an option.

But I didn't know if adding him to my circle of friends was, either. Could I simply socialise with a man who screamed SEX, not succumb to weakness and not turn arctic like I could with only four others? I didn't trust that I could.

Esme's jaw dropped when her eyes fell on my bloodied slacks and raw palms. She seemed so appalled that she didn't stop to eye-fuck Blaze, who lingered in the doorway to my flat after insisting that he had to make sure I made it inside without falling over. In fact, she glared at him icily and demanded an explanation for me looking so dishevelled, which he volunteered casually with no hesitation while he walked aimlessly around my small open plan flat, stopping occasionally to check out my displays of movie and video game memorabilia.

"Rollerskating, are you fucking kidding me?" She spat her words like venom, tugging the knot of my shirt free because she how crazy it must have driven me. "Who does that? You take a woman out for a nice meal, maybe a drink if she's not hungry, then if you must sate your libido, a cheap hotel for a quickie."

"What can I say, Esme? I'm out of practice." Blaze raised his hands like she had him at gunpoint and edged over to the dining room table to set down my bag and sketchbook. "She'll deny it, but she had a great time. Isn't that right, Emmeline?"

"No," I lied, but he saw my betraying smirk. There really was no denying that a part of me was disappointed to come home, even if he did insist on using my full name like some kind of manager or scholar. "Just promise me there'll be no extreme sports next time."

He cleared the space between us in five strides and grabbed my hands, pulling them up to his lips and staring into my eyes with faux-seriousness. "I swear to never put your life in danger again. I have something way better in mind."

When he left shortly afterwards, I had no expectations of seeing him again. We hadn't traded numbers and I didn't know his surname, age or anything people usually discussed early into a 'friendship'. He knew my name and where I lived and worked, but what use was that if he'd decided I was too much of a klutz to be seen with?

Our Hyde Park disaster obviously got snapped but, thankfully, I wasn't named. That didn't stop me being recognised by the 'coven' who ribbed me mercilessly for the petulant scowl permanently etched across my features. Esme still didn't believe the whole affair hadn't been a disaster, and those pictures and Blaze's prolonged absence didn't really encourage her to change that opinion.

But not even my nearest and dearest had the attention span to pick something to death. We went back to our usual routine of working by day, drinking by night, and spending our free days at Daniel and Jonathan's swanky loft watching horror movies and munching popcorn. Esme went back to her own flat above the bar after four days and threw herself into a new cabaret project, auditioning burlesque dancers and big bands. By the time a week had passed, my knees and elbow had healed enough for me to not think about Blaze when I looked at them.

And if I wasn't thinking about Blaze, I was thinking about Hunter. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

_"You sound like shit, Emmeline."_ I rubbed my chest over my heart, which broke every time he called me. The nine hour time difference between us was brutal, and I knew he'd taken the evening shift so his bitch of a fiancée couldn't listen in on us.

Unlike me, Hunter wasn't too proud to abuse the opportunities of family connections and had taken a job in Tokyo at his father's hardware company without a second thought so his 'woman' could be near her family. How the hell he'd expected me to take it well, I had no idea. That's probably why I didn't find out until he was already there.

"It was payday yesterday. You know what it's like."

"Yeah, you go out and get drunk with those reprobates."

"They're good friends, unlike some." I heard him wince. We knew how to hurt each other too well. The occasional phone call and email wasn't really enough for him to earn the privilege of still being what I considered my best friend, but I gave it to him anyway because I loved him enough to see past the distance. Why couldn't he extend the same gesture to me? I knew I was only a minor blip on his radar.

_"I deserve that,"_ he confessed. _"Work has been insane. Siobhan is being insane. I'm sorry, I really can't deal with any more crazy."_ Story of my life. He never had time for _my_ crazy. Nine years of my life spent agonising over him and not once had he made the time I needed. Never said the words I needed to hear. There was only so much Daniel could offer in lieu Hunter and whatever it was he had inside him that drove me to the limits of my sanity.

"Yeah yeah, I get it. But you can't expect me to sit around on my tod staring at my phone waiting for you to spare me a minute. Reprobates or not—and I'm not denying that we are—they still accept me, even knowing what they know."

"You're not a reprobate, you're just confused."

"Fuck you, Hunter. I'm not confused about anything and that's what makes it so god damn hard to deal with." I took a breath, knowing that if this discussion continued, I'd end up doing something reckless. He kept me sick—I knew it and I'd never get past it. There was nothing in the world that could take away the power of something self-inflicted. Couldn't live with him, couldn't live without him. I'd be messed up over him for the rest of my life. "Maybe one day we'll talk about why I collapsed in that gym."

"Don't bring that shit up. You have no idea how much I hated seeing you like that. You're my best friend, Emmeline, I love the bones of you."

My stomach churned at how he used the L word with me. No matter how many times he said it, it was never enough. Loving me like a friend was nothing. Not even loving me like a sister could satisfy me. I wanted him to look at me like he wanted to be inside me in every way, possessing me heart, body and soul—the way I looked at him. But it would never be that way because he was wasting _my_ love elsewhere.

There was a loud snap that made me jump. I looked down to see that the pencil in my hand had split and splintered after being pressed so hard into a sketch I had no idea I'd been drawing. Cartoon versions of me were torturing a cartoon Hunter in all gruesome manners of disembowelment and garrotting wire decapitations. All of my fraught conversations with him could be documented by the disturbing images that subconsciously formed on the paper when I wasn't really paying attention, like a medium who drew the faces of death she channelled. Not really trusting that the behaviour wouldn't earn me another sectioning, I'd never told a soul that I couldn't control the impulse to picture him suffering horribly for what he'd done to me without even knowing it. I loved him enough to hate and resent him.

"So why are you really calling?" I asked, pushing the sketchbook away and changing tack.

"Come on, Emmeline, you know why. I want you to come to the wedding." I suddenly wished I was still drawing. "Give me one good reason why you won't come."

"I could give you a whole cart full," I snapped evasively, knowing that telling him the real reasons why wouldn't help my 'crazy' case. "But mostly I just really fucking resent flying over to Japan because the bitch demon won't get married over here. It's your wedding, too, Hunter. Why the hell did you give her carte blanche on location?"

"I know how to pick my battles. Are you saying you'd come if we got married at my parents house?"

"No. You asked me for one good reason and I gave you one good reason."

"You're such a god damn brat sometimes, Emmeline. You can't always have it your way. You can't click your fingers and relapse to make the world revolve around you. Sometimes you have to accept that other people matter more than you do and make some compromises. If you have to grit your teeth and fake a smile to get through a wedding you don't want to be at, you should damn well do it because it means something to me to have you here. You're not hurting yourself this time, you're hurting the people you're supposed to love."

"Hunter?" I sucked in a deep breath and tried to gather myself before I launched a tirade in response. He was the most selfish person I knew, without a doubt, and nothing I ever did was right by him. Even when we were still in school, he had me by the proverbial balls every minute, trying to groom me into a miniature version of my mother. As much as I loved her, I had too much spirit to be a kept woman, something I still clung to by not accepting Henry's money. I had too much spirit to be downtrodden by elocution and deportment classes. I used to have too much spirit for a lot of things.

But when I really took a long hard look at myself, I knew that, despite his insinuation that I used my ill thoughts and actions to manipulate people, I'd hate myself for driving him away. So I simply said, "Sayonara, you self-righteous, egomaniacal pedant," and hung up. Sometimes it was just easier to be the one who stepped back and let him think he'd won, and then pretend the conversation had never happened, than find out what would happened if I bit back.

I just wish I'd realised that I had company ear-wigging.

My eyes tracked up from the varnished wooden cash desk of Double Booked up to the midriff of a man standing directly in front of me on the other side. His fingers slowly brushed along the oak towards me and casually flipped open the cover of my sketchbook.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough to know that pissing you off is a bad idea." My eyes snapped up to a grin I immediately and involuntarily mirrored. The thick, large pages covered in my drawings turned one by one at an almost tortuously slow pace, fanning me slightly when they dropped down. "Who's the self-righteous, egomaniacal pedant?"

"Best friend," I muttered, the smile quickly fading. I always found myself getting strangely defensive where conversations about Hunter were concerned, preferring to avoid them completely. The typical reaction of ridicule for being hopelessly attached to a man who thought little of me was quite firmly etched in my mind.

Noticing that the hands invading my art were empty, I forced my gaze down from the emerald eyes boring into the pages and focused on the fractured nub of my pencil. "Was there something I can help you with?"

The hands paused mid-movement. "Aren't you going to ask why I haven't been around lately?"

"None of my business."

"Are you annoyed?"

"No." I shrugged uncaringly and raised a hand to a returning Mrs. Reynolds sneaking in from an extended lunch break. "It's just none of my business. So can I help you?"

"Actually, yes." The sketchbook flapped shut in front of me, then the hands splayed out on either side of it to support their crouching owner. There was no option to escape or evade him—Blaze was back in my domain, gorgeous and stubbornly persistent. "I was hoping for some company for lunch." If he heard my teeth grind, he didn't give it away.

"I'm not big on lunch." I wasn't big on food in the slightest.

"Smoothies?" _Oh_. My resolved thawed slightly at this suggestion. He held up a finger to ask for a minute and practically sprinted out to the goblin car I hadn't heard pull up, returning a moment later with two travel mugs.

"I thought you said smoothies?" Travel mugs were something I had only known to come hand in hand with chauffeur driven hot shots' morning coffees on the way into the office. Hot shots like Henry. At one point, when I'd practically survived on black coffee, I'd had one of my own.

Blaze pushed one of them across to me and clipped up the seal over the hole on my behalf. "I did. Super fresh smoothies. I made them myself."

"In travel mugs?"

"Sure. How else would I get them here without spilling them?"

Baffled by the lengths he'd gone to just to bring me a nutritious liquid lunch, I shook my head and took an apprehensive sniff of the mugs hidden contents. There was an overpowering smell of banana with an undercurrent of what I suspected might be mango. My favourite.

"How about a flask?" Blaze's mouth opened slightly, but as soon as his face registered his disappointment that I might just be right, he waited until I took a sip and trapped his tongue between two rows of perfectly white and straight teeth. The banana hit my taste buds first, closely followed the odd combination of mango and cherry, then a flavour I recognised but couldn't put my finger on until it's after-burn made me cough. "Did you put rum in this?"

He laughed and shushed me, nodding his head towards the ever pricking ears of Mrs. Reynolds hiding just out of sight. "Call it belated hair of the dog."

"How did you know I'd be hungover?"

His head cocked cheekily. "Call it a foregone conclusion on the basis of your admitted self-destructive tendencies." What I wanted to call it was arrogant and annoying. It seemed as though my day was headed down a path towards being a victim of relentless antagonism.

I pushed the mug away with a sneer and forced my attention to fiddling with the shop's old-as-hell computer. He couldn't see the screen—he didn't need to know that I was being evasive. "Well, thank you for the consideration but I can't drink that at work."

"Isn't it your lunch break?" Blaze took a long drink from his mug and licked the rogue drops of smoothie from his lightly scarred Cupid's bow. The corners of his mouth twitched at my awkward shuffle on the spot. He was just so... hot. "Come for a walk with me. No wheels of any kind, I promise. You _can_ walk without injuring yourself?"

"I can walk quite capably, thank you," I shot at him, taken aback by my own temper. Hunter's sour words had left me reeling as always. I forced my tone to soften. "I usually just work through my lunch breaks."

"Emmeline..." He sighed and rounded the desk to heave me to my feet. It didn't matter that I tried my best to be uncooperative and went lax and jelly-legged, he pulled me up effortlessly and so quickly I had to grab onto his arms for support.

His biceps were solid and thick with muscle. Instinctively, I knew my cheeks must be pink. "I didn't—" Blaze coughed to clear his voice of the sudden, unexpected huskiness. I smirked. There was no way he was immune to the sexual tension. "I didn't come here to be told no. Humour me."

He had no idea how little me and humour had in common.

We mingled with the frantic flow of businessmen pacing to lunch meetings, sightseeing tourists and lecture skipping students roaming the packed out streets. The slight fuzziness left by the rum smoothie did little to ease my growing panic in the unfamiliar situation—thrust into a finite tidal wave of unknown, scrutinising faces flooding my senses with harsh, judgemental stares. Every single one of them watching me, rating me, identifying my flaws and failings with passing glances faster than I could process. My feet began to fail and I could feel myself lagging behind, battling to anchor myself with both hands clasped around my travel mug.

The majority of my life from adolescence had been spent seeking to avoid anxiety-ridden scenes like these. Central London on a Friday lunchtime was my worst nightmare and a small, dark, neglected piece of me missed the ostentatious but peaceful suburban palace I'd grown up in, with it's tall imposing walls, looming security gates and pre-approved guest list.

The foreign sensation of an arm wrapping around my waist grounded me slightly and slowed the surge of strangers who almost seemed to part for us.

No, not us. They parted for the Adonis who had picked me up like, what? A pet project because I was commitment-phobic?

"Hey," Blaze whispered down at me, driving me to look up and find his eyes beating down on me like two shimmering green comets. Even though he'd spoken so quietly, his voice was still louder than the roar around me. "Are you all right?"

"I don't like crowds," I muttered. "Sorry."

"Don't apologise." His arm tensed around me and he pulled me closer to his body, fingers kneading into my left side tenderly. All of my breath got trapped in my chest and my brain shut out the rest of the world around me. The combination of dumbfounding fear and unexpected comfort kept my feet moving when I might have crumbled to the floor in a heap, and before I knew it the streets began to clear and quiet. Blaze had damn near guided me safely through Hell.

He pulled me into an inconspicuous restaurant and up a staircase with ornately carved spindles to a sheltered mezzanine area overlooking the street below. I was sure I recognised the red table cloths that matched the immaculate parasols from a magazine. My anchoring travel mug was prized from my grip and set down on the table in front of the chair he ushered me into by the shoulders, and a glass of water crammed with shell shaped ice cubes quickly placed next to it.

"I don't have time to be here, Blaze. I have to go back to work." The idea of having to traverse through that crowd again made me feel sick. I was suddenly grateful for the water in front of me and made a hasty grab at the glass.

Blaze pulled his chair around the table to sit next to me rather than opposite, and pulled the lank ends of my ponytail over my shoulder into his hand. "You have plenty of time, we were only walking for ten minutes." How was that possible? It had seemed like so much longer. "Well, you're not wearing it down but it's much better this way. His fingers combed through my tethered hair gently. I didn't even try to hide my frown at what he was doing—treating me tenderly the way Daniel had done every time I was having a 'saga'. He didn't like the word 'relapse'.

I caught Blaze's fingers in my fist and slowly pulled them away. "Are you always so hands on with people?" He gazed at me like he didn't understand, rubbing his thumb over the pale knuckles trapping the rest of his hand.

"No," he said eventually, "at least I don't think so. I don't really think about it and analyse my actions before they happen—I'm the type to go with the flow. Life is too short to second guess your every move."

"Does your 'flow' usually come with a side order of cliché?" He grinned at me and rested his free hand on my knee. _Holy crap..._ I really wished he'd just bed me then disappear back to whichever smoking volcano he'd erupted from eight days earlier. "You're very intense."

"Am I making you uncomfortable?"

My eyes tracked down to his hand still on my knee, warm and alien, but... "No." I answered honestly. He frustrated me, intellectually and sexually, but once the sand he persistently kicked in my eyes settled, I was no more uncomfortable at that moment than I had been when he'd dropped me off at my flat and said a friendly goodbye. "You say you go with the flow, and yet you go out of your way to avoid women." _Except me..._

He shrugged. "The irony isn't lost on me but I know where to draw certain lines. However, may I snoop?"

My automatic reaction was to smirk. "You're asking my permission? I thought you had me pegged."

"I do." He pulled his hand free of mine to wave to a waitress hovering around the doorway out onto the mezzanine. She approached us, all luscious curves and auburn haired, and curtseyed politely as she delivered a sandwich to the table.

_Curtseyed?_ I waited until she was out of earshot before I laughed at her. Yes, she was definitely one of those women Blaze sought to avoid.

"Something funny?"

"Not at all. You were snooping?"

He held out the plate, offering to share his sandwich, but I shook my head firmly to decline. "It's really more seeking supplementary information in regards to an observation."

"Spit it out."

He sighed and ran a finger over the small scar on his upper lip. "Your so call friends—Esme and the egomaniacal pedant—they really seem to talk down to you."

My mouth dropped open an inch. "And?" I got a very pointed look in return for my snapping before he turned and took a large bite from his sandwich. He wanted to know why, of course he did. "It's concern," I sighed. "I suppose it's hard for them to treat me like I'm at my best when they've seen me at my worst."

"Relapses?" He stared blankly at my look of horror. How much had he heard? "You work in a bookshop, Emmeline—a usually empty bookshop—and the guy talks so loudly that you may as well have just had your phone on speaker. I wouldn't want to go to his wedding, either, if he spoke to me like that." Ignoring my obstinate grunts of objection, he pressed on. "Your other friends don't talk to you like that."

"No, they don't." My mind cycled through the motions of the affinity I shared with the other men in my life. Daniel and Jonathan had struggled to find acceptance over their sexuality and Chris had been dealt a pretty shitty hand in the self-esteem stakes. It didn't take much to knock any of us down to rock bottom, and until you'd been there yourself, you just didn't understand how it felt. "They know what it's like to be damaged goods."

"Damaged goods!" Blaze snorted, but didn't pursue the conversation further. Instead, I watched him snarf down his sandwich with quiet enthusiasm and silently tended to my internal war wounds.

I _was_ damaged, inside and out, and it wouldn't be long before that damage spread. I was too far gone to fight it.

#

Every day I saw the same face. That washed out, beady eyed, chubby cheeked face caked in chocolate and smudged make-up.

Why are you trying to make yourself look pretty, freak? Everyone thinks you're ugly. You're ugly, fat and everyone hates you. No matter how hard you run on that treadmill, you're always going to have a big doughy backside and five chins. Six years of this and you're still wearing the same sized jeans you wore when you left school. Even the fat chicks are embarrassed to see you in the plus size section. Maybe you can cut it out. Maybe you can remove that fat yourself and stitch it back up. You'd do anything for him, wouldn't you? Just make it go away. Nobody would ever know...

No matter how sharp her tongue was, I stood there sadly and took her insults without ever answering back or looking away. I was as bored of hearing it as she was of saying it, but somehow we needed each other. I needed to hear it and she needed to be heard. We were gluttons for punishment. Words were meaningless with no action and neither of us could act alone.

If you looked at us side by side, you'd never guess that we were two sides of the same coin. You'd never understand why we stood so close together. You probably wouldn't even realise that she was there...

"Hey, Emmeline!" The loud voice at the door of Double Booked's bathroom made me jump out of my skin like I'd been caught with my hands in the cookie jar. "You have five seconds before I barge in through this unlocked door, White—I have your boss' permission. Wake u-up!" My chubby company returned my quizzical look at the sing-song voice. She wanted to know why Blaze had intruded on my workplace two days running, too.

My failure to answer in my time limit provoked an uninvited visitor to my bathroom break. I instinctively took a step backward when the door swung open and leaned protectively towards the wide-eyed face standing with me.

Blaze paused, frowning, then sagged back on the spot. "You look upset."

"How do I look upset? I'm not upset. Who's upset? Are you upset? Because I'm not upset." His lips pursed at my ramble and his wariness to approach me dulled. He reached out for my hand carefully, which I almost surrendered until I saw my fat friend giving me a wholly disapproving look. "What are you doing here?"

"Hoping to take you to lunch, actually."

Lunch? With him? How else would you like to fraternise with the enemy?

I could have sworn I heard her hiss. Her patronising tone made me pale. I was somehow betraying her and Hunter by going with him.

"We had lunch yesterday."

Blaze arched a brow at me and grabbed at the hand I didn't give up willingly. His skin was remarkably soft and warm, almost like he was wearing a suede glove. "Hadn't you heard? It's a daily thing. And that was hardly lunch, Emmeline. Come on, something more substantial."

"I don't—"

"It's a free lunch. Who turns down a free lunch?" The muck-caked face shrugged at me. She'd never turned down a free meal in her life. That was my job.

I watched her slide out of view over my shoulder as I was unwillingly tugged from the bathroom, wondering how much worse she'd look in a few hours. Blaze didn't know it, but she'd be lurking everywhere we went. Stalking us.

He spun around when he heard me mutter a goodbye to her and frowned down at me. His hair had been left to flop leisurely across his forehead again and, as ever, he looked beautifully male and edible. I doubted he was going to volunteer himself as my lunch, though.

"Who are you talking to?"

"Nobody." As much as a nobody as I was. "I'm not hungry." Not strictly speaking...

"Then you can watch me eat." He was in I-won't-take-no-for-an-answer mode again. I wasn't confident that he had any others. "But I think you might be persuaded after the journey."

"What does that mean?"

He shot me a wicked grin that made me smile slightly. "It means you're going to sing for your supper." Nightmare visions of karaoke bars and busking flashed in front of my eyes. "Not literally!" He laughed and steered me towards my bag behind the cash desk. "But I meant it when I said this would be a free lunch. I'm not paying for it, either."

There was no chance to question his cryptic statement before we were ushered out of the door by an only too eager to shut up shop early, starry-eyed Mrs. Reynolds. She stared after Blaze enviously; I knew that she, too, planned to live vicariously through me.

Hell, if she wanted to go for lunch with him instead she was welcome to take my place. Central London on a Saturday lunchtime was even less desirable than Friday lunchtime, and my already fragile disposition was quivering with the thought of all those people swarming the streets again. There'd be more of them, flocking and swooping at me like scavenging eagles, mentally picking away at my inadequacies...

Imagine my horror when Blaze parked the goblin car in the very heart of the city and dragged me to Oxford Street sans handbag, throwing me out into my interpretation of a nightmare with no means of calling for help. I doubted that blinking in Morse Code would be useful.

And I was letting him lead me to unfamiliar places and coming out of it unscathed. Was this progression or regression?

"Okay." He pulled me into a small barely noticeable alley way and grabbed my face between his hands. My heart pounded frantically at his proximity. This was how I'd wanted him since the night we met in Esme's—somewhere secluded and up close. Public didn't bother me.

He ducked down towards me and stopped an inch away from my face. "Keep dreaming, Emmeline. I'm still not done terrorising you."

I caught a glimpse of the fat girl in a murky window opposite us and her sardonic expression.

Ho. You'd screw him in an alley and he still doesn't want you. Why the hell would he lower his standards?

She was cruel to me, my sister in misery.

"Of course you're not," I sighed, pulling my attention back up to Blaze, who stared down at me with a frown.

"Lost you there for a minute. You keep looking like you're having conversations with an invisible friend."

"She's not invisible," I whispered, distracted by how perceptive he was. The truth was that days like these were intermittent and yet frequent. I kept bad company, but it was company nonetheless. Like Hunter and I, we were devastatingly inseparable, and maybe more destructively. It was thanks to Hunter that we'd come together and I still didn't know if that was a good thing. She was there for me, always, but she was an honest bitch. "So why are we in an alley?"

"Preparation," Blaze replied, still frowning. "Mess up your hair and rub your eyes."

"You want me to look like I've just been bent over and fucked without the fucking?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, I want you to look like you've been mugged."

It was my turn to frown, confused. I stood stock-still while he worked at roughing me up himself, brusquely tousling my tied back hair and smudging my sparse eye make-up with his thumbs. Totally numb and paralysed, my mind struggled to process what was going on and draw a conclusion as to where this plan was headed. Until—

"I'm not picking pockets!" Blaze blinked blankly for a moment, then shook his head and laughed. "I mean it. I don't care how much of a ruffian you make me look like, I'm not stea—"

"I've not brought you out to steal, Emmeline." I sagged back slightly with relief. "Just to tell a few fibs." Consider that relief unceremoniously ripped out of my hands and stamped on.

"Fibs? What fibs?"

"Well..." He grinned and pulled the hem of my shirt askew. "You're going to run down that street like you're being chased, pick a rich type to 'unintentionally' bump into and turn on the charm for our lunch money." Was he positively insane?

"No!" I snapped resolutely. There was no way in hell I was going to try and pull a scam like that anywhere, let alone on Oxford Street, even if he was the hottest man on the planet. "Why the hell would you think I would do that?"

Blaze shrugged uncaringly and took a second go at messing up my hair. By the time he finished, it was sticking out all over the place from my hair tie and I looked like a street urchin. "You look like you need a little mischief in your life."

"Why would you think that?"

He shrugged again. "You look like your life never deviates from a work, drink, sleep routine." He was almost right. It was a work, drink, copulate, sleep routine. I think I had a right to be defensive.

"Are you done making asinine judgements about my personality? You don't know me, not even a little bit."

Smirking, Blaze pulled me by the wrist to the mouth of the alley and stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. I could see both sides of the street from that point, crammed to bursting with native Londoners and day trip visitors craning their necks to look around in awe. All of them travelled with far more ease and fluidity than I ever could. Was I really going to make such a scene and risk the backlash of collaterally embarrassing Henry by being identified just on Blaze's say so? Did I want him that much?

"Your family is well off. They have high hopes for you but you don't want to comply. You'd prefer to spend your life drawing but now you've self-published one graphic novel and sold both copies, you feel like you've reached the conclusion of that episode in your life.

"School was rough, people didn't like you. You lived in your friend's shadows, though it was entirely by choice. You met a boy. You fell in love. He didn't want you. That rejection consumed your life. You left suburbia to become a self-made woman and got stuck in a depressive routine of working, drinking and rolling out of stranger's beds in a series of one night stands in a futile attempt to gain acceptance you don't really want.

"You don't like yourself and you want change, but you don't know where to find it. When left in your hands, decisions about your life are reckless and unproductive, so you count on others, like Esme and your charming male friend in Japan to take those decisions out of your hands.

"Am I right?"

I glared at him over my shoulder. How had he deduced so much from four short meetings with me? Was he psychic? A stalker? Had I really given so much away just by the way I looked at him?

His eyes shone sympathetically in the summer sun. "This is change. Besides, I left my wallet in the car, so if you chicken out on me, I go hungry, too."

In a flash, his hand wrapped around my ponytail and yanked it. Hard. Tears sprang to my eyes.

"Fuck!" I spun around and, in a knee jerk reaction, slapped him hard. Pain rang through my hand and radiated until it began to tingle. It was the most physical discomfort I'd felt in years, after becoming numb to all else. "What the hell was that, your idea of foreplay?"

Blaze's fingers traced his reddened cheek. He didn't look even slightly shocked by my attack. Silently, he turned me back around and shoved me out into the fray with only one word as guidance.

"Run."

And I'd never felt so much like running in my life. Between that girl chasing me like my shadow, Blaze's uncanny ability to analyse me, and the current of arrogant shoppers flooding around me, panic was the only emotion I could process. Run, yes, I could do that. I could dodge and weave through the people as though I was running from my own life, and maybe if I ran fast enough, I might actually escape.

I felt much warmer than the sun might have made me, and my skin prickled uncomfortably. I was aware of everything—every voice, car, cyclist, and the fact that Blaze was nowhere near me—but somehow totally unaware of my feet moving of their own accord.

I'd run like this before, relentlessly and aimlessly, and the agonising cramps in my muscles were deliciously cathartic. I liked to hurt—I deserved it and it felt productive. The overwhelming need to prolong that ache drove me to keep limping forwards, gasping for breath and eyes burning.

She crept up, running along side me and matching my pace.

You're doing it again. You can't run away from him. You'll always love him and you'll never be good enough. Stop running.

I couldn't. I wanted to run until there was nothing of me left. I wanted to gain enough speed to burn up in the atmosphere like dust. If I couldn't be enough, I didn't want to be anything.

The next thing I knew, I was on my back on the concrete, dazed and light-headed, and only vaguely aware of a throb in my forehead. Everything was quiet and serene for a moment. Not one cell in my body cared how I'd found my way to the ground until the fog in my mind cleared and the faces overhead came into my blurred view.

"I'm so sorry, she just fell at me from nowhere."

"No, no. It's okay, I'm just glad I found her." One of the dark haired faces above me leaned closer, and I could immediately _smell_ who it was. "I'm here. I'm sorry, I couldn't catch up with him." Blaze stroked my hair, then grabbed both of my hands to pull me to my feet. My legs promptly flagged beneath me, overused and flaccid.

"What?"

"The guy who cornered you. Why did you run off this way?"

"Sorry..." What _was_ he talking about? My hand felt my way to my face and found the reason why my vision was so blurred. "Glasses," I mumbled, twisting out of Blaze's grip to search the floor for my absent lenses. The other dark haired face grasped my hand and wrapped my fingers around them firmly, his grip lingering around mine for just a second too long. "Tha—"

_Holy shit._ When my glasses revealed exactly who it was I'd stumbled into, I couldn't help but simper.

Super-urbane and well-groomed, the man still holding onto my hand shot me a smouldering smile that made the corners of his ice blue eyes crinkle joyously. Dimples burrowed deep into his cheeks, adding youth to the age added by a flawless black suit embellished with a shirt that matched his eyes and a black tie.

"Are you all right?" _American!_ My stomach back-flipped. Of all the men for me to collide with, it had to be the single-most man in London who might just be scrummier than Blaze.

"Better now," I breathed, falling victim to my raging libido. "I don't remember falling, I'm very sorry."

"You were mugged?" He glanced up at Blaze for his answer but turned his eyes back to me expectantly. "You and your boyfriend?"

I blurted out, "he's not my boyfriend," and bit down hard on my lip. The insatiable harpy in me wouldn't be happy unless that man was crawling out of my bed in the early hours of the morning.

"Uh, yeah." The snarl in Blaze's tone surprised me enough to look up at him and raise an eyebrow. What the hell was his problem? "I was trying to talk this beautiful lady into accepting my business card so she can look me up next time she's in the city, but a guy jumped out of nowhere and snatched her handbag and my wallet. I tried to chase him down but the fucker was fast."

"Quite." The stranger spoke with enough apathy for it to be obvious that he was ignoring Blaze. I could feel his gaze raking me, mentally undressing me. "You're not from London?"

I opened my mouth but Blaze answered for me. "Cardiff." Hiding my irritation, I nodded and fiddled impatiently with my own fingers. Being spoken for like a child was more annoying than being cock-blocked.

"How will you get back?" The man's eyes glinted when I shrugged, and his hand delved into the pocket of his crisp blazer. "Here." He passed me a money clip engraved with a lavish 'R' holding an indiscernible amount of money wrapped up in a business card.

"You just happen to carry this around?"

"No, I just woke up feeling lucky, actually. With good reason, too, apparently. You call me. I'll come running to that Cardiff of yours for my money clip."

I was as aware of the man smiling as he walked away as I was of Blaze seething next to me, practically vibrating with cataclysmic ire next to me. Waving the money clip in his face, I elbowed him in the ribs, still watching my new 'friend' slink down the street with almost feline grace.

"What's your problem? You get your free lunch—I did what you asked."

"What?" I glanced up at him and rolled my eyes at his denial. "What the hell was that, Emmeline?"

"I believe _that_ was a pick up line. And it's going to work on me. See?" My fingertip tapped the business card. "You get free food and he gets laid tonight. My good deeds for today and tomorrow are covered."

"I meant you." Blaze pulled my hair free of the elastic tie and tried to restore some order to the straggled locks with his fingers. "One minute you're running like the Grim Reaper is on your heels, collapsing into a heap into some New York stiff, then you turn into Miss Sex Appeal."

"What?"

He glanced down at me in disbelief and shook his head wistfully. "You don't even realise, do you? Your posture completely changes; you straighten out and swagger, and your voice goes all husky. That guy didn't stand a chance against you."

Me, swagger? That was hard to believe. I'd never really questioned how I'd managed to coerce so many men into bed before, presuming it was more to do with a bad reputation of being a sure thing than genuine attraction. Miss Sex Appeal? No, that wasn't me. If that was me, I'd have Hunter.

"So where do you want to eat?" I grunted downwards and shoved the money clip into Blaze's pocket. The rush of snagging the hunk in the suit had quickly faded and left me back where I was before—in the middle of a crowded street and centre of unwanted attention. "A snap decision, please. People are staring."

"Well, you _are_ bleeding. Again." My fingers reached up to the warm throb I'd forgotten about until he mentioned it and came away coated in crimson. "I'm beginning to think I might be something of a danger to you."

He had no idea how true that was.

As I'd chosen not to get into a deep discussion about my food preferences or lack thereof, the location of our lunch ended up being a quaint pizzeria that boasted a broad selection of Italian delicacies prepared specifically for groups and parties. While I gazed lustfully over the oil and dressing free salad options, Blaze took command of our order, insisting that he was well-versed in the virtues and fortes of that particular menu.

_Whatever, he's going to be eating alone anyway_. Despite his threat that I might, I was no more hungry than I had been when he'd interrupted me at work. Even if I had been, my messy friend was lingering in the background ready to rebuke me or stand at my shoulder barking insults and criticisms if I indulged Blaze's feeder tendency.

The staff had swarmed around me when we walked in, Blaze being the notorious jack-of-all-trades demigod he was and me being scruffy and blood streaked. It was hard to tell if they thought he'd dragged me in off the street after saving me from a mugging—which he supposedly had—if they were trying to win his favour, or if they were just being conscientious human beings.

Either way, their fussing rendered me immobile and sparked some uncomfortable memories of being in a similar situation before. So much noise. So many people forcing me to be someone and something I didn't want to be, namely; alive.

Almost as though he sensed my unease, Blaze dismissed the huddled crowd around them and took over the duty of tending to the small but deep cut on my forehead. His touch was gentle and tender, like he'd cared for someone else in the same way like this before. I leaned into him, feeling weak and helpless, fending off the small part of me that wanted to cry.

In a move I think shocked us both, he dropped the cloth spotted with crimson and cradled my head against his chest, nuzzling my hair. "Your blood smells like vodka," he muttered quietly, trying to inject some humour into a dire situation. I felt guilty that he was starting to get a look at the Emmeline roller-coaster in all it's depressive finery, but it wasn't like I'd forced it. He had, for want of a better word, harassed me, and I'd caved every time.

"I should definitely call a doctor, then," I joked, pulling back from him. His tendency to make me reciprocate his smiles worked in full force, but there was something hollow about his this time. He looked almost lost. I could relate. "My poisons of choice are all dark spirits."

"Ah." Blaze shuffled back into a seat, leaning over to drape a napkin over my lap as our meal arrived.

It was like looking at a murder scene in food form. An enormous pizza sat in the centre of the table in a metal pan, surrounded by several plates of brightly coloured and gloriously spiced side dishes. Not a lettuce leaf in sight. My fingers locked around the glass placed down next to me and my brain struggled to contemplate the foodageddon in front of me.

Ten years earlier, I might have cleared that table alone. Now, I didn't know that my stomach didn't just cooperate with the old adage 'eyes bigger than your belly'

I hope you're hungry, Blaze.

My fat friend smacked her lips while my insides roiled at the collaborative aroma.

"So, you're a speedy little thing. How did you get so fast?"

I blinked up at Blaze as he served a slice of the pizza onto my plate, glad of the distraction. "I used to spend a lot of time at the gym, mostly on the treadmills."

"Used to?"

"I was effectively banned five years ago after collapsing."

He paused mid-movement before proceeding to spoon some sort of pesto concoction onto my plate. "Do that a lot, do you? I'm not sure that I would have caught up with you if you hadn't hit the deck in front of that guy all of a sudden. You're lucky that you don't have more grazes."

"I fainted?" _Oh dear._ "I had no idea." I could just hear my mother's words echoing around in my mind. _'Please Emmeline, no more of this. I can't bear to see you this way.'_

"You wouldn't. You were unconscious." Blaze stuck his tongue out and tucked into his own well-stacked plate. "Why did you really get banned from the gym? Did you screw a personal trainer or something?"

"Not when I was seventeen, Blaze. What do you take me for?"

"You're only twenty-two?" He stared at me, surprised. "Well, that explains the baby face but you seem much older. More mature." He frowned. "Too mature."

I considered probing into yet another asinine assessment of my personality, but decided against it when he shoved the first fork full of food into his mouth. That seemed to be a good indication that the conversation was over for now, but would probably crop up again somewhere down the road. Regardless, the reprieve was welcome, unlike the food, which I picked at unenthusiastically. It almost certainly tasted divine, but that was something I preferred not to find out.

Blaze, however, had no qualms about eating to excess. He ate like a man starved though he clearly wasn't, evident from the tightly packed muscles I'd felt on the few occasions I'd been close enough. There would be none of that if he didn't eat well and work for it, though I imagined him being the type who was lucky enough to be blessed with a hot body regardless of his holistic decisions. I still wanted to see that body, almost as much as I wanted to see Mr. Money Clip out of his suit.

I watched Blaze with utmost fascination as he savoured every morsel like the meal had been prepared by gods. Food wasn't just a necessity to him, it seemed like a passion he enjoyed almost as much as he enjoyed causing trouble.

And he was looking right at me. "Come on, Emmeline, I can hear your stomach rumbling from here. It's not a lunch date if I'm eating alone." Lunch date? The dirty D word was news to me.

"Sorry, I'm just a little calorie conscious." I picked one of small olives from the pizza topping, held it up between my fingers and grimaced. "I can feel myself expanding just thinking about the trans fats."  
"Calorie conscious!" He snorted the words and wiped his face on a paper napkin, then his hands on his trouser leg before he folded his fingers under his chin and seemed to size me up. I suddenly felt more self-conscious than before, if that was even physically possible, and shrank down a few inches. "I don't know why you're bothered with nutritional value. You could stand to gain a few pounds. You're in a what? A size eight?" The raging insecurity got worse with his estimate.  
"I'm a size twelve. A big twelve," I muttered quietly, discretely discarding the olive in a napkin, "I'm honestly a little chunky."

I'd come to expect any number of reactions to those five words over time. Laughter was the overruling response, followed by eye rolling and a failure to acknowledge. By no stretch of the imagination did I imagine he'd be angry.  
"Chunky? You think you're _chunky?_ " If I'd told him I thought I was the Antichrist he might have looked less annoyed. "I thought you had at least half a brain. Come with me."  
Before I could say anything, his long fingers had wrapped around mine and I was on my feet, away from the busy dining room, in a vacant side room left open for customers waiting for taxis. Momentarily mesmerised by how fast we'd seemed to have moved, I barely noticed that Blaze was urgently tugging at the hem of my shirt.

"Hey!"  
"What is _this?_ " He jabbed at the buckle fastened at my middle.  
"A belt and a gross violation of my personal space? Are you not familiar with the saying 'noblesse oblige'? You're supposed to be a celebrity, a role model or... something."  
He ignored the complaint and pressed on, brow creased into three deep lines. "And why might you need to wear a belt? To stop your trousers falling down around your ankles? Might that suggest your clothes are too big?" He continued to mutter his rhetorical questions in a grumble as he foraged around for the size label in my linen trousers. I batted at his hands pointlessly and tried to pull my shirt down further than it could possibly cover. "You put extra holes in this belt...? My God, Emmeline..."

And then he stopped completely still in his tracks and lifted my shirt an extra inch or two. The moment I realised what had caught his eye, I tried to twist away, but he snapped my name in a way I couldn't even imagine disobeying.

His fingers traced over the faded silver lines set into my skin from my left hip up, then followed the prominent ridges of my ribcage. Every touch felt like gentle and well-meaning torture, like slapping a child's hands for playing with knives, and it was the shame that paralysed me into place. What would he think when he saw my damage? Would he scold me like so many others and offer an endless stream of pity and bullshit encouragement? Would that be the end of our friendship, because I was just too much of a liability? Or was I now a pet project for him to 'cure'?

I still had no answer when he lifted the fabric further to see more of my ribs and sucked in his breath between his teeth.

"Oh, Emmeline. Who made you feel this way?"

It was another unusual reaction and made no way to dragging me from my stupor. The question everyone had failed to ask when it mattered came from a man who didn't know me from Adam, but yet seemed to know me better than anyone.

He regrouped far more quickly than I did, diverting his search for the label to a search for the fabric of my underwear and taking a quick peek under my shirt to check out my bra. "Hey!"

"Relax, I'm just checking they match. I'm taking you shopping."

"I can't affo—" The lie wouldn't come. If I swallowed my pride, I had enough money in a separate bank account to buy a fairly large and needlessly luxurious townhouse. Allowing Henry to siphon some of his wealth into an allowance was one of the few concessions I'd made to get him to agree to me moving out without him torturing my mother over my financial situation on a daily basis. He'd gone over the top, obviously, and the account was bound to have accumulated interest. I might not have wanted to touch his blood money, but I couldn't deny that I had it. Not to Blaze. "I really hate shopping."

"Well, tough." He grabbed my hand again and pulled me back to our table, pushing me down by the shoulders into my seat. "But first you're going to eat. You're not even a size eight. If I see you calculating calories, I'm just going to pin you down and feed you that way."

I was damned if I was going back down that path.

#

I must have eaten my body weight in garlic bread before Blaze let me leave the table of the pizzeria, feeling sleepy, overstuffed and greasy. As I'd expected, the food was delicious, but there were enough people in that dining room to stop me losing myself in the flavours.

It felt like I had a captive audience as ever, watching each bite eagerly with their fingers gripping into the wooden table tops, wondering if this mouthful would make the girl so slight erupt like an emetic volcano. They knew that much was inevitable—I was positively green when we slumped back out into the big, wide, crowded world.

Blaze had at least had the decency to exercise his pushy concern in a way that didn't make me feel observed. Even though I knew he was considering all the reasons why I might have such a dire appetite and a torso like road kill, his insistence that I ate what he'd served onto my plate was gentle, unlike the army drill sergeant attitudes that had been utilised by just about everyone else.

What he'd laid out hadn't been excessive, but enough for me to struggle. Like a child, he enticed and bribed me to keep eating until he could tell that it would do more harm than good. I didn't clear the plate, but I'd eaten. That seemed to be good enough for him.

And I'd eaten for no reason other than to wipe the anxiety off his face. I'd never cared before, why did I care now? For him? Not even Hunter's 'encouragement' had worked as well as Blaze's.

A part of me had dared to hope that he was joking about shopping, but the looming buildings of Oxford Street slipping back into view squashed any of that fruitless optimism right down into the ground. Blaze ignored my audible groan and pulled me into a department store that was too bright and too frantically loud.

Finely-polished women wearing too much make-up swirled around us dressed in fine black tunics. As soon as they spotted him, they gushed with almost disgusting streams of salesmanship jargon and far too obvious lust for him. Like I had when Jonathan had joked about roping him into their gay soiree, I began to feel unjustifiably territorial.

My grip tightened around our already linked fingers—a way in which Blaze seemed to prefer to walk with me. I wouldn't lose him to one of those super sleek jezebels, even if he wasn't really mine to lose.

Our pace didn't slow until we found the women's department, full of svelte housewives and rubbernecking teenagers who pointed and whispered between themselves. The fat girl whispered next to me, pointing incredulously at scrap of material that barely qualified as a skirt.

Don't worry, they're not interested in you. Nobody is ever really interested in you.

My pace stalled, though not enough to deter Blaze from an energised trawl of the shop floor, picking up garments at random and slinging them over the arm that joined with mine. They were all _so_ small and in sizes that surely wouldn't fit. The styles were all super urbane like the stranger in the suit or daringly low cut and revealing, so far removed from the comfort zone of my linen trousers and work shirts.

After a ten minute surge of power shopping, I found myself shoved into a dressing room. In fact, I found myself shoved into several dressing rooms in several shops that provided less than complimentary lighting and mirror combinations, and pumped loud obnoxious music into the building via loud speakers that always seemed to be right over wherever I stood. Sensory overload.

"You know what really frustrates me about you?" Blaze called to me through a curtain that barely covered the gap into the small vestibule with mirrors on all three solid sides. I pulled it across and waved a hand down at the outfit I was wearing—a denim skirt that showed far too much leg and some kind of chiffon sleeveless shirt, both in a minuscule size six. I was being forced to seriously reconsider how I dressed myself.

"Everything I imagine."

"Other than everything." He grinned and gave a thumbs up to the outfit, just as he had for nearly every other outfit he'd forced me to try on. The stack of bags behind his feet was embarrassing, and we'd never stopped to pay for anything. It had all materialised, already packed and ready to walk out with when I re-emerged from the dressing rooms wearing my own trash-sack clothing. I would undoubtedly analyse the hell out the situation at Esme's that night. "I never know what you're thinking. You must be a real nightmare to date."

"I thought you had me pegged?" We caught each other in a sceptical eye lock for a moment before I pulled the curtain back across. "I wouldn't know, I've never dated."

"Never? Why the hell not?"

"I just don't. And nobody has ever tried to convince me to do so." Not that I'd given anyone half the chance. Blaze already knew that I couldn't get attached, and if he hadn't guessed by now that it was nigh on impossible to convince me to change my habits, he'd been walking with his eyes closed.

"You know why that is? Nobody knows where they stand with you. You treat your enemies like your friends, your friends like your family, and probably your family like your enemies. God knows how you treat lovers... Wait, you're a not a vi—"

Not really caring that I was wearing nothing but my underwear, I whipped the curtain back fast enough to shock him. "No! What do you take me for? I've probably had more sex this year than you have in your lifetime. You'd be hard pushed to find someone I haven't... you know." Embarrassingly, most of the faces I'd seen in that particular shop had been underneath me at some point. In open air, the scathing expressions were all generic and the same. In smaller, more intimate areas, I recognised every single face and they recognised me, too.

Blaze's eyes flittered across my mostly naked form for a brief moment, purposely avoiding the scars on my left side, then settled back at my face. "When was the last time you left Esme's alone?" My mouth twisted ruefully. I couldn't give an accurate answer so I preferred to give none. "The night we met?"

"Esme." His jaw dropped, eyes flooding with the same look I'd seen on Chris' face when I caught him watching lesbian pornography at a LAN party.

"You're bisexual?"

"No, I'm just not fussy. I don't put any emotional value in sex. It's just something I enjoy and it feels the same whoever does it. Well, better if one of my friends does it because they obviously they know my sweet spots."

"The gay couple?" I flushed scarlet. Even Daniel and Jonathan found themselves curious on occasion, and after all Daniel had done for me when I was younger, I was only too happy to offer my 'services'. "The big nerdy guy?"

"Chris," I raised a finger to Blaze's face severely, "would surprise you."

"It's not emotionally significant to you _at all?_ "

His baffled eyes darkened and smouldered, shifting into a look that made my insides clench. _Dear God... Is he turned on?_

"You have sex with your _friends_ , then go on like nothing ever happened? You don't just throw everyone onto the discard heap?"

"There are loopholes..." My voice muted to a whisper, unsure of his reaction. It would have been a great time to call me a whore and leave me stranded, but I didn't think he had it in him to do something like that.

"Loopholes?" His voice took on a low growl that sent a frisson of static through the small space between us. It was the same growl from when he'd unpinned my hair at Hyde Park, and again, I felt like I was about to get eaten alive. "Why the hell didn't you say so before?"

Before I could respond, he grabbed me by the waist and pushed me back into the dressing room until my back crushed against the mirror. His hands moved into my hair and his mouth met mine, teeth clashing at the ferocity with which he kissed me. He ate me like he ate his food—ravenous and mad for it.

"Looking at you in all those tiny outfits—Shit!" He ducked down to divest us both of our lower garments, grabbed my legs and pulled them around his waist, impaling me in one swift movement. My fingers clawed into the back of his neck, then grabbed for the indiscreetly left open curtain. My legs tightened around him, pulling him closer to me, and I clung to him while he fucked me until I was rigid.

It was the realisation of what I'd wanted for the past nine days and better than the fantasy. My hands slipped under the fabric of his t-shirt to discover whether his body was what I'd imagined.

It was. Toned slabs of hard but not overly pronounced muscle tensed intermittently in my hands as he moved. His back was just as firm, and tightened when I dug my nails into the sinew in response to a particularly tactical thrust. Sweat started to bead on his skin, so he paused to rid himself of his t-shirt.

"Holy shit, Blaze!" I leered appreciatively, tongue trapped between my canines. Seeing it was better than feeling it, all the finely shaped bronze flesh of him, hot and pressed against me. He smirked wolfishly and leaned in to clamp his teeth around my bottom lip.

"Why, Miss White," he purred, flexing back into a steady rhythm. "Are you objectifying me?"

"Objectifying the shit out of you. And I don't even know your surname."

"Vixen."

We laughed for a moment before need and lust took over and drove us into a fast, desperate plea to find our release in each other. We mingled together, heavy breathed, in tune, nose to nose, eye to eye and trapped in the moment, until my head fell back against the mirror and my body went lax, awash with satisfaction and a hot blast of relief.

And something else. Something stronger than I'd ever felt before. Affection and gratitude—not for the orgasm but for the man who'd provoked it. For the sheer fact I'd found him.

In that moment, I felt like I was standing in the middle of a train track staring directly into the rapidly approaching headlights. Something that I'd kept so separate from my emotions for so long had opened a floodgate I'd only ever hoped to be unlocked by one person. I'd fantasised about the same kind of needy, charged sex before, and it had always been a fantasy involving Hunter. That was always how I'd imagined it would be when two kindred spirits opened up to each other intimately.

My universe shifted and centred around Blaze, a man I barely knew but knew me better than anyone else. I was cut wide open and weak for him to see, vulnerable and feeling like a liar.

I didn't delude myself into thinking that he didn't see the cataclysm of emotions that coursed through me as I hung limp against him, desperately trying to gather my scattered wits. Neither would I insult him by denying it if he broached the subject. For the sake of my own sanity, I was prepared to be honest and cut him off completely. He'd been lured in only by the promise of my detachment and I'd failed to provide that. He'd wanted the connection even less than I had.

But when I looked up, I could see in his eyes that he was on those train tracks with me. His face said exactly what we were both too afraid to put into words; _this wasn't supposed to happen_. After such a short period of association, my confession to being loose and his fucking me senseless had thrown the flame on the kindling we had no idea we'd set out. Lust had become something almost too painful to bear and led us down a path neither of us wanted to tread for any number of reasons.

We both had fallen, hard and fast, into a dangerous place that would undoubtedly make us do crazy things to each other.

When our breathing steadied, we stood in an awkward silence, him still semi-hard inside me and both of us mostly stripped naked. The buzzing voices outside reminded me where we were and pure panic set in. Any normal couple engaging in a danger fuck in a changing room would be big news, but something like this would have me identified.

A fast exit was necessary if we stood any chance of escaping without our names sprawled out across gossip columns—my name well known even if the face wasn't. Like this situation wasn't stressful enough.

Without looking at him, I separated our bodies and grabbed my scruffy shirt from the hook stuck to one of the mirrors. When my arm twisted around him, he caught it by the elbow and squeezed gently.

"Emmeline." A silent agreement passed between us that our ugly feelings would go undiscussed but frequently indulged—the craziness would be allowed to happen even though we'd deny it existed out loud. Whatever it was we thought we felt wouldn't be given a name or taken too seriously. If we talked about it, that made it real. It was enough that we secretly knew it was there, knew that the other was aware, and would consider it a guilty pleasure.

He burned with covert passion for me, and only me, and I was right there with him. Caught in his flame and scorching, he _was_ the distraction I dreamed of. How long that would last remained a mystery, but whether or not it was temporary, there was no way I'd walk away from him with anything less than third degree burns.

Then all that terror and confusion melted into a drowsiness that made me sag down onto the bench behind me. My eyes grew heavy and battled to stay open as I pulled my shirt back over my arms.

"Are you... Are you falling asleep?"

I nodded dopily. "Sex is my kryptonite. Esme says I'm wired like a man. She's a cuddler. I am not."

Blaze knelt down in front of me and hooked my feet into the legs of my trousers. "Need me to carry you?" Feeling myself becoming complacent and typically arctic, I shook my head and batted his hands away. "Hey." He curled a hand around the scars on my left side and reached up to stroke my dishevelled hair. "Don't over-think this."

"Over-think what?" I snapped, staggering to my feet to pull up my trousers. The usual sense of guilt set in, for sleeping with yet another man who wasn't Hunter. I'd betrayed him again, worse this time for not being my usual emotionally disconnected self. I had royally fucked up this time. At least the fat girl had the good grace to keep her mouth shut.

"Bit presumptuous that you wouldn't need a condom, wasn't it?"

Blaze reached into his trouser pocket for his wallet and pulled a foil packet from a zipped compartment on the side, throwing it down on the floor between us. "We both fucked up, Emmeline. Please don't cut me off now." He dressed quickly and grabbed the clothes I'd been trying on, leaving me alone to brood.

I dozed, fighting a losing battle with my heavy eyelids, and lifted my fingers to my swollen lips. His kiss had been so tender but so urgent, telling a lot about how badly he'd wanted me. He'd said I was 'safe' and he was out of the danger zone of temptation. Was he feeling as bad as me?

Neither of us had expected the scene to play out as it had. It had just been a little fun at first, two people working to satisfy a primal need. We'd laughed, damn it! How had it gotten so deep just seconds later?

He returned quickly, pulling the curtain back and giving me a sheepish smile. "You're still here."

"My bag is still in your car." He nodded, but he knew as well as I did that I couldn't have left him if I'd tried, no more than I could have left Hunter.

My paranoia over being watched sky-rocketed when we set foot out on the street again. The fact that people had a damn good reason to stare now didn't really make me feel any better. My cut forehead, fuck-mussed hair and drowsy stagger might not have felt like such a crime if I'd been enclosed in Blaze's strange aura of calm like normal, but he was keeping a cautious distance from me and not looking particularly calm at all.

On the few occasions we spoke to each other, we snarled, both feeling cheated by life and vulnerable. Why he wouldn't just let me go, I had no idea. Out of sight, out of mind.

The goblin car looked too small for both of us. It _was_ small, but somehow just seemed too cramped for us, the bags of clothes and the recent arrival of a big pink elephant. Blaze proved me wrong by packing all the purchases into the back, then stood politely holding my door open.

"Let me drive." He snorted incredulously and rolled his eyes. "I mean it. I need a distraction."

"You're dead on your feet, Emmeline. This car is my pride and joy."

"Then you should seriously consider whipping out a ruler and measuring your penis. I passed my driving test hungover and got zero minor faults."

The tension between us momentarily dissolved with his grin. "It's big?" _Oh, brother..._

"Yes. Biggest I've ever seen. All six foot three of the giant penis standing in front of me."

"You just like saying penis, don't you?" He reluctantly held his keys out and mouthed 'penis' in the hope of making me laugh. It worked, but only for a second. "Can I ask you something?"

"No." I circled the car and let myself in the driver's side, grabbing my bag as soon as I was sat down to find a pair of scuffed mirrored sunglasses I hoped would guard the thoughts and feelings I knew would be visibly thrashing around in my eyes as I drove. They were snatched off my face the minute they settled on the bridge of my nose. "Do you mind?"

"Are they prescription lenses?" My eyes narrowed. "You're not driving my car with a visual impairment, Emmeline." So we were back to snapping at each other. Easy come, easy go.

I pulled out of the car park steadily, hands tightly gripped around the steering wheel. It had been years since I'd driven, not that I'd confess as much to Blaze, but the instinct flowed back into me immediately. I'd forgotten how comfortable I felt driving and my thoughts strayed to the Bentley I wouldn't touch. Some twenty-first birthday present that had been; locked away and never taken out onto the road. I couldn't afford the insurance on it anyway, not unless I dipped into my allowance.

Hunter would tell you to drive it, he'd tell you to swallow your pathetic pride and use the money. Yes, Hunter, remember him? The man you're supposed to love but now you're pining after yet another man who won't have you.

I scowled at the road ahead, unable to shake off the annoying voice nagging at me.

The silence between Blaze and I was intolerably present. Both of us trapped in our thoughts, staring blankly ahead, unable to comprehend the turn of events. The tension seemed to wrap around me and tighten like a cobra, tighter and tighter until I snapped.

"Talk to me," I gasped, keeping my eyes straight ahead, "talk to me, distract me. Please. I need you to keep my mind busy or..."

"Or what?" Blaze straightened in his seat and I could feel his eyes burning into me with all the heat his name implied.

"Or I don't know if I won't spend the rest of my life trying to avoid you. I can't do it. This." I waved a hand at the space between us. "You know I can't."

"Neither can I, but we're going to. You know that, don't you, Emmeline? We're going to destroy each other and both of us are going to pretend that we're not happy about the damage we're doing. And we're going to deny that we're enjoying taking the damage, too." I shook my head to myself, soothed just slightly by knowing that we were on the same wavelength. My feelings for Blaze were easily just as wrong as my feelings for Hunter, but I at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he felt the same. I was going to go down in a blaze of something, certainly not glory, and he would be right there with me, reeling as I was.

"So are you going to distract me or not?"

He sighed and shifted in his seat to face me, swinging an arm around his head rest. Did he have much choice if he wanted to keep me around? "Where are you really from?"

My mouth curved slightly. "Ironically, Cardiff. You've already figured out why I left."

"To become a self-made woman. Did you even try?"

"Of course I tried!" I hissed, affronted.

"Tell me how."

My brief account of how I'd lived during my four years in London came to an end as I pulled up outside my flat. I knew that he'd asked to hear the tedious tale for no reason other than to provide the distraction I'd requested, and I was grateful that he'd both done it and that it had worked. My nerves were still scattered, but I knew, at that point, that the path I was going to be walking was not my own. He'd decided for me.

"Thank you," I muttered quietly, cheeks reddening slightly. I wasn't sure what the protocol was for parting ways with a non-committal man who was committing to me.

"For what?" He pulled himself gracefully from the car and walked around the front of it to open my door. "Springing you out of work early, sending you on a scam, the head injury, swindling money from a stiff, lunch, the shopping spree, the sex, letting you drive my car, distracting you, or for potentially making both of our lives very difficult for the foreseeable future?"

I gaped at him, taking the hand he offered. It had definitely been an eventful afternoon. "All of the above, I suppose."

"Even the latter?" I croaked and stammered, eventually confessing with a nod. "I still want to ask you something."

"Is it about the scars?"

"Huh?" He glanced down at my side and shook his head dismissively. He'd forgotten? "No, I was wondering if you believe in fate."

"No."

"How about destiny or, I dunno... karmic balance?"

"Aren't they three ways of saying the same thing?" Where the hell was he going with this? _And how could you just forget about those scars?_ "Still no."

"Wishes?"

I froze solid in my place. Wasn't it just the last week I'd been musing over 'be careful what you wish for'? I'd wished him, but had I wished for this? "I may have recently come across some supporting evidence for granted wishes."

"Me, too." His fingers strayed up to my face and stroked away a few rogue tendrils. "Maybe it was a fluke."

"Only one way to find out." I wiggled my eyebrows at him suggestively and tugged him towards my flat.

"Now? Are you insatiable?"

"Yes. Would you rather sit on it and have it weigh on your mind?"

No, he didn't. He didn't say another word until my door was open and he had me wrapped around him again, speaking only to ask which way my bedroom was. There was no question that we were on fire this way, lost in each other and so attuned it was like we'd each been created with the other in mind. He was a selfish lover as I'd expected, and it drove him crazy when I tugged at his hair, bit his lips or dug my nails into his back to bring him back into line. In return, he knew just how to touch me to keep me satisfied and stimulated, physically and mentally.

That compatibility was driven into me in my bedroom, in my kitchen, in my bathroom, and came to rest on my couch, where Blaze curled around me and toyed with my hair mindlessly while I fought off slumber. There was a sense of calm I'd not felt for years, if ever, and I was far too pleasantly exhausted to feel guilty about it.

"You look sensational spread out like this," Blaze purred at my ear, nipping the lobe gently. "Sedate, pacified. So far removed from the woman who sat in that pizzeria with me earlier."

"It's you," I purred back, "you've done something wicked to me."

"Well, I'm glad. You're smouldering. Glowing."

"Blazing?" He smirked down at me, but the intent of his smile shifted quickly. His gaze was fiercer and hotter than I'd ever seen it—positively incendiary. I whispered an apology and tried to squirm out of his hold, regretting making him feel so... what? What did he feel?

"Why are you apologising?" He wrapped around me tighter, making it clear that he didn't want me to escape. How deep did that desire run?

"The way you're looking at me. I just felt like I needed to apologise."

He sucked in a breath and leaned his forehead down against mine. "Don't. You don't know what it is you're looking at."

With yet another cryptic remark and the gentle kisses he laid across my face, I fell into a deep, restful sleep.

When I woke up, he was gone, leaving nothing but the bags of clothes from Oxford Street and the anonymous suit's money clip as his calling card.

"You're wearing your hair down." Daniel pulled me from my thoughts of the vanished enigma that was Blaze with his observation and a glass of wine as he and Jonathan took their usual seats opposite me in Esme's. "You haven't worn it down in years."

"Blaze likes it down." I rolled my eyes at myself for doing something so juvenile. So what if he liked me to wear my hair loose? He wasn't there. He probably wouldn't ever be there again. Five minutes away from me and he probably started to think rationally about all that had been thrown at him that afternoon.

"And new clothes?"

Jonathan leaned across the table to examine the stitching on the uncharacteristically form fitting blazer wrapped around me. Once I'd taken a bitter sweet look at the haul from the shopping trip, I'd realised that my new wardrobe was actually rather impressive and really gave me no excuses to keep wearing the clothes I hadn't noticed were quite so big on me. The man had a great fashion sense—shame the same couldn't be said for his taste in women, though that lapse in judgment was now technically rectified if he'd seen sense.

"You look great. Very London. Very much the multi-billionaire's prodigally alcoholic daughter."

"Wow, thanks." I was suddenly far less keen on the blazer, vest and jeans combo if it made me look like a Tudor. There had been no shoe shopping, so the outfit was scruffed up with a pair of well-loved old deck shoes I'd hoped would lessen the look of expense.

"Don't sweat it, you're still hotter than your sister." _Obviously._ "So have you tapped that yet?" Jonathan grinned at me cheekily and settled back down next to Daniel, who regarded me suspiciously. I was almost as transparent to him as I was to Blaze. "I knew you had that look about you. It's going to be two men in one day again, Emmy? I am in awe of you."

"Oh, I..." My hair veiled my face as it filled with blood. "I think I've been used as a penile insertion point quite enough for one day."

I looked up just in time to see Esme sit down next to Daniel and their exchanged glances.

"Who's penile insertion point? Blaze?" She bit her lip to stifle a laugh. "Hallelujah, praise the Lord. She finally nailed him. But this could get awkward because he just walked in."

"What?"

Chris snorted grumpily next to me and scanned the room for a glimpse of Blaze. There he was, stood at the bar draped in an untucked white cotton shirt and pinstripe trousers. "You should really drop your standards, Emmeline. Guys like that won't care about your quest to chase impossibly high ideals because they think they have it all. He'll be expecting exceptional and preferential treatment because he's a pretty-boy with a loaded wallet and you'll end up in another one of your funks."

"I'm already in one of my funks, Chris. She's been following me around all day." My pulse started to race when Blaze turned at the bar with a tray of six drinks and began to weave between the tables towards us. "And if you recall, I do drop my standards. Frequently. Don't tell me our nights together haven't been memorable because I'll call you a liar."

I stood when Blaze reached our table, and met his unusually cool gaze with one of my own, rife with confusion. Why had he come back?

He looked fantastic, the shirt fitting the contours of the body I had spent an afternoon writhing against. God, I wanted him, and not just physically. I'd been so distracted by his disappearance that I'd been oblivious to the dull ache that had manifested in the depths of my chest in his absence—the acute need he'd left behind. It was a craving unlike any I'd ever known, and my point of relief stood only a foot away, looking stunning and smelling like expensive cologne and hot sex. He hadn't showered.

"You look surprised to see me," he murmured so only I could hear.

"You left."

"I couldn't stay. I couldn't fall asleep next to you and wake up with you in my arms. That would have been bad for both of us. But I couldn't go, either." His voice cracked with sincerity, and I knew that he was one man who would always be nothing but honest with me. I barely knew him but he didn't mind exposing his soul to me. I treasured that aspect of him. "No matter how many times I leave, I'll always be back. Remember that. So, is there room for one more in your coven?"

Nervously, I turned back to my four friends for their verdict. Esme and Jonathan were almost dancing in their places while Chris and Daniel shared aggrieved expressions, anticipating the inevitable disaster that would befall me.

Daniel saw it, the bigger picture in the way our bodies leaned together and the fearful glint in our eyes. Chris saw nothing but an impending repeat performance of the keening and sobbing Hunter left behind when he visited, provided by a new source. They would always be standing on the sidelines waiting to be tagged into the ring.

And as Blaze took the seat next to me, I knew that when that firestorm of a disaster hit, we'd be thrown into a full blown mutiny. Our table was too crowded now, 'us' and them packed into a booth that wasn't nearly big enough for all our complications.

#

The warm, gentle buzz of voices and aura of serenity in Esme's that night was deceptive. Heartbroken lovers laughed with friends like they weren't in pain. Addicts tended to their vices like they wouldn't shake and sweat for them tomorrow. Enemies drank together as though the bad blood could be sweetened with anecdotes and recalled memories from times past. The sick and depressed faked smiles and lied about just how ill they were.

And, as normal, all of their flaws centred into me, the culmination of all that misery sat next to a man who settled into my surroundings like he'd donned camouflage and infiltrated us from the inside out. I suppose he had.

Blaze and Esme gossiped about a cartoon they'd both worked on as voice actors, Daniel and Jonathan quietly discussed dinner arrangements, while Chris and I sat, turgidly silent, watching them all but barely aware of what was happening. His tense quiet boiled down to little more than feeling like he had been, once again, overlooked as anything more than a source of dry wit and like-minded humour.

This was his usual pattern—pinning hopes on the unlikely and brooding when a miracle didn't happen. He didn't understand that even though he wasn't my first choice of bedfellow, he was still a very huge and vital part of my life. I might have lowered my defences one or twice, but I never gave off any impression that I wanted him for anything more than studding services. Manipulative, maybe, but he knew where he stood. That didn't stop him hoping.

"I don't think the big guy likes me." Blaze's hand slid discreetly over to my thigh and squeezed as soon as Chris left to collect his round from the bar. The action was so instantaneous that it seemed like he'd been holding off on purpose until it was 'safe' to touch me. Negative vibes had been flying around so viciously that it should have been obvious that Blaze might have felt like I'd been marked as forbidden territory.

Jonathan laughed quietly and shook his head into an impressively large glass of brandy. "Don't take it personally. He shows that kind of contempt for anyone who thwarts his nightly attempts to pillage the Deep White South. Tonight it's you, tomorrow it'll be someone else, then someone else and someone else until Emmy has a dry night and he begs for his turn against Esme with the flip of a coin."

Hearing that said out loud by someone else was uncomfortable, worse knowing that Blaze heard it, too. If he was any other man, he'd be disposable. As it was, I wanted to keep him around but I wasn't in the mindset to change any habits for him. He was less in my life on a guest pass and more of a VIP with a membership card like only four other people, but that didn't mean that the menu, entertainment and venue would change for him. There would be no gaps and breaks in my normal life when he wasn't around, and if he expected there to be, we were already at a painful impasse.

"And what if my day trip becomes an extended holiday?"

"Emmy would never... You _have_ seen the scars right? Doesn't it bother you?"

"Of course it bothers me. What kind of person would I be if I was cool with someone I cared about being in such a bad place that they felt like hurting themselves was the only option? But if you're asking me if I can accept it, of course I can. As long I'm not the person that's causing that kind of self-loathing."

Blaze turned his gaze onto me, that same scorchingly intense gaze he'd hit me with before he left my flat. All of the blood in my body rushed to my face and the deepest depths of my stomach knotted and contorted, much like the way I felt in a crowded room—claustrophobic, out of breath and horribly self-conscious. The smallest of smiles kissed the corners of his mouth when I mouthed an apology and sagged back warily. What was I doing so wrong? How could he say he cared for me knowing that I was, for want of a better word, a slut?

He excused himself off and slunk over to the bar, turning every woman's and some men's heads as he travelled the distance. That kind of spellbinding effect seemed to be universal, and for that I was grateful. I had no desire to become _that_ girl who mooned after a man because she'd bumped uglies with him. It wasn't my style.

Esme leaned over to grip my chin and pull my eyes away from what looked like a dangerously serious conversation between Chris and Blaze. "Why did you apologise just then?"

"I just felt like I had to. Didn't you see the incomparable fury in his eyes? Jesus, not even Hunter looked at me like that when they sectioned me."

"Incomparable fu—... My God, you can't see the forest for the trees, can you? Open your eyes, Emmy. That man up there is the forest." I shook my head at her blankly and received a raised eyebrow in return. "Get used to his face because you're going to be seeing a lot of it."

What concerned me is why that statement didn't concern me. When I pictured night after night of drinking in Blaze's company, taking him home and falling asleep next to him, I didn't feel sieged like I should have. I felt... indifferent. It already seemed like normality when this was really only the first night of what was forecast to be many.

He was too close but I couldn't bring myself to hate it. A crazy little piece of me thought that he might just be the person who broke the curse of unrequited affection Hunter had hung over my head.

"Cupcake?"

"Hmm?" The sudden blast of giggles around me alerted me to the stupid mistake I'd just made. "Oh! Oh, God..."

"Might catch on." Blaze slid onto the seat next to me, one leg up on the velvet between us, and held out a dainty cupcake iced in pale pink butter-cream and a white sugarcraft rose. "But I was asking if you wanted this. They're good, maybe the second best thing I've tasted today." He bit down on his lip and flared his nostrils at me, sending a delicious shudder right through my veins. I knew he was thinking about what else he'd tasted that day, and just the memory made me want to claw at the cushioned seat next to me.

"I'll lick butter-cream off anything, you know." I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to break the seductive ruse with a squeak. "Call it an indulgence."

"Miss White, you're incorrigible."

"Surely you mean 'encourage-able'? And I'm almost certain that if you save that cupcake for later when I'm far drunker, you'll have a few choice words of encouragement for my greedy mouth."

"Cheque, please."

His eyes twinkled brightly in the soft light of the candles I'd learned to keep a safe difference from when he was around. The barely containable urge to reach up and stroke his face made my fingers twitch with unfamiliar adoration. After only eight days, he'd come to mean so much to me and left a heavy footprint on my life. If I never saw him again after that night, I'd never be able to forget him and his smile, or his laugh, or his frown. I suspected that his memory would haunt me just as Hunter did, and that alone told me enough to know that I'd come out of this hurting.

It might not be that day, maybe not the next, but at some point I'd have to face the repercussions of trying to touch an untouchable man.

I glanced sideways at the table and caught my miserable, distorted reflection in my glass. Daniel pushed it out of my line of vision when he realised how furiously I was staring at it.

"She's not here, Emmy. Not anymore."

"Who?"

My eyes peeked up to meet Blaze's, though my head didn't move. Yet again, I prayed for a distraction.

"Just a small ghost from the past. An unwelcome face who tells her lies."

"Lies?"

"Truths." I closed my eyes and resigned myself to confessing to the hallucination. Better it came from me. If he stuck around, he'd find out sooner or later. Sooner meant the inevitable hole he left behind might be smaller. "The shadow of my teenage self telling me that I'll always be—"

"A bit little ugly, a little bit frumpy, a little bit socially stunted, a little bit fat and a whole lot boring." Esme, Daniel and Jonathan recited the prose in unison, having heard it themselves a thousand times before.

"Lies, then." Like I hadn't heard that platitude often enough for it to be meaningless. Blaze ignored my muttered, 'Whatever', and squared himself to the table, effectively turning away from me.

That was it, then... He understood what had been chasing me all afternoon and it was just too neurotic for him.

"I happen to find you quite fascinating and easy on the eyes, and I think we... hammered out the fat, frumpy thing this afternoon." Did he really think it was that easy?

"You still think I'm socially stunted though?"

"Yes." He tutted mockingly. "Not so much as a thank you."

"For the lunch I didn't want, the clothes I didn't ask for, or the entirely too public 'hammering'?" I saw his eyebrow raise and cheeks lift into a sly smirk. "I'll thank you with butter-cream."

"Phew!" Jonathan fanned himself theatrically with a cork drinks coaster and swooned against Daniel's shoulder. "It's like watching my parents all over again and I heard how hot it was in their bedroom!"

"Is that what turned you towards the frilly paisley pink side?"

"It helped. What did you say to Chris, anyway?" At once, we all turned our attention to the unusually empty seat next to me, then to the sullen figure slumped over a whiskey on the rocks at the bar. "It's not like him to prop up the bar. Especially when we're all spitting feathers over here."

Blaze shrugged and raised his glass to his lips, pausing to speak. "I told him that I enjoy the scenery of the Deep White South too much to stay away. That I'm planning on renting a log cabin there to concrete my intentions of visiting frequently until such a time when both a permanent place of residency becomes available and I'm in a more comfortable position to retire there." He took a small sip of his drink. "More or less."

"Well, was it the more or the less?" I blurted my words out in a rush, feeling my face return to the shade of red it seemed to visit far to often around Blaze. It sounded suspiciously like he'd told the most protective of my friends that he was going to hang around until our complications stopped obstructing the way to what? A happily ever after? He'd be waiting a long time.

"Less," he laughed, ignoring the three anxious faces sat across from us. "But less is more. At least I know how you feel about the matter now. Don't worry." He dipped down to my ear so his lips brushed the lobe. It was the closest he'd been since he'd arrived to light up my dark evening and reminded me just how lost I felt around him. "I have a guarantor."

Esme, Daniel and Jonathan collectively sighed with relief when the comment made me laugh and inexplicably comfort me in a way it probably shouldn't have. Rather than respond to the threatened intrusion with a dramatic breakdown or a swift sprint down the path leading to the hills, I rolled my eyes at him with a smile on my face and made lustful eyes at the cupcake I didn't want to save for later.

Just the fact that he said he planned to stick around for the long haul made me feel good—special. I may well have been the worst woman for the job, but nobody else could say that they'd been offered the chance, and I would have been crazy to not be grateful for the opportunity to hang on to a man like him. I might have even dared to say like I felt like a concubine to a prolific king, my purposes singular, indecent and terminable, but I'd been picked from many as the best. I doubted that he felt the same way.

Chris did eventually rejoin us, still looking downtrodden, but forced enough polite conversation to make it obvious that he was putting himself out to be civil for my sake. I loved him for it.

To our surprise, we learned that Blaze was somewhat well-versed in our nerdy persuasion, owning an extensive comic book and graphic novel collection that would have made Stan Lee weep. He even carried some street cred destroying pictures of said collection on his phone, and pinpointed exactly where 'Syncretic Sciences' now took residence. Naturally, everything was ordered alphabetically, then by year, issue and language—comics and novels separately stored. My mother would have loved him and his anally retentive organisational habits.

"Shame you haven't done more, really. I'd like an Emmeline White shelf. Autographed first editions, obviously."

"Obviously. But my imagination is a little limited."

"To garrotting wire?" Blaze gave me a knowing wink and topped my glass up from a bottle of wine he'd ordered that I'd never tried before but had gotten a taste for. Too much of a taste. It was hard to fall into my usual depressive drunken slump with him around, knowing what mischief lay in wait after the bar closed. But the bad mood threatened.

"Speaking of work being 'limited'..." I barely caught the spiteful smirk on Chris' face before it faded. "... You're not exactly fighting off the paparazzi for a man with his fingers in multiple pies and your portfolio isn't all that impressive. You're not filling your days filling Emmy, so what do you do exactly?"

"Chris!" _Oh my God..._ Wincing, I thrust my hands into my hair and peeked up at Blaze through my fingers. "You don't have to answer that." What he did in his own time was his own business, just as my 'extra-curricular activities' were mine. Whether he taught the word of God to small children or murdered whores in brothels, it was none of my concern.

"It's fine," he assured me, wrapping an arm around my back and turning to address the question. "You're asking me what keeps me away, aren't you?" Away from me. Did I really want to hear his reason 'why'? "I'm a carer."

My head jolted up, not nearly attached to my ability to form words. A carer? When he wasn't looking out for me, he was looking out for someone else, someone sick or disabled. I hadn't put much thought into what his complication was, but something like this would never have crossed my mind. It wasn't nearly as bad as the other ideas that might have plagued me given half the chance, and it just seemed so... _him_.

"They're not completely incapacitated, but accidents happen and concessions have to be made. Job opportunities come and go—being on standby compromises my time. I can't take work outside of the city and I don't like to start something I can't finish. If there's a risk of anything interrupting the little time I get with Emmeline, I'd prefer to sacrifice seeing her rather than give her just half my attention through phone-watching."

And that was how it would always be. A watered down version of my role in Hunter's life. He too only called when he could give me his undivided attention, so the concept didn't distress me too much. How could it when I knew that Blaze's motives were much more honest and noble?

The gaps were shorter, a few days at most. Whether it was just lunch or a night out, I knew that the flying visit was always good for at least one cervix-destroying orgasm that sent me searching for a place to catnap. Mrs. Reynolds didn't object to my post-lunch snoozes when I found my way to and from them smiling.

Blaze was like my own brand of Prozac. The all-encompassing woe that usually drove me subsided and the fat girl disappeared from my mirror in the mornings. By no means did I love myself, but I could bear to be me. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn't think about Hunter and how I lacked the qualities he desired from the moment I woke up. I stretched my arm across my bed and remembered who'd been there, talking to me as I nodded off. Complicated or not, whatever we were doing worked and it worked well.

It worked through the scorching heat of June that had us peeling our sweaty, replete bodies off the leather interior of the goblin car on occasion. It worked through impromptu lunch dates and nights out at Esme's. I wore the clothes he'd chosen for me and my hair loose on the off chance he arrived because I liked to imagine what he thought when he opened the door into Double Booked and saw me looking just how he liked me. For some reason, he was attracted to me and made no effort to hide it, kissing me when he saw fit and making vulgar yet endearing propositions regardless of the company we were in.

We didn't talk about it, but we both knew that we felt too much for each other. Neither of us cared as long as the other was still on the same page of our bizarre 'don't ask, don't tell' understanding. We were inextricably bound by our denial, a bond so honest that it might have been devalued if we'd forced 'I love you's like everyone else.

We were functionally dysfunctional and not even the summer heat could compare to how moltenly hot I burned for him at every given chance.

A few days became a week, and a week became ten days. The space that we left for him at our table in Esme's grew cold but stayed open for him to warm up when he could. My friends fussed, sure that I'd crack in his absence. They saw how close we'd grown but were so negative about the outlook of our 'relationship' that they didn't believe in my blind conviction.

"Aren't you worried?" Esme walked home with me through the side-streets after lunch in a quiet little bistro I'd discovered near my flat during a walk with Blaze early the week before. The world hadn't found it yet, which meant that the beastly Saturday crowds had yet to taint it's Mediterranean serenity with popularity. London was in full flow with older children enjoying their summer holidays after exams, students shopping for university essentials and tourists absorbing the fascinating landmarks we natives took for granted. My fear of that mania remained.

"Worried?"

"That he's not coming back." Her reluctance to say the words manifested in a whisper, pausing me for only half a beat.

"No, I'm not. He told me that he'd always come back for me and I believe him."

"Oh, Emmy. Even you aren't this naive."

That stopped me for a moment longer. "You think he was lying?" I challenged her with a raised eyebrow. She immediately relented, knowing that the man was despicably honest to the point of it sometimes being too much. I wasn't sure that he know _how_ to lie. "He'd tell me if he wasn't coming back, Esme. He wouldn't just leave me flailing."

We scaled the staircase up to my flat on the first floor in silence before she sighed and held up her hands. "I just don't want to see you throw yourself under the metaphorical bus here. You're setting yourself up, but I'm not sure which direction the punch line will take yet. Don't be foolhardy. He may not have been lying at the time, but you don't know how or when the wind might change direction."

"I'm prepared for this to all go wrong. I know that it will so I'm at peace with it." I shrugged and pulled my keys from my pocket. "I'm a realist, you know that. Ask me how I'd cope if it all went right, well, that's a different mat—"

My sentence was cut short by the door swinging open and hand shooting out to pull me inside. The door kicked shut behind me, putting an abrupt end to my conversation with Esme.

I was tugged so quickly my head spun, eyes barely clear of stars when a familiar mouth closed around mine. I'd never been kissed so passionately before, like I was so essential and life-defining. I shivered at how mighty I felt; an evil harpy done hexed this poor unsuspecting man. Hexed him like he'd hexed me.

My feet left the ground, my legs were wrapped around his waist, and I smiled against his lips. _I knew you'd be back._ Not only did I have him here, but I also had the satisfaction of a big 'I told you so' for my friends.

"Blaze, _quelle surprise_. Have you been working hard or hardly wo—" My back swiftly found the fabric of the couch the same moment his mouth found mine again and kissed me hard, quietening my satire to a needy moan into him.

God, the ten days had been too long. All the craving I'd been able to block out while he was gone flooded back into me in a deluge of heat and lust. My face flooded with colour and my eyes with life, reigniting a flame he snuffed out every time I woke up alone. I never knew how much I'd miss him until he came back, and this time was almost painful. Just because I didn't feel the hole he left expanding didn't mean I didn't feel it being plugged up.

My fingers raked across his back and held him until he shifted, breathless and flushed. "That was one hell of a greeting."

"I was checking if I was still damned." Like he needed it to breathe, he pressed his lips to mine again and moaned softly. I felt his longing surge through me and aggravate that volatile little flame that burned for him.

"And?"

"Very damned." His lips trailed across my jaw to my ear. "I missed you, cupcake."

"I..." Had never been 'missed' before. Not like this. I didn't know where the boundaries lay in an association like ours, but I was certain that they were being pushed with pet names. Still, I couldn't deny that I was right there with him, though maybe a little less confident about it. "I missed you, too. Especially when you call me sweet names like that. But I'm really turned on right now and your erection is digging into my leg."

He laughed softly and kissed the frantic throb in my neck. "It's a shame you'd just fall asleep if we made love."

My mouth dried. I could tell that if I looked at him, he'd be regarding me with that almost carcinogenic glare I felt so guilty about evoking in him, but if it came with the sweet nothings reserved for treasured lovers and long term partners, was I misinterpreting it? I was so confused, and so reluctant to let myself get carried off in a pipe dream fantasy.

"Actually I could really go for a power nap. I've been awake for a whole two hours."

"Oh. Well, then." He sucked and nipped at my skin as he pulled me up to sit and wrestled me out of my clothes, carefully folding the arms of my glasses and putting them safely on the coffee table.

This, I could deal with. I never felt more certain about my actions where sex was involved, particularly sex with Blaze. I'd quickly learned that it was impossible to make a wrong move with him because he was just so hungry to be inside me. He was still selfish but liked to feel me writhe beneath him, carefully taking his time to drive me crazy. He did so quite capably and in more ways than he knew. Small stupid things like the noises he made and the way his back beaded with sweat when he was close to his limits made the experience for me.

We seemed to fit so well together that I swore the mould used to make him had somehow been turned inside out and fitted inside me. Not a single one of the casual encounters I'd had in Blaze's absence could compare or satisfy the lust that took over. I'd started to leave feeling short changed and a little dirty, wondering if I was acting habitually or keeping up appearances.

I'd fashioned myself a protective cocoon during my four years in London and Blaze was starting to find the cracks in it. He could exploit my weaknesses the way only one other could—someone who had no business being in my thoughts when a mouth-watering male stood topless in front of me. He'd undressed me in record time and was quite openly ogling me, tongue trapped between his teeth.

"I went to the bookshop first. You weren't there." Blaze scrunched his t-shirt up into a ball and threw it at my face, promptly scooping me up while my guard was down and carrying me into my bedroom. Somehow, the space seemed bigger and tidier. How long had he been there and what the hell had he been doing in my absence?

"Day off. It happens sometimes."

"You need a mobile phone."

"I have one."

"I need your number."

"I don't give men my number."

"I'm not 'men', am I?" I inched back to look down at him from my almost prone position across him and frowned. No, I didn't suppose he was 'men', but I'd promised myself that I wouldn't break trends for him. "Am I?"

"No." Sitting back on my heels, I tugged at the waistband of his jeans as a hint for him to lose them, and quickly. "And I'm not 'women'. So you'll get my number when I get your surname."

"Oh, touche." He wriggled out of his jeans and pulled me back over him, eyes burning like two emerald green beacons. The fact that he'd gone commando turned me on and I had no idea why. "You, on top. I need to see this."

"See what?"

I got my answer from his face. His gaze slid down and rested at the point where our bodies would connect. A low growl rumbled in his throat as he watched himself fill me up, fingers restlessly flexing against my hips while the balls of his hands held my weight and stopped me descending too quickly. He snarled a curse, jerking up to meet me, and flipped me onto my back to drill into me hard, fast, and so roughly I battled to catch my breath.

Blaze lacked his usual finesse and I knew that it was because he was feeling tormented. His earlier kisses had said as much. He fucked like he had a point to make, maybe not to me, but to himself. What that point was, I didn't know. Maybe he was trying to reassure himself that it was just the driving urge to screw me senseless that made him miss me as much as he had and we really did just use each other as implements to get ourselves off. Whatever the reason, he charged through, determined and unrelenting, sparing me no time to recover between orgasms that began to roll together and snowball.

It was too much. Pleasure became painful, but I didn't want it to stop. No matter how hard my toes cramped, he drove on and licked away the almost sadistic tears that dripped down my temples into my hair. I was lost to him, forced into a place where I could focus on nothing but him. My new most favourite place in the world, away from all my neuroses and memories—the only place I could connect so deeply with another human being. An activity I'd spent four years using to validate myself had become a meaningful bridge to a bigger place. Had he turned my life upside down like I'd wanted? Maybe. Given half the chance, Blaze might have ploughed away at me until I was no longer gifted with eyesight, foresight or hindsight, so I might never see for myself just how much damage he'd done.

I whimpered feebly when he sank his teeth into my neck and moaned my name, finally finding his release after I don't know how long. His weight pushed me down into the mattress, making me feel gloriously overpowered and well-used. Immediately, my eyelids drooped, but his nose nuzzling my hair kept me just about conscious.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, spending a wave of goose bumps across my skin. "I lost control." Unable to speak, I grunted quietly and found enough energy to catch his hand in mine and squeeze it. "I've broken you, haven't I?"

"You've ruined me for other men, that's for damn sure." I forced one eye open and winked at him. "I'll be good to go again in five minutes."

Blaze scoffed gently and traced his fingers across his bite mark. "Did you really miss me this week?"

"I did. I just didn't know how much until you came back. You always come back." My trust was rewarded with an indulgent, typically contagious smile. I'd believed in him and clearly it meant a lot that I had. It meant so much more to me, too—it meant that I _could_.

"What would you do if I was still here when you woke up?"

My forehead creased slightly. Our situation was what it was. Why would I consider it being any other way when this was all it could be? What would be the point of conjuring idyllic scenarios that would never become reality?

"Make you get me coffee and do my hair." He cocked his head to the side a little, a gesture seeking my honesty. "It would be weird for me, like it was 'real'."

"Real how?"

"Real like no complications. No reasons 'why not', I guess. If I woke up and you were in the kitchen or something, that's like Chris or Esme being here. But if I woke up and found you sleeping next to me, I think I'd be forced to do something really stupid like think you were mine." Inhaling sharply, I blushed crimson through my already flushed cheeks and closed my open eye to avoid seeing his reaction. I couldn't filter my thoughts when I was sedate, and the last thing I want to do was scare him off with hints at how deeply he affected me. "Can I have my power nap now?"

"Of course, cupcake." He kissed the tip of my nose and pulled me over to lay my head on his sweat slicked chest. His heart was still racing, visibly straining at the confines of his chest. "And I'll be in that kitchen making you coffee when you wake up."

Maybe he wasn't as scared as I thought.

#  SEVEN

#

I woke up feeling hungover and raw. It took a moment for me to recall the events that had led to me ending up sprawled out in bed, hugging a pillow wrapped up in a t-shirt I didn't recognise. But I knew the smell that clung to it and it was one that didn't exactly encourage me to move. Blaze's scent set me up for the day, along with the memories it provoked of the night before.

But this wasn't the morning after the night before. It was the same afternoon after the afternoon before, and I had absolutely no reason to feel so disgraceful.

Dragging the t-shirt over my head, I winced as I sat upright and surveyed the murder scene that was now my bed. Blood spotted the cream cotton valance sheet that was torn in places, and sweat and other...fluids stained the fabric under where I'd laid to sleep. I hadn't realised just how carnal the sex had been at the time, but seeing how rough it could get when I didn't even know it made my mouth snap open.

Blaze was dangerous—a serious threat on my sanity and self-control, but how savage was _I_ when I lost my head? It had taken less than five minutes from front door to bedroom to reach this level of indecency...

"Oh, Esme!" I remembered her rude exclusion from my afternoon and knew that I had to explain myself. Or rather explain Blaze. "Blaze!"

The sight of him standing in my kitchen stopped me in my tracks. He wore nothing but black briefs and was covered in small, red crescent marks left by my nails. His skin glowed red under the scratches but he looked none too perturbed, leaning over a tablet computer set down on the breakfast bar, watching music videos while he swigged milk from the carton.

He was at home here, looking far better off than I did even if he had been brutalised by my hand. All elements of that scenario combined, he looked fucking hot.

"You helped yourself to my WiFi password?" He glanced up, seemingly surprised to see me in my own home, and shot me a smile that made my insides melt enough to forgive the host of violations he'd committed. I loved that he felt comfortable and confident in my small space. It only made sense when he was so happily underneath my skin. "And you're getting your germs in my milk."

"You're getting your germs in my t-shirt."

I walked into the arm he held out and leaned into him, sliding a hand down the front of his underwear to stroke the trail of hair that crept down from his navel. If he stuck around like this every time he fucked me into slumber, we'd never leave my flat. "God, woman. You're insatiable. You might be ready again but I need longer than half an hour to recover from something like that."

"Half an hour?"

"Hmm." He nodded and reached around me to pour a large mug of coffee from a steaming hot jug he'd already made. I usually used instant, and was amazed to see that I even owned a coffee grinder. I definitely didn't have the beans... "I thought you'd sleep longer. I was going to sneak a shower and make myself look pretty before you woke up. I brought a change of clothes."

"Quite good at taking liberties, aren't you? Making up for lost time?" The playful atmosphere dissolved with the reminder that we'd been apart for what seemed so long but was really no time at all. We were becoming too emotionally involved in our tryst. I didn't want to pry into his absence but I had to. "Has your uh... 'caree' been ill?"

"Nothing else could have kept me from you, Emmeline." The mood lifted with the tenderness of his tone. "This would be another good case for you giving me your number. I couldn't leave her but I wanted to talk to you; let you know that I was thinking about you."

"Phone sex isn't my thing." I muttered into my coffee and smirked. "It would be too easy for you to just send me a picture of your cock and spare the words."

"You know..." Blaze took the mug from my hand and lifted me up onto the breakfast bar next to the tablet, which quietly piped out _Panic! At The Disco_ , one of my favourite bands. "... You're much more amenable when you're freshly fucked. I do think of you beyond your erogenous zones, and the only time I get a sense of you feeling the same is when you're lulled into a post-coital stupor." He sounded affronted, even if his face didn't show it. "I get it, I do. You don't want to let your guard down for something hopeless, but please don't wound me by pretending you're bullet-proof. You've got me by the balls here."

His honesty still shocked me sometimes. I'd overheard enough conversations by scorned women to be led to believe that men sugar-coated their feelings or kept them completely locked away. A great source of frustration to womankind, I thought. I appeared to have the entirely too forthcoming exception to the rule standing in my flat.

"I can has guilt trip?"

He mirrored my pout. "I don't want to make you feel bad, I just don't want to throw myself into something imbalanced. I don't know that I'm not chasing a mirage if you keep hiding behind innuendo and bravado. Sometimes it's just not practical to bend you over and prod the truth out of you."

I still felt guilty. I'd been trying to run from my feelings for so long that I just didn't know how to express them anymore, and I certainly didn't want to muddy the waters with them. What we had was so simple, or at least it had been at first. We were both in way over our heads now, dangerously close to the point of no return, and maybe I did have to seriously consider playing my part in these far too frequent discussions about 'us'.

There _was_ an 'us', I couldn't deny it. I just still didn't know how to deal with the fact someone had pushed their way into and warped the Hunter shaped hole in my heart. Some parts had bowed, forced to move around Blaze, but there were still some gaps around the edges that made the fit imperfect. I didn't know that the round peg in a square hole would ever be a good substitute for what I'd spent nine years wanting, but if a miracle happened and Hunter returned from Japan with his arms spread wide for me, I didn't think he'd be enough either anymore.

I was in limbo and, paradoxically, the only way I could live through it was to shield my emotions with a subject change.

"Is 'she' still ill?" I rolled my eyes and swung my feet impatiently side to side. I hated that he'd given her a gender so the irrational part of me had ammunition to be childish and possessive. _He's spending all week with another woman..._

Blaze stooped to look up into my downcast eyes and grinned, seeing my rogue thoughts the way only he could. Somehow, he looked almost happy to see my naughty little green eyed monster. "Why, Miss White, are you jealous that there's another woman in my life?" It was typical that the one man in the world who didn't freak out over a possessive woman would be the man I didn't truly possess.

"No..." I knew that mine was the only world Blaze was rocking, but I couldn't say the same. I had no right to be jealous, and was determined to pretend that I wasn't for the sake of not being a hypocrite. "Is she okay without you?"

He nodded and pushed away from me, making a beeline to the coffee table for my glasses. "I usually have back-up at the weekends. Last week was an annoying exception."

I followed, hot on his heels. I couldn't stay away from him too long—always had to be close enough to touch him. He was addictive, and so potent it scared me. "So Saturday is Emmyday?"

"You want a whole day, cupcake?" A whole day? A light at the end of the week and an excuse to wheedle out of work early? The best part of a weekend to enjoy the hell out of him? A guarantee that he'd be there on the Double Booked threshold ready to make me centre of his universe, even if just for an evening?

"... Yes, please. Weekly."

I didn't know how he'd take the request, but was relieved when he smiled and sank down on the couch, patting the seat next to him for me to join him. "And what would we do with said days?"

"Depends how long it takes you to recharge..."

He tried on my glasses and recoiled back immediately, blinking like a light had been shone in his eyes. It was a reaction I was used to seeing, but somehow it warmed my heart when it came from him. He made every expression look gorgeous, doubly so when so devoid of clothing.

"So you're like, blind." Blaze slid the glasses onto my face and the hangover type pounding in my head began to subside. Far from blind, I often forgot how much I needed them when I could still see capably without them. Okay, I couldn't see the details of faces or read, but I wasn't exactly walking into furniture. "You don't wear them when you're at Esme's _._ "

"I don't want them to get broken."

"Buy new ones?"

I sighed, head dropping back. "Truly spoken like a man with perfect vision. For something so necessary, they're really quite expensive. My lenses are complex, so they take days to be ordered in, and glasses are like work boots. It's not as simple as putting on the first pair you find. They might not suit and they're not comfortable right away. You have to wear them in because they'll be too tight, too loose, some lenses put the ground at a funny angle—"

"Okay, okay!"

My point made, I twisted around onto my knees and combed my fingers into his messy hair. "I don't get to see you clearly so often. It's an education."

"Oh really, how do I look?" He donned his full-voltage male model face and posed.

"You look..." Even covered in scratches, he took my breath away. He wore sex hair well; it darkened when it was grimy and brightened those startling green irises that saw right through all my brave fronts. The small scar on his Cupid's bow had become less of a flaw and more of an invitation, a mark to kiss, lip and suck on. It drove him wild when I targeted it. "... Edible. Did you come here today to offer yourself as my meal?"

"Hmm, no... I came to see if you could help me with this here quandary I have. I don't suppose you know any dysfunctional, hot, brunette bookshop assistants with a brand new wardrobe who'd like to get into Monday's Miracle's secret gig tonight?"

I leaned back, eyes narrowed. "Don't toy with my emotions, Blaze. I'm a fragile woman."

It was mean of him to taunt me with such things. Esme and I had been keeping our ears to the ground for weeks, waiting for hints at locations and who she could charm into finding us tickets. Blaze had watched us, denying any connection to the event despite being an ex-member of the band. Dirty little liar.

"It's at The Roses." It figured that it would be at one of Henry's clubs, though luckily one he didn't frequent. "Super small, super exclusive. Up close and personal with the band. What do you say?" Like he had to ask.

"If it's a super gig..."

"No capes." I grinned, pleased to have him on my wavelength. The excitement made me squirm—thoughts of breaking my usual cycle of drinking at Esme's to do something so outlandish dizzied me with childlike anticipation. Just me and Blaze, dancing and screaming along to heavy rock, right up in the action with the promise of schmoozing with some rockstars. It was a point of my life I'd remember forever, looking back at the photographs when I felt low and lonely without him. Something so special...

"... Is this a date?"

He blinked slowly and exhaled on a hum, giving no answer in his expression. "How would you ever know if you've never been on one? Call it an awakening. I've seen a lot of your life in the past couple of weeks, Emmeline. Now I want you to see what my world is like, beyond the day job, auditions and boring go-sees."

_Auditions and go-sees._ Jesus, I was really sleeping with a male model, actor and musician. If only I could see the faces of the girls who'd bullied me in school now when they opened their magazines to see me staring up at them, standing next to easily the most wanted man in London. Funny, how I didn't see myself deserving of anyone's envy until it involved a man. I'd nearly always been rich and part of a notorious family, but that didn't seem like a matter to be boasted in my mind. Being Blaze's, even if I wasn't really his at all, made me feel important. Special. Like the only person in the world.

"I would hug you but I have this annoying monkey with intimacy issues on my back."

"You said I looked edible..."

Someone hammered at the door, but I was already straddling Blaze, moaning into his mouth as his tongue stroked mine. In nothing but a t-shirt, all he had to do was pull his underwear down and we could be fucking like minks in seconds. He was hard already, switched on by my grinding against him.

"Ignore it." I mumbled when the door knocked again, pumping restlessly against his teasing hand, so turned on and in the moment that it wouldn't have taken much to push me over the edge. He held me up and watched his first hard inch push into me, growling so gutturally it undid me.

My orgasm hit the same minute the visitor called out. "Emmy, love? I know you're in there!"

"Shit!" I stared down with amused horror at Blaze, steadying myself on his shoulders. "It's my mother. She has a key."

"Emmeline Elizabeth, open this door!"

"Coming, Mum!" Blaze wiggled beneath me, hitting a sweet spot that damn near brought literal meaning to my answering shout. "You have to hide in the bedroom. Like, now."

He pouted and slowly eased out of me, still rock hard. "Just let me meet her."

"No! Even if you weren't only in your underwear..." Ivy Tudor had the unmistakable face of an angel and an encyclopaedic knowledge of current events and celebrity hearsay. Blaze had his equally as seraphic face plastered everywhere. There was no conceivable way they wouldn't recognise each other. I shuddered at the thought and pointed sternly at the bedroom door. "Go, you fiend!"

"You'll need these." Quickly, he yanked down his briefs and hooked my feet through them, pulling them up to cover my wet, less than modest modesty, then set on a leisurely pace towards the bedroom, gloriously naked. Watching him walk away was still almost as good as watching him walk towards me, more so when I now knew what lay beyond the clothes, a thought that made me squirm.

"Emmy!" The door opened before I could get to it and just as the bedroom door closed on Blaze's fabulous backside. I smiled up guiltily from the couch with my eyes still a little starry, pulling the t-shirt down over the borrowed briefs. My mother stood just inside the door, innocently oblivious to what she'd walked into.

She was a breath of fresh air in a lilac wrap dress that brought out the green in her eyes, but clashed horribly with her car. Her greying blonde hair fell loosely into a chignon and framed a dainty nose, sculpted cheekbones, and naturally full red lips that sheathed a killer smile.

She was a trophy bride all right—a real English rose who didn't have any thorns until she married them. And I hadn't seen her for the longest time.

"Mum! You look great." If she was a vision of how I'd look in twenty years, I was eager to age.

"I wish I could say the same, darling. You look dreadful." I nodded, knowing that I couldn't rationally find insult in what she said. My hair was still matted and fuck-mussed, eyeliner smudged and the bite mark Blaze had left in the tender flesh of my neck was starting to bruise. But no matter how obvious it looked to me that I'd been up to no good, Ivy Tudor saw the good in anyone and could deny the bad existed. "One of your neighbours called your father with a noise complaint. I was around, and thought you'd prefer me to come and scold you for being a vixen." Her eyes gleamed with a mischievous yet reverent glint. These were the times she liked to leach vicariously from, having led a relatively unremarkable life in the bedroom department. I didn't want to know the details, but I knew that there had only been one man other than Henry between her sheets and he'd been something of a wet squib.

"I'm sorry, I had no idea I'd been so... vocal."

"By all accounts it was the fellow, love." She sounded disturbingly proud. "I think that was what caused the concern. Old Mrs. Adams upstairs thought you were beating him senseless."

"Well, then." I coughed and pulled the neck of the t-shirt up over my nose to hide my grin. The idea of Blaze being so lost in the pleasure he found in me was endearing, and I had the driving urge to make him do it again so I could hear it—hear him moan my name while I rode him. It was the times like that I knew I had him all to myself.

Ivy wandered through to the kitchen, pausing once or twice at various objects of my scattered clothing. "You bought yourself a tablet?"

"Ah... no, it's a friends. I'm borrowing it?" The music ceased, leaving a weighty silence between us. There was more to this visit than a noise complaint and I knew it.

"Are you all right, love?" Frowning, I looked over my shoulder into the kitchen area of my open plan flat. "Hunter says you've been ignoring his emails." I blinked, at a loss for words. My email account had been untouched for weeks because the thought simply hadn't crossed my mind, but how dare he run off telling tales to my mother? I was a grown woman with my own life, a life he'd walked out of. "You know he thinks the worst when he doesn't hear from you."

"He could have called." I raised an eyebrow at her, daring her to disagree. "I'm all right, Mum. I'm the best I've been in a while." Though a little worse now for hearing the 'H' word.

"You _do_ seem different. There's more colour in your cheeks." There was no way I was going to tell her that the rosiness might be due to the fact I'd been having sex just seconds before she walked in. Less way I'd tell her what was making me feel so exuberant beyond my bedroom. "You're still wearing awful clothes, though. Come on, I'm taking you shopping. No arguments."

I leapt to my feet when she headed towards my bedroom door. "No, you can't go in there!" She ignored me and made a grab for the handle. "Seriously, Mother. Please don't go in there."

She scowled at me, one hand on her hip, and paused with her other hand ready to lunge. "Why not?" I immediately thought of the bloodied sheets and balked. Even if Blaze found a place to hide, the state of that bed might give her a coronary.

"It's a mess in there." A nervous giggle escaped my throat. "You don't want to see that."

But, because she was my mother, she knew I was hiding something. "Please don't lie to me, Emmy. I know your ways. Tell me what mess you made."

My eyes widened and I was vaguely aware of shaking my head. I knew which 'ways' she meant, the conclusion she'd jumped to. She'd jump on it harder when she saw the blood. My recycled excuses for secrecy stoked her concern but I hadn't even realised that I was using them again now.

"It's not like that this time." She sighed, looking me up and down before she made the move I'd been scared of, shoving the door open before my body had time to catch up with my brain.

The brain stopped stock-still at the sight of the bedroom. The bed was freshly made, the torn up sheets hidden by the duvet, and Blaze's personal effects were scattered around the room. Fresh underwear and a change of clothes for him were folded up on the ottoman spanning the bottom of the bedstead, next to a pile he'd apparently laid out for me with clean towels for a shower. My small, practically antique stereo system played the same music he'd been listening to in the kitchen, and he could be heard singing along from the shower in the en-suite.

He'd done this on purpose, though I had no idea why or how he'd done it so quickly.

Ivy stared at me, stunned into silence.

"I told you it wasn't like that this time."

"You did." She swallowed hard, blinking too fast. "Sorry, love. I just... Is he handsome?" I nodded with a shy smile. She might find out for herself some day just how handsome, but on that day, I was happy enough just to give her the reassurance. "Does he look after you?"

"He does. He took me clothes shopping. He takes me to dinner." Stepping back out into the lounge area, I urged her with me and fiddled with the hem of the t-shirt. "Let's have lunch tomorrow. I'll explain everything then."

"You don't need to explain anything, Emmeline. Just tell me that you're happy."

It was that cut and dry for my mother and I loved her for it. I could have been sleeping with an ex-con and she wouldn't have cared as long as he told me I was pretty and paid for my lunch. Love was paramount and almighty as far as she was concerned, believing that everyone should be paired off with their soul mate.

She swore that Hunter was her fault, an oversight. She'd tried to pair us up too young when our personalities weren't done developing. By her reckoning, he was marrying his match, despite us being compatible. My other half was out there and she promised that she'd know him when she saw him.

Secretly, this was another reason for keeping her away from Blaze. I was scared she'd tell me that the man who was destined to be with me was the man I couldn't have. I'd be building a miserable rod for my own back.

"I'm happy, Mum. Happy and terrified."

"Then lunch it is. 'To fear love is to fear life'. We'll have you chomping at the bit in no time."

I purred happily, stretching my sleepy, well-used body out across the king-size mattress, coming to rest with my head nuzzling the pillow that was once again wrapped up in Blaze's t-shirt. I'd owed him an orgasm and he'd made damn sure that he'd claimed it the minute my mother had walked out of the door. The skill and technique I'd grown accustomed to had returned, buckling me into a fairground rollercoaster I couldn't get enough of.

Blaze had been created with a vendetta to literally fuck me stupid. I could think of no logical reason for my surrendering to our difficult romance without a fight that didn't involve him at some point scrambling a few of my brain cells. Like it or not, I was bloody besotted and it was entirely his fault.

"Good afternooning, Miss White." I sat up automatically when Blaze strolled in, freshly showered and dressed in just a red chequered shirt still hanging open. He smelled strongly of men's shower gel, washed clean of the musky scent of our sex, but it still at least distracted me from the fact that he'd practically moved himself into my flat.

"Why do you do this?" I nodded down at the pillow I'd unwittingly kept clutched to me when I sat. "Why have you wrapped your t-shirt around this today?"

"I untangled myself from you earlier to go the bathroom. You were fine when I left but when I came back in a minute later, you were having a bad dream." He sat down next to my feet and took one of my hands in his, turning it palm up to trace circles around my life line.

"I had no idea."

"You calmed as soon as I sat next to you so I thought it was over. But you started to toss and turn again when I stood up, so I got my t-shirt from the lounge and made an alternative me. I didn't think you'd appreciate it if I was there when you woke up, but I couldn't just leave you like that. It was heartbreaking."

His face fell and became morose and pained, like he was reliving watching me at the mercy of a nightmare. But then it brightened when he spoke again. "You immediately threw an arm over the pillow and nestled into it, calm and smiling. It was a joy to see, Emmeline." A joy to see me act so daftly or a joy to see me so comforted by his scent?

I simpered, embarrassed by my somnial admission. Surely it was the behaviour I couldn't control that betrayed me the most? "And this time?"

He smiled and stood, pulling me up to my feet. "I didn't want to take any chances. I kept checking on you to make sure I wasn't being big-headed. I wasn't. Now..."

Whatever he said, I didn't hear it. My mind was working on overdrive, clawing around for any shred of a clue at what I'd dreamt of that had made him want to comfort me beyond consciousness. That spread into a paranoia over what I'd done in my sleep, if I'd spoken or done anything untoward. What if I'd said something I shouldn't have?

I acted compliantly as he dressed me like a child. The clothes he'd picked out portrayed me as anything but. The black vest clung to my body, showing off just how slight I was, but the low cut V revealed something that I didn't usually care to show off: I was somewhat 'blessed' around the bust.

It was almost a point of embarrassment that my breasts look like someone else's stuck onto a waif, and the minute Chris had pointed out that I was unrealistically stacked and trim like a video game character was the moment I started to cover up.

The flared, black satin skirt Blaze had picked to accompany the best was equally as revealing. How had I not realised that he'd been dressing me up like a baby hooker when I was in the shop trying them on?

"You've expanded." Blaze spoke directly to my chest and leered, tugging at the V neckline. "You've gained those few pounds I was lusting for. This wasn't so tight before."

Fat Emmy roused from her sleep in my subconscious and shook her head at me disapprovingly.

You've been letting things slip.

"What, really?" Now he mentioned it, my underwear had been feeling a little snug, and the clothes he'd brought for me looked more like they would have on the airbrushed catalogue models who sold them.

"You look great for it," he assured me, forcing his eyes away from my cleavage to meet my distraught gaze. No woman wanted to be told she'd gained weight, some women didn't want to be placated with lies like, 'You look so sexy'. I was one of them.

Blaze turned me around by the shoulders and groaned longingly behind me. "This skirt is so short..."

"Shouldn't I have showered before you dressed me?"

"No point. You're going to be filthy in minutes when the music starts and no man wants to stir another's broth."

It took moment to decipher his riddle. "You want me to go out smelling of you so I don't make it with any rockstars?" His usual cockiness faltered with the betraying twitch of his eyes. "You do! Does my green eyed monster have a green eyed monster of his own?" I felt a little guilty for calling him mine, but it didn't seem to be that particular point of the conversation that left him disgruntled.

"I certainly don't want to stand there watching anyone else putting the moves on you." He scrubbed a hand over his face and grabbed my brush from a shelf underneath a large oval mirror painted with brightly coloured filigree, a piece of art with my fingerprints all over it. Blaze sighed as he combed at the tangles in my hair, stroking the entire length down to my waist as it smoothed. "It's like I told your friend, Chris, I have every intention of concreting this arrangement someday and I can accept that things won't be 'typical' in the meantime. But I'll be clear, Emmeline, one day I won't care for the complications. Mine are temporary and I can overlook yours."

"But you don't know what my complications are."

He shrugged. "I don't care. I'll take what I can get. God knows I had no idea that we'd be at this point when we met, but I don't know that it would have stopped me anyway. Ten days away from you put it into perspective and scribbled a few question marks down into full stops. I just need time, if you'll allow it."

I don't know if he needed my answer, but I was stuck too still to respond. As messed up as I was, he was looking for permission to stay and a license to become permanent fixture in my life. How could he say that he could just overlook my 'why's when he had no idea what they were?

There would be times when I'd regress and fall apart, a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode, and I'd always be in love with another man. It wasn't fair to give him a green light when there was so much he didn't know, so much that might overshadow his delusion that I was a joy to look at and 'make love' to.

"You really don't know how messed up I am, Blaze."

Flapping his hand uncaringly, he paced into the bathroom and returned with the case full of makeup I rarely used. "I'm a strange man, Emmeline White. I prefer to look a person's problems as strands in a tapestry. Alone, they mean nothing, all the same dull colour and hue. Put a few strands of red in a white sea and you might say it looks wrong, blemished, unacceptable. I say it adds character and definition, all in the interest of improving the bigger picture. I could pick away and analyse, questioning why they're there, or I could appreciate that they are and enjoy the masterpiece that took a miracle worker twenty-two years to weave. Now look up."

With a smile on his lips, Blaze held my chin up with his forefinger and kissed the tip of my nose. I loved the way he could ham up any sentiment with something poetic when 'I don't give a shit' would have done. There was no way in which he didn't seduce me and leave my inner Juliet drooling and damp around the gusset.

Holding a kohl pencil next to my eye did, however, concern me. "You're going to do my makeup? What, are you—"  
"A model? Yes." He gave me a look that warned me off the words 'gay', 'cross-dresser' and 'post-op'. "I also spent a lot of puberty painting Warhammer armies. Look up."

It was nigh on impossible to imagine Blaze as the nerdy type- huddled over collectors cards and hyperventilating over pictures of girls boobs. It was harder to imagine him ever not being attractive. Nobody just morphed into a stud when their balls dropped and I refused to believe that he'd been a special case.

He applied my makeup with care and a delicate touch I never would have expected from a man who could be so brusque and domineering. It was almost like having a very masculine big sister prettying me up for the prom I never attended.

He sucked on the back of his teeth thoughtfully when he'd finished and stepped back to examine me. "You'll do. Any more and we won't make it out. I already have balls like space hoppers from looking at that skirt."

I glanced down at the short band of satin and smirked. "You like?"

"I'd like it better if it was all you were wearing and your ankles were by my ears." His eyes misted with a heavy haze of arousal that made heat pool between my legs. That look, Jesus, I was addicted to it. "Keep looking at me like that, Emmeline," he warned, lips dipping to graze my earlobe, "and neither of us will leave this flat for days."

"Keep talking like that, Blaze," I countered, "and neither of us will leave for weeks."

And a very small part of me thought it might just honour that threat, keeping him captive in my ivory tower whether it was complicated or not.

#  EIGHT

#

"That skirt is so short..."

"You mentioned." I swatted at Blaze's hand as I climbed out of our taxi onto the pretentious red carpet that was typical of one of Henry's establishments. He said that he liked his guests to feel important when they arrived, like royalty. That was bullshit, he just knew how to market his businesses.

The Roses looked a lot like a small backstreet theatre, boasting a grand stage with rich ruby curtains that drew across by old fashioned pulleys. In fact, it had been at one point. The building had been renovated roughly fifteen years earlier, keeping the exterior's old world charm of the street facing ticket windows that often sat vacant.

But inside, the auditorium itself had been rebuilt with a few mod cons like mismatched ultra-modern chrome bars fully stocked with all manner of spirits, and seating booths towards the rear similar to those in Esme's.

As one of the first businesses Henry had started, it was one of the roughest around the edges, and that was why I'd liked to go there. It lacked the archaic yet still super-sterile air of Tudor blood-money and graced the least of his attention. Bands played there the most, seconded by independent theatre groups. Esme liked to hire out the building for her annual winter ball and knew exactly how to glamorise it to greatest effect. It didn't attract the highly polished crowd Henry aimed for, instead enticing bohemians and alternative-rockers through it's doors; the kind of people we were there to see.

But The Roses had a dirty little secret. Technically, it was mine. The club had been gifted to me after Henry saw how keen I was on the place, and that had immediately dulled it's appeal. Designed as a ploy to brighten my mood and draw me into ruling his empire, the idea of being responsible for anything or anyone was horrendous to me, and I'd shied away as soon as the gesture had been made. There would undoubtedly come a day when I'd regret throwing all the benefits and privileges Henry had granted me back in his face, but that day wasn't in sight.

Instead, I stood in front of it's doors with a man who suited the demographic of any power hungry mogul, groupie or sycophant, tugging at the leash to cash in my backstage pass like a hyperactive teenager.

"I can see where your backside meets your legs. That hot little crease just below your buttocks..." Blaze grabbed me and spun me around, catching my bottom lip between his teeth then sucking it gently, groaning lowly against my mouth. "I changed my mind, let's go back to bed."

"But it's Monday's Miracle! You can't drag me out like this, full of your cum because you denied me my right to shower, then change your mind when we're right outside. It doesn't work like that."

"The hell it doesn't." He cupped himself through the seam of his jeans and shook his head at me. " 'Full of your cum'—Your dirty mouth might be the death of me, Emmeline." Pulling me up close to him, he reached behind me and traced the ridge between my backside and my thigh. "I can see this."

"You know, from the way your lips have swollen and reddened, your pupils have dilated, and that vein in your neck is pumping away, I'd say you're crushing on me pretty hard, Blaze."

"I daresay I am, cupcake. And I daresay that you know exactly how hard."

Innuendo aside, I knew because I felt it too—the way that nothing else had mattered that afternoon because I'd been with him. The air became heavy and humid around him, suffocating me in a way that was almost erotic because it was so safe.

He was a talisman that protected me from the world and, more importantly, from myself. I was the most level I'd been in years and it was down to nothing more than the fact he was in my life, even if he wasn't in the same room. Stupidly, I'd put him up on the same pedestal as Hunter, but found myself placated by the fact that he gave me what I'd needed for so long.

Still, I hated it when he got that look in his eye, that wild, inflammatory look he got when he spoke of how he felt for me.

"I'm sorry."

"You keep saying that," he laughed, pulling me into an embrace and rocking me playfully, "but you wouldn't be if you understood. My heart aches for you sometimes, for the worldly things you don't know because the world has been cruel on your young mind."

"Hey!" I pushed back to look at him and scowled. "I'm not so naive! I might have had a pretty shitty adolescence, but you must only have a couple of years on me. Three at most."

"You think so?" Looking almost embarrassed, he cocked his head at me and pursed his lips. "I turn thirty next February." _What?_ There was no way this guy was in the twilight of his twenties, putting a little over seven years between us. My birthday had been a few weeks before we'd met—I was barely in my twenties and he was fast approaching his third decade of life. He'd had so much more time to define his parameters, wants and goals, so what the hell did he want with a kid like me?

And then I thought of the twelve year difference between Daniel and Jonathan, the illicit student-teacher affair that had turned into a fairytale. They'd met in college, Daniel as a student and Jonathan as our graphics professor, and the heat wave that moved between them from the first moment had been palpable. The number of years that separated them had been irrelevant and unimportant, less of a factor than their professional positions or lack thereof. Who was I to grumble at the sex god's age when he wore it so well?

"I must make the most of us both being vicenarian's before you stagnate."

"You been reading the dictionaries at work, cupcake?"

"My life has recently become quite a boring slog of staring at doors waiting for my favourite non-enabler to arrive. It was the dictionary or one of Esme's overtly feminist 'women's interest' magazines."

"Tough call."

I murmured in agreement and turned my attention towards the boom of music that radiated outward from within The Roses like a shockwave. _They_ were inside, and I was practically vibrating with excitement to meet them. It may not have been a big deal to Blaze after being one of the group's founding members, but the experiences of fame I might have experienced as a privileged teenager or student had been lost to illness, obsession and convalescence.

In a way, this opportunity made up for the wild-child I never was and had decided not to be when unwillingly submerged into a world of popularity with Henry. Not paying much interest in those who sat around me at A-list functions and dinner parties, I'd blocked out the famous faces when I might have stared in awe.

But if I'd taken it all in my stride then, maybe I might not be so convincingly anxious and star struck now. I might have known Blaze already and looked like less of an attractive prospect had I not spent years cutting my nose off to spite my face.

"Why did you leave the group? All the respect in the world to him, but you'd have made a much better front man than Chase-bloody-Garret."

"The tours." Blaze answered flatly, obviously a little sore over the subject. "As much as I hated it, my responsibilities kept me tied to London. My opportunities to leave are restricted to weekend trips and overnight red-eye drives. It was too much strain on the guys and an impossibility with international tours." Wistfully, he shook his head and rested it against mine.

"That was a long time ago."

"It was. Six years." I felt his frown before I got a blurred, up close look of his eyes darkening. "I thought life might have changed by now. I thought I'd have more freedom."

"Do you regret it?"

"In some ways. I still got a lot of media attention, what with my face already known as their singer, so I didn't lose out there. It led to a lot of work, the work you know. But as much as I loved the music, I couldn't hold them back. Chase is a good guy. I knew he'd do me proud, even if he does act like a bastard around pretty women." He shot me one firm, very pointed glance. "You'd do well to remember that."

"He'd stir another man's broth?"

"Not if he enjoys being attached to his genitals..." The humour was there but tainted by possessive vehemence I couldn't help but smile about. Blaze sighed and rolled his eyes at me, trying to look annoyed and failing miserably. "All right then, let's introduce you to some rockstars."

Monday's Miracle were an award winning collaboration of four far too attractive men who sang far too angry songs. Even after a generous dose of bad publicity after a particularly nasty case of blackmail, they were still one of the biggest UK bands to grace the industry.

And I was sitting with them in a club nobody knew I owned, drinking and talking movies. What were the chances? We sat on the stage itself in couches and chairs dragged up from the base level, surrounded by their equipment and using an overturned crate as a table for the drinks we'd swiped from the bar.

The band made comments that the owners would probably kill them for helping themselves. I casually said that I thought the owners might be particularly forgiving. I may not have taken the offer to have jurisdiction over the business, but Henry would know that I'd been there and be lenient.

I easily could have gotten away with calling Chris, Esme, Daniel and Jonathan down, but for once in my strange life, I was selfishly enjoying the limelight from being sat with incredible company, who were honestly looking at me like I was the amazing spectacle in the room.

Pictures didn't do Chase Garret justice. He looked to be on top form that night, blonde hair combed back over a face that boasted bright blue eyes and an attractively angular jaw line. He had a foul reputation, but that didn't seem like the man who sat on the other side of Blaze, who was territorially obstructing our conversation by hovering backwards and forwards while we tried to talk around him. Chase was the kind of gorgeous one-time-only lay I enjoyed in Blaze's absence and I think they both sensed it.

"So, you seem way too hot to be a nerd." The drummer, Jordan, forced a ceasefire with his observation. He was quieter but sharper, with keen brown eyes and long hair that fell to his shoulders. A pussy cat by nature without a doubt, and shy in bigger crowds. I could relate. "Hot and smart don't really mix."

"What can I say?" I pouted at him sarcastically. "I'm the whole package."

"I'm not convinced. I think you hide your lies in your boobs."

Blaze sat up poker straight and glared in his direction. "Why are you looking at her rack, Jord?"

He laughed back awkwardly, clearly not knowing where to put himself. It was strange seeing Blaze so on edge when he was usually such a gentle soul, so cool and collected in spite of his name. It was a revelation almost, seeing a crack in his composure.

The unease was contagious. Was he having second thoughts about introducing me to his friends like this?

"Before you humiliate yourself by acting like a complete idiot..." I warned him in a quiet but strong voice that might have seemed like a whisper if it wasn't so audible. It was the hostilely sweet tone I'd learned after years of watching my mother berate Henry for telling racist jokes in public. "... remember what I chose to wear before you strolled into my life and took a rather large, spectacular crap on all that I know. You picked this outfit out and dressed me into it, commenting on said rack as you did so. Therefore you have no rational excuse to expect others to not notice, too. Unless of course you're embarrassed to see me showcasing the assets I thought I understood you were quite partial to." Patiently, I turned back to Jordan, who regarded me with the utmost respect, sparking the suspicion that people rarely spoke down to Blaze. "Try me. Challenge my inner geek."

He stammered and shook his head, sagging back into his bowl seated arm chair. Obviously, I had him at a loss by putting him on the spot.

"Permission to antagonise?" Matt, their bassist raised a hand and shrugged at me, standing forth as the only one with the guts to take me on. I nodded my assent and smiled politely. " _Ironman_ was the best hero _DC_ came up with."

"Wrong. _Ironman_ was _one_ of the best heroes _Marvel_ came up with. Stan Lee would fuck you up for blurring that line."

"She's good. Though not too riled..." I bared my teeth like a dog and faked a snarl. "Okay, okay. _Jar Jar Binks_ was the greatest science-fiction character to rise from the brain of the god of everything—James Cameron."

I grabbed my drink, inwardly seething and leaned back coolly into my corner of the couch. He'd not so much antagonised as picked at the very sore point for all of nerdkind and done it in style. "Maybe Stan Lee won't fuck you up. Maybe I'll save him a job."

"Yeah. She's a nerd, all right." Matt grinned across at me, tipping his glass towards me as an apology. "Sorry I had to put you through that, Emmy. We're kind of a big deal, you know. We have to know that we're not dealing with fakers."

Secretly, I glanced across the room and clenched my jaw. I was a club owner, a mess, and technically a billionaire dressed in sheep's clothing. Albeit a pretty slutty sheep, but I was possibly the biggest faker they could have hoped to never find. "Yeah, yeah. Your mouth is moving but all I hear is, 'Did you feel that just then? That was me killing a piece of your soul with my sick, twisted mind games'."

The light-hearted banter was disturbed by the guitarist, Scott, emerging from a dressing room and laying a hard slap on the backside of the girl who came with him—him looking pleased with himself and her not so much, rubbing at the smudged line of her lipstick. She looked younger than me, barely out of school. Assumptions were drawn. I presumed Scott had taken over Chase's role as mouthpiece after his tiny bullying 'indiscretion' and flaunted the position of power to rope in groupies.

Whoever he was, I didn't feel the same sense of familiarity with him as I did with his band mates. He was undeniably 'off' in comparison.

"You must be 'the artist'." His breath stank of hard liquor, detectable even at a distance. I wasn't really sure what I'd expected from them, but maybe I should have had a more realistic view that at least one of them would be more than a little narcissistic.

Scott was it, probably what you'd now call the Monday's Miracle pretty boy, and he damn well knew it. "How are you tolerating his bullshit?"

Figuring he was talking about Blaze, I cleared my throat and leaned over the back of the couch to look at him deadpan. "I was fine until he brought me out in public. _Are you my enemy, fool, or my way out? Will you reel me in or cast me free? Am I leaving here with you tonight, or the idiot I brought with me?_ "

Apparently baffled by my knowledge of their lyrics, a stunned silence spread across the stage before it was fractured by raucous laughter and the unexpected shower of glitter from a large, spontaneously popped balloon hanging from the light rigging overhead. "Oh, Jesus. Close your mouths! If you swallow too much of this you'll be shitting it for days."

"How in hell would you know something like that?"

"I have a friend who tried to cheer me up with glittery space cakes when we first met." It was a fond memory I had from the early days of my friendship with Chris, back when he thought that he could storm in like a white knight, fix me and take the rescued damsel in distress as his prize. He couldn't stand to see me so miserable on my birthday, so let himself into my flat while I was at work and waited in the dark for me.

He scared the hell out of me, and I laughed with him through the haze of the cannabis, but I was no closer to recovery then than I was at that moment in The Roses. It took a long time to accept that I'd always be 'in recovery'—Daniel liked to call it my remission. It just meant a lot that he'd tried.

"What's with the glitter, anyway? Seems kind of misplaced."

"Glitter—" Chase started, rolling his eyes when Scott flounced off with his plaything, uninterested in the conversation. "—lost a lot of credibility when the whole 'sparkly vampire' thing became pop-culture. We're trying to prove that you can rock it without being queer about it."

"You're trying to prove that one of the campest decorations in existence isn't queer?" I pulled a face and mumbled into my glass. "Your logic is flawed."

"Precisely!" Their faces seemed to light up, leaving me confused and needing an explanation. "It's totally fucking flawed, that's the beauty of it. It's a direct contradiction of itself and still, we're doing it proudly. Everyone is flawed, no matter how much they want to deny it, but flaws should be embraced and celebrated. We'd all be pretty boring without our fucked-up-ness; no interesting tales of woe to rivet people or any sour experiences to shape us. Think of someone 'normal' who's never suffered at the hands of negativity, then think of someone who's a mess. Who's more interesting?"

Immediately, I thought of my sister, Tallulah, who never paid much attention to the fact her little sister was trapped in her own personal hell. She lived the high life everyone else could only wish for, and she was boring as sin. That was her flaw, that she was flawless.

"I get it." I nodded, and I did understand. Blaze's philosophy of appreciating how screwed up I was wasn't as exclusive as I'd first thought. There were a whole host of people out there who wore their quirks almost proudly on their sleeves, and after years of feeling like I was the most damaged person in the world, it wasn't until I was sat in the company of an ex-blackmailer reliant on psycho-stimulants to not be a complete bastard that I realised that my life could be so much worse.

I was already drunk when we were ushered off the stage so the roadies could do their last minute checks and open the venue doors, swaying slightly on purpose to make the light cast off the silver sparkles on my skin. A sense of warm euphoria filled me instead of the usual moodily lull, along with the vague sense of guilt that I should have been sharing the experience with my friends.

Still, I'd heard that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade, and while I didn't have the necessary equipment to start a production line for carbonated beverages at my disposal, I did have some sort of alcoholic lemon cocktail in my hand. It seemed like a fair compromise.

"So where are we sitting?" I wandered between the seats, running my free hand over the soft suede fabric of the seats as I walked. "Or standing? Are we standing?" Blaze grunted quietly and jerked his head towards the stage. He'd been unusually quiet since his telling off, speaking only in response to a question. "You're freaking me out."

"What?" As much as he tried to make it look like he had, he didn't snap out of his bad mood. "I'm sorry, I'm just distracted."

"No shit. Do you wish I'd stayed at home?"

"Yes, but not for the reason you think." Sighing, his chin dropped to his chest. A sign of defeat. "I like having you to myself. I like being centre of your attention and it's not that way tonight."

"Don't be ridiculous." Setting my drink down on a table, I cupped his face in my hands and forced him to look at me. "Just because I'm not looking at you doesn't mean I'm not caught up in analysing how you feel. You're driving me fucking crazy with your silence and making question why. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong and what big mistake is going to stop you from going home with me tonight."

"But Scott—"

"Oh my God!" I threw my head back to laugh. Blaze caught me in his arms when I staggered back and lost my footing, cradling me against his hard, also slightly sparkling body. I lost my senses for a minute, drunkenly stupefied by the glitter. " 'I was wishing that I could believe you were real. And I was wishing that I wasn't afraid'."

"Did you... did you just _Bella Swan_ me?"

I fanned my face with my hand. "I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. Though with my inhibitions stunted, I can promise that the sentiment is true. Scott was just a challenge- I was showing off to some unsociable arsehole. That's the usual response to meeting people you idolise, but I don't lo—"

Blaze cocked his head at me when I stalled, cutting myself off before I said something stupid. It had almost fallen from my mouth without thinking; a four letter word with the potential to ruin my life.

But yet, he dared me with a look, goading me to sabotage myself. "Don't what?"

"I don't..." The alcohol fuzz turned into a nervous churn in the pits of my stomach. I needed to think of something else, and fast. "I don't... _look_ at them like I look at you. They're almost fictional to me, people I'll probably never meet again. But by your own admission, you're a constant figure in my life. You brought me here, so I wouldn't disrespect you by leaving with someone else. You're my first choice for everything these days and I can't see that changing, not when you keep making out that you're going to marry me or something."

"Marry you?" His face flattened and became expressionless, plunging me into a realm of panic and regret. _Oh, Jesus_ , that's not what he meant. It was never what he meant. When he talked about permanence, he meant nothing more than being a weekly fumble for the foreseeable future.

What were you expecting? A live in lover, patiently waiting in the wings until you decide you don't want Hunter anymore? Yes, remember him? Why would he ever change his mind when you've pushed him to the back-burner? You just need someone to love, don't you? You just need something hopeless to cling to. You wouldn't want Blaze if you could really have him. You'd just fuck it up by getting too fat...

"Emmeline?" Blaze clicked his fingers in front of my eyes to halt Fat Emmy's tirade. "Whatever she's saying, it's not true."

"What?" Flustered, I stepped back out of his arms and folded mine protectively over my torso. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it seriously."

"Shame. Could you imagine the honeymoon?" Simpering at my feeble squeak, he reached for my hand and pulled me towards an ornate wooden balustrade that twisted around the back of the room, inclining slowly towards a balcony that housed the dressing rooms. "Stop worrying about saying something to scare me away. There's nothing you can do to get rid of me."

"I'm a post-op transsexual with a taste for necrophilia."

"If that were true, you'd be happy to wake up next to me. I sleep like the dead."

The dressing rooms were the epitome of Hollywood chic. Harshly bright bulbs were set into the frame of a mirror that spanned the entire length of a wall above a wide shelf that normally would have been used for the likes of face paint and make-up. In Monday's Miracle's case, it was used as a drinks counter and desk, cluttered with MacBook's logged into their social networking accounts, media players and an entirely too extensive collection of mobile phones. Chase, Jordan and Matt sat quietly together while Scott and a girl—not the girl he'd been with before but just as young—dry-humped in a dark corner.

Between the three well-behaved musicians sat a petite girl with acid green hair styled into a tall quiff. Below the spectacular 'do, her face was childlike and youthful. Why were they surrounded by young girls?

"Oh, Blaze." She smiled brightly from her seat and heaved herself up to stand. "Are you ready?"

He shot her a smile that got his usual stammer inducing reaction of near-disgusting desire and tugged me over to a couple of folding canvas directors chairs facing the mirror.

"You've lost me." I blinked at his brightly illuminated reflection. "Ready for what?"

"Oh, I'm going on stage for the first part of the set tonight. Didn't I mention it?"

Even Scott stopped his entirely too graphic necking session to watch my reaction.

"You? On stage?"

"Sure. It probably won't ever happen again, so when they asked me this morning, I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather have watching me from the sidelines. You want to be my groupie?"

"Oh, Blaze." Sighing dramatically, I slouched down in the chair and draped an arm weakly over my face. "I want to be a lot of things right now, but a groupie is only second on my list."

"What's first?"

"On your face." The whole band cracked into laughter again, reflecting the type of girl I'd been pre-Hunter—the girl who offered little more than vulgar humour to a situation. It was bitter sweet, being someone who made people laugh so effortlessly but would never be seen as anything more than the clown. I was well-liked or ridiculed, but never a face that people would pick out in a crowd as exceptional. Living proof that brains weren't as favoured over beauty as people liked to make out.

As ever, my perception was flawed. Scott unfurled himself from girl number two and left her sat alone in the corner to join the rest of his group. "Well, damn, Blaze. Your girlfriend is awesome. _Muy caliente. Muy bien._ "

Feeling my face turning puce, I tried to hide behind my hand and tease the residual glitter from my hair." Oh, I'm not—"

"Yeah." Blaze's arm snaked around my shoulders and stunned me into an obedient silence. "She's the best."

And without even asking me, that was how I became _that_ woman in his life without the complications of being _that_ woman in his life. Monday's Miracle would use my 'label' in an interview about their secret gig the next morning, an interview that would get me into trouble. My background would remain a secret, but the world would know that Blaze had picked his woman from billions and I was her.

Neither of us would make any demands for more time. His long absences would carry on and I wouldn't chase him. We both seemed to accept each others reluctance—no, _inability_ to make an emotional investment. But on the outside, we looked just like any other couple out with friends.

Nothing would change. The words 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' meant nothing. They were just name tags we wore so the world knew who we were to each other on some deep, fundamentally fucked up level of fantasy we didn't care to debate. Maybe he'd steal a couple more cheeky kisses and hold my hand when it wasn't necessary, but it wouldn't be uncomfortable or intense. Just natural. As natural as breathing. As natural as the storm that would definitely follow when our uncomfortable truths and complications came into the light.

But I took that moment and grabbed it with both hands. My ignorance was indeed blissful, my head swimming, and my 'boyfriend' about to go out on stage for the first and only time in six years, ready to sing his heart out to approximately three hundred lucky people. I was the luckiest of them all.

Chase joined me on the sidelines as Blaze took his place at the microphone for the first four songs on their set list. I barely noticed him though, partly through the desire to honour my promise that Blaze's was the only face I saw, but mostly because of how nervous I was for him. Of course, he hid any nerves he might have had well, hopping between the balls of his feet to the music that played out to the crowd that roared when they saw four shadows walk out onto the stage.

The gap between the recorded music ending and the live music beginning was torturous and agonisingly long. The first chord hit me like a bolt of lightning, charging every nerve with static and standing every hair on end. Already, I was captivated, and tipped forward on my tiptoes waiting for the sound everyone was waiting for.

His voice triggered a wave of red hot, molten and raw emotion that pooled into my chest and choked me. I hadn't known what to expect, but as ever I'd underestimated just how soulful and deep he could be in so many ways.

The stage lights lit him up like a divine entity, the reds, blues and whites reflecting off his bared forearms while he strummed at a guitar, yet his eyes still looked vividly emerald no matter what colour shone at them.

Fascinated, I watched him sing on that stage like he did it every day with a voice as silky as his laugh. The crowd was mad for him, ravenous even, and bounced on their toes to the beat of the drums and bass guitar. On occasion he glanced sideways and shot me a smile that hit me so deep down inside that I started to feel light-headed and winded.

"First time watching him?" I nodded, unable to speak. Chase laughed and crammed a glass into my hand. "He's a complete show off. Great showman. Ah." He pointed out towards the stage just as Blaze took a step back and ran out across the stage, throwing himself over the dangerously small sea of heads and hands that somehow still carried him safely to the back of the room while he continued to sing as though he was standing still. My heart jumped into my mouth the minute his feet left the ground but I quickly coughed it out with a laugh when I knew that he'd reached the foot of the wooden staircase safely.

"He's crazy." I muttered, turning slightly to smile at Chase. I knew my eyes must look far too bright and pupils too dilated like I was drugged. Honestly, it felt like I was.

"He is. Are you too?" There was something in his tone that told me he wasn't talking about my mental stability.

I tested the waters with a vague response. "It's not like that." Instinctively, I thought he was referring to Blaze, but didn't want to risk incriminating myself with any awkward confessions. Besides, when someone implied that a man that transcendent was crazy for me, I couldn't help but be a little sceptical, not really sure how I could possibly deserve that kind of high regard.

"Sure looks like it's 'like that', Emmy. I've spent a long time warning him that one day he'd meet a girl who'd turn his life upside down and force him to seriously consider the way he lives. I'll be the king of Denmark if you're not that girl."

"I'm just a font of sarcasm, uncomplicated sex and a guaranteed lay." Definitely not the dream woman he was making me out to be.

"There's no such thing as uncomplicated sex." He squeezed my shoulder gently and made towards the stage as Blaze emerged next to us, glistening with sweat and his shirt tucked into the waist band of his jeans. Was I really that much of a big deal for this man who was so damned beautiful it hurt to look at him?

"So, what do you think?" Without hesitation, he curled an arm around my waist so our bodies were flush against each other. "Enjoy the show?"

"You're amazing. Ah..." I glanced downwards, hoping that my hair would cover the embarrassment. "Amazing out there. Quite a turn on, actually."

"You want me inside you? Too bad you'd just fall asleep afterwards, or I'd service you in the middle of that audience and nobody would ever know. We'll have to wait." I pushed myself back from him and grunted an objection. "It's as much as a disappointment for me, too, Emmeline. That skirt is so short..."

"You keep saying," I tugged at the back of it fruitlessly, covering no more flesh that before, "I keep telling you that it's your own damn fault for picking it."

Blaze bit his lip playfully and pulled me back towards him by the V of my vest. "My, don't we get feisty when denied the good lovin'?"

I sneered. "Who says it's good?"

"Oh, mean implication! But I know you're lying." He dipped down and kissed me, softer than he ever had before. I melted into him and wrapped my arms around his bare neck, one hand sliding down to the firm muscles in his chest.

I was—I was crazy about him. That much was sure. How I'd ruin my life over another inconvenient fixation was still a mystery.

"Just for tonight, Emmeline, let's not focus on why we can't and focus on why we are anyway. Now, nothing would make me happier than seeing you stripped, sweating, caked in glitter and boneless after a good fucking across that stage..." My jaw hit the floor at his brazenness and my eyes tracked across the length of the stage. That was a tantalising idea but we both knew that it would put an abrupt end to our night. "But I'll compromise and settle for sweating and caked in glitter. But for now, into the fray with you."

#

Someone threw up in my mouth at some point between 'the fray' and my getting home. I didn't remember it, but I was certain it had happened from the way I felt the next morning. That or the apocalypse had come, localised entirely in my skull.

Sticky eyed, and almost definitely still drunk, I had little to no memory of what had happened after Blaze led me down into the crowd and insisted that I climb on his shoulders. I think I fell, I might have flashed my chest, and for some reason I recall a zebra. The details are a fuzzy black hole in my mind, but what I do know was that I woke up in my bed, undressed and stinking of sweat and liquor.

A sequinned orange top hat lay on the bed next to me and the ache between my legs gave me the impression that I might find myself getting another noise complaint. I just hoped it was Blaze who'd left the bite mark on my inner thigh.

It wasn't until I lifted my arm to rub my eyes, I noticed the thick black letters drawn on my skin.

Told you I'd get your number. Call me!

Blaze

But no number to call. In the same second, I realised that there was music playing outside in the lounge and the nauseating smell of greasy food. No... that was the burger I was lying on. No... it _was_ outside. The unmistakable smell of bacon tugging at my gag reflex.

"Blaze?" My shout came with a cough and a hand full of glitter. Well, I appeared to have either had a good time or sucked off a clown. And swallowed.

Half dressed and carrying a breakfast tray, Blaze slammed in singing unreasonably loudly and looking so good it was unfair. I felt like the Crypt Keeper and he looked like fucking Hercules in the flesh with his own sheen of glitter. It was only his unsteady hobble toward me that made him human.

"How dare you look so good on a hangover."

"I'm not hungover." He giggled cheekily and put the tray down on the bed next to me. Again, it was covered in speckles of blood, but somehow it was the glitter that made it look nightmarish. "I haven't slept, I'm still drunk."

I groaned, "Me, too," and pulled a pillow over my head. "What time is it?"

"Roughly seven in the morning."

"What the fuck! When did we get back?"

"Five-ish. We stumbled in, I fucked the hell out of you for about half an hour, you begged me to take the ass, proposed, then passed out with me still inside you."

God knows I wanted that to be a joke, but the play by play flashback ran involuntarily through my mind. "I remember that," I groaned. "I feel like someone's pissed on my brain. Did we have fun?"

"Lots," Blaze assured me, removing my squashed burger from under the duvet before pulling it over us both. "Eat your breakfast so I can curl up on top of you and listen to those exquisite little moans you make when I'm inside you." His leg pinned down both of mine, leverage for him to clamber over me, nuzzle between my breasts and inhale deeply. "I can't get enough of you. Damn it, I can't keep up with how much I want you. Your tiny waist, flawless skin, your sweet, pink, tight little pu—"

"Shit, Blaze!" I blushed violently at the way he spoke about my body. Those buzz words were fine, yes, if said in regards to someone else. Still, drunk Blaze had a dirty mouth and I have to admit, it got me a little hot under the collar.

"Oh, but Emmeline!" He whined pitifully and ran his tongue down my body until he disappeared beyond the duvet. "You're so snug and still full of my cum..."

"Oh God, don't—"

There went another hour of my morning, my breakfast on the floor and a large chunk of my so-called innocence. I guess I spoke a little prematurely about how dirty his mouth was.

My post-coital power naps seemed to be getting shorter. I didn't know if that meant my body was becoming immune to my soporific endorphins or eager to get back to the person who triggered them. I was almost physically addicted to Blaze and needed more and more of him to satisfy the cravings.

But having to leave me to wake up alone seemed to be wearing thin. Still drunk and 'shagged out', Blaze had needed to leave me right away before he fell asleep next to me and retreat to the couch. I desperately wanted to let him rest with me, but we both knew already what my brain would do when we woke up together—freak out. I was scared of how I'd react if he was there, petrified by the big question mark that hung over my own indecisive mind. I didn't want to turn polar and kick him out of my life, afraid to let him into my heart, anymore than I wanted to become one of those needy, psychopathic girlfriends who became irrational and demanding. So I evicted him to the lounge and slept alone, listening for signs of him around when I woke up.

That morning, I had nothing but the buzz of music still playing outside and a text message on my phone.

Don't let me sleep.

Okay, so I had his phone number now, and he'd already saved it in my phone book with a heart next to it for good measure. He'd also changed the background to a picture of him curled up next to me, grinning into the camera while I slept. The image was new, obviously taken that morning. The glitter gave it away. When he wasn't around, I would at least have the reminders that he existed, evidence that he wasn't a reoccurring dream or another hallucination to add to the list. Flesh and blood man who cared enough to bunk on my back breaking furniture to keep 'us' a reality.

But I made a promise to myself not to text or call him unless he did first. It was like being back at the basic rules of dating etiquette.

When the room steadied enough, I crept through the lounge to the kitchen and watched him napping on my couch. I'd seen Chris, Daniel or Jonathan grace that camelback many times, but Blaze looked the most at peace there. He didn't have bad dreams like my friends and I did every time they slept, just lay naked, midriff covered with his jacket, mouth slightly open and one foot dangling over the arm rest. The muscles in his torso flexed and defined as he breathed steadily—in, out, in, out, almost hypnotically. I had no idea that watching someone sleep could be so entrancing.

I poured us both cups of coffee and tiptoed in to crouch next to him, finding myself smiling. He really was beautiful, and as far as the world knew, mine.

But he's not yours, is he? However much you think he wants you, you can never be the focal point in his life. You'll only ever be a part time lover—God knows what he's doing in the week.

Shut up, he's caring for someone. It's his job, he gets paid for it.

Unless he's lying. Maybe he does care for her, but maybe he's fucking her as well. You don't keep yourself for him, why would he? You don't really have a right to complain, do you?

"Emmeline?" Two sleepy green eyes fluttered open at me and crinkled with an accompanying smile. It stopped my heart to see him so unguarded in those first waking moments, before his brain could start to process and produce his usual cockiness and wit. Shakily, I raised a hand to stroke across his hairline, feeling something I thought I'd obliterated from my emotional repertoire years ago: tears burning the backs of my eyes and complete, pathetic, unreasonable dread.

He meant too much. I was already hurting. If I cut him off now, it might save me from years of obsession, but it would shred me to do so. _And down the rabbit hole she goes..._

"Hey, don't cry." Even the quiet encouragement couldn't stop me. I was 'feeling' the most I had in years and was a little resentful about it. All the framework I'd put in place so far to become indestructible had been burned to the ground and lay in sad little piles of ash at my feet. Back to square one, somewhere I'd come to London to escape.

"This is all just too much, Blaze. _You_ are too much. I don't think I'll come out of this in one piece, even if I step back now."

"Oh, Emmeline." Shifting to sit, he pulled me up into the couch with him and manoeuvred me onto his lap, pressing his nose into my hair. "This time last week I felt the same way. I thought I'd come and see you again just once to say goodbye and limp home to lick my wounds because I was in too deep.

But then I heard two words. Two words that perfectly epitomised our dilemma and told me how to proceed. Two words who came from a woman neither of us know; a woman who'd just been told that if she discharged herself from hospital and refused chemotherapy, she'd die."

"Go on."

" 'Fuck it'." I twisted to look at him and raised an eyebrow. He nodded briefly, then pulled me back into the warm snug of his arms. "Wonderful woman, ancient, vulgar to the back teeth, and she said 'fuck it'. Her explanation was that life is too short and she'd already taken more time than she deserved. She said she'd wasted her life second guessing impulse decisions and saying no when she should have said yes, and 'damned if it isn't about time someone took it away from me so I don't balls it up further!' "

"She sounds wise." The hassle I'd have been saved from if someone had taken away my life or freewill...

"Not so much. She smoked sixty a day and had lung cancer. But I understood what she meant. I don't want to waste my life on 'what if's. How do I know this would turn out so bad if I don't even try? I'd rather walk through life saying, 'Oh well, at least I know' than turn my back on something that isn't so significant for no reason. I told you yesterday that nothing will get rid of me now, not when my mind is so made up and I've finished second guessing. We just need time. Do you have time?"

"Yes." I had time in bucketfuls because I was guilty of wasting it, too. With or without him, I'd keep wasting it, but at least the scenery was better when he was wasting it with me. "I really don't have any choice but to sit here waiting for you, do I?"

"Sure you do. You can send me away and go on with your life as normal. But that doesn't mean I won't stop coming back."

So, waiting it was. This was my 'normal' now—door watching and making the effort to leave the house looking good every morning whilst trying to maintain my usual patterns of behaviour so it didn't look like I was too far gone, then intermittently being swept off my feet and spoiled with compliments and affection that would drive my feelings for him deeper, making it more painful every time he left.

As depressing as it may have sounded, I really didn't mind it. It was almost like my routine with Hunter except he didn't spare me the kind words and subdue me with orgasms at every chance. The roar of the cynical voice in my mind was easily blocked out when Blaze spoke to me and wanting him wasn't nearly as self-destructive. I was actually kind of happy about it.

We stayed wrapped up on the couch while we drank our coffee, idly chatting and trying to piece together the fractured memories of the night before. I _did_ fall off his shoulders, and Blaze caught me. How symbolic. Spending this kind of quality time together was peaceful and soothing, the fact of it being uneventful being proof that our strange relationship had substance beyond the alcohol and animal sex.

He looked like hell and he still looked great. We both stank to high heaven but somehow he just wore it like a movie role, cast as my party animal 'boyfriend'. The word still felt strange.

"I think I need to de-funk." The words lacked motive. I was still exhausted and heavy-headed, putting 'moving' fairly low on my to-do list.

Blaze lifted my arm and stuck his nose into my armpit, squeezing me to stillness when I tried to squirm away. "Jesus, you're right. You're noxious."

"You disgust me." I thought about daring him to sniff lower down but, not trusting him to hold back from the challenge, I begrudgingly pulled myself away from him and made tracks through the bedroom to the en suite, groaning at the sight of my bed. I _had_ to trim my fingernails.

"You're a natural blonde." Blaze caught me by the elbow just as I was about to step into the shower and smirked downwards. I followed his line of sight and grimaced. The point of focus was the fine muzzle of pubic hair making an appearance between my legs.

"I was about to deal with that." Grooming had never been essential but somehow it just made me feel feminine and a little more acceptable. "So if you don't mind..."

"You want me to leave while you shower?" I glared at him like the question was stupid. It _was_ stupid, but he raised an eyebrow and leaned into the shower screen, not flinching at the ice cold sheet of glass pressing against his still very naked body. I didn't even try not to eye-fuck him. "Why are you so body conscious? You have an amazing figure. Even with those god damn scars, you're still one of the sexiest women I've ever met in person." I was about to ask why I wasn't _the_ sexiest when I remembered he'd been in a music video with Amelia Marsh. There was no way to compete.

Shuddering inwardly, I backed under the water and closed myself in before I confessed, "because I used to be fucking fat." He had to hear it sooner or later, and there really was no time like the present. If he was insistent on throwing around claims of sticking with me despite everything, it was better I told him when it was easier for him to take back.

His scoff and disbelief rang over the hiss of water. "No, really."

"Really, Blaze. I was the fat, ugly, sweaty, blonde nerd who hoarded chocolate in her pencil case." The memory of looking like a two tonne whale made me literally gag.

"So what the hell happened?" I paused and closed my eyes, praying for the subject to go away. "Emmeline?"

"... Boys. One in particular. He was really nice to me when other people weren't, and gave me and Daniel the time of day. I was mad for him to the point of being downright brazen but he ignored it, so I figured it was my weight. I took the weight loss to the extreme. I..." My voice broke. Reliving those memories was painful and talking about them now of all times—when I was naked—wasn't helping. No matter how hard I looked in the mirror, I saw fat and I saw ugliness. I couldn't remember the last time I looked at myself and saw anything I liked. Sure, I was a little more accepting of it since Blaze had been around, but still, Fat Emmy was always there.

"I dropped a shit ton of weight and even though he told me I looked great, he never asked me out. So I thought I needed to drop more." The screen slid open and Blaze slipped in behind me, folding his arms around my body. He felt so much warmer than the water pouring down on us and was giving me what I'd needed nine years earlier. Just that comfort and willingness to touch me.

"You were anorexic."

"Yeah, but I'd get so hungry and snap sometimes. It went on for years, still does. It was around the time I collapsed in a gym and ended up hospitalised he met some half-Japanese chick who looked like a fucking hentai character. Abnormally massive rack for a seventeen year old, big brown eyes and really amazing raven hair. So I dyed my hair black, figuring that was what he liked, which earned me a smug girl chat in the college bathrooms. She told me I was still fat, he hated me because I was ugly and I'd never be as good as her. So I made a bungled attempt at suicide, ended up back in hospital and was forcibly sectioned, where he told me I was selfish. That just provoked a self-harm habit in places I knew nobody would see—where I thought it was 'needed'. However much I thought I hurt, it just didn't feel like I was hurting enough."

"Emmeline..." He eased me around by the shoulders and pulled me against his rippling bronze skin. Even hearing about my messed up life, he was still semi-hard and holding me. Why the hell was he doing it? "Cupcake, anyone who can't accept you on face value isn't worthy of you. You don't have to change for anyone—nobody at all. You want to be a fat blonde chick indulging an oral fixation? Then be that fat blonde chick."

"You'd like me blonde?" I looked up at him shyly and my mouth curved into an awkward smile.  
"Yeah, it would suit you because genetics made you that way. But I like the black and I'd like red, green, blue or purple. Hell, I couldn't give a shit if you were bald, which is a serious possibility if you don't stop dying it. But it doesn't matter what I like, as long as you're comfortable in it."

_God_. There was no way this man was for real. He was already screwing me, so where was his ulterior motive? What could I possibly have that would make six foot three inches of pure godliness say these things to me? "Do me a favour though? Don't lose any more weight. You're perfect the way you are." He nodded down to the proud erection straining between us. "See, we're only talking and I'm dying to be inside you."

His confession made me drop to my knees and lick my lips, taking his thick heavy cock in my hand. It was the first time I'd really paid attention to it beyond foreplay in a dimly lit room and I was determined to repay the favour for all it's good work.

My lips pushed over the crest and switched me right on. He felt right in my mouth, solid and firm but still soft. Closing in on him, I reached up for his hand and urged it down in my hair. I wanted him to guide me, to tell me how he wanted it. His fingers flexed on my crown and rocked me back and forth, encouraging me to fuck him with my mouth.

He purred my name as I sucked, twisting and bobbing to find any spot he preferred and targeting it. Cupping his balls in one hand, I tugged just enough to make him flinch and throw his hands out to steady himself.

"Faster," he rasped, leaning into me. "Suck me harder." One hand pumped while the other squeezed, my tongue flattening against his underside, curling around the crown and swirling around the tip. He twitched and buckled, filling my mouth with his own unique creamy flavour forcefully enough to spill over. I pumped until he softened and continued to tease beyond the tremors, hoping to get him hard enough to taste him again. "Christ, woman! Give me a chance."

I looked up innocently and took the hand he offered, knowing that my cheeks were as flushed as his. The noises he made always turned me on. "Is this your kryptonite?"

_"You_ are my God damn kryptonite."

I grinned, feeling a little giddy with pride. "Come on, let's do my hair. I told you I'd make you."

"Asshole, I told you—nobody called Miss Tudor lives here. _Stop calling_."

The one-sided screaming match in my lounge forced me back a step when I emerged from the bathroom, a fresh bottle blonde that was artificial but almost my natural colour. Blaze had done a great job, obviously well practised, but I didn't dwell on it. I didn't look so sallow in my own colouring, and my irises glowed like a cat's eyes. Even Fat Emmy stopped and stared in awe at the person looking at her now.

My eyes slipped into a glare when they locked onto Blaze clutching my cordless landline handset, slamming around in the kitchen like he owned the place. And then they softened when I realised that he was dressed only in boxer shorts and an unbuttoned white shirt. His hair was still damp and carelessly combed back into no particular style, his stunning irises visibly greener than normal and visible across the room. As soon he put that phone down, he was going to end up with those boxers around his ankles.

"No, you listen to me, dumb fuck. I don't care how much this call is costing you, I have spent enough time inside the woman who lives here to know that she doesn't go by the name 'Miss Tudor'." _Shit._

I scurried across the lounge, feet slipping on the hardwood, and wrenched the handset from his hand. Why the hell had he felt the need to say _that?_

"Hunter," I panted, resting against a cupboard. "I am so sorry, you don't usually call on a Sunday." He didn't usually call at all, but who was splitting hairs?

_"Your friend is a real idiot, Emmeline. You pick him up on a street corner?"_ There was an accusatory hardness around the word 'friend' that got my back up.

"What the fuck would you care, you dickless wonder?" My words carried enough aggression to embarrass me. "What do you want?"

_"I want to know who you are and what you've done with my best friend."_ He sighed, and at even blows on insults, the battle ended. _"Your mother called yesterday to let me know that you've been distracted by a new boyfriend."_ Hell, I should have known that they'd have a little back and forth repartee going on between them. Not knowing that he'd been the cause of my anguish, my mother still worshipped the ground he walked on and thought he was fabulous. _"Was that him?"_

"What? That is precisely none of your fucking business." I glanced over my shoulder at Blaze, who had stationed himself over the cooker and was frying bacon again with a scowl, and moved into the lounge. "It's complicated. Anyway, you know nobody calls me Tudor here."

_"He didn't sound like any of your male friends and we all know you don't keep company overnight. I thought you'd let one of Henry's staff in to tidy your shithole."_ Resentfully looking around my flat, I couldn't reasonably deny that it looked 'lived in'. But the mess was new from that weekend—I'd noticed areas of the space suddenly become well ordered and neat overnight when Blaze was around. Was there anything he wasn't setting right in my life?

"I would sooner die than get his goons in. I'm Emmy White outside of Cardiff, a separate entity. Independent."

"You're still pretending you're 'normal'? Grow a spine, Emmeline. You have obligations and a public image to uphold, if not for Henry then just for your mother."

I sighed and slumped down on the couch, not stupid enough to think that there was a good way to have this conversation. So I'd get out of having it. "What do you really want? I presume you don't want a step by step guide with diagrams of how I interact with my... boyfriend?" There, I said it. It was real now.

"I want to know why you've really been ignoring my emails."

"You could have called." Silence in reply. Hunter knew better than to try and defend himself when he knew I had a point. Those moments were rare. "I'm sorry, I've just been really busy. I forgot."

_"You forgot about_ me _?"_

Every trace of my good mood and regained self-esteem vanished. I _had_ nearly forgotten about him. Barely thought about him for weeks. The man at the top of my list had been unfairly demoted and really hadn't been so much as a blip on my radar. Nine years of friendship neglected for my pretty new toy who was really equally as inaccessible. I was a terrible friend.

And how did I suppose he'd ever change his mind about me if I wasn't giving him the time of day? Who would lay themselves out for someone who turned their back as soon as something shinier caught their eye? Hunter didn't hate me because I was fat. He hated me because he knew I was a cold, selfish bitch.

"I promise it won't happen again."

_"You don't have to make any promises to me, Emmeline."_ His voice was filled with the hostility I was afraid of. _"You want to fuck your own life up and end up sectioned again because you're keeping the wrong company, you go for it. Just have the decency to recover or die in time for the wedding so your family can be there."_

The phone slammed down on his end, leaving me in a loaded silence where even Fat Emmy was afraid to speak. I'd blown any chance of ever seeing the inside of that man's heart over a walking hard-on I'd never wake up next to. How the hell could I undo the damage? Why did I even fucking care anymore?

Still, I didn't scream and curse out loud like I was inside. Nothing good came from making a scene and I was no attention seeker. It wasn't safe for me express outwardly with my history, not if I wanted to avoid going back to that hellish ward of unhinged misanthropists. I could deal with it alone, in private. Let it go then...

"Emmeline?" A bacon sandwich appeared over my shoulder, but I ignored it. I wasn't hungry, but it wasn't me being mental. I just wasn't hungry. "Please."

"I don't fucking want it!"

"I don't particularly care what you want right now." Enraged, I spun around onto my knees, ready to throw the phone at Blaze, but stopped as soon as I was looking at him.

_This_ was what I'd neglected Hunter for. A selfless man who spent his whole life 'caring' for someone else but still arrived wanting to care for me in more ways than one. A man who'd put himself out for me even when I didn't want it since day one, and didn't hate me when I threw it back in his face. A man who'd thrown me into the fire like Joan of Arc but stood in the flames with me rather than leave me to stand alone.

A man who believed in me far more than I believed in myself. Maybe he understood what it was like from my perspective to be eclipsed by Hunter.

Despite not really being hungry, I took the sandwich from him and bit into it just to put a smile on his face. Blaze visibly relaxed and sat down on the couch next to me, curling an arm around my shoulders and pressing his lips to my temple.

"That was your Japanese friend?"

"He's not Japanese, he just lives there. And I don't think he's my friend anymore. We haven't spoken since the day you walked in on it and he's not best pleased."

"He really does expect you to sit around waiting for him to spare you half a minute?"

My teeth clenched and ground together at his recollection of the conversation. "He's been emailing, that's the problem. I've been too busy thinking about you to read them. He set my mother on me."

A breath hissed out between his teeth. "That's so fucked up, Emmeline. He needs to realise that you have a life beyond him, people who are looking out for you. The world doesn't revolve around him."

Except it does.

Fat Emmy smacked her lips at my sandwich and mouthed 'a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the thighs'.

At least he was until you fucked it up over an easy lay.

"Why do you let him talk to you like that? He clearly has no respect for you, it's disgusting."

"Because it's the only way I can have him in my life."

I could hear the cogs grinding furiously followed by the distant sound of a penny dropping. He'd got it. He'd figured out my complication, my reason 'why not'.

"He's _the_ boy." The transformation in Blaze made it impossible to look at him. His mind was working through everything and the disappointment showed in his hunched back and sad eyes. I'd given him too much to process that day and it was taking it's obvious toll.

Bet he regrets saying he can overlook your shit now.

"Is it the same? As... this?"

Setting the plate down on the coffee table, I knotted my fingers in front of me. I couldn't stand the defeat in his voice but I wanted him to understand. "I can't really have either of you, but that's where the similarities end. Both of you, I..." Want? Need? Love? "I have two gorgeous men in my life in a way barely tolerable and holding on to something that's just not quite enough is hell. But while that much might seem the same, you're polar opposites. You're looking out for me and he's only ever looked over me. You focus on the person I am and can be while he dwells on the person I was. I have a flesh and blood you, full of empathy and pushing invisible boundaries to put us in the same room in a way that we shouldn't be, and I have a man on the other side of the planet who didn't care enough to tell me that he was leaving until he was already there. I feel the same way about both of you but he makes it feel like something I should mourn." Christ, Hunter sounded like a complete bastard when I described their differences. Why the hell did I care about him so much?

Blaze turned to face me, frowning. "You're in love with him?" Why did that sound less wistful?

"Irrationally so. It's a nine year habit I've never had a reason to quit."

"And now?"

Ah. The crux of the matter. He needed me to tell him that he was a good enough reason to let go of my stupid infatuation and I couldn't. It wasn't that simple—I couldn't just turn it off for him. If I could, why would I for a life of no guarantees and why wouldn't I have done it sooner?

"It's like quitting drugs to become an alcoholic, Blaze. Either way, I'm damned to spending my life mooning after a man I can't have. If I erase him from my life, what do I have left when you go, too? Some nice new clothes, some new scars and a few memories? I don't know that I'm not the sort of person who needs something to be reckless about. My life would lack purpose. And I know that's unhealthy and co-dependent, but—"

He cut me off with a kiss. "I have to go."

"I know. I've said too much."

"No. You said what matters. But I do have to go because you have a lunch date with your mother." _Shit_. In the midst of all the outrageousness and revelations, I'd completely forgotten. "I set clothes out for you. Something nice and demure to hide your war wounds."

"You're quite the domestic god." He smiled but it lacked his usual enthusiasm and sincerity. It was like looking at the first lie he'd ever told. "You hate me, don't you?"

"I could never hate you. I hate him." I could understand why. Finding out the significant woman in your life had a history of self-harm and a latent eating disorder must be tough, but for her to then say that she was dividing the love that should have been concentrated on one person—that had to sting. Knowing who he was had to rub salt in the wounds.

"I'm sorry that you didn't meet a better person, Blaze. Somebody a little less colourful."

"I'm not." He leaned over to recover a duffel bag he'd stowed under the couch and quickly dressed into trousers, half-buttoning his shirt before he rose to collect his shoes from the bedroom. I didn't move, just watched him get ready to walk out of my door for what I presumed would be the last time.

He lingered a moment too long when he kissed me a poignant goodbye, cradling my face in his hands. "I'll call you."

If he'd wanted to vengefully wound me as he left, the clichéd brush off did the job nicely.

#

July was too hot and too fickle. Even with a stupid floppy great sun hat, the heat was too much unless the breeze made my skin prickle. I'd been in that state of hyper-awareness before, seeing and hearing everything that should have been hidden out of sight, sitting in some giant, isolated goldfish bowl that resonated everything, separating me from a world I still watched while it still looked in on me. Detached from my feelings, completely apathetic but still present, about as sentient as a robot.

"I'm sure he didn't mean it, love." I tipped my chin just slightly to look at my mother under the brim of my hat for some kind of clarification. The sun glared off her white silk shirt making it hard to have a conversation looking right at her.

We looked strangely alike that day, my own blouse and pencil skirt outfit almost matching hers. Two golden blonde sophisticates lunching on the terrace of a restaurant only the dirty rich could swindle reservations for. It felt shallow and disingenuous but it was exactly what I needed; something a million miles away from my usual habits and somewhere nobody would ever think to find me, not that anyone would look.

As for being habitually ashamed, that didn't happen when I was out with Ivy. Her purity was as noble as helium and bloody contagious. Plus I had my hat. I was, for all definitions, intents and purposes, completely covered.

"Hunter." Knowing she couldn't see, I rolled my eyes and sipped at an intensely saccharine fruit cocktail containing a whole shelf full of spirits. "His mother spoiled him horribly, he doesn't think before he speaks. He's been very lucky unlike—" Her sentence stemmed off into an awkward and apologetic half-shrug. "He knows how to work a room but he's horribly impersonal. I imagine he's awfully jealous of your new romance."

The one that doesn't exist anymore? Doubtful.

Fat Emmy was feeling bitter, too. He might have been the enemy but she sure liked to look at him. I raised my glass to her in a gesture of solidarity.

"Mother, he's livid about anything that might interfere with his stupid wedding. I mean, come on, who throws a sakura blossom themed wedding in January? The fundamental basis of the event is a fucking sham."

"Emmy, language!" She scolded me but her eyes said that she agreed. Born romantic Ivy Tudor was vehemently opposed to artificial flowers of any kind, particularly when they would naturally be in bloom just a couple of months later. By her way of thinking, a fake rose symbolised fake love. I never pointed out to her the potential symbolism lurking behind the fact that real roses died. Maybe it was better if it was fake. It sure as hell wouldn't hurt so much. "Speaking of your romance, why on earth didn't you tell me that you're dating _the_ Blaze?"

Struck-dumb by her knowledge of our 'relationship', what else could I really do but play the fool? I'd concentrated so hard on keeping that part of my life hidden from him that I'd neglected to consider that it might find him first. Stupid, of course, when my mother was as hungry for gossip as she was. "Pardon me?"

"This _is_ you isn't it?" Unfolding a magazine and spreading it across the table between our glasses, she tapped the page at several pictures from the night before at The Roses, showing me in varying degrees of drunkenness while always attached to Blaze. It made my heart ache to look at them. The accompanying article was as reckless to look at but I just couldn't help myself.

UK rock act Monday's Miracle stormed Tudor owned 'The Roses' in style at their highly anticipated secret gig in Mayfair last night. Founding foreman Blaze topped the bill, rejoining former band mates Scott, Jordan and Matt for the first four songs of their set, leaving the stage with an artful leap across the two hundred and ninety-seven strong crowd.

But the ladies were left lusting when he emerged to watch his friends perform with his frequently pictured companion. Bad news folks, that foxy brunette is officially stoking his fire, and boy, does it ever burn for her!

Our insider couldn't get close enough to the inferno for an exclusive, straight from the horses mouth, skinny on how it's rocking in that casbah, but Monday's Miracle guitarist, Scott, had this to say:

"Oh yeah, they're the real thing all right... As far as girlfriends go, our man lucked out. Emmy is sexy, smart, hilarious, and drank most of us under the table. I give it a month before he whisks her off to Vegas so none of us have at her after the tour."

So that's it, girls. Hang up your fantasies and chuck out the best knickers you wear in case he's on the bus that might hit you if they're not fresh on—hot tamale Blaze has finally found love and we got sunburn just looking at it.

"Bloody hell." It made for difficult reading. Not two hours earlier I was the envy of the female population of Great Britain, maybe even beyond. Now it was only a matter of time before the press found out that I was the conniving slut who'd had him and lost him over the futile desperation to fuck my best friend. My temples began to throb with a tension headache.

_You_ really **blew it this time.**

Yeah, yeah, I know.

"And he was in your flat yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes, but—" But what? But I lost two men in the space of ten minutes just by being my usual messed up self? "It's not like that, Mum. Sticking 'girlfriend' on it is just a way to make it socially acceptable for it to be public knowledge that we fu—... had relations whenever he had a free five minutes."

"Pull the other one, Emmeline." Again, she tapped the pictures, forcing me to look at how happy we'd seemed the night before. "I've never seen you smile like that."

"Can we please change the subject?"

She curled her fist under her chin, looking at me with that worldly, all-knowing look only mothers are capable of. "You've had an argument."

"No, not an argument. We've just... reached an impasse. We're too different, incompatible. He doesn't have the time I need and—"

She straightened. "What really happened?"

Transparent as ever, I sank down in my seat sulkily and stuck my lip out like a child. "He found out about Hunter."

"Ah." I'd always had a feeling that my mother had her suspicions about what Hunter really meant to me, and I think I'd just confirmed them. "And you think that there isn't enough space in your heart for two men?"

"No, I do. I just don't think Blaze does."

"Oh, Emmy..." And here came the pep talk... "Men are very proud creatures—very territorial. I'm sure he's just stewing and will be beating your door down again in no time. What was the last thing he said before he left?"

" 'I'll call you'."

"Oh." After a beat, she clicked her fingers at a waitress and pointed at her glass. "We're going to need another round."

Uh huh... that was what I thought.

Ivy's driver dropped me off at Esme's around nine in a state of near catatonia, barely able to walk, speak, yet still clasping that ridiculous sun hat. A liberal attitude towards drinking to excess was apparently a Tudor trait, residing in all of us. My family had a reputation for knowing how to throw a party, and now that reputation apparently lived independent of the name.

Nobody recognised me for a while, not until Daniel strode into the bar in his gayest finery, looking to whet his whistle after Sunday lunch with the in-laws. Somehow, the temporary camouflage that came from my new old hair was liberating.

Jonathan had gone straight home, as drunk as me by all accounts, leaving Dan and I to stare across a table at each other the way we had done in so many restaurants, bars, canteens and hospital wards so many times before—me dejected and him feeling bereft of a limb in his partner's absence. He _was_ co-dependent. He wouldn't deny it.

For Daniel, watching me was like watching a woman hang from a bungee rope. I'd plummet, then gleefully spring back up. And then I'd fall again and again, the enthusiasm of my bounce getting less and less, climbing a little less high every time until there was nothing left but down. The last time he'd seen me hanging with no gambol was when he'd been dragged out of my private room away from the sight of me screaming and struggling at doctors trying to fit a nasogastric tube. I saw that memory play through his mind sometimes, obvious from the way he paled for a second and the dark shadows crossed his eyes. It might have been worse than finding me bleeding to death and I didn't know exactly how much bounce he thought I had left.

Chris didn't join us either, apparently pissed off that I hadn't turned up the night before. As much as I appreciated that my friends were sensitive, I couldn't help but feel like they couldn't stand to see the bigger picture sometimes. I rarely acted through malice, so my actions were never a slur on them. It was hard to win when the people there to support you were as self-loathing and downtrodden as you.

The habitually quiet Sunday lull was in full swing, or lack thereof, when Esme found us, first frowning at me like she didn't recognise me, then slamming the same magazine I'd been shown by my mother down on the table.

"What the hell is this?"

"A magazine?"

"Don't act cute, Emmeline." _Jesus._ Esme had never used my full name before. "You were at the secret Monday's Miracle gig. With Blaze. And _them_. Some fucking warning might have been nice." I should have known that my decision to monopolise the evening would come back to bite me, but I had enough alcohol in me to slur a retort.

"If you were so worried about me, all you had to do was call. Nobody ever has the sense to just call, you all have to presume the worst of Emmeline Tudor, the hopelessly fucking suicidal."

"No, I—"

"Is it cold up there on your soapbox, Esme? Do you—she who is so naturally beautiful—really think that I don't deserve to be the centre of focus in a room sometimes? How often do I get a shoo-in standing next to you like some glorified fucking wingman? How dare I enjoy my last blissful night with Mr. Decadent without my babysitters?"

"Emmy, shut up! I'm pissed off because of the journalists who've been crawling around here all day!" Stunned out of her anger, Esme sat down next to me and drummed her fingers across the table's top. "You're a mean blonde. A hot, mean blonde."

An involuntary giggle escaped from my throat with the sob I'd been holding in all day. Once I started, I wouldn't stop, and nobody wanted me to lose that control.

"You have that look like you're crying but the tears won't come out. What do you mean 'last night'?"

My 'crying inside' look was easily detected by my friends and seldom discussed. It only ever came as a result of a feud with Hunter and their patience was exhausted where he was concerned. Chris and Esme didn't know him well enough to rationally comment on his behaviour, Jonathan knew him only as a student and Daniel kept a rigid silence on the matter. He was grateful for the acceptance he'd been afforded as a gay outcast in a society that championed conventional lifestyles and conformity, but disliked his attitude enough to not jump to his defence. Not a single one of them had the energy to rehash old debates with me and only the hint that my latent tears were for someone else drove the curiosity.

"Hunter called the flat and Blaze answered. He knows the score now, he just doesn't want to sing from it." I scrunched my eyes up and flopped forward to bury my head in the crook of Esme's neck, haunted by the memories of standing just off stage, watching him with wide-eyed wonder. "And boy, can he sing."

A faint whimper rattled in Esme's throat. It was the kind of helpless noise she made when she was speechless over something she'd been expecting for a while. I'd heard it the last time she'd been told that a book she'd been chronically obsessed with had been delayed for release by six months.

"What did you do about the journos?"

"Plead the fifth, of course. I didn't want to give them any reason to whip their cameras out in here." As beautiful as she was, Esme's anonymity was as precious as mine. She'd turned down so much acting work in a bid to keep her face out of the public eye, preferring to just be a disembodied voice over the urban A-List goddess she could have been, all in the interest of keeping her mother away. I didn't even know if Esme was her real name, but her face was unmistakable to anyone. I couldn't imagine that she'd changed that drastically over the years to be unrecognisable.

"I would never intentionally screw up your privacy."

"I know, I was being irrational. And so are you. Blaze wouldn't—"

"He said 'I'll call you'." Trading glances with Daniel, Esme pulled me up straight by the shoulders, the stunted flow of encouragement trapped by her own flailing faith.

"He's a very honest man. I think he's earned your belief in him. And you're not going to like this, but I think you need to cut Hunter off." It wasn't something she'd needed to tell me for me to know it. The idea to blank him out the way I had recently done unintentionally had crossed my mind so many times before, but like I'd told Blaze, I didn't know what my purpose would be if it wasn't to moon after him.

"I can't. It fucks with my head when he calls me because he's such a prick and I still want him for reasons I can't even explain anymore. But it's still there, that sense of needing him in my life. I hate and resent him, but he visits and I need him to kiss me, to love me obsessively like I do him. The sadistic craving for something that's done so much damage."

"And Blaze?"

"Just as sadistic." I shook my head at myself, recounting every other time Hunter had broken the lines of communication for a while and left me at a loss. Like the miles weren't enough, the emotional distance between us left a migraine-like ache in my skull until he called out of the blue and spoke to me like nothing had ever happened, leaving me confused and reeling from the abruptness of his turnaround. I never harassed him with correspondence in any form; he always came back to me and I was grateful for it. It was the delusion that he needed me as much as I needed him that kept me dreaming.

And that was exactly how it had played out with Blaze. I would wait and hope, counting down the days until I fell back into his good graces. And if it never came, I might still hold on, convincing myself to believe my own lies.

There was no way back once I'd put an emotional investment into a man, no matter how involuntarily. I needed them both like water and air. Not one without the other. All or nothing. Double or bust.

The days I felt like I was living on the periphery were always the hardest to get through. My lips would chap, stomach cramp, and I'd always end up run down and nursing a common cold because my immune system gave up before my brain did. My leukocytes were quitters. My appetite suffered and my body buckled under the strain of being sick and hungry. I was always cold, even in the sunshine, and walked hugging myself to keep warm. I'd been told that I'd been lucky to avoid any permanent damage from my eating disorder but I couldn't possibly see how these moments in my life were part of the best case scenario.

But whatever was going on inside, I didn't feel it. Just the vague sense of plodding on for everyone else's benefit when I wanted to do nothing more than curl up in bed and hibernate. I was in a bad place, but it wasn't _that_ place. My bungee cord still had some spring in it but was granting me a reprieve before it yanked me back into the real world. This was just the eye of the storm, a place where I could wistfully sigh for no reason and nobody would pester me with questions about what was wrong.

Monday was the worst. Unable to sleep, I spent the early hours of the morning clearing the clothes and toiletries Blaze had left behind into a box. I'd get it all back to him Somehow. Someday. Washing my sheets would have come up on my list too if the flat hadn't been inexplicably tidied when I staggered back home from Esme's. If he'd sneaked back in to clear my bedroom of his blood stains as a consolation prize, I'd hate to be trading gifts with him at Christmas.

I went to work exhausted, keeping one hopelessly optimistic eye on my phone, but still dragged myself to Esme's that night, chasing a higher level of numbness through intoxication and my usual meaningless fling. The minute I started breaking my routine was the minute I'd be beyond recovery.

The fatigue of Monday was the start of the nosedive. On Tuesday I woke in a cold sweat, racked with shivers as a fever set in. The four ulcers that popped up in my mouth overnight chased away any lasting inclination to eat. My body felt like lead, aching too much to move, but I still forced myself through the usual day, taking Esme home with me that night. I wanted my daily orgasm, but I didn't want it at the hands of anyone else if Blaze wasn't there.

The unproductive string of casual fucks I left in my wake had always felt like a betrayal to Hunter when I crept away from them, but I needed them to feel like I wasn't somehow faulty or deformed. The more I did it, the more I felt like he wouldn't want a woman so 'well travelled', but every man—or woman—I laid became a faceless vessel for a fantasy that I was sleeping with him.

Now, I couldn't act on it like I used to because I didn't _want_ to be wanted by anyone else. Nobody else fit me or knew my body like Blaze. Nobody appreciated the way my back arched more and more as I crept higher towards the climax he pushed me halfway to with a smile.

On Thursday, I woke up after apparently seeing in Wednesday disorientated and incoherent. I slept like a corpse and couldn't be roused, setting off a mass paranoia over the state of my physical and emotional well-being. My doctor told Esme that my body just needed the rest, so my friends sat in on a bedside vigil watching over me like I was already dead. They sat around me on my bed playing cards over my unconscious body, occasionally disturbed by my conversational but wordless rambles and aimless stumbles to the bathroom.

I don't remember any of that. A seething Esme ordered me back to bed on Thursday morning, but I ignored her, red nosed and hoarse. I needed the normality of menial employment in my life and my job was hardly strenuous.

"You're over-reacting." She shot me a look that would have melted lead paint. Honestly, I didn't feel too bad once the fever had settled, at least I didn't until I picked up my phone and remembered what had made me ill in the first place.

The picture of Blaze and I still stood prize of place as my wallpaper, his eyes much brighter and greener than I remembered. Sunday morning replayed in my mind; a montage of still images pasted into my memory like some perversely masochistic scrapbook of regret and 'if only's. How had my life flipped so quickly?

"Call him." Esme pushed me down onto the couch to brush my hair, knowing that she wouldn't win the argument of me missing work again. Being largely unconscious and oblivious to breaking so many of my firmly set habits the day before stopped me from getting crazy about it, but I wouldn't give myself a reason to crack now I was lucid.

"Don't be ridiculous. Even if I was the type of woman to chase men, wouldn't he have called already if he'd meant it?"

"Maybe he's waiting for you to call him?"

I surprised her by laughing through gritted teeth. My scalp hurt enough to touch without the added insult of the knots that tangled my hair from root to tip. My whole body felt bruised. "I thought _I_ was supposed to be the naive one. I may not be a seasoned pro at interacting with men beyond the bedroom, but I'm pretty sure thinking a woman has another man on her mind when you screw is a major turn off." Not that I wasn't guilty of inflicting that insult on four years worth of men.

_"Was_ Hunter on your mind?"

"No, are you crazy? In case you hadn't noticed, Blaze has a way of paralysing neurons and synapses with a look. It's easy to forget to breathe around him." Just thinking about him made me feel tired and bone weary. I didn't think we could really be classed as 'broken up' when we'd never really been together, but I suddenly understood why women were rendered whiny and insufferable even when they'd been the one to call it quits. I just wanted to talk about him, like recalling all his traits out loud would keep him alive, but I was sure that doing it was just as bad as my already unhealthy tendency to self-harm. If anything, my unwillingness to be that fucked up over a man again drove my motivation to not fall victim to old vices. To be that pathetic once in a lifetime was enough. Twice, and people would probably leave me to die shamefully.

" 'We' didn't exist outside the bedroom. He hung around to stop himself being demoted to the same level as the guys I pick up every night. All we had was our wild animal sex and now that's tainted. What would bring him back? He's a hot guy, he only needs to blink to summon a bevy of fan girls ready to service him."

Just thinking about how replaceable I was depressed me.

Esme sighed behind me and began to part my hair into sections. I thought that she might secretly be glad that to dress and preen me the way she hadn't been able to for weeks. Something about braiding and curling my hair relaxed her and made her feel like she had some use beyond reading scripts—a purpose to me beyond being decorative.

"It's not just sex between you, Emmy. Any fool could see that. It's just the only way you two can be on the same wavelength without scaring yourselves with words. You're both more scared of saying it than you are of hearing it and that's fair enough. You've fallen for the wrong guy once before and now you've done it again. But don't belittle him or yourself off by thinking this is just about being an available orifice when he has a spare evening. To use terminology you're comfortable with, you're on the same page in the same confusing book full of continuity errors and plot holes, but you're sure as hell not characters in a horror story. I have a good feeling about which three words your tale ends with."

I winced at a particularly sharp yank at my hair. " 'They all died'?"

"No! Happily ever after!" _When were you lobotomised?_ It wasn't like her to churn out rose-tinted romantic clichés. Not even a little bit.

"Ugh, Jesus. I'll be sat right here waiting when you, strange alien impostor, return my dear unromantic, cynical Esme."

"Keep saying that. I'll be waiting to hit you back with my 'I told you so'."

Mrs. Reynolds only had to have her offer of another day off sick with full pay refused once before she let it drop. Maybe it was a wisdom that came with age, but she knew the points of my personality that were negotiable and altering my routine was not one of them. Instead, she showed me the fridge full of orange juice she'd stockpiled to give me a vitamin C kick and relegated me to paperwork duties to keep me off my feet.

The tedious process of cross-referencing the stock information she'd complied over the week and the information we had on our system was just monotonous enough for me to get lost in it's rhythm. My head bobbed to the sound of _Portishead_ I picked out from my MP3 player and soothed me to a state of near-hypnotism, moving almost automatically without thought. She always had me do something slow paced like this when she knew I was going through a rough patch, offering me an opportunity to shut down and recover when others wouldn't let me. The typical tactic was to distract me, wearing me out so I couldn't brood over my problems, when peace was what I really needed. How else would my body catch up?

I had heartburn to rival a nuclear holocaust when I got home that night. Racked with dry heaves and draped over porcelain, Esme held my hair and traced shapes on my back while I panted through the spasms that tore through my stomach.

We had sat that way too many times before—naked and mutually post-orgasmically exhausted. What good had ever come from living my life that way until Blaze came, a man who took me out of that pattern whilst simultaneously satisfying all the criterion I set for a 'normal' night? Why was I so scared to go home alone just once rather than add notches to my bed post, leaving me feeling dirty and devalued?

"Am I wasting my life?" I looked over my shoulder at Esme, resting my cheek against the toilet seat. "Is this work- drink-fuck-sleep cycle doing as much damage as I think it is?"

"I can't answer that definitively for you, Emmy, but it's not great." My eyes closed, acknowledging the confirmation of my thoughts. "I love to hear you purr and watch you drift off when you're satisfied, but it's sobering to hear what you say to yourself when you're asleep." I flushed, unaware that I'd ever spoken in my sleep. "We've all learned to accept that this is who you are—you and your pernicious hallucination who tells you to hate yourself—but it's hard being your friends, for no reason other than the fact we're so useless to help you and doomed to watch you spiral out of control."

Her honesty was hard to hear but I took note and considered it carefully as she slept next to me that night. I don't know that if she'd told me how they felt sooner it might have changed my perspective, but in that moment I was ready to reconsider a way of living I thought was working for me.

I woke up on Friday morning bloody minded and determined, sporting a mentality I could only liken to the force of will I'd adopted when I first sat down to draw 'Syncretic Sciences' _._ My aim was simple; to act like the entitled young woman I was without sacrificing the simpler life I'd fought for by shunning high society. Esme helped me pack the ill-fitting, unbecoming clothes I'd lived in not so long ago into bags, destined for the charity shop next to Double Booked to be exiled from my wardrobe indefinitely.

For the first time in years I had surplus income thanks to Blaze's gentlemanly tendency to cover the bill whenever we went out, so I spent it on a new bed I had no intention of sharing with strangers. My second chance bed. If I couldn't be someone Hunter and Blaze wanted to love, I'd become someone they wanted to miss.

The bags of unwanted clothes sat along side the box of Blaze's belongings on the coffee table when I left for work, just a pile of dead weight I'd been insisting on carrying around. It all looked fairly innocuous when it sat there so innocently, but I knew how damaging it could be to keep it. The time to dwell was over. The ghosts residing in those objects would be laid to rest, or so I hoped.

I wasn't Emmeline Tudor, but I wasn't the same Emmeline White who'd cut herself over a catty remark when she was seventeen. I was new, improved, and damned if I'd let my past catch up with me again.

The latter part of July saw a minor influx of custom, enough for there to always be at least one person browsing the shelves at all times. As dire as that might have seemed, these were the beginnings of our prime days before another minor improvement around late August. The rare occasions when customers tried to spark a conversation were the times I tried the hardest to force my new outlook, smiling politely and chatting back when I might have usually grunted a dismissive, monosyllabic response and wished them away.

It stung when people recognised me from the pictures at The Roses despite my drastic image change, and asked me some fairly intrusive questions about my fabricated relationship with the ever pre-eminent Blaze. Women mostly wanted to know if he was well hung while the men wanted to shower me with compliments and insist that they'd make a better bedfellow. As complimentary as it may have been, and as familiar I was with that kind of attention, I felt ill at ease and out of my element, almost lost in a place I knew so well. The more small talk I forced, the more claustrophobic I felt until my earlier positivity was almost completely sapped.

I took a late lunch and opted to escape the confines of the shop to roam the side streets I knew would be quiet. My Thursday vitamin boost had done wonders and the only remaining evidence that I'd been ill was a slightly runny nose and the lethargy I could no longer fend off. It helped that I'd been pounding decongestants as much as the dosage recommendations would allow.

The distant throb of traffic in the distance played as a soundtrack alongside the steady click-clack of my kitten heels through the thoroughfares that stemmed off the main streets into smaller, more intimate areas of the city. In my mind I was searching, though I didn't know what for. I'd already seen most of the shops and townhouses that filled the streets during aimless wanders with Blaze, who had an innate ability to seek out jewels in a huge coal mine of conurbation.

I took the time to sit at an abandoned children's playground hidden between a splash of poorly kept greenery and a vein of largely boarded up retail units. All but one swing hung uselessly from their chains—the perfect embodiment of how I felt inside. Change wasn't as easy as I hoped and the optimism was hard to hold on to. If I could have bottled it I would have and shared it freely with anyone else as forlorn and demoralised as me.

But the single swing that still stood functional felt like a reminder that even in the most dilapidated spaces there were survivors, something that refused to go down with the rest of the pitiful wreckage. No matter how poorly managed it was, there was always something fighting against fate, a spark of hope in perpetual darkness.

What was stopping me from being that something—if not for myself, then for the friends who took my crap on a daily basis?

Mrs. Reynolds had a look of roguery about her when I got back to the shop, suppressing a smile given away by the deep dimples in her cheeks. Her hands rested on a brown paper package bound up in parcel string. Unremarkable, yet strangely the most out of place item in sight.

"You've had a delivery," she spoke with tethered laughter, "of the utmost importance, I'm assured."

The sparkle in her eyes unnerved me but told me that there was no option to open the parcel in private. I pulled at the string and sucked in a shaky breath when the paper fell open.

The world wanted to play games with me and I was in no mood to take my turn.

#  eleven

#

The brown paper package contained a red gingham swing dress, a pair of white sandals and a small white card tucked into a ribbon around the base of a floppy straw hat much like the one I'd worn to lunch with Ivy. I recognised every item from my own wardrobe apart from the hat and my chest tightened with my knowing who must have been in the flat to find them. The card bore nothing but the words, 'I'm sorry' in lavish calligraphy and detailed directions to an unnamed location on the reverse.

"Go on, then." Mrs. Reynolds peered over my shoulder and shoved me playfully. "You have somewhere to be. It would be rude to keep them waiting."

Instantly, I suspected she knew precisely who was waiting and that the package had been hand delivered by the same person. It made too much sense that it would have arrived at a time I would have usually been working rather than during my usual lunch hour. He must have been watching or had her in cahoots—this was just his style.

But I was past the point of incitement. "I still have three hours left of my shift."

"It's hardly a rave in here. I think I have the place under control." Groaning indecisively, I pulled one sandal up from the paper with a fingertip and sighed at it. My mind played through all the scenarios possible. I didn't have a good enough sense of direction to figure out where I was being led to—that alone triggered alarm bells. It didn't necessarily have to be Blaze who sent the package when enough people knew where I kept my spare key.

But what it all really boiled down to was that I'd been focusing so hard on wanting him to turn up that I'd been blocking out how nervous I was to see him again. I'd been dreading a chance encounter in the street, nightmare visions of seeing him wrapped around another woman making the deepest pits of my stomach cartwheel and back flip. It was too likely that I'd snap and act foolishly, either breaking down into tears or throwing myself at him just for him to push me away and tell me that he didn't want me anymore. A worst prospect was the disappointment and self-pity if I got myself worked up to see him and it wasn't him waiting for me.

"What do you have to lose?" Mrs. Reynolds' question niggled at a point that I also had to consider. I had _nothing_ left to lose. I'd lost everything already. My two men were gone, my family barely present in my life and my friends were feeling dejected. Was I really going to torture myself by seeking him out?

Of course I was. I was one of _those_ people.

The message on the card filled my mind as I followed the simple directions, finger restlessly brushing across the penmanship as I walked. 'I'm sorry' for what exactly? Sorry that he left? Sorry that he ever arrived? What good was an apology if the reason remained a mystery, and why all this supplementary cloak and dagger bullshit? Just the card would have done without the stupid treasure hunt.

The directions led me to the same restaurant we'd ended up at the day of our smoothie date, specifically to the mezzanine, but the manager there already knew that much. His smile was a little too wise when he led me to the foot of the staircase and paused to pass me a glass of white wine.

"Mr. Lundy will join you shortly, Miss White." Mr. Lundy? My mouth dropped open an inch to enquire but I just didn't have it in me to speak. If I did, it wouldn't make sense anyway. Now that the possibility of seeing him was gone, I had to battle through a blind date with a man I didn't know. My strength was best saved for that.

Slowly, I ascended the steps with high hopes for more wine waiting, barely noticing the gentle lilt of music coming from the mezzanine. As soon as I noticed that, I noticed the scattered pink, red and white petals creeping up the top most steps and the scent of fragrant blossoms.

The terrace looked much different from the last time I was there. The tables were missing, replaced with a large arrangement of multicoloured satin cushions set in a closed circle and a white blanket between them, laid out across the wooden decking. The petals that had trailed in surrounded the cushions, and around those were four cross-hatched privacy screens interwoven with honeysuckle. That was the overpowering perfume that filled the bizarrely intimate scene.

"Do you like it?" The voice sneaked up on me, sweet and cajoling, sudden enough to make me jump but soft enough for it to only be a small surprise. Eyes stuck to the display, I stiffened on the spot and tightened my grip around the stem of the wine glass.

"You did this for me?"

"You said nobody had taken you on a real date before. I had to rectify that situation."

I still couldn't bear to look at him as I paced towards the cushion circle—it was worse knowing that he'd abandoned his responsibilities for some kind of extravagant pity parade. I'd avoided dates on purpose and it was to avoid shitty situations like these.

"I was told I was waiting for a Mr. Lundy."

"You didn't think I'd put all my effort into this just to send another man, did you? You wound me." Not as deeply as he wounded me, but he was surrendering information I'd been hungry for since we met. Blaze Lundy? Christ, no wonder he kept it under his hat. It was a small insight into a man with too much character to contain in one body—a secret shame. "I think my mother thought giving me an awesome forename would make up for it. You can imagine the hassle I got in secondary school when they started teaching us French."

Lundy—Lundi, the French translation of Monday. Yeah, I could see that leading to a bad nickname. So did that mean...

"Monday, Lundi, Lundy... Lundy's Miracle?" Was the band closer to his heart than anyone would ever realise?

"They certainly were. They did me proud." Fabulous. Why the hell was he telling me now? I felt him take a step towards me and took an instinctive self-preservative step forward to keep the distance. The minute he touched me—hell, even the moment I could smell him would be the moment I came apart at the seams. "Whatever I did wrong, I'm sorry."

"You don't even know what you did?" I snapped back at him, glad to feel the invigorating stab of annoyance through my stupor.

"Well, no. I've been staring at my phone since Sunday waiting for it to ring or just buzz with a message."

"You said you'd call _me_ , genius!" Feeling the ire building, I divested myself of my sandals, more than a little sick of their straps digging into my ankles. I'd always hated them for that reason and I was irrationally pissed off at Blaze for not realising that it was why he'd found them in a box instead of loose like all my other shoes. "You sack me off with a classic line then turn up all resentful that I didn't chase you?"

"How do you know classic lines if you've never—"

"Because I don't live under a fucking rock!" Spinning around, I catapulted each sandal at him in turn with impressive aim and force. It was the worst mistake I could have made.

Blaze never looked more divine in two pieces of a malapropos grey three piece suit that had to be stifling in the heat, a world away from his usual casual attire. He'd really gone all out. His eyes snapped up to meet mine after he deftly caught the projectile footwear and hit me with the full force of all that contradictory knowledgeable wonder I'd grown far too fond of over the summer months. I held my breath, like breathing would intensify the strength of his power over me, willing myself to stand strong and not succumb to the trembling legs that wanted to buckle, pulling me down to the ground to kneel in front of him.

No, to use his own words, 'fuck it'. I surrendered to that will and folded over, knees and palms flat on the decking. Anywhere was safer than being on his eye level.

"I didn't think you were coming back."

"Why wouldn't I?"

My eyes flickered up to glare at his knees. "Don't insult me with faux-ignorance. You know why."

"I don't, I—" His feet seemed to approach at an unearthly slow pace. He didn't talk as he walked, not a word until he crouched down in front of me. "Japan guy? You thought I'd walk away over that?"

"You found out all my junk in one morning, Blaze. Expecting you to be okay with it is unrealistic."

"I'm not okay with it." I immediately went lax when he rocked back on his heels and pulled me over to sit in the fold of his crossed legs. The smell of him cloaked me like gossamer—heavy like an evening perfume, hopelessly masculine and intoxicating. I'd missed his smell and now that it was back again, I was going to forgive him. I was helpless against him. "But I wouldn't leave you over any of it. God knows my heart wouldn't let me."

"You said you'd call."

"So did you." I leaned back to look up and frown at him. Even when he was trying to be serious, his face was always smiling. What I would have given to be that at peace with life. "You don't remember. You told me on Saturday that you'd call whenever you needed me. I guess it was pretty stupid to think you'd remember."

"So why didn't you call? Or just send a message?"

He shrugged. "I didn't want to bombard you. I wasn't lying when I said I'd call you, but after Sunday I didn't want to make anything worse." My frown deepened, prompting him to explain. "You lost a friend because of me, Emmeline. Even if I do get the impression that he's a pretty poor friend, that was still my fault. That's what I thought you were mad about. Plus, you know, I didn't want to suffocate you with neediness. I was waiting for a green light."

All the angst because he felt guilty? Was this really all crossed wires? I didn't want it to be, I sorely wanted a reason to hate him and had nothing but petty slim pickings. "You _did_ answer my phone."

"So I'm not house broken. I've never made any claims to being perfect- I can't help that the world holds me to ridiculously high ideals just because I'm attractive."

He had a point. I didn't know much about him, but I knew enough to know that he didn't flaunt his aesthetics and use them as an excuse to act like a fool the way other people in his position did. He was very modest, evident from the way he sacrificed Monday's Miracle to be a carer. The preconceived notions that he was flawless were consequential of that beautiful face.

"I have a theory, you know. A theory designed to distract you long enough for you to forgive me."

"Go on." I was interested to hear what he had that could possibly distract me from the irritation I was trying to harbour, and failing.

Stroking a hand up to my nape, he buried his face into my hair and took a long, deep breath of me. His exhale was so soft I was barely sure he'd done it until he spoke. "The most beautiful of us are the most messed up inside because we need something to make up for the way the world has fucked us over. The more beautiful we are, the more muddled up we are below the surface. The ugly people are the simple souls who've had straight forward lives, and that's why two fuglies can have beautiful children. They're not wise or experienced enough to shield them from what might lay in wait." Again, my mind strayed to my sister, a woman ugly inside and out who never suffered with the rest of her family. There was some substance to this theory, but what did he have inside that made him feel less gorgeous than he was?

"The scientist in me wants to point out that looks are determined by genetics. That's like saying that some people are biochemically predisposed to misery. That's bleak."

"It is. So is life. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever met and admittedly the most fucked up." Blaze nuzzled my neck and planted a kiss in the hollow below my ear. "But definitely the most beautiful." His lips strayed across my jaw until they reached mine, then parted to let his tongue dip into my mouth. He groaned when I did, pulling my legs around so I straddled him and combing his hands into my hair. "God, I've missed your noises. Did I win my forgiveness?"

"Almost," I breathed. "You just need to explain one hole in that theory. If we're more beautiful because we've suffered—" I paused to graze his Cupid's bow with my lips. "—why do we have our scars?"

"Because we're not beyond hope."

The moment our lips touched again, Blaze scooped me up and carried me over the cushion arrangement, laying prone across me when he laid me down across them like a goddess.

"We're doing this wrong," he muttered. "Stop being irresistible."

"Right back at you." Ignoring my grunt of objection, he jumped up with a grin and ducked behind one of the privacy screens to recover a wicker picnic basket lined with the same red gingham as my dress. "Is this part of the 'date' experience?"

"It is. Do you like it?"

"I do. I feel like a queen."

Grin softening, Blaze reached across to stroke the backs of his fingers across my cheek. "You _are_ a queen. I should have said on Sunday, but you're a stunning blonde. I feel honoured to be in such company." I could do nothing but whimper feebly, feeling my cheeks heat like they usually did around him. Those days without him seemed so distant already, just like he'd dispelled the void left by ten days the week before.

The picnic basket held a cornucopia of fruits and cheeses with water biscuits and crackers to accompany the chilled wine brought to us by the restaurant manager, who had obviously been waiting for some kind of covert sign to interrupt. As all time first dates went, this, like it's organiser, would be the one that probably ruined me for other men. When nothing else would compare, how could he possibly not expect the world to not hold him to high ideals?

Basking in the sun lounged across the cushions, sedate and ready to eat despite the lingering sores in my mouth, Blaze topped off my glass of wine and spread himself out next to me, propped up on one elbow. He looked stunning, draped in bespoke tailored threads that fit every fine curve and ridge of his body perfectly. I'd seen enough men in suits to know that they usually made the man. Blaze was an exception and very much made the suit.

"So how was your week?" _Oh_. That was a loaded question and I had no idea which direction the barrel was facing when I squeezed the trigger.

"Dubious. I've been unwell."

"Oh." He sat up slightly, looking alarmed.

I waved my hands dismissively around my head, wanting to discourage him from any thoughts that the illness had involved any kind of sharp implements or appetite suppressants. "Nothing serious, I'm just a little run down. But you've probably noticed that from the state of the flat." He raised his hand with the palm flat as a confession that he'd let himself in. Part of me knew he'd have tidied up again when he was there. It was strangely comforting to know he imposed himself on my personal space that way, like it was his space, too.

"You moved me out." He sounded amused but I knew he would have felt a little disheartened when he saw the box full of his personal effects on the coffee table. They were probably back in their old places, too. He had to know that I was a sure thing. "This date was really a ploy to win you back. I was just going to drop by Double Booked until I saw that something a little more drastic was necessary."

"Storming me at work would have done the job nicely. Though in the future, let's agree to save our pride. I didn't call you because I was waiting for you to call me first." I was begrudged to admit that Esme had told me to swallow that pride and I'd ignored her. All of the paranoia could have been avoided, but I wouldn't have been treated to the spectacular picnic. "I still don't understand how you can just accept that I'm hopelessly fixated on my best friend."

Blaze jutted his bottom lip out thoughtfully. "Well, he barely knows you're alive, is rude to you, and I'm guessing he's not going to call off his wedding to whisk you away?"

I petulantly mimicked his expression and scowled. "Your insensitive point?"

"My point," he half-laughed, "is that I don't know the guy. I barely know his name and don't know what he looks like, and it's highly unlikely that he's going to pose some sort of threat, particularly if you're no longer talking. So how is this any different to you having, I don't know, an obsession with a celebrity?"

"I _do_ have an obsession with a celebrity," I said dryly, seeking to look as hostile as possible and failing miserably. Blaze was my celebrity crush realised, even if I had only seen a limited sampling of his work. It wasn't something I'd cared to seek out with the real thing making eyes at me. I suspected my flagrant disregard for his status might have made me a more attractive prospect. "You make me crazy." Both the good and bad subtypes.

"Crazy enough to make plans?" He laughed at my horrified expression and carried on with his train of thought regardless. My life didn't involve making plans. I didn't nurture dreams and ambitions to save myself from future disappointment and reasons to beat myself up. Hell, I didn't even have them. "I know it's just July, but how would you feel about coming home with me for Christmas?"

I scoffed softly into my glass, knowing that I definitely wasn't the type of woman any sensible man took home to meet his mother. _Hi, how are you doing? I'm the daughter of one of the richest men on the planet, though I live like a bum after having some kind of inwardly psychotic breakdown, evident from my collection of spectacular cutting scars._ She'd be skittering around to hide the steak knives in seconds.

"Isn't that something 'real' couples do?"  
"Well, there are magazines all over the country saying that's what we are and you did say that you felt the same way about both me and your ex-friend in Japan..."

"Oh." I stilled, making a brief mental reconstruction of the Sunday conversation that had brought us to this point. I'd quite incontrovertibly told him that I was in love with Hunter. "I did." And then, more forcefully, I repeated, "I did," and sealed it with a stiff nod so he knew that I'd meant it and hadn't made the claim flippantly. It was the best way I could think to tell him how I felt about him without tarnishing the sentiment with something that had meant little when cast my way. I didn't want to spoil our connection with annoying emotional buzzwords that had a habit of making an easy arrangement too much to stomach.

"Well, then," Blaze tipped his glass to me, smoothing an invisible crease in his waistcoat. "Home for Christmas it is."

"Incidentally, where is 'home'?"

"Incidentally..." he set his glass down and shuffled around onto all fours, prowling towards me with feline grace, "... Cardiff. We could drop by your folks place en route, but I would like you to stay with me." _So would I_. The idea of sitting across from Henry, Ivy and Tallulah for Boxing Day breakfast in the ostentatious dining room in a manor house so ridiculously expensive made me feel ill—them, too, I suspected, as they spent most of their time living out of hotels in London so they were closer to me. How long could I keep that last nugget of information under my belt? I'd revealed enough secrets already without piling, 'By the way, Daddy's a billionaire' on top of the precariously balanced tower of our fractious relationship.

"Sounds great." I fidgeted to mask the telling shiver that slid through me. The five month period before that event was more than long enough to build up the courage to part ways with the last hurdle between me and the finish line, if we even lasted that long.

"Hmm." Blaze hummed at me, blatantly analysing my expression. He at least had the decency to read it wrong. "How about something a little more short term?"

"Come again?"

"Plans." Face impassive, he pulled a cheeseboard from the bottom of the picnic basket and began to prepare a selection of hard and soft cheeses for our crackers. "Personally, I would like to spend the next three weeks possessing your life."

"More than usual?" I snorted, draining my glass and happily accepting the refill he offered.

"Unequivocally more. I might go as far as forecasting three weeks of Emmydays." His face softened at my confusion. "My 'caree', as you once put it, is holidaying in Normandy with her mother. I understand that there's the matter of your work and sleeping arrangements, but I'd like t—"

I cut him off with a squeal before he could finish his sentence and launched myself towards him with a girlish gusto I didn't know I was capable of. I wanted to be greedy with his time, take advantage of his freedom to be something near normal with him. With no Hunter on the scene, my attention was centred on him and he deserved it, as much as he deserved me fighting for the fresh start I'd woken up lusting after.

His hand crept up the curve of my thigh until it met the fabric of my dress. "You know, we have this terrace to ourselves all afternoon with 'do not disturb' orders hammered into the staff..."

"They couldn't possibly 'disturb' me more if they tried." Craning his neck, Blaze slowly pulled at the hem of the dresses skirt until my backside was exposed, sucking and biting his bottom lip as he unabashedly checked me out. "Why, Mr. Lundy," I purred, shooting back a line he'd once used on me. "Are you objectifying me?"

"You love it," he teased, quietly aware that he'd hit the nail squarely on its head. I loved that he looked at my body the way he did—ravenously despite all it's blemishes. And I loved that he viewed what was inside the same way. If he'd found out about my past and started coddling me the same way others did, it might have destroyed the connection between us. He understood and I didn't want to dwell on how.

"I... I missed you, Blaze." He nodded once sagely and kissed me, appreciating how difficult it was for me to admit that he had that kind of control over me. I tended to keep my thoughts and feelings internalised, even to detrimental effect, but I know that wasn't going to be an option when he saw right through me.

His tongue teased mine gently, tenderly lapping but making his self-restraint obvious. "Eat with me, Emmeline. I won't be able to leave your side if you fall asleep here. I don't want to—" I pressed my finger to his lips to silence him and slunk back, eagerly waiting for him to fill my plate. Somehow, this 'first date' premise was as important and monumental to him as it was to me, and even if I didn't know why, I wouldn't spoil it for him.

My work-drink-fuck-sleep cycle would remain, but in a way I wouldn't protest. I'd just have to reorganise my schedule to eat too.

"I told you so." I rolled my eyes at Esme's goading whisper as Blaze vanished across the bar's floor headed in the direction of the men's room, but a smile hit the corners of my lips. Despite Chris' oozing disapproval, Blaze had rejoined us for our usual drinking binge like he'd never left and kept one arm around my shoulders, possessively brushing his fingers across my skin while he divulged details of work further afield he'd arranged while he had an open calendar. By all accounts, photographers had fallen over themselves to find out he was in a position to travel, some even hoping to snag photo-shoots including myself. I was grateful that he'd declined on my behalf, still lacking the self-confidence to make an exhibition of myself the way he could. Besides, I had absolutely no discernible talents that could justify that kind of publicity. Being the daughter of a smug, rich bastard was no talent.

Smiling into my glass, I gave Esme the words she was working for. "You were right." The admission came with her jubilant air-punch and self-satisfied grin.

"I was there when he turned up, you know, sorting out those bags for the charity shop. It took all my self-control to not call you and let you know."

"You spoke?" I sat up rigid, inexplicably thrown off by the news. "Please tell me you didn't tell him anything embarrassing."

"Embarrassing?" She teased me with her question, cocking her head thoughtfully side to side until I shoved her insistently. "I didn't tell him anything. What he said, however—"

"Esme, you're awful." Daniel shook his head at her across the table, looking almost amused. "She's having you on, Emmy. She was leaving as he arrived, shot him the daggers and pulled the door shut behind her so he had to faff around with finding your spare key."

She shrank down bashfully and gave me the smallest of shy smiles. "Someone had to stick up for you."

"Oh, Esme," I crooned, pulling her into a hug. "You're like the sister I wish I could trade mine in for."

"You have a sister?" Blaze startled us both with his rapid return, but appeased all with the tray of cupcakes he carried. They'd been something I couldn't stand to look at for the other four days of that week, but now provoked a smile that came with the memory of my pet name.

"I hope you washed your hands." He retook his seat and shot me a pointed look that reminded me of all the places his hands had been when the remaining contents of the picnic basket were repacked and stuffed into the boot of the goblin car. I gulped down a large mouthful of my wine to remedy the dryness that came to my mouth. "Yes, I have a sister. By blood only, I assure you. There's no love on either side." I cared for my sister the same way you might care for a house cat. You got used to her lurking in the background, she only ever came to you when she wanted something, I'd miss and remember her when she died but ultimately, she was a superficial factor in my genealogy. Even though only two years separated us, we had never been particularly close, even as children. "Do you have siblings?"

"Only child," he muttered as he shook his head. "My dad died young and my mum never got over it."

"I'm sorry." I immediately felt bad for prying, even though there really was no way I could have known. "Was he ill?"

"Murdered." A stony silence befell our table, an eerie sadness matched by our vacant spaces like we took a moment to mourn with him. "It was a random attack," Blaze went on, seemingly forcing the matter out of the ether, "wrong place at the wrong time. They stabbed him repeatedly in the left side before they realised it was the wrong person."

I felt all eyes burning into the point where all my scars converged, and withered. What were the chances that I'd pick the same place?

"I'm sorry," I said again, feeling ashamed tears burning the backs of my eyes. I carried a reminder of something terrible around on my body and that made me need to put some distance between us. Pushing up from the table, I excused myself and rushed out for a gulp of heavy summer air, not feeling as refreshed as I hoped. Plenty of people had tried to urge me to feel guilty about what I had done to myself and it had never stuck. Blaze achieved his results effortlessly, seamlessly and unintentionally.

"It's just coincidence." His voice rasped behind me, weighted with a kind of bitter sweet affection that made my skin crawl. "I don't think about it."

But I would. Every time he saw me nude, I'd worry that the recollection of being young and suddenly fatherless would spring into the forefront of his mind.

"Do you remember him?"

"No. I know that he walked in the wrong circles and that's why he was caught in the crossfire, but my mother loved him enough to give me his stupid surname." He stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms in a cross around my body, settling one hand over the scars that marred my side. "Do you still do this?"

Turning in the circle of his arms, I drew in a breath and traced the V neckline of his charcoal waistcoat that met in the middle of a black tie, the darkest point of the monochrome three piece suit he'd dressed back into after washing himself clean of the smell of reconciliatory sex that afternoon.

Honesty was something I had difficulty with, not because I was a pre-dispositional liar, but because I didn't like to verbalise the ugly thoughts that swarmed around in my mind, the ones that reminded me what a good idea it had been at the time. The only time I'd given him anything meaningful had been in times he'd given me the once over and the endorphins rushing around stopped me caring if my words had any negative impact. I knew that it was a bad habit I had to grow out of—to use his own words, it really wasn't convenient to bend me over and prod the truth out of me when I was being defensive by rote.

"I don't tend to pencil it into my daily routine." I coughed the satire out of my voice when he arched an unimpressed brow. "Sometimes. Not often. There are times where I feel so numb that I need to hurt physically to feel human, or I can't forgive myself for not being good enough without feeling like I've paid some sort of penance. It doesn't hold the same relevance it did when I was a teenager. That was punishment, this is... coping." It seemed ridiculous to try and justify it, but I wanted him to understand that the compliments and respect he paid me weren't redundant, that I didn't necessarily feel fat and in need of a serious diet in spite of them. His kind words had a healing affect that came from nobody else, an ability to make me see light where there was once nothing but darkness.

" 'Good enough'?" He raised his hand when I tore my eyes away from him, showing me that he didn't need the clarification. "If it makes you feel better, you're perfect for me. I wouldn't change a thing."

It did. Regardless of everything else that had happened since our night at The Roses, he pulled me out of the eye of the storm into the swirling winds of the squall that would toss me around like a rag doll until such a time it spat me out and let me crash back to ground disgracefully. I had a feeling that Blaze would be crashing with me.

#  twelve

#

I groaned, pleasantly stuffed, and fell lax backwards into my seat. The first part of Blaze's working holiday aka 'wildfire season' had passed too quickly, without dramatic incidence and at great penalty to my waist line. A further shopping trip had been necessary and had played out exactly the same way as last time, minus the fraught recollection of scattered wits and scuppered self-imposed trends. Blaze had picked out my second new wardrobe as he had the first, compensating for my lack of fashion sense, and dressed me almost every day in a way that made me look quite the model's glamorous girlfriend. It was a miraculous transformation I only ever could have dreamed of, coupled with the comfortable adjustment to what some might have called a fairly average life.

The warm fuzz of wine I really should not have been drinking in my lunch break made the man who sat across the table from me in the inconspicuous Italian bistro almost glow incandescently. He looked mighty fine in a fitted dress shirt and smart-casual pinstripe trousers he'd donned purposely to drive me crazy. And as ever, he was wolfing down food like it had gone out of fashion, barely pausing for breath to notice me contemplating him, one finger running in circles around the haloed rim of my wine glass.

"You're such a voracious eater." He swallowed his mouthful before grinning at me, eyes gleaming with recalled scenes of eating something that didn't appear on the bistros menu. The heat behind his look forced that familiar blush to my cheeks, which made him grin wider.

"Food is a passion of mine that comes second only to you, Emmeline, though the line where you end and food begins often becomes blurred."

"I'd noticed." I coughed through the lump that knotted in my chest every time he gave me that molten glare. I'd learned to stop apologising after being told repeatedly from multiple directions that I was reading it wrong. When I saw it now, it seemed almost like he forced himself to soften for my benefit. Whatever thought came with the look, I knew he was reigning himself in.

This lunch date had been one of many over the past two weeks and was rapidly becoming a hot commodity. With Hunter still incommunicado and sulking, it had been easy to push him to the back of my mind and focus on the one remaining man in my life. Being 'with' Blaze was a surprisingly easy pill to swallow, made easier by the fact he had his own plans some evenings to give me the breathing space I still sorely needed to fend off the feeling of suffocation.

That didn't stop him messaging me through the separation, though. With free time in the week such a rarity, he wore himself ragged trying to catch up with absent friends and entertain me all at once until I told him to relax. Coming from one of the most highly strung bachelorettes in London, he knew that it wasn't an order to be sniffed at. We had a finite amount of time together, even if it was just weekends most of the time, and I needed him fighting fit. I made unfair demands on his body as he did mine, and feeling what I did for him could be draining at times. I didn't know if that much was mutual, but I knew that I was falling deeper in love with him with each passing day.

I was at least at peace with being a part time lover. Full time was probably too much. Still, this wasn't quite enough.

"Stay with me tonight. Properly." I spoke so quietly it took Blaze seconds to decide if he'd heard me properly. Leaning over to pull my glasses down my nose, his mouth twisted ruefully as he checked for signs of deception or narcotic euphoria.

"Fuck my life." He sagged back in his seat and regarded me with interest, confusion, and that twang of hunger that always graced his emerald irises when I was in his line of sight. "You're my Big Bang, Emmeline."

"Explain."

"Well, from the moment we met, you were a statistical anomaly. The conditions had to be perfect, a once in a lifetime experience." He tried to frown at the amusement I took in his flowered up compliments but couldn't. Making me smile was a supplementary third on his list of great passions.

As ever, I was riveted by the way he could turn the simplest of comments into a complex, poetic metaphor that left me drooling slightly from the mass exertion of my brain cells. "So how is that like the Big Bang?"

"You created a handful of little orbs of opportunity and spread them so sporadically through the universe that it takes a lifetime to travel between them, and then complicated it by sticking bloody great fireballs in the middle of them. Shrink it down to our particular solar system and how long is it before the sun expands and starts burning up planets? How many of those opportune sparkles does it destroy before it fizzles out completely?"

I rocked back onto the hind legs of my chair. "Kinda sounds like you're saying my universe revolves around you there, sport."

"Just this particular section." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, which he'd left un-styled. It was almost too long, starting to cover his eyes and taking the 'business' edge from a casually urbane look. He'd almost definitely gotten more scrumptious since we'd met, but I tried not to put credence to his previous beauty theory on this occasion. "What I'm really saying is I have plans tonight but don't know when you're going to let your guard drop enough to extend that invitation again. Remember how long it took CERN to recreate the Big Bang? Maybe I should have called you my Higgs Boson..."

I forced an accepting smile despite being disappointed by the rebuff. No matter how nicely he'd tried to break the news, it had taken me a long time to get to a point where I was ready to wake up next to him, confident that I wouldn't go arctic the next morning.

Our time of 'normality' had come with a mess of last minute dashes and close calls relying heavily on my tendency to sleep through alarms. The nights we drank too much together saw him passing out next to me when I'd drifted into a peaceful post-coital slumber, springing up like a jack-in-the-box at the sound of the first of my five alarms and ready to dazzle and conquer.

He was much more reliable than me like that, ready to spring into action as soon as his eyes opened while I preferred to hit the snooze button a handful of times and bury my head under a pillow.

When he had plans or a job the next day, he stuck to the soft drinks and left for home to catch a few hours sleep as soon as my eyes closed.

The signs that he was starting to flag manifested in the reddening whites of his eyes and the yawns he tried to stifle to save me the guilt. I had to be costing him work and his patience had to be waning.

Sometimes I woke up not long after he'd left and the bed would still be warm where he'd lain not long before, the sheets crumpled underneath the place I suspected he'd taken a moment to watch me sleep. Every time I rolled over into the space he'd left in a bed that had only been touched by us, I felt that emptiness reflected in the irrational stab of disappointment that he hadn't tried to challenge me by staying anyway, despite my vehement insistence that he needed to leave.

I was ready. I wanted the morning sex and coffee experience with him—every day if I could. I wanted him to bully me into staying awake and share my morning shower, dressing me for work and then mentally undressing me as we ate breakfast together. Seeing him every day wasn't enough. Not taking someone else home on the nights he was out, holding onto the tantalising soreness he'd driven into me before he'd left, wasn't enough of a sacrifice for me. I wanted to give him everything.

_Christ._ I wanted the full package I couldn't have, but took some comfort in knowing that he wanted it, too.

Still, I respected that he had plans so I acquiesced. "It's an open invitation, Blaze. It doesn't have an expiry date." His face flooded with relief and he swept his brow with a light-hearted 'phew' to inject a little humour into what teetered on the brink of becoming a serious moment. He really was humbled that I'd made the offer at all and it was plain on his face for all to see in the softness that hit his eyes like I'd lifted a weight crushing his foot—not crippling but hardly bearable.

Righting myself on the chair, I picked up my fork to shove at my pasta. I really wasn't hungry anymore, but I needed something to distract me from the urge to pry. _Fuck it_. I wanted to know what was so important that it was stopping him from doing something he'd been gunning after for weeks. "So... are your plans important?"

Blaze picked up his own fork and began to dig back into his meal, smirking as he speared a ravioli parcel. He knew exactly what I was doing. "Imperative." He winked conspiratorially and tortured me with the time it took to chew and swallow his mouthful before he offered any elaboration. "I'm heading out to Birmingham as soon as you're back at work."

"Oh." That seemed like a long journey and a definite 'no' stamped over the question of whether I stood a chance of him changing his mind.

"I'm coming right back but I owe a favour to a photographer friend. She needs a hand setting up a venue for a function tomorrow."

"A photographer is holding an event?" I hoped that I was appropriately disguising my bite of jealously over the fact he'd be with another woman while he was _not_ pinning me into my mattress.

"She modelled first."

"Oh." _Not helping._

He had the nerve to laugh and lean over to wrench the fork from my fisted hand. "Relax. Nelly is very much in love and I am... also into some chick with a very cute jealous streak."

"Some chick?" He gave me his most disgusting shit-eating grin and puppy dog eyes—a lethal combination that forced a smile to crack through my steely resolve. "Best give me her name so I can kill the bitch."

Checking the time on the impressive leather strapped watch that bound his wrist, Blaze tossed his credit card down on the table and grabbed the legs of my chair to pull me closer. It was starting to scare me how often he glared, a look I so often tried to mirror to no effect. I don't think he knew how small and boxed in it made me feel, confused by his tenderness but squashed down by the force behind his eyes. "You still have tomorrow off work, right?"

"I do," I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. "Free to be at your disposal for the entirety of Emmyday." The low growl he made promised that he'd ensure I made good on that claim. "You should probably sleep in. I plan to." Something in his almost predatory stance told me I'd need to.

"No need, Miss White," he drawled, stroking a fingertip just under the hem of my skirt. "You'll sleep for a season when I'm done with you."

I had no reason to suspect that he was exaggerating.

I was overcome with a sense of dread when Blaze pulled off, destined for Birmingham. Despite maintaining his usual impish manner, he'd been distracted since he'd made his sensual promise. His words still flowed but they lacked their usual punch and all he left me with was an unenthusiastic kiss goodbye and another, 'I'll call you'. I didn't allow myself to get caught up in that again, instead I wanted to know exactly why he'd withdrawn.

Had my eventual surrender tripped some sort of switch in his mind that told him, actually, he didn't want what he thought he wanted now it had stopped being an impossibility? Had it all just been a case of wanting what he couldn't have? Was this the end of our story because I'd done what I thought was necessary to keep us together?

I needed reassurance. It was a standing order to get over myself and call him when I needed him and this was definitely one of those times I needed him to nurse my hopelessly neurotic side. But he'd be driving for at least two hours—longer if he stopped at the services for a bathroom break. Even if I sent him a message, there was no guarantee that he'd pick it up and reply before he reached his destination. I needed instant gratification and the longer I was forced to wait, the more my ego would bruise and self-pity fester.

I clock-watched fixedly for the remainder of my workday having taken the pragmatic approach and just sent a damn text message. Slowly, the clock ticked and time passed, counting away the seconds until my phone ra—

"Double Booked, Emmeline speaking." I deflated when the first noise I'd heard in ninety-seven minutes came from the shop phone. Maybe it would be important and I'd be able to drag it out for half an hour, or maybe it was a supplier who needed excruciatingly specific details of something. Anything to distract me.

"You're calling yourself Emmeline again now?"

My hand tightened around the receiver when the awareness of the voice hit me. A voice I'd had no intention of hearing again after the last words it had spoken. I was right to have been feeling like there was a weighted silence hanging over my head like a sharpened guillotine blade. It was the voice that could tear me to shreds.

I didn't offer a hello, just a snarl. "Why didn't you call my mobile, Hunter?"

"I have been. It's been turned off."

"No, it hasn't. I—" Scrolling through the call settings on my phone, I discovered that someone, I presumed Esme, had set it to forward all of Hunter's calls to voicemail. Fifteen had already been diverted and God knows how many emails sat in my neglected inbox. The gratitude I felt for having the decision taken from my hands lasted for half a second before it was spurned by the resentment that he'd found and exploited a loophole. "What do you want?"

"My, aren't we testy today? Problems with the boyfriend?"

As ever, he got my back up with the malicious hiss surrounding his words. I wanted to tell him that my life was great without him in it. I wanted to tell him that Blaze had fixed all the damage he'd caused over the years. I wanted to get into the nitty gritty details of all the different ways he'd fucked me over the weeks and how I came so hard I thought I might go into cardiac arrest...

But because I really didn't know what was going on, I wilted and surrendered an unenthused, "no," rubbing at the cramp in my stomach. "Like I said, what do you want? I have work to do."

Hunter laughed. _"Work? Nap time already?"_

"Real work, fuckwit, I'm looking at revamping our stock system." I hadn't been, but now I had the idea, I was going to.

"Ohh-hoo, 'real work'. Revamp the stock system for a multi-national corporation and we'll talk then about 'real work'."

"Hunter?" I considered all the catty remarks I'd made in self-defence over the years. Thought about all the times I'd tried to argue to win his respect. And all the times I'd failed. "I'm presuming you didn't call just to remind me how worthless I am without you?"

There was a pause, suggestive of the fact that Hunter had never heard me not jump in with a counter-attack and was surprised by my grown-up attitude. _"Umm... no, of course not. Do I do that?"_

"All the time, actually."

_"Wow, Jesus. Sorry, Emmeline."_ I pulled the receiver back to look at it for a moment. No, it was definitely real. Pinching myself hurt so I wasn't dreaming. That was an actual apology. God damn. _"I was calling to invite you here for Christmas, actually. Siobhan has planned a week away with a girlfriend so—"_

"So you need a replacement little woman around to take her place while she's away." My hand shot to my mouth to muffle the involuntary giggle that rattled in the back of my throat. When I didn't screen my responses before I opened my mouth, I inevitably lunged straight for his jugular with my teeth bared. Somehow, it was quite funny, but I saved myself with, "I actually have plans already."

"I know you hate flying out, I could come over to you."

"Uh..." Okay, now that wasn't like him. It was usually his way or the highway. As it was, I didn't know that my plans to go back to Cardiff with Blaze would ever come to fruition but they were set in stone nonetheless. "I really do I have plans. I'm going home with my... with my boyfriend."

_"Hang on, Emmeline."_ Rolling my eyes at the break he forced in our conversation, I began to hear the bar noise behind him and the stream of discussions going on around him. Someone seemed to ask who he was talking to, someone else asked if I was hotter than his fiancée. I gloated a little when he laughed and his friends murmured agreeably, then froze when I heard someone start rambling in Japanese faster than I could understand, making only one word out clearly. _Blaze._ Christ, we were an internationally recognised couple, and boy, did that get my hackles up for some reason.

"How the hell have they heard of Blaze over there?"

Hunter sighed harshly and turned his attention back to me. _"He's been a voice actor on a pretty big cartoon over here. Has an impressive fan base."_

"He speaks Japanese? That's... hot." Even if I was confused about where we were, the mist that clouded my judgement made me want to jump in my untouched Bentley and chase him to Birmingham so I could shamelessly tear his clothes off. That kind of intelligence was like an erogenous zone set independently from my body.

_"I speak Japanese."_ Hunter objected, the volume of his voice rising more than necessary. What the hell—was he jealous? _"Is that walking wank bank seriously dating_ you _?"_

My head jerked back. "What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, I just don't get why he'd be celibate for six years and then—"

"Then what? Waste it on me?" The extent of his surprise stung. No, he wasn't jealous, he just didn't think I was worthy of being on such a gorgeous man's arm. I wasn't, but he was supposed to be my best friend. "You know what, Hunter? I may not look like I belong in a porno magazine. I don't throw Daddy's billions around to score a lay and I have my fair share of emotional baggage. But I'm a smoking hot blonde with a pretty good rack and my value goes beyond how well I suck dick and cook dinner. Blaze didn't screw anyone for six years because he's not a total narcissist like you. He doesn't need to fill volumes of little black books to feel like a stud because he'd rather be a happy outcast than miserable and adored. And despite that period of celibacy, he's still had more sex since he met me than you have in the past six years and you're fucking marrying the woman you lost your virginity to. Good luck with that."

The minute the receiver touched the phone's base and ended the call, I was forced to process what the hell had just happened. _Six year celibacy_. How had I not known this? Being as gorgeous as he was, I'd assumed that Blaze had threaded his own string of casual encounters over the years, not gone without completely. He was too skilled in the bedroom to have been victim of a dry patch that long. Was it voluntary or had his work kept him so busy that it wasn't an option?

It was too early to call him, not that there was a good way to bring up the subject even if I omitted that Hunter had called. With Mrs. Reynolds out of the shop, I spun around to the computer and pounded 'Blaze' into a search engine, hoping to score lucky on his Wikipedia page. The snippets I found were like staring at a meteor shower.

Blaze (born February 14th 1983) is a British singer, song writer, model and actor, also lending his voice to a multitude of video games, animated films and short cartoons recorded in three of the five languages he speaks...

... Born in Cardiff, Wales, Blaze lived alone with mother, Constance, after his father's murder (name withheld) in 1987... He took an early interest in music and was an accomplished classically trained musician of six instruments by thirteen...

... Studious Blaze won his place in the University of Cambridge at just fifteen years old, choosing to decline to study locally near his mother... and amazed scholars by finishing his Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy at age twenty-two...

... Blaze co-founded UK rock act Monday's Miracle midway through college, utilising his charm and good looks to snag gigs at high end venues and the consideration of numerous record labels. The band were picked up by Counterpart Records in 2006. Shortly after, Blaze relinquished front man responsibilities to Chase Garret, choosing to step back to become full-time carer for an unknown disabled family member...

... His good looks and natural prowess attracted the likes of modelling and advertising agencies who hired him for a number of campaigns. Blaze has since been repeatedly requested to appear in a number of film productions, television series and designer photo campaigns but has rejected many offers, still dedicating the bulk of his time to caring... Making exceptions only for a two day video shoot with UK rock princess Amelia Marsh of The Bystander Effect as a favour to Amelia's now husband, Caspian Pearce...

... Blaze supports a number of charities specifically advocating the awareness of neurological disorders and mental health. He has mentioned in passing difficulties with body image and diet after his early break into the modelling industry but has chosen to never elaborate...

... Nothing is known of his romantic history. Blaze has fended off the advances of many A-list actresses and singers, openly admitting to being celibate until meeting young artist Emmeline White in June 2012. The couple denied any romantic involvement at first, their relationship confirmed in an interview with Monday's Miracle guitarist Scott Henlow, who speculated on the permanence of their arrangement...

"Holy shit." He wasn't just a pretty face, he was a smart cookie with some serious skeletons in his closet and now I was publicly recorded as one of them. Of course, I'd known nothing about the man until it had been shoved at me, but who else knew that he'd battled his own confidence issues?

As much time as I'd spent with the man, I really didn't know Blaze at all. If I thought about it, I knew his age, basic career background and where he was born. I knew his name, but I didn't know why it was really such a big secret. Withheld for legal reasons? Why? And how the hell had he never given away that he was some kind of child genius?

I needed to talk about this with someone, someone who'd stop me analysing the hell out of it or offer some kind of snide comment and snap judgement. Someone who wouldn't try and placate me with a movie quote. Someone who'd understand why it bugged me...

_"Daniel Vine."_ Just his voice made me feel better. Even though we were friends before, Daniel and I forged our affinity around the time we both showed signs of being mixed up kids. He started realising that when I was looking at boys, he was looking, too.

I thought that was actually pretty cool of him. He was also the only guy who ever told me I looked particularly good in any given outfit or shade of lipstick. When the pieces began to slot into place, I let him feel me up to 'test' if he was gay. That didn't work because he still loved my tits. People thought we were 'together' for a long time and in a way, we always were. We were inseparable physically, always walking with our arms linked or holding hands. We were each others grounding forces until Hunter came along and fucked me up good and proper.

"How lame is it that I'm still laughing over your initials? D.I. Vine, how droll!"

_"It's pretty lame, princess."_ I smiled, loving the way he still addressed me with the endearment he'd used when he was eleven. _"What can I do for you?"_

"Have you ever checked out my 'walking wank bank' boyfriend's Wiki page?"

_"No, hang on."_ I waited patiently through the clatter of keys at his computer and the low mutter as he read aloud. _"Bloody hell. Hungry Dr. Unknown on a sex strike dating the mysterious, sexy artiste."_

"I'm glad you picked up on the five things I did. What do you make of it?"

Daniel hummed in contemplation, sighing with it. The leather of the high-backed swivel chair I knew he sat in creaked and I could tell it was because he'd sat forward to rest his elbows on the edge of his desk, the way he always did when deep in thought. _"I think there's not nearly enough information on this page. Do you think he was a virgin when you met?"_

"Not from the way he rammed it in me."

_"Hah! He's in Birmingham today, right? I'll shuffle my workload and pick you up from the shop. We'll thrash this out over sushi."_ Sushi was his answer to everything—his idea of comfort food. When the world needed to be put to rights, it was best done with the fortifying fire of wasabi and the comfort of tempura. Needless to say he'd sent back his RSVP to Hunter's wedding the minute the invitation arrived.

"How do you know he's in Birmingham?"

"Ah. Uh... Ohh, look, something shiny!"

That diversionary tactic should not have worked half as well as it did.

"Oh, Christ!" I coughed through the scorching tang of wasabi I'd been promised didn't exist in my pork wonton. Jonathan chuckled mischievously as I snatched the glass of water from his hand and gulped it down, eyes wide and watering. He'd joined us after work and looked as dapper as his partner in a deep purple suit that really shouldn't have looked as good as it did. Daniel had taken advantage of 'casual Friday' in his office and worn a simple white t-shirt with a pair of low fitting blue jeans, and while the couple couldn't have looked much further apart visually, it was clear to everyone that they were the most kindred spirits in the sushi bar.

'Thrashing it out' with Daniel hadn't been as productive as I'd hoped, and I was yet to discover how he knew about Blaze's plans. As far as the Wikipedia page went, I really didn't know what I was hoping for. He couldn't enlighten me further, I knew that much, neither could he explain the secrecy.

"I think," Jonathan mused, "you're putting too much value on his past. God knows yours is pretty colourful and he's not letting it cause a rift."

"As far as we know," I shot back. "He knows I'll be in full swing when I'm letting him stay over properly and he wigged out completely when I told him that he could tonight." Failing to hide my irritation over it, my hand dove into my pocket to recover my phone, and then tossed it down onto the table when I found no response to my message. "And no reply. I have bets on him dropping by the flat when he gets back into London to leave me a big fat Dear Jane letter."

"Bloody hell." Daniel rolled his eyes at me, turning my phone around to look at the message I'd sent in the afternoon. "Well, there's your problem. It's still in your outbox."

"What?" I squeaked loud enough to turn heads, promptly sinking down in my chair to hide out of view. I could have kicked myself for not thinking to check my outbox myself and had consequentially been beating myself up over it all day.

"It's not like you to get quite so het up, Emmy, and that 'walking wank bank' comment earlier was such a Hunterism. He's called, hasn't he?"

Begrudgingly, I explained how he'd call the shop with his usual insults and made the offer to come over for Christmas. That and the shitty comment that I wasn't good enough for Blaze.

"Damn it. It didn't even occur to me that he'd seek out the shop's number. I thought the call barring would be enough."

_"You_ set that up?" I was sure my eyes were boggling at Daniel. It wasn't his style to take assertive front-line action, he preferred to be a background adviser—a tactician or strategist. I was seriously honoured that he'd taken that kind of stand for me.

"Well, sure, Emmy. At some point you have to swallow the bitter truth and accept that your friends are arseholes. Not all of you, obviously, but he's really doing more damage than good. Tell me your heart didn't leap into your mouth when you heard his voice."

"It petrified and hit my feet."

"Good, good." He nodded but traded a glance with Jonathan, withdrawing the same way Blaze had before he'd left. It didn't matter that he shook it off quickly because I'd seen it already. Something was going on, some kind of conspiracy, and I wasn't in on it.

Esme's and Chris' unnatural exuberance didn't improve my state of concern when we hauled into the bar as usual. She, too, traded secret glances and smiles, while Chris' cheerfulness had an edge to it, like he was in on some sort of evil scheme that would cause a tragedy of catastrophic proportions. Whatever they all knew, he was happy about it for a different reason and that scared me.

"You know when you just have a really bad feeling about something?" It surprised me how drunk I was feeling. I'd been accosted at the bar when we'd first arrived by a group of people who recognised me from some candid press photos of myself and Blaze around the city, and they'd invited me to join them in a round of shots. I could never turn down a free drink, but I really should not have felt as lousy as I did for one more. My voice didn't sound like my own. I wasn't sure that I was making sense and I was feeling so dog tired. Suspecting it was just a result of my shitty mood, I pushed on. "You're all keeping something from me and it's really not fair. Something is going to go wrong. I can feel it in my gut."

My four friends bristled. My gut feelings were usually pretty precise, capable of picking up on misfortune lingering before it happened. I joked that I was distantly related to the cats and dogs who laid down beside a pensioner in a nursing home because they smelled death coming.

Esme reached for my hand and squeezed it tightly. "You don't have to worry about anything. I promise. Nothing bad is going to happen."

"Whatever." I pulled my hand back, pushing to my feet. Impending doom wasn't the only thing happening in my gut and the crowded room was starting to stifle me. I needed air. I lusted for the dry lingering heat of a dying summer to disappear and grant me with a cool, revitalising blast when I stepped outside. And whether he was busy or not, I needed to talk to Blaze. I needed to know that he'd be there like he promised in the morning and there wouldn't be anything hanging between us.

My step faltered when I edged around the table. Chris leapt to his feet and caught me before I made contact with the floor. "Damn, Emmy. You've been here less than an hour, how are you so trashed already?"

"I'm not. What's the strongest thing here for shots?"

Esme frowned. "I think we still have some Pernod Absinthe but you have the constitution of an ox. One shot shouldn't have—Emmy? Emmy!"

#  thirteen

#

There was a poker hot body wrapped around me when I woke the next morning. It was attached to a scent I knew well; Chanel perfume mixed with black cherry flavoured tobacco and white rum. It wasn't the way Esme dutifully stroked my knotted hair that woke me, nor the fact that, unlike most of the other times before when I'd woken up this way, she was still dressed. It was more the fact that there was a third person in the room, standing at the foot of the bed.

"Well, this is interesting."

I lifted my head weakly to sigh at Blaze, quickly sinking back at the exertion. He'd still come to me as promised and didn't look as distracted as he had done the last time I'd seen him. I was grateful for that at least. Still, the way I felt detracted my attention away from the fact he looked wicked hot in tight jeans, high-tops and a loose fitting Monday's Miracle t-shirt. "Have I crossed some kind of line by waking up with a woman? 'No, oh no, I'm sorry. It's not what it looks like'." I opened one eye to look for Esme's confirmation. "Is it?"

"Not this time, sexpot. You know I like you lucid and/or sentient. There was none of that, mores the pity." She slid out of my bed and headed in the direction of the kitchen, pausing at Blaze's shoulder. "We had a mishap last night. Emmy's drink was spiked."

"What?" I flinched at the sound of his car keys hitting the floor. In less than a second, he was at my side, taking Esme's place between the sheets and cradling my head against his chest. Being dragged around like a rag doll nagged at my aching muscles and made me wince, but it was a small price to pay for being in what had somewhat recklessly become my most favourite place in the world. "Why the hell would someone go to your bar to do that? Why the hell didn't you call me?" The questions seemed almost like accusations.

"Your girl there has a 'one hit wonder' reputation. She has patterns: she never sleeps with the same man twice. At least she never used to..." Esme shot a pointed look in my direction. "Occasionally, she gets a greedy nut job who wants a second whirl, whether she's conscious or not. Par for the course when you look like her and live her 'lifestyle'. It's not the first time and it won't be the last."

"Are you kidding me?" Blaze glared across the room with enough suppressed aggression to wipe the nonchalance from her face. "This isn't the first time?"

"I had a triage nurse tell me I should have built up an immunity by now." I smiled wryly up at him, then coiled up into the foetal position when a wave of nausea hit me.

"If only you had a sexually exclusive boyfriend to protect you from incidents like this."

The bitter sentiment trailed off into the kitchen with Esme, lingering only slightly in the room with us. She resented my liberal attitude to 'free love' and was annoyed that I'd carried on seeking out new lays during my first weeks with Blaze, and I understood that when it got me into situations like this. But what she wanted for us was the full couple package; sharing a home, sleeping and waking up together every morning and being generally inseparable, and that wasn't an option for either of us.

Blaze had his own life and I had mine, that was why our 'thing' worked so much better than most other relationships. What we had was a mutual understanding to use each other when we needed to, not a co-dependency or reliance. He couldn't be around to babysit me every night and I wouldn't sit around alone at home like the little woman during the week. In my defence, I hadn't slept with anyone else during Blaze's holiday and I was genuinely crazy about him, but as patient as he was, he wouldn't be able to take all my crazy if I designated him as an exclusive asset.

And that crazy was roiling around now, like it did every time I had one of these 'mishaps'. It took something dramatic like getting my drink spiked for me to start seriously rethinking and regretting the more destructive choices I'd made since I moved to the city. Binge drinking was normal for a twenty-two year old. The level of my promiscuity wasn't and it was dangerous. It was a choice I made through insecurity, not believing that second, third or fourth encounters once would be the same after they saw the scars on my side. I didn't want their interest to linger through pity or a desire to 'save' me when that particular issue was almost ancient history, but I needed that initial allure and driving urge to fuck me stupid. In that way, I was conceited and arrogant.

Blaze had seen the scars before nailing me in that changing room—that was the loophole he'd unwittingly exploited. Like Esme, Daniel, Jonathan and Chris, he discovered the damage and didn't think twice about accepting it as a part of me. He thought I was beautiful even with them and didn't put out to make me feel better. That's how he earned his place on my list of repeat offenders, even if it would have been way easier to cut him off at the pass and avoid dealing with my ugly emotions.

What I couldn't help was the way I was going to handle the retrospect; the way I'd leap back into unhealthy vices to cope with the negative way I'd start looking at myself again. The times when I was forced to look back at my sexual history were the times I acknowledged that I was a slutty tramp and I was cursing my own life. Nobody wanted to love a whore and I certainly didn't want to love myself when I replayed all the moments I slept with a new man or dragged a friend home just to tick a box in my daily routine. I didn't even enjoy it; I did it automatically without any consideration or forethought.

What did that say about the deeper reaches of my true nature? I was headed down a hot road into hell, and the less of that distance Blaze travelled with me, the better.

"You should go," I said, pushing out of his hold around me. From the pause and frown he gave me, I figured that it must have come out slurred and my bid for freedom about as effective as slamming a beach ball against a brick wall.

"Not a chance." He curled around me tighter. "Maybe she's right. "

"Don't. This was nobody's fault but my own. I shouldn't be so loose."

"How many other guys have you been with since we met?"

I shifted around the best I could to get further away from him. "Seriously?" Taking a deep breath, I sighed, "don't ask me that. You won't like the answer."

His voice hardened. "Tell me." Then softened. "We've not defined any rules and acceptable behaviours. I didn't demand exclusivity and I knew what you were doing, so I have no right to be offended." He couldn't possibly take any more on top of the massive pile on of my junk without batting an eyelid, but I knew he wouldn't give up until I told him. He just had that look of quiet determination about him.

I shifted around onto my knees and nestled my hands in my lap, fiddling nervously with my own fingers. "I can't give you a number because I don't know. Since I moved here, I haven't gone a single day without some kind of sexual contact." His eyebrow quirked and I could see him doing the mental arithmetic to tot up some kind of four year estimate. It didn't make for a pretty number. "Sometimes once a day isn't enough, not even twice. If there are no new faces in the bar, Esme or Chris sort me out. Believe me I'm not proud of myself—"

Before I knew it, I was on Blaze's lap and his lips on mine, hands in my hair holding me still. There was something new about his kiss, something almost possessive.

"We need to hang out more, you sex maniac." I almost laughed, but failed with an unenthusiastic half-cough and woeful sideways slump back to a relatively safe horizontal position. Sickness was impending, and the last place I wanted to void my stomach was over his lap.

He leaned over me, fingers stroking my pallid face. "Tell me what I can do to make you feel better right now."

Looking up at him guiltily, I rolled my eyes before I closed them. "Nothing unless you're just going to hold me like a pathetic child." There was a shift of fabric and the sound of denim pockets full of loose change hitting the floor before I was pulled over into the crook of a fully reclined Blaze's arm. "Are you going to be here when I wake up?"

"I'm going to be here as long as you want me to be, Emmeline."

I craned my neck up to look at him and frowned. "I warned you what would happen if I woke up next to you." The offer was still open, but considering the circumstances, I felt he needed an additional caveat. If I was him, I wouldn't want to wake up as the possession of a woman who'd shagged a fair chunk of the population of London with a few rapists and psychopaths in the mix.

"Yeah," he nodded and lifted his free shoulder in a shrug, "and you said yesterday that I had the standing offer of allowing you to do so. Besides, I haven't been inside you today, and in about an hour you're going to wake up needing someone to hold the bucket I'm going to tell Esme to get." At least he wasn't disillusioned and he seemed to have a pretty good grip on my strange cognitions. He could friend-zone himself by not having sex with me between the arbitrarily set hours of the day starting and ending. He cared. He'd paid that much attention and taken time to process it all.

"Touché." Squirming down, I felt the tears burn the backs of my eyes as I said, "but if I had my way, you'd never leave."

I was sure I heard him mutter 'okay' as I drifted into a troubled sleep.

I stood there, pillow in hand, looming over the lifeless body of a faceless corpse I didn't know. Her glassy eyes stared up at me, blank and still shining with tears, hand hung over the side of an extravagant four-poster bed decorated in filigree and royal blue velvet fabric. Not a scene I knew now, but somehow I knew that I would some day. It felt too familiar. Too charged.

And as I stared over her, I smiled. I was proud of myself, sickeningly so. I hated that woman deeply and one day I would kill her for no reason other than the fact she had somehow been an obstacle, a nuisance.

I just didn't know who she was yet.

"Emmy!" Esme's voice jerked me awake just in time for me to fall face first out of my bed and scramble uselessly towards the bathroom. Those eyes were still staring at me, wide and afraid, and nothing could tune them out of my memory. I couldn't understand how any part of me could have been happy about taking a life, and then I thought of Hunter's fiancée, Siobhan, the woman who pushed me to a suicide attempt. Yeah, I probably would have killed her.

Esme stuck a bucket underneath my face and rubbed my back through my heaves, brushing my hair back from my forehead across the sheen of sweat across my skin. "My God, what were you dreaming about? You were thrashing around like a crazy person."

"I _am_ a crazy person." I shivered through the image imposed on my mind's eye, shaking my head in a weak denial. "I don't remember. Where's Blaze?"

"He ran out about ten minutes to pick up some lunch et al. He thought he'd be back before you woke up."

" 'Et al' ?" She winked, setting me further on edge. Shoving my hands into my hair, I sighed and pushed the bucket away. "Can you please run me a bath? I feel... dirty." In every possible negative way.

Blaze found me in the bath half an hour later, submerged to the shoulders with my eyes closed, listening to the music piping out from the smartphone perched on the lip of the tub. The track was like nothing I'd ever heard, playing on almost every sense in a way that took over the body completely and almost projected it's essence outwards like an outer-body experience.

"What is this?"

"I have no idea," I moaned drowsily, "and I have no idea if I'm still a little doped up, but I'm not moving until it finishes."

"Want some company? I'm good at washing hair."

My eyes instantly flipped open. "Seriously?" Blaze began to strip in reply, forcing me upright from my lazy lounge little by little as more of his bronze skin became exposed. By the time he was down to his underwear, I was on my knees, elbows propping me up against the side of the bath and unashamedly ogling him.

"Well, then." He crossed his arms across his firm torso and gave a look rife with promise. "Don't you look just superb like that? Flush-faced with those little rivulets of water creeping down your divine body."

Glancing down, I smiled sweetly, feigning innocence. "This body?" I cocked my head, teeth clamping down on my lower lip. "Did you miss it yesterday? You made me go a whole day without you inside me." A whole day full of dread that I'd obviously misplaced. The residual unease from all sources of stress the day before hit me in full force, breaking the seductive guise I recovered quickly. But he obviously caught that momentary lapse and held out a hand to pull me up out of the bath.

"About yesterday." He held up a hand to hush me and pulled a large fluffy towel from the rail, using it to pat the water from my legs before he wrapped it around my shoulders. "Come with me."

Intrigued by his tone, I let him lead me back through into the bedroom and found myself hit by the aroma of fresh coffee curling off the two mugs that stood on the table next to my bed. Urging me by the small of my back, Blaze guided me down to sit on the fresh linens and crouched to dry me from the toes up.

"Your silence is deafening." I tugged him up gently by the hair until our faces were level, "finish the thought you started in the bathroom or take advantage of me being naked."

"You and your options," he admonished softly, leaning forward until our lips met. The slight force behind his kiss coaxed me backwards to spread across the sheets, allowing him to crawl over me and settle with his hips pinning mine. "Let me keep you awake afterwards."

"You make that sound easy."

"You've done it before." His right hand slipped down to hitch my thigh up against him. "The first time. I don't want to waste a single minute I have with you."

I wrenched away, perturbed by the sentiment. "That was awfully ominous. You make it sound like our time is limited." The nagging feeling of dread knotted in my chest and I rubbed at it, twisting out from underneath Blaze when it didn't go away. "You were distracted yesterday. Something is wrong."

"There's nothing wrong." He caught me by the ankle and trapped me back underneath his hot, solid frame. The warmth from his skin heated me, reminding me how right it felt to be there. Without stopping to really think about it, I lifted my head to nuzzle into his neck, drawing in as much of his natural scent as possible in one breath and falling back drunk from it.

"God, you're too much sometimes. Too male."

"All right, now you've done it." Jumping up quickly and leaving me bereft, Blaze crossed the room to the duffel bag that seemed to live in my flat a lot of late. He rifled through it quickly, pausing for a moment before he stood again and prowled back towards me, privately smirking about the very proud erection straining against the fabric of his underwear.

Sprawling back across the linen, he sat cross-legged opposite me and gestured for me to surrender a hand. "About yesterday. And about what Esme said earlier—"

"Ignore Esme. She doesn't know what she's—"

He silenced me with a look and held my hand in both of his. "I want to give you something. But I'll be clear and say that it's not a commitment, just a promise."

He stuffed a small velvet covered box into my palm and closed my fingers around it, cool as anything. Morbidly curious, I snapped the lid open to a needlessly large emerald set into white gold, flanked on either side by three diamonds arranged into a triangle. Almost too much without being pretentious, like the man himself. Just the sight of it made me wince—if this was just a promise, what the hell did the proposal look like?

And that was when it all started to make sense; my friends peculiar behaviour the night before, their knowledge of his plans and Chris' evil overlord demeanour. They knew about this. The trip into Birmingham had been for this ring. Esme, Daniel and Jonathan had immediately launched into frenzied romantic visions of summer weddings and Parisian honeymoons, and Chris had thought I'd panic and run a mile. It was all suddenly so clear.

"The promise," Blaze clarified, "is that I'll always accept you for who you really are. By agreeing to wear it, you're promising to accept yourself and to never try and change to match someone else's expectations." Then he shrugged and reclined, folding his hands behind his head, unintentionally flexing every muscle in his torso and breaking the severity of the gesture. "Besides, if you wear it on just the right finger, it might repel some of that pesky male attention you so hate."

I ignored the mean chide and lifted the box into the light. The hue of the stone was a close match to his eyes and I suspected it was intentional. "This wouldn't go unnoticed." And I didn't just mean because the stone was huge enough to send green sparkles across the sheet when it caught the sun. "People will make assumptions."

"Let them. We know what this is."

We did. More than a promise. This was exactly what people would assume it was. Did the idea of being bound to him like this scare me? No. Did it matter that we'd only known each other a couple of months and I hardly knew him? No. Did I care what anyone else thought? No. I only cared about what Blaze thought and the expectations he had of tethering me, but I loved how he got that if he'd dropped to his knee and tried to take the traditional route, it might have been enough to send me jumping out of the closest window. That was probably why he'd looked so distracted, knowing where he was going and what for. He was thinking of the most backhanded way to give me this ludicrously beautiful ring that reminded me of him in so many ways.

I hoped the assumptions I was making about the situation were right.

"I know what you're doing," I muttered, pulling the ring from the box and passing it to him. If he was going to make these kind of assertions, he was damn well going to make sure I didn't make a fool of myself by misinterpretation. "Something to the same effect as pissing up me?"'

"Ah." He tugged at my hands gently until I was persuaded to snuggle under the sheets with him. "That obvious, is it? What can I say? My mother never quite convinced me that I should share my toys."

So the ring came with a promise of acceptance and exclusivity.

"So, which finger is the 'right' finger?" I heaved myself over onto my side, propping my head up with my hand so I could look at him, daring him with my eyes to be bold. "Why don't you blast some of that infamous Blaze honesty at me and tell me how _you_ envisage this... ridiculously extravagant proposition?"

"Emmeline." He quickly flipped me onto my back and nestled between my legs, trapping my lip between his teeth. "I want it wrapped around your heart so you feel it there with every beat. But instead, I'll settle with wherever is going to keep you with me the longest."

The loop slid onto my left ring finger—a perfect fit—weighted but comfortable, something I'd soon adjust to. In a strange way, wearing it made me feel settled, like the open edges around that Blaze shaped space in my heart fused shut around him and kept him locked in. It was an unusual kind of serenity that had never occurred in my life before but would live on as long as the man who kissed me like his life depended on it kept his Saturdays free for the little nerd who could.

Pinching my temples, I shook my head at the hand wrapped around my fresh mug of coffee. Blaze had started out sweetly, gently rocking my soul with sweet love-making, but quickly lost control and turned back to the white knuckle, breath-taking screwing we were so good at, and then honoured his wish to not let me fall asleep.

It was a revelation. I got to see how he glowed. For the first time, I witnessed the kick he got from seeing me recover from mind-blowing sex—the pure joy he got from seeing me quivering from the orgasms he'd induced. I wanted to collapse face first into my coffee and snore.

"Jesus H. Christ. Mrs. Emmeline Lundy."

He snorted behind me and set a plate down in front of me that was giving off the most amazing meaty aroma. I looked up and saw that it was a thick, hearty beef broth he'd obviously made from scratch. "Let's not inflict that on you. Eat."

Reluctantly, I picked up the spoon and took a small slurp of the soup, groaning when the flavours hit my palate. There was _nothing_ the man couldn't do well. "You might be worth keeping."

"Is that right?" Smiling, he picked up his own spoon and held it over his bowl. His gaze strayed to my hand and the ring looking quite at home on it. "You know, that ring comes with a matching dress."

"A dress?" I gaped up at him in alarm. "Is it white?"

"What? White? No, it's—Oh. Ohh..." He laughed and shook his head. "Give me some credit, Emmeline. I've seen how fast you can run, I'd never catch you if I hit you with _that_ dress. The ring is enough... for now." He caught the frantic glint in my eye and winked. "Anyway, the dress I meant is green. Very modest and demure but very sexy. I have great visions of peeling it off you after tonight."

My eyes narrowed slightly. "What's tonight?"

"We have invitations to my photographer friend's mixer tonight—the friend I was helping last night. It's back down at The Roses again."

I frowned, put off by the idea of spending another Saturday in the venue he didn't know I owned. "That's kind of a big place for a mixer, right?"

"That's Nelly. She likes to mix. It's a pretty long guest list full of business types and big cheeses. It's an open bar." Despite thawing a little, I couldn't help but feel like it was all a little high profile and too risky, crammed full of Henry's associates.

"I can't come. It'll be too crowded and I'll get overwhelmed, then my sweaty panicked face will be all over the tabloids tomorrow. You'll be known for having flaky dates, and worse, there'll be a ring on my finger. That could go either way."

"It's a masquerade mixer." He crossed his arms and arched a brow at me like that nugget of information should have made a difference. It did, sort of. "I won't leave you on your own in a room full of strangers. I won't even leave your side. Your sweaty face will be hidden, you won't have to talk to anyone beyond a polite hello, and I'm more than happy to clear up any speculation over that ring." He heaved himself up and crept around the table towards me, slowly and cat like. "And afterwards, I'm going to screw you to sleep before you have a chance to undress. It'll be rough, because I'll have waited all night and spent the evening looking at you dressed in silk that clings to that great rack of yours and skims the legs I'm quite fond of being between."

"Are you trying to entice me with the promise of sex that was already a given?"  
"It's not a given if I have to go without you..."

"Oh, mean!" But effective. The threat of having to spend another night not being thrown down into bed and feasted on made my chest ache. I probably would have done anything to stay close to him at that point. "You won't make me talk to anyone? And I'll be wearing a mask? Oh jeez, all right. Who's hosting it?"

"Cornelia Alexander." I went stiff. Cornelia Alexander's mixer. Shit. One place I could guarantee to bump into people who knew me, least not Cornelia herself. And my family, oh God.

What would he think when he found out about my family? What would my family think to find out I was _engaged?_

"I think I'm still ill," I lied. "I need to lay down."

"Emmeline..." The way he sighed my name had an edge of irritation that reminded me of Hunter. "This is my life—my tapestry. I love my tapestry, every single thread. Especially the white ones." My breath caught at the way he projected the double meaning of that comment right at me. If I'd needed reassurance of how he felt—like the ring wasn't enough—he'd given it to me. "I want to believe that it loves me back... Enough to grow a pair and put on a pretty dress to drink some free wine with me."

"Emotional blackmail now?" I rubbed at my heavy eyes before I grabbed at my coffee, sorely wishing I'd been allowed to nap. He wanted me to go, I got it. The guilt trip wasn't necessary. "Show me the fucking dress."

The Roses looked otherworldly, bathed in pale blue lights rigged to temporary ceiling scaffolding, and decorated in silver. I had to double take back into the lobby to be sure that this old theatre— _my_ theatre—was the same one I'd stood in three weeks earlier.

Blaze urged me by the elbow into the auditorium so I'd stop bottlenecking the flow of executives and minor celebrities flowing in behind me, and I took a moment to drink him in. Even though the mixer wasn't black tie, he'd donned his three piece suit and a vivid green tie that any other man of lesser beauty might have found difficult to carry off. For the first time since we met, I felt like he might have pulled out all the stops to look like an even match to me.

Viridian satin flowed around my ankles, iridescently shimmering between green and blue as it moved. The modest sweetheart cut gown flared out into a fishtail skirt at my knees, clinging tightly to every curve up to my shoulders, which were covered by delicate ivory lace sewn into the satin, reaching down to my elbows.

The Venetian eye-mask I wore was a matching hue and decorated in trails of silver glitter, the ribbon holding it around my head causing no interference to the tumble of golden curls pinned to gather and fall over my right shoulder. Apparently the dimple that creased my cheek made my left side the best. All in all, I felt comfortably hidden but perfectly glamorous, and for once not overshadowed by the gorgeous masked mystery man at my side.

"Ready?" I blinked in reply. His black _Phantom of the Opera_ mask covered half his face but really didn't dull his looks in the slightest. I was still completely dazzled. "I'll take that look on your face as a yes."

"This look?" I pointed at my face. "This fucklust stare you can't see properly."

"I can see it perfectly well, Emmeline." Gathering my left hand up in both of his, Blaze kissed the emerald set into my ring. "Don't steal my word."

I calmed a little with every step deeper into the room, giving up my mission to guess at who people were after the fifth or so little huddle of faceless socialites. The idea that if I couldn't see them, they couldn't see me, was a comfort and I took a cleansing breath to gather myself. The many clusters of tables suggested that the place would be packed out to the rafters, improving the chances of avoiding my family.

Blaze led me to our table, right at the head of the room with the largest calla lily centrepiece. When I enquired with a frown, he pointed out the cards labelling the places for Cornelia Alexander, her two brothers and their respective plus ones, explaining that his help the night before had earned us top table privileges. Not to mention that Cornelia's brother owned the label that had signed Monday's Miracle.

I grabbed two champagne flutes from a passing drinks server's tray and passed one to him. "To complications and 'fuck it's."

"Mazel tov!"

We kept our hands linked while Blaze ambled the room, imparting perfunctory hello's and anecdotes to the mega-moguls and their wives who all fell under his spell and regarded me with looks of well-meaning envy. I lucked out with him and I knew it, and found myself falling even deeper for him as I listened to the lilting cadence of his voice. The words made no sense, just the smooth even rhythm and the way his mouth moved reminded me that I'd feel those lips all over me in a few hours—less if I got my way—and the seductive sweet nothings that would spill out of them when we got home and spent our first 'real' night together.

He didn't break the flow of his conversation when he felt me shiver with anticipation but he smirked. He knew what he was doing to me and he was damned happy about it.

Blaze fussed when he left my side to answer a call of nature, restlessly straightening my hair and mask while he asked incessantly if I'd survive without him. An uneventful hour and too many glasses of champagne made me feel brave, and if it hadn't, the scotch I was planning on ordering while he was in the bathroom would have. I couldn't resist watching him as he walked away, blatantly checking out what _was_ mine, only turning back to wait my turn in line when he was safely out of sight.

He took a while to come back. I'd suspected he'd get trapped in a few conversations en route so I didn't let it play on my mind. Instead, I traded a knowing glance with the copper haired woman sheathed in silver who leaned back against the bar next to me, red faced under a mask much like my own and shimmering with sweat.

"Scotch on the rocks." She nodded at my drink. "My kind of woman." I knew immediately who she was from her clipped, rich and brutally British accent that would have put the Queen to shame.

"Quickie at your own high profile mixer. _My_ kind of woman." Her mouth dropped open for a second before she dipped down and pulled my chin up to look at my eyes. "Cornelia."

"Emmy, good God! Is that really you?" Stepping back, she walked in a circle around me, scrutinising me from every angle, coming back to stand in front of me and toy with my hair. "You look stunning. The blonde looks great. But your father said you weren't coming."

"Ah," I grabbed my glass to hide behind it, "I'm not here with the family. I'm here as a plus one."

"Come again?" She didn't even try to not act surprised. "Have you run out of hearts to break?"

"Oh no, I almost certainly have at least one more, though I'm hoping to hang onto it."

"I see. So..." Cornelia scanned the room over her shoulder and squinted. "You're not here with Derek because he's old and paunchy... Joseph is here with his 'wife' and my brothers are both, how do I put it, 'preoccupied' with their women... You're not with him..." She looked somewhat smugly at a savagely attractive dark haired man sans mask laughing with Blaze. "... Because he's mine. And some lucky young lady has just snagged the man with him."

"Oh?" Turning to look in the direction of Blaze, I took another sip of scotch to hide my amusement. "Recently?"

"Mm-hmm. Such a shame because you'd have gotten on so well. I had to travel down to the Pearce & Parker office in Birmingham yesterday to approve of the ring he picked out. So nervous, he was. Planned to pop the question tonight but changed his mind this morning and decided to keep it private. Such a shame, I do love a good proposal."

I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, bracing myself to reveal the news for the first time. "It needed flowers."

"Emmy!" Cornelia nudged me in the ribs with her elbow and flashed me one of her stunning model smiles. I knew that smile was genuine, having spent a period of time sneaking out of galas and dinner parties with her, drinking heavily to escape in more ways than one and rambling. She had some idea of how rough my life had been and she was glad to see me with some stability in my life. "He adores you. You know that, don't you?"

"I think so," I breathed, "I adore him too. He's done me so much good."

"It shows. What do your family think of him?"

Averting my eyes, I turned back to the bar and kept my eyes fixed on the rows of spirit optics. "They don't know. He doesn't know about my family. I'm hoping to avoid it if possible."

"That might be difficult—" Cornelia tapped my shoulder and pointed out in Blaze's direction, "—as he's talking to your father."

#  fourteen

#

My legs shook like leaves as I tentatively approached what appeared to be a far too friendly conversation. Henry talked animatedly while Blaze rocked back on his heels to laugh at the right moments—a warm caress of a laugh I could hear over the music and the hundreds of voices around us. Nobody would doubt that they were familiar, probably trading boyish jibes and quips.

My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I got closer, making me feel sick and dizzy. Somehow, their voices echoed over everything, too.

"No, New York sorely needs someone to go out and throw their weight around at The Seymour. I just don't have the time to go myself and Tallulah is a halfwit."

"Is your youngest still refusing to partake in the family business?"

"Blaze, my boy, I would do anything to get my little ball-buster in and Tally out. I still maintain that you'd get on like a house on fire. You could be good for her."

"Sorry, old chap. I've very recently acquired a ball-buster of my own."

Blaze looked in my direction the same moment my step faltered—he muttered something to Henry and they laughed. "Henry." He beamed and reached out to curl an arm around my waist when I was close enough. "This is my very significant other." Politely, I offered my hand and kept my eyes fixed down. The minute he saw them, he'd know. They're were too much like my mother's; too keen and all-seeing. They told my story with a single blink.

"Miss White, yes?" I nodded. "Not very talkative, are you?"

"She's here under sufferance. I've just brought her to show her off."

"At a masquerade party? Daft sod."

They went on with their conversation like I wasn't even there. I was horrified to find out that Blaze knew Henry. Well. Our mothers had been close before money stole the soul from our family and the only reason we hadn't met before was because Blaze was older than me. While I was sneaking vodka from the liquor cabinet and binging on tea cakes, he was behind the scenes with the adults, dazzling them with his fierce intelligence.

The men talked more about the business troubles in New York; the staff over there were becoming apathetic as their creative minds began to dry up and too much money was being pooled into morale boosting incentive schemes. Not that money and a lack of it was ever a real issue for Henry. I could identify his mistakes just from witnessing that single conversation, though I'd never tell him as such. I wouldn't help him manipulate people.

The only time I was engaged in the conversation was when Henry asked to see my ring and I surrendered it silently without argument. "Beautiful, just beautiful. Like the young lady hiding beneath that mask, I suspect." He released my hand and thumped Blaze on the shoulder. "I've taken up enough of your evening. Show the lady how real men dance."

I could barely believe I'd escaped undetected.

Blaze led me out onto the area of the auditorium directly in front of the stage which had been designated as a dance floor, and wrapped himself around me like a cloak. My rising intoxication levels made it an experience of sensory overload—seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and if he kissed me, taste him. He did, and it was only the fact of feeling Henry's eyes on me that stopped me getting indecent.

Blaze moved with his usual grace and refinement, swaying me to _Glory Box_ , a song I'd listened to a lot in the four days I thought he was gone for good. His cheek rested against my head while we moved and the lyrics hummed in his chest. For a moment, I forgot we were surrounded by people. If we'd been stood there naked I wouldn't have cared. I was the calmest I'd felt in years. Maybe ever.

"Are you bored? You're very quiet. You could have spoken to Henry, he's not all that bad."

Nestling into him, I ran my hands up to the lapels of Blaze's blazer, feeling the ridges of muscle underneath the fabric. He'd toned up since we'd met, no doubt from the way he'd picked me up and carried me around so much.

"What was I supposed to say to him? Tell him that he should stop frittering money away on new property and ventures and focus on what he already has? That throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away and comfort can't be bought? His employees are flailing through lack of leadership, not lack of inspiration." I lifted my head to look at Blaze's arched brow. "What? I'm not as stupid as I look. That 'dumb blonde' stereotype is only fifty percent accurate."

"You've done a survey of blondes?"

"No, you're either a dumb blonde or you're not. Fifty-fifty." I rolled my eyes as I watched the logic click into place and rested my face over his heart, enjoying feeling it thrum beneath me. Even in that highly charged nightmare environment, I felt unruffled and comfortable, even if the stupid mask was digging into my face.

I closed my eyes and we danced for what felt like an eternity. Fantasies of living this peacefully with him forever unfolded in my imagination along with plans I'd never admit to making out loud. I wondered how our life together would work around his job, if I'd meet the woman he looked after and if I'd end up looking after her, too. It was always going to be complicated between us, but that wouldn't stop me committing myself to a life in the firestorm. That much was sealed the moment we fell for each other in that dressing room and I wouldn't let myself regret it any more than I regretted falling in love with Hunter. Both of them were bad for me but gave my life meaning and drive.

Blaze hummed along to the five songs we danced to, occasionally checking I was still awake when I sank into him a little more, hoping we might meld together. But our little bubble burst with an interruption during the opening strains of _Don't Know Why._

"Might I cut in?" From the voice, I expected to see Cornelia when I turned around. The full-faced pillar box red mask told me otherwise. "It's me, lover!"

"Oh, Esme!" I should have guessed from the thick crest of red hair and the fact she was the only one completely covering her face. She valued her privacy so much that over the top functions like these were the only ones she'd come to. The public could get no hint at her face and the press always found a way in somehow. She was many things, but she was not foolhardy.

"You look amazing!" Her eyes glowed behind the mask. "Mind if I pull her away, Blaze?"

"Only if you bring her back quickly..." He brushed his hands across my shoulders and down my arms, leaving a trail of goose bumps where he'd touched. "... As she _is_ mine now."

"Oh!" Esme grabbed at my hand and sighed dramatically. "Oh thank God. You accepted it. Chris was adamant you'd be on the first plane to Aruba or somewhere equally as obscure." _Knew it._ It was a comfort to have the suspicion that they'd all known the whole time confirmed. Glancing up at Blaze, she nodded to herself and tugged me towards her. "Don't worry, we'll be right back. I just want to gossip real quick."

Before he gave her permission, we were off across the auditorium and out into the foyer in the direction of the ladies room. We got a good helping of polite nods and hello's from people who knew me only as the lucky woman who'd pinned down Blaze, and somehow that was more of a bragging point than being a Tudor.

The bathroom was empty when we walked in, every black-doored cubicle empty in the burgundy tiled room. Esme ducked into the cubicle furthest from the door and pulled me in with her. Unfazed by company, she went about her business as normal.

"So how did he get you to accept it? He can't have dropped to one knee and said the M word."

I stammered, amazed that she'd jumped on the subject with no preamble. "He called it a promise. To his benefit, he was lying there in nothing but his underwear."

"Ohh..." she chuckled quietly, "the old tag 'em and shag 'em tactic. Works well with you."

"Gee, thanks."

"You know he really thinks he's going to marry you, right?"

Temporarily stunned, my gaze dropped down to the emerald on my finger. Marriage. Jesus. It didn't really register that we were heading in that direction until the word was said out loud. I'd said the words but it hadn't really sunk in. It was a hell of a long way to come in such a short time and a hell of a long way to go. But I loved how it implied some much needed solidarity in my life and, for once, some good luck.

"Yes. And I really think I'm going to marry him, Esme." Even though her face was covered, I knew she was grinning like a maniac. Somehow, I don't think anyone had ever expected me to grow enough as a person to reach this kind of point of adulthood. Seeing it happened may have been one of those monumental moments that restored some faith in the romantic notion of happy endings.

"I've seen your mother, by the way. I explained the whole Blaze situation and she's not going to blow your cover. There's a whisper that Hunter's mother is here, though." I winced and made a mental note to keep Blaze out of her war path. I'd already identified the masks which hid the faces of the people she'd most likely stay close to. "Are you not tempted to talk to her and flash your new sparkle at her so it gets back to Hunter?"

"What?" I scoffed. "No. I'm not going to have some kind of caveman pissing match with him to be named alpha. 'Ug, me Hunter, you Emmeline, me pee-pee make whizz higher'. It wouldn't be fair to make him embarrass himself when I'd obviously win anyway."

"God, you crack me up." We battled to straighten out the many netted layers fanning from the waist line of Esme's knee-high ball gown in the same shade of red as her mask, and giggled like fools while we shuffled around to escape the cramped cubicle. "Just promise me I get to be your maid of honour."

"Of course. Who else would do it? My stupid sister?"

A sister whose face was the first I saw when I stumbled out through the door into a less than vacant bathroom. Five women had congregated while we'd been talking and had all removed their masks to fix their makeup. I was grateful to only recognise one of them.

Our eyes met for a split second in the mirror before Esme made a sweeping bow behind me and proclaimed, "Ladies." On the next beat, we were scurrying back out through the foyer in fits of hushed laughter that earned us a few dozen curious looks. "Do you think she knew it was you?"

"Maybe. Can't be sure if she got a good look at my eyes." I flapped a hand dismissively. "Don't really care. She knows she'd be lucky to get an invite, let alone an ugly bridesmaid dress." There was no guarantee I'd ever find anything to look good on her. Tallulah had the same ruddy complexion as Henry, lifeless brown eyes and a mess of auburn hair. It was almost impossible to believe that we came from the same parents—even I wouldn't believe it myself if we didn't all, by some strange coincidence, have the same rare blood type.

The mixer was in full swing by the time we spotted Blaze chatting to a group of people he obviously knew very well. Their mutual body language was very open and friendly, innocuous little touches on each others hands and arms I might have gotten funny about if the women around him hadn't all been obviously middle-aged. I could sense them all hoping to marry off their daughters to him, as much as I could sense his refusal in return.

One of the women in particular was most animated, hair pulled back into a deceptively severe bun that didn't at all match the vibrantly coloured silk maxi-dress she wore. Jewels glittered around her throat and wrists, and the light kept catching an engagement ring that put mine to shame; onyx and sapphire encircling a massive diamond embedded in platinum, with a wedding band to match. It was a sign of good taste and a hefty bank account. The sign of a woman on her fifth rich husband. The sign of Helen Rosen.

"Oh crap," I groaned, "that's Hunter's mother."

"The one with all the bling?"

"The one and only."

"Jeez." Esme shook her head and pulled me to the bar before Blaze had chance to call me over. I'd been lucky to so far escape unscathed, but Helen's eye was too sharp. She'd have minute details like the shape of my jaw, length of my fingers and stride of my step memorised. It was a safe bet that she knew the face behind every single mask. "Looking at her, you can sort of understand why Hunter came out so self-centred. Women dripping in sparkle are just screaming 'love me, love me, oh please, why won't you love me?'" I snorted a laugh, knowing that Helen Rosen made it her life mission to be on everyone's Christmas card list. That family were nothing if not adored though strangely not the most outwardly sociable beyond functions. Funny that.

Every time I checked over my shoulder, Blaze was still engrossed in conversation with Helen. Her hand would clasp to her chest when she laughed, and then stroke down his arm. Even with her face covered, I knew that she'd be fluttering her lashes, too, having witnessed the same disgusting display of peacocking many times before. Knowing that she only had sons gave me enough comfort to send Blaze over teasing looks and pouts when he looked to me for help.

"Think I should go and save him for you?" Esme taunted him with a wave he returned stiffly. "He looks like he's suffered enough."

"Actually, I think I'd like to talk to my mum while it's safe. Where is she?"

"Twenty-two years," muttered the woman next to me, "and she still doesn't recognise her own mother."

Honestly, I had no chance in hell of realising it was her. Ivy's hair was pinned up like a bride and her dress a sassy V cut halter neck with no back to speak of. The knee-high slits made it daringly youthful and the vivid cerise fabric of the dress-mask ensemble had made me put her in her twenties at first glance. I might have even thought she was younger from me. So much for modest and demure.

"Mum! You look so..." 'Young' was not the way to go. It would somehow be twisted to imply that I thought she looked old to start with. I'd been taught better than to use age-related adjectives in my compliments. So I went with, "You look hot."

"Oh, well," she giggled, smoothing down a non-existent stray strand of hair. "I didn't even try, really." Bullshit. She had that day-spa look about her, which meant she'd been primping for at least a good twelve hours before they arrived and had the full arsenal of beauticians at hand. For a masquerade mixer. Go figure. "That dress is lovely, sweetheart. You look very sophisticated."

"Blaze picked it out for me."

"Ah." Ivy nodded serenely and looked over my shoulder in his direction. "I'm so glad you two made up. You both deserve some joy in your lives. Esme, be a love and fetch him for me would you, I want to see them together."

"Oh God, no." She wanted to look for the perfect match in us, something she could do with laser precision. Any couple she disagreed with never lasted long enough to prove her wrong and those who got the nod lived in blissful matrimony. I didn't want the death sentence in either case out in public. "Please don't embarrass me."

"Oh nonsense," she scoffed. "I've known him as long as I've known you. Longer. Blaze, darling!" A warm arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me back against my six foot three inch miracle. The hot rush of satisfaction I felt for being reunited with him after the short separation was instant and powerful. Nobody around could miss that I was crazy about him.

"Ivy." Blaze kissed the back of the hand she offered before he kissed the crown of my head and rested his chin the same spot. "You look wonderful. And you appear to have met the only other woman in the room who comes close enough to compare." Oh, he was good.

"I have indeed, young man. Let me look at you both without those silly masks." I watched her eyes track around the room for Henry before she gave a secret nod of reassurance. Blaze pulled the ends of the ribbon securing my mask and smiled down at me as it slowly fell away, a sexy half smile that made me melt.

It didn't seem possible that I'd feel my pulse jump when he took off his own mask, that it would be like seeing him again for the first time. Something in his grand gesture and slipshod proposal had unleashed something in me and stripped away any lingering reservations. I was no longer afraid to admit to myself that I needed him too much and was stupidly in love with him.

"Oh, yes!" Ivy gushed next to us, clasping her hands to her mouth. "Yes, you're perfect together. I'll be on tenterhooks waiting for news of your engagement." Esme caught my eye and shrugged, silently admitting that she hadn't felt it was her place to impart such news. I was sort of grateful for that.

Blaze took my left hand in his and dipped to plant a quick kiss on my lips. "Actually, Ivy, I concreted my intentions to keep the lovely Emmeline just this afternoon."

"Oh!" My mother whimpered, fingers flexing with the motherly urge to gather me up and cover me in reverent kisses. In many ways, I was her greatest achievement and most prized possession, but the day she could pass me on to a man who would treat me like the princess she believed I was would always be, to her, a moment almost as precious as my birth. She, too, wanted stability for me after my rocky adolescence, something I think she always felt partially to blame for.

So she compromised on her exuberance and took my hand instead. "Beautiful, simply beautiful. Like the lady herself." I could tell that she appreciated the modesty of the ring as much as I did. "Masks back on, my loves! We must celebrate!"

Sun poured in through the window and woke me with an emetic surge that had me scrambling for the toilet I was conveniently lying next to. Not one I recognised, but that didn't really matter until I'd stopped spluttering into it's bowl. A naked body wrapped around me and pulled my hair out of harms way, spreading kisses across my shoulders despite the fact I was hacking disgracefully just inches away. That was when I realised that I was naked, too, and both of us were covered only by a bed sheet.

"I don't think this is what I envisioned when I imagined our first morning together." Blaze chuckled softly and turned me around to wipe my face with a flannel. He looked like he'd been ravaged mercilessly, boasting an impressive collection of scratches and bite marks, and even a few bruises. "I'm guessing we had some crazy pre-maritals?"

"Oh yeah." Grinning, he tilted his chin up to show me a few impressive love bites. "The craziest."

I smirked and rubbed my eyes. "Where the hell are we?"

"At the hotel across the street from The Roses _._ Ivy Tudor got you and Esme paralytic on champagne, you made some fairly indiscreet demands of my body, and then you started looking kind of green. It was safer for Henry's limo to bring you here."

"Oh." I blushed, remembering how many times I'd been sick in that limo before and how long it had taken to get the smell out. "Esme?"

"Face down snoring on the couch outside."

"Okay..." I looked shyly down at my hands, fiddling with the emerald that I apparently hadn't dreamed. It was really there and it really meant that the devilishly handsome man eyeing up my exposed chest was mine. "You know, if you found me a toothbrush or some mouthwash, we could go back in that room and do this morning properly."

"I'm on it."

I wasn't allowed to sleep after Blaze capably screwed me until I begged him to stop. Instead he enticed me down to the hotel's dining room with the promise of coffee and canoodling in the lift. The genial old couples forced to share the car with us watched us kiss and tickle from the corners of their eyes, smiling secret smiles full of 'ah, young love' admiration and 'remember when we used to be that?' snipes directed at their companions.

Something about Blaze had changed, too. He was still too beautiful, of course—even sporting his morning stubble, just-fucked hair, last night's suit and the evidence of my carnality, he still made me look downright homely in my crumpled dress. He might have even looked better for showing that he was human. But he exuded some kind of euphoric triumph like snagging me was really something to boast about. I suppose it might have been. We had both succeeded with each other where many others had failed. Both of us refused to get tied down but were now tied to each other. In a strange way, we couldn't have been more perfect together.

I didn't know the name of the hotel but it had Henry's hoof-prints all over it. The room we'd woken up in had been no less than a suite. The bedroom was excessively large, the enormous wooden, queen-sized four-poster bed decorated in rich blue and purple linens and throw cushions. That stemmed off into a private sitting room full of couches that looked no less impressive for housing a thoroughly unconscious Esme. Although the underlying palate was very stark, you could almost taste the expense injected into the room by the bold splashes of colour in the furnishings and the top range electronics tucked away in the blackened glass cabinets lining the walls.

It would probably have taken a year for me to save up for one night in that kind of suite on bookshop wages and I would have felt awkward about touching anything. Just another little thing that made me so different from my family; extravagance that came at a high cost made me uncomfortable. Presumably, that was why Blaze hadn't shoved his money in my face and gone for a platinum engagement ring with bigger stones. What he'd given me was modest enough for me to pretend it had cost less than it probably did but still brag about the size of the emerald. I loved that he understood my quirks so well.

The reception area of the hotel was equally as intimidating as the suite. The front desk reminded me of a judge's bench minus the gavel, and the finely preened staff who manned the phones there looked equally as judgemental. Thankfully, we bypassed that area completely and headed straight into a dining room with wooden floors so buffed you could see your face in them.

"So what do you hunger for, Miss White?" Blaze swayed into me playfully when I raised a suggestive eyebrow. "Something that doesn't involve one or both of us making sex noise."

"But where's the fun in that? I'm actually jonesing for black coffee and scrambled eggs."

"After the pounding you just got, are they not already scrambled?" I gaped up at him in disbelief and snatched a menu off a table as we passed. I loved playful Blaze as much as I loved horny Blaze and serious Blaze. It just still shocked me when he said anything vulgar because it didn't seem like something someone so gorgeous was capable of.

"Look, see. Scrambled eggs on toast. Perfect. If I eat real quickly, we can get back up to that big ol' bed before check out time and you can bash my head against the headboard a few more times."

"Okay!" Blaze swung his hand back and slapped me hard on the backside, making me yelp. "Chop chop, vixen. I have plans for us this afternoon."

"Oh?"

"Not _those_ plans. God, woman. You'll kill me before the honeymoon."

I turned away with a blush. In the cold light of day with no alcohol addling my brain, marital buzz words seemed so foreign and terrifying. I was happy to partake in the bravado, but I was definitely not at the point of shopping for a wedding dress.

"So you know, I'm really in no rush to—"

"Me, either." Not even pretending to not look relieved, I stepped right up to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. _Thank God._ We were on the same page, and that meant no nasty surprises for either of us. "I'm still not done terrorising you. It's been less than a day, there's no need to rush it all now when we have all the time in the world."

If I was any other woman, I might have worried about the sudden reluctance to start talking flower arrangements, but I was too grateful for the lack of pressure and distracted by the sigh of Esme limping towards us looking horrendous. Everyone suffered when Ivy Tudor spent a night pouring their drinks, and Esme definitely looked to be suffering from the mother of all hangovers.

"Breakfast?"

She groaned and raised a hand to me, rubbing at her stomach with the other. "God, no. Bloody Mary, please, and don't skimp on the 'bloody'. I'll be sitting outside seeing if I sparkle in sunlight because, honestly, I feel like I've been dead for a thousand years."

Blaze and I made our orders for breakfast and fooled around like we had in the lift while we waited for our coffee. 'Happy' wasn't a word I could apply to my life often, but that morning, I could. It was short-lived.

We carelessly stormed through the glass doors, attached by the mouth, out onto the terracotta tiled terrace leading out into the hotel's small but luxurious garden. Only Blaze's fast reaction's saved our coffee from spilling when I froze solid, eyes wide.

"Emmeline?" I opened my mouth and croaked, stepping back from Blaze like I'd been caught in the middle of something heinous.

Henry, Ivy and Tallulah Tudor stared at me from a round white table looking almost as shocked as I did. Esme gave me her best 'caught with my pants down' look and inched down a little in her chair. Like us, my family were in the same clothes they'd worn for the mixer, which meant they'd stayed in the hotel too. Of course. Ivy would have had us put in one of the nicest suites and insisted that we didn't pay.

"Oh, um... hello."

"Henry?" Blaze took my coffee from my hand and ushered me over to the table calmly. "You know of my best girl?"

"I should say so..." Esme, Ivy and I winced pre-emptively. "... as _your_ best girl is also _my_ best girl."

The noise that came out of my mouth was the strangest I'd ever heard. It was half strangled laugh coupled with a dry heave and a definite sob. When I swayed on my feet, Blaze pulled me back into the dining room by the elbow so he could plant me down into a chair.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me Henry and Ivy are your parents?" _Shit._ I knew he'd be angry.

"You didn't ask?" His eyes narrowed to slits and made me squirm. "You know enough about my family to know that I'm not an active member. If it doesn't matter to me, it shouldn't matter to you."

It felt like we'd glared at each other for an eternity when he said, "You're right," and pulled me back to my feet. Taking advantage of my stunned silence, he pulled me into a deep, lush kiss and gave me a 'fucklust' stare of his own. "So if you don't mind, I'm going to go and find out if you come with a dowry."

"What? Hey!" With a laugh and easy grace, Blaze took our breakfasts from an oncoming waiter and paced back out onto the terrace, setting my plate down at the table between Esme and Ivy before I could argue.

"Henry, old boy. I believe it's customary for me to seek your blessing. Let's take a walk."

Dumbstruck, we watched the manly backslapping and negotiations head down the garden to a trellis that reminded me of the screens at the restaurant for our first date.

Esme broke the silence. "That went rather well."

"It did somewhat." Confused, I wilted into my seat and stabbed at the scrambled eggs I didn't really want anymore. "I guess we don't have any more secrets left." And yet, I felt uneasy and mithered. All of our revelations had been too easily handled and drama free. There had to be some fallout somewhere. My anxiety was not helped by Tallulah snorting across the table at me before she lifted a magazine to cover her smirk. "Problem, Tally?"

"Oh no, I'm just imagining how awkward your wedding ceremony is going to be when his wife turns up."

I dropped my fork with a loud clatter. "Come again?"

"Wife. The thing you're not allowed two of in this society."

Ivy laid her hand over my bunched up fist and admonished her eldest daughter with a sigh. "Don't be rotten, Tally. I didn't bring you up to tell ugly lies."

"I'm not lying." Tallulah turned the page of her magazine without looking up, face trained into a smug but unsmiling, contemptuous expression. "He left his band to look after her when she got ill. They did the ceremony privately and didn't intend on telling anyone. I just happen to be privy to the information is all. Can't see her being awfully happy about moving you in though, Emmy. Not enough space in the marital bed for three."

The feelings which collided inside me in the following seconds ranged in extremes; vehement disbelief and a will to defend the accusation melded with ambivalent disappointment, apoplectic rage, and a strange kind of pensive tranquillity like I'd known all along. Not one of them showed on my face when I pushed to my feet and turned my head fractionally towards Esme.

"We're leaving."

"You should talk to him about this." Yes, I should have. But it all made too much sense. He seemed too perfect but talked about being damaged, so logically he had to have something this twisted working against him. When life posed an obstacle that threatened my mentality, I had no choice but to walk away from it. I left Hunter behind in Cardiff. I could leave Blaze behind in this hotel.

"We've been talking for months, Esme. He had his chance to tell me himself."

Ivy stood and looked out across the garden. I could see in her eyes that she was somehow trying to twist the situation around to not be so grim. She'd never been wrong about a couple's compatibility before and she'd be damned if her first failure would be the one that would hurt us all the most. "Would it have made any difference if he'd told you himself? It may not be as simple as you think."

"Yes, it would have. I would never have gotten this involved if I'd known. Ah, God!" I shoved my hands into my hair and tugged hard. I was _this close_ to snapping but for my mother's sake, I had to keep it together. Esme stared vacantly down at her Bloody Mary and I knew it was because she was mentally planning out how to have someone with me at all times so I'd neither fall into old destructive habits or be left open to be stupid and call Blaze. Saving me from myself was all par for the course in her world, but it was something I'd hoped to avoid putting her through again.

Tallulah tossed her magazine down on the table and reached over it to pick at my abandoned breakfast. It reminded me of being fourteen again, when I really got trapped in my eating disorder. She'd quaff my leftovers and loved it, and had the fat arse to show for it. "He doesn't deserve you if he's a liar, sis. It's really not enough just to love you more." I scowled at her disingenuous pout and pulled my plate out of her reach. I was grateful that she'd told me the truth but the motive was written all over her face and dripping from her voice. This was no mercy mission by a loving sister who'd seen her younger sibling suffer enough already, it was spite-charged vengeance for the fact I was smarter, prettier and loved more than she was—finite jealously over my happiness.

"Don't think I'll forget this, Tallulah."

And with that, I turned on my heels and walked out of that hotel with Esme and Ivy close behind. I climbed into the Mercedes I hated and let Oscar drive us back to my flat, said my goodbye's to my mother and trusted that she wouldn't make it easy for Blaze to talk to me. Esme called the guys and we sat in my flat drinking whiskey, devising plans to keep me attached to my sanity.

Not once did I let the tears out. There was no regret from walking away. I kept it all locked away and pretended it wasn't there. I just wish I'd been a fly on the wall when he found his ring squashed into my scrambled eggs.

#  fifteen

#

_  
Emmeline White blasted into my life like an ice cold tidal wave, leaving me disorientated but revitalised. The calm monotony of my life was left skewed the instant she looked up at me with her olive-green eyes and whispered,_ "Wow" _. Despite the boldness of her body language, she emitted a timid, almost childlike vulnerability that made me think she'd suffered horribly, and the shadows in her eyes seemed to scream,_ "Accept me, please" _._

There was no way I couldn't fall in love with her.

Finding her in the bookshop was a shock. Finding her book was a bigger shock. She was obviously an intelligent and complex little thing, and the more I looked at her, the more invisible walls I saw guarding her. She was damaged, maybe irreparably.

The sensible thing to do would have been to walk away and never look back, accepting that she looked too jaded. She was too attractive to not be taken, but too stunning to keep herself tied down—the most beautiful contradiction I'd ever laid eyes on.

I needed her in my life, but something about the way she carried herself told me that if I went with my impulse to be inside her physically, she'd feel like she'd fulfilled her purpose and walk away. I got that; I got that she felt like she was worth nothing more than a one night stand. If I wanted her around, I had to find out what lay beyond the beauty.

That seemed easy enough, but I never imagined that she'd look more perfect when she looked freer, and at the same time more trapped up in her insecurities. She was glorious but she just didn't see it, and she didn't know how to kick back.

The more time I spent with her, the more I understood why her eyes were clouded and distant. The scars, the voices, the feelings of worthlessness... Hell, even the fact that she'd cared too much about the wrong person was something I could appreciate and relate to. I was determined to make her see that she was perfect just the way she was and that she didn't need to meet anyone else's expectations. That's why I took her shopping and showed her how everyone saw her. Her eating habits had already told me that she had a distorted view of her own body, so that grim tale of her past was no surprise.

I should have guessed that I was in trouble when that New York stiff was flirting with her and it played on my nerves. I should have realised that it wasn't some kind of priapic programming that made me want to kiss those brutal scars when I first saw them. I should have been smart enough to know that it wasn't just a case of getting it out of my system when I saw a way to satisfy that lust without losing her. The simple fact of being afraid to lose her should have sounded the first alarm bell.

But I don't regret that I took that chance. I don't regret that the moment I was inside her, it sparked a need to stay there until my dying day. And yes, I'm kind of happy that she got caught up in that disaster with me even though it couldn't have been clearer that she really didn't want to.

I'll admit that I became obsessed with her. Every free evening I had, I jumped into my car and drove to Esme's bar. Not being close to her became a physical ache and a thirst I had to quench. But being close to her just wasn't enough, and no matter how much I tried to screw her stupid until the novelty wore off, it just never did. I woke up in the middle of the night with a hard on after dreaming of her and found myself getting irritable over the stupidest things when I knew I wouldn't get to see her. It was like being a teenage boy crushing on one of the popular girls all over again, so horny the slightest breeze had me ducking away for a 'personal' five minutes.

She was always surprised when I came back and I never understood why. I didn't really understand at all until I found out about that idiot in Japan who'd caused her so much hell. I hated him. I hated that he'd made her feel so worthless. She'd been downtrodden for so long and she thought that she loved him, but me, I knew she didn't. I knew she just wanted to be loved but didn't feel like she deserved it when she came with so much baggage, which he'd created. What she didn't see was that I loved her baggage as much as I loved that dimple in her left cheek. In fact, the more I found out, the more there was to love.

That's why I gave her the ring, so she'd have some reassurance in physical form. It was so much more than a gift given with the intention of marrying her, which I would one day, despite my own complications. It was given so she'd feel some permanence in our connection, which I knew she thought was temporary. It was my way of saying that nothing she'd told me could scare me away. My way of telling her that she was mine, and she didn't need to worry about not being his anymore because I wanted her myself, and I wanted him to know that he couldn't have her. His bullshit would have to stop if he had me to answer to when she got upset over him talking to her like dirt.

Nothing made me happier than seeing how much she settled when that ring was on her finger. The day I'd had to spend away from her and sacrifice the opportunity to watch her wake up was worth it. I'd spent the whole drive to Birmingham worried that she thought I was rejecting her as well as worried that she could tell I was on the brink of making a pretty wild gesture and was lacing up her running shoes.

I felt complete when I knew that I'd marry the first woman I'd ever truly loved, a woman who blew all my inhibitions to hell. I just hoped I'd have chance to fix my own life now I'd fixed hers, and that I wouldn't undo any of my own handiwork in the process.

There was no way I could have foreseen the way she'd panic when I told her we were going to the mixer. I put it down to the fact that I'd dragged her out of bed and refused to let her sleep. A selfish part of me wanted to take advantage of how receptive she became to honesty and affection after an orgasm took hold of her like a drug. She was the most open with me after we'd made love, and I wanted to string that out so she'd learn to never be afraid to say anything to me. And I wanted her to curl up into me and just be held—let me brush my fingers through her hair and tell her how gorgeous she was without recoiling like she usually did.

Looking back, I guess she didn't do it because she didn't know how. She'd never been with the person she wanted before, so she'd never let anyone in. She'd never been loved. I don't think she knew how to be held and worshipped. She trained herself to fall asleep in self-defence so nobody could ever try to make that kind of romantic connection with her. Some of the most basic parts of life most people picked up in their teens didn't hold a place in her heart because she'd never learnt them. Spending those years hating herself had stolen her life, and that explained so much.

I was going to teach her how to be loved, and show her that loving didn't have to hurt. I thought that I might be halfway there already.

When I walked into The Roses with her on my arm, I felt like the luckiest man in the world. She couldn't have looked any more different from the woman I'd met, but I knew that she was still in there; fragile, lost and confused. But she was wearing a ring that I knew she wouldn't have accepted under sufferance when there was such an easy exit. That was all that mattered to me; that she loved me enough to take it even though she would never say it out loud. She had enough faith to take the risk. She loved me more than the man who made her ill, and I'd earned that love fair and square.

The dress I'd picked out looked perfect on her, the viridian satin clinging to the lush curves she'd grown into since we'd met. It had looked great on the assistant who'd modelled it, but Emmeline made it. Her hair swept over her shoulder and tumbled in soft curls down to her ribs on the right side—the unscarred side—leaving me access to kiss the dimple that creased her left cheek every time she gave me her shy, lop-sided secret smile.

God, I loved that dimple, and I loved how she'd sat there patiently and let me dress her and curl those soft tresses that were definitely better blonde. I got to see and touch so much more of her than anyone else, and that was my honour.

She took the chaos of the mixer in her stride like she'd been doing it forever. People loved her dry, quick wit and congratulated me on finding her as much they congratulated us both on our engagement. When everyone else could identify and appreciate what a rare and amazing beauty she was without even seeing her face, how could she not realise that it was true?

Whenever we were torn away from each other, I felt her eyes on me. She was obsessed as I was, and so acutely attuned to me that she knew where I was without even looking. And I was watching her. I watched the way she chatted with my long time friend, Cornelia, like she was her friend, too, and I couldn't help but smile when she felt comfortable enough to laugh. Emmeline was an enigma—my enigma—and worth standing in the heat of my personal hell when she caught my gaze and told me what she couldn't put into words. I love you.

I didn't hear most of the conversations I had, and I barely tasted the wine. All I could focus on was being next to her—getting back to her and keeping my arms wrapped around her satin sheathed frame. When I had to answer a call of nature, I was overcome with irrational concern that she wouldn't be there when I came back. Then, to add to my irritation, I was roped into several conversations on my way back to her. Thank God the cavalry arrived.

Henry Tudor was a great man. His business ethic was a little off, but he was jovial and obtusely hilarious. He didn't excuse or pardon himself when he pulled me away from Cornelia's boyfriend—a man who was ridiculously self-reverent—just spoke over him until he went away on his own like only a successful man who took no crap could.

"Looked like you needed saving there, young man." He had no idea. I knew he'd keep me in one place and Cornelia would encourage Emmeline to come over for introductions.

"I appreciate it, old boy. You never stop saving my bacon, do you?" He grinned and beckoned me over to his table, where he retrieved a large glass of brandy. I noticed that he was one of just a few people not drinking the wine circulating the room. My unusually audacious fiancée was another.

Seemingly reading my mind, he raised his glass in a solitary toast. "What's the point of babysitting the establishment if you don't get to raid the liquor cabinet, eh!" Babysitting? I didn't probe, just laughed along with him, getting caught in his good mood that rivalled my own. Henry had done so much for me in the past and I still owed him. He wouldn't let me give him back all the money he'd frittered away on my university fees for years and I could never repay him in kind for all the times he'd let my band perform in his upmarket venues so we'd get noticed by the right people.

But I could afford him my utmost respect. He deserved that of me for all the magic he'd worked.

"So is everything going well in Tudorland?" Not probing. Just making conversation.

He grunted and shook his head at himself. "No, New York sorely needs someone to go out and throw their weight around at The Seymour. I just don't have the time to go myself and Tallulah is a halfwit."

"Is your youngest still refusing to partake in the family business?"

"Blaze, my boy—I would do anything to get my little ball-buster in and Tally out. I still maintain that you'd get on like a house on fire. You could be good for her."

If Tallulah was anything to go by, I really doubted that we'd have any common ground, though secretly I admired that she wouldn't participate in the family business, giving the less legitimate side of it an extremely wild berth. Henry hadn't become so successful by making friends and had too many enemies. I could imagine his life being very lonely.

Besides, I had my woman. "Sorry, old chap. I've very recently acquired a ball-buster of my own."

I looked up because I felt her approach me. Not the confident woman who'd been working the room all night, but the lost ghost I'd met at first. But I could still see how much she wanted me in the way she reacted when I looked in her direction. Her cheeks underneath the mask flushed, her eyes flared with desire and her step faltered. I could make her remember every way I'd touched her in the bedroom and just by glancing in her general direction.

And when she was thinking about it, so was I. "And there go my balls."

The closer she got, the more I wanted to step forward and pull her into my arms, pick her up and carry her out of that room to make those memories a reality. But I also wanted to show her off so she knew that I was proud to have her with me.

"Henry." I reached for her and curled my arm around her waist. "Meet my very significant other." Emmeline offered her hand bashfully, keeping her head low like he was too rich to look at. She looked so sweet and nervous.

Henry kissed the back of her hand and smiled to himself. "Miss White, yes?" He'd obviously seen the seating plan. "Not very talkative, are you?"

"She's here under sufferance, I've just brought her to show her off." Because I was elated to have arrived with the most beautiful woman in the room, maybe the country. Almost certainly the planet.

"At a masquerade party? Daft sod." As silly as it seemed to him, I'd had my reasons. I knew the anonymity would comfort her around the people she'd feel awkward forcing conversation with; people who oozed affluence and wealth.

She stood patiently like a serene statue while Henry and I spoke, watching and absorbing all the action. We exchanged polite chit-chat about work and family, musing over gatherings past before the Tudor's followed their youngest daughter into London and Henry's staffing problems.

Emmeline spoke clearly and coolly when she was spoken to, smiling when appropriate and allowing Henry to look at her engagement ring without pause for thought. Anyone would have thought she'd been perfectly trained in the proper etiquette for these kinds of events—she didn't appear even slightly ruffled if she was being watched.

"Beautiful, just beautiful. Like the young lady beneath that mask, I suspect." Henry gave me a many slap on the shoulder and winked so Emmeline couldn't see. I had his approval on my choice of woman, and that stood for a lot in my eyes. He was a shrewd judge of character. "I've taken up enough of your evening. Show the lady how real men dance." Finally.

I loved the way she nestled up against my chest to dance, and how she was just the right height for me to rest my cheek on her head so she could hear me sing to her. I could feel her smile, and when she looked up at me for a kiss, her sweetness made me melt a little—an innocence dispelled by the hunger in her kiss.

"Are you bored? You're very quiet. You could have spoken to Henry, he's not all that bad." It was important to me that all the big characters in my life got on with each other. I hated time wasted on conflict.

She ran her hands up my jacket as she snuggled in closer to me, moulding against the muscles I knew she could feel well through my suit. That was why I'd worn it—I wanted her to feel as proud to me as I did her.

"What was I supposed to say to him? Tell him that he should stop frittering money away on new property and ventures and focus on what he already has? That throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away and comfort can't be bought? His employees are flailing through lack of leadership, not lack of inspiration." I arched a brow in surprise. She never ceased to amaze me when she opened that mouth and came out with something unexpectedly profound and intelligent. I knew her so well, and yet so little. Now, I had a lifetime to learn more. "What? I'm not as stupid as I look. That 'dumb blonde' is only fifty percent accurate."

"You've done a survey of blondes?"

"No, you're either a dumb blonde or you're not. Fifty-fifty." Oh. Embarrassing. Secretly, I blamed her for catching me off guard and being so outstanding in every way that it made my brain go soft like mush.

While we danced, I let my imagination get carried away with me. I dared to imagine our first dance, how she'd look in an elegant white dress I'd have to resist the urge to pick for her, and how she'd look underneath it. Even images of how she'd look swollen with my children growing inside her flooded my mind, if that was even a possibility after her 'difficulties' as a teenager. There definitely wasn't a good way to broach that subject.

But I wanted all of that with her. I wanted those little dreams to become little realities, and I knew that I had to set my affairs straight before they could happen. There were a few discrepancies and inconveniences that needed my attention, and they were the only things stopping me from taking Scott's little joke about Vegas and turning it back on him.

_Esme strode across the dance-floor between us, wanting me to answer the question I knew her eyes were screaming._ Did she accept the ring? _She fist-pumped the air when I made my barely discernible nod, and closed the distance between us, complimenting Emmeline on how beautiful she looked._

"Mind if I pull her away, Blaze?" I might have objected if Emmeline hadn't look so pleased to see her. As her only female friend, Esme was the only person who could really relate and enjoy our engagement in the typical girlish-giggling way. The gay couple might have had their fair share of opinions on the big day, but Esme could enjoy the hype that lead up to it, something that would last for a while yet.

When they left, I was inundated with questions from clucking women who'd seen us dancing, asking who my partner was, how serious we were and what had been so wrong with the daughters they'd been trying to pimp out for years. More annoyingly, I was collared by Helen Rosen, a notoriously conceited and self-obsessed woman who knew my mother. She rambled incessantly about her son, who I'd never met but got the impression that he was as big-headed and pig-ignorant as his parents. They'd found wealth like Henry—because of Henry—and weren't even slightly modest about it. It was hard to guess which parts of Helen were still real.

I didn't want to know about her son's wedding. I didn't want to know about all the things his fiancée did that mine didn't. And no, I didn't want to see the photographs, but she showed me anyway. The wholesome copper haired boy next door standing with a long, raven haired stick figure of diluted Asian origin, painted on smiles all round. Yeah, I liked to think that Emmeline and I looked a little more edgy and a lot happier. In fact, I knew we did.

"Excuse me, lady and gent." The huge red mask that was Esme sashayed to us and positioned herself in the middle of the unwanted conversation. Again, thank God for the cavalry. "I hate to interrupt, but Ivy would like to test her third eye on you and your lovely new fiancée." **Shit**. Ivy Tudor had a gift for spotting soul mates and poor matches. What the hell would I do if she gave us the death sentence? Would Emmeline take it to heart and give up, and would I let her?

But they were standing together, and I wanted to be near my girl. I was confident that she'd see in us what she'd seen in all the other couples I'd watch grow closer and more blissful. I wanted that thumbs up.

"Blaze, darling!" Looking outlandishly youthful, Ivy Tudor peered at me from behind her bright pink mask. How had her oldest daughter gone so wrong when she looked so magnificent for her age, topped in blonde curls with an almost embarrassingly impressive figure? It made me wonder what the other Tudor daughter looked like.

"Ivy." I kissed the back of her hand and turned my attention to the beauty pressed up against me. I'd wrapped my arm around her without even realising. "You look wonderful. And you appear to have met the only other woman in the room who comes close enough to compare." You had to give me my dues, I knew how to handle rich, important women.

Ivy smiled to herself, then directed it up to me. "I have indeed, young man. Let me look at you both without those silly masks."

My fingers pulled at the strands of ribbon attached to Emmeline's mask. My God, I'd almost forgotten how divine she was. It damn near took my breath away. She seemed to go through the same motions when I removed my own mask, and something shifted and click into place. This woman was mine, and would be forever. I'd do anything—anything, to make sure of it.

"Oh yes," Ivy gushed, "yes, you're perfect together. I'll be on tenterhooks waiting for news of your engagement." An approval from the Child of Cupid. We couldn't fail. My complications would have to be resolved, and quickly. I couldn't risk leaving anything to time or chance.

I took Emmeline's left hand in mine and kissed the emerald on her finger, then kissed her soft, pink lips. "Actually Ivy, I concreted my intentions to keep the lovely Emmeline just this afternoon."

"Oh!" Ivy snatched her hand from my grip to critique the ring. "Beautiful, simply beautiful. Like the lady herself. "Masks back on, my loves! We must celebrate!"

And boy, did we celebrate. From that day, my life would become about celebrating every day I had with that girl. As hungover as we were, we made love through the night, slept only briefly and started again in the morning. It didn't matter to me that she jumped up to be sick because we both laughed about it, and laughter was something my life had seen too little of. Love like ours came around once in a lifetime, as did women like Emmeline. And yes, I had to celebrate that.

We fooled around in the lift down to breakfast like we were already newly-weds, hands always on each other and nearly always lips. Dressed in our formal outfits from the mixer, we looked dishevelled but peaceful, focused only on each other. That lift ride might have been the single-most best moment in my life. It was the moment I knew our fates were inextricably juxtaposed. No matter what, we would always be connected.

It made me smile to watch Emmeline crane her neck to look around at the impressive structure of the hotel. I don't think she even realised she was doing it, and I'd been in enough expensive hotels, restaurants and venues to take it for granted, so I got a good view of her wide, awed eyes. They really were an amazing and unusual colour. I'd seen it elsewhere but just couldn't place it...

"So what do you hunger for, Miss White?" I shoved her gently when she gave me that look. I wanted that too, but she needed to refuel first. I had a week left before I had to resume caring duties and I had big plans to spend most of it admiring that starry-eyed look she got when I'd made her come so hard her head spun. "Something that doesn't involve one or both of us making sex noise."

"But where's the fun in that? I'm actually jonesing for black coffee and scrambled eggs." She had no idea how good it felt for me hear her talk about being hungry. The idea that she might go back down the road of anorexia someday put the fear of God in me. I wouldn't be able to watch her suffer. I'd suffer with her.

"After the pounding you just got, are they not already scrambled?" She tried to look affronted but failed. I hoped I hadn't accidentally touched a raw nerve.

"Look, see. Scrambled eggs on toast. Perfect. If I eat real quickly, we can get back up to that big ol' bed before check out time and you can bash my head against the headboard a few more times."

"Okay!" Now she was talking! "Chop chop, vixen. I have plans for us this afternoon."

"Oh?" Her face lit up like a kid at Christmas. The woman was bloody insatiable and I loved it. Her greed for me was a real turn on, just one on a long and extensive list.

"Not those plans. God woman, you'll kill me before the honeymoon."

All of a sudden, she turned away. Dread bubbled in my stomach. Had she changed her mind?

"So you know, I'm really in no rush to—"

"Me, either." I was quick to reassure her. As eager as I was to make her my wife, and despite the wrongs I had to set right before that could happen, I wasn't going to push her harder than she wanted. Too many people had done that to her in the past. I knew she needed the control, that's why she looked so relieved. "I'm still not done terrorising you. It's been less than a day, there's no need to rush it all now when we have all the time in the world."

Esme caused a welcome distraction, walking in looking like Death himself. While the girls spoke, I took the opportunity to admire how amazing Emmeline looked even when hungover. She had come so far from the waif in baggy clothes and looked like she was, herself, expensive. Maybe even worth millions. Luxury suited her and she wore it well. It was like a kick in the nuts every time I saw her—I couldn't believe my luck.

Unable to keep our hands off each other when we weren't talking to someone, we stumbled out onto the open terrace attached to the dining room, barely keeping our coffees from spilling. My fast reactions saved the cups when she ground to a standstill right in front of me, face draining of colour like she'd seen a ghost.

"Emmeline?"

A hesitant croak left her mouth and she stepped back, gaze fixed on the other three guests sitting with Esme. "Oh, um... hello."

Henry and Ivy sat on either side of Tallulah, the daughter I'd been fortunate enough to avoid at the mixer, still dressed in their evening clothes sans masks. They'd been nice enough to put us in one of their suites when we stumbled across the street from The Roses with our female companions barely able to hold themselves straight.

And they were looking at Emmeline the same way she was looking at them. Stunned. Mortified. Maybe even confused.

"Henry," I took the coffee cup from Emmeline's hand before her white knuckle grip snapped the handle and urged her towards the table, "you know of my best girl?"

"I should say so, as your best girl is also my best girl."

Emmeline made the strangest noise of shame, guilt and woe. It took a moment to register why she looked so green around the gills, but when it did, I pulled her back into the dining room, completely dumbstruck. She was the missing Tudor—the daughter who wouldn't play house. No wonder she held herself so well around a high-end crowd. She was worth millions herself, even if she was living like a bum on bookshop wages.

I didn't know how the hell to react. She wasn't helping matters by looking so ashamed. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Henry and Ivy are your parents?"

"You didn't ask?" The obtuse retort pissed me off. If she could be so honest about everything else, why was this such a big secret? Did she think I'd start trying to chip away at her hidden fortune? Didn't she fucking know me at all? "You know enough about my family to know that I'm not an active member. If it doesn't matter to me, it shouldn't matter to you."

But it did. It mattered a lot because she was the daughter of a man I respected deeply. Hell, if I'd have known, I'd have proposed properly so he didn't feel like his dear daughter had been short changed. I would have asked his god damn permission like a gentleman. I owed him that for all the times he'd helped me.

And that was when it clicked. Henry was always happy to help me, and this time, I needed help to make his little girl happy for the rest of her life. He had the power to do things I'd struggle to do—make plans I couldn't even dream of concocting. He could be my greatest ally, and he could help me set this right.

"You're right." I grabbed Emmeline's hands and pulled her up to her feet, wrapping her arms around my neck so I could kiss her. She was worth all that I would have to do, and she was worth it to Henry, too. The first little while would be tough while I was forced to keep her at arm's length, but after that, she'd always be happy because I'd make sure of it. I'd devote my life to it. "So if you don't mind, I'm going to go and find out if you come with a dowry."

"What? Hey!" Feeling lighter already, I took our plates from the approaching waiter and rejoined the Tudors and Esme, putting Emmeline's down in between Esme and Ivy so she could eat while I spoke to Henry. She needed that energy even more now; I would be flaming for her when I got her alone.

"Henry, old boy. I believe it's customary for me to seek your blessing. Let's take a walk."

We walked down to the trellis at the bottom of the hotel's garden before I braced myself the way I always did before I begged a favour from Henry. This had to be by far the biggest ask I had for him, and I technically owed him thousands.

"You had no idea, did you?" He shocked me by talking first, reaching up to one of the honeysuckle blossoms. "You thought she was just a broken girl you picked up from the gutters and turned into a queen. Your queen."

"She was already a queen, I just helped her see it." Nodding, he turned back to me, brow arched expectantly. The man could read me so well—he knew there was more. "Henry," I rasped, hands balling into fists at my sides. "I want to be upfront with you. I love your daughter and I'd love nothing more than to marry her with your blessing. But there are things that stop me. Things nobody knows."

He listened patiently while I told him about the side of my life nobody saw—the part that forced me to keep my distance from Emmeline. I explained how Natasha had been diagnosed just as we were due to head out on tour and considered being with me her dying wish. I explained how we married in secret quickly so I'd get everything when I was gone—my reward for humouring her when she knew how much I'd be sacrificing.

And I explained why the situation was particularly bothersome—the lies and the betrayal that meant I deserved my life back with what I'd earned. When I finished, he nodded and looked out across the room to the table where the women in his life sat.

"So what exactly is it you're after, son? My blessing to carry on keeping secrets from my daughter, or my help so you can live happily ever after?"

"Both. But right now, mostly the help." Bowing my head, I stepped back and paced the grass restlessly. "I've played it over a thousand times in my head and I see no way out. I can't lose Emmeline now I've found her. But I've paid my dues, six years of them."

Henry's hand clapped down on my shoulder. It was a gesture that provoked a sigh of relief. I knew that his brutal refusal came with a handshake. He was on my side. "It's a tricky one, but I'll help you, son. Anything to keep that smile on her face."

"And in the meantime?"

He frowned. "Tell her the truth, but I suggest you word it very carefully. One wrong syllable and she'll go down like a lead balloon. Otherwise, welcome to the family."

His acceptance made me push out a breath I didn't realise I'd been holding. "You're sure that you're all right with this?"

"All is fair in love and war, young man. All manner of philandering, foul play and truth stretching is fair game. You did what you thought was right at the time, and retrospect is a bitch. Just keep Emmeline out of this. She doesn't need to know the ugly details."

A massive weight lifted off my shoulders. Like always, Henry would save me from trouble and make my dreams come true. Maybe this time I could repay him by making that beautiful daughter of his happy for the rest of her life after she'd been miserable for so long. It might just be enough his time and effort to see her happy.

But when we turned back to the terrace, she was gone. We exchanged confused glances before I ran back up to the dining room and searched inside, hoping that Emmeline was there with Ivy and Esme. But nothing.

Dread took over again. When she always worried that I'd never come back, it was me that worried she wouldn't wait. All the men she took home in my absence, the way she didn't chase me... I never really believed that I was enough. Now I had my proof.

"I swear, Dad, I have no idea where they went!" Tallulah's grating bleat pulled me back out to the terrace, where Henry stood over his eldest daughter looking enraged. He didn't need to utilise years of learning her mannerisms to know that she was lying because it was written all over her face. In fact, she looked downright smug. "She just took off without touching her breakfast. Nothing new there. Oh, I lie," she turned her pig-eyed gaze on me and nodded down at the scrambled eggs still piping steam. "She did touch it. Your ring is in there somewhere."

"What?" Without forethought, I bolted over to the table and saw the emerald glinting up at me. "When did they go?"

"About five minutes ago." Tallulah turned back to the magazine she was reading and refused to look up. "She said something about telling you to go fuck yourself and your complications."

I didn't understand. All she knew was that my time for her was tight. I loved her; I gave her a god damn ring so she knew. If it was too much, she should have said at the time instead of letting me announce it to the world.

I'd find out what the hell I'd done wrong, if it meant following her through hell and back. If we were over, just like that, I at least deserved a chance to make it right. I needed it so I wouldn't let the confusion kill me. She made me crazy enough to take that path if I had to live without her. She was the only reason I had to get away from my fucking wife. Without her, I was a sucker, waiting and hating myself for it.

Emmeline White was my reason 'why' to stop thinking about the 'why not', and I wasn't going to give her up without a fight, even if I did have to spend six days sleeping in my car and stewing before I could get close enough to get my explanation.

She was mine. No matter what.

#  sixteen

#

When I was young, my parents had me fairly effectively shielded from disappointment and grief. Neither of them were particularly close to their families, so I never really mourned the deaths of relatives. I never had pets, so our garden wasn't pathed like an animal cemetery. And unlike so many other children on the playground, I was never encouraged to follow a fantastical illusion of characters such as Santa Claus or The Tooth Fairy. Hell, we weren't even religious, so there was never any sources of false hope to be shredded down.  
My first taste of negativity didn't come until I was a teenager and I was thrown into the throes of the testosterone fuelled rejection temple of doom that was secondary school, and even then I was prepared for it. _'Hope for nothing',_ my mother had told me since the day I had enough cognition to see 'the bigger picture'. _'Hope for nothing so that's all you expect, and anything beyond is a bonus'._

Of course, my mother was so painfully cynical it should have been illegal, and didn't believe for a minute that the 'beyond' was either genuine or indeed in existence. You find your partner, you marry, you mate and then you die—there were no bonuses. She was just insistent that everyone died after a lengthy time spent on one side of an ampersand and put in his and hers grave plots. By her reckoning, every person was born with half of them missing, and if you hadn't found that other half of yourself by the time they laid you in the ground, you'd failed at life. On reflection, it's no wonder I turned out so jaded.

When Hunter became a big deal in my life, I very quickly learnt that petulance, delusion and denial could be both very good friends and very good weapons. I pretended that my heart didn't flutter when he was around and I always had a snarky comment hidden up my sleeve for any kind of speculation, no matter which direction it came from. If I believed the lie enough, it was true to me and that was all that mattered. I'd made it this long using those three tools to fool myself into thinking I didn't miss him when I really did and that I had a shot with him when I really didn't, and that proved how well they worked.

The joy of those three immature pals of mine was that they were transferable. I made believe that Blaze didn't exist, and when my friends found out why, they were only too happy to join in the facade. As far as I cared, his incessant voice mail messages were left by cold callers, his lurking shadow in every restaurant, cafe, arcade, shop and bar was any other stranger, and the quickly scrawled out notes he shoved through my letter box every morning never needed to be acknowledged, let alone read, because they were put through the wrong door by a foolish passer-by or suitor for a neighbour.

My work days were not spent at work. Instead, Mrs. Reynolds sent me to the flat above the shop that we used for extra storage and had me invent banal and unnecessary organisation and filing systems that we _would_ use, but were no better than what was already implemented. She was furious for me, and she didn't want to give Blaze a reason to come into the shop by keeping me in eye shot. It wasn't likely that he'd get out alive.

Instead of drinking out in public view at Esme's _,_ we kept ourselves hidden on the small VIPs only balcony that overlooked the club's ground floor, and had table service from the charming barman who adored his boss. If I wasn't at work, I was always in the company of at least one of my friends, never alone, never left unguarded, never allowed to change my mind.

I'd surrounded myself in an efficient bubble that contained me and the whole world, everything except him. He was locked out of my mind and exiled to a cramped little box that held all my other nasty little monster memories that had teeth strong enough to snap steel.

It had been almost a blessed week of blissful ignorance when that box burst open. There had been no note that morning, so figuring that he'd finally got the hint, I agreed to go back to my old humdrum task of restocking the shelves in Double Booked. That was my first mistake.

It was just after my lunch break when it happened. I'd worked through it and ate on the move like old times, and Mrs. Reynolds had run across the street to get us some 'real' coffee from a cafe that had opened the day before. That window of opportunity stood open to be abused by all kinds of lovelorn actors/rockstars/bastards, and it was. By a man who epitomised all three occupations in the same miserably beautiful vessel.

He stood next to me looking almost genuinely surprised that I might actually be working to earn my wage. His eyes were bloodshot, red ringed and surrounded by grey bags. His hair was messy and style-less, six days of stubble spread from his chin up to his cheekbones, and he was still wearing the suit I'd left him in.

It was his broken, 'I got dumped by the ultimate' look, and he still looked like a fucking magazine cover model. I spared him one single cold and empty look for a full two seconds, and resumed brutally shoving the poor tomes into their spaces.  
"Wow, it's kinda nippy in here." Reflexively, I made an involuntarily glance down at my chest and cringed when I heard his soft, hoarse laugh. "I was referring more to your cold shoulder, but now you mention it..."

Turning quickly and folding my arms around me to obscure his view, I forced away my scowl and blinked at him, making direct and vacant eye contact like he was a stranger. "Can I help you, sir?"  
"Are you going to tell me what I've done wrong?"

I made a hard step past him and positioned my back in his direction. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't believe I've heard of that particular publication. Might I suggest you ask my colleague at the front desk to search the system for you when she comes back in a minute?" I hoped he heard the warning.

"Oh, Emmeline. Stop being a brat." _Obviously not._ Had he intentionally used the insult he'd heard Hunter use on me before?

Resisting the urge to swivel around in a rage, I groped around aimlessly behind me to my left, hoping he'd have the decency not to take advantage of my blind spot and get a good look at my bare hand. I got a firm, unhampered grip on the handle of the book trolley and yanked it so hard it nearly overturned. "Brat? _You_ didn't tell me what _you_ did wrong so why the hell should I let you exercise double standards?"

He stiffened behind me—I felt it—and his voice took on a harder edge. "Double standards? You think I'm being dishonest? After you failed to tell me that your parents are loaded? I never lied to you."  
It was true. I'd never asked specifically if he had a wife. Our 'relationship' wasn't concerned with honesty and openness, just acceptance of what we gave up voluntarily, so even if I'd thought of it I probably wouldn't have asked, the same way I hadn't asked about his freakish intelligence or mystery dead father.

Besides, I was trying to play at pretending it had all never happened. I'd been in love with Hunter for as long as I could remember and had wanted him inexorably before all this. I could go back to that hopeless cause, so I shouldn't have cared. Blaze was just a pretty diversion from my failing mission to find completeness at a dead end.

But I had never been so irrationally dependant on another person to feel happy as I had been in the moment I found out Blaze belonged to someone else. However occasional and irrational our bond may have been, it clung to me like a heavy perfume—or more aptly, the smell of smoke—and refused to release it's grip. The fire he'd sparked in my blood was a blessing and a curse. Blaze was a complication that was likely to set me back off down a reckless road, and for that reason, I had to quench those embers.

"The roots of my gene pool are _not_ the same." I argued. "And I never lied, either."

His eyes flared. "The same as what?"

"Don't harass me while I'm at work, Blaze." The sudden meekness of my voice was a poor and ineffective way to dismiss him. The moment my words came out with no conviction, I knew it wouldn't be as simple as him leaving then and there.

Part of me didn't want him to go. The same part was happy he'd chased me. But it didn't want to explain what he should already have figured out and have to put words to it. It hurt so damn much to say it. _You're already married to someone else._

"Where would you like me to harass you then? Because you haven't taken my calls for six days and have your rock-dumb friends as a meat shield whenever I get close."  
"Don't harass me at all." My legs set on a non-negotiable trail for the stockroom where he couldn't reach me before I finished my thought. "Go harass your wife."

That was my second mistake. The moment I got to the stockroom door I was trapped up against it by six foot three inches of solid, furious looking male. I might have been scared if not for the fact I could see the fear clouding his eyes, which lacked their usual sparkle and gravity. "You look like shit, Blaze."

"Who told you?"

I tried to force my gaze away but it was stuck to his. "Tallulah."

"What the fuck..." He stepped back and ran his hands into his hair. Hating that my body was still betraying me by burning up and bowing towards him, I mirrored the gesture and squeezed my palms into my eyes under my glasses until I saw spots. "Why the hell didn't you tell me who you are?"

"I did tell you! I told you everything. Nothing about me changes because my family is well off. God knows if it did I'd be poncing around in a bloody Bentley telling people to fetch me coffee and wipe my arse. I'm as fucked up as the day you met me and no amount of money changes that."

And then I realised what he was doing and I hated that he was trying to deflect the blame. While the opportunity was open, I reached for the door handle behind me, hands trembling, and darted behind it before he could stop me. I grabbed a spare chair to jam under the handle just as it started to rattle.

"Emmeline! Damn it, let me in!"

"I won't let you turn this around onto me," I shouted through the door. "My secrets don't hurt anyone else—yours do."

"Cupcake." Blaze ended his attempts to break in and I could imagine him leaning his head against the door frame, splaying his hands across the wood like it would bring us closer. It hurt more now that'd I'd seen him and how lost he looked without me. It hurt when I saw the panic when he knew that I knew. It hurt most when I realised that he'd never intended for me to find out.

"I'm at work. I don't get paid to beat down bigamists."

"Please don't send me away. I've been trying to get you on your own for six days, Emmeline. Six fucking days. People are dumping spare change in my coffee when I walk down the street."

"Use your fucking travel mugs." I pretended not to hear his quick gush of a laugh, resentful of the fact that he'd dared to do it, but I knew it was choked with tears.

"I was going to tell you, Emmeline. I just wanted to do it right."

"Not telling me at all was not doing it right. Any point in the three months I was unwittingly your mistress would have been the right time."

Steeling myself, I slowly slid the chair back and opened the door so he could see my face—see what he was doing to me. Like I'd imagined, Blaze had his head against the frame, but straightened the moment he saw me.

He looked sorry. Ruined. He knew that keeping his complications secret and letting me believe that he was perfect was the biggest mistake he'd made. Turning up at my workplace to verbally beat me into submission until I told him was just a supplementary faux pas.

He reached for me and I stepped back further into the stockroom. "Emmeline..."

"You're the only person who's gotten real tears out of me in five years, Blaze. Please don't make me shed them here. We'll have this conversation when you admit that I did nothing wrong."

"But you—"

"My family is _not_ the same! And even if it was, how is it worse that I didn't tell you my dad is a multibillionaire but I won't touch his business or his money because I abhor his attitude? Please, enlighten me because I am really struggling to understand why I'm a bad person in this case." My face bunched up tightly into an expression of torturous pain as the first burning tear slid down my cheek. "Just get out."

He advanced towards me, not stopping when I backed away. When I was pressed up against the wall, he cupped my face in his hands and kissed the tear, nuzzling me in a way I couldn't stand because it was so sweet and desperate, like he was savouring me for the last time. "I'm sorry."

"So am I. I'm sorry that you didn't respect me enough to tell me the damned truth and I had to find out from a sister who told only because she wanted to stick the fucking knife in for all the attention, praise and love I get for being a victim of my neuroses." He winced, but ran a thumb across my lips, pulling the bottom lip down with a slight groan. I knew what he was planning, and if he did it, it would be too much for me to bear. "Please don't kiss me. I'll forgive you if you kiss me and you can't make this go away with sweet nothings."

"Emmy?" Mrs. Reynolds appearing in the doorway gave me a much needed opportunity to push away from Blaze while he was distracted and put some distance between us. I couldn't forgive him—I didn't want to, but there was no way to fight him if he was right up close to me. It made me remember the other times he'd touched me like that and what else he'd been doing at the same time, all the times we'd had sex just to be closer to each other. God, when he was wrapped around me I wanted to scratch myself open so he had a way to crawl inside me for good.

"Y-You need to g-go." My chest started to shake, holding in what I knew would be a shameless storm of tears and wailing. Sending him away was better in the long term, but my God, was it killing me to find the strength to do it. The clean break would have been better. He could have just taken the hint.

"Emmy, love." Mrs. Reynolds pulled me by the arm out into the shop, leaving Blaze inside the stockroom swearing to himself. She sucked on her teeth looking in on him and sighed sharply. "Go home. Talk this out with him."

"But—"

"It hurts like hell, I know. But he had to have a bloody good reason." _Sure, because he wanted to have his cupcake and eat her._ I didn't vocalise that acerbic notion, choosing instead to regress into miserable teenager mode in protest. If I took him home we'd end up in bed together and that was not the right direction to take from there. Nothing he said would change the fact that I'd essentially been an extra-curricular sex toy and he'd probably been double dipping.

That's why he'd really gotten weird when I said he could stay overnight properly—Shit! It was all starting to make sense. He needed that excuse to creep away so his wife wouldn't twig onto his affair. So why be seen so publicly with me? Why give me a ring? Why tell my friends and family he'd marry me? None of it made sense.

"Stop asking yourself questions he has the answers to, Emmy. If nothing else, go and get some closure so you don't waste your life on 'what if's'." I swallowed convulsively at the same words I'd heard from the mouth of the man in that room and hoped he did have a damn good explanation. She was right, the unanswered questions would drive me insane and I was too weak a person to not end up blaming myself. I didn't know that the penance I set for myself wouldn't be a cost too much.

"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 inaudibly, 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, all right. 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 commitment-phobe 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 those 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, damn it!" 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?"

His brow furrowed while he stopped to think about a question I hadn't really intended him to answer. But I didn't talk because I was curious to see if he got it. "Yeah, I would. So I understood how you felt." I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. He so _didn't_ get it and he was just saying anything to win my favour. That wasn't the way to do it.

"You can't understand and ruin yourself just by joining in, Blaze. Nobody will ever understand the drive and self-loathing that leads to something like that; to want to do something horrible to yourself just so you feel functional. I would never ask you to do that for me."

"But that's nothing like this!" He sprang up to match my eye-level and dug a hand into his pocket to retrieve a ring. _My_ ring. I might have never known the truth if he hadn't given me that ring. By trying to keep hold of me he'd inadvertently pushed me away but I was grateful for it. "Nothing has to change. This can still happen. We didn't want to rush right into it anyway."

"Okay," I conceded. "There's a possibility that it might still happen one day. I'm tweaked enough to wait for you. I wasted nine years on a hopeless cause before so, yes, I will probably spend my life fantasising about a reunion. But I can't wait _with_ you, Blaze. Do you understand that?"

It shred me apart to see him look so unhappy. He'd really plead his case but he couldn't win, not this time, and for once I was the strong one of us. There was no way back from what had transpired between us and it was doubtful that there was a way forward. We were standing at our impasse but neither of us wanted to be the one who turned away first.

"Emmeline, without you I have no reason to—... Six years is already far long that I thought she'd—" Blaze averted his eyes, knowing he needed to pick his words extremely carefully. "She's held on so much longer than we thought possible. I don't know how much longer I'd be asking you to wait."

And that's when I realised how insecure he was. He didn't think that I _would_ wait for him. He maybe didn't know that he was worth waiting for when he was tearing us apart to do this. He would have done anything not to lose me for any amount of time, but I couldn't stay. I just couldn't. He needed closure as much as I did—a definitive answer to the question that would play on his mind. _Is she coming back?_

It was up to me to make that choice.

"Let's pretend..." My voice came out as a hoarse whisper. "... that we didn't have all this complicity between us. Let's pretend that this is normal." I stepped up to him and lifted my chin, pushing up onto tiptoes to brush my lip across his. "Let's try it on for size."

"Emmeline." He kissed me with a pained moan and dragged me down onto the couch, sliding his hands underneath my shirt to touch me, skin on skin. My finger brushed down the line of buttons on his over-worn shirt, then set to undoing them, one by one, so the bronze flesh I'd spent that first week itching to see lay open for me. I loved that he was naturally smooth and hairless, perfectly toned without trying. He was usually so warm to touch, but this time he was cold, almost shivering.

His thumbs hooked into my waistband and pulled my trousers down until I had to shift to kick them off along with my shoes. He lifted just enough to pull his own lower garments down for me to reach and stroke myself across his thick, throbbing penis. He was still hard, even now, still aching to be as inside me as physically possible. This was the only way we understood each other.

I pulled my underwear to one side and let him sink into me. There was an overwhelming sense of relief, regret, sadness and acceptance while I adjusted to his depth. This felt final. This was the last time we'd make love and once it was over, I'd go out of my way to make sure he didn't appear in my life again so neither of us tortured ourselves waiting for each other. He'd be just like every other man who could never match up to Hunter. Nameless. Faceless. I'd deny that I ever fell in love.

The finality made me miserable. Bowing my head, I pulled his against me and cradled it while I fought back the tears. I didn't want to let go.

"Emmeline?" Blaze's arms entombed me by the waist, pawing at me restlessly. "Why does it feel like you're saying goodbye to me?"

The tears came with my sigh. He looked up at me, eyes shining with tears of his own and my chin quivered. Despite being mostly covered, I'd never felt more naked. "Let's make it a good one, okay?"

We both cried the entire time we were joined together, both of us too scared to jump the precipice that would separate us forever. Wet kisses covered every inch of flesh during something so melancholic even the part of me that drove me to hurting myself snapped. I just didn't have it in me, not anymore. Whatever was left over when Blaze was gone, I would have to rebuild into some semblance of a human. There was nothing left of Emmeline White for me to piece back together because in the time I'd known him, he'd blown it all to hell. I didn't know who I was without him, but that was better than knowing who I'd be if I stayed. At least there was nothing of a husk to hate.

The sky outside darkened. The perpetual blackness in my lounge was a good physical manifestation of how we both felt knowing that the other was lost. We lay like any other couple while we still could, wrapped up in a tangle of half-dressed limbs. I could have stayed there all night, but it was no good for either of us to drag it out.

"I need to go to Daniel's." Blaze mumbled his acknowledgement but tightened his grip around me, face burrowed in the crook of my neck.

"Let me take you."

"I don't thi—"

"Please. It's on my way to..." I leaned back to look at him. "I have something I need to do." Exhausted, I closed my eyes and nodded. I could give him that much if he needed it. I'd already emotionally disconnected from the whole ridiculous affair. I could look at it that way now. I was that bored of feeling bad about it.

This was my usual response to taking a man to bed; this was my arctic chill and I was glad it had finally made an appearance. Blaze was now the same as the rest of them, at least that was what I'd tell myself to get through the days.

Reluctantly, I sat up and let the blood slowly trickle back into my legs before I headed for my bedroom to find some fresh clothes. Over my shoulder, I watched Blaze gather himself together and comb some order into his hair with his fingers. Knowing he had a real comb in a drawer in the bathroom, thoughts of coming home to all his stuff made me feel weighted like lead, forcing me to sit down. I couldn't stand to see it all there when he'd never use it again, but I couldn't watch him pack it all up now.

"Are you going to be, um... busy, for long?"

"What?"

"Your stuff..." That was as far as the conversation went, because he hurtled into the bedroom and rammed back into me with his old sexual aggression until I'd ruined yet another bed set and came violently with a garbled string of expletives. Clearly he hadn't gotten the memo that sex stopped after the break up. Ah, well, _c'est la vie._

It was late when we finally pulled up outside Daniel and Jonathan's place. I'd quickly learned that reminding Blaze that he'd be leaving my flat permanently just got me a good fucking so took full advantage of it. I'd have been a fool not to, since my usual routine was so shot to shit that I was seriously considering his old celibacy habit. Not knowing how I planned to move forward from the moment he drove off, I figured I'd just start playing life by ear, the way I should have been for years. The heartbreak might just have been the best thing that could have happened to me.

Blaze grabbed my hand when I moved to leave the car and crammed the emerald ring into my palm. "This promise still counts."

"Blaze, I don't—"

"Just the promise, Emmeline. You're not bending to meet my demands and I accept that, like I promised. I respect that you're being true to yourself."

"Okay..." I was actually sort of glad that he was giving it back to me. Considering all the truths it had provoked in such a short time, it felt almost like a lucky charm or some kind of talisman.

"I want to give you something. But I'll be clear and say that it's not a commitment, just a promise."

It was never about effectively collaring me or territorialism, just the promise. Not that he had a leg to stand on when it came to judging how I lived my life. By his own notion, it carried no responsibility to be permanently tied to him one day, just to honour a promise to accept myself.

I could do that. I could wear it and hold my head up proudly, saying that I'd walked away because it was the right thing to do.

"Thank you. I really am humbled by the thought and effort you put into getting this for me last week. Really."

"You know, it's still Emmyday." I laughed a little through admiration of his tenacity. The corners of his mouth curved up though his face remained sad. I felt bad for being able to find anything to laugh about when he was so low. "It was worth a shot."

"Tell me that you're going to be okay." He looked beyond despair and so dejected it scared me a little. Finally, I could appreciate how it had been for my family when they had to watch me be patched up and tube fed. I could even appreciate why Hunter had been so angry.

"I'm going to be fine, Emmeline. I can't have it my way. I get it. I need to go and do the right thing." _Good._ I hoped he'd man up and make his wife's last days happy and comfortable, and realise that she needed him to show her some compassion. She was more than just a bank account or a job, she was a victim who needed his care. "But don't think I've given up on you, Emmeline. Not for one minute. We still have plans for Christmas."

"Of course."

I humoured him for the sake of an easy escape and stole one last kiss before I climbed out of the car and watched him drive off. Our paths were no longer entwined, and no matter how brave a face I put on it, I'd be feeling the backlash for a long time. But I was proud of us both for doing the right thing, no matter how wrong it felt in that moment.

If it wasn't obvious that Daniel and Jonathan were gay just from looking at them, it would have been obvious from their super-modern and freakishly sterile looking loft. It had a masculine base despite the men who lived there, decorated in only pale blues, pebble greys and black surfaces, with their top line electronics as a focal point in the lounge and bulky black leather recliners for gaming.

But their girly side shone through in the large crackled glass vases holding long stemmed ornamental flowers and powerfully feminine canvases painted with oriental scenes of manga girls and geishas in bluescale.

I recognised the artwork; it was mine. Their home was like a living testament to my talent and I was still so proud to see it hanging up on every wall. The fact that they were there when I arrived unannounced like this was proof that they didn't just put them up for my benefit.

Daniel buzzed me into the building and rushed to greet me when I reached his front door. It was a welcome distraction to see him look so casual; barefoot in loose grey jogging bottoms and a _University Of London_ sweatshirt when he so loved to suit up.

"I can't believe that still fits you." I took the glass of wine he'd poured for me from his hand and drained it in one mouthful. "Please tell me you have more?"

"Of course. I was warned."

He followed me closely when I walked straight into his kitchen to find the rest of the bottle. I was glad to see the usual set up on his granite breakfast bar; several bottles of Chablis cooling in ice buckets, Belgian chocolates and _Chicago_ on Blu-Ray, my secret shame. Daniel was such a mummy's boy it was disgusting, still receiving an allowance like me but choosing to spend it on little luxuries he stockpiled for occasions like these. They usually came at the hands of Hunter, but a broken heart and wounded ego was what it was and healed the same way, however it was damaged.

"No Jonathan?"

"He's working late, but what the hell happened, Emmy?" Daniel refilled my glass while I held it, shaking his head as the wine reached the rim. "Your boss called Chris just after you left work and he called us all to bollock us for letting our guard down. It's been hours and we—... Oh." He smirked and sucked on his tongue to stifle a laugh. "You fucked him again, didn't you?"

I hung my head with mock contrition and pouted. "Yes, sir. Yes, I did. A lot."

"Oh Emmy. Never hump and dump."

"I didn't!" Setting my glass down on the breakfast bar, I held up my hands to declare my honesty. "I dumped _then_ humped. Every time I tried to remind him that he needed to take his stuff and leave, he countered by trying to lead me back onto the road to hell like Will o' the Wisp. Getting sacked off by a billionaire's daughter is an aphrodisiac, who the hell knew?"

And now I was talking about it to an impartial observer, I was aware that the situation fucking sucked. The epiphany that the only thing that had really made me happy in years had been a lie, and not even one I could bear to hold on to, finally set in now he was actually gone and the only way I'd see him was to hit a search engine, where I'd likely find all the pictures of us together.

Daniel rubbed my shoulder and pulled me by the wrist back into the lounge, where we plonked down onto the hefty leather couch, which was deceptively comfortable. I had my suspicions he'd put me there because it was waterproof. "Did he explain the wife?"

"Sort of..." I left him hanging for a minute, trying to figure out if there was any way to make it sound less awful than it was to, I don't know, defend Blaze's honour a little. There wasn't, so I lifted the glass to my lips and said it quickly before I sipped. "She's rich, dying and he's waiting for the pay out."

Daniel spluttered on his own wine and gaped at me, eyes boggling. "Wow. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I guess. I suppose I'm just being bent over and fucked by Murphy's Law as usual-; 'Everything that can go wrong will go wrong'. We were never meant to happen and fate wasn't going to let it. I just know why now."

But somehow, I didn't really feel like I'd gotten any closure at all. Blaze would still hang on and I'd still waste myself on 'what if's. What if I'd just stuck it out? What if I'd demanded he leave her? What if he made that choice himself? Would it ever make up for the fact he'd had the ill motive before?

We sat in a reflective silence for a while. Daniel pulled my legs over his and snuggled into me, letting me rest my head on his shoulder until our glasses were empty again. I could relate to that feeling of having the void filled and watching it slowly drain out again until my purpose was redundant, but unlike that glass, it wasn't as simple as refilling me with any old vintage. Even when I was at the point of suicide, I'd not felt quite so useless.

"Tell me I've done the right thing, Dan."

"You have, Emmy. I admire you for having the strength to do it. I think if Jonathan had thrown this kind of curve ball in my direction, I would have gone along with it and ended up getting chewed up by resentment."

"So why does it feel like a mistake?"

He saved his legs from underneath mine and padded into the kitchen for an ice bucket. "Because you love to love. It's just your nature. There are lovers, and fighters, and you ain't so hot at the fighting. Your love, once given, is selfless and unconditional, and for once you're doing something that's best for you. It was necessary but unusual." He threw the box of chocolates through to me and curled up on a foot stool with his legs crossed like Buddha. "Don't write off love yet. The world is your oyster, Emmeline Tudor—for that is your real name. And you know, while I may not be a huge fan of seafood, I do like having the option to be a pescatarian."

The metaphor made me smile. Friends and lovers would come and go, but I thanked my lucky stars that I had someone like Daniel as a permanent fixture in my life. Our matching rose quartz bracelets were _our_ promises to accept each other and we always had. In a strange totally crazy way, he was my first love before Hunter but I never had the driving inclination to sleep with him, even though we had given each other our virginities because we didn't want it to be too serious or with someone who didn't deserve it. Maybe that explained why my attitude to sex went on to be so cavalier. If it was, I didn't care. I loved Daniel with all my heart and I knew that the fact I was still around to tell him so gave him a lot of faith and hope.

"How did you get so wise, Dan?"

He frowned halfway through his bite into a chocolate and nodded his head towards a picture of him and Jonathan stood next to their unnecessarily large television. "Because I fell for the wrong man too, except the hot road into Hell was the lesser evil in my case."

That was true. It had been a massive scandal when their relationship was first discovered. The fallout was ugly. A lot of people lost respect for both men—respect that they were both still fighting to earn back. Of course Jonathan didn't have any mystery spouses hidden in the woodwork. He was just an older superior with a big heart. It made me happy to watch them prove everyone wrong when they said it was a mistake.

"I might be out of line in saying it, Emmy, but I'm glad you met Blaze. Like it or not, you've grown massively as a person because of him. I was scared to leave you on your own for a really long time, but I'm not anymore. He's been good for you, even if he has turned out to be a massive bastard."

"He has," I agreed, "so what the hell do I do without him?" How was I ever going to keep myself strong enough to not pick up the phone and call him when I was having a bad day? How could I stop myself from thinking about what might have been when I looked at that ring, which I'd stupidly put back on the same finger? Would I ever stop wondering if he was still thinking about me, and what the hell would I do if he really wanted me to honour our plans for Christmas?

"You live, Emmy. You have us to look out for you. Just tell us what you need us to do to go on living."

"Right now?" Daniel nodded, rolling the stem of his wine glass between his palms while he waited for my orders. "Right now, I really want to watch _Chicago_ and pretend that we don't know all the words."

He grinned. "You got it, _Roxy._ "

Lifeless grey eyes stared up at me, leaving only the look of dead panic. I was still smiling when I looked down at her and shoved the pillow back underneath her head. Her features still remained a mystery, but her eyes were just so... there, and I got a sense that they'd propelled all kinds of hate at me before.

She looked so small in that huge bed. One tiny life—what did it matter if she was gone? She deserved to die...

Gasping, I lurched out of the bed in Daniel and Jonathan's guest room and staggered across the hallway to the bathroom. It had a been a night of too much wine, too much chocolate and too many musicals to top a day of too much emotional abuse, and consequentially, I looked like shit. My eyes were like huge craters in my pallid face, and my lips were starting to chap again.

And so began another cycle of illness.

The guys didn't flinch at the sound of me retching, seduced into a coma by the cognac Jonathan had cracked open when he'd gotten home and heard the miserable tale of my failed relationship. I'd been right there with them in their alcoholic buzz up to a point but never quite managed to shake off that sense of uselessness.

I wished it wasn't so late, or early. It was still mostly dark outside, so I knew it must be in the small numbers of the AM and not really an appropriate time to take a shower. The nightmare had left me drenched in a cold sweat and it made me feel dirty, just like last time.

I was vaguely aware that I'd been having a lot of bad dreams recently, but didn't tend to remember them when I'd woke up. They were almost definitely the same one. There was no mistaking that triumphant flare of pride when my eyes first opened—the one I couldn't control but made me feel awful anyway.

With no methods of hygiene available, I slouched back into the lounge to attack rather than drink some more wine. If it made me sick again, I didn't care. I didn't want to be capable of cognitive thought for at least a fortnight, or until scientists could develop an effective way to selectively erase memories like in _Men In Black._ Whichever came first.

I made the stupid mistake of looking at my phone. The picture of Blaze and I was still the wallpaper, but that wasn't what felt like a dagger in my heart. He'd been trying to call me. A lot. For my own sanity, I dismissed the notification for his missed calls and erased all twelve of his text messages without reading them. If I let myself believe there was a way back, I was likely to take it.

I missed him, and my still throbbing muscles reminded me that he'd spent an afternoon making it clear that his place was inside me in every way. It was, and I'd probably feel him there for days, getting lost in the fantasies of how hotly we burned for each other, and how bone-shakingly awesome it would be if we found our ways back to each other.

Maybe I _had_ handled it wrong. Maybe I should have just been happy to have had the chance at all...

"Hi, this is Blaze. Obviously you're calling at a ridiculous hour and I'm sleeping so leave me a message and I'll call you back when this man's brain opens for business."

I called five times before I gave up and told myself that I needed to cut my losses. He's been upfront in telling me that he couldn't get attached and obviously had a damn good reason. This was never meant to get serious; it was always supposed to just be both of us getting our end away, and he was going to realise that too. We'd just gotten swept up in the drama, but in a few days, this would all look much better. We might even be friends again one day. Purely platonic friends. Another notch in my 'platonic penis' belt.

I sat and drank for hours, but didn't really feel like it was touching my sobriety. When the early rumble of traffic started to move outside, I sneaked out as quietly as possible with my sights set on a secluded café that kept stacks of books that people had left behind. Failing that, I'd buy a new book. I wanted to get lost in someone else's woeful romance.

When I'd sourced my caffeine fix, I tried to distract myself with as much banal bullshit as possible to clear my mind before I started reading. I logged into my email account on my mobile phone and went through the tedious task of deleting all the junk mail. Depressingly, that left me only with emails from Hunter with various 'URGENT' titles. _Idiot._ He thought anything was urgent when it came from his mouth/fingers. I counted through all the change in my purse, taking out the copper change for the charity box. That was my good deed for the day.

It was around the time I was sorting through my old receipts that I was reminded of the last time I'd declared a good deed done.

A faded black and dog eared business card covered in gold font stared up at me from between the scraps of paper. A business card for one Calloway Ryan of New York—the sexy suit from Oxford street. What was it with these gorgeous men and their equally as impressive names? I hadn't made good on my promise to call him and I still had his money clip...

And then I found the creased wedding invitation from Hunter stuffed into a credit card compartment. That invitation to Japan was still open. I knew the language, had the money and could contact the right people...

Or I could swallow my pride and throw myself into the lava pits. The moment I looked at my phone and saw Blaze's face staring up at me was the same moment my mind was made up. I could sit around moping or I could start to make some big changes in my life—productive this time. I'd been offered so many opportunities and never taken advantage of them, and running away was my forte. It was my tendency to build bridges to replace those I'd burned, but now it was time to rebuild some of those that weren't completely destroyed.

And if I had to sell a little of my soul to get there, it was a cost I'd gladly pay. Blaze wasn't the only one who could find a way into an impenetrable vessel and make changes on the inside that pushed their way out.

I felt invincible when I made the call I swore I'd never make. He sounded shocked but pleasantly surprised when he answered, his voice bright, so I knew I hadn't woken him.

_"Emmeline, are you all right?"_ I wasn't, not quite yet.

"I'm... Look, I know this is unexpected and I probably have no right to ask, but—"

"Just tell me what you need. I'd do anything for you, you know that."

"I need your help."

Calmly, I explained my plans and justified them completely so he had no reason to think that I was acting on a whim. He agreed that what I wanted was sensible and not unreasonable. We decided to meet in the café I was in to discuss the finer details and set a solid plan for the foreseeable future.

When the taxi arrived to take us back to the flat, I left Emmy White behind with my half-drunk cup of coffee. I left her there with all my behaviours and predispositions that had made me become such a weak person. I left her with my morals and my idea of what was 'right'.

I left as Emmeline Tudor, mega-mogul's daughter and heiress to billions, and my life had just begun.

#  acknowledgements

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NOTEABLE MENTIONS

Jaguar

BMW

Mercedes

Brokeback Mountain

Star Trek

'Misery loves company.'

From Stephen King's 'Misery'

Mack the Knife

Frank 'Ol Blue Eyes' Sinatra

Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

Fallout Boy

'Knowing is half the battle.'

From G.I. Joe

Lisbeth (Salander)

From Steig Larsons 'The Girl Who Played With Fire'

Weak

Skunk Anansie

Aston Martin

Cygnet

Gremlins

Optimus Prime

From 'Transformers'

Bentley

'Knowledge is power'

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Panic! At The Disco

'To fear love is to fear life.'

From Bertrand Russell

Ironman

DC Comics

Marvel Comics

Stan Lee

Jar Jar Binks

James Cameron

'I was wishing that I could believe you were real. And I was wishing that I wasn't afriad'

From 'The Twilight Saga's character, Bella Swan

Glory Box

Portishead

Don't Know Why

Norah Jones

University of London

Roxy (Hart)

From 'Chicago'

So here I am, on the day of my twenty-fifth birthday, sending this tale out to you. Of all of the books I've written, I think 'Blazed' reminds me the most of my friends. I don't think any of my close friends have a good firm history of mental health. They all have something that makes them a little broken. From borderline personality disorder to depression to pathological liars, I've had it all in my life one way or another. And they are all beautiful. My bitches; you are my Big Bang. Nobody could ask for a better bunch of friends who cry hard and laugh harder. Your loyalty to your fellow fuck-ups goes above and beyond.

Thank you for the alcohol. Thank you for the coffee. Thank you for the dry wit and sarcasm. Thank you for humouring me when I drivel on about my books. Thank you for being my secular circle of social rejects, nay, my coven. And thanks for the memes. Seriously.

I also have to send some serious kudos out to my hardcore fan Lou Turner, who's got a lot of people to join in the craziness, and Louise Ebdon, who's given me some pretty wicked compliments. And of course, thanks as ever to my proof-readers, Michelle and Lindsay.

You have all played a part in my ability to look back over being twenty-four and honestly say 'last year kind of rocked'.

Now if I could only find one of these fabulous fictional men of mine for real and make it big by twenty-six.

Corri Lee, 7th March 2013

#  author information

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