Blazed(23)

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 red 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 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 here 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."

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 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 fourth century 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 frontman 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. "Alright 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.