Blazed (20 page)

"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 comfo
rt 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 mout
h 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. "Ch
rist, 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. He'd 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 al
l, 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 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?