Page 13 of Blaze
In a crescendo, Blaze captures the man’s hand when he tries a last desperate strike with the knife. Blaze’s strength overwhelms his opponent, and he redirects the knife up. I slap my hands over my mouth as Blaze delivers a devastating uppercut with the hand, driving the knife into the soft flesh of the attacker’s jaw and into his neck. He lets go of the man, sending him crashing to the unforgiving ground. Blaze stands over him, but the man is dying. His blood is black and silver in the moonlight, his hands digging at the dry dirt, and all I can hear are the wet, strangled gasps. Until he’s finally still and quiet.
The dust settles, and the desert is quiet except my breathing. Blaze turns to me, his face the same strange visage. He waits, watching me with those flame-filled eyes, a fire-kissed titan in the night. I take him in, broad-chested, smoke and strange flickers of flame coming from his shoulders and skull. He isn’t human. Logically, I know that there are supernatural creatures living among humans but I’ve never been exposed to them. Or if I had, I never knew.
Sydney’s words come back to me, the thing she’d called him
“You’re a... demon?” I ask.
“I am.”
His voice sends goosebumps down my arms and legs, and I bite the inside of my lip. He’s more than ten feet away from me and yet it feels as if I’m surrounded by him. He radiates strength and danger in a way that I wish I could bottle and sell. I’d make a killing.
I look at the dead man again and swallow hard. “Thank you, Blaze.” The breeze whispers around my bare legs and I tug my thin, borrowed jacket tighter, gasping when my hand throbs.
“He hurt you?”
Blaze crosses the distance between us in a heartbeat, his face hard. But when he wraps his hand around my forearm, it’s a gentle caress. The heat from his hands spreads through the jacket’s material and I lean closer, drawn to the comfort of his heat as the desert cools. I must be in shock still, if all I can focus on is how being pressed up against Blaze feels as perfect as sliding into a hot bath. The therapy blogs I read would say I’m compartmentalizing and will probably freak out about Blaze being a demon later when it’s safe. Right now, this demon protected me from a man intent on dragging me back to Riccardo, so my brain is placing him in the “safe” category for now.
“I think I might have broken something when I punched him,” I answer when I find my voice.
Blaze cradles my hand, and our size difference makes so much more sense now. If we pressed our hands together to compare, I don’t think my fingertips would even go past the middle of his fingers. Enzo was bigger than me and he liked to remind me how much stronger he was. Blaze doesn’t lord his size over me, but doesn’t seem to try to make himself smaller for my comfort’s sake. Watching him inspect my hand carefully, the strange flames growing dimmer, I realize his size doesn’t intimidate me because it’s just who he is. He doesn’t seem to consider his size a power against other people, it’s just... him.
Blaze runs two fingertips over my knuckles, my skin scuffed from the punch, and I wince. His eyes meet mine. “You’re just bruised.” He doesn’t lower my hand. “Now I think it’s time you tell me what the hell is going on.”
I try to pull away but he holds on, not letting me go. “I can’t,” I protest, shaking my head. “I just need to get out of here. It’s not safe for anyone.”
“Why?” His voice is normal again and he tugs me against his chest, locking his other arm around my lower back. “What are you running from, Claire?”
At the false name, my eyes water and the control I’ve been trying to keep starts to crumble. “My name isn’t even Claire,” I whisper, ashamed and unable to meet his eyes.
I expect him to push me away, to call me a liar and a betrayer and a bitch. I don’t expect him to rub the back of my hand with his thumb and say, “So, what is it?”
When I meet his eyes, he raises a brow. His expression is still hard, half of his face hidden in the dark while the other half is illuminated by the moon.
“Kennedy. Claire is my middle name.”
“So, Kennedy, why do you have men after you, and why are you driving a car that isn’t yours?”
My stomach drops as if it’s filled with concrete, and the urge to run and hide almost overwhelms me. My throat is drier than the desert around us, and I can’t bring myself to give him an answer.
He cocks his head when I don’t answer. It’s not that I don’t want to. God, I have the overwhelming urge to spill everything and to let someone else take care of all my troubles. But I can’t let anyone have that much control over me, not again. I have no idea who Blaze really is, and I thought I’d known Enzo before he turned on me.
When I remain silent, Blaze sighs and releases me only to turn me back towards the clubhouse glowing a short distance away. His hand is an iron shackle on my upper arm, and I’ve no choice but to walk with him back to the party. Blaze doesn’t give the dead man a second look.
We’re silent the whole way back. I have no idea what Blaze is thinking, and he looks completely normal by the time we reach the edge of the clubhouse's glow. I swallow hard as we walk around towards the courtyard, my feet starting to drag.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
Blaze stops and looks down at me, his face blank. “Reaper decides.” He seems to hesitate, then he continues. “If you tell us what’s going on, it might change his mind. He doesn’t like trouble, but he doesn’t like assholes. Well, assholes that think they can get away with shit like hurting others.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to respond, forcing me to walk again. Not that I can give an answer with how dumbfounded I am. Could these people give me the chance to escape? Even if they did, it wouldn’t stop my brother-in-law. Riccardo will only stop coming after me when he’s dead.
When I left the courtyard earlier, it was filled with music and laughter in the sunset. Now, as Blaze guides me to the entrance, the air is quiet except for the sounds of crickets and the breeze as it winds through the sparse vegetation and flutters the hanging banners against the adobe walls. When we cross into the courtyard, there’s a clear division between the Knights of Hades and three new men, two wearing the same black shirt and cargo pants as my attacker and the middle one wearing an ill-fitting black suit. There’s no sign of Sydney and Lacy—or any other woman actually—and the doors to the room where Blaze kissed me are shut with two bikers standing in front.
Only a few people look at Blaze and me as we enter; one of them is the man in the suit. He grins, and I’m all too familiar with his expression. I’ve seen it on so many men while I lived with Enzo. Men who are slimy and too confident in their power, the ones who think they own the world and that a woman should lick his boots on command. I instinctively step closer to Blaze, and he squeezes my arm reassuringly. Together, we walk towards the Knights, who move out of our path without ever taking their eyes off the intruders, until we’re beside the man I assume is Reaper. Chainz is on the other side of him, but other than a gruff look, he doesn’t pay me attention.
“Ah, there she is,” the man says, his hands spread wide like a game show host. He looks at me appreciatively and my skin crawls.
Blaze isn’t holding onto me anymore, but a part of me wants to hide in his arms. This low-rate thug with a beer belly, thinning hair, and a weak jaw is no match for Blaze and I don’t look away. If I did, it’d just make the cretin happy.
