Blazed

chapter One

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 kind of 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 and 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 that was 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 off 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, an independent pun of a 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 struck 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 cautiously 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 snuck 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 arrived 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. From this sick deception, he forged new 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, and without his knowledge, 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 week living off week old takeaway leftovers 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 its black tinted windows and narcissistically 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 and 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 worsened 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 loaned a 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 singlehandedly 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 to make the 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, Emmy. 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 that creaked a little under the strain. I'd sooner go 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 the 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. 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, and 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 its advantages.

"YOUR ROUND." CHRIS smirked at me across our usual table in 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 the ones in my toes. More likely the ones 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 that 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 eaten her weight in the brightly coloured cupcakes 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 beast of a man with a stocky build who might just have had an unfulfilled wanderlust to rival my own. He too craved the 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 whole 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 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 hard wired 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 snuck 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 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— the woman 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 an indignation 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 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 worthy or 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.

His own level of 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— needs 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 noticing, 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 just how memorable.