Caress of Flame (14 page)

She glanced at Flare and almost swallowed her heart. She’d never seen anyone look so angry in her life. More than a little intimidated, she looked away again and continued before he could say anything.

“The better part of a year passed. My stepdad raped me, on average, every couple of months and it just got to where I didn’t even bother fighting him anymore. I just laid there and took it and didn’t tell anybody what was going on.”

The temperature in the room was alarmingly high and growing hotter by the second.

“One afternoon I was doing my homework and my mom stormed into the room.

‘What the hell is this?’ she shrieked, waving my journal in my face, slapping me with it.

How she’d found it, buried deep in my closet to keep it hidden, I’ll never know. But she had found it and she had read it.” Isis paused. “She didn’t believe me,” she whispered at last.

Isis trudged on, ignoring the intense heat baking off Flare. “I took a good beating from her that day. She was smaller than me, I could have fought her off, but I loved my mother. I don’t blame her for the things she did to me because I know she was sick. But it was still a shock when she didn’t believe the words I had written. I had envisioned my mother championing me over and over again, but when it came down to it, she just didn’t believe me at all and so she beat me.”

Isis wiped the sweat from her brow and reached for the glass of water on the nightstand. She drank a few sips before continuing. “My stepfather took every chance he could to tell me how no one anywhere would ever believe my story. He even convinced me of that. So I closed myself off from the world. I let go of all my friendships at school and I dropped out of all my extracurricular activities. When my stepfather was raping me I learned to leave my body, to let my mind just fly away from what was happening. It was the only thing that saved my sanity.”

A teardrop landed on her hand and Isis put her fingers on her cheeks in surprise.

She hadn’t even realized she was crying. “Time passed. Things didn’t change. Then one day, a few days after I’d turned seventeen, I came home early from school. I had a migraine—probably from all the stress I was under—and I had left school during one of 7our breaks. I didn’t think anyone was home. I went to my room and started to do my homework when I heard some strange sounds.

“I thought someone was fighting. I could hear grunting and moaning. I followed the sound to my parents’ bedroom. I didn’t think about what I was doing—I had never been allowed in my parents’ bedroom before—but I opened the door anyway and looked inside.”

Isis’ tears were falling fast now and there was nothing she could do to stem their flow. “My stepdad was having sex with my fifteen-year-old sister. At first I thought it was rape and something snapped inside me. I launched myself at him, throwing him from the bed. That crazy strength you saw in me the other night came out in me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I pounded my stepfather’s face into mush. I broke his nose, his jaw and I crushed his cheekbone before my sister pulled me off him. She was actually protecting him—can you believe that shit?”

She sniffed and was stunned when Flare gently offered her a soft, beige handkerchief. She took it gratefully and wiped her tears away. “My sister yelled at me that the sex had been completely consensual. I couldn’t believe it. I told her so and she just laughed at me.

“‘I’ll fuck him better than you ever could,’ she told me with this awful, sneering look on her face. I’ve never felt so much despair as I did when she said that to me. I lunged for my unconscious stepfather again but Maria got in the way. I couldn’t stop myself in time. I hit her in the shoulder and broke it. She screamed and cried and I was mortified at what I had done, my blinding rage disappearing like a puff of smoke.

Whether she liked me or not, she was my sister and I loved her. It killed me to know that I had hurt her.

“Needless to say, when my mother got home, I told her everything and once again she refused to believe me. But she couldn’t ignore the condition of her husband and daughter—I had beaten them both—and this only made her angry as hell. So she told me to grab my stuff and go. She said she never wanted to see or hear from me again. I did as she said and left my old life behind that very night.

“I lived out of my car at first. I quit school so I could work to get a roof over my head, and I spent each day in a daze of shock. This went on for about four months until I saw my sister and stepdad in the mall one afternoon. They were holding hands and going into Victoria’s Secret—that’s a lingerie store, by the way, in case you didn’t know.

They were laughing and happy. My stepdad’s face was still bruised in places and I know for certain he’d had to have reconstructive surgery to fix his cheekbone. Watching them together that way did something to me. I didn’t let them see me. I just left and went out to my car.”

Isis met Flare’s gaze and it was so hot with rage it could have burned the clothes from her body. “I sat in my car for about an hour, just thinking about my life and what I needed to do to change it. To forget the pain my family had caused me. I cranked my car and left the state—I didn’t even gather my stuff first. I just drove until I ran out of gas money. I took odd jobs, never making any friends of course—I hurt too much for 7that. Sometimes I lived in my car, other times I would rent small places to stay in for a while until the money became so tight I had to leave again. I lived that way for many years. Running from my past, yet haunted by it all the time.”

Isis laughed ironically. “One day I just decided that the best way for me to make money was by using my body. But not for prostitution—that I couldn’t ever have done, no matter how desperate times became for me. I got a job at The Pink Pit and worked every night until I started to gain a following. The money was good from the beginning, but it kept rolling in and I kept on earning it. It was the best job I’d ever had.

“That was the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place since I left home,” she admitted.

“Though I’ve tried, I can’t rationalize why I’m still so traumatized by my past life. I just am. The pain of my memories makes me a little crazy sometimes. I fight it, but I just can’t escape it.

“I’ve always kept my addresses and phone numbers secret because I didn’t want there to ever be a chance that my family might try to find me and succeed. But then, last week, this note came to my P.O. box.” She handed him the letter her sister had written.

Flare studied the envelope for a moment then pulled the sheet of paper out. He read it in silence and Isis remembered the words as clearly as if
she
held the note and not him.

Dearest sister,

Just thought you’d like to know that Dad…I mean Jeff…and I are getting married. I’m
pregnant with our first child, isn’t that lovely?

Mom died cursing your name. I’m sure you didn’t know that, so I’m glad to tell you.

Toward the end all she could talk about was how much she hated you. Hated that you even came
from her blood. She never once believed you, you realize that? She never even suspected anything
between me and Jeff either. It was so much fun to mess around behind her crazy-ass back! Ah, I
almost miss those days.

We don’t miss you around here though. I certainly never have. But I knew I just had to tell
you my happy news. See, I told you I could satisfy him more than you. Now he’s all mine. If the
world is kind you’ll be so jealous you won’t know what to do. I’m betting that you’ll just cry like
a baby and retreat into whatever little hole you’ve wriggled your way into. You were always
such a wuss.

Anyway, things are going great for us. We fuck like bunnies and with Mom gone now we
don’t even have to hide it anymore, isn’t that great? I hope things are terrible for you and that
this letter hurts the hell out of you.

Your loving sister,

Maria

7“How you have suffered,” he whispered, voice unsteady. Hands shaking with rage, Flare crumpled the letter in his hand. Isis cried out and reached for it, but he held it beyond her reach. He eyed her stonily. “You will never read this shit again,” he told her.
“Never!”
He gritted the words out.

“It’s the only letter I have from my family,” she said.

“And it will be the only one you ever get. Isis, why do you punish yourself by keeping this horrible thing close to you?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted with a sob.

Flare eyed her knowingly, a fierce rage simmering below the surface of his gaze.

“You blame yourself for how your sister turned out.”

Isis shook her head, knowing the lie for what it was.

“You
do
,” he insisted. “I know you. You’re thinking that if you had done something—anything—differently, you might have changed things. But don’t you see, Isis, there was never anything you could do. You were only a child and you were alone.”

“Maybe if I had gone to my mother in person, picked a time when she was calm, maybe if she hadn’t read my journal, she would have believed my words instead.”

Flare’s jaw was clenched tight. “Your mother was mad. Nothing could have saved your sister. She didn’t want to be saved. There was absolutely nothing you could have done to change things.”

“I don’t believe that,” she admitted.

“Then I will teach you to believe it,” Flare said, beyond rage. He ripped up the letter and envelope and tossed the bits of paper about the room. “This never happened,” he said.

“You can’t change the past,” she told him.

“No you can’t. But you
can
forget. You can fill your life with such love and laughter and wonder that your memories will fly away like dust in the wind. You never have to think about this horror again.”

Isis bowed her head and looked at her hands. They were clenched into tight fists, her nails cutting her palms. She deliberately relaxed them. “I have thought of something that might help me do that,” she said cautiously.

Flare lifted her head up with a gentle hand beneath her chin. “What is that?”

Her gaze met his. “I want to be a warrior. Like you.”

7
Chapter Eleven

“Before you say no,” she rushed before he could respond, “hear me out, okay?”

Flare sat back a little and motioned for her to continue.

“I’m strong—you’ve shown me that. You can teach me to become stronger. I can fight the Daemons alongside you just like Cady and the other human women do. I’m not afraid. And I want to be a part of something important for once in my life.”

“What you ask is difficult. I would have to ask my superior—”

“Oh, I’ve already asked him,” she broke in, unconcerned.

Flare’s eyes went wide. “The Generator was here?
Today
?” he asked with shock.

Isis frowned. “The Generator? I don’t know what you mean. He said his name was Pulse.”

“Pulse?” he said, dumbfounded. “He’s never asked me to call him by his true name,” he mused as if more to himself than her.

“He and I already talked about it. Pulse says I can join your army, become a fighter for your cause.”

Flare’s eyes blazed. “You talked of this to him before you talked to me?”

“Well, I figured I should, since I was given the opportunity. He is your superior officer or whatever. I’d have to ask him eventually.”

“What else did you speak of?” he asked in a tight voice.

“Not much else. He just asked me a few questions and then left. It was a really brief visit, thank goodness. He’s really…intimidating,” she admitted with a short laugh.

“Perhaps. Yet you could trust him to the ends of the Earth,” Flare said loyally, echoing her earlier thoughts. It was obvious by the tone in his voice that he greatly admired Pulse.

Eyeing her in such a way that Isis couldn’t guess at his thoughts, Flare asked in a deceptively gentle tone, “Did you speak of
anything
else?”

“No,” she assured him.

Flare watched her carefully for a moment then nodded his head. “Are you sure about wanting to be a warrior?”

“Absolutely,” Isis said, definitively relieved that he wasn’t arguing with her about her decision. “But I’ll need your help with that. I don’t really know what to do.”

“I will guide you always,” he promised. “You can count on that.”

7Isis looked at him, studying the planes of his handsome face. She’d thought this moment would bring fear and uncertainty, but it did not. She had never been surer of herself. “I love you,” she admitted softly, taking the plunge.

A halo of flame appeared around his head and his eyes reflected the heat of that fire. The temperature in the room soared until the very air was almost too thick to breathe. “Say that again,” he told her, his voice thick and rough. His gaze locked with hers and refused to let go. He reached for her, taking her into his arms. “Say it again.”

He repeated his command into the curve of her neck and shoulder.

“I love you, Flare.” His skin was so hot as he held her, but Isis welcomed the heat. It proved to her that she had definitely gotten his attention with her admission.

“Oh, Isis,
baby
,” he said and claimed her mouth with his, tightening his arms about her.

Flare lowered her back onto the bed, kissing her so deeply that he stole her very breath away and gave his own in return. Tasting him, she ran her tongue alongside his, sucking on it gently. His flavor was wild, swamping her senses and making her reel like a drunkard in his arms. She took his full bottom lip between her teeth and tugged gently, playfully.

Growling, Flare let one of his Foils come out of the tip of his finger. It was glowing red hot and sharper than any sword. Taking great care, he traced his Foil down her front, slicing her dress, bra and panties so that her clothes fell away instantly. The frayed edges of the clothing were smoking and Flare pulled them away from her completely, tossing the ruined material to the floor.

He turned back to her, seeing her glorious nudity and nearly coming undone from the beautiful image. He tamped down on his raging need and put his hot lips on hers once again, letting his hands wander freely over her, concentrating on her breasts, belly and labia until she was moaning uncontrollably into his mouth and writhing beneath him.