Pyromancist (26 page)

“Clelia, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“What then?” Her voice shook. “To question
me? To lock me up?”

He shook his head. “To save you.”

Her eyes widened. “From what?”

“It’s not from what. It’s from whom.”

She stared at him with her pretty, big eyes.
“Why?”

“Because of this.” He bent down slowly so as
not to frighten her, watching her expression. This time she didn’t
flinch. He pressed his lips against hers lightly, forcing himself
to pull away. He had to close his eyes to process the enormity of
his relief at feeling her, very real, very sweet.

“It was you all along,” he said. “Why didn’t
you tell me about the graveyard?”

She lifted her chin. “Are you going to kill
me?”

“Is that what you still believe? All I can
think about is touching your skin to mine, of tasting every inch of
you, of being inside you–just to prove to myself that you’re real.
It hurts me that you can even think that.”

“Is that why you’re here, then? To fuck
me?”

“No. I’ll first make love to you, as you
deserve for your first time, and then I’ll fuck you senseless for
the rest of your life. I’m here for
you,
Clelia.” He looked
around, angry to find her in such a state of poverty. “Why are you
here?”

“You know why I ran.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m referring to
this hellhole. Is this where you live?”

“I had no money when I came here. Work in
this country is scarce. This is what I can afford.”

“And the bar?”

“What about the bar?”

“Did the men touch you?”

She looked away, her cheeks flushed. “I
didn’t allow them to.”

“But they wanted to?” he said, feeling his
anger escalate.

“Some. Yes.”

He would fucking kill each one of them.

“Did they look at you?”

“I was too busy working to notice,” she bit
out, glaring back at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the
graveyard?”

“I thought it might be painful for you, that
you wouldn’t want me to know. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just
wanted you to have the bullet so you’d remember how valuable your
life was every time you looked at it.”

“What was painful was for me to find out that
my vision was real, and that you let me believe what I had found in
that cemetery was only a dream.”

“Josselin,” she said, “it was only a
dream.”

“No. I want it to be real. I want you,
Clelia. I’ve come over a continent in search of you.”

“You don’t know what I am.”

She covered her face with her hands.

He sat down on the bed and gently pulled her
hands away. “I know what you are. You are an angel. You are a
pyromancist. And you are mine.”

She stared at him.

“I want to keep you safe, Clelia. And I want
to claim you.”

“Claim me?”

He moved forward, wrapping his arms around
her, pulling her against his chest. “Like this,” he said, gently
kissing her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, and her lips.

He closed his eyes when he tasted her mouth,
the shape and the warmth that were imprinted in his mind, once more
real. He deepened the kiss to feel her respond to the caress, and
nothing could have gladdened him more.

Hugging her tighter, he felt her heart skip,
and drank it in greedily, like a starving man. He remembered the
shape of her breasts under his palm, the feel of the tight skin
over her tummy, and he wanted to become heady on her taste and
scent, wanted to make her scream with pleasure so much that it was
almost all he could focus on. But not like this. Not here, in this
ugly place, where it wasn’t safe, where she had suffered.

He pulled away from their embrace and smiled
at her soft moan. He nipped gently at her lips.

“Can you trust me, Clelia?”

Her eyes became clouded. “I don’t know,
Josselin. After everything that’s happened...”

It was a stake in his heart, but one he
deserved. “I can be patient. I’ll work hard at winning your trust.
But for now, you have to believe me when I tell you that you’re not
safe. You’re in danger from both Cain and Lupien.”

“I know that, Josselin,” she whispered. “Why
do you think I’m hiding?”

“Let me make you safe.”

“But you work for Cain.”

“If I lose you, I lose everything. Don’t you
see? Not even the team will matter.”

“Then he doesn’t know you’re here?”

“No one knows where I am.” He took her hand.
“The only way for you to be safe is to face Lupien and to fight for
your freedom.”

She sucked her breath in. “I can’t fight
someone like that. I can’t even start a fire. Since the boat ...
I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

“Your talent has regressed. I’ll help you.
We’ll do it together. You’re stronger than you think. It’s the only
way to save you ... us. If we can destroy Lupien, and by doing so,
prove that you’re pure and that your heart can’t be twisted, Cain
won’t have to eliminate you.”

He felt her trembling under his hands. “I
don’t know, Josselin.”

“There’s no other way. And we don’t have a
lot of time.”

She bit her lip. “Where do we start? How am I
supposed to do this?”

“We’ll start by getting you out of this
dungeon.” He stroked her hair. “You’re mine. It took me too long to
realize it, and I have a lot of lost time to make up for. We belong
together.” His fingers tightened around hers. “Please give me a
chance to show you how good we can be together, how much I love
you.”

“You love me?” she whispered, as if it
weren’t possible.

“Yes, little witch. More than you can ever
know.”

He got up and held out his hand, wanting her
to come to him freely. This time, she gave him her sweet, innocent
trust when she placed her hand in his.

He pulled her to her feet gently, eager to
take her away from all that resembled her suffering, but when he
moved toward the door, she said, “I should have a shower. I came
home from work only a few hours ago. I’m still dressed in my
working clothes. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll clean up and
pack.”

“No,” he said, more harshly than what he
intended. “You can shower at my hotel. And I don’t want you to have
things that will remind you of this.” He motioned around. “I
brought your things. You ‘forgot’ them when you left.”

Chapter
Sixteen

Josselin took her back to his suite at the
Westcliff. He watched as she looked around the lounge and bedroom
that were ten times the size of the room in which she had lived for
the past four months, and he clenched his fists. To hide his
turbulent emotions, he walked to the dressing room and pulled open
the sliding door of the cupboard.

“Your things are all here,” he said.

Clelia followed him and flipped through the
hangers, touching each piece of clothing. He had also brought the
contents of her backpack, but had replaced the old rucksack with a
leather bag. Her hand rested for longer on the silk coat.

“Were you so sure of finding me?”

He took her hands and turned her to him. “I
wasn’t as sure as I was determined, Clelia. I had to find you.”

“What now?”

He smiled. “You asked me that in France, too,
but then I didn’t know.”

“And now you do?”

“Yes.” He knew with absolute clarity. “I need
to take you home.”

She pulled her hands free and took a step
back. “It’s not safe.”

“Clelia, listen to me. Lupien will stop at
nothing. He won’t stop until he’s found you.”

He could see the fear in her eyes and it
pulled at his heart.

“What will he do when he finds me?”

Josselin didn’t want to add more to her
burden, but she deserved the truth. She needed to be prepared, to
be ready to face the inevitable.

He took a deep breath. “He will want your
gift of fire. It will add to his power. The only way he can take it
from you is to corrupt you, and then to kill you.”

Her lips parted, but no sound escaped. A
little frown spoiled her perfect brow.

Josselin caressed her cheek with the back of
his hand. “Trust me, Clelia. Please. Please let me help you.”

“I don’t even know if I can do it–if I can
start a fire. Unless it was I...” Her voice broke.

Josselin folded his arms around her and
cradled her head against his chest. When he felt her silent tears
soak his shirt, he pulled away, distressed, and lifted her chin
with his finger.

“What is it, Clelia?”

She wiggled from his embrace and walked to
the balcony doors, facing outside. “I don’t know if it was me.”

He frowned. “If it was you who did what?”

She flung around. “Me who started the
fires.”

“Of course it wasn’t. What are you talking
about?”

Her bottom lip trembled. He saw her biting
down onto it, and then she lifted her eyes like a silent
apology.

“Clelia, what is it?”

“A month before you came, the same time that
the fires started, I started having a dream, the same dream, and
whenever I dreamt it, I walked in my sleep.”

“You sleepwalked?”

“Yes. Sometimes I woke up in a different room
of the house, but sometimes ... sometimes I woke up someplace else,
like in the woods.”

He looked at her in disbelief. He suddenly
understood, but his main concern wasn’t for the fires. It was for
her safety and what could have happened to her.

“I begged Erwan to lock me into my room at
night, but he couldn’t get it over his heart. He told me it wasn’t
me. Said I had set fire to things only twice, when I was three
years old, and never again.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh,
Josselin, what if it was me?”

He couldn’t stand her agony. He crossed the
floor and grabbed her to him, pressing her precious body against
his, feeling the sobs shaking her.

She pushed her palms against his chest,
putting some distance between them, and sensing her need to
continue her confession, he let go.

“I wanted to go to the authorities, to hand
myself over, but Erwan said it wouldn’t accomplish anything, that
they’d only use me as a scapegoat and brand me as guilty without
seeking the truth. He wanted me to get away, to hide for a few
months until the dust had settled. I didn’t know what we were going
to do afterward.

“Erwan knew he was a suspect. The mayor, one
of his closest friends, found out about it and leaked the
information to him. It wasn’t Erwan who started the fires, either.
As much as I doubted and wanted to face the fact that it could have
been me, he maintained that it was someone else. Erwan said it was
best that we both go into hiding, asking me to take his boat and
disappear for a while. I was on my way to the jetty to do exactly
that when you arrived.”

Josselin shuddered. The fires were malicious.
He sensed it when he visited each site. It had never occurred to
him that she would worry herself over it, believing she was capable
of something like that.

“Clelia, it wasn’t you,” he said gently. “It
could never be. You’re not capable of such evil. I knew it when I
tasted your blood, and even without tasting your blood, I always
knew that it could never be you. We’re sure now that it was
Lupien.”

“But why?” She chewed her lip. “You truly
believe that Lupien burned down innocent people’s homes just to
draw me out?”

“It’s a way of awakening a regressed
art.”

“Is that why you couldn’t pick it up from my
blood?”

“Yes.”

“But how could Lupien have known this if he’s
never even met me?”

“I honestly don’t know, Clelia. But Lupien is
a very clever man, from what I’ve managed to learn about him. We’re
also concerned that his motive for setting a whole village on fire
over the course of a month wasn’t only to draw out a virgin
firestarter. I suspect he also knew that it would draw out his
enemy–Cain.”

“So he would have been able to steal my art
and to launch an attack on Cain, hoping to kill him too? Two birds
with one stone?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t he kill Cain?”

“He tried to kill
us
, remember? The
shooting. It was an effort to get to you. Thank God, it failed.
That’s why I had to hide you, why I took you to my house, and when
Cain realized that Lupien was lurking somewhere, to the safe house.
Then you escaped and Lupien disappeared.” He touched her cheek.
“He’s still after you, Clelia. I’m extremely lucky to have found
you first.”

“I thought...”

Josselin kissed her tenderly. “Clelia. You’re
too good to do anything bad, even in your sleep.”

“If you want me to face Lupien, does that
mean I’m going to have to learn how to use my gift?”

“Yes, darling, you are going to have to
master your art.” He took her hands again. “But I’ll be here. You
won’t have to do it alone.”

“I’m not even sure I can do it.”

“You will. Under the right circumstances, it
will surface.”

“What are the right circumstances?”

“A life-threatening situation. Protecting the
ones you love.”

“Oh, God, Josselin, I’m not that brave.”

“Of course you are,” he said, giving her a
reassuring smile. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Despite it all, despite what I am, you still
want to be with me?”

He pulled her to him. “I only want to be with
you. Always.” He kissed her tenderly. “Please allow me to love you.
It will make me the happiest man alive.”

She smiled at him, giving him hope and
warming his heart.

“I love you so much, Josselin de Arradon. I
loved you long before you knew I existed.”

His soul leaped. He no longer felt broken,
hopeless, and twisted. He was whole, and worthy of the love of
someone as beautiful as she.

“You’re wrong, little witch,” he whispered.
“I always knew you existed. I stayed away to save you from the
darkness of my soul.”