Tease Me (Teased and Broken Book 1) (7 page)

“Daniel!” I squealed, excited to see him.
 

Aaron nodded. “Yep! He’s pissed off as hell at me for calling him at this hour, but he has agreed our asses need to
not
be anywhere near Thornton Darko and his brand of crazy right now. Except you still plan to stay here don’t you?” His grey eyes narrowed on my face.
 

“Thorn made it clear I was no longer invited,” I shrugged. “Might not be good to attract the anger of a man like that.”

“Indeed,” my friend muttered coldly, clearly still disappointed that I had even contemplated staying here with him in the first place. Then as we stumbled onto the pier together, he released a long groan of complaint, scanning the beach before us.
 

“What’s wrong?”

“I hate sand all right? Last time Daniel convinced me to do anything outdoors, I had sand up my ass for about a week.”

“Well,” I couldn’t help but laugh, “I don’t think you’re going to have that problem with me.”

As we walked together unsteadily across the beach, not exactly sure where we were going but reassured that the gorgeous Daniel was on his way to us, we couldn’t help but ogle over and take a few pictures of Thornton’s castle.
 

Holy shit - like the man, this thing was over the top, and magnificent.
 

You could not get a more committed Hollywood castle than Thornton Darko’s. There was a freaking drawbridge and everything – a moat circled the huge whitewashed structure. Gargoyles with red lights flaring from their frozen eyes prowled the top of the parapets of this thing, and bright black words, in Thorn’s handwriting of course, were scrawled down the sides of it. The structure was a work of impossible art.

Aaron wasn’t looking at it, though. He was staring down at his phone, eyes widening, and he appeared to be frozen in shock. “Fucking asshole,” he whispered.

My phone beeped, signaling a message.

My friend’s hand flew to mine. “Please don’t look at it. Elena!” he begged. “You don’t want to see it.”

I looked down at my phone.

“Fuck’s sake, Elena, can you just listen to me for once in your life!” Aaron pleaded.

It was a picture of Brett from an unknown number.

Brett, with a tall gorgeous leggy blonde at one of his favorite little bars in Arandale, a town just outside of Ashby - the town the gallery owner was in, I noted. They were kissing leaning over their drinks, arms wrapped around each other’s necks. Another shot showed them leaving hand in hand. I scanned the message. Brett Argosy and gallery owner Clarissa Meadows.
 

Of course. My heart gave a hollow resounding knock. He had spoken a lot about this gallery owner, and with great affection, but I had been too wrapped up with my own shit to really show an interest in
him
, and what was going on in his life. She was impossibly flawless, but I knew it was just my fatalist mind offering up to me that thoroughly depressing frame through which to look at this piece of shit situation.
 

“I guess this is what Brett wants to talk to you about tomorrow, Elena,” Aaron said gently. “He’s leaving you.”

I had no words as I stared down at the rather cruel proof of the decimation of our short-lived engagement. Tears threatened, but I swallowed them down. I would choke on the fucking things before I cried right now. Asshole.
 

Yeah, you wanted time away to focus on your art, all right.
 

I wondered how long it had been going on, and then I became aware that I was babbling something over and over again, but my words did not match the angry thoughts churning around in my mind. “I did this. I did this. I did this to us.”

“No, honey,” Aaron disagreed, his grey eyes were shining with tears. “His stupid cock did this to you guys. Damn, you women are all the same, blaming yourselves.”

“Don’t you start crying!” I warned him. “Or I will start!”

“No shame in crying, Elena. Jesus. Unlike some of the shit you cry about, this is actually one of those times that it’s justified.”

Screams echoed to us from down the beach.

I frowned, turning toward the sound. “Thorn.” His name fell unbidden over my lips.

“Big bad Thornton can take care of himself, Elena,” Aaron said softly, noting my look of concern.

“Thornton Darko takes care of
everyone,”
a male voice rumbled behind us. “But himself? No.”

“What the shit!?” Aaron whirled on a burly guy dressed in head to toe black, wearing a gimp mask. The dude’s black eyes were on me, and to be honest, he didn’t look happy to see me.

“But you wouldn’t understand, would you? Pretty little witch like you?” he all but snarled at me.

“Hey dude!” Aaron protested, taking a few steps toward him. “Why so hostile?”

I thought briefly about punching this presumptuous asshole in the balls. “Do you hear yourself right now, dude? You don’t even
know
me! How dare you-”

“I know this witch. You will be the death of him,” he sighed regretfully. “There ain’t nothing on God’s earth that can protect him from the likes of
you.”
 

Sweet Jesus! How did the dude even know of my ancestry of infamous bad ass enchantresses? Unless, of course he was just calling me an epic-level bitch, which was possible… I had been called worse.
 

“How am I the death of Thornton Darko?” I asked, stunned at how the guy said it with such conviction. A shiver worked its way down my spine as my mind flicked back to the psychic dream Aaron believed he’d had of Thorn, dragging me away by the hair from a very strangled to death Brett.
 

“You are
she
?” he said simply.

“Who?” I was confused now.

“The witch,” he went on. “He is a famous warlock, our Thornton, you ask him. He is the most powerful in his line, and you are the most powerful witch in yours. The two of you cannot happen. You will destroy each other, but he will pay the ultimate price.”

“Telling fairy tales again,” came Thorn’s voice. He sounded angry.
 

Aaron groaned as he smacked his forehead. “The guy is always just… fucking there, you know?”

I looked up in the direction of Thorn’s voice. He was standing not far from us on a rise of sand, in that badass mask, fists clenched and I noted trembling by his sides.

“I’m sorry.” the burly guy stepped back. “Everyone’s concerned, Thorn.”

“I can take care of myself,” Thorn snarled. “Now get back to work, and help me find Jimmy, will you?”

The guy made a whimpering sound in his throat, and shuffled away reluctantly.
 

“Elena!” Thorn appeared to freak out - he reached for me, and I blinked at him dumbfounded, then screamed when a row of palm trees surrounding me exploded into flame.
 

The heat of the blast hit me in the back of the skull. One cracked and swiftly fell, in front of me, creating a wall of flame that separated me from my dark crazy ass rocker from hell, as well as Aaron who had dissolved into wails of horror.

“Witch!” A voice screamed hysterically behind me. “Stay away from
him
!”

Nine

“Jimmy, I presume?” I shakily addressed a skinny, lanky guy smelling of kerosene with bright red hair that flopped into a face full of piercings. He shot me a glare that would have annihilated me, and dumped more kerosene on the tree burning before us, then he aimed his blowtorch at it.

“Jimmy, no!” Thorn roared.
 

I began to run.

The palm tree in front of me was now an insanely high wall of flame. Fire behind me, fire next to me… that left the water.
 

I heard Jimmy thundering across the sand toward me, and he was on me in an instant. He drove a boot into my ass, making me lose my footing, and I pitched forward on the sand. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, and pulled me up by it.
 

Thorn was shouting on the other side of the flame.

“Jimmy, what the hell has gotten into you man? This isn’t
you.
I know
you.
The Jimmy I know doesn’t hurt pretty ladies.”

Jimmy was breathing heavily, but he kept a grip of my hair and yanked me against him, staring out at the flame. Tears were streaming down his face. The rather imposing figure of Thorn flickered there through the flame.
 

“I’m just so fucking broken,” he wept. “And she ain’t no lady, Thorn, she’s a witch, and she’s going to fucking kill you.”

“No,” Thorn disagreed. “You’ve got it wrong, Jimmy. Come on, let her go, put the blowtorch down. Do you want to go to the carnival again? Remember that time we had your birthday there?”

“Yeah, me and all my friends,” he blubbered as he pulled harder on my hair, and I gritted my teeth. His finger was trembling on the trigger of the blowtorch.
 

“I am your friend, buddy, Cellrager is the only friend you need,” Thorn’s tone had turned pleading. “Come on, I’ll fire up the carnival now.” He held out a small black device that looked a bit like a walkie-talkie, and hissed something urgently into it.

My eyes widened as lights flared behind Thornton’s castle. Of course he had a carnival at his residence. Why the fuck not? The man was irretrievably over the top.

“It’s not enough anymore,” Jimmy moaned, and I screamed when he placed the end of the blow torch in in his mouth.

“No, Jimmy! No, please don’t do this!” I heard the desperation strangle the delicious timber of Thorn’s voice, and then impossibly, the crazy ass motherfucker ran through the flame and hurled himself at us.
 

“NO!” Tears were spilling from my eyes. This was a nightmare. If we lived through this, and I thought I was being arrogantly optimistic even framing that as an ‘if’, I would have to tell Thornton Darko to get some new fans. This was beyond fucked.
 

Thorn roughly shoved me aside and I went flying, I looked up just as Jimmy’s finger flexed on the trigger, Thorn roared and yanked the blowtorch from him, except it was too late. My hand rose to my mouth as it lit up Thorn in a whoosh of flame that leapt off onto a startled Jimmy, who started screaming. Thornton howled and pushed them both down to the sand. By this time, my rock star was completely covered in flame. Behind Aaron, I noticed a sea of little lights as folk filmed the appalling atrocity with their phones. Of course, stand there, do that, do nothing, you are all
nothing,
I screamed silently. Undeterred, even though the man was on fire, Thorn was tumbling along the sand, pulling Jimmy with him into the water. After some loud desperate thrashing and splashing, they disappeared beneath the foaming waves.
 

I don’t think I had screamed as long and as hard as I did then. I was crawling. I don’t remember when I started moving again. I had been frozen where Thorn had thrown me clear, but I kept going. No one had resurfaced. The water was eerily silent. He couldn’t have survived
that.
My heart felt empty. Thornton Darko was dead.

Ten

What felt like an eternity later, Thorn emerged from the foaming surf, very much alive, and rather unscathed, with Jimmy dangling unconscious in his arms.
 

Cheers exploded around me, and a chant ensued, annoying and relentless. “Cellrager, Cellrager, Cellrager.”
 

Medics shoved past me to relieve Thorn of Jimmy, who had suffered some minor burns, and I heard the distant wail of fire trucks in the distance. Meanwhile, some more folk dressed in head to toe black and gimp masks that I could only presume were Thorn’s minions were attempting to put out some of the fires that had broken out along the beach.
 

I ran to him. The man had saved my life. I was overwrought and overcome, I wanted to hold him.

He was getting checked out by the medics, and had obediently removed his mask - which had partially melted away in places - to reveal his beautiful face that was a dark storm of sorrow and disbelief. He was bleeding beneath his eyes, some soot smudged across his right cheek, but otherwise, that gorgeous face of his was perfectly intact. They were helping him out of his rather scorched coat.

“I knew Jimmy was bringing fire so I used my fire-resistant mask and coat,” he was explaining hollowly to the medics. They stared at him as if he were quite insane. Which he was, but I was beginning to love him for that exact reason. He was as loyal and devoted to his fans as they were to him, but this shit had to stop; it had gone too far. These stupid ass fans had to know their place, and that place wasn’t messing with Thorn’s head anymore.
 

Thorn looked up. His dark green eyes were filled with tears, and a faint smile touched his lips as I watched them move over my name. “Elena.”

I approached shyly. He shrugged off the medics who had started fussing about the cuts beneath his eyes. “I need to go now,” he said, dismissed their looks of disapproval, and held out his hand to me instead.
 

“I don’t want to feel any of this anymore, Elena. Come and get numb with me,” he insisted, his fingers curled around my wrist and he slammed me hard against his body.

I felt my arms rise up around him. I buried my face in his chest, enjoying the simple embrace, the heat of his body, the glorious beating of his heart.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

“Please stay with me awhile,” he murmured into my hair, as his large chin rested atop of my head. “I
need
you tonight, Elena.”

“I will stay,” I agreed. “Of course. It’s the least I can do for saving my ass.”

“I will always want to save your ass,” Thorn’s hand moved to my rear and squeezed the right cheek hard. “It is a thing of beauty.”

I leaned back, arching my brows slightly as I scruntinized his rather serious face. “Really? You’re going to flirt
now
? After what just happened?”

“Always,” Thorn leaned into me again. “And especially now, when I have witnessed the person I want most in the world almost die on me, that is some incredibly life-affirming shit right there, Elena.”

Wow. A
little
intense, I liked it.