Ember – Three Years Later
California in the summer is the best time for fire. The skies are clear and beautiful and the air is buzzing with electricity and excitement. It fuels the enticement of the flames, the wonder of the one of the most powerful elements being manipulated by mere human hands.
I’d been with Wanda and the girls for three years and I had never regretted it. It was hard to believe that the soft-spoken girl that I was when I met her in that alley was no longer here—instead, I was the confident, scantily-clad woman dancing before a sea of people watching me raptly as I spun fire by my hands. My costume was essentially an intricate two-piece: red silky material that clung to my body’s curves in all the right places and gold embellishments that drove home the fire imagery—especially with every peek and glimpse of the nearly-new phoenix tattoo that sat on my shoulder. There were pretty gold and red ribbons in my hair, too.
I was the main attraction right now, and I was having the time of my life.
The music festival we were performing for would go on for a week. This was day three. Organized by a bunch of fancy fresh-faced executives and entrepreneurs from the Valley, it was a cushy gig. We didn’t usually do jobs like this, but money was money, and the money we were paid was good.
“Whoo! Yeah, spin, sweetness, spin!”
Well. The pay was good. The investors, not necessarily. These businessmen were a certain brand of enthusiastic that wasn’t necessarily good, if you catch my drift.
I ignored the catcall like I had been ignoring them all during this whole gig and continued spinning and dancing among wolf whistles. This was the only bad thing about this gig so far. The entrepreneurs who had hired us were nasty little shits, to put it delicately. I was craving something a little more akin to what we were used to over these white-collar suits—something a little more raw and interesting and real.
My hip jutted out, and I rocked it to the beat of the music as I did intricate movements with my flames and watched the way the men in the crowd gazed hungrily at my body—and noticed, as I watched the crowd, that it was slowly being filled with more than just the stuffy suits that were plaguing me with their irritating presence.
Boys in kuttes and leather were beginning to spill in among the others. Bikers. My kinda men, honestly.
But my set was ending for now. The music and my movements came to an amazing, shuddering climax and the men in the crowd roared with applause and cheers. A few of the bikers started walking forward, but they would find themselves a little disappointed if they had come in the hopes of seeing me.
I hopped down neatly from the small stage that had been set up for the fire performances, giving a demure little bow after putting out my flames.
“Encore!”
“Again!”
I smiled out to the crowd, catching the excited, enticed eyes of the men who watched me and the bikers that were also eyeing me hungrily. I gave a little smirk before walking off, retreating to my tent for the break that I was owed.
Or ... that’s what I had intended to do. Someone grabbed my arm, their grip firm and needlessly tight around my forearm. My brow twitched as I looked at who had grabbed me.
“Jameson.”
Jameson Mathers was one of the heaviest backers for this music festival. As such, he thought that he owned every performer that had been booked for the event—especially the women.
He was a handsome man, I would give him that. Blond haired, blue eyed—that classic kind of handsome that made most women weak between the knees. But he was as much a bastard as he was a looker, too touchy, and if it weren’t for the fact that we were getting paid well to be here, I would have told him from day one that he could go fuck himself.
I didn’t, valuing the promise of a paycheck too much. Like the wolf he was, I knew he could sense that with the smirk that he gave me.
“Ember. Don’t you hear the crowd? They want more out of you.”
“It’s time for my break.”
“You don’t need a break when there’s a crowd to please. What am I paying you for then, huh, If you just flit your little sparks away willy nilly?”
“You’re paying me to perform, which I did. It’s my break now.”
I could feel the eyes on the two of us, watching, even though he was speaking low enough for only me to hear him. It’d be uncomfortable if I wasn’t used to men treating me—and the other girls, really—as though we were property for what we did. But we were strong, and I was no exception.
So it wasn’t uncomfortable, only infuriating, when he wrapped his arm around me and turned the two of us to properly face the crowd. He walked me back over toward the stage.
“Ember here’s gonna give an encore!” he announced jovially. I tried to move away, only to have Jameson’s grip on me tighten at my bare waist. I gave him as subtle of a glare that I could manage. There was no room to argue now that he had gotten the crowd involved and made that open announcement.
I made my way back over to the stage. He was lucky that the only one doing any dancing tonight was me, and there wasn’t anyone else ready and available to cover his ass.
I pulled myself up to more rowdy cheers. This time they were joined by the louder, drunker cheers from some slightly sloppy boys from the bikers that had come in. I had no idea where they had come from or why they were there (I couldn’t imagine that they were rubbing elbows with the men who’d organized this gig) but I enjoyed the looks on the white-collars’ faces. They were so damn pompous and uptight that these uninvited bikers were probably an affront to their delicate sensibilities.
I could have laughed at the notion of that and it was a public event, meaning that they couldn’t legally turn them away.
I was ready to hop back up on the stage when I caught one of the bikers staring at me. Not just staring, though. They were boring into me. Burning. Like a scorching fire. The gaze was intense and the biker was just as intense. He was huge, all thick muscle and arms covered in tattoos. He had hair that was red like fire—like me—cut into a perfect undercut.
I stopped in my tracks, taken by the intensity of this fiery biker. I wasn’t shy about me and I hadn’t been in a long time, but he actually made me flush. The heat rose up over my body, my face, and pooled heatedly in between my legs.
“Ember.”
Jameson spoke up, his voice annoyingly sing song, and I tossed a glare over my shoulder and back his way, letting him know that I didn’t need his shit. I pulled myself up onto the stage again, getting my fire lit. When I turned around again the biker had moved to the front, and he was watching me still.
Intense.
Fire blazing in his eyes.
I was used to men looking at me with lust. It came with the territory, and I wasn’t really opposed to it, but I felt myself blazing hot inside with this man looking at me the way he was. I couldn’t take my eyes off him anymore than he took his eyes off me.
He followed my every move. I was dancing for him—that’s what it felt like. It was almost like he knew it, too. There was a slight curve in his mouth, a smirk that had me flushing and dancing more intensely than I had before when it was just the rich boys and their rich friends that I was performing for. Jameson who? I forgot that he even existed in the moment.
Biker Boy folded his arms over his chest as he watched me, shifting on his feet as though he were antsy while he was watching me. Was it possible to have such tension without actually being in the presence of someone else? Christ almighty, this man was driving me insane and we hadn’t even met.
The cheers from the crowd were loud, but all I could pay any real attention to was this man in front of me, watching me as I spun about, as fire left trails of heat and sparks in its wake. This wasn’t what my performance was supposed to be about. I was the one that was supposed to captivate. I was the one that was supposed to entice. Not the other way around.
And yet …
I wanted to know this man, and that was a very, very dangerous thing.