Page 5

“Dead?” The corners of his lips curved, though his mouth never lost its carved quality.

I realized how close we stood, but he held me firmly in place, and I couldn’t step back, even if I wanted to. And still I listened to that mesmerizing rhythm, as though every heartbeat was precious.

“Quiet.” I raised my gaze to meet his amber glow in challenge.

He nodded, returning my study. “You left me in the bar. Actually, you left a little…mess.”

I flushed the same color as the roots of my firebrick hair. “That’s kind of unavoidable. And rude to point out.” I flicked my fingertips at his chest. That little motion had about as much effect as flicking an iceberg.

Amusement flickered behind his eyes. “That you avoided the witch and my friend speaks of no little skill. They are determined.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Someone always wants something,” I muttered. “Like salespeople at the door.” Confusion crossed his face, and I hurried to correct my assumption of before. He knows less of this world than I do. “I just want to be left alone.”

His features softened, though he still retained a glimmer of that inhumanity that left him looking carved and removed from the world.

The impossibility of him was…intoxicating.

It had been a long, long time since I stood close to anyone, let anyone touch me for fear of ending their existence.

Yet this man touched me without that same dread.

Refreshing, but only because he didn’t realize his mortal existence was threatened with every breath of that fascinating heart of his within his body.

“I understand that need. What’s your name?” His thumbs grazed across the center of my palm, stopping there to rest.

The constant contact was so intimate, breaking through my thoughts, that I couldn't concentrate on anything but the gentle strokes he made over my palms. “Stop that,” I whispered, pulling back.

He let me go.

I stumbled back for a fraction of a second—long enough to hear what our conversation had obscured. Approaching voices. And not just one, but many.

I closed my eyes. “The morning grave tour.” I hated them.

Every second week, one of the community groups brought people through the graveyards.

Educational, sure. Disturbing? Absolutely.

I twisted away, but the path across the way to my hiding place to the raised crypt above the water level had never seemed so far.

A quick glance along the lane assured me the tour group walked far too fast for an educational lesson this morning.

“They’re not looking for me,” my stone man echoed my thoughts.

His hand found mine before I could answer him, but this time his firm grip didn’t create manacles around my wrists as he swung me back into his body. Warmth enveloped me for the briefest moment.

“What–”

“Close your eyes, Steorra,” he murmured. Cool lips brushed my temple as he turned us with grace I recognized. The sort of balance and grace that only came with many miles walked upon this earth in the same form year after year after year.

Because he, too, was an ancient one.

Steorra , he called me. An ancient word for a bright burning star.

Heat travelled along my body as alarm tore through me.

Not now, not now ? —

Panic followed hot on its tail. “I need to run,” I hissed, fighting against him, though I didn’t want to.

My stone man braced his arms over my head, arching his body around me, and?—

Silence fell.

Inside his arms, I shivered. The stone of him, so much more than a facade, was cold.

Outside the chatter of the group continued, louder as they passed but still muffled.

I held still, keeping my breath inside until my lungs were fit to burst, but no one stopped at my tomb, and no one poked that odd stone statue that had just appeared in the cemetery, unnamed and unmarked.

Apparently my stone protector looked just like any other stoner creature in New Orleans, hiding in plain sight.

Letting out my breath a whisper at a time, I pressed my cheek to his chest and rested.

Then my eyes flew open.

Nothing.

His chest might as well have been as he said before—Dead.

No sound came from within him, the stone of him complete. No breath, no heartbeat. I tried to untangle our fingers but he’d laced our hands together in a way that refused to let me escape. The tour group turned a corner after a detailed discussion on my row, and I fidgeted, tugging at my fingers.

HIs squeezed back.

I trapped my yelp between clenched teeth, forcing the sound down and managed a breath. “I am going to scream in your face one day,” I muttered. “And you’ll have earned the privilege."

“I look forward to it, Steorra.” One hand detached from mine, and I mourned its loss as he risked raising it to trail through my hair. “You are the brightest burning star. What is your name lest I pick a constellation to name you after?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I muttered, staring at the ground. He laughed softly, far too sexily with our bodies pressed too close in the tiny space against the obelisk opposite my crypt. My cheeks blazed even as I squeezed my eyes shut. “You may call me Ash.”

He remained silent for a moment, though thick fingers played in my hair. “Ash because you consume everything, or is it short for something else?”

It’s short for something. That’s what I meant to come out. But my body chose that moment to overheat and all I could think of was that I was glad to know the community group had moved on as I couldn't contain this next part at all.

My next thought was that we were about to find out how fireproof my stone man was.

“Run, run,” I whispered, reaching out and squeezing his arms to hold him tight, my words clashing with my thoughts as I gave him the singular truth I could to free myself from everything that might actually keep this enigmatic man who seemed to understand me close.

“Someone else sets the fires. I am not the one you seek.”

He stared down at me, his yellow gaze oblique, unfathomable.

Just once, would it be so wrong to have someone be able to touch me? Someone who I can’t hurt?

The impossible plea. I knew, because I’d been begging the universe for that for over three thousand years. Why would it start giving me what I wanted now?

“Run,” I pleaded instead, staring up at him. “Go, now.”

He smiled faintly. “No, Steorra. I will stay.”

Hot tears tracked my cheeks, burning my skin even as he watched my flames burn through my skin with the sort of awe they all had in the beginning. Right before their screams began and I couldn’t control anything anymore.

But this time, I didn't get to hear his screams because yet again, I was nothing more than a pile of ash in a public space, and everything around me burned.

But like every Firestarter, I would rise again.