Kiss The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

by Christopher Rice

  She grips the back of his head, slides her fingers to the back of his thick, powerful neck. There’s that smell, his smell. Maybe it’s his cologne, or maybe it’s some intermingling of scents that are more purely, naturally him. Vanilla, campfires, and something musky. Only when she feels his palm grip the underside of her thigh does she realize she’s about to wrap her right leg around his waist, that her dress is sliding up her leg and if she doesn’t lower it soon she’ll be exposing herself right in the middle of Jackson Square.

  Their lips part. He cups her face in his hands. She slides her leg back to the ground, slowly so as not to send the false message that his touch is repulsive; she just can’t risk exposing herself to passersby.

  “You have two more questions,” he growls.

  “Will you wait?” she asks.

  “For?”

  “One word answers only. Remember?”

  “Yeah, and no yes-or-no questions either, remember? You still want to play this game?”

  “It was your game, professor.”

  “And you were being a very good bad little student.”

  “Will you wait, Michael?”

  “I already said I would.”

  “Michael…” Her hands find his face, and somehow this touch feels more forbidden and electrifying than their passionate kiss, just allowing her fingers to gently rest against the hard angles of his face she’s studied day after day in class. To feel the heat of him in this gentle and unhurried way.

  “Laney,” he says, in a gentle imitation of her own breathless voice.

  “Even if I make you wait forever?”

  “Is that your plan?” he asks quietly. But he’s taken his hands away from her flaming cheeks, and suddenly it seems awkward to continue touching his face when he’s just released her own, and just like that, with just one slightly disjointed question, there’s a foot of distance between that feels like a mile. “To make me wait forever?” he asks.

  A minute goes by before she realizes she hasn’t answered, hasn’t said anything to assuage his fears. She’s been so damn focused on her own. The slight distance between them is enough to allow every muscle in her body to knot with tension, a tension so uniform and persistent there’s no mistaking it for what it truly is—resistance.

  When he takes her hands in his again, he’s not preparing for another passionate embrace. It feels like he’s comforting her.

  “So I guess this is where this night ends?” he asks.

  “I need—I mean, I just need…”

  Deep breath. Deep breath. If she could just get one more deep breath. The sensations throughout her body feel like a terrible moment of self-realization; passion and panic sit side-by-side within her fundamental being, and she’s going to have to learn how to separate them.

  “Cat’s waiting for you at Café du Monde, right? You want me to walk you over there?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  She is so obviously and clearly not fine that this response renders Michael silent.

  A panic attack. Is that what’s happening? Is she literally having a panic attack because the most beautiful, amazing man she’s ever met has just promised to take her fears away? She’s become that woman she used to sneer at in movies, the one who can’t accept a gift from the universe, the one so full of fear and anxiety she can’t take a chance on anything. How can that be? That’s not Laney Foley. Laney clawed her way out of a neighborhood of people who thought she was personally insulting them by reading books. She worked three jobs at once to put herself through community college, applied for every scholarship she could. Aren’t those the parts of life that are supposed to terrify people, paralyze people? Not the possibility of being loved by an amazing man.

  But for her, passion could be dangerous, couldn’t it? This kind of a passion in particular.

  A teacher’s passion.

  She hasn’t read the fine print of her scholarship agreement, because she doesn’t want to read the goddamn fine print on her scholarship agreement, thank you very much. She’s been so damn focused on the idea of Michael punishing her with a bad grade if things didn’t work out, she hasn’t stopped to consider whether her own scholarship involves a real consequence for going to bed with someone responsible for her grade. Even if it were only an allegation, brought by him, or anyone, or a jerk like Jake Briffel, what would happen if she were accused of trading sex for grades to maintain her status in the university’s most exclusive and competitive scholarship?

  Now there are black spots crowding her vision, darker and more menacing than the shadows all around him. It feels like she’s breathing through a straw. And her arms, shoulders and neck are tingling. Not sensual, anticipatory tingles. This is oxygen deprivation as a result of hyperventilation. This is anxiety and fear run amuck in her veins.

  Yep. Definitely a panic attack.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says, pulling away from the fence and from him.

  “Laney?”

  “Just. Please. I need a …”

  Her feet finish the sentence for her.

  She’s already broken into a run when she realizes that’s exactly what she’s doing. Running. She is literally running away from the man of her dreams, away from the sound of his voice calling out to her, his struggle over whether or not to chase her evident in his pained sounding cry. Only once she’s left Jackson Square in her dust does she realize what the slight tug on her right wrist meant as she took off. She snagged the balloon’s strings on the fence as she ran, releasing them into the night sky.

  7

  He’s right behind me, Laney thinks. But when she turns, she finds herself on a shadowy, side street with blurry, disjointed memories of how she got here. And Michael is nowhere to be seen.

  She remembers racing across Bourbon Street, darting through thick crowds, dodging a mounted policeman whose horse expelled hot breath on one side of her face in a terrible burst. She ran with the conviction that each pounding step would drive the breath back into her lungs, flush the ice-cold prickles from her skin. To some degree it’s worked. She’s gasping now instead of wheezing. But she’s also alone and too close to Rampart Street, the Quarter’s northern boundary.

  Silly of her to think Michael would have been able to keep up, not without drawing the attention of cops on Bourbon. That’s how fast she was running, and if he’d run that fast to keep up, what would we have looked like? Even in flats, her near-sprint has left her feet throbbing with pain.

  Still, why did she stop right here? Why was she suddenly overcome by the sense that he was just a few feet away??

  I can smell him, she realizes. I can smell him as strongly as if I were still in his arms. Vanilla and campfires and some kind of spice I can’t name.

  Several second-floor balconies cover the depth of the sidewalk, their filigree ironwork dappling the street with scatters of shadows. A strange glow emanates from the windows of the tiny shop across the street. The glow is just faint enough for her to make out the wood-plank sign hanging over the open door and the gold outline of a tiny candle flame. The shelves inside the front window are lined with uniform candles, each one so large she could hold one in both hands, one hand on each side of the glass, and her fingers wouldn’t touch.

  A candle shop open at this hour, this far from the main drag?

  But it’s the source of the smell, Michael’s smell. It has to be. Just to be sure, she pulls a piece of her dress close to her nose. Maybe his cologne rubbed off on her during their embrace and she’s coated with the stuff. But her dress smells more like dinner than the man of her dreams. When she lifts her head again, when she gazes across the street at the quaint little candle shop bathed in a gold light that feels otherworldly, a tide of it hits her again.

  With each step she takes toward the shop, she feels as if she’s slipped further out of her own body.

  It’s only the second day of class and he’s asked them to meet him at the sculpture garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park. He’s telling them how a
rt is something that’s present in their everyday lives, not just something you visit in museums or study in books. The bright sculptures shining in the sunlight all around them are proof of that. And that’s when she realizes he’s not like any other man she’s ever known, as she gazes up at him, sitting cross-legged on the grass with the other students as he speaks. Handsome and brilliant and full of passion for something besides football. That was when she first caught his particular smell and it felt like he had unzipped her soul without touching her. And the moment had been so intoxicating, so powerful, she’d shoved it down and repressed it, and now it’s coming back to her unfiltered, uncensored, overpowering and raw.

  She knocks on the doorway’s frame. There’s no answer.

  The shop before her is tiny, but too beautiful and immaculate to have been carelessly abandoned at this late hour. Instead of a register or counter, there’s a small desk tucked in one corner beneath a row of ribbon wheels attached to the wall above. A large black table with a round marble top takes up the center of the tiny space. The table’s curvilinear supports make her think of snakes, if you made snakes rounded and elegant and lined their bodies with tiny flecks of ivory.

  The source of the smell is sitting on a metal tray, a few inches from a vase exploding with yellow flowers she doesn’t recognize. It’s a candle just like the ones lining the shelves in the front window, only this one is lit. And the smell coming from it is Michael.

  “Good evening,” a male voice says.

  She cries out, startled. The man suddenly standing a few feet away only smiles. She can’t decide if he’s handsome or just pretty. His outfit looks so formal and out-of-date she wonders if he’s some kind of tour guide. Most of the tour groups she’s spotted that evening were led by women dressed like vampires, but maybe there’s a Jazz Age walking tour of the Quarter she’s never heard of. Because with his purple silk vest, his linen tailored slacks, and his slicked-back, side-parted hair, the Jazz Age is exactly where this man seems to belong.

  “What is this?” she asks, pointing to the candle. She hasn’t just asked. She’s barked it. At the sound of her tense, frightened anger, the shopkeeper doesn’t flinch or recoil. Instead, he gives her a placating smile, as if her harsh question were an enticement to learn more about her.

  “It’s a candle,” he says.

  “I know it’s a candle. But what’s the smell. I mean, what’s it made of?”

  “Would you like to sit down, miss?”

  “No. I don’t want to sit down. I want you to tell me what’s in this candle. Please.”

  She can hear the strain in her voice, the losing battle against tears.

  “The human brain is a mysterious thing,” the man says. “Smells trigger memory, mostly, and so I would suggest that the individual ingredients are irrelevant. Irrelevant to the experience you’re having right now.”

  “Irrelevant?”

  “Forgive me, I don’t mean to dismiss your feelings. I suggest that their source might be somewhat larger than what’s contained in that candle.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  This is insane. Is she really about to explain Michael’s aroma to this strange man?

  “I was with a man earlier and he…”

  “He was what?”

  “He smelled like this candle. Just like it. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound so crazy.”

  “In the Quarter, at this hour, you’d have to work rather hard to seem like the crazy ones.”

  She laughs in spite of herself.

  “Right. But still…I just, I really need you to tell me what’s in it. Can you just tell me…?” Because I’m suddenly afraid that this smell is all I’ll ever be able to have of him, the only piece of Michael I might be able to keep.

  “This man,” the candlemaker asks. “Did he upset you?”

  “Did he upset me?” The strain in her voice turns into a stammer. She tries to wipe tears but it feels like she’s missing each one. “No. No, he didn’t upset me. He did everything perfectly. He did everything right. But he’s…”

  “He’s what?”

  “It’s not possible,” she says. “He’s my teacher.”

  “Oh, I see. So he’s considerably older than you?”

  “Three years. Not that old.”

  “And he’ll be your teacher for the rest of your natural life, of course.”

  “He’s not big on waiting.”

  “So he’s refused to wait?”

  “No. He hasn’t refused to wait. It’s just that—”

  “What? What has he done that’s upset you so?”

  “Nothing. He hasn’t done anything to upset me, other than be exactly what I want.”

  “The miserable bastard,” the candlemaker whispers with a smile.

  His smile is disarming and Laney finds herself laughing through her tears.

  “Can you please just tell me what’s in this candle so I’ll stop losing my mind?”

  “You think that’ll do it, do you?”

  “Easy, fella. We just met.”

  “I see. Well, it’s a proprietary blend, designed to stimulate certain areas of the brain which ignite passion.”

  “Are you serious? Is that what’s on your marketing materials?”

  The candlemaker gestures to a notecard taped to one side the candle’s glass container. “No. It’s much simpler actually,” she says.

  Laney lifts the notecard’s flap and reads the calligraphy within.

  Light this flame at the scene of your greatest passion and your heart’s desire will be yours.

  “I’m Bastian,” the man says. “Bastian Drake.”

  He extends his hand. She takes it gently in her own, sees the skin on his fingers is remarkably smooth. The guy looks like he must be in his twenties, but he talks like he’s from a bygone era.

  “Laney,” she answers. “Laney Foley.”

  “Take it,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The candle. Take it. It’s yours.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “You can because it’s a gift.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I am.”

  “You’ll get in trouble.”

  “With who? I own this place.”

  “Seriously.”

  “My stars, you aren’t very good at accepting gifts, are you?”

  “In my experience they come with rules.”

  “Rules? Like don’t fall in love with your teacher? A rule that I’m sure has never been broken before.”

  “I’m on a scholarship. A good one. If I do anything to screw it up—”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’m back on the West Bank busting my ass to find a job while my family tells me over and over again how I was an idiot to try for something better. How I don’t really love them because I want a different life for myself.”

  “I see. But if you follow the rules, everything will be perfect, right?”

  “If I keep my scholarship, I’ve got a shot.”

  “And even if you waited until this man was no longer your teacher, you still think it would endanger your scholarship.”

  “People might talk.”

  “I see. So it’s not just your scholarship. You’re also afraid of what people will think.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. I do know what you mean. Fear doesn’t come from our circumstances. It comes from within. And that means we can change our circumstances and fix what we think is the problem, and the fear will still be there, waiting to be dealt with.”

  “And how do you deal with it?”

  “You stop living in a dozen different imaginary futures and you start living in today.”

  “Oh, everyone says that like it’s so easy.”

  “No, actually. Everyone says it because it’s something we all need to do a better job of, and we need to do a better job of it because it’s incredibly difficult.”

  Thanks, Yoda. But she’s glad she doesn’t say it bec
ause it would be intolerably rude given how nice this man is being. But she wouldn’t be Laney Foley if she didn’t have some sort of comeback.

  “I got where I am today by focusing on the future,” she says.

  “Indeed, and wherever it is you are today, Miss Foley, it seems like a very painful place.”

  His response has silenced her and this seems to please him. He picks up the lit candle in both hands. She waits for him to blow it out, but instead he pinches the flame itself between two impossibly smooth fingers, then he moves to his tiny desk. When he begins packaging it for her in a brightly colored paper bag complete with tissue paper and an elaborate clover of turquoise and purple ribbon, her mouth opens to protest. Even though his back is turned, he must have heard her sharp intake of breath because he says, “Not another word.”

  “You’re a strange man, Mister Drake.”

  “Of this,” he says, turning, a disarming smile on his youthful face, “I am most certainly aware, Miss Foley.”

  When she takes the bag from his hand, she glimpses some sort of pulse of gold light in both of his eyes, probably a trick thrown by a pair of passing headlights outside. But for there to be passing headlights, you would need to have a passing car, and the street outside is utterly silent. Something has just happened right behind her, however, because just then Bastian’s smile fades and his gaze cuts to the shop’s entrance.

  The beautiful, full-figured woman standing in the doorway wears a black leather dress several shades lighter than her own skin. Her fixed, stony expression is impossible for Laney to read. Her first guess is that she’s a jealous wife or girlfriend who has mistaken their exchange for flirtation. But this has less to do with the woman’s rigid posture and intent gaze and more to do with Bastian’s apparent shock at seeing her on his doorstep.

  “Good evening,” the woman says.

  Then Laney remembers she’s a tear-splotched, disheveled mess who just ran clear across the French Quarter in the throes of a panic attack. Maybe that’s why the woman’s studying her with something that looks vaguely like disdain.