All Fired Up (Stardust)

by Riser, Mimi

  Gulp.

  She slid off the Harley onto shaky legs. “We can’t stay here.”

  “We can’t stay there either.” He slid off, too, and jerked a thumb at the weather raging outside the cave’s entrance. “Make yourself comfortable. We may be stuck here a while.”

  Like a jungle cat settling into its lair after a long night on the prowl, Slo leaned back against the wall opposite the entrance and sank down to sit cross-legged on the earthen floor, all in one lithe, wickedly sensual motion. Pure predator, Roxanne thought, lowering her gaze – but if she was his quarry, he was in for a very rude awakening.

  Moving as far away from him as possible in the cramped confines – not nearly far enough, a scant few feet – she stood in clinging wet clothes, hugging herself and studying him through her eyelashes. Why was he here anyway? Was it a coincidence he’d shown up when he did? Had he just been out joyriding, or had he deliberately been hunting her? She suspected the latter, but couldn’t be sure. His mind was closed to her at the moment. There were no sultry smoke signals filtering from his head into hers. Thank God. It was going to be difficult enough to ignore the rest of him until the storm blew past; if she had to deal with his thoughts, too, it would be impossible.

  As if to illustrate that point, a torrid rush of visions suddenly swamped her, flooding in then out again like a riptide. Old memories, but not hers. They seemed to come from the cave itself. She saw Slo – a younger Slo, seventeen or eighteen maybe – with a raven-haired beauty. No, wait, it was a blonde…no, a redhead… Oh hell, it appeared he’d had a gazillion girlfriends back in high school. And he’d brought them all to this cave.

  Terrific. Roxanne really needed to know that. She felt the dangerous red burn of a blush, tinged green at the edges with something that might almost be called jealousy – but she couldn’t imagine why. Even if she were normal and could pursue a normal relationship, she wouldn’t pursue it with someone like Slo. She shouldn’t care how he lived his life, provided he stayed out of hers.

  A claustrophobic bundle of nerves, she inched closer to the cave’s opening, trying to put more space between herself and him.

  Watching her, Slo breathed a rusty sigh. “Stop. Don’t make me have to haul you out of the storm again. You’re already soaked.” He shrugged off his vest and handed it to her. “Here, this is still pretty dry on the inside. Put it on before you freeze.”

  Roxanne stared at it in horror. For godssake, she wanted to be cold – colder than she was now. More warmth was the last thing she needed. “Thanks, but I’m fine. Really. That won’t help me any.”

  Too bad, Slo thought. A little extra covering on her sure would have helped him.

  “You can sit on it then.” Laying the vest leather side down beside him, he smoothed it out for her.

  Roxanne’s horror increased. Sitting on it – sitting next to him – would be worse than wearing the damn thing. “That’s okay. I like standing. I’m fine.”

  Slo heaved another sigh. Yeah, she kept saying that. Why didn’t he believe her? “Roxy, sit down before you fall down.”

  He reached forward, gripped her wrist and pulled. Roxanne locked her knees and leaned backward. The tug-of-war ended with a soft thud as a female fanny hit the vest.

  “Relax,” Slo ordered. “You are perfectly safe here. Safe from the storm” – the hand on her wrist drew her back when she tried to scramble away – “and safe from me. What happened in the tent was…a mistake. It won’t happen again, I promise. I’m not a child molester. I—”

  “Wait!” Roxanne jerked her hand free from his, removed a small object from her ear, blew on it, then replaced it. “Excuse me, but I was afraid my aid might have gotten some rain in it,” she explained, glaring. “I thought I heard you say something about child molesting. You think I’m a child?”

  The second the words were out she realized her mistake. Damn. Here he had actually been intending to leave her alone – exactly what she wanted him to do – and she had just shot the whole thing to hell. Because of an ill-timed flash of pride. Because, until she’d moved to Star, people had always treated her like a child – like an idiot – and she was damned sick of it.

  But it was too late to take back the words. Now Slo would rethink the matter. He was thinking right then, thinking fast. Roxanne still couldn’t read his thoughts, but she saw it on his face, could almost hear the wheels of his mind cranking. He was thinking about lovely Lydia Jones and her daughters, all of whom looked years younger than their ages. It was an inherited family trait, and Slo must have had enough contact with the Joneses to be aware of it. He would realize now that she, too, had inherited that youthful quality.

  “How old are you?” he asked, a sudden interested gleam in his eyes.

  Too interested.

  “Twenty-seven,” she confessed. Reluctantly. Bit by cautious bit, she started to scoot away.

  A muscular arm snaked around her waist, holding her in place.

  “Twenty-seven?” Slo sounded vastly relieved.

  Roxanne was glad someone was – but not very.

  “That’s only a year younger than me. I guess I should apologize for making it seem I was calling you a kid. Obviously” – the gleam in his eyes heated – “you’re not.”

  There was trouble in that gleam. Roxanne’s heart stuttered. The arm around her waist tightened, drawing her closer. There was trouble in that, too. The man was playing with fire. Literally. But if she warned him, he’d probably think she was insane.

  That could be a good thing.

  Hell, why not? The truth had gotten her into this mess. Maybe some more truth would get her out.

  She forced a laugh. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have gotten upset. I am a child in some respects.”

  “You don’t feel like a child,” Slo said. But just to make certain apparently, his hand began a roving exploration of her ribcage.

  This was not helpful.

  “What I meant,” she rasped out, “is that age is a relative thing. It’s not how long you’ve lived, but how much. And I haven’t. Lived much, I mean. I’ve spent most of my life in an institution.”

  The roving hand paused on her breast. Not the best place for him to have stopped, but at least she’d gained his attention.

  “An institute for the deaf?” he asked.

  A logical assumption probably, from his standpoint.

  “No. I’m not quite deaf enough to qualify for one of those.”

  Technically, she wasn’t deaf at all. Her hearing loss had occurred suddenly at the onset of puberty, and the doctors had never been able to determine a physical cause for it. They had dubbed the condition “hysterical deafness” precipitated by trauma. The trauma being that Roxanne had discovered a rogue force lurking within her; it was at the age of twelve that fires had first begun erupting around her. In her mind the two problems were inextricably and inexplicably linked. But she didn’t try to explain to Slo what she didn’t understand herself. All she knew was that one problem was correctible, and the other wasn’t.

  “With an aid I can hear almost normally,” she said, without saying how. The hearing aid was a psychological treatment more than a medical one, and based on the placebo principle. A mental crutch. The power of suggestion. Supposedly the aid allowed her to believe she could hear, so while she was wearing it, she could. Go figure.

  “I was in a mental institution.”

  “A what?” Slo jerked away. His gaze went wary.

  For some strange reason that bothered Roxanne, despite the fact it was pretty much the reaction she’d been hoping for.

  “You heard me. A mental institution. A lunatic asylum, a nuthouse, a funny farm. A lockup for crazy people.” She laid it on with a trowel to make sure he stayed wary. Better to be bothered than burned alive. If he tried to kiss her, the motorcycle’s gas tank might explode.

  “Mine was a pretty ritzy nuthouse though.” A gilded cage. Privately owned and operated, it catered to a rich clientele. Only the best for haughty Russell Sinclair
– the perfect place to dump a distressing daughter and then forget about her, secure in the knowledge she’d be properly pampered as befitted the Sinclair name. “It was kind of like a five-star hotel with bars on the windows. My father committed me when I was twelve. Sam got me out last month.”

  There. That was over. And judging by his expression, Slo would now avoid her like the plague. She should be very pleased, very proud of how calmly she’d handled this.

  So why did she feel like crying?

  Slo swallowed down outrage. In the town where he’d been raised people didn’t lock away their kids. He wanted to ask Roxanne why her father had been such an asshole, but couldn’t think of any tactful way to phrase the question. He reached for her instead, because that was the other thing he wanted to do. Hold her. There was nothing sexual about it, no attempt at seduction. It was the bleak look in her eyes. She tugged at his heartstrings, turned him tender. His arms slipped around her, and he pulled her to his chest in an act of pure comfort.

  You might have thought he’d tried to strangle her. She screeched in alarm and grappled free.

  Good God, Roxanne thought, he couldn’t still be interested. Or was this some sort of weird perversion? Maybe he’d never made it with a lunatic before and wanted to see what it was like.

  “You are a very dangerous and sick man,” she said.

  Scrambling upright, she started to flee, evidently preferring the storm to him. Slo no longer wondered why she had been committed. It was obvious the woman was nuts. Mad and maddening. Nonstop trouble. He was half inclined to let her run off and be blown to Oz. But by this time, rescuing her had become a hard habit to break.

  He grabbed her arm and tugged.

  She lost her footing and fell.

  And somehow they ended up tangled together on the floor of the cave.

  Anyone for a game of Twister?

  It was the tussle in the tent all over again – horizontal dirty dancing full of bumps and grinds – except Slo enjoyed it even more this time, because without the constraining folds of nylon, he had much better maneuverability. When the dust cleared, Roxanne lay breathless beneath him, her eyes like blue smoke, her lips half parted in what seemed provocative invitation.

  Slo sure hated to disappoint those lips. “I don’t care if you are crazy. I have to kiss you – before you drive me crazy.”

  “No!” She shoved at his shoulders, straining to push him back. “You have to get away from me – quick – before we burn to death!”

  Amen.

  “Is that a threat or a promise?” He made another try for her lips.

  She twisted her head to the side. “It’s a fact, damn it. You’re about to go up in flames!”

  About to?

  “Roxy, I already am.”

  “Slo, I’m serious. When I get excited, I start fires!”

  He groaned. This was almost too good to be real. “Great. You can light mine, and I’ll light yours. We’ll torch each other.”

  “No! You don’t understand. I mean I’m a real live genuine blowtorch.”

  “You ain’t kiddin’.” This baby was hot.

  “I’m not kidding! Get off me! Now!”

  Only if he really, really had to. And it appeared he did.

  Sigh.

  Regretfully, Slo pulled back and eased Roxanne up to sit beside him. “Okay, I’m off. Now what exactly are we talking about here?”

  She drew a deep shuddering breath. “Psychically induced spontaneous combustion. Excitement triggers it – arousal, anger – any hot emotion. That’s why my father locked me away. Not because I’m crazy, but because I’m pyrokinetic.”

  Pyro what? He stared at her a tense moment, not sure what to say. The woman was a fire freak?

  “You’re, um, trying to tell me you have an uncontrollable urge to start fires? Roxy honey, that” – he cleared his throat – “that is sort of a mental problem, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, for godssake…” She gave him an exasperated look. “I didn’t say I’m a pyromaniac. I said pyrokinetic.”

  Slo frowned. “What’s the difference?”

  “Plenty. A pyromaniac deliberately sets fires for the thrill of it. And they have to do it the usual way – with matches, gasoline, stuff like that. Pyrokinesis is a psychic ability, like precognition or ESP. Like the way your grandmother predicts the weather.”

  “That’s just her lumbago. There’s nothing psychic about it.” But don’t tell Ina Lorene that. She believed in things like ESP. Slo didn’t. He was a firm believer in logic, had to be to have gotten where he was. He’d been forced to admit on occasion that some paranormal phenomena might be possible, but none of it was logical, and all of it unnerved him. He had little use for that shit, and less use for the flaky-cake airheads who did – barring his flaky grandmother, of course.

  And airheads who looked as luscious as Roxanne. He could think of a few uses for her. More than a few – a big juicy smorgasbord of uses from sweet and spicy appetizers to the meaty main course dripping with succulent sauce—

  Roxanne suddenly stiffened. “I also have flashes of telepathy,” she warned, “so you’d better be careful what you think around me.”

  Slo stiffened, too, but not in the good way. He was remembering a similar occurrence of the previous night when it had seemed almost as though Roxanne could see into his head. But she hadn’t then, and she wasn’t now. Impossible. She had read his expression, that was all, and merely thought she’d read his mind – just like she thought she could magically manifest fire. Her last name might be Sinclair, but she was a definite Jones.

  “All right,” he said soothingly, “you’re a mind reader and the inspiration for Stephen King’s Firestarter. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “You mean besides the fact that I don’t like being talked down to, don’t like being considered a lunatic, don’t appreciate being viewed as a sex object, and hate being treated like a helpless child? No, I suppose other than that, you know as much as your brain can hold.”

  Crunch.

  That was the sound of Slo’s teeth clenching.

  “Roxy, if you don’t want to be treated like a child, don’t act like one. What do you call running off the way you did? That wasn’t responsible adult behavior.”

  “I didn’t ‘run off.’ I left a note for Aunt Lydia in the broom closet.”

  “The broom closet? Who in their right mind puts messages in closets?”

  The glow of triumph on her face said she’d caught him on that one. “Does that mean you think I am in my right mind?”

  “No, I’m taking it as further proof that you’re not. Why the hell did you leave a note in the broom closet?”

  “Because we took down the Christmas tree yesterday, of course.”

  “Of course,” Slo repeated, feeling a bit like a man who’d just run blindly into a brick wall. “I should have realized that. Whenever a Christmas tree comes down in summer, the logical place to put notes is a closet.”

  Roxanne glowered. “Stop trying to make it sound stupid. It is logical. Aunt Lydia used to keep a little artificial Christmas tree in the kitchen to help her stay cool while cooking – because Christmas makes her think of snow – and we’d been using the tree as a bulletin board. If one of us needed to leave a note for the other, that’s where we hung it. But the tree got broken while Aunt Lydia was playing Charades with Cardinal Richelieu and Cleopatra, so we had to take it down. That’s why I had to put my note in the broom closet. Because Aunt Lydia usually sweeps as soon as she gets up. She says it’s both a practical and symbolic way to sweep the night’s cobwebs out of her head – she used to be a writer, and she does love her metaphors. Anyway, I figured she’d be sure to see it in there. It normally would’ve been the first place she looked.”

  Damned if she wasn’t right, Slo thought in grudging admiration. It was wacky as hell, but it was logical.

  “Even if she missed the note somehow, she still should have realized what I was doing,” Roxanne added.

&nbs
p; Slo was almost afraid to ask why, but he was perversely hooked and, for better or worse, had to see this through to the end (if, indeed, there was an end to this story; he was beginning to wonder about that). “Why should she have known?”

  “Because she was there last night when I decided on a Vision Quest. Black Elk gave me the idea. I couldn’t see or hear him naturally, but Aunt Lydia told me what he said. She gets offended if anyone else asks her to explain what her people are saying and doing – she assumes everyone sees them the way she does – but I can get away with it because of my hearing loss. At any rate, Black Elk said I’ve been doing things ass backward. I’ve been trying to stop my fire when I should be looking for what creates it. He said I should think of control as a light switch. It flips both ways. If I can learn how to turn the fire on, deliberately, instead of it just happening, I’ll know how to turn it off. Black Elk has been dead for decades, but still seems to be very wise. I thought I should trust his advice.”

  “Black Elk?” God, this was like one of those old George Burns and Gracie Allen comedy routines.

  “Black Elk, the famous Native American shaman. He showed up last night right after you left,” Gracie said, frowning at George. “It’s a lucky thing, too, because Aunt Lydia had been expecting you to stay. She made cocoa and little sandwiches and everything. She was really disappointed when she came back to the family room and found you’d gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” What else could he say? That he had left because he’d gotten the distinct impression Roxanne had wanted him to go? As a matter of fact, Slo was getting the same impression now, saw the same wounded look he’d seen in her eyes then. Wounded and wanting, desperate and defiant. A look that said “Hold me and never let go” and “To hell with you” in the same breath. A look that clawed at his core and lacerated logic – that made him feel for a foolish instant he would walk through hell if it would win him the chance to hold her forever…

  Shit. He might be crazier than she was.

  Roxanne shrugged and the look vanished under a veil of lashes. Guarded reserve. Her shields were up.