Souls of Fire

by Vanessa Black

  “Please.”

  It was that last word that did it. It was the desperate, pleading note on which her appeal ended, the way her voice finally broke with emotion. It was the vulnerability she showed, a moment of weakness, when she had seemed so strong before.

  That tiny glimpse of genuine emotion, and the pitiable way in which she stood before him and so desperately tried to hide it, had him off the bed in a confusing mixture of pity, respect, and longing.

  Aaron didn’t know what he was doing, or why he suddenly had felt the urge to leap off the bed and go to her.

  He had thought she wanted to seduce him, thought she had played the damsel in distress so that he would bring her to his room and sleep with her. Now, it seemed, she hadn’t wanted any of it.

  She evidently felt so distressed by the mere thought of being with him, that she had made a fool of herself in front of him, just to get away from him quickly.

  He had thought she wanted him and that he was going to reject her, now he was the one being rejected. Reminding himself that this was what he had wanted, that he hadn’t wanted to spend the night with her anyway, he tried not to let the rebuff get to him.

  But the truth was: he wanted her.

  If he hadn’t wanted her before, he wanted her now.

  Now that she had rejected him.

  Now that she stood before him, emotionally raw and vulnerable.

  It made him ache to touch her. It made him yearn for her admiration. He wanted her to want him.

  The desire he had felt earlier was nothing to the way he felt now. He was barely in control, holding back with extreme difficulty. He was sure his fiery gaze was burning holes into the girl’s skin from the heat it radiated as he looked down at her.

  As Aaron lifted his hand to touch her face, her gaze met his. The broken word she had spoken last hovered in the thick silence between them and was mirrored in her eyes as they flowed over, teardrops rolling slowly and silently down her cheeks.

  Aaron couldn’t do it. He couldn’t play games with her, and he would not be able to look at himself in the mirror again if he tried to seduce her now, if he forced himself on her now, when she was standing before him with tears in her eyes, every fiber of her being begging him to let her go.

  He had wanted her to beg, but this wasn’t what he’d had in mind!

  Quietly Aaron cleared his throat, desperately trying to find his voice again, and at the same time trying not to let on how strongly her tears had unsettled him.

  “I think it’s time for you to leave,” he said coldly, wanting to infuriate her with his blasé manner, so that she wouldn’t notice the inner turmoil he felt.

  Moving her away from the door in a rather rough way, he took the key out of his pocket, unlocked the door and opened it for her. Holding his arm out in a mockingly courteous manner, he dismissed her, ignoring the hurt look in her eyes all the while.

  When she had hurried out the door and Aaron was alone again at last, he dropped all pretenses and sank onto his bed, completely miserable. The hurt she had shown reprimanded him; her huge tear-filled eyes haunted him.

  He felt dirty and ashamed.

  What was wrong with him?

  How could he have behaved in such a despicable manner? Even if he wasn’t interested in her as a person, and even if she were strong enough to deal with his rude behavior, there was no excuse for the way he had treated her throughout the evening!

  He had behaved violently toward her, and he had mocked her. Oh God, he thought, as the memory came back to him vividly, he had shook and threatened her. She would probably have purple markings around her wrist tomorrow, where he had gripped her so tightly.

  Seeing those beautiful eyes fill with tears had made him realize that she wasn’t what he had expected. She may have appeared to be strong, but she was fragile and insecure.

  Having realized this, he felt like a monster. He had thought she could take it … he had been wrong! Now, as he tried to come up with a way to make it up to her, he realized there was none. There was no way in which he could explain himself, because there was no excuse! She would continue to despise him.

  Dimly wondering why he even cared if she despised him, and finding no answer that suited him, he fell asleep on his bed, his jeans and shoes still covering his weary body.

  I couldn’t believe I had actually escaped. Well, not escaped in the sense of getting away under my own power, but I had managed to disgust him, so that he had let me go.

  For a moment, I’d thought he might actually force himself on me. And though I hadn’t believed him to be the kind of man to do such a vile thing, the fierce, hungry look in his eyes when he had leaped off the bed and stood before me had sufficed to convince me otherwise.

  As far as I was concerned, he had been within an inch of losing control.

  After all, who could tell what another person was really like, I pondered. If rapists walked around with tags that read “RAPIST, BEWARE!” life certainly would be easier.

  Until that day came, however, the utmost anyone could do was make an educated guess and hope to God to be right about the person one believed to be able to read.

  Then again, there was trust, or faith, or whichever word fit the concept best. One could always have faith in someone being a good person.

  Trust, or faith, however, was a concept that was beyond me just then. Trust had to be gained, earned; not simply handed out to whoever came along.

  And faith is blind! Isn’t that how it goes? I thought morosely. Okay, Love is blind. But faith might just as well be.

  Well, when it came to him, I was undoubtedly blind.

  Even now, walking back to my own room mere minutes after having felt terrified that he might rape me, the shock had already worn off, and all I felt was hurt.

  The feeling was so powerful that it clouded any other emotion. The disdainful tone in which he had dismissed me; as if I bored him to death the minute he discovered I didn’t want to jump his bones.

  Against all the things I believed in, against all the values I held dear, I wanted him and felt hurt by his icy dismissal. Despite my fear that he might harm me, and despite his cruel indifferent behavior toward me, I ached for him. And that meant that I had to stay away from him!

  If I was emotionally so far gone that, by all rights, I needed professional help, then the only thing standing between me and catastrophe was my resolve to keep out of his way. Easier said than done, I thought, when he was my professor, and I was required to go to the classes for which I had signed up.

  I would have to go sooner or later. However, if I managed to elude him for at least a week, it might be all the time I needed to put things back into perspective and get over the attraction I still felt.

  The class was held Tuesdays and Fridays at twelve thirty in the same auditorium. All I had to do was skip his class on Friday and play sick throughout the next week, starting with Tuesday, I mused.

  Though it might be slightly embarrassing, I could easily excuse myself on the grounds of having menstrual cramps. It’s not like he had a good opinion of me anyway … that ship had sailed! And it’s not like anyone would ever check to see that I really had my period.

  That would be the day!

  Of course, playing ill would mean blowing off my other classes as well. Under normal circumstances, this train of thought would have made me feel slightly guilty. At the moment, however, I didn’t have a choice. I just couldn’t face him right now!

  I spent the following days leading up to Tuesday in a state of nervousness hitherto unknown to me. I went to my other classes in a calm and collected state knowing he wouldn’t be there, and resurfaced as a nervous wreck, fearing to run into him at every possible turn.

  In the cafeteria, I wolfed down my food so fast that the taste of it hardly registered on my mind. The little food I was able to eat, having had no real appetite since the night I had fled from Aaron Chambers’ room, had no worth to me other than being a necessity. I couldn’t enjoy it!

 
When I had attained the note excusing me from classes and didn’t need to visit the cafeteria, having stashed a large amount of food and water in my fridge, I thought my nervousness would finally let up and that my appetite would return.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Every night now, I was being plagued by the same forceful dream in which I was lying in his arms making love to him in front of the scorching flames of the crackling fire. I would wake up, bathed in cold sweat, with a longing so fierce it made it hard for me to breathe.

  Every morning I would be haunted by the remnants of that dream. Where, before, I had been able to distinguish details of the room in my very first dream, now I felt only emotions.

  The dreams held nothing more than a flow of all-consuming sensations that rolled over me in sweltering waves.

  Waking from my dreams, I was left with a sense of loss so vast, that it tore a big, aching hole in my heart, leaving me broken and miserable for hours on end, unable to move, eat or drink, and growing weaker as time went by.

  Things were not getting better; they were getting worse!

  I was suffering terribly from not seeing him. With the little sanity I still had left, I realized I could not really be feeling this way about Aaron Chambers.

  Wanting him ― desiring him ― despite his rude behavior toward me, was one thing. Feeling as though the man I loved had ripped out my heart and stepped on it, was quite another.

  I had never suffered a broken heart before, but I was sure that what had happened between us could not warrant such a reaction.

  Contemplating it over and over in my head, I could come to only one conclusion: it was my body, not my heart.

  My feelings about him hadn’t changed. I was extremely attracted to him, though I knew I shouldn’t be. But my body’s reaction to my feelings was completely over the top!

  In what alternate reality could I ever feel this way about such an insensitive jerk, I thought savagely.

  Whatever strange bond was between us ― of which I felt positive he knew nothing and probably couldn’t sense if he tried ― I would bet my right arm that the same bond was affecting my body at the moment.

  This revelation did nothing to soothe me, though, and I collapsed onto my pillow, my body weakened, my mind exhausted.

  Aaron had been feeling strange for days.

  Something was wrong.

  In a remote part of his mind, a voice whispered; an elusive thought was almost taking hold. However, this thought would steal out of his reach every time his conscious mind tried to pin it down.

  It had been ten days since he had so unceremoniously ‘thrown’ the redheaded girl ― he didn’t even remember her name ― from his room.

  He hadn’t seen her since; which suited him just fine, seeing as he wanted nothing more to do with her. It was true that he had deeply regretted his behavior toward her and would have taken it back if he could. It was also true that he still wanted her.

  But he knew better than to act on want!

  He would stay away from her as well as he could. He would see her again, of course, since she had to come to class eventually, but he was sure she would ignore him as he would ignore her.

  It was Friday evening, and most of the student body was getting ready to drop in at one of the parties some of the students always threw.

  It was only eight o’clock, but Aaron felt strangely exhausted. Taking off his shoes, and vowing to rest his eyes only for a minute, he fell fast asleep.

  The room was mostly dark. The only light came from a blazing fire opposite the bed. His fireplace, he realized, looking around the dimly lit room.

  Suddenly sensing he wasn’t alone, his gaze shifted to his right and came to rest on the figure lying beside him on the bed.

  She was on her stomach, her head resting on her arms which she had folded under, using them as a pillow. Her body lay wrapped in his white bedspread, covering her otherwise naked skin, concealing every bit of her but the part above her breasts.

  Her fiery red curls were spread out around her pale delicate face, the color even paler than usual in comparison with her hair which was glowing like embers from being lit up by the dancing flames.

  She was so hauntingly beautiful at this moment that it took Aaron’s breath away.

  He wondered vaguely if he dared reach out and touch her. He wanted to so badly that his body started trembling!

  Afraid to do anything to distress her, he started to pull away his already extended hand when he suddenly realized none of this could be real. Nothing in this world would entice her to share his bed! Not after the way he had treated her.

  With the realization that he was dreaming came the notion that he was free to do whatever he wished. She was, after all, only a figment of his dream. Therefore, nothing he did had the power to hurt or distress her.

  Delighting in the thought that he could at least touch her in this vivid, realistic dream, that he could have what his body yearned for, which was denied him in reality, he reached out to touch the soft bare skin of her back. His fingertips were a hair’s breadth from her skin when her image shifted right before his eyes.

  Her eyes flew open at the same instant as her right hand shot out from under her head and wrapped itself around his wrist, her fingers clawing at his flesh with such desperate strength that the tendons stood out on the back of her hand.

  Her terrifyingly distorted face had gone from pale to ghostly white, dark bruises marring the skin under her eyes, making them seem even larger on her suddenly skeletal face.

  Her movements had been so sudden, so inhumanly fast, her appearance so appalling, that Aaron was shocked out of his senses. He felt like a kid, secretly watching the horror movie his parents had forbidden him to watch, feeling exhilarated at first and traumatized the next moment; suddenly wishing he’d listened to his parents.

  As he sat and stared in disbelief, unable to move a muscle, she turned her whole body toward him.

  He only had a moment to wonder about the strange mark on her chest above her left breast ― was it a rose? ― when she opened her mouth, only just managed to get out the words she so desperately needed him to hear, and then disappeared in a swirl of color and motion as Aaron’s dream went up in smoke, and he came crashing back to reality.

  Turning on every light in the room in a feeble attempt to chase away the nightmarish image of her, Aaron paced frantically up and down his room; his apprehension for her warring with his inability to believe any part of the dream to be real.

  Ignoring his first stubborn impulse to bury the dream in the darkest recesses of his mind, the part of his consciousness that had continuously whispered to him, urging him for days to delve into the mystery of why he felt so strange, finally broke free of its confinement.

  Inhibited no longer, it didn’t merely whisper. It shouted!

  With a cry so ferocious, Aaron hadn’t believed it possible, his inner voice raged at him to do what his dream image of her had so desperately pleaded with her last breath.

  Running from the room as fast as his legs would carry him, he finally listened to his inner voice; governed by the bond between them, it guided him without fail in the direction of her room. Carrying his laboring body along, his feet hit the floor in powerful rhythmic motions.

  As each step thumped loudly in Aaron’s ears, in complete synchronicity with his frantically beating heart, his mind replayed the image of her desperate request, the breathless whisper that had escaped her dying lips.

  As he rushed toward her, hoping against hope that he wasn’t too late, her last words echoed hollowly inside his head.

  “Save … me.”

  Aaron sprinted up three flights of stairs in the girl’s building. The bond that continued to guide him had grown weaker and weaker as the minutes flew by, threatening to break off at any second and leave him utterly helpless in finding her, thereby condemning the girl to death.

  Although, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the moment he no long
er felt the connection he would already be too late because it meant that her heart had stopped beating.

  Vowing not even to entertain such a notion, he pushed on down the hall, feeling the tiny spark of the bond going out just as he reached her door.

  Refusing to give up on her, frantically trying and failing to open the door which she had obviously locked, he let the panic he felt completely take over his senses, willing his adrenaline-flooded body to do the only thing he could think of that might still save her ― if it wasn’t already too late.

  Retreating as far as he could, he inhaled deeply, and then charged straight for her door, crashing into it, and taking it down with the force of a raging bull, showering the hall and her room with an array of wooden splinters.

  How long had it been since he had felt her spark go out?

  Seconds? Minutes? He no longer knew!

  Running toward her unmoving, deathly pale body, he tried to block everything else from his thoughts as he concentrated single-mindedly on what he needed to do.

  Feeling for a pulse, his heart skipped a couple of beats when his senses confirmed what he had already felt to be true:

  Her heart was no longer beating!

  Aaron couldn’t let her be dead!

  The sound of her pleading last words haunted him. It would be his fault if she was dead. Because he had hesitated!

  She had used the bond between them and had cried out for help. He had been her only hope.

  And he had failed her!

  Beside himself at this very thought, he clutched at her, pulling her upper body toward him, starting to fill her lungs with air and massage her no longer beating heart.

  A minute went by, then another. More minutes passed.

  Nothing.

  No intake of breath.

  No heartbeat.

  No spark!

  Completely overwhelmed by everything that had happened that night, and left with a sense of loss so acute, so painful, that he could hardly breathe, Aaron hugged her body to his, no longer concerned about appearances.