Burn For Him

Burn for Him

Kristan Belle

Copyright
© Kristan Belle

First Published 2015 Createspace

Cover Photo ©
Dmitryzubarev | Dreamstime.com

The moral rights of the author has been asserted.

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this digital publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, nor circulated in physical form without prior consent of the author.

Also by Kristan Belle…

The Sons of Satrina Series

The Sons of Satrina

Dawn of a New Age

Acknowledgements

People often think that writing is a solitary life. However, that’s far from the truth! There are so many people that have worked with me to help pursue my dream of writing that if I named each and every one of them, it’d probably be a book in itself! So, I’ll try and keep this brief…

As always, a massive thank you to Heidi P – you never complain when I come to you with stupid ideas or questions and work tirelessly to help me get things as perfect as humanly possible (hey, we all make mistakes, right?!)

A big thank you to Jill K for all your help and input. Your support means the world to me, thank you.

And I want to say a big thank you to my sister, Nikki. When I told her a few years ago that I wanted to be a writer, she didn’t laugh at me or tell me I was nuts. She told me to go for it and is still there for me whenever I need her now. Love ya sis XX

Chapter One

The constant flashing lights and banging bass were starting to give me a major headache. Honestly, I really wasn’t in the mood to come out and party tonight. You know that feeling you get when you just don’t want to be there? When it felt like it was all a huge waste of time and money? Yeah, that was how I was feeling. Staying at home and chilling out with a delicious take-away pizza would have been much more preferable than enduring this nightmare. Maybe I was just getting old before my time?

Sliding my still full glass down the bar, I motioned for the bartender to bring me an ice cold bottle of water. Within less than thirty seconds, some skank had picked up my discarded drink, happy to accept a freebie. Does no one care about their safety these days? For all they knew, the drink could have been spiked and they could have been walking into a world of trouble. But, it’s free, right? So who cares? I rolled my eyes at their stupidity.

Taking a satisfying gulp of the cool water, I instantly felt better. Sure, my head was still banging like there was a rock concert playing in my skull, but at least the cool water brought some temporary relief. I couldn’t seem to stomach alcohol tonight. Even the smell of it was too sickly to take. There wasn’t any point in drinking myself sick and making this night any worse than it already was.

Glancing around, I had to smile to myself despite the fact that I still wanted to get the hell out of dodge. Some things really never did change. Destiny was really giving it some on the dance floor, gyrating like there was no tomorrow in the middle of a hoard of adoring men. Trust her.

It was no wonder, really. She was about as naturally beautiful as you could get with her rich ebony skin and a body like a cat walk model and the biggest soulful deep brown eyes that I’d ever come across. It was like she was a flame bright beacon, drawing attention to herself wherever she went. Dee was the kind of girl that thrived on adoration and clamoured to be the centre of attention in everything she did.

Of course, I had to admit that having electric blue hair kind of drew a lot of attention my way, too. But I didn’t do it for that reason. I often change the colour of my hair, usually depending on my mood at the time, or sometimes through plain old boredom. Right now, black would have probably suited my mood better than the vibrant blue that it currently was.

We were like chalk and cheese in that respect. Destiny loved to be in the centre of the crowd, the one with all the attention focused on her. Me? I didn’t even want to be one of the crowd. I liked to be different. Destiny didn’t need coloured hair to stand out from the masses; she naturally drew people to her. Especially droves of men.

“Is everything okay?”

A voice came from behind me and I whirled around to see who had the audacity to lean down and rest their chin on my shoulder, ready to shake them off, violently if need be. I really wasn’t in the mood to be hit on tonight. Luckily, it was Harper who was standing there, grinning at me like a demented Cheshire cat. I smiled and nodded over to where Destiny was still bumping and grinding amidst her admirers. Harper rolled his eyes at me.

We were like the Three Musketeers. We had always been together, stuck to one another like glue since we were all about five years old. I still don’t know what it was about the three of us that initially drew us together and then kept us together for so long, but time had only managed to strengthen our friendship.

We’d met as three lost little kids in my very first foster home and no matter how many times we had been split up and moved around, we still managed to somehow keep in contact with one another. Sometimes, a bond that strong is impossible to break.

Destiny, or Dee as we tended to call her, had always been the loudest one out of the three. She was the one with all the out-there ideas, doing anything and everything that was fun, anything to escape the blankness of everyday life and the stifling call of reality. Destiny was the original wild child. Personally, I thought it was all an extreme attempt to fight against society and the rules that had been set down for her by her family. But, hey, it seemed to work for her.

She didn’t have one of the most loving or the easiest of upbringings. One of my least pleasant foster mother’s once said that Destiny was an out and out slut, just like her mother before her, and that she’d get herself caught up in a sticky situation that she wouldn’t be able to get herself out of one day. Needless to say, that was one of the foster families that I no longer had any contact with. She was a bitch to live with, so why would I willingly choose to have someone like that in my life? It was a wonder how some of these people were allowed to look after children.

And then there was Harper. They all liked Harper. Everyone loved Harper. They all said that he was a good and calming influence on me. He was an all-round nice guy, fun to be with, humorous and someone that I trusted with my life. No matter what the problem was, I could always rely on Harper to be there for me.

However, nothing he ever did seemed to have any kind of positive effect on Destiny. Not that it would ever stop him from trying. Harper had always been the more mature one out of us, the one to look out for us girls and keep us out of scrapes.

Harper was the kind of good looking man that other guys seemed to find a threat and therefore had to try and belittle him to make themselves feel better. For a while back in high school, Harper had to endure quite a bit of bullying and grief from the other boys, saying that he was gay and generally making his life a living nightmare. They thought that he was an easy target because he was generally quite quiet, didn’t put it about like the rest of them and his two best friends were girls. Not that it would have made the slightest difference to me if he was gay, but Harper was as straight as they came. He was just more choosey than the rest of them who’d hook up with anything with a pulse.

Harper was single at the moment. His last girlfriend didn’t last too long. It was destined to end after she got in a jealous huff and accused both me and Destiny of sleeping with Harper. That was just laughable. Nothing like that had ever happened between any of us. We were all each other had. We were like family. Being that close to one another, it would have felt incestuous.

“What’s wrong?” Harper asked, bringing his mouth close to my ear and raising his voice so that I could hear him over the loud music that was bouncing off the walls in the club.

“Just tired, I guess.” I had to try and stifle a yawn as soon as I said it.

There was no way that I wanted to spoil their night if they were having a good time, so I didn’t say outright that I was ready to call it quits. There was also no way that Dee was going to be ready to go home quite this early. She was just getting into her stride. And, I knew from the past, with her acting as she was that Harper wouldn’t want to leave her in the club on her own. Destiny was a bundle of fun and always out for a good time, but sometimes her actions tended to attract the wrong kind of attention. She wasn’t exactly picky about the men that she hooked up with. There had been plenty of times in the past when we had to rescue her from the hands of a man that got a little too grabby.

“I’ll go and tell her we’re leaving.”

The boy knew me too damn well. Harper put his drink down on the bar and made to walk away from me and into the throng of gyrating bodies on the dance floor. I held up a hand to stop him.

“What?” he mouthed.

I shook my head at him and pulled him closer so he could hear me over the din. “Why don’t we give her a bit longer? She looks like she’s having fun tonight.” I knew that I must have sounded like an indulgent mother, but I really didn’t want to spoil her fun tonight. She lived for the weekend and it wasn’t her fault that I wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to have to attempt to shout over the music again. My head was banging and all this shouting was only proving to make it worse. It was like I had my own personal post-hardcore band pounding away in my skull.

“Five minutes?” he held up a hand and raised his eyebrows in question. I grinned back at him knowing full well that it was going to take us a hell of a lot longer than just five minutes to get Destiny out of there. She was clearly having a whale of a time and we were going to have to pry her out of the club with a crow bar when the time came. Harper knew exactly what I was thinking and laughed. “Do you want to go and sit down for a bit?” he nodded his head over towards a table that had just come empty and grabbed my hand to claim it before someone else beat us to it.

We spent the next couple of hour’s people watching. It was actually one of my favourite pastimes. It was fun. It let me unleash my nasty, bitchy side, ripping apart other people’s choice of wardrobe, dancing style, partner choice, etc…  None of it was meant maliciously, but it sure made the pair of us laugh. Harper could be just as scathing as me. He was a total bitch when he wanted to be. We imagined the kind of conversations that were going on between the couples around us, guessing at people’s professions and generally having a good old giggle at other people’s expense. The club and its patrons gave us plenty of ammunition.

The club was one of the most popular spots in the city and people from all walks of life partied within these walls. It appealed to people of all ages and all backgrounds. You would have thought that on an ordinary night out that Dee would have stood out like a sore thumb in her all leather get-up, looking for all the world a dominatrix, but she wasn’t the only one here dressed like that. There were plenty of other people out rocking the PVC and leather BDSM look that seemed so ‘in’ at the moment. The more out there and risqué, the better apparently. Blend that in with the regular Joe, the designer chic clique, the emo’s and the hip-hop crowd, this place really catered for all.

It was a huge building that had been a night club for as long as I could remember. I had been one of those rebellious teens, usually egged on by Destiny, and had started my drinking and clubbing days a little earlier than the law suggested. We had been coming here since we were about thirteen or fourteen. Not much about the place had changed in that time.

The club itself was an overload of red, from the ratty old carpeting that had so many drinks spilled on it over the years that your feet stuck to it when you walked, to the classic red leather booths that circled the dance floor. It wasn’t a huge space compared to some of the new clubs that were sprout in up all over the city, or particularly classy, but it was always packed to the rafters.

Our eyes kept skimming back over to Destiny, who was currently getting all down and dirty with a muscle bound, bling wearing, shaven head looking thug on the dance floor. She was the eternal flirt with no specific type to tie her down or limit her choices. Personally, I couldn’t see what was so appealing about the guy that she was with. In my mind, he looked like he could do with a damn good wash. She didn’t seem too bothered, though, as his hands continued to roam over the exposed skin of her stomach.

“Carrie? Do you want me to go over and tell her that we’re ready to leave?” Harper asked finally.

I had been rubbing my temples for the last five minutes in a lame attempt to try and ease this headache that was building, but nothing seemed to be doing the trick. I was more than ready to leave. I didn’t think it would be quite as easy to persuade Destiny to get out of there, though. That was another headache I didn’t need.

I thought about it for a moment. I knew by now that Harper was also ready to get out of there, but I didn’t think that it would be a very wise move for him to go over there and try to talk her into leaving. I remembered the last time Harper had tried to drag her out of a club. It wasn’t pretty.

Harper was stunningly good looking. He was never short of admirers himself, especially in a place like this. I always found it highly amusing, the amount of evil glares and dirty looks I received from other girls just because I dared to stand with him. It was pathetic. They seemed to take it as a personal affront that he was with me and not them.

It wasn’t like I ever discouraged him from hooking up on a night out, as long as they were worthy of him. It wasn’t just Harper who had a protective streak in him. Thankfully, he tended to listen to me when I gave him an opinion on a girl he was interested in. I would have hated for him to get hurt by some skank that was just using him for his good looks and charm.

With Dee, we never had such luck. She was always beyond listening to reason when it came to the kind of men she attracted. Once she got a drop of alcohol inside her, she was an equal opportunities kind of girl, giving every guy that crossed her path the chance to charm her. Hence why Harper and I had such a hard time keeping her under control.

Harper stood at well over six feet tall and had the most unique hair colour I had ever seen. People always assumed that he dyed it to achieve that kind of colour, but the blond, gold and auburn streaks were all natural.

But, out of the whole package, it was his eyes that were the killer. They were big and expressive, an almost yellow shade of hazel, and so intense that you knew just what he was feeling. One look into those eyes and you felt like you were falling head first into the depths of his very soul.

He worked out all the time and trained in several different forms of martial arts in his spare time, which left him ripped. Harper was a personal trainer and was in the gym nearly seven days a week. He wasn’t built like a boosted up body builder, like the guy who was salivating all over Destiny, but Harper had rippling muscles in all the right places.