Surrendered Read online

  The night-slinker hissed and writhed, its long talons finding his face and leaving ugly, bloody scratches down one high cheekbone.

  “Gods damn it!” Thorn snarled. “Son of a bitch!”

  Suddenly, something strange happened to his eyes. The flames which she’d seen so often dancing in his mismatched irises seemed to spread outward, licking down his cheeks to the sides of his corded throat and then to his broad shoulders. Neh’sa watched in disbelief as tongues of fire stroked down his muscular arms and forearms, encircled his wrists and suddenly burst from the tips of his fingers.

  “Oh my Goddess,” she breathed, scooting back against the wall, her own eyes wide. What was happening? How was he suddenly on fire? Was it some kind of spontaneous combustion? But he didn’t seem to be in pain, at least, not from the fire.

  From the face and shoulders down, Thorn’s big, muscular body was wreathed in flames. But though the fire licked all over him, bathing the dim fresher in a savage, flickering light, they didn’t consume him—didn’t even hurt him as far as Neh’sa could see. It was like being on fire was his natural state or fire was his natural element.

  The same couldn’t be said for the night-slinker. Scorch marks were appearing on its white hide like black fingerprints. It began to shriek—a high, unearthly, piercing sound that made Neh’sa clap her hands over her ears, fearful that it might burst her eardrums.

  Still Thorn held it and wouldn’t let go.

  “Die, you fucker,” she heard him growling in a deep, beast-like voice. “Die for daring to threaten my female. She’s mine, damn you! Mine!”

  The last word ended in a roar and the fire licking from his big hands began to engulf the night-slinker’s head. It screamed and thrashed harder as its white hide turned black and shriveled up, its long, clawed feet kicking wildly, trying to disembowel its captor.

  Somehow Thorn managed to avoid the kicking legs—he kept squeezing and burning until, as Neh’sa watched wide-eyed with horror, his strong hands crushed right through the creature’s wind-pipe and the intense heat of the flames severed its neck in a gout of black blood and ashes.

  The night-slinker’s still burning head rolled across the fresher floor to come to a rest in the stall it had originally been hiding in while its long, bony body slumped to the floor, still twitching and spouting the foul, midnight-colored ichor it used for blood.

  “Goddess,” Neh’sa breathed, her heart pounding. “Oh my Goddess.”

  Thorn was kneeling on the pink marble floor, his eyes still burning, his arms wreathed in flames. He looked at her beseechingly and Neh’sa felt a great wave of painful terror and self-loathing rush through him.

  “Neh-sa,” he whispered hoarsely. “Mistress, help me—I can’t turn it off. Can’t quench it on my own.”

  * * * * *

  It was the first flame-up he’d had in years and it was a bad one. Thorn could feel the fire starting to spread. If it engulfed his entire body it would have no place else to go but the building around him.

  She’ll die, he thought desperately, staring at Neh’sa who was staring back at him with wide, horrified eyes. She’ll die because I tried to save her, to protect her. Just like before…

  The memories of his past, which he had so often blocked and suppressed, began to flow like lava, seeping through the cracks in his conscious mind, making him feel sick and helpless to stop the fire, giving the flames that lived inside him the upper hand in his struggle to control them.

  “A release,” he told Neh’sa desperately. “I need a release. It’s too much—I can feel it spreading…building up. If I can’t fucking control it, the fire is going to explode like a bomb!”

  “A release?” She stared at him, uncomprehending for a moment. “Thorn I can’t…I don’t…don’t even have any equipment with me here. The silver wand I used last time is at home. I—”

  “Fuck the wand,” he growled, hearing the desperation in his own voice and not liking it a bit. “It’s not pleasure I need now—it’s pain. I need something to focus me—something to help me regain control. Please, Neh-sa!” He stared at her with his burning eyes. “I’m going to burn this fucking club down around us if I can’t reign in the fire. I don’t…don’t want to do that. Don’t want to hurt you.”

  Her eyes grew wide with understanding.

  “This is what you were afraid of when I asked you to lose control,” she whispered. “This is what you feared would happen the last time when I used the wand on you.”

  “Yes,” he ground out. Gods but the fire was strong! And so hungry. He hadn’t let it out for years—for over a decade. And now it was escaping the net he’d built around it, seeping out, getting away, hungry to consume everyone—to consume her.

  Just like it did last time…no! Thorn tried to push the toxic memory away but it wouldn’t go. Every moment he felt his control slipping more…

  “I’ll help you if I can.” Neh’sa’s voice cut through his anguish. “But I don’t know how.”

  “The whip…the fire whip.” It was the only implement he could think of that was painful enough to do the job of re-caging the fire. “Flame…helps control… flame,” he ground out as Neh’sa started to shake her head. “Get the whip and use it on me—use it on my back.”

  “I can’t do that!” she protested. “Your back…your limits—”

  “Fuck limits,” Thorn growled hoarsely. “You think the fire inside me recognizes any limits? It’ll fucking burn this club and everyone in it to ash if it gets the chance. Please, Neh-sa—I can’t hold on much longer!”

  By now he wasn’t even sure he could wait for the time it took her to run get the fire whip. The flames were spreading down the sides of his body, trying to take over.

  Suddenly, his wildly searching eyes fell on the branding iron, lying abandoned in the corner of the fresher. It was still cherry-red with heat. Just looking at it made the fire inside him recoil…which was how Thorn knew he had found his answer.

  “The iron,” he said hoarsely, pointing one flaming finger at it. “Neh’sa, there’s no time for the whip—use the branding iron instead. Hurry!”

  Her eyes followed his and slowly—much too slowly for Thorn’s taste—she walked over and picked it up. She stared at the glowing brand at the end, a look of distaste coming over her lovely face.

  “Thorn, I can’t—”

  “Do it!” he roared at her. “Do it before the fire kills you! Before it kills you the way it killed her!”

  A look of understanding and horror, sorrow and pain, passed over Neh’sa’s lovely features. Then her expression hardened into a determined stare and she stepped forward, the iron held in one hand. She spoke one word.

  “Where?”

  “Here.” Thorn turned from her, baring his back where he could feel the flames licking, trying to take over. But though they were spreading down his sides, and lapping around the back of his neck, there was still a cool spot between his shoulder blades—the scarred place where the fire whip had fallen during torture.

  “I don’t want to do this,” he heard Neh’sa say, her words squeezed tight with tears.

  And then the searing pain of the hot iron branding his back drove everything else out of his head. Thorn let out an agonized roar as the fire abruptly went out, fleeing back inside him as the burning catharsis of the brand forced it to retreat.

  Gods, he thought, feeling his stomach fist into a knot as cold as the fire had been hot. Now she knows what I really am—what I’m capable of. Now she’ll hate me.

  * * * * *

  Thorn collapsed on the floor, panting and spent. The supernatural flames that had been threatening to take over his entire body had gone out as suddenly as they had ignited.

  He was right, Neh’sa thought with a distracted kind of horror. He did need a kind of release in order to control them.

  But it was a release she would have denied him if she could have—not because she didn’t want him to find relief but because she’d felt the wave of pure agony that went thro