Smoke billowed from the roof of their home.
Orange clawed at the wood.
She fled from the house, her dress engulfed in fire, the flames eating at her body like a rabid mouth.
There was nothing he could do. He dropped to his knees, covered his ears and closed his eyes.
As his mother screamed and screamed and screamed.
Timber exploded through the forest, shattering his thoughts. The terrain was rocky in places, and fire wouldn’t burn there. He’d couldn’t save his mother . . . he’d been too young, too weak. A rare lurch of emotion choked his throat.
He tore his jacket off, and in less than a heartbeat, he was out of his car and running into the forest.
The heat hit him like an electric shock, sinking into his bones. He surged forward, leaping over crackling branches and skirting around burning trees. Red-hot embers danced through the air like thousands of fireflies. He jammed an arm over his mouth as he ran, but the heat was blistering. Every breath was scorching and windpipe felt as though a grater ripped shreds from it.
Lit branches slashed at his body, striking like scalding lashes as they burned through his shirt and singed the hairs on his arms. He could withstand it. But Amelia was so fragile . . .
Her emerald eyes gazing into his, the soft touch of her hands on his back. Her scent, so sweet he could almost taste it.
A flare of adrenaline flooded his veins, and he ran even faster. His soundless feet chewed up the distance.
Karson jerked to a halt directly behind a huge wall of impenetrable flames. The whole forest was reduced to flaresof orange, red, and darkness. The monstrous mouth spat lava, reaching its executioner’s tongue out, devouring everything around it.
He couldn’t see a way through. He should turn around and leave. She wasn’t the first woman who’d caught his eye, and she’d not be the last.
He wiped sweat off his forehead. Leave her, she wasn’t his problem, she wasn’t his anything . . . His heart twisted against the cage of his ribs, reaching for her, craving something he’d buried a long time ago. But his mind was a far superior beast. Hehadtried to save her; it was more than anyone else would have risked.
There was no redemption for what he’d done, if that was the cause of his heart’s discontent.
As a towering tree slammed to the forest floor, Karson turned away.
A deer darted ahead, eyes wide, nostrils flaring as its coat blazed with fire. It was screaming. The deer was screaming.
Karson shuddered and swung back to the flames.
She’d laughed at the lines he had used a thousand times before. Lines that’d worked a thousand times before. And when she gazed up at him, there was something about the green of her eyes which captivated him. They made him want to reach in to see what lay beneath.
Made him want to exhume what he’d thought was dead inside.
He shook the thoughts away. Only a fool would try to get through a fire of that size. But something else fought back. A soundless whisper clutching his heart like a hand.Save her.The battle of what to do warred in his head.
Sweat trickled from his entire body. His lungs were a furnace, and every breath he sucked in hurt. The heat stung his eyes. He squeezed them shut, and her image appeared in the darkness ofhis mind. Her voice arose in his ears, the melodic tune washed over him. Washed through him.
Her voice, a siren’s song dragging him to her.
Her image, a beacon whispering against the dark.
The battle was lost before it ever really began.
His eyes tore open and he remembered who the fuck he was. It was just fire; something as ordinary as heat would not kill him. It would hurt, yes. Be excruciating, yes. But he would not allow something as mundane as pain to determine his actions. Being controlled by pain was an attribute of the weak, and he was anything but that.
Karson snatched in one last deep breath, tensed, then shot forward. The heat was metal claws tearing at his body. His skin bubbled, blistered, and popped—he was being cooked alive. The pain was excruciating. So terrible, Karson whined.He whined!
The vile smell of his burning flesh clotted his nostrils. His vision was reduced to an orange glow, his hearing nothing but a thunderous, deafening roar.
Each second felt like a minute. Each step a marathon. Each heartbeat a scream.
His muscles seized and lost power. He staggered, running blindly.
