The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights) Read online

  The Flame

  A Desire Exchange Novella

  By Christopher Rice

  1001 Dark Nights

  The Flame

  A Desire Exchange Novella

  By Christopher Rice

  1001 Dark Nights

  Copyright 2014 Christopher Rice

  ISBN: 978-1-940887-18-0

  Foreword: Copyright 2014 M. J. Rose

  Published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Book Description

  NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR CHRISTOPHER RICE PRESENTS HIS FIRST WORK OF EROTIC ROMANCE.

  IT ONLY TAKES A MOMENT…

  Cassidy Burke has the best of both worlds, a driven and successful husband and a wild, impulsive best friend. But after a decadent Mardi Gras party, Cassidy finds both men pulling away from her. Did the three of them awaken secret desires during a split-second of alcohol-fueled passion? Or is Mardi Gras a time when rules are meant to be broken without consequence?

  Only one thing is for certain—the chill that’s descended over her marriage, and her most important friendship, will soon turn into a deep freeze if she doesn’t do something. And soon.

  LIGHT THIS FLAME AT THE SCENE OF YOUR GREATEST PASSION AND ALL YOUR DESIRES WILL BE YOURS.

  The invitation stares out at her from the window of a French Quarter boutique. The store’s owner claims to have no knowledge of the strange candle. But Cassidy can’t resist its intoxicating scent or the challenge written across its label in elegant cursive. With the strike of a match and one tiny flame, she will call forth a supernatural being with the ultimate power—the power to unchain the heart, the power to remove the fear that stands between a person and their truest desires.

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  1001 Dark Nights story on 1/1/15.

  The First Night

  by Shayla Black, Lexi Blake & M.J. Rose

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Also From 1001 Dark Nights

  Acknowledgments from the Author

  About Christopher Rice

  An excerpt from The Surrender Gate: A Desire Exchange Novella by Christopher Rice

  Also by Christopher Rice

  Special Thanks

  One Thousand and One Dark Nights

  Once upon a time, in the future…

  I was a student fascinated with stories and learning.

  I studied philosophy, poetry, history, the occult, and

  the art and science of love and magic. I had a vast

  library at my father’s home and collected thousands

  of volumes of fantastic tales.

  I learned all about ancient races and bygone

  times. About myths and legends and dreams of all

  people through the millennium. And the more I read

  the stronger my imagination grew until I discovered

  that I was able to travel into the stories... to actually

  become part of them.

  I wish I could say that I listened to my teacher

  and respected my gift, as I ought to have. If I had, I

  would not be telling you this tale now.

  But I was foolhardy and confused, showing off

  with bravery.

  One afternoon, curious about the myth of the

  Arabian Nights, I traveled back to ancient Persia to

  see for myself if it was true that every day Shahryar

  (Persian: شهريار, “king”) married a new virgin, and then

  sent yesterday's wife to be beheaded. It was written

  and I had read, that by the time he met Scheherazade,

  the vizier's daughter, he’d killed one thousand

  women.

  Something went wrong with my efforts. I arrived

  in the midst of the story and somehow exchanged

  places with Scheherazade – a phenomena that had

  never occurred before and that still to this day, I

  cannot explain.

  Now I am trapped in that ancient past. I have

  taken on Scheherazade’s life and the only way I can

  protect myself and stay alive is to do what she did to

  protect herself and stay alive.

  Every night the King calls for me and listens as I spin tales.

  And when the evening ends and dawn breaks, I stop at a

  point that leaves him breathless and yearning for more.

  And so the King spares my life for one more day, so that

  he might hear the rest of my dark tale.

  As soon as I finish a story... I begin a new

  one... like the one that you, dear reader, have before

  you now.

  1

  CASSIDY

  The first sheets of rain pound the parked cars and filigree ironwork all around her with enough power to give off spray, forcing Cassidy Burke to hurry for the cover of the nearest balcony.

  When she starts to run, the giant rolls of tapestry in her arms slide back and forth, giving her no choice but to launch into what her best friend Shane would probably call “a Cirque du Soleil move,” a desperate sideways and backward dance intended to keep the whole precarious assemblage of outstretched arms, toile-patterned fabrics, and slippery plastic coverings from slamming to the wet sidewalk.

  It works, thank God; her balance is back, and just in time. No such luck with her bangs. When she puckers her bottom lip and tries to blow them out of her eyes, they remain sealed to her forehead, her hair soaked to its roots.

  For several days now the French Quarter has been in a drowsy, post-Mardi Gras slump, but the heavy downpour sends it into a coma. She’s the only pedestrian in sight, which makes her feel like the only human east of Canal Street. And now she’s trapped, all because some silly vendor scheduled his delivery for the week before when she’d told him specifically the shop would be closed. But it’s not Leonard DeVille’s fault she walked to the UPS store without an umbrella or a raincoat. Still, parking is a nightmare on these narrow streets, laid as they were in the age of horse-drawn carriages, and she knew she’d need both arms free to carry the shipment back to the little gift shop she’s owned for two years.

  Two-and-a-half-years, she reminds herself, keenly aware, once again, that ever since she became a business owner she’s tended to round down her every accomplishment, as if no achievement of hers will be good enough until Cassidy’s Corner is out of the red and fulfilling Internet orders from all over the world. Then everything will be better; then she will earn the respect of her husband’s fellow architects at Chaisson & Landry, men and women who currently see h
er as nothing more than a housewife with a love of long novels and a codependent friendship with her gay best friend. And then she will never have another insecurity in the world. Ever.

  If she’s not careful, this cruel, self-defeating line of thought will wash away her ambitions with the speed and ease of the rain sluicing through the gutters overhead.

  She’s not a teenager anymore. She has no business blaming others for the terrible pressure she places on herself at the start of every workday. And if she doesn’t watch herself, she’ll make it Andrew’s fault, too. If he weren’t so driven and successful, she wouldn’t feel the need to compete. And if he weren’t so goddamn handsome, then she wouldn’t constantly feel like she didn’t deserve him, that other women were whispering things behind her back, things like, “What’d she do to land that one? Does it involve splits?”

  It is fear that tricks her into seeing the blessings in her life as obstacles. It is fear, plain and simple, that twines its black fingers through the love and respect she has for her husband, pulling it apart until its strands look like chains. And nothing good in her life has ever come from treating fear like a teacher.

  Worse, these thoughts are just painful distractions from uncomfortable, everyday realities. Owning a business is a lot harder than she thought it would be. That’s the long and short of it. And it’s just easier to indulge paranoid fantasies than it is to balance the books, conduct bi-weekly inventories, and stay abreast of trade conventions where she might find that rare, expensive specialty item that will snag the attention of a tourist from Atlanta or a Garden District housewife wandering the Quarter after brunch at Galatoire’s.

  And then there’s what happened during Mardi Gras.

  Cassidy screws her eyes shut to keep the memory at bay. For a split second, she worries the effort might launch her from her body, causing her to drop the rolls of tapestry after all. To anyone peering at her through a nearby window she probably looks like she’s suffering from a crippling phobia of rain, what with her furrowed brow and her rapid, shallow breaths lifting her soaked blouse. How could they possibly know she’s trying not to feel the dizzying, seductive caress of her husband’s breath against one side of her neck and her best friend’s lips against the other?

  Stop it. Everything’s fine. Stranger things have happened during Mardi Gras. You’re lucky it wasn’t— She’s at a loss for how to finish this thought. Worse? Better? Are they one and the same when you find yourself on the verge of surrendering to a threesome with your husband and your best friend?

  When the smell hits her, she assumes she’s having a stroke. Isn’t that how it works? Burnt toast. That’s what people report smelling in the moment before an artery gives way or one side of their body goes limp.

  But while there is a light, toasty quality to the aroma filling her nostrils, it’s more like a top note, and the smells beneath it are multiplying. In her mind’s eye, she sees the petals of a blossom falling away and wonders if that’s exactly what’s happening; if the rain has pummeled a potted flower somewhere nearby with enough strength to peel it apart until its central bud is unleashing raw, earthy scents that are blending with the oil in the gutters. But there are no planters nearby, not on the window ledges or front steps in either direction. Maybe on the balcony overhead…? No, that’s probably not right either. These smells are not of the earth. These smells are…men.

  She cackles at the thought. Ridiculous! But it’s there. And not just any men either—her men.

  Her men? Insane to think of them in that way! Her husband, maybe. But not Shane. Not proud, gay Shane, with his endless series of casual boyfriends. It doesn’t matter. Whatever title she bestows upon them, their combined essences have somehow joined her on this tiny island of dry sidewalk amidst the storm.

  Here is her husband’s familiar musk, tempered by a sweeter scent that reminds her of baking bread. It makes her see the dark rings around his nipples and the smooth sweep of his tan, muscular inner thigh where she loves to rest her hand after sex. Then another, less familiar set of aromas intrudes, a lighter bouquet she was accustomed to smelling from a safe distance until a few nights before. Shane is sweet olive with a hint of earthy vetiver, both of which make her see his blue eyes and the gentle angel’s press in his upper lip, the startled expression he gave her after their thrilling and forbidden kiss. A kiss he gave her, in part, because her husband put his hand on the back of his neck and made him do it.

  How could her efforts have backfired so badly? She tried to dispel the shocking memory of their—she wants to call it a mistake again, but the overpowering smells haven’t waned and for some reason they make it impossible for her to hold fast to the judgment-filled word.

  In her effort to forget that night—not a night really, just a few minutes before they were interrupted—she has summoned the smells of it. The smell of them. Together. What other explanation could there be?

  The wood plank sign hanging above the entrance to the courtyard across the street is brand-new, Cassidy is sure of it. It looks weathered and old but so do the signs for most of the shops in the Quarter, and often because they’ve been treated to look that way. She has to squint to make out the logo, a vague outline of something that’s been carved into the wood and painted gold. A flame, a tiny candle’s flame, and beneath it the words, Feu de Coeur. She has only a few years of high school French behind her, but she thinks it means fire of the heart.

  For a few seconds, she’s convinced the sign is another piece of some elaborate hallucination. But the tiny gold flame and the store’s prim French name can only mean one thing—a candle shop. And thank God, because it’s an explanation. She’s not having a stroke or some out-of-body experience. And she’s not suffering from madness induced by almost taking an insane sexual risk with the two men she loves the most.

  It’s a candle shop. That’s what she smells.

  The rain has lessened, but not enough to justify walking across the street toward the courtyard’s entrance without fear of damaging the tapestries in her arms. Still, she won’t be convinced she’s not crazy or delirious until she sets foot inside the shop itself.

  The courtyard is home to a tiny coffee shop, a gurgling fountain, and riots of banana trees erupting from dirt squares that reveal what fragile cover the brick floor underfoot gives to the wet soil. At first, Cassidy thinks the tinny sounds of 1920’s jazz are coming from the coffee shop where a gaggle of excited, rain-soaked tourists, speaking rapidly in some foreign tongue—German, she thinks, or Swedish—have gathered around an assemblage of cast-iron tables and chairs.

  She’s wrong. The music, a spirited counterpoint to the rain’s steady patter, is coming from the candle shop she’s never noticed before now.

  A sign just like the one over the courtyard’s entrance hangs above the tiny shop’s front door. From a few feet away, she can see the rows of identical candles lining each shelf in the front window. The glass containers are so large she could pick one up in both hands and her fingers would just barely touch around its circumference.

  The smells get stronger as she approaches the shop’s front door, and now that she’s laid eyes on what is most likely their source, it’s almost impossible to believe they contain essences of her husband and best friend. Whatever oils are mixed into these dark treasures, they’ve simply stirred memories deep within her. That’s all—fresh, not-yet-buried-enough memories.

  It would be intolerably rude of her to carry the dripping rolls of tapestry inside, and she fears leaning them against the front door would be just as inconsiderate. So she tries propping them against a column a few feet from the entrance, and is still jostling them into balance when a male voice behind her says, “You can bring them in if you want.”

  The man is handsome in a delicate, fine-boned way. He polishes the fog from his glasses with the edge of his vest while studying her casually at the same time; his lack of nervousness at her sudden presence suggests the confidence of a storeowner. Even in a neighborhood where people have a tendenc
y to dress as if they’ve walked out of another era, there is a particular otherworldly elegance to his silk vest and tailored linen slacks.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t! They’re soaked,” she says.

  “They’re beautiful,” he responds with a smile.

  “Are they? I guess. Sure. I—I’m Cassidy Burke.” She grimaces and jerks a shoulder in his direction to indicate she’d like nothing more than to shake his hand if her arms were free.

  With another comforting smile, the man closes the distance between them and takes the wet rolls of tapestry from her arms before she can protest. She hates the thought of him dampening his immaculate outfit. But before she can stop him, he’s upended all three rolls and placed them just inside the front door of his shop.

  Inside, a thick Oriental carpet covers the hardwood floor, and the shelves along every wall are gleaming, varnished mahogany that matches the burnt-umber glass containers holding each candle. But the closer Cassidy looks at the candles, the more she can make out shades of purple amidst the brown. Is the wax one color and the glass containers another? Are the two shades working together to create an effect of syrupy, luxuriant darkness?

  There’s no counter or register, just a little desk pushed into one of the back corners where she spots a pile of receipts and a calculator. Several wheels of brightly colored ribbon are pinned to the wall above. The store’s centerpiece is a round table with a black marble top and serpentine supports lined with flecks of ivory that curl upward like jeweled snakes united in the effort of holding the table’s central column upright. There’s a huge vase of yellow flowers, and beneath it a silver tray with a candle just like the one on the shelves. Only this one is lit, and the smells wafting from it have caused her face to flush. They’re causing something else to happen as well, and she hopes, she prays, the store’s owner hasn’t noticed. But the rain has soaked her from her head to toe, turning her blouse into a wet napkin over her fiercely hard nipples.