When Stars Burn

Chapter Ten: Lighting The Fire

A/N: Hi everyone! Hope you're all having an incredible week. Mine is busy, busy but in a good way, I guess. 

By the way, February starts tomorrow and you know what's happening the entire month, right? Wattpad Block Party - Winter Edition II. Please show your support by checking it out. There are authors being featured every day. I'm on Feb 7 with a special post and pretty much an open Q&A the entire day. Just comment on the post and I'll reply there. 

Anyway, here's something a little intense for you this week. Enjoy! =)

***

Julian stuck to me as much as his jacket did most of the night.

I was constantly struggling between needing to peel myself away from him and wanting no more than a breath between us.

So, for the first time in six months, I had to drink.

And because I was no lightweight, it took several drinks before I felt the strings on my tightly wounded self-control loosen a little.

We were laughing hysterically as we stumbled out of the Horror Room, hoarse and unsteady from fifteen minutes of screaming our lungs out and jumping away from the variety of frights thrown at us as we made our way through the long, dark maze.

We wove through aisles and aisles of booths, from fortune-tellers to candy vendors, trying to spot our next attraction.

I tripped over a thick piece of cable that stretched from a mini-stage where a magician was cutting his assistant in half to a small curtained booth a few feet away from it.

I giggled as I teetered forward but a strong pair of hands caught me by the waist and hauled me up against a large, hard body.

"I should probably remember I'm not levitating." I laughed, turning around in Julian's arms to face him. "I feel a little floaty though."

Julian's brows knitted with a helpless smile as he peered at me with those sensual green eyes. He'd long discarded his eye-patch but he was still every bit the devilish pirate he was supposed to be tonight. "I think you've had enough to drink for one night, Star. I should probably take you home."

"I have a feeling that you're making that suggestion without any true benevolent motive behind it," I quipped. I must've been smiling at him so winningly that he groaned and rolled his eyes heavenward. "You just want to take me home in hopes that you can peel me out of this costume and look at those little lacy things I'm wearing again."

I was crazy—absolutely one-hundred-percent crazy—but it was exhilarating watching Julian's gaze heat up as the body he had pressed against me tightened with barely restrained desire.

It would seem that for someone who always went for what he wanted, Julian was exerting an incredible amount of self-control around me and it tempted me to shake him out of it, even just a little—even though I knew better.

"It hurts to want something so bad, doesn't it?" I said in a shaky breath because my heart was hammering so fast in my chest all of a sudden. "I know what it's like."

He glanced up and gave a quick sweep of the crowd before jumping behind the black curtain of the booth next to us with me still wrapped in his arms.

It was no bigger than a Porta-Potty and it was crammed full of creepy-looking props from what I could see in the poor lighting coming from a clip-on lamp.

"Why are you tormenting me, Star?" Julian murmured as he buried his face in the curve of my neck, his breath hot and damp against my skin.

"Because you do the same to me."