Read The Flame for Free Online

man and thought, Damn, I’d hit that . But just to be sure, he’s checked out some gay porn sites, studied a few hardcore photos to see if any of them trigger a part of him that’s blossomed over the past few years. Everything he sees there leaves him cold. For starters, there are no women at all, and that’s a big problem, and secondly, none of the guys are Shane. None of the rutting, passionless couples he studied have the combined charge of his wife and her best friend.
    It’s simple, really. Or at least it should be.
    Shane is the other half of the woman he loves more than anything in the world. When he was younger, this fact used to make him insanely jealous. Now it fills him with hunger. Because now he’s almost as close with Shane as he is with his own wife, except for the part where they…
    How could he not feel something for the—
    Andrew slams both palms down on the side of the counter, hard enough to knock a bottle of contact lens solution onto its side.
    Get in the goddamn pool before you rub one out in the bathroom like some horny teenager.
     

4
    CASSIDY
    The bench looks the same, perhaps a bit lonelier given there isn’t a party in full swing nearby.
    Cassidy is surprised her fevered memories didn’t exaggerate its slender design or its cast-iron frame. It’s in the same spot, beneath the spreading branches of a massive oak, hemmed in by a small perimeter of banana trees sprinkled with uplights. String lights from the party still wrap the oak tree’s branches overhead, but they’re turned off and probably have been since the event.
    The few floors she can see of the condo high-rise next door are dark. A streetcar lumbers by on St. Charles Avenue, its clatter muffled by curtains of foliage. There are scrapes and rustles from the plants nearby, but the loudest sound she hears is the sound of her own breathing as she tugs a matchbook from her pocket.
    The candle rests on the flagstones at her feet. She’s taken care to stuff the tissue paper back inside the bag and set it aside. She’s about to light the match when another thought hits her and suddenly she’s pulling her phone from her pocket and setting it on the bench beside her. Now that she’s done it, she’s not exactly sure why. Maybe she fears the candle will poison her; a few less inches between her and 911 might mean the difference between life and death. It did nothing of the kind while it burned inside Bastian Drake’s shop. But this is different. Now she’s poised to obey the instructions written on the candle’s tiny card; she’s going to light the thing at the scene of her greatest desire. Who knows what will follow? The whole thing could be a terrible trick.
    Maybe, but how much help could dialing 911 be if it is?
    Enough stalling.
    The match doesn’t light after three strikes.
    A little act of self-sabotage, she thinks, bringing a matchbook instead of a cigarette lighter. Then the match lights suddenly. Before she realizes what she’s done, she’s brought the flame to the candle’s wick and shaken the match out with one hand.
    She sits back, preparing herself for—she’s not sure what exactly. Perhaps a stronger tide of the candle’s intoxicating scents?
    But what comes next is something else entirely.
    At first, she assumes a cloud of delicate, luminescent insects have flown into the halo of the candle’s growing flame, circling like lazy moths. But the candle’s surface also glitters and glows. The wax looks like a piece of thin mesh stretched over a puddle of hot lava. And the swirl of particles above are fed by little sparkling flecks that drift up into the air, determined embers driven by an impossible, upward wind.
    The smell hits her next, far more powerfully than what she experienced in Bastian Drake’s shop. She is instantly, fiercely moist. A great wave of pressure has forced her back against the bench. But with this pressure comes pleasure as well, coursing through her with such intensity—it feels as if