Read The Flame for Free Online Page B

her hips and squeeze just a little so that her back will arch and her sex will rise up toward him through the bathtub warm water.
    In the meantime, he risks temptation swimming in the nude like this. Each time his bare ass breaks the surface, each time water rushes across his cock and balls when he turns off one wall, he’s tempted to seize his erection in one iron-fisted grip and finish himself off. But he’s saved himself for his wife every night since the incident. It feels like the right thing to do. But it wasn’t easy. Especially during long days at the office, when the memory of her gasps as Shane devoured her neck would have him eyeing the only private bathroom at the office to see if he could steal a few minutes of self-release.
    Not then, not now. Save it up, mister. Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. Breathe. Find another word for stroke. Breathe. Find another word for stroke, seriously. Now.
     Their swimming pool is a long, slender rectangle that takes up most of their backyard. To keep the neighbors from getting an eyeful, he left the pool light off. Same story with the row of gas lanterns along the brick wall that hides the neighbor’s house.
    He installed the lanterns himself, which required him to learn more about gas-powered fixtures than he thought it was possible to know. So when the lantern closest to him pops to life like a miniature Olympic torch, the wrongness of the sound halts Andrew in mid-stroke.
    They don’t come on one at a time. That’s not how they work. You hit the switch, and then you wait a few seconds while clicking sounds indicate that gas is being fed down the length of the line. Then all four lanterns flicker to life, gently, sometimes so weakly it looks like they’re not going to catch. Never one by one, never with a loud, obtrusive pop .
    But it happens again. And again. And again, until all four lanterns are lit. An impenetrable radiance fills the glass chambers of each lantern. He can’t see the tiny gas flames anymore, just a bright halo of yellow. Fingers of bright gold have emerged from each lantern. They rise snakelike through the night air before converging at the end of the swimming pool, just above the steps to the shallow end. Their movement is steady, determined, unswayed by the humid breezes rippling the pool’s surface. Treading water, his rasping breaths the loudest sound in the entire yard, Andrew watches as the glistening, gold tendrils of material he doesn’t have a name for form the vague outline of a… ghost ?
    But ghosts are not made of gold.
    They’re also not real, jackass.
    Then the smell hits him and Andrew Burke thinks, I’m dying. That’s it. And then he thinks, Dying smells incredible, like every delicious scent I’ve ever discovered on my wife’s body, the floral notes of her perfume mingling with the scent of her juices, a combination of lilac—and candle wax.
    The figure standing at the edge of the swimming pool is not human. Human beings aren’t hollow. When they open their eyes, you see pupils and irises, not golden sclera. It’s a he , for sure, with handsome, defined facial features, but the rest of his identity is a mystery, and wondering about his identity seems insane given that he doesn’t have a real body, just a glittering, shifting suggestion of one.
    The figure goes down on one knee, lowers one glittering finger toward the surface of the water. But his face is angled upward. Andrew realizes this spirit, this golden ghost, is staring at him expectantly.
    “What are you?” Andrew whispers.
    He’s answered by another burst of intoxicating scents. Only now there’s a new smell—it’s vaguely sandalwood, earthy. It’s Shane. It’s both of them, essences of Cassidy and Shane entwined in this impossible bouquet. It washes over him with invisible, overpowering force. The shimmering figure is still down on one knee. One glittering finger, shedding tiny particles of bright gold like delicate embers, still hovers just above the pool’s