Wildfire Phoenix by Zoe Chant

Chapter 17

Blaise was undoing her seat belt when her phone pinged with a new text message.

Diana:

AFTER ALL THAT WORK???

thank you thank you thank you <3 <3 <3

“Everything okay?” Zephyr asked, holding the door open for her.

Blaise smirked, showing him the screen. “Looks like our evil plan is a magnificent success.”

He chuckled as he read the message. “I hope they enjoy their last-minute date. And that it’s not a problem that I’ve got Callum’s suit.”

“He’s probably borrowed something from Conleth.” In Blaise’s opinion, that was no bad thing. Out of the three pegasus brothers, Conleth had by far the best sense of style. “They’re literally identical, after all. Hang on, I’ll be with you in a sec.”

Blaise shoved the phone back into her (ridiculously small, how the hell were you supposed to carry a bag of snacks or an emergency screwdriver) glittery clutch purse. She slid out of the driver’s seat, wincing as her bare feet hit gravel.

“Crap.” Without enthusiasm, she rummaged under her seat for her stilettos. “Suppose I’d better put these back on. This place might not be swanky, but it’s still no shoes, no service.”

Zephyr held up her spare hiking boots, which she’d forgotten she’d left in the passenger footwell. “You could wear these.”

“Zeph, I may have the fashion sense of a drunk giraffe, but even I can tell that those do not go with this dress.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you care?”

Blaise contemplated the tortuous high-heeled alternatives, and found that she really didn’t. She took the boots, hopping back into the driver’s seat to put them on. After a moment of consideration, she stripped off the tasteful jewelry that Seren had lent her (which she strongly suspected were actual diamonds, and not small ones) and grabbed her beat-up leather biker jacket from the back seat. At least that would cover up the top half of the dress.

“Diana and Darcy would kill me.” Pulling on the jacket, she turned around, and discovered Zephyr staring at her. “Ouch. That bad, huh?”

“No.” He sounded oddly hoarse. “No, it… really isn’t.”

No doubt he was just being polite, but she appreciated it anyway. If she could see herself, she was pretty sure she would have laughed in her own face.

“Well, I’m still wildly overdressed, but at least I can walk,” she said. She waved at the corner of the building. “Door’s round that way. Shall we?”

“Door,” Zephyr said, still wearing that stunned-deer expression. “Right. Yes.”

Zephyr’s body turned, although his head didn’t. Never taking his eyes off her, he walked straight into the back wall of the diner.

How about that,Blaise thought in bemusement. Diana was right.

At least the collision seemed to have jarred Zephyr back to his senses. He rubbed his head, flashing her a rueful grin.

“Please pretend I didn’t just do that.” Brushing himself off, he frowned, looking down at his suit. “Hmm. Perhaps I should at least lose the jacket.”

“Yeah, if you walk into Jimmy’s dressed like that, they’re going to think you’re there to audit the place.”

Zephyr had both arms twisted behind his back, wrestling with his sleeves. His head jerked up. “Jimmy’s? As in Jimmy’s Burgers and Bar?”

“You did say to take you to my favorite place. It’s nothing fancy, but they’ve got the best fries in a hundred miles. Why, you know it?”

“I used to come here all the time with my family.” A brilliant smile lit his face as he struggled out of his jacket at last. “It was my favorite place, too. I can’t believe it’s still here after all these years.”

Zephyr’s grin grew even wider when they walked through the door. He took a deep breath, gazing round at the red vinyl booths and wood-paneled walls with soft, wondering eyes.

“It hasn’t changed.” He smiled up at the moth-eaten moose head above the door. “Even Monty’s still here. Though I think he might have lost another prong or two.”

“You can blame Joe for that. We were playing the ‘toss stuff on the moose’ game, and he got a little carried away.”

“What did he toss?”

“Wystan.”

Zephyr chuckled. “And to think I was so proud of managing to get my baseball cap up there one time.”

The waitress did a slight double take at their outfits, but she led them to a table without comment. Zephyr let out an amused breath as he scanned down the menu.

“Gluten-free and vegan options,” he said, shaking his head. “Okay, some things have changed. For the better, though.”

He ordered the bacon and fried onion burger with a side of buffalo fries, while Blaise opted for her usual mixed sharing platter (which was sized to feed two hungry truckers, or one average shifter). After the waitress had brought their drinks, Zephyr leaned back in the booth, looking speculatively at the dusty change machine in a nearby corner.

“This is a long shot,” he said. “But do they still have the arcade games at the back?”

“Why do you think this is my favorite joint?” Blaise grinned across the table at him. “You wanna play while we wait for our food?”

She took a detour to get a stack of quarters out of the change machine. When she caught up with him, she found him right in the back corner, past all the flashy racing simulators and 3D fighting games. His hands rested on the glass top of an ancient pinball machine.

“It’s still here.” Very gently, his fingertips stroked the cabinet, as though it was a sleeping kitten. “I must have spent half my allowance on this thing. I even managed to get to the top of the leaderboard. I can still remember how it felt to enter my name. Every time we ate here, I would come and bask in the glory of seeing ZPH at the very top.”

“Hang on.” Blaise stared at him. “You’re ZPH?”

His eyebrows shot up. “My record still stands?”

“Um. I don’t think there’s any way to break this gently.” She pointed at the glowing dot-matrix screen on the machine’s backboard.

HIGH SCORES

532,830 - CON

532,820 - BLS

498,610 - ZPH

Zephyr staggered, one hand pressed to his chest as though he’d been shot in the heart. “Alas, my proud legacy in tatters! Bumped to third place! Who’s CON?”

“Connor. Callum’s other brother. If it’s any consolation, it cost him about two hundred bucks to beat me. He’s a smokejumper, so we have a whole crew rivalry thing going on.”

“Well, in that case, this really can’t stand.” Zephyr straightened, cracking his knuckles. “Clearly the honor of Thunder Mountain is at stake here.”

Zephyr flicked open the top two buttons of his shirt, rolling his shoulders like a boxer about to enter the ring. He undid his cuffs, pushing his sleeves up past his elbows, and the room suddenly seemed a lot warmer.

“Right.” He braced himself against the cabinet, fingers resting on the flipper buttons, eyes narrowing. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

He was horribly rusty. On his first two quarters, he didn’t even manage to crack six digits, which would have had his teenage self crawling under the cabinet to expire of shame. Especially since it was in front of his date.

Not that young Zeph would have ever believed this scenario. Playing pinball with a smoking hot woman lounging at his elbow, her hip cocked, cracking dirty jokes in between swigs of beer? It was the stuff of fantasies.

But his most fevered, hormone-fueled adolescent dreams couldn’t have come up with anything even close to Blaise.

She was so unbelievably sexy, he kept missing the simplest plays. How could he concentrate on anything else, when everything about her was a miracle? Her filthy laugh when he cursed his own ineptitude; her joyous whoop when he finally managed to hit a decent score multiplier. That dress shimmering over her curves, those boots showing off the hard, powerful muscles of her calves…

“You are ass at this.” She elbowed him aside as he lost his last ball yet again. “Hold my beer.”

Under her strong, clever hands, the pinball machine came alive with light and sound. Every ring and flash echoed in his own body. He was captivated by the little furrow between her eyebrows; the way she bared her teeth in concentration. Her biceps flexed as she nudged the table just enough to curve the ball’s path without causing the machine to shut down.

She was still playing, on her fourth extra ball, when the server hunted them down to tell them their order was ready. He fetched the plates from the table, and fed Blaise fries and onion rings as her fingers danced over the flipper controls.

“Crap.” Blaise let go of the buttons at last as Game Over flashed on the backboard. She stretched her arms above her head, arching her back, and Zephyr inhaled a bite of burger and had to grab for his drink. “Oh well, I was getting hungry anyway. You want another go?”

He had the feel of it now, old memories ghosting back from where they’d been burned into muscle and bone. The dance of the lights; the play of those elusive score multipliers.

He still would have crashed and burned on his third ball if Blaise hadn’t squawked and leaped for the left flipper button, mashing her hand down on top of his just in time to send the ball bouncing up the table. He froze, his whole world narrowing to the press of her palm against his fingers. For an instant, he felt her tense—but then the ball was spinning back down again, and there was no time for hesitation. Blaise’s eyes narrowed, following its flight.

“I’ll take this side.” She wormed under his left arm, inserting herself between him and the table. “You get the other.”

Side by side, they battled the table, batting the ball back and forth between them. He was acutely aware of the heat of her hip against his. With every breath, he inhaled her scent; worn leather and pine soap, layered over clean sweat. And something else too, warm and earthy, that brought to mind dry forests and high, wild peaks.

She smelled like Thunder Mountain. She smelled like home.

Time fell away. They moved in unspoken unison, with no more communication than the occasional split-second grin or shared groan. More and more sections of the table lit up as they activated bonus conditions and hit special score targets. His old score hurtled past. He was flying now, higher than he’d ever been, Blaise at his side.

“Nearly there,” Blaise muttered. “Nearly… now! Go for it, Zeph!”

The ball was on his side. It bounced for his flipper, and his finger tightened on the button—but it was a fraction too soon. The ball ricocheted past the jackpot, missing by a hair, and dropped straight down.

Blaise swore, heartfelt and profane. In a frantic lurch, Zephyr nudged the table, almost too hard. The table let out a blurt, and for a horrible moment he thought he’d triggered the anti-cheat shutdown—but it was only the buzz of the score ticking up. The ball altered course, brushing the tip of Blaise’s flipper.

She flicked it up, sending the ball streaking in a perfect line for the jackpot slot. The whole play area blazed into a dazzling cascade of pulsing lights. Patterns flashed across the back board display, resolving into words:

!!! NEW HIGH SCORE !!!

Blaise’s ecstatic whoop echoed his own yell of triumph. Forgetting himself, he swept her up in his arms, spinning her round.

He caught himself just in time, a moment before their mouths met. He started to draw back, to apologize, but her hands tightened on the back of his neck. For a long, long moment, she searched his eyes. Her own were wide and dark, as deep as the space between stars.

Slowly, carefully, she pulled him down.

It wasn’t effortless, like their kisses in dreams. They were both far too aware of the immensity of what they were doing for that. Every muscle in his body was tense, poised to pull away at the slightest hint of hesitation. In his caution, he misjudged the distance, and the shock of contact caught him by surprise. He felt the slight bump of her teeth against his lower lip; the little hitch of her indrawn breath. It was messy, and tentative, and awkward.

And oh, it was better than dreams.

Because this was real, this was Blaise, all softness against his lips and tense muscle under his palms. He could taste her now, truly taste her, in all her sweet, hot glory.

He hardly dared to move. He held still, hands lightly resting on her waist, venturing only slow, tentative brushes of lips and tongue. He let her take the lead, alert to her every move, matching her step by step in this subtle, wordless dance.

She grew bolder, stretching up on her toes to pull him deeper. He responded gladly, cupping her face, bending down to meet her. Oh, the heat of her mouth, her hungry, breathless sounds. He could spend a lifetime exploring her, and never reach the end.

All too soon, she pulled away. Not all at once, in a fearful jerk; but slowly, sweetly, like the slide from dream to dawn. Her eyes were bright now, shining like stars, without a trace of fear.

“You want to get out of here?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “Oh yes.”

Her smile was like the sun rising. “Don’t forget to enter your initials first.”

In his dazed, dazzled state, it took a moment to work out what she meant. He glanced at the pinball table. A cursor patiently flashed on the display, waiting for input.

When they left, a new high score blinked at the top of the table:

550,680 - Z+B