Page 8 of His Greatest Treasure

He looked at me expectantly and I could hardly think what to say to him.

“Oh yeah! I was taking you somewhere safe, right? Come on.”

I set off, walking through the woods. I wasn’t wearing the best shoes for it and I slipped and slid on the damp soil but at least I didn’t fall over. That would have been embarrassing.

As I walked, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure he was following me. I looked over my shoulder more than I looked where I was going, until he suddenly reached out and said, “Look out!”

His hand touched my arm and even through my shirt sleeve I felt his touch burn me like a brand. It didn’t hurt, but I felt it linger there long after he pulled his hand away. It was so warm and it made me feel all funny.

I wanted him to do it again.

“You were going to walk into that tree,” he said, when I kept looking at him, hoping he’d touch me again.

“Oh.”

That was disappointing. I’d have preferred him to touch me just because he wanted to. It made my body feel hot and, you know, aroused. Perhaps it was a good thing he wasfollowing me because it meant he didn’t see the way my, um, dick was starting to press against my fly.

“We’re nearly there,” I said, trying to cheer back up. I desperately wanted to impress him but I wasn’t sure how to do it. Then it occurred to me that I didn’t even know his name. “I’m Alfie, by the way. Well, my real name is Alphonse, but I don’t like anyone to call me that. I’d much prefer you call me Alfie like everyone else. Nearly everyone else. Father never calls me that. What’s your name?”

“Blaze,” he said.

“Blaze,” I repeated, rolling the name round my tongue. I liked it. “Do you have a surname?”

“Fire. Blaze Fire. Spirits are always named after their element. It’s our parent.”

“Oh, okay, that’s weird. In a nice way, though, not in a horrible way. Do you know any other spirits?”

“Not any more,” he said, and something about the final way he said it made me stop asking about it, which was basically a miracle.

We walked through the woods together, me just in front and glancing over my shoulder to check he was still behind me. He always was, and I always had a moment of surprise when I looked at him.Just a second, but I was stunned by his beauty every single time.

Blaze was slim and small, even smaller than me anduasalweren’t really known for being big. We left brute strength and muscles to thecuraidh, who had no magic and needed physical size in order to fight.

Blaze, though, looked delicate and pretty, as insubstantial as fire, and I wanted to grasp him to make sure he was there and wouldn’t simply vanish. Everything inside me longed to reach out to him, to hold him and make love to him. I had to force myself to focus on other things or I’d have got very distracted by my naughty thoughts.

We reached the den before I even realised. I was standing at the front of it when I finally thought to say, “Oh yes, here we are. This is my den. Well, it’s mine and Morgan’s but Morgan isn’t here at the moment. Nobody else knows about it so you’ll be really safe here.”

Blaze gave me a strange look and ducked inside.

Suddenly, I saw the den for what it really was. It was shabby and not very well built. Morgan and I had tried our best but we’d made it a few years ago,and we weren’t exactly expert carpenters. It had a few rough edges and it wasn’t pretty.

Feeling my face heat up, I ducked inside after Blaze. The den was one room, big enough for us to stand up in but not exactly a mansion. We had only needed it to play here. Now, it was somewhere we could go to be alone, where nobody would find us and make us do something boring.

“It’s not much,” I said, “But there are chairs and a table over there and I’ve brought quite a few of the good books out here and there’s a blanket if you get cold and I can make it better for—”

Blaze turned to me with a smile and my words fizzled out like he’d dried them up. That hardly ever happened to me, but my throat didn’t work while he smiled like that.

“It’s perfect.”

“Really?”

I sounded incredulous, even to my own ears.

“Yes, it is! It’s dry in here and I really hate being wet.”

“I think it’s going to rain later but you should stay dry. Morgan insisted that we make the roof properly and it tookagesbut it never lets water in.”

“I love it!”

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