Free Taming Blaze by Sabrina Paige Page B

then?"
    He shook his head, regret written all over his face, at least I thought it was regret.  I never knew with my father.  He was an emotional chameleon, changing at whim, and I could never be sure what was genuine.  Or if anything was ever genuine.  "You know that's not what I'm saying.  Your mother's death was a tragedy.  But her murderer was gone, and there was nothing you could do about it.  You didn't need to worry about him coming after you.  That's what I was protecting you from."
    "So my mother's murderer has been running around for years wanting to kill me too, and you let me think I was perfectly safe?  That's your idea of protection?"
    "You've been protected the entire time.  You've been safe."
    "But suddenly I'm not."
    "No.  You're not."
    "But you're not goin g to tell me why I'm not safe."
    "No.  I'm not." 
    "Why should I go to some safe house?"
    "There’s no should.   You will.   This is the only time we'll have this conversation."
    "Is that a threat?"  I was pushing it, and I knew it.  I was testing him.  I watched the vein on his neck throb, the one that provided me with a barometer of how angry he was when I was a kid, how close he was to exploding.  I watched him, wondering if he would explode now.  He rarely did, but when he did it was nuclear.
    When I was fourteen, my mother was murdered.  I ran around after that, completely out of control, and my father was angry all the time.  I didn’t know if he was angry at himself, at me, or at the world.  But o ne day, I was sitting on my bed missing my mother, and I had an epiphany, as much as fourteen year old kids can have epiphanies.  I’d always thought of my father as dangerous, but never to me.  Toward other people, sure.  But not to me, his daughter.  But there was something about him after her murder, something dark- and I thought he might actually kill me.  That was why I begged to go off to boarding school.
    “It's not a threat," he said.  "It's a statement.  We will not have this conversation again.  Pack your bags.  You' ll leave tomorrow."
    After he left, I sat on my bed , feeling depleted.  Part of me wanted to fight this, to get my shit, jump in the car, and drive away.  I could start a new life somewhere under a new name.  I would live in Thailand; serve cocktails on the beach; live cheaply.  I could be someone else, anyone else, someone who was not my father's daughter.  Another part of me was just resigned to it all, the same way I'd always been resigned to the fact that my father would control my whole life, no matter where he was.  Everything he’d given me came at a price, and that was the cost.  It was my deal with the devil.
    I knew I didn't have the strength to fight him.  I would shut my mouth ; go to the safe house; read some novels; and sit on my ass until he did whatever he was going to do.  I wouldn't ask too many questions, and I would live.  My instinct for self-preservation would win out in the end.  It inevitably did.  That was the most important lesson I'd learned in life. 
    Always save yours elf.

    I steeled myself as I waited outside the heavy wooden door to my father's o ffice.  Bikers stood at the entrance to the house, lingering, joking around, playing grab ass with each other like a bunch of high school football players.  Morons.   These guys didn’t look familiar, a different club than he’d used when I was growing up.  But they were all the same.  My father, always in bed with bikers.  Like father, like daughter, I thought.
    Heat rose to my cheeks at the thought of what had happened with Blaze, his hands on my body, mouth on my lips, on my breasts .  The image of him looking down at me, urging me to open my eyes and look at him while he came flashed through my head.  I immediately felt arousal, like a reflex, in the pit of my stomach and radiating through my hips. 
    Stop, I thought.  He's gone, and it was nothing.  It was a one night stand with someone you