Blazing Read online

  Blazing

  An Assured Elites Romance

  by

  Parker Avrile

  ♥♥♥

  All Rights Reserved

  © 2022 Parker Avrile & Paris April Press

  ♥♥♥

  A second chance with the rockstar who got away...

  A lonely billionaire seeks his perfect match—only to be paired with a famous rockstar who just happens to be the billionaire's former high school crush. Is this a second chance at love? Or has the famous Assured Elites gay celebrity matchmaking service gone completely wackadoo?

  One drunken kiss is not enough to be sure.

  As long as the Assured Elites matchmaking service rules the Big Apple, no hot gay celebrity can remain unpaired. The novels in the Assured Elites gay romance series can be enjoyed in any order. A checklist to get you started:

  ♥A Fiercer Heat

  ♥A Higher Flame

  ♥A Hotter Fire

  ♥Flaming

  ♥Blazing

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  A Note to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Extended Copyright & Credits

  A Note to Readers

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anyone, any time, or any place is not intended and is merely coincidental. The cover model appears for illustration purposes only and has no relationship to any events in this story. Brief mentions of real persons, places, or products are used fictitiously and in accordance with fair use. All trademarks remain the properties of their owners. Some locations and police proceedings have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

  Chapter 1

  A mysterious fog coiled around the January streets surrounding the cruelty-free, ivory-free netsuke shop. Eli Feldstone's heart twisted. He'd been warned about these fogs.

  It was a cool fog, but not clammy. Somewhere beyond the fog, Manhattanites were strolling with their faces lifted happily to the cloudless blue skies of an unusually springlike winter's day. As he wandered these few square blocks to locate the address, Eli had already unzipped his retro fuzzy fleece jacket. Its skin-flattering shade of earth-toned browny orange seemed almost too vivid against the misty white of the fog.

  His stylist had told him the proper name of the jacket's color. You wouldn't call something this expensive “earth-toned browny orange.”

  But Eli had forgotten the name.

  “Sometimes, when people go looking for Assured Elites, they can't even find the storefront.” The stylist frowned at the mirror as he spoke. Was he frowning at his own reflection or Eli's? “They're lost in the fog where they wander for hours. Even days. Or weeks.”

  Eli frowned back at the stylist's reflection. He did not believe stories about mysterious fogs.

  “Sometimes,” the stylist said, “seekers set out in the morning never to return. They say some of these seekers are still wandering to this day.”

  “Never to be seen again.” Eli snorted. “Am I really supposed to believe that?”

  “I think it's supposed to be an urban legend. Or is it called a parable?” The stylist visibly shook off his own question. “Anyhoo! The point is, if you're not ready for love, it's risky to go looking.”

  Eli had dared to sneer. Eli did not believe in getting lost. The GPS in your phone would show you the way.

  But, ever since he'd entered the fog, Eli's GPS had fallen mysteriously silent. It would be easy to allow yourself to become superstitious. A weaker mind would already be softening.

  He would not soften.

  So what if the store—the whole small neighborhood—was located in some kind of hole for cell phone service? These sorts of holes were rare these days, especially in Manhattan, and especially in the era of 5G, but they weren't impossibilities that demanded you believe in the supernatural.

  Eli was a thirty-two-year-old hedge fund billionaire. He was a practical man with a practical mind. He believed in numbers.

  Test me if you must. You won't frighten me away so easily.

  Jane Austen had assured him that any single man in possession of a fortune could find love—and this particular single man had four billion dollars. Also, as his mirror and his stylist and his entourage and his coaches assured him, he was a lot easier on the eyes than your average Daddy Warbucks.

  Six foot two. Tall without being ostentatious or lanky. Broad shoulders. Tapered hips. Clean eating kept his abs cut in the classic eight pack. Thick sun-streaked hair. Light brown eyes touched with amber flecks.

  “He looks like a marble carving of a billionaire,” some debutante said to some gossip reporter, and so a nickname was born. Marble.

  “Secrets of Marble's Private Island.”

  “Will Marble Join the Race to Privatize Space?”

  “Boy Band Romp With Marble: The Singer Speaks!”

  Some “boy band,” thought Eli. The youngest member was twenty-six.

  In any case, Eli didn't hate the nickname the first three hundred times he read it. But even the classiest nicknames get old. Who was leaking this stuff anyway?

  He'd called the singer, twenty-seven-year-old Bradley Kee, only to be told, “I'm sorry, man, but they paid me too much money for that interview.”

  “But we didn't romp! You made it up!”

  “They were paying for a story about a romp. They weren't paying for, you flew Key to Sky out to play two songs for a private charity event with a lot of old guys dressed like penguins frowning at homeless statistics, and then you flew us back out.”

  “I paid you,” Eli grumbled. “I paid you a lot.”

  “Sure,” said Bradley. “But, this way, I get paid a lot twice. You're a math guy. You can do that math.”

  Eli could, indeed, do that math.

  “Wasn't there an NDA?” he spluttered.

  “Sure,” Bradley said. “But I didn't disclose anything I was sworn not to disclose. I just shared some made-up stuff. My lawyer didn't see a problem.”

  Key to Sky's lawyers were almost as good as Eli's lawyers. A boy band might not be worth billions, but the record label that held their contract certainly was.

  “You can't tell me I can't talk about what really happened and I also can't talk about what didn't happen,” Bradley Kee pointed out. “I'm a celebrity. The fans expect me to talk about something.”

  “I suppose.” Eli ended the call on this ungracious note.

  Singers. They're always trouble.

  The face of an even more troublesome singer sprang to mind. Eli pushed it back out of mind.

  In any case, Eli would never admit it to Bradley, but he fully understood where the man was coming from. No one wanted to buy a story about a billionaire who was probably a demisexual or whatever the label of the day was when you only wanted to do the do with The One. Everyone wanted a story about sick, twisted billionaires partying with entire bands.

 
The more a billionaire kept his hands to himself, the more freedom people had to speculate about what he got up to in private. Something about the Marble inspired people to let their fantasies roam free.

  He wouldn't admit to reading his fanfic. He would never do that.

  Well, not more than once or twice.

  He would not have wondered if any of those fics were written by men. He would not. Eli Feldstone would never admit to that.

  Now, drifting alone through these streets, he experienced a sudden deep throb of disgust with the entire planet. The world was his oyster. Everybody said so.

  And yet, here he was, hit by a swell of frustrated emotion so strong it brought him to a dead stop in the middle of the street.

  A shockingly empty street.

  Wasn't this Manhattan? An expensive part of Manhattan?

  So where the fuck was everybody?

  He planted his feet wide part. Hands on hips. Head tilted back to roar at the sky.

  “Knock it off with the fog machine! I'm onto your crappy little tricks!”

  His rich tenor voice echoed around the (barely visible) facades of the fog-bound buildings around him. No clot of busses, taxis, and private cars on the slightly too-narrow street. No people on the sidewalk.

  No shadows in the windows.

  How can you ever be alone in the city that never sleeps with its eight million or however-many-million-now stories?

  And yet Eli felt so terribly alone.

  He knew he could be married tomorrow if he wanted. He knew he could be surrounded by a whole harem on top of that—and his spouse wouldn't utter a word of complaint. His money could buy him that.

  His money could buy him everything.

  The pretense of love. If not the reality of love.

  But why couldn't he have the real thing?

  “Why is this hard?” he shouted at the sky he couldn't see through all the fog. “I have money, I have looks. I'm even reasonably young. Isn't that what everybody's looking for? Isn't that what you're supposed to have?”

  He refused to cry. Billionaires don't cry. What have they got to cry about?

  Why do they need love? They can buy sex, companionship, marriage, romance, everything.

  What was wrong with him?

  “Please!” he shouted at the unseen sky. Yesterday, gazing out the wide window walls of his penthouse office at the top of the world—because Manhattan was still the capital of the world, he didn't care what any of those other cities said—he had seen two pigeons on a ledge.

  One danced with its feathers in a fan. The other watched.

  Soon enough, they were billing and cooing.

  They weren't even fancy pigeons. They weren't pretty. They were gray street birds. The dancing one had a weird white face with freckles on it. Some kind of mutation.

  And yet he found love. All he had to do was ask. A stupid flying rat.

  “What about me?” he shouted. “I'm not going away. I deserve love too.”

  Eli folded his arms across his chest.

  He waited.

  Then he blinked.

  Was that a tiny patch of blue appearing in the sky above?

  It was.

  The fog was wisping away like smoke from a kettle.

  The patch of blue grew bigger.

  The fog was gone.

  Chapter 2

  With the fog vanished like it had never existed, Eli was looking directly across the street at what could only be his destination. A small and tasteful sign in the corner of a gleaming shop window advertised “cruelty-free, ivory-free netsuke.”

  Shoppers, some arm-in-arm, had appeared on the sidewalks. A laughing couple paused at the window to look in. The woman winged her elbow into the man's side to emphasize some point. The man laughed even harder.

  Eli looked both ways. A silly gesture, since he was already standing in the middle of the street. Perhaps it was a delaying tactic. Perhaps he wasn't as ready to gaze into the window as he thought.

  By the time he reached his destination, the laughing couple had already moved on. He could take his time. It wasn't as if he'd made an appointment, after all.

  He studied the place with care. If there were any obvious signs of fraud, he could quietly depart without stepping one toe over the threshold.

  But there was real money invested here. Even a man who took luxury for granted had to admit the window display was impressive. It was a curated space designed to spotlight a few special items sculpted from the rarest of materials.

  The intricate central piece was a show-stopper carved from apple jade, the most exclusive and gemlike of the jades. The highest quality was always translucent.

  This jade went beyond mere translucency into the realm of diamond clarity.

  There was no price displayed and no need for one. A non-billionaire would call it “priceless,” and they'd be close enough.

  And this is the front? Not even the serious business of the shop?

  If the owners were grifters, they were damn good at their grift even to be able to afford uncut jade of this quality—and this piece had been worked by a gifted artist at the peak of his powers. Eli had rubbed enough elbows with Asian billionaires to recognize the man's favorite subject, the kirin, a mythical herbivore of peace.

  Eli was becoming aware he was dallying too long outside the window.

  Well. You're here. Are you in or out?

  Traffic was beginning to ease slowly down the street. A reflection in the gleaming glass alerted him to the presence of his hovering limo.

  (Why must they hover so close, as helicopter-ish as any helicopter mother in Westchester County?)

  Refusing to look back, refusing to acknowledge the mother-hen worries of his security team and bodyguards, Eli threw back his shoulders, flung open the door, and strode into the shop. Old-fashioned bells on braided red silk tinkled somewhere distantly above him.

  Despite the priceless contents, the store appeared empty. They must possess the latest in security features, but those features were invisible. Eli's fingers itched to pick up the apple jade netsuke, but he repressed the urge. It was a piece best handled with gloves on to avoid marring its surface with one's sticky fingerprints.

  A striking man in his mid-thirties emerged from the back. “Mr. Feldstone,” said the man. “Welcome. If I do not misunderstand, perhaps we would do better to discuss your needs in the back.”

  He gestured at the half-open door behind him.

  Eli hesitated.

  You can still turn around. Go home.

  Once you find out it's all a scam and an illusion, your last hope is gone.

  But a billionaire did not become a billionaire by refusing to walk through doors. With a brisk nod, Eli stepped into the mysterious back room—the true headquarters of Assured Elites, the legendary matchmaking service known for pairing the most glamorous gay celebrities.

  Another man, as striking as the first, was frowning into a triptych of screens. They were a couple. You saw it at once in the easy way they exchanged a glance. What were they saying about Eli with those significant looks?

  “So.” Eli hoped his voice didn't sound too jaunty. Too try-hard. “The famous team that matched celebrity chef Tony Snye with that runaway prince.”

  “We do not discuss other matches,” said the man at the computer.

  “We offer complete confidentiality,” said his partner.

  Eli had put his foot in it from the very first word. He sighed. “I'm here because—”

  The computer operator lifted an open palm. “We know why you are here, Mr. Feldstone.”

  “Our analysis is already running,” said the partner. “Come.”

  Eli came. The three of them stood watching the three screens roll like old-fashioned televisions all on the blitz at the same moment. He felt as if he'd stepped into an episode of The Twilight Zone. He started to hum the theme song, then decided they'd be thoroughly sick of the joke.

  Instead, he said, “I'd like to purchase that apple jade piece you'
ve got out front.”

  The computer man nodded absently. As if someone casually mentioned they intended to buy a multi-million-dollar piece out of their showroom window every day of the week.

  Perhaps they did.

  The storefront didn't have to be just a front. It could be a money-making business in and of itself.

  The television screens were beginning to shiver but also to roll more slowly. They'd been gray and black and white before, but now some color was bleeding in.

  Then, boom! Boom! Boom!

  As if hitting the jackpot on a slot machine, all three screens snapped into focus to land on a recent closeup image of the same man.

  Eli groaned. “Oh, no. That's a nope. Not gonna happen.”

  The two matchmakers turned slightly to study Eli's face. One of them slipped a casual arm about the waist of the other. Both were smiling faint but distinct smiles.

  “Are you so sure?”

  “Our advanced matchmaking algorithm is never wrong.”

  “We have never failed to make a match.”

  “You may have complete confidence in the process.”

  Still shaking his head, Eli took a step back. “Well, your advanced matchmaking algorithm has really fucked up this time. There is no fucking way I'm a match with...” Eli could not even force himself to speak the name. “Him.”

  For some reason, their smiles grew broader.

  “This pairing represents a compatibility index of ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent.”

  “Only one couple in a hundred thousand is as compatible as you two.”

  “The math is indisputable.”

  “Our calculations are never wrong.”

  “Well, I'm disputing your math, because this time your calculations are very wrong.” Eli folded his arms. “Find me someone else.” His feet braced themselves firmly apart on the carpet. He had no intention of leaving until he got a different outcome.

  There had to be somebody else—anyone else!—out there in the world for him.

  The two men looked each at other, then back at Eli. Was that pity in their eyes?

  That damn well better not be pity.

  “This is your man.” The tone was gentle.

  “This is The One who is right for you.” Even more gentle.