Burn (22 page)

Gian read her signals and obliged her, lowering him
self until his mouth covered her dark opening. He drew
on her long and with enough firmness to leave her arched
in pure pleasure, her mouth open, her eyes shut.

Her doctor was the last man to have touched her in the places Gian touched, only Gian’s touch thrilled her.
No fright laced the luscious, thickly sensual waves of
warmth and desire he generated as he learned her body
and its responses. His muscular frame was pleasantly
hard, but his strength and size were not used to intimidate or dominate her. He used his body in ways meant
only to please.

His arms cradled her thighs, positioning her bottom
against his chest. The former Marine became an explorer
and he expertly used his tools to discover every detail of her. His tongue delved and excavated, his teeth tested textures and firmness. Cinder writhed beneath him, grit
ting her teeth. Gian’s left arm slid up her body so his fin
gertips could graze the cool, smooth skin of her jaw.

“Relax,” he told her, the word an erotic murmur
against her most sensitive flesh. “Just let it come.”

Cinder concentrated, her attention turned inward,
rather than out. She told her big muscles to slacken, her
little ones to soften. Her eyes drowsed shut, her lips
slightly parted as she made herself stop gritting her teeth.
She let the breeze inflate her lungs and fill her nose with the scent of eucalyptus and lavender from a neighbor’s
aroma garden. She ignored the scratch of the web cable
under her arms and focused only on Gian and the magic he performed between her thighs.

Her abdomen jumped when he splayed his hand over it to stoke her with his thumb while his tongue plunged
into her with a spongy firmness that both scandalized
and delighted. Whatever apprehension she had left was
freed by the hungry pellet under Gian’s thumb. Much more blissful sensations radiated from it as her body
danced to the silent music of sexual pleasure. Arms out
stretched above her head, she stifled her moans in her left
bicep. One word ran on a loop in her mind, the word she
managed to gasp when Gian replaced his thumb with his
tongue and his tongue with two fingers.

“Gian.”

Her breathy utterance stoked Gian’s own fires beyond
bearing. Every part of him hurt, from his tightly curled
toes and the hot knot behind his fly on up to his biceps
and the tips of his ears. He made love to her with his
entire face, parting her with his nose and running its
length along her pliant heat before lapping at her as
though she were his favorite dessert and he was deter
mined to collect every drop.

Clutching handfuls of his T-shirt at his shoulders,
Cinder trembled. Gian stood on his knees, grabbed his
shirt between his shoulders and tugged it over his head,
carefully wiping his face before flinging it behind him,
where it landed on a branch. Cinder took off her top and
skirt, and with Gian’s help, eased out of her bra.

As much as it pained him not to touch her, he
couldn’t stop looking at her. He’d seen naked women
before, lots of them, from his first sexual encounter at fif
teen up to his last interlude with Kuriko. Cinder was the
first woman he’d seen who looked prettier dressed in dap
pled moonlight and the shadows of oak leaves than in clothing. She was so lovely, he couldn’t think of her as
naked. He thought of her only as his.

His eyes roamed the places his hands and mouth
wanted to search. The hollows behind her collarbones
and in her throat. The angle of her jaw and the warm
place where it met her earlobe. The unlined space
between her finely arched eyebrows and the apples of her
cheeks. Her lower lip, still plumped from earlier kisses.

The action of her hands at his fly broke his contem
plation of her. Quickly, he finished what she’d started,
slipping his jeans and briefs down and scrambling out of
them, careful not to fall backwards out of the tree. He
had to turn and sit with his back to Cinder to kick off his
athletic shoes, one of which popped out of his grasp. By
the time the shoe hit the ground, Gian’s jeans were slung
over a branch with the rest of their clothes, giving the tree
a lived-in look.

G
ian scooted back and positioned Cinder on top of
him. He preferred having the coarse plastic cable biting
into his skin rather than hers, not that he noticed the
spiky scratch of the web once he had the view of Cinder
astride his hips. It was too dark to make out more detail
than the outer curve of her breasts, the sensuous lines of
her arms, the inward arcs of her waist and the swell of her
hips. Her silhouette had weight and warmth, and when
her thighs hardened under his hands to raise herself on
her knees, Gian shivered in anticipation of what else it
offered.

Bracing her hands on his chest, Cinder lowered herself on him, swallowing his thickness all at once. A burst
of sudden pain stole her breath, and she stilled, taking deep breaths until her body acclimated to the sudden invasion.

“It’s been so long,” she said breathily. “It’s like . . .”
She struggled to find the right words. “Retroactive vir
ginity. Like the first time all over again.”

Gian wanted to respond, to comfort her in some way.
But he couldn’t, not with the heat of her tight center rob
bing his will to let her take the lead. It took all of his self-
control to stop himself from grabbing her hips and
taking the satisfaction he had wanted for so long. He was
no stranger to battles. He knew that patience and control
were the only weapons needed to win this one, which
would have no losers if he kept it together and followed
her lead.

Slowly, with rhythmic pulses of her strong leg mus
cles, Cinder rose and sank upon him. She leaned back
and grabbed the highest branches within reach so she could smoothly rock forward and back. Her sighs and
quiet moans harmonized with the rustle of the wind
through the leaves and the call of crickets, forming a
primitive song of carnal bliss with lyrics of one word.

“Gian,” she gasped, his hands coming to her breasts
to knead and pinch them in ways that left her smiling
into the night.

“Gian,” she sang once more when he contracted his
abdomen to sit upright, to guide her breast to his mouth.

Her breasts were small; their shape, firmness, and sen
sitivity more than compensated for their size. Her nipple
reacted to the brush of his thumb, the dot of flesh
growing even harder and more pert. Gian took it gently
between his teeth, then closed his lips around it, taunting
it with the rapid flick of his tongue.

Cinder cradled his head to her shoulder, her chest
heaving. Her abdomen bunched and relaxed in a cycle
that left Gian burying his sweaty face in her neck.

“Sweet heaven,” he murmured. “Take me with you,
baby.”

Arms around her middle, he held her as close as he
could. Her gaze locked with his, she smoothed errant
locks of sweat-drenched hair from his face. There was so
much more she wanted to give him but couldn’t, not
with the tide of passion cresting within her. Gian caught
her mouth with his and she tasted her sweetness, inhaled
her distinctive pungency. His kiss propelled her to the
summit of sensation. Her thighs shaking, her hips drove
harder and faster and her inner muscles fastened around
h
im in strong, rhythmic pulses that forced Gian’s head
back and locked his jaw in a grimace of ecstasy. He shud
dered within her and beneath her, his arms like steel
around her as he joined her in passion’s ultimate embrace.

Tears seeped from Cinder’s closed eyes. She reveled in
her discovery of true rapture, of how thoroughly love
could be expressed without words. Sumchai’s touch had
elicited all the wrong colors and tension. Sex with her ex
had been black and empty, electric in a way that shocked
without pleasure.

Cinder felt no embarrassment or self-consciousness with Gian. In his eyes, she saw herself as he made her
feel—perfect. She blinked, and the discomfort of the
cold grays, blacks, and stark whites she’d always seen with
Sumchai transformed into deep reds and purples, striking
blues and passionate oranges, blinding yellows and explo
sive golds erupting with volcanic heat and force, stirring to life something within she’d thought dead.

She surrendered to the want of her body, the need of
her soul, her union with Gian Piasanti satisfying in too
many ways to name, all vital. Gian took no more than
she could give him, and his understanding made it so
easy to give him everything, heart and head, sex and soul.

This was passion without fear or worry, only mutual
joy at fully sharing each other. His concern outweighed his desire for her, and in his eyes she’d found the one
truth she most needed—that he would never hurt her.
Causing her pain would never be a requirement for his
pleasure. He had waited for her, sure that his patience
would be rewarded.

“
Are you okay?” Her breathing slowly returned to
normal.

Still panting, he kissed her moist brow. “I was going
to ask you the same thing.” Without leaving her, he fell
back on the web, bringing her to rest on top of him.
Cinder’s lithe body cloaked him, a sheen of perspiration
adhering her torso to his. It also helped the breeze carry
off their radiant heat, so he wrapped his arms around
Cinder to keep her warm.

“I’m fine,” he said, kissing her chin. “Thank you. ”

“Thank
you,
” she whispered. Moonlight sparkled in
the tears above her lower eyelashes. “I’m sorry you had to
wait so long.”

“Almost forty years, and worth every second.” He
wiped away her tears with the pads of his thumbs.
“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. But I did mean what I said. I didn’t realize it
until now, but I’ve waited my whole life for you. I’ve
never known a woman like you.”

“There’s nothing special about—”

“What would you say if I asked you to marry me?”

She stopped breathing, resuming only after her lungs
began to burn and her head went fuzzy. “That’s not a fair
question.”

“I know, I know,” he groaned in frustration. “I
shouldn’t have phrased it that way.”

“You shouldn’t have asked at all.”

Gian looked stricken.

“If you asked, I’d want to say yes.” She smiled
somberly. “But I’d have to say no.”

“Because of him.”

She nodded.

“I’m not scared of Sumchai Wyatt.”

“Neither am I. Not anymore.”

“He can’t control your life anymore. He’s in jail. He can’t hurt you. I won’t let him.”

“He won’t be in jail forever. When he gets out, he will
look for me. Chances are, he’ll find me. That’s when it’ll
end, one way or the other.”

“Why can’t it end my way? With you and I getting
married. I’m not getting any younger, you know, and my
biological clock is starting to sound like a hammer
striking a steel drum. I don’t want to die an old maid.”

Cinder laughed. Gian widened his legs to maintain balance, to stop her from rolling off him.

“We could have the ceremony at my house,” he went
on. But then he paused, his expression a bit more serious.
“Why don’t you ever want to come to my house?”

“You know why.” She laid her head on his chest. “I
feel safer in my apartment.”

“You’ve never been to my place, so you don’t know if
you’d feel safe there or not. What could happen to you
there?”