Burn (23 page)

“The same thing that could happen to me anyplace
else, only it might happen to you, too. I won’t put you in
harm’s way.”

“I think you’re being too . . .” He finished with a sigh.
“Paranoid?” Cinder scooted off him and lay on her
right side, close to him.

G
ian rolled onto his left side to face her. “If there’s a
word less offensive than paranoid that means the same
thing, that’s what I should have said.”

“I’m cautious,” she said. “Not paranoid. I know
Sumchai. He won’t just let me have a life. He’ll want payback.”

“You didn’t do anything to him.”

“He doesn’t see it that way. He blamed me for every
thing that went wrong in his life. If he was late for work,
it was my fault for not having the coffee ready on time.
If his softball team lost a game, it was my fault because I
didn’t wash his lucky socks. Never mind that he had a
weak throwing arm and no coordination.”

“Cinder,” Gian began carefully, “couldn’t you tell that
he wasn’t quite right before you married him?”

“He had quirks, like everyone else, but when we were
dating, they seemed charming. It wasn’t until a few
months after we were married that he started packaging
insults and pinches and little slaps with his quirks. Once
I was his, his charm disappeared.”

She pillowed her head on the crook of her right arm.
Her left hand moved over Gian, her fingers lightly dancing
over his skin. Gian inhaled deeply when her gentle touch
stirred the flesh between his legs. It rose to meet her belly,
prodding her with the impatience of a greedy child.

Gian caught Cinder’s hand. “I want to finish talking.”

“Okay. Why aren’t you married?”

Gian’s soldier retreated an inch.

“You’re the one who wanted to talk,” Cinder
reminded him.

“
I never met the right girl.” He leaned in for a kiss,
which Cinder avoided by turning onto her back.

“That’s what old unmarried people always say. There had to have been a lot of women in your life. You’re a
handsome guy, you’re straight, you’re employed, and
you’re a hero. Women must have been falling from trees
to be with you.”

“Speaking of trees . . .” Gian started to sit up,
reaching for his jeans.

Cinder pressed him back down and half covered him
with her body. Speaking directly into his face, she said,
“Have you ever proposed to anyone before?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came. He tried
again, and still nothing. Just when Cinder was about to
shake the words from him, he said, “I know the differ
ence now between love and what I thought was love.
There were a couple of women I really liked, but I never
imagined what they would look like wearing my
bathrobe on a Sunday morning, or if they smiled in their sleep. I never had dreams about a golden-brown little girl
with your nose and my ears calling me Daddy. I never
drove by Memorial Field and wondered what it would be
like to coach a little boy with my throwing arm and your
strength in Little League. It’s easy to have sex with
someone and enjoy going to a movie or out to dinner
with them. It’s a lot harder to imagine building a life with
someone. But it’s so easy with you. Those are the things
I want . . . with
you
. I think that’s what real love is. And that’s the way I feel about you.”

“Let’s just stay up here.”

Cinder’s reply was casual, but the quiver in her voice
showed Gian how much his declaration affected her.
“It’s a little windy, don’t you think?”

“I like it.” She took a deep, refreshing breath. “It
reminds me of New England.”

“I’m confused now. You won’t come to my house
because you don’t think you’ll feel safe, but you’re willing
to live in this web? It’s totally exposed.”

“No one would think to look for me here,” Cinder
said. “People never see what’s right in front of them.”
“Hey, Tarzan!”

Gian and Cinder jumped, startled by the shrill call of
Zae’s voice from the ground.

“How ‘bout you and Jane getting dressed and getting
your asses outta my tree? I need some help cleaning up
the deck.”

“We’re coming!” Cinder and Gian responded
together.

“In that case,” Zae said more quietly with a knowing
side-eye at the tree, “take your time.”

“This is a lot more comfortable than that web,” Gian
laughed as he came up for air. He’d thrown Cinder’s light
flannel bed sheet off his head before crawling up her
torso. Cinder draped her arms around his neck and
kissed him, shifting to align her hips with his. She
opened her legs and tilted her pelvis upward, massaging
Gian’s hardness with her tidy V of curls.

“That feels so good,” he murmured, sinking into her.
“That’s even better.”

Cinder stifled his compliments with kisses and
wrapped her legs around his hips. Gian’s hands were
everywhere at once—stroking her thigh, cradling her
head, clasping her bottom, and kneading her breast. She’d had him twice and was having him again, and
already thinking about the next time she would wrap her
self around him to take him within her. Rain had come
to her drought-stricken nation, and she craved every drop
Gian gave her.

Two hours earlier at Zae’s, they’d dressed and climbed
out of the tree. After making quick work of Zae’s cleanup, they had left her and Chip arguing about whether or
not plastic bakery packs could be recycled. Gian had
walked Cinder home, stealing kisses in every shadow.
Once Cinder had secured her apartment, she had invited
Gian into her bedroom simply by stripping off her skirt,
top, and Chocolate Silk.

Like locusts on new corn, Gian had landed on her,
struggling to undress as he kissed her. With Cinder’s
help, he had gotten rid of his shirt and freed himself from his jeans and briefs. There had been no preliminaries this
time, not when their hunger was so fierce. With his jeans
and underpants bunched at his ankles and Cinder’s calves
braced on his shoulders, he thrust into her with primitive
force, earning a loud, lengthy gasp of relief from Cinder.
She’d had nothing stronger than sun-brewed herbal tea at
Zae’s, yet her body hummed with the pleasant buzz of
intoxication.

Gian was responsible for that. She felt needed,
wanted, in his company. Even when he wasn’t touching
her, a mere glance from him was all it took to let her
know that he craved her. He’d taught her so many things,
not the least of which was the carnal magic of love
making. Even as her body responded once more to him,
the rhythmic pulses of her body stacking and intensi
fying, enough reason remained for her to appreciate what
had truly happened between them.

They knew each other completely. Not in details, but
in the way two hearts and souls had of finding each other
and knowing they were part of the same whole. Gian
stiffened on top and inside her, his muscular arms com
pressing her shoulder blades in an unyielding embrace.
She locked her ankles at the small of his back, her hips
bucking in a dance of rapturous surrender over which she
had no control.

T
heir acts strengthened her as they weakened Gian,
empowering her with the vulnerability he shared with
her. She took his head in her hands and raised his face to
catch his gaze. The sweaty ends of his hair fringed his
face, and Cinder stroked them off his forehead only to
have them flip back.

“Forget the tree web,” Gian said, a tremble in his
voice. “I want to live right here.”

“My apartment is so small.” Cinder smiled. “There’s
barely enough room just for me.”

“I want to live
here
.” He nodded toward her hips,
giving his own a slight wiggle. “I could stay right there
forever.”

“You’re nuts.” Cinder giggled. “How would you teach
your classes?”

“I could get a
gi
big enough to cover you up. We’d look like conjoined twins.”

Cinder laughed as Gian rolled onto his back, one hand on her bottom to keep them from separating. “I wouldn’t
be able to work like this. It would be really hard to reach
my drafting table with you wedged between my legs.”

He chuckled. “It doesn’t sound as romantic when you
say it like that.” He pressed his chin to his chest to get a
better view down the length of his body. His thumbs
went to the base of his soldier, which was attempting to
retreat. “You’re gonna have to do something about this.”

“About what?” Cinder glanced down. “Your soldier?”

Gian nodded.

“It’s takes longer for men to recover as they get older,
doesn’t it?”

“
‘Older?’ ” His eyes widened. “I got your older . . .”
Gian braced his fingers at the crease of her hips and
thighs and brought his thumbs to the dark silk veiling the
tiny heart of her pleasure. He found the candy-pink tip
hidden under its delicate hood, and, mindful of its over-
sensitivity, he worked his thumbs on either side of it with the softness of a whisper. Cinder abruptly sat back, grip
ping his thighs to support herself. Her thighs hardened,
securely flanking Gian’s. The taut muscles of her
abdomen flexed and relaxed as her lower body moved to
meet Gian’s thumbs.

“You are impossibly beautiful,” Gian said, his
breathing rate increasing along with his length and girth.

Cinder moaned, taking one corner of her lower lip
between her teeth as Gian filled her anew. The pressure
and friction inside and out brought her quickly to
another climax, one so strong her legs threatened to cramp. Her breathy cry of release combined with the
sight of her supple brown body sent Gian over the top,
his groans joining hers.

He pulled Cinder down to lay beside him, his arms
too weak to do more than pillow her head with his arm.

“That . . . was awesome,” he sighed. “I can’t get
enough of you. You know, I think your flexibility has
improved. Your stamina has always been good, but—”

“You’re not my trainer now,” Cinder told him. “Don’t
critique my performance the way you do at Sheng Li.”

“That wasn’t a critique. I just wanted you to know
that I think you’re in great physical shape. I could teach
you a couple of things, though.”

“Oh, really?”

“You forget to breathe,” he said.

Cinder sat up on her knees, her hands primly folded
in her lap. Unlike Gian, she was energized by their acts
rather than depleted. “I can hold my breath for three
minutes. Easy.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

She crossed her arms prettily over her chest. “You
don’t believe me?”

“Sure, I do.” Gian yawned. He dragged one of her
pillows to the center of the bed and gave it a punch
before resting his head on it.

“I can prove it.”

Gian smiled. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

* * *

Gian watched the clock, but he was only scarcely
aware of the movement of the seconds hand. It swept past
the stylized six, seven, eight and nine on the broad face of
the black and white newsroom clock mounted high on the bathroom wall. Each second dragged on yet raced
past at the same time as Gian’s concern for Cinder battled with the sensations mounting below his waist.