Flaming Crimes

by Chrys Fey

  “Hey.” He sat on the coffee table next to her feet. “I never thought I’d see you watching this show.”

  She pointed her bottle at the TV. “Her boyfriend is a complete ass, but she stays with him for some undefinable reason. And her sister is starting a new business, which makes her mad for another undefinable reason.” She took a swig of beer while frowning at the bickering unfolding on the screen.

  Worried, Donovan shifted in front of the TV, blocking her view. “Babe, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  She blew out a breath. “I just needed to veg out to something mindless.”

  “Bad day?”

  She looked at him in a way that told him it was worse than a typical bad day. “I fired Dave.”

  A slow smile stole across his face. Since the moment Donovan met Dave, he despised the man, and he hated knowing he got to put his hands on Beth, something he was sure Dave enjoyed for reasons unrelated to teaching.

  “It’s about time.” His pleasure and smile faded as he realized Dave would’ve had to have done something horrible to get the ax from Beth. “Did he touch you, because if he did I’ll—”

  “Not me,” Beth interrupted. “Maria.”

  Donovan dropped his head into his hands. “Shit. She’s such a sweet, wounded girl.” He lowered his hands. “What did he do to her?”

  “Grabbed her crotch.”

  Donovan’s back straightened as anger flowed through his veins, setting them afire. “What?”

  Beth nodded. “And he got off on it, too.”

  He clenched his jaw. He had sensed something off about Dave. How he’d look at Beth had always made Donovan uncomfortable. He had to restrain himself from ripping Dave from limb to limb several times. That cocky smile he’d give Donovan at the end of a very hands-on lesson, the way he’d strut around as if he owned the studio, everything about the man had ticked Donovan off. He was glad to see Dave go, but sorry for the added trauma Maria would have to work through because of Dave’s sick assault.

  “That’s not all,” Beth said, bringing him back. “Before class, I think he saw me when I was changing.”

  Donovan’s face burned as a raging firestorm exploded inside him. His shoulders tightened like cinderblocks. He fisted his hands in his lap, imagining he was strangling Dave. While Beth told him the story, he barely breathed.

  “Donovan…” Beth’s voice penetrated his thoughts, his rage. “Donovan, you look like you’re going to commit murder.”

  He blinked and refocused on Beth. Taking a deep breath, he forced his shoulders to relax and his hands to unclench. “I’m glad you fired him, because if you hadn’t, I would’ve gone in tomorrow to cripple him and maybe blind him.”

  “Well…” Beth set aside her beer. “I didn’t fire him for what he did to me, but for what he did to Maria. I was so pissed I almost wanted him to make a move on me so I could lay him flat on the sidewalk. And I’m angry at myself for not seeing he posed a threat to my students. I caused this because I turned a blind eye to how he flirted with me.”

  Donovan shook his head. “This is not your fault. He is the sick creep, not you.”

  “But I’m supposed to see that. I’m supposed to protect them.” Tears welled in her eyes. Her conflict played across her face, drawing her eyebrows together and tilting down the corners of her mouth.

  He moved onto the couch beside her, put his arm around her shoulders, and drew her to him. She nestled in to his side. “You can’t know everything, Beth, or see the evil in everyone. I know you want to, but you also can’t protect everyone.”

  “In my own studio, I should be able to.”

  He stroked his finger down her arm. “You stepped in when you needed to and did the right thing. You never could’ve known Dave would take his sly flirtations this far. He never touched you inappropriately, did he?”

  “No. I mean, he never grabbed any of my parts, but his hands did brush.”

  Hearing her say that made his spine stiffen. He had to inhale and exhale slowly.

  “But I always thought it was harmless, only aimed at me, and I could handle it. I was stupid for thinking that. Stupid.”

  Donovan turned his head and pressed his lips to her temple. “You couldn’t have foreseen this.”

  She didn’t argue with him this time, and they fell silent while staring at the TV.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked after a moment.

  She let out a sigh. “I need to find a new assistant.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “One.” She took a swig of beer. “After this fiasco, it’s clear it has to be a woman. I’m not going to risk a male assistant even accidentally brushing a woman inappropriately. And there’s only one student who is good enough to ask—Amanda.”

  Donovan considered Amanda. She was one of Beth’s long-time students, always on time and skilled; he’d seen her giving pointers to several students. He nodded. “She’d be a very good assistant.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. Everyone loves her because she’s so sweet. I think we’d balance each other out.” She grinned at Donovan. “She’s the sugar, and I’m the spice.”

  He threw his head back. “You can be sugar, too,” he said with a wink.

  ****

  Wanting to crawl into bed with Beth, Donovan moved through the first floor, turning off lights. He came to the dining room where his laptop was sitting open on the table. He tapped the mouse pad to see if it was off, and the screen lit up. A website left open filled the screen. The word “adoption” was scrawled across the website’s banner. He stared at it a moment.

  Is Beth thinking about adoption? She hadn’t mentioned it. He lowered the lid and tucked the laptop under his arm. Upstairs, he found Beth sitting on the edge of their king-sized bed, rubbing lotion onto her long, tan legs. He paused a moment to admire her. Watching her complete the simplest task of applying lotion had his chest tightening. She was stunning in her simple beauty—no makeup, pajama shorts, and a tank top.

  He stepped up to the bed and sat down next to her. The light aloe scent of the lotion teased his nostrils. He inhaled, drawing the fresh smell into his lungs. “How are you feeling after your bath?”

  Beth squirted more lotion into her palm and caressed the lotion onto her arms. “Much better. On top of the beer, it was just the ticket.”

  He leaned over and kissed her on the shoulder. “I’m glad.” With slow movements, he set the laptop on his lap and eased the lid back up. The screen lit up, and he shifted the laptop so Beth could see it. She stilled in her act of massaging in the lotion. Her cheeks turned pink. She looked at him as if he had caught her red-handed doing something illegal.

  “An adoption website?” he asked in a soft voice.

  She recapped the lotion and set it on the bedside table. “I was just checking it out.”

  “Are you thinking about adoption?”

  She shrugged but continued to avoid his eye. “It may be our only option.”

  He set aside the laptop and took her hand. “It’s not our only option, because we haven’t done everything yet. We’ve been trying for a few months. Give your body a break. It hasn’t happened because it wasn’t the time. It’ll happen, though, I know it.”

  She turned to him. “I want it to happen soon.”

  “I know, and it might. It might happen tonight.” He kissed the back of her hand and gazed into her eyes. A slow smirk lifted the corners of her lips. He lifted his eyebrows up and down in a comical show that he knew would make her laugh. “What do you say, Mrs. Goldwyn? Shall we make a baby?”

  She linked her arms around his neck. For a moment, she did nothing but return his stare.

  Her eyes glistened with unshed emotions. He pressed a hand to the side of her face. His thumb stroked her cheek. She closed her eyes, leaned forward, and framed his face with her hands. Their noses brushed. Their lips touched. But Beth didn’t do any more than that. She became still. In that instant, with their bodies sharing the same breath, the emotio
ns bottled so deeply inside her passed to him. He felt what she felt. His throat tightened. His chest constricted. His heartbeat faltered. The punch of her emotion had him squeezing his eyes shut. His wife was hurting. He was hurting. For her. With her.

  After several seconds, Beth’s lips parted, and she kissed him. He kissed her back; gently as if he were kissing butterfly wings. The sensation of her shared emotions on top of the soft kiss was staggering. He moved one hand to cup the back of her head. The joining of their mouths was the most intimate kiss they had experienced yet. Their kiss on their wedding day, though memorable, wasn’t even this powerful. This kiss had everything. Their love and pain. Happiness and sadness. Strength and wounds.

  Beth continued to kiss him in a way that was almost heartbreaking; yet, it shared a mending emotion. She was giving him all the hurt she’d experienced, and by doing that, she was healing. He was healing her by accepting her burden, by embracing it with both arms and turning it into something beautiful. Each time their lips meshed and their tongues touched, there was more love, more happiness, more strength.

  Less pain. Less sadness. Less wounds.

  She shifted so her legs were on either side of him and eased back onto the bed, drawing him down on top of her. He didn’t break their kiss until she did. She lifted her head to kiss his forehead. Her mouth drifted across his face, kissing his temples and cheeks. When she stopped, he opened his eyes to see a sweet smile on her swollen lips.

  “Before we went to San Francisco, the thought of having kids put me into a panic because I didn’t think I had the mothering gene. Raising a child from birth to adulthood was a scary thought. How could I do it?” Her fingertips skimmed down his temple to his jaw. “All of that changed the more I fell in love with you, the more I envisioned a life with you. I imagined our wedding and our honeymoon.” Her gaze lowered, and he pressed his lips to her forehead. Neither of them foresaw the disaster that would strike on their honeymoon, nearly killing them. “I want a baby because I love you so much. I can’t think of another way to show how amazing our love is than by creating another human being. Our children will have the most beautiful parts of us. And carrying a baby for nine months would only make me love you more, because the creation of our love would be growing beneath my heart, a heart that beats for you.”

  Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. He wiped them away with his fingers. His heart pounded in his chest. Tears coated his vision and clogged his vocal cords.

  “Yes, Donovan,” she said. “We shall make a baby.”

  Donovan dipped his head and kissed her. He wanted to tell her that holding their baby the moment he or she came into this world was something he thought about a lot. Even just imagining it choked him up. A baby that was part her and part him; the thought of it made him swell with love and pride, and she wasn’t even pregnant yet.

  He planted a line of kisses down her neck, across her chest, and down her arms. The smell of the lotion she had just applied filled him. He lifted her shirt up her body and dropped it to the ground. Every inch of skin on her torso was lavished with attention until her skin glowed a pretty pink. Then he slipped off her pajama bottoms and showed her thighs, kneecaps, and ankles special attention, causing her to squirm from ticklishness and affection.

  There wasn’t a spot of skin on her he didn’t love—the light scar across her chest, the circle of scarring near her shoulder, the dimples in her cheeks when she smiled, the few freckles on her legs, the soft creases of her elbows and knees, the veins showing through the skin of her wrists, the hollow at her throat. He loved it all.

  His hands sought the different textures of her body as he caressed every part of her. The satiny feel of her legs. The velvety touch of her shoulders. The dampness of her palms.

  With Beth’s help, he stripped out of his clothes. Then she took control. Her mouth tasted the skin of his abs. Her fingers followed the cuts in his torso and teased the hair of his happy trail. As she moved, the ends of her hair skimmed over his chest, activating every nerve-ending. His body was revving to go, but he reined it in the best he could until her exploration was finished.

  Poised above him, she looked down at him with flushed cheeks and glittering eyes. He knew she was ready without her having to say anything. Wrapping her in his arms, he switched their positions so she was beneath him. He kissed her once more before sliding into her. As he did, she bit her bottom lip, which was something she did every time, and it never failed to arouse him more than he already was. She locked her legs around him and elevated to meet him. Each thrust was like a prayer, a hope, a wish.

  When Beth shook with her ecstasy, Donovan gathered her in his arms and held her. Her heart banged against his. He closed his eyes while drawing in her scent. Slowly, his throat unstuck, and the words he had wanted to express to her earlier finally broke free.

  “Five years ago, if someone had asked me if I’d ever have kids, I would’ve laughed at them. Ryan used to tell me all the time ‘Just wait until you find the right woman. When you do, you’ll want to be her husband, and you’ll want to have her children.’ He was right.” Donovan let his fingers tangle with her hair as he spoke. The sound of Beth’s breathing was all he could hear when he paused to collect his thoughts.

  “After I proposed to you, I imagined what I would want our lives to be like. I saw us in a house like this with a dog and three kids. I saw us together to the very end with a big family. I know we’ll have that, Beth.”

  Her hands clutched his shoulders, but she didn’t lift her head off his chest.

  “At odd times during the day, I catch myself fantasizing about kissing your pregnant belly and talking to our baby. I want to do those things so badly. I also picture what it would be like to hold our baby for the first time. I can almost imagine the dark eyes looking up at me. Your eyes.” He took a deep breath. “It’ll happen, Beth. Neither of us would have this passion in us if we weren’t destined to be parents.”

  Several seconds went by before Beth rose and peered into his eyes. “I love you so much.”

  People who said love was only in the mind didn’t have a clue, Donovan decided. He didn’t believe it was a mere chemical reaction giving us this “in love” feeling, but that the body and soul could actually love. Not just in the mind, but with every fiber of our physical and spiritual beings. So, when he said, “I love you, too” he meant it with every part of him—mind, heart, and soul.

  Beth brought her mouth to his, giving him a quick kiss. When she pulled back, she tilted her head at him and frowned. “Do you think this was wise?”

  He frowned back. “What do you mean?”

  “Aren’t athletes supposed to preserve their energy? Don’t they usually restrict sex before a competition?”

  Her question made him grin. “I’ve never been one to follow rules.”

  She nudged him. “I’m serious. I don’t want you to lose your competition tomorrow because you used up everything tonight.”

  He put a finger under her chin and stared deep into her eyes. “If we made a baby tonight, I don’t give a damn about a trophy.”

  Chapter Five

  Beth woke in the morning feeling wonderful. All the tension she had at the end of the previous day had dissolved in Donovan’s arms. She showered and went downstairs with a bounce in her step. Donovan was in the kitchen filling a cup of coffee. She kissed him on the cheek and stole the cup from him with a smile.

  “You know,” Donovan said. “If you are pregnant, you shouldn’t be drinking coffee.”

  She froze with the cup an inch from her lips. She thought about that a moment. “If anything happened last night, it’d just be an egg and sperm right now. Plenty of women drink coffee during this stage before they know for sure they’re pregnant. So, I think a cup today is okay.” She checked the time on the stove. “I have some time before I need to leave. I can make omelets and hash browns.”

  “I’ll help chop.”

  They diced red, green, and yellow bell peppers, which they added t
o minced tomatoes, and then Beth added the mixture to some eggs. She poured it into a pan with shredded cheddar cheese. While the giant omelet cooked, she fried seasoned hash browns with butter. With a little finesse, she flipped the omelet so it could cook on the other side. Once it was a light and fluffy yellow with bits of color from the veggies and the hash browns were golden, she divided the meal onto two plates and took them to the kitchen table.

  Across from Donovan, she enjoyed her breakfast. As she ate, she read the headlines for today’s newspaper. Fire. Fire. Fire. It seemed as though all of Florida was burning. What would happen if it did? The thought of the homeless people and dead wildlife made a dry lump form in her throat. She swallowed it down with some coffee.

  As she took a sip, she studied Donovan. Tonight was his big competition. He didn’t seem anxious in the least. He never appeared to be nervous about anything, not even his career. His calm-headedness and quick-thinking were gifts. If she were about to compete against the best monster truck drivers in the world, she’d be jittering with nerves.

  “Are you excited for tonight?”

  “Sure.” He shoved in a forkful of egg and potatoes.

  She smirked. “Do you think you’re going to win?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Are you worried about competing against anyone in particular?”

  “Nah. I’ve beat them all at least once before.”

  She set down her cup. “You’re a tough one to crack, Donovan.”

  He looked up at her. “Are you trying to?”

  “Always.” She winked at him. “I’m just trying to gauge your level of excitement.”

  “Oh, I’m always excited.” He grinned at her, hinting at something other than driving.

  She shook her head at him. “Cute.”

  “Thanks.”

  She chuckled as she got up to drain the last of her coffee and set the cup in the sink. “I guess I’m nervous enough for the both of us.”