Burn (Indigo)

by Hubbard, Crystal

  Cinder gave up trying to reason with him. “Your mother threw a dinner party for me when I got promoted. I wish you’d been as happy for me as your family was. And as for sons, I’m not the one responsible for us not having one. I’d love to have a little boy with your eyes, and—”

  Sumchai didn’t move, but no sooner than her words left her mouth, Cinder saw something snap in his eyes. “You carry the Y,” she hastily told him, all the while knowing that she had crossed into dangerous territory. “That’s all I meant. I wasn’t referring to your ability to—”

  He scrambled over the foot of the bed and pressed her to the mattress with such force, one of her shoes flew off. Straddling her, he ripped off her filmy dress. Ignoring her screams of pain and protest, he caught her arms, wrapped them from wrist to elbow with the torn garment and secured them to the headboard. She tried to buck him off, but his weight and determination rendered her efforts useless. With one hand he forced her legs apart, the other unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.

  His hands rough, invading, damaging, he barely moved her G-string aside before he shoved into her with such force that her head banged into the teak headboard. Deaf to her pleas to stop, he pounded into her, arching upward to avoid looking at her tear-streaked face. He prefaced his climax by taking handfuls of her hair, pulling it so hard the skin of her face went taut. Her agonized cries matched his grunts of release. When he finished, he rolled off her, lying beside her to catch his breath. “I think I might like having a personal slut,” he panted.

  Too angry and still too stunned to think of anything bad enough to say in response, Cinder stared at the ceiling fixture. The lead eagle medallion supporting its frosted glass globe was original to the farmhouse, but they had purchased the globe shortly after moving in. They had spent a Saturday comparison shopping at home goods, antique and lighting stores, searching for the perfect globe. Such a small task, yet it had been so much fun driving around with her new husband on a rain-glossed day.

  But as she lay there, bound and sore, she recalled a few details about the way he had treated her that day. The comments he’d made in front of sales assistants, making fun of her choices and suggestions—they had seemed amusing and harmless then, in the wake of their new union. With pain and humiliation lending clarity to retrospection, she saw his behavior for what it had been. Abuse.

  She thought back to the last time he had left marks on her, at an anniversary party for Zae and Colin. She had danced with Colin’s younger brother to one too many Earth, Wind & Fire songs and Sumchai had escorted her from the dance floor, holding her upper arm so tight his fingernails had broken her skin. He’d apologized and she’d forgiven him. But she hadn’t forgotten.

  Every insult, every smack, slap, pinch, kick, and push came back to her, snowballing into something so big and ugly, Cinder could no longer ignore it, not in light of what he had just done.

  Sumchai left the bed and stripped off his clothes as he strolled into the bathroom. Cinder’s hurt and humiliation morphed into fear that didn’t lessen until she heard the quiet whoosh of the shower. She wrenched her arms, struggling to free herself from her bonds even if it meant snapping one of the slats in the headboard.

  She slid her forearms together, working them back and forth an inch at a time. Although she tore her skin in the process, she managed to release one arm. The other came out much easier. Freed, she scooted off the bed. She picked up the striped button-down Sumchai had discarded on the floor and put it on as she slipped out of the bedroom and hurried down the carpeted stairs.

  She had retrieved her car keys and purse from the kitchen and was approaching the front door when, faintly, she heard the shower stop. She opened the heavy front door and left it standing open, so he wouldn’t hear its tell-tale latch upon its closing.

  “You’d better be down there getting dinner on the table!” His command chased her to the driveway, where she got into her sensible Audi and started it. Sumchai’s big pickup blocked her in the long driveway. She tested her car’s maneuverability by backing over the low stone border she had spent three afternoons putting in, onto the lawn, and down to the two-lane street.

  Her tires spun for a moment, long enough for her to see her husband’s silhouette against the bright light bleeding from her front door, before she zoomed away, her headlights blazing a path in the night.

  * * *

  “Did you go back to him?”

  Gian still held her hand and Cinder was grateful for it. It was the only thing that had steeled her enough to tell him her reason for leaving her husband.

  “I wanted to,” she admitted. “I tried to. The night I left, I showed up at my parents’ house with nothing but the shirt off Chai’s back and my car keys. My dad wanted to kill him, especially when Chai got to the house a half-hour after I did.”

  “That guy had a lot of nerve,” Gian said. “I hope you called the police.”

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on the votive. The bright flame seemed to skim the liquid surface of the melted wax. “He spent two nights in the Middlesex County jail because I wouldn’t post his bail. He couldn’t get arraigned until Monday morning.”

  “I’ll bet that pissed him off.”

  “I didn’t do it to piss him off. I needed some time to get my clothes and things out of the house.”

  “Most women wouldn’t have found it so easy to just leave like that.” Gian summoned the waiter.

  “It wasn’t easy,” she stated firmly. “I still loved him, at that point. I couldn’t just turn that off, no matter what he’d done to me. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay there and let him do it again. I was in love, not insane.”

  “Point taken,” he conceded.

  A smiling waiter appeared and took Gian’s order for coffee. Once the waiter hurried back to the kitchen, Cinder continued. “He called or drove by the house every night for two weeks, until I threatened to get an order of protection. He left me alone after that. One day, about a month later, I called him.”

  Gian opened his mouth but Cinder spoke over him. “I wanted to help him. I thought medication or therapy, something, would help him control his temper and manage his impulses and paranoia.”

  “What was he paranoid about?” Gian asked. “He was convinced that I would leave him.” “He forced you to.”

  She smiled somberly. “I tried not to. I really did.” “I can see that you did.”

  “We started seeing each other. We’d meet for lunch and he’d tell me about his job search. The lunch dates went well, so we started having real dates. He was so nice, the way he’d been when we were first dating. He promised to see a therapist and told me that he would be willing to go to marriage counseling. It took him three months to blow it.”

  “How so? Did he hurt you again?”

  “He came to pick me up for dinner and a movie one Saturday, and my cousin David was visiting. He was twenty-six years old, and he’d just gotten his degree from the Massachusetts School of Law. He’d come to my parents’ to pick up a graduation present. It was a sterling silver Cross pen with his name engraved on it.”

  The waiter returned with a busboy, who collected their plates and empty sake cups to make way for coffee and a small tray of delicate almond cookies.

  “David was leaving when Chai pulled into the driveway,” Cinder continued once she and Gian were again alone. “I was on the front porch giving him a hug. Chai got out of his car, charged across the lawn, jumped onto the porch, and threw David against the side of the house. He broke David’s nose before my dad and I could pull him off.”

  “What the hell was wrong with your ex?”

  “Chai thought David was a date.” Tears spilled over her lower lashes when she blinked, and they sparkled in the candlelight until she wiped them away. “David came to our wedding. Chai had met him before, he knew David was family! That was it, for me. He hadn’t changed. There were things wrong with him that I would never be able to fix. Everything he’d said about getting help was a lie. I couldn’t go
back to him and the toxic life we’d built. I’d been living with my parents for a year, and it was time for me to rebuild my life. I filed for divorce a few days later.”

  “How did your ex handle it?”

  “Not well,” Cinder said tremulously. “He wouldn’t sign the papers.”

  “There are ways to divorce someone, whether they want to be divorced or not,” Gian insisted, sitting back in his chair.

  “Those ways took time,” Cinder said.

  “So when did you get your divorce?”

  “Shortly after I last saw him.”

  “You’re being cryptic.” A tinge of impatience tainted his words. “When did you last see him?”

  She swallowed hard and still struggled to get her next words out. “We agreed to sell our farmhouse in Manchester-by-the-Sea. The day I was emptying it, he violated the order of protection I’d taken out on him.”

  “Tell me what happened.” He scooted his chair in closer and took both her hands. “I—”

  “Sir, ma’am,” interrupted their waiter. “We closed a half hour ago. May I bring you your check?”

  “Of course, thank you,” Gian said.

  “We’re making a habit of overstaying our welcome.” Cinder took her purse from under her chair and withdrew her wallet.

  “Uh-uh,” Gian said. “I’ll get this.”

  “I invited you to dinner, sensai,” Cinder argued. “That means I cover the check.”

  “I don’t feel right, letting a woman pay for me.” “That sounds like something caveman Karl would The waiter returned with their bill tucked in a small leather folder. Cinder plucked it from his hand before he stopped at the table.

  “That was impressive,” Gian said. “Your reflexes are really good. I think you’re ready for group classes.”

  “I don’t want to be in a group.”

  “You need to spar with other people besides me,” he told her. “You have to learn to adapt your fighting style to your opponent’s, and you’re too familiar with my moves now. I don’t think I’m challenging you enough.”

  “I’m paid up through the end of the month for private lessons.”

  “Sionne is teaching a class tomorrow at five,” Gian said. “There are only seven students. Just try the class, on the house. If you hate it, no harm, no foul. But if you find you’re getting something out of it, we can apply your tuition credit to the cost of a group lesson.”

  “I’d rather not—”

  “Here you go,” Gian said, butting Cinder’s credit card aside to hand three twenties to the waiter, who had returned for the check. “No change.”

  “Thank you, sir, and good evening.” The pleased waiter escorted Gian and Cinder to the exit and held the door open for them.

  “Oh!” Cinder squeaked. The waiter closed the door so fast behind her, it struck her backside.

  “Maybe we should go out earlier next time,” Gian suggested. He took her hand and they strolled across the parking lot to their cars.

  “I’d like to go to the zoo,” Cinder said. “I’ve read that the St. Louis Zoo is one of the best in the country. I went to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston once, and I hated it. The animals looked so sad, like they knew they were serving life sentences.”

  Gian laughed, the booming sound carrying through the near-deserted parking lot.

  “That wasn’t nearly that funny,” Cinder chuckled.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Gian agreed, stopping between his SUV and Cinder’s Audi. “But you said it, so I liked it.”

  Toe-to-toe in the awkward silence following Gian’s remark, Cinder was unsure if she should hug him, shake his hand or . . .

  “May I kiss you?”

  His eyes moved over her face. More plea than request, his words were as quiet and pleasant as the night itself. Moonlight streaked his hair with silver and darkened his eyes. His white shirt, preternaturally bright in the cold wash of the overhead lights, led her to think of him as a guardian angel, some divine appointee to protect her though she had never asked for it. His rolled-up sleeves exposed thick, well muscled forearms, and Cinder fully realized that, were he the type, he could have had his kiss whether she wanted to grant it or not.

  “Thank you,” she said, the hammering of her heart muting her words. “For asking.”

  “What’s your answer?”

  “Yes.”

  Awkwardness vanished. Gian bowed his head, Cinder raised hers. Their lips met delicately, growing more eager once fully acquainted. Powerfully gentle, the heat of Gian’s kiss flowed through her. Dormant sensations flourished under the nourishment of his kiss.

  Gian’s hands clenched in his pockets. His abdomen tightened from the effort it took to restrain himself from spreading her over the hood of her car and kissing every part of her. The touch of his tongue to hers, chaste at first, triggered rapid-fire reactions throughout his body. His most responsive tissues instantly hardened. His heart raced, his breath quickened, every part of him reaching for Cinder.

  Her arms went around him, hesitantly at first, but with more confidence when her fingers splayed over the muscles of his lower back. She drew his torso to hers— the move he had hoped and waited for because it invited him to return her embrace. His arms circled her waist and shoulders and he held her even closer, moaning into their kiss.

  When they separated to breathe, Cinder laughed. The merry sound made him laugh, too. “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes delved into his.

  “You were laughing for no reason?”

  “I’m happy.” That was it, unadorned. She was so happy, it flooded from her in the form of laughter.

  “Why do you sound so surprised about that?” He nuzzled the top of her head with his cheek and chin.

  “I didn’t expect this to happen.” She pressed her cheek to his chest and deeply inhaled his scent. She had come alive in his company. With each passing week since her first lesson with him, she had emerged more and more from her cocoon of solitude. Sure, she had been nervous and scared to ask Gian out, but looking back on it, she had enjoyed even those feelings. It had been too long since she had felt anything other than apprehension and uncertainty. She embraced those feelings because they brought happiness, yearning, contentment, and desire with them.

  Gian was not what she expected of a former Marine. He was a leader without being oppressive or domineering, and he readily earned respect because he was willing to give it. He made it so easy for Cinder to view him as a warrior as easily as . . . a lover.

  “Are you glad it did?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.” She laughed.

  “Good.”

  He scraped the edge of his neatly trimmed index fingernail between his incisors, lifting away a glistening orange dot. “Maybe we shouldn’t have done sushi. I think this belongs to you.”

  Laughing, Cinder said, “You had the California maki with the flying fish roe, not me. That’s all yours.” “Want some?” He offered it to her on his fingertip. “No, but thanks.” She giggled, catching his wrist.

  “What’s mine is yours,” Gian taunted in a schoolyard sing-song.

  “Really, I’m good.” Smiling, Cinder sidled away from him until she was free of their cars.

  Gian chased her. Laughing and squealing, Cinder ran, neatly stepping out of his reach and blocking his attempts to catch her.

  “Nice,” Gian told her. “See what I mean? You know me so well now that you anticipate my moves. I can’t get a hand on you until you let me. You’re ready for new opponents.”

  She sobered a little. “I don’t think I am.”

  “You read my body very well. Can you tell what move I want to make next?”

  “You want to kiss me again.”

  “I rest my case.”

  He reeled her in for a second kiss. Had they been using their mouths for speaking, they would have agreed that it was twice as nice as the first.

  * * *

  Gian lay in bed, his hea
d resting on his right forearm. Staring at the ceiling, he sighed. He had kissed Cinder goodnight over an hour ago, and he was still too high to sleep. Memories of the sweetness of her mouth and the softness of her lips acted on him as would a drug, loosening his joints and relaxing his muscles. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d so enjoyed the company of a woman and ended the night on a kiss that left him more thoroughly satisfied than a weekend with the limber and imaginative Kuriko.

  Beneath a thin cotton sheet, Gian’s body reacted to his thoughts of Cinder. “At ease, boy,” he muttered. The one-eyed soldier between his legs paid no attention to his orders tonight, not as long as Cinder White was on his mind. She had given him a lot, but there was so much more he wanted to know about her.

  What had been her favorite game as a child? Who was her favorite teacher? Did she have siblings? What of her parents? What was her favorite candy? What was her favorite color? Did she prefer pearls to diamonds? The Red Sox to the Cardinals? Did she like The Three Stooges, and if so, which was her favorite?

  Those questions spiraled into more intimate ones. He wondered if she slept in the nude, in a sexy nightie or an old T-shirt. What sounds did she make at the height of passion? Did she gasp and grunt, hold in her noises, or did she cry out in abandon, speaking the language known only by those who really knew how to revel in the giving and acceptance of pleasure?

  The most important question, though, the one keeping him up, was far more simple: Was Cinder awake and thinking of him?

  He rolled out of bed, intending to get a drink of water. Scratching himself through the thin cotton knit of his grey sports briefs, he shuffled toward the kitchen. A soft, mechanical hum from his office sidetracked him.

  He backtracked and entered the dark room, drawn by the unflattering, over-bright light of his monitor. The padded seat of his swivel office chair creaked under his weight, and its wheels cried out when he scooted the chair up to his desk. A wiggle of his mouse brought up his home page, and without a moment of hesitation, he typed Cinder White in the search box.