He sat wedged at the back of Cinder’s bathtub. His elbows braced on the pale yellow tile at the back of the deep tub, his biceps tensed. Beneath the billowy bubbles floating on the surface of the deep water like whipped dessert topping, Gian’s legs and toes tensed in a rictus of pleasure. The water softly buffeted Gian’s torso as Cinder, her water-slicked backside exposed like a chocolate heart, showed Gian exactly what she could do to him in the three minutes she could hold her breath.
The first minute had been amusing, fun even. But fifteen seconds into the second minute, Gian had begun wrestling with the urge to bring her up for air and his growing need to take the sides of her head and steer her head faster and himself deeper.
At two minutes and forty-five seconds, Cinder’s left arm went around his waist and her right shoulder pressed farther into his crotch. Gian’s head fell back, clunking against the tiled wall, when Cinder did something that he could only describe as . . . swallowing.
The warm, soft walls of her cheeks pulled in around him, which gave him a tantalizing thrill of its own, but then that unique snugness grew even tighter when he felt himself drawn so deep that Cinder’s nose pressed into his lower abdomen. Gian sounded the three-minute warning with a shudder and a loud groan as Cinder’s throat generated a vacuum effect that left him pounding his fists on the tile.
At three minutes, ten seconds, Cinder rose from the water, standing on her knees before Gian. Her chest heaved as she took deep breaths and asked, “How long?”
“It’s a new record,” Gian grumbled before taking her by the waist with one arm and reversing their positions. “Three minutes, ten seconds. Wanna see how long I can hold my breath?”
“Sure.” Cinder smiled.
Gian went under, his bigger body only partially obscured by the water and bubbles. His hair danced in the water, caressing her skin with feathery strokes. Cinder’s back arched when she felt his nose open her, followed by greedy laps of his tongue that covered more and more territory with each lick. His fingers dug into the meat of her buttocks as he spread her wider and tilted her upward to fully enjoy her. The scrape of his lower teeth and the rasp of his tongue against the puckered ring between her buttocks gave her a dizzying erotic charge. Gian nibbled her hard, hot pearl while using two fingers to taunt the sensitive bed of nerves inside her.
She almost screamed in frustration when Gian burst through the surface, flinging water from his hair as he looked at the clock. “Two minutes, eleven seconds,” he gasped.
Cinder sat up straight and might have put him in a chokehold if he hadn’t said, “I can’t hold my breath for long, but there’s other things I can do for hours.”
He stood on his knees and took Cinder’s ankles. He pressed them to her buttocks and drove the rigid, heavy weight between his legs into her. Cinder held onto his shoulders, allowing him to control the speed and depth of their union. Their position was perfect, giving Gian’s mouth access to her breasts. He licked droplets of bath-water from her nipples, then he suckled them, drawing just hard enough to put a curl in her toes. Cinder held his head to her bosom, her upper back and shoulders butting into the back of the tub as Gian increased his speed, bur rowing deeply. Cinder tried to hold on, to outlast him as she had under the water, but the nip of Gian’s teeth at her right nipple forced a blissful surrender. She clamped around him, her fingernails marking crescents in the meat of his shoulders. She closed her eyes and happily, eagerly, lost her mind to the universe of warm, bright color turning over itself with each thrust of Gian’s hips.
* * *
Gian kept still.
His heart drummed faster from the effort of trying to remember every detail of the moment he awakened in Cinder’s bed. She lay with her back to his chest, her hands under the left side of her head, folded as if in prayer. Her bedroom was a study in muted shades of green, gold, and umber, her furniture sturdy and well crafted in distressed hardwoods. Books neatly packed her shelving units. Gian was a little surprised to see her comic book collections. Matt Groening’s Life is Hell, Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County, The Boondocks, The Far Side, and Peanuts were well represented alongside romance novels by Kitty Kincaid, Khela Halliday, and Victoria Ronaldinho. He knew that she had to have had a sense of humor at some point to handle being friends with Zae, and he’d seen traces of it. Her taste in comics proved that she had a sardonic streak that needed to be resurrected.
Paperback classics—To Kill a Mockingbird, Being Plumville, The Color Purple, A Separate Peace—their bindings creased from multiple readings, sat prominently at eye level along with slim, glossy graphic design trade manuals.
She had no photos of friends of family in her bedroom, or anywhere else in her apartment. All of her clothes and shoes fit in her bedroom closet and one five-drawer bureau with room to spare from what he’d seen when she’d selected a pair of white cotton briefs and a matching slip gown to sleep in.
The only area of her apartment that seemed lived in was her drafting table, which occupied the corner of the bedroom that best received the northern light. Her work area exploded with color. Her drawings and designs were tacked to giant corkboards mounted on adjacent walls, and they represented everything from cartoonish grocery store and austere pharmaceutical company logos to an ornate, Asian-style painting of a serpent dragon. That image captivated Gian, reminding him of the silkscreens he’d seen in dojos in Japan.
Gian stroked Cinder’s upper arm with the backs of his fingers, marveling anew at the wonder of the woman tucked into the hollow of his body.
“It’s early,” came Cinder’s quiet, sleep-raspy voice. Gian kissed her exposed shoulder. “I didn’t realize you were awake.”
“I’m a light sleeper.”
Gian lay on his back, his hands laced over his torso. Cinder turned onto her other side to look at him. “Something’s wrong,” she said and sighed.
“I don’t like the way you live,” he stated bluntly. “Why not? I’m happy here.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re in a holding pattern. You’re waiting. The tragic part of it is that you’re waiting for something that probably won’t ever happen.”
Cinder slipped out of bed. She opened her pale, heavy curtains, allowing a blast of early morning sunlight to strike Gian’s face like a laser beam. Squinting, he sharply turned away.
“I think I know my ex-husband a great deal better than you do,” she began evenly, leaning against the wall between the window and her workspace. “This can go two ways. If it’s gonna be our first fight, let’s get on with it so we can get to the make-up sex before you have to open Sheng Li. Or, you could apologize and change the subject. We might be able to squeeze in a nasty little breakfast entrée between the sheets before you have to go to work if you calm my fur enough. Pick your pleasure, Gian.”
He saw that there was no point in further pursuing the matter with her. She refused to see reason, at least for the moment. A veteran of all sorts of conflict, Gian surrendered with his pride intact. “Cinder, I’m sorry. Tell me about that serpent dragon on your wall.”
Her pleasant, relaxed demeanor restored, she unstuck the clear push-pin holding the art in place. She returned to Gian’s side, sitting cross-legged with the eleven-by-seventeen-inch poster propped on her knees.
“The arena is going to be so big, and Zae wanted to make sure that her family and friends would be able to see her when she competed in the tournament,” Cinder started, her excitement waking her fully. “She asked me to design some kind of symbol that she could embroider on her gi, something to represent Sheng Li. I did some research, and I came up with this.”
Leaning against Gian, Cinder pointed out the details she had so carefully incorporated into the design. “Green represents health, vigor—”
“Wealth,” Gian put in.
“That, too.” Cinder smiled. “But that’s why I shadowed some of the scales in gold. To represent longevity, value, and wealth.”
Gian peered closer at the work. “That looks like real gold.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“According to myth, two brothers discovered a gold statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, when they were fishing the Sumida River. Gold dragons flew out of the river when the discovery was made.”
“So I guess the brothers got stinkin’ rich.”
“One could suppose.” Cinder chuckled.
“This is really beautiful, Cinder. It looks like an authentic tatsu.”
“I’m a good artist and a good researcher,” she stated with pride. “One of the first things I read about dragons is they don’t have the same stigma in the Far East that they have in Western culture. They don’t breathe fire and watchdog captive princesses. They’re benevolent, but powerful. They symbolize power, strength, and the bal ance between might and wisdom. Buddhist traditions view the dragon as a mythical representation of the hardships we have to face and overcome before we can obtain enlightenment. I wanted to honor Sheng Li and the man who created it. The dragon was the perfect emblem.”
“I would be so honored, so pleased, to wear this into combat,” Gian said. He put an arm around her and drew her in close. “I want all my fighters to wear it, too. It’s perfect.”
Cinder fastened her arms tight around his middle and stared at the dragon. Everything it stood for was something she believed in. Gian personified the ideals behind the emblem, and Cinder wanted to represent them, too. After a moment of introspection, she said, “I’m sorry I struck out at you about what you said. You’re right, and I know it. It’s just hard to hear someone say it out loud.”
Gian leaned back against the high, slatted headboard and brought Cinder to rest on his chest. “Last night was the first time you fell asleep before I did.”
“I was tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open once we got out of the tub.”
“You’re so beautiful when you’re awake, but when you’re asleep, you look like an angel. I’ve never seen you so relaxed.”
“I’m comfortable with you. You know that.” “Is that all?”
Beneath her cheek, Cinder was certain that his heartbeat pounded harder. “No,” she said. “I trust you. I sleep easy with you because I trust you.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” “I’m hungry,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Woman, I’ve had just about—”
“I love you.”
Gian’s heart slammed against her cheek, and she turned her face up to his. “Is that what you wanted me to say?”
“Only if you mean it.”
“I do.”
“Yeah?”
She felt his smile in his whole body. “Yeah. That was practice, by the way.”
“For what?”
“When we get married.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Gian pulled her over his lap, cradling her in his arms. “Are you sure?” His joyful gaze bored into hers.
“I want to get on with living my life,” she said. Gian began layering kisses on her face. “I want to live it with you. I don’t want to waste another second worrying about something that might never happen.”
But if it does, she thought before giving herself over to Gian’s kisses, I’ll be ready . . .
Chapter 9
With an enigmatic grin aimed at her feet, Cinder walked through the leaves that had been raked into the curb along Taylor Avenue. “Don’t you just love that sound?” she asked Zae, who kept pace with her on the wide, tree-lined sidewalk. “It sounds like potato chips!”
“It won’t smell like potato chips if you happen to kick up some of the dog poop mixed in with those leaves,” Zae warned. “I smell a hot one now.”
Cinder threw up her arms and gave the leaves one last kick, sending them on their second flight of fall before she hopped back onto the sidewalk.
“What’s gotten into you?” Zae asked, casting Cinder a suspicious glance. “You and Gian must have kept the party going after you left last night. Want to tell me why you were so late meeting me?”
“I had to finish up a nasty little breakfast entrée.” Cinder hid a sly smile behind her crooked index finger. “You went to Muttermann’s Diner again?”
“No, I had breakfast in bed this morning.”
Zae’s eyes widened in understanding. “Did you now,” she remarked. “What was on the menu?”
“Italian sausage and a couple of boiled eggs.” Cinder chuckled.
“Hard or soft?”
“Soft, by the time I was done with them.”
“That man is bringing out the worst in you,” Zae teased. “And I’m so glad to see it.”
“We had a good night. And we made some plans for later.”
“Are you going to the International Festival in Tower Grove Park on Friday?” Zae adjusted the wicker grocery basket hanging from her right arm so it wouldn’t snag the sleeve of her orange cashmere cardigan. “Chip said he and Gian wanted to catch the capoeira demonstration at the Brazilian section.”
“Our plans are for later than that,” Cinder said.
Zae stopped and drew Cinder up short at the entrance to the Kirkwood Farmer’s market. “I haven’t seen you this happy since we were kickin’ it back in college. What exactly do you and Gian have planned?”
Fall was Cinder’s favorite season in St. Louis. The bright heat of the sun was friendly, rather than oppressive as it was in the summer, and the absence of humidity assured that her hair looked great every day with little effort or product. The leaves were not as bountiful in color in a St. Louis fall as in New England, but the milder temperatures allowed her to wear adorable khaki short shorts instead of heavier Bermuda shorts. And Kirkwood Market, the place where she and Zae got all their best produce in summer, was a riot of fall festiveness.
The sweet cinnamon-laced scent of freshly pressed apple cider flavored the air, competing with the drool-inducing aroma of kettle corn popped as it was ordered. Bales of fresh hay added their own distinct odor and ambience. Cinder led Zae to one of those bales and sather down. “Gian asked me to marry him, and I said yes. He didn’t want me to tell anyone, but I had to tell you.”
Cinder knew that Zae would have a strong reaction to the news, but she was completely stunned when Zae burst into tears.
“Zae, don’t,” Cinder softly pleaded, placing her hand on the knee of Zae’s dark brown slacks. “Gian and I aren’t rushing into a wedding. But I love him, and I can’t imagine not being with him. He’s not like Sumchai, and—”
Full-out bawling, Zae threw her arms around Cinder and wept. Loudly. Her shoulders shaking, Zae wet the collar of Cinder’s white button-down shirt. “Baby, I’m happy,” she exclaimed through slobbery tears. “I have been so worried about you.” She fished a wad of crumpled tissues from her Coach bag and mopped her face. “I wanted you to meet a good man and settle down and have a nice, long, boring life.”
Cinder chuckled. “I hope by ‘boring’ you mean a life with a big home office and a big friendly dog.”
“Don’t forget about a man who loves you.”
Pensive, Cinder picked at the nail of her left thumb. “Are you disappointed that he isn’t a black man?”
Zae took Cinder’s hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “The only criteria your man has to meet is that he loves you. Really, truly, all the way through with his whole head, heart, and ass. I don’t care if he’s black, white, tall, short, fine, ugly, rich or poor. He better love you and take care of you the best he can. And I know Gian can.”
“So can Chip,” Cinder murmured.
Zae sat up straight. The tear tracks striping her foundation evaporated. “What’s Chip got to do with anything?”
“Chip is a good man, too. And I think he likes you.”
Zae dismissed her with a lazy wave of her hand and
picked up her shopping basket. “Chip is fun to mess with, that’s all.”
“Okay.”
“We’re talking about you now, not me,” Zae said defensively.
“Fine.” Cinder smiled.
“There’s no law that says just because we spend time together here and there, we’re in love.”
“I know.” Cinder laughed.
Zae suddenly stood. “I’m going to get my apples.” She gave her cheeks one last swipe and resumed her usual regal posture. “You can come, if you want to.” With a sassy sway of her hips and an exaggerated swing of her free arm, Zae strutted toward the Summit Farms booth.
Still laughing, Cinder caught up to her, overjoyed at the big step she had taken to move on with her life.
* * *
Zae grabbed Cinder’s arm and tugged her close, snatching her away from the tiny paper cups holding free samples of Summit Farms freshly pressed apple cider.
“What is it?” Cinder whined low, her cider splashing over the rim of the cup.
“Look,” Zae whispered loudly, turning her right shoulder into Cinder and pointing over it with her left index finger. “Look who’s crating Jonagold apples over there.”
Cinder peeped over Zae’s shoulder to see Karl Lange in a sweaty T-shirt. He used a stubby knife to pry open wooden crates of apples, and then dumped them onto a big, padded produce scale. He steadied the scale with two fingers, his sweat-shiny arm muscles glistening. Once it reached the desired number, he tipped the bed of the scale into a half-bushel basket adorned with a Summit Farms sticker.
“He looks like Tom Joad,” Cinder said.
Zae hid a laugh behind her hand.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” Cinder told her. “How could he go from autoworker to karate teacher to apple guy?”
“It’s his temper,” Zae said. “Karl is smart, and he’s handsome. He has more blessings than most people, but he throws them away with both hands. He’d better get a hold of himself before he ends up in jail or the morgue, because one day he’s going to pick a fight with someone bigger, meaner, and crazier than he is, at the rate he’s going, and that person is going to whoop his ass for him.” Zae looked at her watch. “We’d better get a move on. I’ve got people coming for dinner tonight, and I haven’t even started marinating my meat yet.”
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