Burn (15 page)

“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 pri
vate 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
o
nce 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
h
er 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 domi
neering, 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 fin
gernail 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.

G
ian 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 head 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, loos
ening 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
o
ne-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 h
is home page, and without a moment of hesitation, he
typed Cinder White in the search box.

He got three results, all for an athletic shoe called the
Cinder, which came in white.

He tried her ex-husband’s name, spelling it three dif
ferent ways before his search yielded the first ten of
thirty-six thousand hits on Sumchai Wyatt. Gian had to read the headline of the first one twice before he could
bring himself to double-click on it, opening the page.

North Shore teacher found guilty of
first-degree assault in spousal abuse case

Cady Winters-Bailey
Special to the Herald-Star

A Middlesex Superior Court jury yesterday convicted
Manchester-by-the-Sea high school teacher Sumchai
Wyatt of first degree assault, the most serious of 18 felony
counts against him following the June 9, 2007 attack on
his wife, Cinder B. Wyatt. The jury delivered mixed ver
dicts on the remaining 17 counts.

After two days of deliberations, the jury of eight men
and four women found Wyatt guilty of eight charges,
including torture, spousal abuse and child endanger
ment. Wyatt was found not guilty of seven counts,
among them false imprisonment, making death threats
and second degree assault. The jury remained deadlocked
on three charges of assault, making death threats and assault with a deadly weapon.

Jurors heard from 56 witnesses and reviewed 310
exhibits during the two-month trial, including the police
photos below reprinted with the permission of Dee
Bolds, an administrator with Project Protection, a North
Shore advocacy group for victims of spousal abuse . . .

Gian stared at the disclaimer above the photo—
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IMAGES MAY BE
DISTURBING TO SOME READERS—for a long time
before he took a deep breath and looked at the photo
graphs accompanying the article.

Twelve years of active duty as a Marine in several war
zones hadn’t prepared him for what he was seeing. The
first photo depicted a young woman on a hospital
gurney. Her bloody, swollen face made it impossible for
him to identify her. He had to trust the caption, which
read: Cinder B. Wyatt upon admission to North Shore
Medical Center.