Burn (40 page)

Skin to skin, they wrapped themselves in each other.
Cinder sat astride him, holding his gaze. She took him
gently with her fingertips and guided him toward her
center. Gian stroked her thighs, working his hands over
her hips and back to her buttocks. He spread her wide as
she lowered herself on him, stopping halfway.

Reaching back, she gripped his shins to steady herself
as she pumped her hips in hard, short strokes, allowing
his swollen cap to massage the internal bed of nerves pre
vious lovers had never found. She moaned in blissful
agony, keen waves of pleasure radiating to her limbs.

Gian raised his hips and her along with them, eager
to plunge himself completely within her. Cinder, her
head lolling back on her shoulders, closed her eyes and
concentrated on squeezing him with each upward stroke.

Gian gritted his teeth so hard it hurt, every part of
him aching for more. Without dislodging himself from her, he sat up, forcing her weight onto him. Impaled,
Cinder cried out and fastened her arms tight around his neck, her legs firmly around his waist. Gian gripped her
hips, aiding the movement of her strong thighs as she
raised and lowered herself, faster and faster until the solid
bed began to creak.

He buried his face in her neck, reveling in the utter pleasure of their union. Her breasts flattened against his
chest, her breath came hard and heavy in his left ear. Her
tongue snaked out and traced the shell of his ear before
she suckled his earlobe. The sensual simplicity of it trig
gered a reaction that zoomed straight to his loins, and he
erupted with a ragged groan. His body stiffened, his
thighs and buttocks hardening, his arms tightening
around her. He pumped himself into her until he felt
himself shrinking. Not quite ready to exit her slick
temple, he eased a hand between them and found the
slippery hood at the apex of their union. He drew it back,
just enough to expose the treasure beneath it to the friction provided by his coarse nest of hair.

A rolling, guttural moan issued from Cinder’s throat.
She shifted her hips, working them in tiny circles with
e
ach forward movement. Gian brought her left breast to
his lips and clamped the nipple between his teeth. Quick
flicks across it with the tip of his tongue jolted Cinder to
a climax that left her frozen but for the pulsing of the
muscles imprisoning Gian.

With a ragged cry, she pressed her face to his neck,
kissing beads of sweat from his skin. Behind her closed
eyelids, she saw every color, each shattering into a kalei
doscope of blissful sensation. As the colors faded, so did
the intensity of her orgasm. She held onto Gian,
pumping her hips into his to achieve it once more.

Gian spent a second cursing the failings of the male
anatomy and its inability to recover as quickly as women
did. But what his soldier couldn’t give her, another part of him could. He laid her on her back, earning a short noise of protest from Cinder when he pulled out. He
quickly settled between her thighs, hooking them over
his shoulders.

Long, firm strokes of his tongue sent her fingers burrowing in his hair. Her fingernails dug into his scalp; her
strangled groans answered each lick and nip at her overly
sensitive flesh. His tongue found the hard seed from
which her rapture would bloom, and he sucked it,
starting her hips bucking. Gian curled his arms around
her thighs to keep her from breaking contact with his
mouth.

Panting, she tugged at his hair, the muscles of her
abdomen bunching as she tried to sit up. Relentless, Gian
continued, gently scraping his upper teeth against her
most sensitive place while his tongue thrust into her.

“Gian,” she gasped sharply. “Please! It’s too much! . . . . . . . .”

He took her hardened pellet between his teeth. Not
hard, but with enough pressure to force broken grunts of mindless bliss from her. As if an electric charge had been
administered to her, her body went rigid, then twitched.
Over and over, her backside clenched, her hips rose and her abdominal muscles contracted.

Cinder melted. Her arms and legs turned to pudding,
she lay on the bed, completely helpless in the aftermath
of perfect pleasure. Tears trickled toward her ears.

“Sweetie, what’s the matter? Did I hurt you?

She shook her head and mustered a smile for him. “I
always suspected something better or stronger, or what
ever you want to call it, was there. I’ve had orgasms
before, you know that. But I’ve never felt
that
before.”

Gian grinned. “I kinda wanted to see what would
happen if I took you past the twitch. Now I know.”

“ ‘The twitch?’ ”

He stroked light fingertips over her belly. Her skin
jumped, still highly sensitive. “That point past orgasm,” Gian explained. “Orgasms stop, eventually. But once you go past the twitch, you find whole new secrets to taste. It
can go on and on . . .”

“Until your heart stops.” Cinder laughed. “Or dehy
dration sets in.”

Gian cupped her between her thighs, his thumb lightly
caressing her bare mound. “This is different,” he remarked.

“Zae and I went for pedicures and manicures yes
terday.” She grinned. “The salon offered a package deal.”

“
They’ll shave your kitty with every mani-pedi,” he
teased.

“They waxed.” Cinder laughed lightly. “I’d never
done it before. It felt like the technician was using a
flamethrower, but after it was over, it was okay. I was sur
prised at how sensitive the area is once the fur coat came
off. Do you like it?”

“I do now. You’re just as smooth and juicy as a fresh
nectarine.”

“You’re making me hungry.” She dragged a fingertip
along the trail of fine, dark hair arrowing toward his
groin. She kept it moving past his pelvis until her fin
gertip was tracing the instrument between his legs, which
grew with the movement of her finger.

“I was just thinking about seconds, myself.”

Cinder sat up. She pushed Gian onto his back. She
stifled a giggle at the sight of his “little” soldier at full
attention.

“What’s so funny?” Gian asked.

“Talk about perpendicular.” She emphasized the third
syllable of her last word. She threw a leg over Gian’s chest
and sat on him.

“Nice.” He gave Cinder’s bum a little slap, since it
was now in his face.

“Behave,” she directed over her shoulder. She
hunched forward and took him in her mouth. Gian
groaned, a slight bend appearing in his knees as his feet
flexed and his toes spread. He caressed Cinder’s buttocks,
lightly stroking a finger between them as she tormented
him with the soft, wet walls of her warm cheeks. Gian
i
nhaled deeply, the ginger musk of her scent heightening
the action of her tongue and lips. The lines of her shoul
ders, back and bum, exquisitely beautiful in the semi
darkness, changed as she switched position.

Lifting her backside, she supported her weight on her
knees to add both hands to the work of her mouth.
Gian’s girth overfilled one hand, so she laced her fingers
together to fully circle him, twisting her hands up and
down his shaft while she sucked his smooth, taut cap.

“God Almighty,” he grunted. He clasped her thighs
right at her hips and dragged her back until he could
reach her with his mouth. He braced his elbows on the
insides of her knees, forcing them as far apart as possible.
With a satisfied moan, he devoured her, lapping and nib
bling her, mimicking everything she did to him.

One of her hands fondled the fleshy package trying to
crowd his base. He responded by dragging his tongue
along the full length of her seam, finishing with kisses to
the dimples just above her buttocks. Cinder squealed, her
hips taking on a life of their own to exuberantly delight
in the skill of Gian’s tongue, teeth, and lips.

Cinder took him deeper, the rhythm of her mouth
matching that of her hips. On each downstroke, she took
him all the way to the back of her throat, dragging her
lips in a tight “o” along his length on the upstrokes.

When he grabbed her thighs and held her to his
mouth, kissing her nether lips as deeply as he would the
lips on her face, she gored her throat with him, taking
him deeper than ever before. Frozen in a rictus of
pleasure, Cinder kept him entombed. She pressed her
t
ongue against him, the only movement she had room to do, and slowly pulled off of him. The rasp of her tongue
over the nerve endings gathered at the base of his cap sent
that part of him coddled in her hand crowding upward.
He twitched between her lips and she shoved her head
down on him once more. His length pulsated between
her cheeks, his liquid heat bypassing her tongue.

Gian’s arms locked around her thighs, holding her in place as he once again took her past the twitch. Lying flat
atop him, her face pressed into his right thigh, she held
onto his legs and let the intensely strong orgasms carry
her to that place where her state of being dissolved into pure sensation.

“So what do you think of the place?”

Gian ended her tour of his home in the same room it
had started, the kitchen. Cinder leaned on her elbows on the center cooking isle and watched Gian take covered plastic containers out of the stainless steel refrigerator.

“It’s wonderful,” Cinder answered. “It’s so airy. When
you said it was environmentally friendly, I imagined an
adobe cottage with a goat instead of a lawnmower, and
oil lamps instead of electric lights.”

“Just think of all the good times you could have had
here, if you’d been willing to leave your tower.” He set a
wooden bowl of red grapes before her.

“I hope you’ll give me the chance to make them up.” She plucked a few grapes, then caught his gaze. “I like it
here. I feel . . .”

“Comfortable,” he suggested.

“Safe.”

Gian rounded the cooking isle and put his arms
around her, lacing his fingers loosely at her back. “Where
is that timid little woman who came into my dojo so long
ago?”

“She’s gone. You turned her into a warrior. You gave
her the skills to take care of herself.”

“
My beautiful warrior.” He cupped her face and
kissed her forehead. “The day you walked into my dojo
was the best day of my life. I can’t imagine my life
without you.”

“You say the most wonderful things.” She hugged him, fitting her head under his chin.

He laughed. “Your hair is tickling me.” He scrubbed his fingers through it. “It’s so curly.”

“I didn’t blow dry it after we showered,” Cinder
explained. “This is what it does naturally.”

“I like it.” He gently tugged one of her spiraling curls
and watched it spring back into place just as a bell
chimed. “Whoa, that was cool. It has sound effects.”

“That was your phone.” She chuckled.

It rang once more before Gian trotted into the foyer
to answer his cell. Cinder hung back in the kitchen to
give him privacy. She went to the sliding glass doors that
led to his deck. Since it was so dark outside and light
inside, the doors acted as a mirror. Cinder wore the
change of clothes she’d brought to the arena, a pair of
black pull-on pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Both gar
ments were made of cotton jersey and were as soft and
comfortable as an old T-shirt.

The glass doors reflected Gian’s return to the kitchen,
and Cinder turned to get a proper view of him. In a pair
of black sports briefs, he looked like an Olympic athlete, and she couldn’t wait to get him out of his shorts again.
She looked at his face and her wanton thoughts vanished.
Gian didn’t speak. His phone pressed to his ear, he listened, his expression growing more grave.