Burn (Indigo) Read online

  “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 surprised 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 fingertip 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 inhaled deeply, the ginger musk of her scent heightening the action of her tongue and lips. The lines of her shoulders, back and bum, exquisitely beautiful in the semidarkness, 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 nibbling 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 tongue 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.

  Chapter 15

  “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 garments 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.

  Cinder went to him and rested a hand lightly on his arm.

  “Someone attacked the kids,” Gian said after disconnecting the call. “That was Zae. She’s at the Crestwood police station.”

  “What?” Cinder asked, horrified.

  “Jalesa, Eve, and Dawn went to a movie with Cory after the tournament,” Gian explained. He started for the stairs. “After the show, they were at their car and a guy in a balaclava grabbed Eve.” Gian took the stairs two at time, Cinder right behind him. He went into the bedroom and headed straight for the walk-in closet. Dressing quickly in jeans and a crewneck sweater he yanked from an upper shelf, he said, “The kids turned the tables on him. All four of them attacked him.”

  “Are they all right?” Cinder sat on the edge of Gian’s bed and put her sneakers on. “Was Eve hurt?”

  “They’re rattled, but they’re okay. Zae says Cory got a good kick in. The guy will be walking around with a bruise on his face for a while.”

  “Where are we going?” Cinder followed Gian back downstairs.

  He cracked a brittle grin. “Zae didn’t think the cops were taking the assault seriously enough. She made a bit of a scene.”

  Cinder cringed. She could only imagine what kind of scene Zae might have made in the interest of protecting her children.

  At the front door, Gian took Cinder’s fleece jacket from the coat tree and helped her into it. He grabbed his car keys from the pocket of his car coat and opened the door for her. “The police are holding Zae until ‘a responsible adult’ comes for her,” Gian said. “She called me because I’ve conducted a lot of training seminars with the Crestwo
od Police Department. They know me. Hopefully, they won’t have arrested her before we get there.”

  “Were the kids able to describe the guy?”

  “No,” Gian said. He locked his front door behind them. “It’s Black Friday. There were a ton of people at the mall, shopping and going to the movies. This is the start of the parking lot mugging season.”

  Gian led Cinder to his SUV and unlocked the passenger door. “I’m just glad everybody is all right,” she said as Gian opened her door.

  “Me, too. But that’ll teach the bastard not to mess with Sheng Li students.”

  * * *

  “Ma’am, I assure you, we’re working with mall security to do everything we can to find this guy,” an officer stated for what must have been the tenth time, because he sounded thoroughly annoyed. “Officers are canvassing the area and an alert has gone out to all the stores and the cinema. There’s not much we can do without an accurate description.”

  “Officer, Mrs. Richardson has understandably been under duress,” Gian started. “Her daughter was attacked at eight o’clock in a crowded parking lot. It takes balls to do something like that. You’re looking for someone who is potentially very dangerous.”

  “Gian, you think I don’t know that?” the officer said. “From what I heard from these kids, our perp got the worst of it.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think we’ll ever get this guy. Looked like a classic grab and go. He went for the girl’s purse, couldn’t get it—”

  “Got his ass kicked,” Cory chimed in.

  “He’s in the wind now,” the officer finished. “We see a lot of this type of crime on Black Friday. There are so many shoppers out, the perps get bold and greedy.”

  “Can we get Zae and go home?” Cinder asked. No fan of the police to begin with, Cinder was irked by the officer’s cavalier acceptance of defeat.

  “Can we?” Gian directed his question to the officer. “Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll go get her. I had to put her in a holding cell. She got real belligerent.”

  “I’m sure she was just upset about her daughter being attacked,” Gian said.

  “Upset or not, there was no reason for her to call me a ‘monosyllabic morphodite.’ I don’t know what that is, but it didn’t sound like anything good.”

  Leaving Gian, Cinder and the kids in the tiny lobby, the officer disappeared behind a door to retrieve Zae. They heard her before they saw her upon her release.

  “It’s irresponsible to ignore a perfectly good lead, that’s all I’m trying to explain to you,” came Zae’s voice. She kicked open the door, making no move to stop it from slamming back into the officer on her heels. “Karl Lange is a troublemaker. He’s got an ax to grind against Gian Piasanti, and what better way to hurt him than to strike out at his students?” Zae saw Gian. “Tell him, Gian.”

  “Tell him what? The kids don’t know who the guy was. It could have been a random crime of opportunity.”

  “Cory’s the one who assumed it was Karl,” Zae argued.

  At the nearby vending machine, Cory shrugged his shoulders and put up his hands. “He was the first person to pop into my head. He lives near here, right over on Sappington Road. He’s pissed at Gian and all things Sheng Li.”

  “How would he know that you would be at the mall tonight?” Cinder asked.

  “He could have heard us talking about it at the tournament,” Eve said, her stern expression a younger version of her mother’s.

  “He was all over the place, fake volunteering,” Dawn added.

  “I couldn’t see the mugger’s face,” Cory said, “so I can’t say for sure who it was. I just think Karl is the most likely suspect.”

  “Likely isn’t good enough, ma’am,” the officer directed at Zae. “I can’t go around arresting people without evidence.”

  “You’ll get your evidence,” Zae said. “But by then, he might have killed someone.”

  “I’d consider it a personal favor if you could look into this a little deeper,” Gian told the officer. “Zae and these kids are like family to me, and I need to know that everything possible is being done to catch this guy.”

  “Sure thing, Gian,” the officer said.

  With a hand at their backs, Gian guided Zae and Cinder to the vending machines, where Eve sat in a plastic chair, surrounded by her sister, Jalesa and Cory. “Eve, are you okay?” Gian asked.

  She nodded, though the hand holding a can of Sprite shook. “He came right at us. It was so weird.”

  “He must not have known that we were karate students,” Dawn said.

  “Then that would rule out Karl,” Jalesa said.

  “Karl is nuts,” Zae replied. “He probably figured he could take on all of you. Losing to Cinder this afternoon probably made him snap.”

  “I think it’s time we get out of here,” Gian suggested. “Hopefully, the police will catch—”

  Gian’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from his back pocket, glanced at the call number in the text window and answered it. The call lasted seconds, and Gian’s end of the exchange consisted only of four words. “I’m on my way.”

  He turned to Cinder. “That was the Webster Groves police. The silent alarm was triggered at Sheng Li. I’ve gotta go check it out.”

  “What the hell is going on tonight?” Zae muttered.

  “Let the police handle it,” Cinder insisted. It suddenly didn’t seem so unlikely that Karl was on some sort of rampage of revenge for his tournament loss.

  “The cops are meeting me there,” Gian told her. “Could you get a ride home with Zae? I don’t know what’s going on at Sheng Li, so I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “Sure,” she said and nodded. “Please, be careful.”

  “I can handle Karl Lange.” Gian gave her a reassuring smile, although his comment convinced everyone that he’d reached the same conclusion Zae had. “Leave a light burning for me, baby. I’ll be looking for thirds later tonight.” He kissed her, and it lasted so long, everyone around them grew impatient.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Zae groaned. “You act like you’re never going to see her again.”

  Gian reluctantly pulled out of Cinder’s embrace. “Wait up for me, baby.”

  “I will,” Cinder said, sending him off with a smile.

  * * *

  Gian squatted at the broken glass scattered over one end of the studio. “Can I pick this up?”

  “Sure,” answered one of Webster Groves’s finest. “It’s evidence, but we can’t dust it for prints.”

  Gian carefully leaned over and picked up the brick that had been thrown with such force, it broke the plate glass window in Sheng Li’s lobby and traveled another ten feet to shatter the observation glass between the lobby and the studio.

  “The guy’s got an arm, I can tell you that much,” the officer said. “The Cards could use him.”

  Gian grunted a noncommittal sound of acknowledgement. Someone had caused him a small fortune in damage. The last thing he wanted for the culprit was a spot in the Cardinals bullpen. Clutching the brick, he stood and faced the officer, who leaned against the frame of the doorway between the lobby and the studio.

  “It’s pretty obvious that burglary wasn’t the intention here,” Gian said. “Or else the guy would have used the brick to break the glass of my front door so he could unlock it. Someone just wanted to cause me some grief.”

  “Can you think of anyone who’d want to damage your property, Mr. Piasanti?” the officer asked.

  “What?”

  “Who’d you piss off,” the officer stated more plainly. “A student, a neighbor . . . ?”

  Karl. That was the only name that came to mind. Gian hesitated before saying, “My club competed in a martial arts tournament today. My fighters took most of the medals. There might have been a sore loser with an axe to grind.”

  “I’ll canvas the area tomorrow morning when the stores open, to see if your neighbors saw anything,” the officer said. He used the edge of his notepad to shove up the bri
m of his cap. “I gotta tell you, whoever did it was pretty fearless. All the shops on the street are open late tonight, what with this being the busiest shopping day of the year, supposedly. There must have been witnesses.”

  “What about Natasha?” Gian asked. “She said she heard the crash and called 911.”

  “Mrs. Usher?” The officer had to consult his notes. “Yeah, the bookstore owner next door. She placed the call to emergency, but by the time she got outside, the guy was gone. I’ll re-interview her. Sometimes witnesses remember details once their nerves have settled.”

  “She locked up early tonight,” Gian said. “You’ll have to catch her at home. Her daughter was involved in a mugging or something tonight over at Crestwood Mall.”

  “All the head cases are out tonight, huh?”

  “Seems like it.” Gian dropped the brick, his shoulders falling. “I need to get someone here to board up my storefront. I don’t want the rest of the glass to fall out and slice some poor passerby into lunchmeat.”

  “I’ll file this report as soon as I get back to the station. If you could come by in the next couple of days to sign it, I’d appreciate it. I have to tell you, though, Mr. Piasanti, chances are we’re not gonna find the person who did this. You got insurance, right?”

  “I’m covered. I’m glad I got the full package, even though I didn’t think I’d ever need it.”

  “Unless you need me to stay, I’m going to get started on my report.”

  “I’m good.” Gian shook the officer’s hand. “Thank you.”

  With a tip of his cap, the officer left. Gian scrubbed his hands over his face, through his hair. The day had started out so well only to end with perhaps thousands of dollars of damage to Sheng Li. If, in fact, Karl was responsible for the attack on Eve and the broken windows, Gian hoped that he had gotten it all out of his system before someone was genuinely hurt.

  On his way to his office to get a phone directory, Gian debated whether or not to call the officer and tell him specifically about Karl. But with no concrete evidence, anything he said would be pure speculation. As angry as he was at Karl, he had no desire to malign the man any more than necessary.