Kiss and Burn (5 page)

A watery smile lifted her lips as she petted his cheek. “You’d really
try to touch me inappropriately?”

“In a heartbeat,” he answered solemnly. “I’d go straight for the
ass.”

She patted his face. “You’re such a lovely man.”

He wagged a finger at her. “Watch it now. You had your chance but,
you chose the pretty mofo as opposed to my rugged handsomeness.”

Laughing, she sat back. “Because I like you, I’m not going to
block you from banging Carmen.”

His eyes widened. “You’re not?”
                                                

“Nope,” she chirped cheerily. Her voice then plummeted, veering
into something deadly. “But if you hurt her, I want you to understand and
remember that I have access to thousands of needles. These needles will be
accompanied by anesthetics strong enough that you won’t wake up until the last
vulture has gotten his fill on your shredded, unrecognizable, sun husked flesh.
This is
not
my anxiety or terror
talking. This is
me,
Elijah
Christopher Aaronson. Are we clear?”

He swallowed, gave another dutiful nod. “Yes ma’am.”

Her smile returned.
“Excellent. Now I need to go and hit the gym. This extra ass meat is not going
to disappear on its own.”

“Love, in the time that I’ve known Eli I’ve come to realize
something that should be
very
apparent
to you by now.”

Carmen sighed, gripping her phone tightly. She slid her feet from
the towering pumps she’d been wearing for the last eight hours. Her soles sank
into plush carpet, while she turned on lights. She’d known she should’ve left
her mother and Selena to their weekend on the coast, since they’d been gone for
the last few days now and therefore totally incapable of making either herself or
Addison mental. But Carmen had to call her. Why? Because she was quite
obviously a goddamn glutton for punishment, that was why!

“And this would happen to be
what,
Mamá?”
Carmen finally asked,
reaching her bedroom and unzipping the side of her skirt.

“He’s determined to have sex with you,”
Angelina answered.

Carmen almost dropped her phone. “Ma!”

“What?” her mother demanded. “Do I lie? Are my
facts inaccurate? That man
wants
you.
He wants you and he’s going to have you.”

“I don’t like this line of talk. I don’t like
it at all.”

“I could express my deepest regrets at your
discomfort or I could be honest with you. I have
never
been one to cut corners. I don’t fumble over the right thing
to say or how to roll it in sugar because I learned a long time ago that
complete brutality would be the only thing that could keep us both alive and
quite well. Therefore, I want you to invest in the largest box of condoms you
can find—”

“My God, I’m going to shoot myself in the face.
I swear.”

“—and stop being so goddamned stubborn. What’s
wrong with having a bit of consensual, safe fun between adults?”

Carmen briefly took the receiver away from her
ear and blinked down at the screen. “I never want to hear
this
kind of talk again.”

Angelina chuckled. “I’ve heard worse words pass
between you and Addie, yet my commenting on your sex life—”

“Argh! Don’t use that word!”

“—makes you uncomfortable.”

“The fact that
you
seem so comfortable with it makes me uncomfortable.”

“Aww,
mi
aliento,
I didn’t raise you to be such a prude,” Angelina groaned. “What
has become of my child? Why is she so stringent?”

“I am
not
stringent. I just don’t have time for games and that is what Eli is
interested in playing.
Games.”
She
was going to do this because she
needed
to.
Needed to
breathe, needed to forget about that taste of Eli’s mouth... How his hands
trembled ever so slightly when they touched her... How after that kiss she
couldn’t seem to focus on anything aside from the ache between her thighs. Eli
wasn’t for her. She wanted a future... a family. Realistically speaking, she
knew she wouldn’t find that just from a few days spent with a man out of town
but she
did
know that it held the
potential to open the door of moving on for her. That was all that mattered
here.

“I think you’d be surprised to find out what Eli
really
wants,” her mother commented.
What sounded like knocking rang out in the background. “Hang on, I need to get
the door. It’s probably Selena coming to harass me about going out later.”

“Goddamn right, it is!” Selena shouted.

Carmen laughed. “I don’t understand why you fight it. You’re out
the majority of the time
anyway.”

“I don’t think I like the implications of that statement. It’s not
as though I’m just hip-thrusting through every city.”

If she
was,
Angelina
would be well within her rights. She’d stepped into the responsibility of being
a mother without a whisper of a complaint. She’d never made Carmen feel like
some catastrophic accident. Angelina had cultivated every possible skill in her
arsenal to make a better life for herself and her child and to shape their
futures. Should she ever decide to spend every, single, waking moment hitting
on men young enough to still have college books on their shelves, then she
could and should. Carmen loved her mother’s ability to simply…
be.
There was a lightheartedness that shone
from her. She was open and fun loving but, had always kept her child’s safety
as her number one priority. If Angelina dated anyone before Carmen turned
twenty-one, Carmen had never known about it. Her mother was all business when
necessary but when it came time for fun…

“Carmen, tell your mother that consequences
will be
dire,
should she deny me my
right to shake my cleavage in a bartender’s face on this night. I
will
make her life miserable,” Selena
suddenly voiced,
obviously
having gotten the phone out of her best friend’s hand.

“You
already
do that,” Angelina snapped from the
background.

“Shaddup and go get dressed.”

“My ass, you have my express permission to kiss it.”

“Do we need to revisit the visual stimulants given during the,
don’t-piss-Selena-off-while-on-vacation
conversation?”

“Do we need to revisit the shallow grave I dug for you, just last
week?”

Quietly, Carmen hung up the phone, chuckling at the way her mother
and adoptive aunt argued. She was beginning to grasp why she and Addison
behaved the way they did. Selena and Angelina were
insane.

A quick glance at her nightstand’s
clock revealed that it was still pretty early in the day. Her tummy rumbled.
She could have something small and veg out. As usual, her day had been
exhausting and a quick catnap would do her some good.

Carmen shed the rest of her clothes,
donned a robe, headed for the kitchen and took down the makings for
sopapillas
.
With a little sugar and some rest her energy would kick-start again. The
problem with
that
particularly theory? She should’ve gotten rest
before
deciding to make a dish that involved hot grease. She quite possibly
could’ve avoided the fire that swept through her kitchen without warning.

***

His heart had stopped. Eli couldn’t
explain it, didn’t want to look too closely at it but the moment the call came
through—the moment he heard the address—his heart had halted, stuttering in his
chest until he was fully suited and Fire Engine number 29 was screaming through
the streets of Santa Fe. His booted feet hit the curb outside of the small ranch
house with the Mediterranean stucco roof before any of his team’s. His eyes
searched through the stream of neighbors standing across the street, watching
the flames and came to land on her. In a robe covered with bunnies, slouching
socks on her feet, and her hair tied back in a ragged knot, she managed to make
everything and everyone obsolete.

 
He was in front of her in seconds, hands
running from her face to her shoulders and onwards. “What. Happened?”

“Grease fire,” she answered, her voice
small, eyes wide and distant. “It caught on so quickly and…my kitchen.”

Eli took her hand. “You need to talk to
the medic.”

“I wasn’t hurt—”

“Carmen,” he interrupted in a low
controlled tone. “You need to see the medic. Smoke inhalation is extremely easy
to miss at times. You could’ve bumped against something and bruised yourself,
anything.
In a moment of panic,
it’s not uncommon to block out minute details.”

She
swallowed and relented without argument. Quietly, she allowed herself to be
examined, prodded and poked until she came away with a clean bill of health and
a minor burn on her thigh. Eli had been right. In passing, she’d bumped her
fryer and wound up getting splashed. It was mild but would probably need to be
treated correctly to avoid infection. By the time the medic was done, Addison
had arrived and Carmen’s mother was calling.

“No,
Mamá,
I’m fine.
It’s minor. I promise. Don’t cut your vacation short. They’ve put it out
already. I just need to call my insurance adjuster and have him come out when
they’ve given the all clear. No, no. I don’t know,” Carmen glanced over to
Addison and Maikao and then to Eli. “They’re all here. Yes, I still have the
spare keys. I’m fine. I swear. I’ll figure something out. Honest.” Her head
dipped. “I love you too. I’ll call later.”

“You
can take the spare bedroom at ours,” Addison told her.

Carmen
shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. Ma left me keys to her place.”

“Which
is an hour long commute for you to the restaurant,” Addison replied. “We’re
only fifteen minutes from downtown.”

Maikao
stood behind his fiancée, his gloved hands making slashing motions across his
throat before he spun a finger near his temple in the universal sign for crazy.
With her consistent mood swings as of late, she and Carmen may kill one
another. Neither knew how to pull punches when interacting and Addison wasn’t
in a normal,
balanced
state.

Eli’s
eyes ran down the curve of Carmen’s neck, traveled to her bare legs and thought
about where that burn was currently located. He was a sick, sick man. She’d
just had damage done to a significant portion of her home and he was contemplating
how he could get her out of her bunny covered robe. A thought suddenly occurred
to him.

“Um,”
he said stepping forward. “If I might make a suggestion.”

Everyone
looked towards him.

“I
also
have a spare bedroom
and
my place is within
walking
distance of
Mi Aliento.”
He glanced at Addison. “No offense Addie but, you’re a
bit…
off
lately and I can tell you
that, because I’m family and you can’t kill family. Isn’t there a reason you
and Carmen never got apartments
together?”

“The
man makes a good point,” Maikao added, silencing when his wife-to-be rose her
brows his way.

“And
it wouldn’t make sense for you to have to get up an hour earlier every day when
you clearly work hard enough,” Eli quietly told Carmen. “Exhaustion almost got
you hurt. I’d be lying if I said the thought of you traipsing around my kitchen,
in nothing but a string of joy and a layer of body butter isn’t appealing but
at the moment, your comfort is more important than my sordid fantasies.”

Reaching
down, he brushed a wisp of hair from her face. “It’s entirely up to you but I’d
prefer to know that you were down the hall as opposed to across the city.”

With
nothing else to say, he turned back to the charred damage of her home and headed
inside to help.

***

“You’re
so full of shit, Aaronson,” Carmen accused as she found herself faced with Eli
once again.

His
brows arched upwards slightly. “I am?”

“Yes,”
she hissed, leaning forward. “You’re not offering up your space in the form of
a misguided noble act and we both know it.”

Mouth
curving, he leaned against the fire engine, folded his arms across his chest.
“I thought you would be grateful. I’m giving you an escape from the clutches of
Mr. and Mrs. Fire-crotch.”

She
was
not
going to laugh at that
description.

“However,
if you
like
the idea of incessant ass
pinches and a man who has no grasp on modesty then hey…”

“Addison
and Maikao are not
that
bad.”

“Right,”
Eli retorted drolly. “And the fact that he can’t seem to keep his hands off of
his fiancée’s unmentionables is
also
a
nonexistent issue.” His head tilted. “Need I remind you of what we caught them
doing behind the restaurant less than a week ago?”

Carmen
slapped her hands over her eyes in the same manner she’d done five days prior.
“My God, man! Don’t bring that up!”

“Do
you recall the noises?”

“Stop
it!
Stop it right now!”

“Perhaps
we should revisit the memory of—”

“I
get it!” she bellowed. “I get it!”

He
leaned back with a satisfied expression. “My point exactly. You can either have
your restaurant within walking distance and an easy escape from the complete
lust that will shroud you while in my presence,
or
you can sit by and attempt putting a pillow over your head when
Addie and Mak get frisky at night.”

Her
eyes narrowed. “Lust does not
shroud
me
when I’m around you.”

“Lovely
lie you’re telling yourself, sweetheart.”

“It
doesn’t!”

“Then
prove me wrong,” he replied, smirking. “You stay under my roof for as long as
it takes for the insurance to get the repairs done and ignore the blatant,
animal attraction between us.”

“I
have literally
nothing
to prove to
you.”

He
looked as though he would laugh at any minute. “You’re scared. You know if you
break I’ll never let it go.”