that had overtaken the whole of her. "Carlos did a lot of shit, but doesn't deserve that."
He nodded. "My condition makes me irrational." The being sighed and walked away from her. "Then, perhaps," he murmured, keeping his back to her, "you might compose a very heart-wrenching selection of whit it is, like to burn for something you should not have?"
She nodded. "That you have inspired, for sure."
"Anything," he whispered, "will devastate me now." He turned slowly, a sensual smile gracing his beautiful mouth. "There is always a way for us to be together, within the limits of righteousness." She chuckled to break the tension. "Now you sound more like a male vampire than a male Neteru."
He laughed low and deep and sensually, and shook his head. "I am everything that you have experienced... and most assuredly male." Again, his smile faded to burn her with an expression of unfulfilled want. "Admit it, if not to me, then to yourself. You want to fully know me in the worst way, right now."
She couldn't, or better stated, wouldn't answer the charge. Not while wearing a towel, him half-naked, and this much heat radiating between them. All she had to do was think about the music that swept through her while she grieved Carlos, or to remember the lusty nights of splendor in his arms that gave birth to her best work. Days of laughter, jamming with Jose, endless moments alone, doodling in her journal, sparking ideas, working out lyrics, getting in touch with every emotion that had ever filled her. Her eyes locked with his as a hard shudder ran through him.
"You know me, Damali. I am no stranger or violator."
"I know," she whispered. "Thank you for always being with me." She swept her hand down her stomach. "I just can't sync up the physical manifestation with the spiritual. As long as you were the spirit of creativity, I could cope."
"As could I. But all that has changed."
"What do we do about it?" "You tell me?"
She looked away. "I don't know."
"We have more in common than you will admit."
She chuckled. "You're working me, brother."
"Yes, I am." He smiled. "But I have also been honest about my condition."
"True," she said, no judgment in her tone. The thing that was still blowing her mind was the fact that an apexing male spirit Neteru was in her bathroom. How in the . . .
"Do not ask me again, please." His voice was an urgent whisper. Palpable desire made the colors on the floor around him shimmer brighter. "To revisit that just runs through me like a river."
His hands found her upper arms and delivered a firm yet gentle pull toward him. Her first instinct was to resist, but what was that now, she wondered? The moment her body fused against his, the moan he released set off a tremor through her womb that parted her lips.
A hot mouth covered hers and the sweetness contained within it was
like pure narcotic. His tongue ravaged the soft tissue of hers, gliding against her teeth, finding the roof of her mouth, and then deepened as the pressure of his hold increased. His kiss of life created a tremor that stirred a bubbling whimper that made her nearly faint. Music tore through her, blinding her mind with its intensity. Colors shot beneath her lids and buckled her knees. The sound he emitted inside her mouth fractured her conscience, and produced a vibrating echo in her lungs, dredging up a low moan from her that should have never been released.
The next thing she knew, her towel was on the floor. A strange new pair of male hands covered her back like hot wax, melting her beneath them with every stroke, and her returned kisses were harder than they ever should have been. The song roiled inside her, quickly escalating from a sultry slow pulse of bass to implode with a demanding staccato fusion treble. Acapella agony changed key, bridged to punishing instrumental, and ended on a long mental carry near a soprano shriek that she delivered right into his mouth.
"Your voice," he gasped, breaking the kiss to breathe the words out against her neck. "That is my river. My weakness. Your mind, my undoing. Damali, let me love you hard, right here, right now, in this key." His damp forehead dropped to her shoulder. "For the love of God, do not deny me."
"We can't do this," she said, practically losing consciousness in his hold. "Then give yourself to him tonight, like