her legs tightened around his waist.
Water was everywhere, her locks nearly standing on end, her spine barely protected by his hand beneath it. Normally a more quiet and controlled lover, he sounded like she was murdering him. Shabazz's voice bounced off the tiles, mak ing her crazy, making her think of things and remember things between them that she hadn't thought of in years ... and the more she did, the more his fledgling second-sight absorbed it, bringing pleasure sobs to both of them the harder he worked.
His dominant tactical charge spilled over the edge of the tub, skipped across the puddles on the floor, and zapped in an arc to the shower, then climbed the walls. She clung to him, half to keep from drowning, when her hands ignited with his spinal chakra points and he hollered her name in waves - head back, eyes squeezed shut, one fist pounding tiles, locks swinging water and orgasm depth charge.
The convulsion that hit him stunned her womb with plea sure so deep and feral that for a moment no sound came out of her mouth. Then she choked out his name in a broken twopart stutter and collapsed. His face was burning against hers. She could feel his jaw move and the muscle in it clamp down as though holding something back. Sweat rolled down his temple and back as he gave up trying to breathe through his nose and gulped air. Her hands felt it all, the way each massive half of his back expanded and contracted while he heaved in breaths. Flick
ers of aftershock static raced down his spine and she started to pull her palms away, but he tensed.
"Baby, don't break the connection ... oh, shit, not yet, let it run its full course." She didn't move, just allowed the sweet flickers to make her fingertips and canal tingle. But when he finally lifted his head to begin to withdraw from her, that's when she felt the huge aftershock that had been building.
The sensation rocked her so hard that she dug her nails into his shoulders and arched up, mouth open and face con torted. Sound exited her body that belonged to another woman, a banshee, as he flattened a palm against her spine, hit her base chakra, and released the last trapped charge. She almost banged her head on the edge of the tub she'd whiplashedjerked so hard, and she couldn't have stopped moving against him until it was over if she'd wanted to.
Spent and half-dazed they finally looked at each other. Shabazz was the first to crack a smile. That was it. She burst out laughing with him, but that only made him wince from her tightening sheath around him.
"What was that, Shabazz?" she asked, kissing him with a huge smile. "Dang, brother."
"I don't know," he said, still breathing hard. "I guess that's what you call a brother losing his complete mind."
"Whew ... you have to lose your mind more often, then," she said, leaning up to kiss him.
"Puts a new meaning to a white bath, though, don't it?" She glanced around at the floor. "This don't make no sense." He chuckled and then got serious, tracing her cheek with a finger. "You know, when I shifted, it sorta took me out a little, Mar."
All the mirth dissipated from her eyes as she cupped his cheek but remained mute to let him talk.
"All of a sudden I was burning up, like every cell I owned would explode. Then this vast
... I don't know how to ex plain it ... other than incredible power and raw energy just slammed me." His troubled eyes searched her face as he spoke in a low, private murmur.
"I'd slipped out of my clothes, I don't even know how, and was free, primal. It felt like there was no division between me and anything - then when it was all over, I was standing with the team, dazed for a second, bloody and naked, dead demon bodies every where ... and I had to go put my shit on. Find my pants, Mar, you know? The brothers were staring at me for a few with their mouths open, and for a minute I was so damned embarrassed that I almost wanted to put my own nine to my skull." He looked away. "Do you know what I'm saying?"
"Yeah, I do," she whispered, tightening her hold on him. "I had it happen to me, remember?" But the moment she'd said it, she instantly regretted it - because then that one teeny statement would unnecessarily remind him of how such a scenario came to be. Old lovers, dead or alive, were skeletons that had already leapt out of the closet, but that now needed to stay dead and buried.
No way to recover, she simply pressed her forehead to the center of his chest. "I love you
... and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go there."
"Water under the bridge," he said quietly. "Me and you are too old to rehash the past." He turned his mouth into her hand and kissed it as she touched his cheek, then captured her palm with his to place a gentle kiss on her ring finger, which was laden with a large oval diamond.
"Yeah," she whispered as he withdrew from her. The sud den loss was profound.
"Thing is," he said, climbing out of the tub and helping her out behind him. "I could feel the energy band connec tions in everything, Mar, does that make sense?" She nodded and brushed his mouth with a kiss as an an swer. This time she grabbed his hand and kissed his ring fin ger, toying with the thick gold band etched with Adinkra symbols that matched hers. If she didn't make this man understand anything else, it was that she loved him. Not that she wanted anyone to lose their life, but the man holding her close right now didn't need to be the one to die out on the battlefield in Morales months ago, or in Lilith's lair tonight, for that matter. God knew what He was doing when He gave her back Shabazz. She was just fine with that decision from On High.
"I ... I don't know," Shabazz finally said when she broke their kiss. "When I agreed to allow an assist, I didn't know it would come like this." Marlene nodded. "The bathroom is wrecked, how about if we go in the bedroom and I finish that massage?"
He kissed her long and slow and deep, not needing his newly developing third eye to know that neither of them wanted to talk about it just yet.
* * *
inez inspected his hand as though she were working for the Feds and his fists were contraband coming in from a for eign nation. Amused, Mike stood just inside the door, stripped, a plastic bag at his feet, waiting for his new bride to complete her assessment.
"They were just cut up so bad before," she said, gently spreading his huge hand out in hers. "No matter how many times I see one of the healers do it, it just amazes me to watch the wounds go back to normal when they're done."
"Yeah, suga, sorry about that. Razor tails, vicious little fangs, straight-edge wings.
Sucker-punching that funnel cloud was like I threw a punch into a switchblade blender." He sighed and stared at her. "Baby, I think she got it all out... but I wouldn't ever do anything to - "
Her kiss backed him up to the door as she stood on her tip toes.