Oh, Damali, one flesh is killing me, corazon.
Then let's die together, okay?
Yeah, oh, yeah, okay. .. oh, D, it's too hot, drop the connection!
Uh-uh, you said it in church, 'til death do us part.
Tears stung her eyes and then fell without shame as she lost all technique and rhythm, put a hump in his back, and made his tattoo solid gold.
"I love you so much, want you to be safe, want us to be one, want a home, Carlos, a family, everything in this life, just with you," she said, beginning to cry. She didn't care if she was babbling, didn't care that she was bordering on hysteria - didn't he understand, she wasn't playing. "I wanna grow old with my man, see our babies grow up, I wanna still be your baby when I'm sixty-five, and wanna love you like this 'til the end of time." He couldn't piece together even a mental reply. Every thing was coming out of his mind in short bursts like his breath. Her admission wrecked him, took him to a place where there was no game in him. Core meltdown, her angel touch was dredging pleasure paradigms unfound, hidden cells within cells, loading in his shaft with pressure, unreleased, unrelenting, his body tethered to hers, unable to spend itself without her, filling his sac with such need that tears wet his face as his mind emptied first.
"Whatever you want," he gasped, "I want." It felt so good he was delirious, straight babbling. "Wherever, however, whenever, it's yours." Air scorched his lungs as he held her tighter, silver-gold sweat now flinging off his temples and hair with every hard stroke, running down his back, tickling the crack of his ass, wetting his balls as they swept against her. Then suddenly it felt like time had stopped, holding him hostage on the edge of a blinding release, his sanity was ransomed, and beneath him was the only person in the world that could set him free.
"Oh, God, Damali baby, I love you, I want all those things too, tesoro, everything, all of it. Just let it go!"
His voice broke with a wail as he felt her start to fall, pulling him, dragging him over the edge of the largest precipice he'd ever scaled. His fingernails ripped down the sheets as he fell; the pleasure bolt left his skull and his sac at the same time, thundered down his spine and imploded in his shaft. The first wave of what hit him was so intense that he couldn't even bite her, his body just jerked like lightning had struck him and was melting him down into white-hot protoplasm from the inside out. Everything within him poured out into her. Hot, sticky Neteru essence that made him holler as it left his body in strobes of ecstasy. She was sobbing when the second wave hit, and soon he realized she wasn't by herself. Feathers were everywhere; his tattoos were running from ice-cold silver to white-hot gold, pulling more seed up and out of him with each phase-shift until he buried his face in her shoulder ready to beg her to make it stop.
Soft hands slid down his wet back and dredged the last of it up and out of him with a shuddering moan. He dropped against her body so hard he was afraid he'd crushed her. It took a minute for his orientation to come back. That was the thing that he loved so much about making love to her, he could never tell how it was gonna go. V-point, creation-point, a chakra-bending experience, lit pulse-point foreplay that ended in him seeing stars ... or a mind-meld talk-dirty-to-me-baby, hard roll in the hay, or something profound just like this. He was half-scared of the places she could take him, truth be told. But he wouldn't give that part of their relationship up if a nine were at his skull.
"You okay?" he finally murmured between heavy breaths as he peeled himself away from her just enough to roll them both over.
"No," she whispered, hiding her face against his chest, sobbing hard. "It was so good ... I'm devastated."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If someone had put a gun to his head and asked him outright why was he sitting in the hotel lobby bar only a few hours after making crazy love to his wife, he wouldn't have been able to answer.
"You'd be one dead motherfucker," Carlos muttered into his Remy, setting the short rocks glass down hard on the bar.
One thing for sure was he needed space. They'd set up shop however many times before, built compounds and safe houses, even had lairs, and watched them be burned or sold. But there was something real different and real permanent about the way each woman on the team looked at that property in La Jolla ... their eyes had hope, future, possibility shimmering in them, especially his wife. That was a lot of responsibility for any man, but seriously no joke for men with a bounty on their heads.
But he also understood the need the team had to invest in the mundane. It made the crazy reality they lived somehow seem sane. To buy a house, a car, go out to dinner and eat... to laugh, make love, think about starting a family, visiting parents - none of that could be taken for granted by a Guardian Neteru team. It was probably as far-fetched as any regular Joe or Jane going to the corner store and wishing they had a hundred mil or so in the bank to play with. That's how the mundane felt for them, so no wonder every team member was turned on, turned out, and celebrating when Dan inked the papers. Same deal with the cars.
Thoughts of home collided with Carlos's next slow sip of Remy, neat. If it weren't for his boy, Yonnie, he wouldn't even have been able to come to the table correct earlier this afternoon. Carlos briefly closed his eyes and ran his palm across his jaw. He'd just gone into the Light coming out of Sydney back then, when his boy, a master vamp with Rider's lady, had stayed with him, regardless, planned for his future, and had made the f**ked-up digit the government had left him multiply into a hundred mil, very large, in Swiss accounts. That was a friend. Because his boy had been a realist, he had a future. Now he was supposed to deny his main hombre access to his house? Damn!
He knew why it had to be that way, understood it all intellectually - the Neteru in him got it. But the street code of ethics, the honor even amongst thieves, the never-leave-yourboy-ass-out, ever, street code of conduct was at pure war with his inner Neteru. Carlos said another prayer in Yonnie's behalf. What else could he do? Might even be too late, but Damali had shown him, it ain't over 'til it's all the way over. Carlos lifted his glass. 'To anybody upstairs listening, this is one for the brother who ain't make it. Watch his six, even if I can't." Carlos downed his drink, spun the glass on the bar, and then slung it down to the bartender for a refill. "Damn." It had been good looking out on Yonnie's part, back then. Otherwise, Damali's resources would have been strained. Girlfriend hadn't been touring in almost two years, CD sales had slacked off, endorsements dropped off - because who could use a star that didn't come out for photo-ops, interviews, or paparazzi to shine? Only Dan had a real clear picture on how the accounts were aligned, the portfolio spread. If Yonnie hadn't hooked a brother up, then he'd be like Berkfield and Bobby, trying to figure out how to buy a four-bedroom ranch in the burbs - and not in San Diego, at that.
Carlos accepted his drink and briefly shut his eyes.
"Rough night, buddy?" the bartender asked.
Carlos quickly scanned him. Not a demon, not a familiar. "Yeah. But I'm cool."
"Lemme know when you need another one, then," the bartender said, wiping out glasses with a white cloth.
Carlos just nodded. What was there to say? Yonnie had gone to war with him; had been on his mind since he'd seen him at la casa... he'd just kept that to himself. Rider was his boy, too. He understood both men's positions. Would have been cool if the Light could have cloned Tara. Carlos took another slow sip of his drink. He needed to talk to Yonnie, but what could he say to him, truth be told? Right now, all he had to offer him was his blade... Yonnie was still his boy and he'd always have his brother's back. A tall dark figure with a familiar gait caught his attention in his peripheral vision. Carlos looked up and set his drink down slowly as he saw Shabazz approach the bar. He glanced at his Rolex - eleven p.m. Shabazz alone at the bar? Oh, shit... whassup?
"Yo, man," Carlos said, pounding Shabazz's fist as he slid onto a stool. He watched his Guardian brother grumble a greeting and order a Jack Daniel's, and said nothing until the bartender left.
"So, what's going on, man?" Carlos asked, cutting right to the chase after Shabazz had taken the first sip from his drink.
Shabazz winced with the sip. "Can't a man just chill and have a drink?" Carlos stared at him. "No."
Shabazz's face relaxed into a slow half-smile. "Then why're you here?"
"We ain't talking about me, right now. We're talking about you." Shabazz lifted his Jack Daniel's shot to Carlos, downed it, and slid the shot glass back to the bartender so accurately that it hit his palm like a bullet. "One more."
"All right, what happened, man?" Carlos nodded for a refill. "We can either play cat and mouse and go back upstairs snot-slinging drunk - which is always an option ... but the morning consequences and the domestic fallout are high - or we can just be real."