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 this, with me in your mind. Just call me."
When he dragged his jaw along her throat and bit her, she literally saw stars. But that's when she also held him by the shoulders and put an inch between them. He dropped his hold on her, ran his fingers through his hair, and walked to the far side of the room.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "That was never supposed to happen. You're already marked, and I know that." He was panting, beginning to walk in a circle, the level of agitation and frustration making several candle flames dance wildly before going out. "The Neteru mind lock is... Damali, I have to go." His eyes held a quiet plea. "I have been with many women and have had many wives over decades of apexes, but never . . ." He stopped, swallowed hard, and leaned on the far wall with one hand, staring at the floor, steadying his breaths. "You will make me sire in the flesh, and that also cannot happen. With you, it is forbidden."
Still breathless from the near miss, she hunted him for an explanation with her eyes. "What is your name?" she asked in a gentle tone that made him close his eyes and swallow hard again. "If you're Heaven sent then you're safe." Immediately, she shook her head. "What am I saying!" She snatched up her towel and wrapped it around her body with precision. "I've lost my freakin' mind."
He nodded, winded, and kept his gaze to the floor until she was covered, and then closed them again to stem the pain. "So have I." When he opened his eyes he simply stared at her. "No. I'm not safe. But now I truly understand so much more." His gaze searched hers. "The conundrum is neither are you, detriment of my soul. I must leave."
"No, wait," she heard herself say while her mind yelled the central question: Was she crazy? But she had to know what had just happened in this very insane moment. "I have so much more to ask you," she whispered. "You've been just the music before. I don't understand how you could have materialized like this."
"You loved it so hard, and it was the only way I could love you in return. Through sound. We have just crossed a barrier that should not have been trifled with, all emotion notwithstanding." His chest was heaving as he spoke. "I want to fill you with living music so badly right now that I cannot summon reason."
She stared at him, a hundred new questions slamming into her mind as her gaze locked with his dark, intense eyes. There were times when it felt like the music was literally making love to her... in her mind, inside her spirit, releasing her soul... something so profoundly intimate as it was being created that not even her living lover could fathom from whence it came.
As the awareness filled her, the being shuddered, shut his eyes tightly, and turned his face away as though she'd slapped him.
"Yes... and I have told you, that was when it was only the two of us," he whispered, breathing out the words.
The pull to this unnamed male being was so intense that she had to redouble her efforts to keep her feet firmly planted where she stood. He'd actually let his head drop back, exposing his throat, and the urge to score his jugular made her tremble.
"If you do that which you are battling not to do," he said in a low warning, looking up slowly, "we shall be lost. Score me, and it will be all over. No going back to what was only spirit. Then you will have to tell him." He began to move toward her again, raw lust making his strides long and slow. "Or, if you find that too daunting, I can tell him?"
"I'm committed, have a person who... I didn't mean to manifest... and I also didn't mean to bring you pain, in any way. I can't do this to him, but I have to be able to sing, do my music, work." Tears were brimming in her eyes, the frustration to go to him more acute than anything she'd ever experienced. She let out a breath of relief when he stopped advancing. The sound of her voice had become so strident it almost shattered the windows. Pure panic swelled within her as she fought her own emotions. "I don't understand this male Neteru stuff, you being one in spirit, but also being a muse... are you from the Male Neteru Council? I don't know what they have on their side, his side--but you can't come to me like this again, it's too . . ."
"Intense," he murmured, slowly bringing his gaze up to decimate her. "Like nothing I have ever encountered." He stared at her and stroked her neck with his thumb by merely touching his own. She covered his hand by hiding the phantom- caressed place that burned against her throat and stopped the sensual invasion that caused a near gasp. Her Sankofa tattoo was burning up, sending waves of desire up her back. She watched him place his hand over his heart, as though trying to stop the burn tormenting the angry, silver symbol lit beneath his palm. The moment he touched it, her head dropped back from the shudder it released within her.
"Oh, God . . ." The words pressed past her lips on an elongated gasp.
"Damali, you have to work without me. I cannot withstand this any longer." He brought his hand away from his chest trembling, the fabric covering his symbol smoldering.
"I know." But she didn't move away like she knew she should have.
Again, his gaze flowed over her and came to rest at her mouth. "If I stay much longer, I promise you I'll break my younger brother's heart... and that will ultimately kill him... which will be my second offense of a similar nature. I need to go. The music between us will keep for another night when we can handle it."
"Who is your brother?" Quiet panic knotted her stomach. He was becoming mist and the frustration of not knowing felt like a stab wound. "Please, if you don't share anything else, at least tell me that." "Carlos," he whispered, then was gone.
Damali walked back and forth between the door and the far wall, punching the door each time she passed it. Oh, shit, oh shit, oh f**king shit!
Her head jerked up when she heard pounding on her front door. She knew who it was, and it was the last person that needed to be there-- even though her SOS had probably summoned him.