"What's wrong?" Carlos yelled, materializing inside her bedroom and crossing the room in battle mode.
Damali closed her eyes and picked up her Isis. What was she gonna tell him?
"Where is it? Level Seven--baby, get out of here, now!"
"It wasn't what I thought it was," she said carefully.
Carlos stopped, looked around the bathroom and at her blade, confusion glittering in his eyes. "You put out an all-points bulletin. You were mentally shouting--"
"I know, I know, I know--"
"Guardians are on the way and the Covenant is mounting up. Baby, if who we think blew through your bathroom did, then--"
She shut her eyes, held up her hand, and couldn't look at him. "I wigged. I was in here composing, dark thoughts, uh, I thought, listen, I'm cool."
He blinked twice and stared at her. "You're lit up like a Christmas tree, girl. Got a f**king Isis blade in your grip and you're squeezing it so hard the metal is digging into your fist. Now, I may be many things, but stupid ain't one of 'em."
Carlos walked around the bathroom, inspecting. He looked at the white bath and the dead candles and inhaled. "Something male came in here and freaked you out. If you were in a white bath and it manifested, then you need to give it to me straight, give the team a full breakdown of what could have made you bug like that, feel me?"
She nodded, too ashamed to speak. What was she going to say, I almost laid my muse, and what's in here is the sloppy aftermath of a musi-cal tryst that went carnal? "Baby," she said, unshed tears catching in her throat, "I love you."
He pulled her to him hard with possessiveness and crushed her head to his chest. "I love you, too, girl. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, no matter what."
She hid her face against his T-shirt and breathed in deeply, a repressed sob making her body shake. "I know." She could feel Carlos's gaze scanning the room.
"Like I said, whatever it was, it was male, with high sexual charge on the shit, too. I can feel that rippling over my skin, and the motherfucker wanted you bad, baby." He pulled Damali away from him and stared at her, his eyes glowing solid silver. "Did it try to violate you? Tell me, and I'll take its head off."
That's when the tears started flowing in earnest. What was there to say? Yeah, true, he'd had near misses with were demons, female vamps, even Juanita and probably a bunch of shit she'd never know about... but, still.
"I knew it!" he yelled, not waiting for her answer. Carlos stalked away from her, punched the door, and stalked back to her. "Damn! That's it, no more arguments, you're moving in with me--period."
She just stared at the man. How in the hell was she gonna move in with him, now, and risk a possible catastrophe? It was that, or abandon her muse forever, which, strangely, she wasn't exactly ready to do. However, Carlos's deadly accurate male instinct unnerved her. She picked at a lame excuse and offered it to him slowly. "Let's not jump to conclusions, baby, we should--" "No, Damali!" he hollered. "I have never heard you put out a fear SOS like that since we've been together. Ever! That shit ran all through me, you were pleading with Jesus to save you, girl. You and I have been to Hell, done master vamps together, freaking demons from every level, and you were never cold-bloodedly afraid, like that. So, whatever blew through here had to be serious. It had to be something you and I have never dealt with, right?"
"It was," she said quietly, and went to the tub to calmly let the water out. Man, if this was what he felt when he'd almost gotten with that Amazon, or got temporarily freaky with 'Nita, she would never say a mumblin' word to the man for his past indiscretions. She vowed from this point forward to live in the moment, no signifying, no mild references, nada. Cold busted. All she could think of was what would have happened if a few more moments had passed, if she'd totally just lost her mind... for him to walk in on that... there would be no words. Humiliation made her face burn. "Then my point remains."
She nodded and kept her back to Carlos, watching the water swirl down the drain and all her dreams along with it.
CHAPTER FOUR
A war party had convened in her living room. Damali sat on the large, overstuffed African-print chair by the window studying the texture of threads in her jeans. The fabric of her light cotton T-shirt felt like sandpaper against her skin. The noise level was deafening as her people argued about what could have possibly invaded her home.
True, she had been the one to accidentally send an SOS, but it still didn't seem to warrant all of this. She was emotionally exhausted and could now only imagine how Carlos must have felt trying to explain the inexplicable to a whole squad of amped warriors, especially about his many highly personal transgressions.
She cringed as the misinformation ricocheted around the room and her people formed flawed theories about an incident too delicate to fully disclose. Her body was still on fire. She needed space, time to mull over what had happened privately. Part of her just wanted to blurt out the truth and send everybody home; the other part of her just wanted to crawl under the rug. Now, with a full- scale investigation underway, their concerns led to queries that bordered on what felt like an inquisition.
Ironically Carlos had been the one to show her how to totally detach and mentally distance herself from probing questions. She'd seen the brother do it a hundred times. He'd just get silent, look off in the distance, and set his jaw hard. When he went there, nobody could break through, not her, not Mar, and not even Father Pat. There was a certain level of compelling wisdom in saving one's personal sanity at a time like this. Dang!
The song that had blistered her mind continued to pop and sizzle within her brain. The voices of her team were becoming very far away.
Stanzas opened up a sanctuary for her to escape through, and put up a wall blocking anyone's invasion. A sassy, irreverent little tune threatened to make her smile as she abandoned the sad one for a more upbeat melody to make herself feel better.
Damali kept her gaze on the threads in her jeans, focused on the varying hues of blue. The entity that visited her had that same color running through his aura. She was almost humming. She could visualize herself strutting across the stage, linger wagging to an up- tempo beat, telling some phantom brother off. She really wanted to laugh.
Just because I can Don't mean that I should. Just because I wanna Don't mean that I would.
I'm not the kinda girl who'll let you play with her mind . . . "Damali!" Carlos was in her face. "You act like you ain't even in the room. Marlene has a valid point."
Damali jerked her focus away from her jeans and stared up at Carlos. Her glance shot between him and Marlene, and she felt like she was back in school, not paying attention to the teacher, and was now called on to answer some question she hadn't even heard.