Vampire Huntress - The Damned Part 19

"Girl, I know what you like," he whispered low and dangerously, his voice a swift-cutting pleasure blade, slicing at her resistance.

"Be honest. At least with yourself. You want a true baby-maker, wild risk-taker, to-the-bone dealer... night... thrill... seeka, make you wanna holla, mad-crazy soldier, hot-desire waker... breath to bone shaker, out-of-body quaker, yeah... empire builder, dream ful-filla, girl stop playin', 'cause that ain't the half of what you want." He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath until it hissed. "C'mon, let me get this... and let me get it right."

His hands slid down his body, creating an unnatural heat within hers. Her skin felt like it was catching fire, leaving acute pleasure in its wake. She couldn't take her eyes off him, or pull away from what felt like an erotic, magnetic current. He drew in air between his teeth, creating another quiet hiss of pleasure just behind her ear from where he stood.

Say no-How? Tell him back off-not possible. Not when he felt the way he did-even standing just beyond her steps, his scent divine, making her know what he really was with each burning phantom touch... all vamp. Maybe more.

"And you love it," he whispered, accessing her mind without permission.

"Stop," she whispered. "This isn't the Carlos I know."

"The old Carlos is gone," he murmured sensually, "Murio en un desgraciado accidente. No quiero desilusionarte, pero...

estoy deshecho, cansado... baby, desnudate, then sufri un desmayo... helado. Tomorrow we can discuss it. Por lana mananas tengo la mente mas despejada."

His eyes briefly slid shut, as though he was regaining his composure, and when he inhaled, it sucked the air right out of her lungs, making her feel faint. She struggled to translate what he'd told her, feeling a shred of truth in the vibration resonating within his statement, but couldn't bring her mind to work that hard for her, not when he was speaking to her low and s.e.xy in Espanol... not when he was working her body the way he was.

"Please, Carlos," she gasped, trying to back away on the porch floor. "I can't think when you get like this, and something is definitely wrong."

"En que estas pensando? But creo que estas equivocado," he whispered, his lids now half lowered as he continued to inhale deeply. "No te muevas. Ya no hay mas. No importa." He placed his hand on the door. "Permission to enter your house, mi tresora."

Something fragile snapped inside her and she nodded, defying every instinct that lay coiled within her. He chuckled so low and deep that she felt it across the porch like a depth charge through her womb.

"That's better," he murmured, slowly walking toward her, his motions so fluid she wasn't sure his footfalls had landed against the floor. "Then... permission to enter you?"

Her eyes were shut tight. She heard her front door groan and splinter open behind her, and another pleasure a.s.sault washed her into her living room. But when she opened her eyes, she was in a place she couldn't recognize. Naked, writhing bodies were all around her. A shadowed figure was in her doorframe. A pool, marble, togas-oh s.h.i.t, old Rome!

Before she could protest, every sensation resident in the tangle of human flesh gathered and covered her, entering every orifice, until she wept from o.r.g.a.s.mic exhaustion. Through sobs of exquisite relief, she sought a pair of eyes she knew. Her line of vision locked with the shadow in the doorway. Breathless, she waited for the familiar glow of silver, something to make her know that he was still with her, that this was just a phenomenal floor show, but no silver light returned to her. Dark, blue-black fire met her stare.

"If you love me, you'll stop right now, Carlos! Do not bring this bulls.h.i.t into my house! I forbid it." She covered her mouth with one hand and sobbed as he smiled, and another o.r.g.a.s.m arrested her complaint.

"I thought you wanted to really know what was inside the mind of a master? I just opened the first layer of my black box for you, baby. Can't handle it?" he said in an amused tone. "Before, you said-"

"That was before," she said, pushing herself up on all fours so she could eventually stand on wobbly legs. But she never made it that far.

"Cypress, maybe, then?" Carlos murmured, "The Greek isles? The Oracle at Delphi had some moves you wouldn't believe.

Three-way? That was a very decadent era... and you are definitely in my favorite position. She'll love it, too."

"Don't," Damali said firmly. "Let me up."

"That's right. You're an old-fashioned girl. Old school, Old Testament. So maybe we should just go back to the beginning and do the d.a.m.ned thing right."

Her hands sank into rich, fertile dirt, and vines began to climb up the walls, forming Eden.

"Fallon tried it, I didn't like it," she said quickly, before Carlos transformed into something that might lope over her threshold.

"My bad," he whispered. "Careless and unoriginal. Maybe-"

"Just please stop," she said quietly, needing to appeal to whatever rational part of him was left. "Let me up; let's just be who we are. No games."

A deep chuckle thundered up from Carlos's insides. "No, baby," he said slowly, shaking his head as he made her bud throb harder, "you definitely aren't ready for that."

She could see him stroke the line of his jaw as though considering her fate, even with the unnaturally dark shadows eclipsing his face and body. Something was definitely wrong; he'd never violated her like this, and his power had never been this strong.

Although he'd never laid a physical hand on her, what he'd done mentally was more than enough. Fighting against the new wash of sensations he was beginning to create, she went for his emotional core-given that her long blade was missing, and her baby Isis had probably fallen off the porch.

"Carlos, I will never forgive you for this," she said in a distant tone, glancing away from him. "I can't believe you'd act like this or treat me this way."

He paused. Maybe he'd gone too far. New approach.

She watched him slowly run his fingers through his hair, and instantly, the force holding her to the floor lifted.

Part of him said not to do it, but an overriding desire shunted that protest. He had to get inside her, feel her sweet heat all around him. He'd played too long, had blown his own mind, there was no work left for her to do. Fluid had already filled his shaft, turning it to what felt like throbbing granite.

As soon as the thought was completed, she was outside on the porch, naked in his arms, initially struggling against his hold, her skin sweaty and pulsing beneath his grip until her hands grasped at his back to pull him closer. His mouth consumed hers, devouring her moan, breaking down her resistance. Her Sankofa blazed white-hot silver on her spine, almost searing his hands as they ran down her back. d.a.m.n, her will not to conceive was strong.

"I want you so badly, I feel like I'm losing my mind," she gasped against his neck, biting his earlobe, her hand covering the place where his tattoo lay dormant. "Just don't make me pregnant tonight, we can't, I can't," she panted in stuttering jags. "Make it burn silver, baby," she said nearly weeping, waiting for his dead symbol to engage. Then she bit his jugular and sucked hard. Down in seconds, they slammed onto the porch floor, her tattoo literally making the wood smolder beneath her, but her urgent movements under him demanded his earlier question be answered. Permission to enter? Her body was on fire, becoming dangerous liquid silver in his arms as her pa.s.sion for him spread through her Neteru bloodstream. Big f.u.c.king variable. Time was of the essence. The throne didn't offer clues about a fully matured female Neteru's secret weapon to withstand an unwilling seduction!

His fangs had ripped through his gums on impact with the porch, but her eyes were still shut so tightly, and her thrashing so erratic, that he knew she was oblivious. The duality of heat was fracturing his intent, breaking his mind. The scorch of her body was dangerous, molten protoplasm from the realms above; his now owned h.e.l.lfire from the realms below. The games he'd played to send her to into a frenzy had become a trap that could leave him seriously injured. The dilemma was kicking his a.s.s, burning him up from the need to get with her.

"Permission to enter you," he groaned into her ear. "Just tell me I can."

She nodded, her voice caught on a strangled gasp.

She had to say it. The Neteru will barrier was impenetrable in a seduction battle. He could feel a force brutally blocking him, even though her nails scored his shoulders to drive him onward. "Just say it, baby... tell me." He was near tears she felt so good; he'd almost forgotten h.e.l.lfire was no match for her silver heat.

She arched for him, making his request a command.

Frustration tore up wood splinters as he gripped her hair in his hands, held her face, broke the kiss, and stared at her. "Say it!"

She cried out his name instead. He closed his eyes and almost laughed. The Light was f.u.c.king with him real bad right through here. He kissed her hard and rolled her over to straddle him. He needed to look into her eyes, get a mind lock going. Had to break the black box in her skull and shatter it. He could barely retract his fangs to speak. His words came out as a stuttering plea instead of the thundering demand he'd intended. "Baby, tell me I can come into you now."

"Oh, G.o.d!"

Ball game. He dumped her on the porch and had to stand and walk in a circle. The electric arc that zapped off her skin almost fried him. Totally sobering, erection killing, pain so intense that he bit his tongue and almost upchucked his nuts. Okay, so not tonight. Fine. He couldn't even look at her as he tried to catch her breath to stop her torrent of pa.s.sionate words.

"Baby, what's wrong?" she said, panting, reaching toward him, beginning to stand.

Horrified that the zap had only further turned her on, he backed away as her aura radiated pure silver. Reality provided a cold slap in his face as Damali got to her feet. They used to play hard, play rough, but he was always on their side before. Every physical Neteru change she'd just gone through under him would have driven him mad-before. There was no way to do this...

even if she said yes. Oh, s.h.i.t...

"Jesus, Carlos, please, baby, no more teasing, no more playing, you have got to finish this tonight!"

The name of the sacred made him wince and turn away. Tears of agony were streaming down her beautiful face. Near madness had filled her expression, making her look all the more ravishing in the moonlight as she'd frantically searched his eyes for an answer before he gave her his back.

"Stop walking away from me!" she nearly shrieked. "Don't you want this? You trying to bait me into a shape-shift? What?

Panther? Is that what you want? Talk to me! You want me to drag you into the bushes by your d.a.m.ned throat?" She shouted, and wrapped her arms around herself. " 'Cause, tonight, if you don't stop playing with me after that floor show, I might. Don't tempt me. Oh, G.o.d, what is wrong with you?"

He held up his hand, three calls of the Names and his skull was splitting. "Shut up! I can't take it," he shouted, pacing as his ears began to internally bleed. "No mas, por favor. A minute. To get my head together. All right?"

He had to get away from her. She was turning him on so f.u.c.king bad it didn't make sense... drag him by his throat, oh, s.h.i.t-if she hadn't said the Names, but he knew from all experience, she would again, and again, and again. And she was walking toward him, lit up with silver fire. He'd torch on impact from even a hug.

"Back off me, woman! You know we don't play like that!" he bellowed as he could feel her energy about to dip low and go serious feline when she purred.

She shook her head as though coming to from a punch as she stood on the porch in the buff, and then slowly backed away from him into the house and shut the screen door behind her.

Carlos watched her for a moment, totally defeated and too conflicted to immediately argue. Okay, maybe he'd gone too far, which could be disastrous, if he ever wanted her to chill out and be with him again. The conundrum was profound. He'd wanted to f.u.c.k her till she lost her mind, but if he took her there she'd burn him alive. If he did her in a lackl.u.s.ter fashion, she might get pregnant, but d.a.m.n, what would be the point? The Light had this s.h.i.t rigged so foul it was obscene. Now he really understood the Chairman and the old boys' problem. Why he was such a necessary p.a.w.n in their game. Think, think, think. There had to be some way around the barrier... and she'd been so turned out she was ready to serve panther? Sheeit.

But as he hesitated, a tiny, fearful cry from within echoed through his conscience. What was he doing? Why was he doing this?

None of this had anything to do with the mission he'd been a.s.signed, and getting Damali pregnant was the last thing he should have been trying to do, especially if what he'd seen on the Chairman's throne would come out of his body.

He stood on her porch, breathing hard, as he battled the procreation imperative and looked at the woman he loved, and then clung to that very thin silver filament left inside him. No, she was not to be the vessel for something worse than a daywalker.

Jealousy and newfound power had had him in its grip. Unbridled rage had made him show off and nearly stop her heart with pleasure shock. He had to get the Jose thing out of his head and be rational.

"C'mon, girl. I was just playing," Carlos said, fighting the eerie sensation of conflict brewing within him. "It's a male Neteru thing, mixed with a little vamp still in my system from old times, that's all. I'm near my real apex. What can I say?" He opened his arms and smiled, loving how her skin was still wet and flushed from releasing till she'd cried.

"Put my clothes back on," she demanded, breathing hard, raking her hair, but her eyes never left his. "No silver, no a.s.s. I musta been out of my mind!"

He smiled as her gaze traveled down his body and lingered. "I want you, too, baby. The old-fashioned way works for me...

unless you want to go to the point?"

"Too rough already," she said, standing and slapping remnants of sand off her soaked clothes as he robed her in what she'd previously had on. She scowled at his good faith move and glared at him. "I'm not going to V-point with you-and I thought...

Never mind. This s.h.i.t was ridiculous."

He smiled in an attempt to play off the pleasurable horror she'd just experienced. "I'll be gentle next time, girl... for real." He gave her a sly glance, his smile widening as he spoke. "But it did feel good, didn't it?"

She still couldn't see if he had fangs, not that she needed any further proof that he owned them. "No. It didn't. You seriously violated my mind. Don't do that to me ever again, Carlos. I'm not playing! I feel dirty, like I need a bath."

"All you have to do is say the word-"

"No!" She scanned the floor for her missing blade.

He produced it for her twiddling it outside the screen door."Let me in the house and I'll make it up to you, girl. You've got me out here naked, cold, and that's why I was p.i.s.sed off. You didn't have my back at the family house, and-"

"Where's my holy water. I'm gonna..."

Damali's voice trailed off as her motions slowed down. d.a.m.n, she really took this the wrong way, and it was not about allowing her to douse him with that foul concoction of Marlene's tonight. It also disturbed him that he was back to needing a verbalized invitation to cross her threshold. That had never been the case, and it released another inner cry from his psyche that he couldn't totally ignore.

Carlos opened his fingers and splayed them against the shut screen, pulling away the last few minutes, closing his fist around it all, and then hurling it into the back of her mind like an erotic bad dream. "Hide," he murmured behind the small black orb that penetrated the base of her skull. Then he dried her clothes, righted all toppled furniture, put the baby Isis back in her hand, snapped his fingers, and released time.

"I'm going to get the stuff I need to douse you and your clothes. Stay on the porch," she ordered over her shoulder. But her tone was calm, as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. "I want you to see how your clothes just disappeared in the yard before."

"Okay, baby," he said in a weary voice, covering himself with his hands. "But can you at least bring me a towel?"

She laughed. He finally relaxed and smiled.

After a few moments, Damali appeared at the screen door. She absently threw the towel she was holding at him and half of it landed over his head. He sat appearing contrite as could be on the steps, watching her make a big production out of dousing his clothes. Total amus.e.m.e.nt filled him as he slowed her down again, his clothes on the ground disappeared, and he replaced them with new ones.

Battling emotions filled his mind as he watched her. A small inner voice kept repeating the word danger. It was a m.u.f.fled cry, almost a sob. Then a stronger voice would override it and tell him to f.u.c.k with her. Carlos dropped his head into his hands and peered up slowly as Damali walked in a haze of altered time. Dear, G- He stood yelling in pain. White-hot poker heat seized his brain and almost set it on fire. He held on to the rail and looked up. He could no longer hear the Name even casually, not just when he was an imminent threat, but no matter what? "Oh, s.h.i.t."

Carlos covered his face with both hands and breathed into them with shaky breaths. What if he couldn't cross cathedral barriers, or whatever? What other limitations did his little dip down to Level Seven via the Chairman's throne have, he wondered? Why could he even cross here and be on this land, though? It was all too confusing.

"C'mon, y'all. Don't play me like this. I'm on your mission. Yeah, I took a tumble, but don't get new. Hey. For real. I'm serious now."

The starry horizon didn't even squint at him, much less produce a sign. "Okay, fine," he muttered, and sat down, then released Damali from the time aberration.

"I don't understand," she said, walking around the wet heap of soiled clothes in the yard. "Nothing happened."

"Nothing happened," Carlos repeated casually, "because, like I told you-nothing happened. I didn't relapse and whatever infection had me earlier pa.s.sed out of my system. We're Neterus, immune." He looked up at the sky, as though arguing with it.

"Everybody is making me feel like I've committed a crime, and I haven't done a thing. Y'all are being real unfair," he said, his face still heavenward. "There's a double standard. When you had your moment of trip-out, they were trying to help you, Damali.

Everybody did all that they could to keep you on lockdown and safe in the compound, but see how they do a brother?"

When she didn't answer, Carlos gave her with a angry sidelong glance, abandoning his skyward-hurled argument. "It ain't right... and what hurts the most is, you're standing here at the bottom of the steps, a bottle of test water in one hand and salt and Ju Ju oil, or whatever, in the other, just looking at me like I'm the Devil himself."

Carlos swallowed hard and stared out into the distance. "Never thought I'd see that expression in your eyes, of all people, Damali... after all we've been through together? Bottom line is, you don't trust me. That hurts more than anything else."

He watched her slowly set the bottle of Holy water, anointing oil, and purified sea salt on the bottom step, then let out an unnoticeable breath of relief.

"I'm sorry, baby," she murmured, glancing back at his clothes, confounded. "We just have to be careful because of the newbies and the portal problem."

"I thought the foundation of any relationship was trust?"

She nodded and came up the steps and sat beside him. "I'm sorry, okay?"

He shrugged, and adjusted the waist of the towel sarong that had been shielding his lap. "Whatever."

"Look, why don't we go inside? You get washed up; I'll open some wine. We'll just chill, try to... I don't know, sync our vibe back up. All right?"

He shrugged away from her hand as it touched his cheek, and stood. "I don't feel like making love now, all of a sudden."

She stood and reached for him again. "Carlos, I am really sorry I didn't trust you."

He didn't pull away from her hold and allowed her to hug him, begrudgingly hugging her back, half afraid to touch her. "Been that way for months."

"I know. I've been going through changes I didn't even understand, and I guess I've been shutting you out, like you said. Maybe the contagion got me, too?"

"So, I'm welcomed in your home? You ain't scared that I might turn into a monster?" he said, brandishing fake claws with his fingers in the air and giving her a crazed expression to make her laugh.

"No," she said, swatting his chest. "You can fall by here anytime you want. It's me and you, okay? You have permission to enter, whatever all that unnecessary drama was about."