Scented Lust

by Jacqueline Turner Banks

  He sat on the bed. “Leeana…,that might be a good idea. You and Leeana should do something. Maybe catch a movie.”

  “No, if she’s available, it’ll be to go out with us.” She pulled off the last of her clothes, then her panties. He started to say something but seemed to lose his place. His eyes traveled to the top of her head and down to her feet; he smiled and did it again. He looked at her as if he was studying fine art. It made her body tingle.

  She stepped between his legs and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’ll be good. I won’t get in your way.”

  “If Leeana can come. That way I don’t have to worry about you being alone.”

  He kissed the valley between her breasts and dipped his head as he licked his way down; backing up, he ended by sticking his tongue in her belly button. “Ugh, that’s a weird feeling,” she told him.

  “Weird good or weird bad?” he asked.

  “Weird like nails on a blackboard.”

  He stopped his tongue wiggling. “I repeat, good or bad? I don’t know that analogy. I’ve heard it before, but I’m not familiar with nails on blackboards. Why would that ever happen?”

  “You do know they mean fingernails, not construction nails?”

  “Oh, okay, I didn’t know that. So the fingernails would hit the board by accident while the person is writing?”

  She pulled away. “Let’s get under the covers. We don’t have a lot of time, and I don’t want to waste it answering creepy questions.”

  He laughed. “You’re delightful, Jordan Greene.”

  “No, I’m just the naked woman in the bed.”

  He stopped. “Don’t say that, not even in jest. You mean more to me than that.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ll just put my clothes on and we’ll sleep.” She got out of bed and picked up her panties, purposely not looking at him because she knew he would make her start laughing.

  He leaned over, grabbed her arm and pulled her back to the bed. “Why do you enjoy torturing me? What have I done to deserve this?”

  She kissed him. “You do tortured so well, and your sincere is even cuter. I can’t help it.”

  “This is not my sincere—this is my ball-breaking horny. You have that effect on me.”

  She pulled the band from his hair and used her fingers to comb through the loose curls that he was trying to tame with some kind of stiff hair product.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” he asked.

  “Obviously I like your hair loose, at least while we’re entertaining each other.”

  “I say let the entertainment begin.”

  He might have still been calling himself horny, but he wasn’t frenzied. They made soft, slow, passionate love and drifted to sleep in each other’s arms.

  * * * *

  Jahia woke them by ringing Artest’s cell phone. The nap might have refreshed him, but it left Jordan wanting more sleep. She’d never been one for power naps.

  “Why don’t you take the bathroom first? I need to call Leeana.”

  “Okay, but feel free to join me when you finish.”

  “If I do,” she let her hand trail down his chest, “will we become distracted?”

  “Probably, but I’ll control myself. I’m more afraid of Jahia than my need, if we’re not there when she’s ready.”

  “Okay, I’ll find you, but I like the water really hot.”

  “Don’t you all?”

  She pinched his perfect ass as he walked away

  “That was sexist,” he said over his shoulder. She heard him laughing as the bathroom door closed.

  She wasn’t sure why, probably just laziness, but she picked up his phone rather than looking for her purse to get her own. She dialed Leeana’s number, one of the few she knew by heart.

  “Artest?” she said in place of a hello.

  That threw her. She knew Leeana’s telephone had caller ID, but her response sounded like a familiar greeting, one she would give a person she’d met more than once. But how could that be? Jordan wondered if Artest’s Dogon-Hunter jealousy was rubbing off on her.

  “No, it’s me. Jordan.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Are you all right?”

  Jordan heard her exhale. “No, I’m fine. Seeing Artest’s name on my caller ID just threw me.”

  “Oh, okay. I’m using his telephone while he’s in the shower.”

  “Got it.”

  “Are you doing anything tonight?”

  “Nothing worth mentioning. Why?” she asked.

  “Artest is . . .” She realized she hadn’t rehearsed how she was going to talk to her about this. “Artest is. . .”

  “Is what?”

  “He’s going out with some of his friends and. . .”

  “And you wanted one of your own friends there for you?” she supplied.

  “Right. They’ll be preoccupied.”

  “Doing what? Is it a business meeting?”

  Great, she gave me the words I’d been trying to find. “Exactly.”

  “Been there—it’s a real bust for the girlfriend. I’ll help you out. It sounds more interesting than my plans, which should tell you a lot about this dry spell I’m having.”

  “Great. We’re getting dressed now, and I’ll call you with the details just before we leave.”

  “See you later.”

  That felt odd to Jordan. She didn’t know how to interpret it, but it almost felt like Leeana had been expecting her call. It wasn’t the first time that Leeana had given her the impression she was way ahead of things, but this felt even more so. She decided it was Artest’s otherworldly influence on her weekend and her life.

  * * * *

  “I was just about to give up on you,” Artest said when Jordan joined him.

  “That seemed long?”

  “Any time away from you seems too long.”

  He did it again—his words ignited that newfound wave of wantonness and sent it flowing through her body. Jordan had always believed herself to be undersexed, so much so she’d questioned her orientation when she was in her late teens. At the time, she’d really thought about it before deciding she wasn’t in the least sexually interested in her girlfriends, but she couldn’t find that mad passion for boys that seemed to preoccupy most of the other girls.

  What was it about this guy? she wondered as he soaped her back. He certainly wasn’t the first guy she’d ever known with game. Game? That wasn’t it. It was anti-game without the geek factor. It felt like sincerity. Who would have thought I would fall for sincerity?

  She’d been trying to avoid getting her hair wet, but it was too late. Embrace the water, she told herself, and she changed places with him. “Your turn,” she said. She took the soap and washcloth and started on his back.

  “I’m finished. You took too long,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” She reached around his waist and cupped him.

  “Maybe not. There’s no such thing as too clean.”

  She felt him growing in her hand. “You’re unbelievable. Are you on some little blue pills or something?”

  “No, I didn’t even know they were blue. It’s you. Well, it’s two things—I’m backed up, it really has been a long time, and you have that effect on me. I’d like to say this is the norm, but it’s not—but I’m not one to question such a gift.”

  She stopped her playing around soon after that because she didn’t want anyone to catch them still in the shower. Artest wasn’t pleased to see her special attention stop, but she figured it gave them both something to look forward to. Jahia rang Artest’s phone ten minutes after they came out and, she said they would be at the door in fifteen minutes. Artest stepped back into the bathroom and came out dressed in about three minutes; it took Jordan a little longer, but they didn’t delay the group. She called Leeana while they were “waiting for the car.”

  She didn’t exactly know what waiting for the car meant, but she stood in front of the house with the rest of
them. Actually, she didn’t see Ian, so she figured it meant he’d gone somewhere to get his car.

  She looked at Artest, Tyler and Jahia; all three were dressed in all black. Jahia had her dreads pulled back in a very attractive bun, and both men had their long hair banded at the nape of their necks. It wouldn’t take a criminalist to see they were dressed for action. Until she noted their dress, she still wasn’t taking Artest’s whole “working” concept very seriously. Jordan knew what she’d seen saw in her apartment was real, but it was so unusual, she was blocking it every chance she got. Looking at Artest in his black leather pants and tailored black silk shirt, she had a hard time keeping the memory at bay.

  Jahia had on black jeans. Jordan wondered why she’d changed from the spandex pants she’d had on earlier. Tyler’s pants looked like a heavy linen. Both husband and wife were wearing black body shirts, and neither one had an ounce of fat showing. The three of them weren’t doing anything good for Jordan’s body ego. She felt like the fat girl hanging out with the supermodels.

  The other thing she noticed was that the Hunters were quiet, unusually so compared to their usual chatter.

  Just a couple of minutes had passed when a black limousine pulled up. It was a town car, not a stretch limo, but it surprised her nonetheless. None of her associates seemed surprised to see Ian get out from the backseat. He stood to the side while the others got in.

  While they greeted a young man named Rico, all she could think was, who takes a limo to kick ass?

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  As he sat next to Jordan in Ian’s car, Artest thought about how much the human woman was getting in his blood. He smiled, remembering how she’d greeted him at the door by tormenting him, making him think she’d been washed.

  She would have no way of knowing her playful tease about Ian being her new boyfriend had sent his blood to instant boil. Had Ian appeared at that moment, I might have killed him. He knew how crazy that sounded.

  If their Hogan, the area’s priest, had any knowledge of his thoughts, he would put Artest on immediate suspension—and who could blame him?

  Artest had spent a lot of time with the Hogan. The priest knew about all the loss in Artest’s life—his mother had died less than six months after Artest committed to Service. He hadn’t even left to join his class yet. The Priest knew about Artest’s sister, Adama, and his first and only love, Halla. He knew that Artest felt cursed.

  The Hogan didn’t believe in mating with humans because it took the Hunters out of the service, but for years he’d been encouraging Artest to find a female Hunter.

  “So I can watch another one die?” he would ask each time.

  “What makes you so sure that’ll happen?”

  “Everybody I’ve ever loved has left me. Why would the next one be any different?”

  “This is a very unattractive and unexpected side of you, my friend,” he said with a voice old and hesitant from a lack of use. The Hogan had looked old by human standards for as long as Artest had known him, which had to be over three hundred years. They’d first met in Mali.

  Inside the temple, the Hogan looked like any old man one would encounter on the streets of Bamako, the capital of Mali. But Artest had heard Hunters say he walked among humans in many different faces, ages, and skins, and even as a woman. That fascinated Artest. Except for the Hogan, if the rumors were true, the Sangsue were the only non- godly African beings—at least that Artest knew of—who could shape shift to lesser or greater body mass and to opposite sexes.

  It was Artest’s understanding that the Sangsue couldn’t maintain the shift beyond about a hour at a time. He’d been told that the Priest had no time limit on his shape shift, but Fox once made an announcement during a party that the Hunter’s Hogan was unlike any other and, even so, most of what was said about him was myth.

  Over time, Artest had stopped talking to the priest about his loneliness during their private sessions, but the thought was still there every time he saw a happy couple. He’d even begun to wonder what it would have been like to have children.

  Since they’d become members of the Global Association of Nonhumans, Artest had met many other Hunters. They were more similar to each other than they were different, but so far, Dogon-Hunters were the only ones he’d met who could choose not to become sterile. Just before their final initiation test, the question was posed, but they were told early in the process that it was coming. They were made to understand that any child born after the final passage was automatically pledged to Service. That didn’t mean they would serve—but the decision was not theirs or their parents. Artest was always surprised and interested to learn more about the Hunters who opted out, since there was no going back. It just seemed logical to him not to eliminate options when there were so many different ways to prevent pregnancy.

  He pictured Jordan’s nude body and he wondered how she would look pregnant. With my baby? He knew he had to stop thinking like that—it would only hurt him in the long run.

  Artest wondered what Tyler was thinking about, not just then, but during past hunts. What does it feel like to go out when you know you have somebody awaiting your return?

  He rested his head against the soft seat back. He tried to relax, but he couldn’t. He knew it wasn’t just the limo that made him feel like he was going to a funeral.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Near the university were two popular nightclubs that shared a common driveway. At seven forty-five, when Rico pulled into the common driveway to the separate parking lots in the back, both The Silly Goose and Mackey’s were full.

  “I’ll call you when I’m ready,” Ian told the driver, who let them out in the back and passed them in the driveway as they walked to the front entrance.

  Jordan was surprised to see Roberta and Leeana standing next to each other, near others waiting outside who managed to not appear together.

  “Do you two know each other?” she asked as the others greeted Roberta.

  “No, but we figured out we were waiting for the same people, so we decided to wait together.”

  Jordan was pleased to see Artest leave Roberta to greet Leeana. She considered well-mannered men a real turn-on. She did the opposite by greeting Roberta. Roberta hugged her and whispered in her ear, “hang in there, he really likes you.”

  Jordan wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but something about the exchange kind of freaked her out, like when your grandmother makes a reference to having sex. She looked almost as young as Artest but somehow seemed much older.

  Mackey’s was a steakhouse that took advantage of The Silly Goose’s overflow by removing some of their tables to create a small dance floor. The atmosphere was very different from the lights and chrome next door, and the crowd tended to be a little older, along with a few impatient young people waiting for an opening on Mackey’s plexiglass floor.

  “Seven for dinner,” Tyler told the hostess, and Jordan found herself getting excited. She hadn’t been in a dining party so large since college.

  With dinner being Mackey’s main purpose, there was a lot of rushing around to pull together three small tables to accommodate such a large party.

  “We figured it would be a while before any of them showed. We might as well eat,” Artest explained.

  Like I needed an explanation for eating, Jordan thought, smiling. Food I get. Nonhumans bipedal beings, not so much.

  He held a chair for her and damn near raced Ian to the other side of the table to get to Roberta’s chair. Jordan noticed Tyler seating Jahia and Leeana. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong. I should have been trying to find me an African man. As soon as she had the thought, she looked at the three men in question. Only Tyler came close to looking like her image of an African, yet they had somehow convinced her to begin thinking of them in those terms.

  “What’s our strategy?” Roberta asked.

  “It’s just a show of strength. Reconsider messing with us—we won’t roll over,” Ian said.

  Jordan
noticed none of them seemed especially conscious of Leeana’s presence. But so far they’d said nothing that would indicate their true mission. Leeana was sitting next to her with her head buried in the menu. It wasn’t like her to appear so disinterested.

  “Leeana, let me introduce you to everybody,” Jordan said.

  She looked up and smiled.

  “You’ve met Artest; this is Tyler and his wife Jahia. And this is Roberta and Ian.”

  “Are you a couple?” she asked.

  “A couple of what?” Ian asked.