by N. D. Jones
Unthinking, Sanura had gotten up during the night and gone in search of something of Assefa’s. She’d initially wrapped herself in his robe but thinking it would be uncomfortable to sleep in, she’d decided on one of his shirts. In spite of it being laundered, Sanura could still make out the faintest scent of her familiar. When she’d slipped it on, when it had touched her skin the same way as it had touched his, Sanura could finally sleep.
“I really did miss you,” she admitted with pure, unguarded honesty.
She kissed him again, taking what she wanted and what he always willingly gave. Moving her right hand down his battle-honed body, she removed the towel that covered his lower half, moaning in anticipation and pleasure when hand grazed steel-hard erection.
Too busy stroking him, delighting in the way he gloriously overflowed her hand, Sanura barely noticed when he’d ripped his shirt, slinging the shredded pieces to the carpeted floor. But then soft breasts met solid chest, and she was glad to be free of the encumbrance.
“Much better,” he breathed against her lips.
Yes, yes, it was.
“You aren’t wearing your moonstone.” She felt rather than heard him breathe in her gardenia scent. “You never have to wear that birthstone around me. I like you the way the gods intended.”
She pulled his face closer to hers and eagerly took possession of his lips, no longer surprised by the effect this man had on her. She wanted him, his mouth, his hands, his tongue, his everything.
“Mmm,” she purred, Assefa finding a nipple and sucking, pulling it in his wet mouth then releasing, only to swirl his tongue around the tip, teasing and playing, then sucking again. “Yes. More.”
He gave her more. Burying his face between her breasts, hands gripped, massaged, and pleasured her mounds while he kissed and nibbled, moving from one to the other, running his face over them and biting with spine-tingling nips of were-cat possession.
She hadn’t made love with Assefa since the morning before they set out with Mike to capture the adze. Between her shoulder injury and Assefa’s last-minute assignment to Alaska, they hadn’t spent much time alone together. They spoke on the phone every day, but his voice, no matter how sexy, was a poor substitute for this, the man burning her alive with his overwhelming presence, overwhelming desire, overwhelming sex appeal.
“Oh, baby, you make me feel so good. I love you so much,” Sanura softly, mindlessly moaned. But the unintended declaration hadn’t been soft enough, for her were-cat had halted his loving and was now staring at her, eyes owlish and clearly just as stunned as she by the admission.
Sanura cradled his face in her hands, suddenly wanting him to know, to understand. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you. Admittedly, I didn’t mean to blurt it out at such an embarrassing moment, but I can’t help the way you make me feel when we’re this close, when you touch me like you do, making me feel so incredible that I forget myself.”
Assefa said nothing, the way he often did when the world tilted in a direction he hadn’t anticipated. She didn’t miss the relieved look that crossed his face as he absorbed and accepted her words. Then the shock and questioning doubt were gone, and he smiled at her with white teeth and big, brown eyes. She’d never seen him smile at anyone the way he smiled at her. And, like always, Assefa managed to bring a flutter to her heart by just being himself. No pretense. No games. No false modesty.
“Thank you. I love you, too.”
That sounded so damn nice. Perfect, in fact.
She knew the grin she was giving Assefa was all witch devilment, but she didn’t care. Sanura was in too good of a mood to worry about her normal emotional shields. “Show me.”
“What?”
She moved seductively under him. “Show me how much a cat can love his witch.”
“You know, Sanura,” he said, slinking down her hot, eager body, “I’ve perfected the art of changing certain parts of my body without transforming completely.”
He kissed and bit her inner thighs. Oh, yeah, this was nice, just the way to start a morning.
Slinging the covers completely off them, Sanura reveled in seeing Assefa’s muscled body between her legs, bare, sexy ass on display, face buried between her thighs.
He kissed her center, a deep, no-foreplay type of kiss, all lips and tongue. And tongue. And tongue. And, gods, yes, and tongue. It kept going and going and going, wide and long with ridges that brought indescribable gasps of disbelief…and pleasure.
“Oh, dear g–gods, that should not be p–possible.” The words came out as a trembling jolt of decadence. “But damn—” She finished on a moan, hands going to the sheets and twisting, hips frantically thrusting to meet the firm, wet slide of his cat’s powerful tongue.
She couldn’t look anymore. Sanura could only squeeze her eyes shut and ride out the body-wracking wave. But it kept cresting, taking her higher, harder.
He was so damn deep. His hands holding her wide open for his ravenous tongue, lapping at her wetness, a starving kitten with a fresh bowl of milk, whipping whirlpools of magic between them.
And he didn’t stop, even after he brought her twice. He kept going, taking her clit into his mouth, sucking with an intensity that had her bucking and screaming. But he held her tight, held her down, made her submit.
Submit she did, unashamed and loud.
Then her mind snapped, her body in a perpetual state of brazen bliss, Assefa’s mouth taking her to Elysian Fields.
She crashed back to earth, deep, ragged breaths, overheated skin, and vibrating sex. That had been amazing. He was amazing.
Somewhere between sanity and sexual delirium, Sanura watched as Assefa rose above her, reached into the nightstand drawer, and pulled out a condom.
“I’m on the pill,” she said, her breathy, hoarse voice stopping him from sheathing. Sanura wanted nothing between them, just her, just him, just this.
“Since when?”
“When I was in the hospital.” She’d taken care of that little personal business before she was discharged, her gynecologist, a water witch, seeing to the matter.
“Thank Ra,” Assefa said, then slid home, his hard, demanding penetration worth the two-week wait. “Oh, hell yes, that’s good. So damn good. I was thinking about this the entire flight home.” He stole her gasping breath with a kiss, murmuring, “I hope you got a good night’s sleep because I’m just getting started on your sweet, sweet body.”
Then he began to move, fueling the flame, stoking the fire, bringing the bliss, trapping her mind and body in a vortex of erotic thrust and withdraw, thrust and withdraw, thrust and withdraw.
Two hours later, exhausted, sated, and aching in the most wonderful of places, Sanura had never felt so glorious. The man was thorough in the extreme, a passionate lover who took and gave, reading her every movement, moan and whimper then responding with the right amount of gentleness or roughness, whatever her body desired, pleasing both the woman and the fire spirit.
Now that she’d gorged herself on Assefa’s special dessert, her mind cleared. Stroking his chest with exploring fingers, Sanura lifted her head from his shoulder. “So, Special Agent Berber, tell me about Berber Pharmaceutical International and anything else you’ve left out of our conversations.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cynthia turned to Eric, her too-pale, sweat-drenched husband. He was getting worse. He was … dying. “We need to call Sanura. She’s the only one who can help when you get like this.”
“No, I don’t want to bother her,” he managed before his breath left him again. With a chest-rattling wheeze, Eric Garvey reclined in their bed, in a partial fetal position, where he’d been since mid-afternoon of the previous day. Struggling with each breath, he stubbornly shook his head, his defiant eyes boring into her. “I’ll be fine, I just need—”
Cynthia didn’t wait for him to finish his absurd statement. He would not be fine. He was not fine. And if she listened to Eric, Cynthia was sure, in a matter of days, she’d be a widow. Sh
e stalked away from him and to the nightstand. With desperate resolution, she picked up the phone. “I’m calling her, and that’s all there is to it.”
“I think our conversation is well overdue, Assefa, don’t you?”
From his perch on the bed, Assefa watched Sanura slip into a knee-length, red robe that she tied at the waist. She grabbed a hairbrush from an unpacked bag near the closet before venturing back to the bed. Sitting next to him, she caught his appreciative eye. He still couldn’t believe she was here, that she’d agreed, despite her initial misgivings, to move in with him.
Assefa surveyed his bedchamber. The masculine colors suited him, as did every piece of bedroom furniture he’d hand-selected. They all reflected his taste. The rest of the house was no different. But it needed a feminine touch. Sanura’s touch. She could change whatever she wanted to make herself feel as if this home was as much hers as it was his. That is if Assefa could convince her to stay after he revealed his secret.
Forcing himself to stop staring at her, he glanced down at his still-naked form and groaned. He needed to put something on. Revealing his soul would be bad enough, he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it with his boys hanging out.
He rose from the bed, took long strides across the room and to his solid hardwood Ambrosia Maple Chateau Philippe Armoire, its design inspired by 18th century artisanship. It was a birthday gift from his father, along with the matching one on the other side of the room. Assefa swung the hefty doors to the wardrobe open. One hanging rod, two shelves, and two drawers greeted him. He pulled the top drawer open and rustled inside. A few seconds later, he removed a pair of white-and-black cotton mesh boxers and put them on.
“You’re right,” he said after he returned to the bed. “We might as well have that discussion now.” Get it all out into the open and off my chest.
Sanura’s hair was wild from their bed play, long and thick and naturally gorgeous. He took the brush from her hand and proceeded to brush her hair in long, slow strokes. They were sitting so close, his hot breath finding her neck. With deliberate movements, his fingers swam through her hair just as his knee rubbed ever so enticingly against her thigh, increasing the magical energy that always flowed between them.
“I love your hair,” he whispered in her ear, massaging her scalp and nape. She turned to him, eyes an aroused shade of dark-green, lips slightly parted. In that instant, between restraint and lust, he kissed her, giving into their shared desire to touch and be touched.
Assefa ran his hands through her hair before resting them on her waist. Like alcohol and cigarettes, Sanura was intoxicating, addictive. Assefa was convinced this explained why his brain went on hiatus whenever she was in his arms, as she was now, body calling for him, luring him in, a siren in her own right. With every whimper and moan, she drew him in deeper, and Assefa knew he was in danger of burning in a fire of his own making.
He forced himself to withdraw from the kiss, and then to release Sanura. He returned her brush and crawled to the other end of the expansive bed. “I think it best I don’t touch you until we finish our talk.”
Flustered but agreeable, Sanura nodded.
Ignoring the demand from his body to finish what he’d started, Assefa propped himself against the wall, took a controlled breath and tried to figure out where to begin. Sex was such an easy method of escape and avoidance, as was running away. Yet Assefa knew he could no longer run from the truth. He didn’t want to hide from Sanura, from himself, not any longer, not today, not ever again.
“I just wanted a normal life,” he began, “and knew in order for me to get it I’d have to move away from home, away from my father. I wanted to build something that was all mine.”
“Is that the reason you founded your company?”
He wasn’t surprised she’d learned about that. In the presence of a beautiful woman, Siddig was bound to open that big, overly friendly mouth of his.
“In part, but more importantly, there was a need on the continent for safe, affordable medicine. You know as well as I do many multinational corporations and pharmaceutical companies don’t give a damn about poor people, outside of making a quick pound. They take and take, giving nothing in return but debt and woes,” he argued, his passion for his work, for the plight of the poor, the weak, the powerless coming through in the tremor of his voice.
He didn’t care. She wanted to talk. They were talking.
“I perform research others think is too costly or not worth the time and effort. I patent my medicine and sell to large pharmaceutical companies, while supplying the same medicine, free of charge, to people too impoverished to pay steep medical costs or who lack medical insurance. And there’s a special research and design department devoted to preternaturals, the gods’ first creations.” First mistakes.
“That’s honorable, but I suspect there’s more you want to tell me. I can’t imagine why you would keep that from me. If anything, most men would use such humanitarian acts as a way of wiggling their way into a woman’s good graces.”
She was giving him her doctor voice—patient, soothing, subtly pressing. Sanura would make an excellent interrogator, Assefa mused, lulling criminals into a false sense of security, encouraging them to spill all just to make her happy. And he did want to make Sanura happy.
Assefa paused, knowing what came next should’ve been shared during part one of the handfasting ritual. Yet the other two parts weren’t guaranteed, in spite of the success of the first. At any point during the mating rituals, either party could put an end to the courting, thereby dissolving the relationship. While biology and the gods deemed them soul mates, the heart wasn’t bound to follow such ordained dictates. In the end, even the gods respected the omnipotence of their creations’ hearts.
“I already told you I’m from Sudan, and about my parents and siblings.”
She nodded.
“What I didn’t tell you is that my father is the ruler of Sudan.”
Sanura’s countenance dropped. The doctor personae did nothing to hide her surprise. She shifted on the bed and began wringing her hands. Two nervous gestures Assefa had never seen from her.
“You’re the son of the President of the Republic of the Sudan? Your father is General Jahi Berber?”
The questions were one and the same, but Assefa sure as hell wasn’t going to mention the redundancy, not with the uneasy way she now stared at him.
“Yes, he’s my father.” Watching her closely, Assefa waited for the judgment.
“He’s a dictator, a warlord.” The coarseness of her voice was rich, hard and thick with bile.
And there it was. The judgment, the condemnation he knew so well.
“He’s not a dictator, and he most certainly isn’t a warlord. He doesn’t run the country by might or use the military to enforce his will. My father rules the nation with the help of his legislative cabinet. They’re all elected officials,” he defended, the way any good son would. The way he invariably had to.
He knew his response was too quick and sounded rehearsed. But he’d had a lot of practice, having always to defend and justify the Berber name, the Berber legacy. Over the years, he’d perfected comebacks for a myriad of reactions, the typical ones ranging from absolute horror and revulsion to morbid curiosity and intrigue, to contemptible greed and sympathy.
“Elected in name only,” Sanura said with a brittle tone, taking the horror and revulsion route. “At most, the Sudan is an oligarchy. But it’s most definitely not a democratic state.”
Sanura paused, shook her head, and then gave Assefa a pensive look. A few seconds later, she picked up her moral argument, firmly rooted on her soapbox. “Sudan doesn’t even allow full-humans within its borders. They were all thrown out, and those who refused to leave were killed. From what I understand, they didn’t even know why they were being singled out.”
As if she truly understood anything. Assefa had heard this all before. Hell, he could probably rattle off her objections better than she could. And women wondered w
hy men kept their damn secrets. Who in their right mind would subject themselves to such ethical snobbery?
“That happened over fifty years ago,” he shot back, tense, irritable. “You can’t blame my father for that, Sanura. He was only a boy, too young to be held responsible for the actions of his father.”
“But he hasn’t rescinded the decree.”
The need to have her comprehend his precarious position and the urge to defend his father waged within Assefa. In truth, he’d made the same arguments himself, had the exact thoughts. But it was decidedly different to hear his witch, his mate-to-be spit them at him. To have his family strung up on a rack and flogged for old crimes.
“While I don’t agree with banning full-humans from Sudan or how it was done, I can understand my grandfather’s motivation.”
“What? I can’t believe you would support such a thing. I can’t—”
“We shouldn’t have to stalk around in the dark, hiding our true selves from full-humans. Don’t we have a right to stand in the light the way they do? That’s what Sudan offers to our kind, Sanura. It’s a place where witches can openly practice magic and were-cats can roam the land without fear of being shot or carted off to the nearest zoo. For all of our history of human rights abuses, Sudan is the only place preternaturals can openly be themselves. And that’s the real reason my father never rescinded the decree.”
Assefa was so tired of this, tired of the inevitable bullshit that came with his name, his family. Tired of not being able to live his life the way he wanted. Tired of the gods shielding full-humans while making their first creations hide in plain sight. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
“This country,” Assefa continued, “along with the islands of the Caribbean and England, were the residences of thousands of Africans stolen from their homes. Thousands more died on the wretched trek from their villages to the coast and the so-called Middle Passage. Full-humans did that, Sanura. Europeans, with the aid of some Africans, invaded, killed and pillaged, burning villages and carting off people, destroying families. And for what? Guns? Alcohol? Fabric? Free labor?”
