Oh, Snowflake.
I jabbed a finger in his chest hard enough to make him wince. “That guilt you’ve obviously been torturing yourself with?” I snapped my fingers. “Lose it. It’s not your fault.”
He hesitantly raised his head to look at me. “But–”
“No. It sucks that it happened, but we’ll figure it out.”
Now would be a good time for full disclosure about my potential demise and black magic borrowing. It would be a very emotional conversation, with lots of tears. In other words, a real mood killer.
“Sex isn’t going to wake her.” I reached for the waistband of his boxers, but he stilled my hand.
“Really.” His voice was hard. Almost as hard as his rigid shoulders.
I replayed the past ten seconds. Oh. Was he freaking kidding me? I widened my eyes theatrically. “I have a confession to make. I’ve been with someone. The things he does.” I whistled. “Buzzes, vibrates. He can go for hours.”
Rohan ducked his head. “I didn’t actually think you’d hooked up with anyone else.”
“Yeah, you did, dummy. But I didn’t.” I swallowed. “Did you?”
“No.” He unclenched my fists. “You’ve ruined me for all other women.”
“Good.” I gazed up at him through half-lowered lids. “Then where were we?”
His tender smile curled filthily and my pulse spiked up. “Turn off your brain.”
I jutted out my chin. “Why? Because you’re so amazing I don’t need to fantasize?”
He pressed his hands to his heart. “She actually listens when I speak.”
“Shut up and fuck me on your Batman blanket, Snowflake.”
He put his hands together in prayer formation looking heavenward and mouthing, “Thank you.”
Then he jumped me. My bra was slingshot and left dangling off a guitar.
Ro broke our kiss long enough to roll me over onto my belly, both of us naked, his hand playing with my clit. I pressed my ass against his erection, rubbing shamelessly against him as his lips against my throat kept time with his busy fingers. His teeth rasped against my spine as he covered me in all his naked glory. And I do mean glory.
Rohan played my body like a favorite instrument: quickening the tempo on my clit to elicit a moan, scraping his teeth against my skin to pull it hot and tight, rolling his hips slowly to leave me gasping and clutching at the blankets.
My blood fizzed under my skin. I squirmed, bending one leg to run my instep along his calf. “Ro. Please. I need to taste you.”
“Since you asked so nicely.” He rolled away from me, my body going cold at the sudden lack of contact. He stretched out on his back, one hand propped behind his head. With the other, he motioned at his erect cock. “Have at it.”
I sawed my teeth over my bottom lip. I didn’t want polite and bantery. I wanted him to lose his precious control, break down the walls still between us until the idea of being without me was unthinkable.
“Make me.”
Ro’s breath hitched, with a growl he tangled his fist in my hair, pushing me down his body.
I sucked his cock into my mouth, moaning at the musky, salty, utterly male taste of him. My magic hummed through my lips, vibrating up through his erection.
“Fuuuuck.” He shuddered, his ass bucking off the bed. His fingers tightened on my locks and his eyes were two slits of gold under a dusky sweep of lashes.
My hair fell forward blanketing out the world, my entire existence reduced to the taste and feel of him. I scraped my nails along his inner thighs, licking down his cock to suck his balls into my mouth. I needed to be overwhelmed by him.
It was the only way to convince myself this was real.
He let go of my hair and I glanced up at him. The boy looked wrecked: pupils blown out, hands fisting the blanket, his mouth half-open, swearing under his breath, and canting his hips so I could take more of him.
“Stop,” he groaned. “I have to fuck you. Now.”
I gave one last saucy suck, before sliding off his dick. “That can be arranged.”
“Can it?” He rolled me over, pinning my hands over my head.
“You got me where you want me, baby. Now what are you gonna do with me?”
“I can’t hold back. This might be rough. That okay?” His voice was strained.
I cocked my head. “How rough?” Ro laughed, low and wicked, and I arched up under him. All the yeses to rough. A furious ache built up from Cuntessa, pulsing upward, muscles tightening in its wake. “Bring it.”
He slid inside me and I sighed. I’d been scared I’d never experience that glorious sensation of Ro filling me again.
“Yes,” he murmured. He teased Cuntessa with the pad of his thumb in small circles.
The room was silent except for the slap of skin on skin, our involuntary gasps, and our forceful exhales. It wasn’t tender, it wasn’t sweet, and it wasn’t enough.
I dug my nails into his ass, pulling him against me. “Harder.”
Ro stood up, tugging my legs up into a ninety-degree angle and fucked me into the mattress. Hips snapping, he launched into this dirty patter about how every part of me felt on him. Around him. His voice wound me tighter and hotter and his musk and iron scent put me into a heady trance.
Delicious sparks of pleasure sparkled from Cuntessa all the way into my toes. With every sense, I drank him in, half-blind with lust, my eyes unfocused. I was writhing, the Batman blanket bunching up around me more and more with each thrust and the bed scraping the ground in rhythmic pounding.
My orgasm hit me with the force of a freight train. Blinding white light filled my vision and sparks crackled off my skin.
It set Ro off with a hoarse groan, his teeth gritted.
He collapsed on the bed beside me. “Lilith show up?”
“I told you, sex wouldn’t wake her.”
“Yeah, but that was using your piddly toy.” He flexed his biceps, kissing each one in turn. “I’m all man.”
“How do you live with yourself?”
He swatted my butt and I laughed, sticking my tongue out at him.
Much as I was mostly certain all this business with Lilith would be resolved successfully, if I was going to die, at least I could get fucked seven ways to Sunday in the good sense before I bit it. Round two, I was coming for you, but first, a small business matter to attend to.
I rolled off the bed.
“Come back.”
Grabbing my phone, I flopped back down beside him, snuggling into the crook of his arm. “Selfie time.”
I angled the camera to snap us from the shoulders up since I was too comfy cuddled up naked to bother getting dressed.
“We look like we’ve been having sex,” he said.
“Exactly. The perfect photo to launch Operation Unbearable Girlfriend.” I laughed. “Unbearable Girlfriend Hell. Code word: UGH.”
Ro grudgingly played along until I added stupid hashtags like “#Blessed” and “#UGot2LuvIt” at which point he tried to choke himself.
“It’s for the mission,” I said. “You know how humble I usually am.”
He started tickling me and I shrieked, getting tangled up in the covers as I tried to get away. I could have stayed there with him the rest of the day, joking, cuddling, fooling around, and crossing my fingers that we were building the foundation of normal, but his Brotherhood phone rang. Our idyll was over.
9
“Cisco, hey man. What’s up?” Rohan said.
I got dressed so as not to prance naked through the house when I retrieved my suitcases.
Ro held up a finger for me to wait. “Yeah. She’s here.”
He winced, holding the phone away from his ears as a group of men whooped, calling out my name and for me to hurry up and come meet them.
“Got a sister?” one of them yelled.
“Brother,” I said.
A bunch of “ooohs,” and a “Bastijn, you’re in luck.”
“Kane? No?” Ro asked me over the good-natured ribbing
bellowing out of the phone.
I shrugged and took the phone away from Rohan. “Boys, I’m flattered. We’ll be there in a bit, so pretty up for me.”
“Don’t you have to pretty up for us?” another asked.
“There’s one of me, and?” I threw a questioning glance at Ro and he held up five fingers. “Five of you. The odds are not in your favor.”
Ro took the phone back. “Don’t mess with my girl, Cisco. She’ll own you.” He laughed, told the Rasha he was speaking with to ‘fuck off,’ and hung up.
“I need a shower first.” I looked around the room at the twin-size bed and bookshelves packed with albums in trepidation. “Uh, am I supposed to stay here with you?”
“We’re staying in one of the guest bungalows out back. More privacy.”
“Not a pull-out couch. Not even a spare room. Entire bungalows. Plural.”
“Mom had them built for musicians to stay in residence while they were recording. There are only three.”
I patted his cheek. “It’s good I showed up when I did, because you are clearly in need of re-connecting with how the little people live.”
“You’re a regular humanitarian.”
“My compassion should be a model to all. A walking mitzvah. Where are my suitcases? I’ll freshen up, we’ll go meet the others, and then I want to pay a visit to Gary Randall.”
“Billie put them in the bungalow already. Yes. We have a full-time housekeeper.”
I mimed zipping my lips and waited for Ro to take a quick shower, after which he gave me a brief tour of the house.
There were a modest five bedrooms upstairs, each with their own bathroom that was spa quality. Maya’s room was by far, the most shocking. The woman embodied rock-and-roll, yet her bedroom was pure old Hollywood glam, from its cream walls to the French vintage bed frame, its headboard and footboard upholstered in soft pink. A crystal chandelier hung over an art deco vanity table which held an assortment of glass perfume bottles and silver-handled make-up brushes.
I clapped my hands. “It’s so girly. I love it.”
Other than the colorful living room that I’d already seen on the main floor, there was a formal dining room with a table that could easily seat twenty whose top was a solid slab of wood, a kitchen that a professional chef would weep over, and the TV room, though there was no sign of these supposed awkward photos. There was, however, more comfortable seating than in V.I.P. movie theatres with higher quality screening equipment.
I sat in one of the leather recliners and pressed every button on the console, beaming when I was rewarded with heat and vibration. “Show me the bell pull to summon the butler and I may never leave.”
“Mom got rid of that when she renovated ten years ago.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking. “Press that.” He leaned over and indicated a green button next to a tiny speaker.
“We’ll return to this later. Right now, I want to see those photos you promised me.”
“They’re in the TV room.”
I looked from the giant white screen to the mounted projector. “This isn’t it?”
“This is the screening room.”
“Uh-huh.” At this point, I expected the TV room to come complete with a stable of A-list celebrities to personally act out their filmographies for my viewing pleasure, so I was highly relieved to find a couple of beat-up couches, a normal flat screen TV, magazines and newspapers tossed on the coffee table, and family photos covering one wall.
I pretended to wipe a tear from my eye at the photo of a very young Rohan, maybe five or six, in a one-piece green spandex leotard, his hair in a mullet, and his two front teeth nowhere to be seen, standing in front of this cheesy solar system photo backdrop.
“There’s just so much to unpack here, I don’t know where to dive in.”
“I was an asteroid in the school play.”
“You were something. This is truly the greatest gift I’ve ever received.”
“I’m adorable,” he said.
“We’ve discussed this. You need to stop reading your fan boards. They’re severely biased and not leading you anywhere good.”
Ro tugged on my arm. “Enough. You’ve hit your blackmail quota for the day.”
“Sweet deluded boy. You didn’t honestly think you could show this to me and not have it be an ongoing topic of conversation, did you?”
I moved through the rest of the photos, some truly hilarious like an adolescent Ro, all goth attitude, others genuinely sweet, capturing Ro’s life with his parents on beaches, at Disneyland, and in the studio with Maya. Even at his most teen emo, he was always smiling when he was with his mom and dad. Some might consider that nerdy. Not me.
The mid-afternoon heat scorched my skin as he led me outside. Not through a door. Please. Nothing so pedestrian. We stepped past the billowing sheer white curtains in the living room, and presto chango, we’d gone from inside to outside, thanks to the retractable wall.
Shielding my eyes with one hand against the glare, I looked from the sparkling blue pool and connecting hot tub with, oh yes, a waterfall, to the enormous stainless steel grill and the teak loungers with striped cushions arrayed in groups on the pool deck, and wondered if his parents cared to adopt me.
The charming yellow adobe bungalows with red tiled roofs were situated down a short path lined with spiky cacti and carefully raked rocks.
Ro stopped in front of the closest–and smallest–one. “I hope you like it.”
It was cozy but bright, with a good flow from the living room to the open kitchen. Black leather bar stools were pushed up to the counter, while the long exterior wall was wallpapered in this 1970s-inspired, trippy purple iridescent pattern that should have been horrendous but was edgy and rock-and-roll. Kane could learn a thing or two from it.
There were fun touches like a beanbag chair with a space-age vibe, a Magic 8 Ball on the shelf which I may have squealed at, and a framed colorful painting consisting of geometric shapes, almost like a child had done it.
Hang on. I marched across the room and peered at the signature.
“This is a Kandinsky. A real Kandinsky. I saw his stuff in the Pompidou in Paris.”
Ro jammed his hands in the pockets of his board shorts and rocked back on his bare heels. “Admittedly, this may be on a bit of a different scale from most people’s homes.”
“Stop talking. You’re embarrassing yourself, Mr. One Percent. Prove you can get your hands dirty with the rest of us peasants and unpack my suitcases.” They were visible through the bedroom doorway, sitting neatly in the corner.
“Billie would have done that already.” He gave me his best innocent smile. “I can help you shower.”
I only declined his offer because we’d never make it out of here otherwise, and stepped into the bedroom to grab the outfit I’d brought especially to meet my fellow Rasha. Not only was everything neatly folded, Billie had ironed a few key pieces before hanging them up.
I poked my head out the door. “Do your parents want to adopt me?”
“Incest is frowned upon in my family.”
I scrunched up my face. “Billie ironed. I mean… I do have a really good vibrator.”
Ro whipped a pillow at me. I shrieked, ducked, and went to take my shower.
All was well for the first couple of minutes but partway through shampooing my hair, my energy leached out of me. I slid onto the river rock shower floor and pulled my knees into my chest, letting the hot spray beat down on me. My skin felt itchy and ill-fitting. Everything seemed stuck in slug mode, from the water condensation streaking the walls, to the flat white noise of the spray, like the world had lost thirty percent of sound, motion, and color.
I guess lack of a good night’s sleep, our emotionally-charged reunion, the sex, and gearing up to go meet new Rasha in potentially hostile territory had taken more out of me than I realized.
A couple of wisps had leaked out of Lilith’s magic box since Esther had checked me out. Even in my inward-seeing magic vision, they were bar
ely evident: fine, short, black threads drifting inside me.
My own magic presented as a spiderweb, stretching out from the crown of my head to my toes, and I mentally tied these threads into the heart of it, letting them fuse and evaporate, giving me an energy boost. Evil Willow may have been my favorite character on Buffy, but jonesing for dark magic to the point of destroying the world wasn’t a life goal.
Holding my own at my first visit to the L.A. chapter, was.
Re-energized, I pushed to my feet and finished my shower.
Ro was waiting with a giant fluffy towel to wrap me in but I shooed him away so I could get dressed.
My fitted black crop top had hot pink glittery letters saying “Punches like a girl. Kicks your ass.” I’d paired it with black hip hugger cargo pants that were cut off mid-calf. Thanks to a ton of gel, I’d achieved a sleek ponytail. I dusted gold eye shadow over my lids, with minimal mascara, all the better to let my red lips pop, and cat-walked into the living room in my black Doc Martins. “As the first female Rasha, am I appropriately representing?”
I got a thumbs-up and more kisses so I took that as a yes, and then it was out to his ’67 Shelby Mustang that he’d had shipped back to Los Angeles. The two-door vintage muscle car had been freshly washed, midnight blue finish and white racing stripe glinting in the daylight.
“I hate to admit it, but I missed her.”
Ro snickered. “You gave Shelby gender. I’ve broken you.”
“Yes. You win. Mazel tov.” I sank onto the passenger seat cooing, “You can’t wait for me to drive you again, can you, baby?”
“Let’s not get crazy.” Ro reached across me to his glove compartment and handed me a flyer for a fundraiser for an international children’s charity working with kids in Third World countries.
“Is this our debut as Navan?” I said. Ro scowled at me. “You prefer Rova? I can live with Rova.”
“I prefer no stupid couple name.”
“Celebrity couples get names and you count.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Deal with it.” There were a bunch of performers supporting this event. That meant press and probably fans. “Go big or go home. You’re going to have to take me shopping, Sugar Daddy.”
Nava Katz Box Set 2 Page 39
