“No, not yet,” I whimpered, pushing him away gently. It was all I could do not to lose myself to passion, but tonight I wanted something else, something intimate.
“No?” his voice teased.
“Together,” I whispered.
He nodded and brought my body close to him. Our eyes locked as he slowly slid into me. I gasped with the sensation, my hands running up and down his smooth pale skin. There was so much of him to touch, so many parts of his body my hands itched to explore. Even as he stroked in and out of me, I wondered at it all, at how any one man could be so amazing. I was so wrapped up in my explorations that the pleasure caught me off guard.
My breath caught as my muscles contracted, I called his name, but Jakob was lost in his own bliss. I reached up to him and brought his face near mine kissing him with our bodies close. He rolled, pulling me on top of him, changing the way he felt inside me. It was too much, my body wouldn’t let me go slow, wouldn’t let me savor this. The pleasure ripped from my body convulsing around him as he finished beneath me.
“Was that what you wanted?” he asked, his lips brushing against my ear lobe as he spoke.
“Pretty much,” I teased between pants.
“Really? Because we could try again, you know, until we get it right.”
Too exhausted to think, I laughed in reply.
****
I was on the edge of sleep, half awake, trying to figure out what had woken me. Jakob wasn’t in bed, and I could hear talking in the kitchen. I pulled on my pants and his shirt before I stumbled into the hallway where the voices became clearer.
“Do I need to tell you to stop ignoring Mallory when E’s around?” Mark’s voice was mirthful.
“No.”
“Then I’ll assume I don’t need to mention that Mallory’s feeling a wee bit threatened by E?”
“No.”
“Or that E, while she’s wonderful, isn’t the little girl you raised anymore?” There was a loud crash, and I raced into the kitchen. Mark was standing in front of the refrigerator straightening his shirt, the magnets that usually held a dozen recipes Jakob was waiting to try were all over the floor. The cookbooks normally lined up on top of the refrigerator covered the floor like earthquake victims. Jakob was in front of Mark, his face a mask of rage. Obviously I had missed the part where Jakob threw him up against the appliance.
“You wouldn’t be upset if I wasn’t right.” He grinned at Jakob and then turned to me. “Don’t let your heart race too much for me, he’ll get the wrong idea about us and then—”
“Mark.” Jakob’s voice cut like a knife. A thin line of blood formed across Mark’s mouth like he’d been smacked hard enough to split his lip.
“You really are having trouble with this aren’t you?” He dabbed at the blood before it had a chance to run down. “Deal with it, Jakob, because the woman you’re about to lose is worth it. Good night, Mallory.” Mark blew me a kiss as he walked out grinning.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Jakob took a moment to get himself under control and then turned to me. “Am I losing you?”
“No,” I hesitated. “I mean, unless you want to be. I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but maybe you do. Shit, I thought we had settled this.” I turned away from him to try and think. I’d been happily asleep a few minutes ago, and now Jakob was beating Mark up over E. Or over me, maybe over me, I wasn’t sure which remark upset him. I stepped forward in a daze thinking I’d sit down to sort it all out; instead I walked into Jakob’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me.
“I can’t lose you. I was alone for too long before I found you. Now that I have you, now that I love you this way, I can’t lose you.” He spoke above my head, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew from his tone that Mark had gotten to him. A tiny piece of me was happy about that.
“Then don’t. Tell me why you got so upset at Mark over her and not me?”
“Sometimes I think the two of them, the way they act together…” He stopped himself. “It’s silly and not worth mentioning. But you, you’re what matters, and I promised you we wouldn’t talk about this.”
“We can if we need to. Do we need to?” I was tired of talking about it, tired of hearing about it. He told me he loved me; he promised not to ignore me. I wanted the issue to be done.
“No. I love you, if you still love me, the rest of it doesn’t matter.” He tilted my head up to look at him.
“Of course I still love you,” I said kissing him fiercely. “It’ll take a hell of a lot more than one bad dinner for that to change.”
****
Sleeping in on Saturday was a luxury I only got to enjoy every other weekend. I had worked last Saturday, ending a day of domestic violence (witch v. troll), shoplifting (imp), and a host of other normal crimes committed by not so normal citizens before the arson case where I met E. I gave myself an extra half an hour of indulgence out of respect for how nasty that Saturday was, finally rolling away from Jakob’s mostly dead form a little after eleven. I didn’t have clothes at Jakob’s place, so I pulled my jeans from last night with one of his shirts and wandered into the kitchen.
It was fall, so the house was stocked with apples, pears, and plums. He couldn’t eat, but that didn’t stop Jakob’s obsession with food. Unfortunately, his idea of a decadent culinary extravagance was fresh fruit not the sinful chocolate creations I would have chosen. I crunched a tart pear while I lay on the couch wondering what I could do with myself until he woke up.
My eyes fell on the box of E memorabilia; I’d asked for a weekend of not talking about her, but now I was curious. I pulled the lid off and rummaged around. A packet of letters caught me, the envelopes went in order, five of one type of stationary, then six or eight of another, with postcards tucked in between. They were arranged chronologically thanks to my boyfriend and his adorable organization skills. I stripped the rubber band off and started at the back.
Farthest back were postcards of cartoon characters and national monuments, the stuff of summer trips. This was E in grade school, with big looping script and i’s dotted with hearts. The best part of the Grand Canyon was the camp fire which she pronounced “awesome” and the donkey ride down the side of the canyon was “lame.” Mikey was annoying, Mom and Dad were fine. I guessed Mikey was her baby brother from the photos. The next family trip was Washington D.C. where she looked up names for Jakob on the Wall. I stopped to dig through the box to find the rubbings and wondered about the men listed there. There were other postcards from similar family trips, Disney World, the Alamo, and all the big national parks.
I was happy to move into the letters. E had gone to an all girls’ college outside of Atlanta. The first of the letters came on white stationary rimmed in purple, the school colors. She liked her roommate, enjoyed her classes, and settled in. Things got rough around November of her freshman year and the near weekly letters got dark. One of the girls in the dorm had found out she was witch and harassed her about it. The bullying was the sort of thing I used to address as a social worker, and it was hard to read through her spiral into depression. Then E fell in love with a dashing fire witch named Azhar, who put a stop to the bullying before he went off to war. With Jakob’s help she tracked him down in Europe. I was reading about their happiness when my cell phone went off interrupting my voyeurism.
“This is Mors.”
“It’s Saturday. Do you really need to answer the phone that way?” Anna’s breathy voice condemned me.
“Hey Anna.” I ignored her question. “What goes on?”
“Not much, are you doing anything?”
“Ummmm.” Reading private letters I shouldn’t be. “Reading some chick lit.”
“Anything good?”
“It’s just getting good. Do you think International Relations is a cop out major, like something you pick when you can’t pick anything else?”
“How would I know? I’m a model. My formal education ended at high school.”
I sucked in my breath in shock before I realized she could hear me.
“You’re okay with me being a lesbian but being a high school graduate gets you? I had no idea you were an education snob.”
“I’m not a snob. I just think everyone needs a college degree.”
“Everyone except models, actors, tradesman, craftsman, the list goes on.”
“You write for the paper part time. Doesn’t that mean you need a degree?”
“I write about fashion. I’ve got years on the runway; no one cares about a degree.”
“Wow, you never struck me as…” I stopped myself. Dumb was about to come out of my mouth. “What makes you call?”
“I wanted to remind you about tonight.”
“What’s tonight?”
“The fair, for our church, for the big fund raiser.”
“That’s tonight?” Anna had told me about it, and Phoebe had given me a flyer, but I’d still forgotten. I wondered how all the other crime fighters remembered these things.
“Today and tonight, but I know better than to invite you to things in the middle of the afternoon.”
“You’re such a smart girl. It’s a shame you never got your degree.”
“Very funny, Mal, really, hilarious. So you’ll be there?”
“With bells on, figuratively that is, they don’t still bell witches at your church do they?”
“How can you be so dumb with your fancy degree?” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes.
“Anything else going on?”
“Let’s see Raya sent me a personal message through your friend, my world is falling apart, and the fair, which I expect to see you at, no that about covers it.”
“What was the message? Do I want to know how it came to you?” I’d never gotten a personal message from any god. I’d never even gotten an impersonal message from a god.
“You don’t want to know how it came to me, and the message was stuff I already knew.”
“Stuff you already knew, meaning?” I hated playing guessing games with her. If she hadn’t wanted to talk about, it she wouldn’t have mentioned it, but Anna, always the model, always in charge, wanted me to ask about it.
“Raya hates weakness, not telling Dad who I love is weakness.”
“Oh my.”
“Exactly, so for now I’m worrying about the fair. I’ll deal with the other stuff later.”
“Is that really a good idea? I mean if she took the time to send you someone.” I cringed, I should have said a message, not someone.
“I doubt it, but I’m not ready to come out to the world yet. It’s weird enough having you know and the way E guessed…it scared the hell out of me. So for now, I’m going to worry about tonight.”
“Sounds good, I’ll see you after sunset.”
“Great, and don’t forget to bring money. This is for charity, you know.”
“Lots of money—got it. Call me if you need me.” I hung up the cell and dove back into the letters. I was deeply involved in liberty weekends on the coast and evening in sidewalk cafés when Jakob caught me.
“Good reading?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. He’d managed to get half dressed in jeans and an unbuttoned shirt but his blond hair was still standing on end from sleep.
“I was… I mean… I just…” I stammered, then decided to go with the truth. “Yes. What happens with her and Azhar?”
“I’m afraid my dear lover asked me not to discuss that subject any longer this weekend.”
“That’s cruel.”
“You’ll have to keep reading.” He grinned and kissed me on the forehead. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Italian,” I said, inspired by E’s letters.
“You had Italian last night,” he called on his way to the kitchen.
“Yours will be better.”
He grinned with the compliment but then called from the kitchen. “Don’t get any ideas about dark skinned men with dark eyes.”
“You mean Azhar? There’s no description in here.”
“Check the box; there were photos,” he called again. I dug furiously inside the box finally finding them in an odd sized envelope at the bottom. E with her black hair reaching the middle of her back and standing beside her, laughing with her, the man she loved. He was dark skinned, his hair in a high and tight. Next to him E looked tiny, smaller than she seemed arguing with Mark even though I was sure she was still the same height. The photos were all over Italy, but my favorite was taken in front of a fountain somewhere. Her white halter dress was blowing in a breeze that was captured forever, and he was in uniform, casual with his arm around her waist. She was laughing, and he was looking at her, completely in love.
“Do you look at me this way?” I asked Jakob.
“Which way?”
I got up from the couch and went into the kitchen to show him the photo. “Like you’re totally in love with me, like this.”
“We’ll have to go to Italy and take a picture to find out.”
“Just tell me when,” I agreed with a quick kiss, then it was back to the couch and reading. She came home, and her letters to Jakob got shorter. She apologized and complained about how her hand ached after writing Azhar. The apologies stopped after a few weeks; with only half the correspondence, I had to guess Jakob had told her not to worry. Then in late March her letters to Azhar started coming back to her. She called but couldn’t get him. I started to worry, and a letter written without any of her normal happiness confirmed my worst fears. It was wrapped around something on army stationary. He’d died in the Morality War, like a lot of other soldiers, but the rest of the letters were heartbreaking. It was impossible to read E’s words and not feel for the pain she was going through. I sniffed and found Jakob standing next to me with a handkerchief.
“He died?” I asked, crying fairly freely.
Jakob nodded.
“And he stayed dead? I mean healers, and all the things we have in this world, and he died?” Jakob nodded again. “That’s not fair.”
He sat down on the couch and wrapped me in his arms. “It never is, my love.”
I reached up and kissed him through my tears. E had lost her love, but I hadn’t lost mine. I moved the letters to the table without taking my lips off him. His chest was pale and cold against me. I welcomed the feeling. It meant he was stronger than the man I’d been reading about all afternoon. Jakob would never die from a bullet wound or from a car accident like my first husband. I hadn’t been grateful enough for that. I kissed down his cold chest while my fingers worked at the button fly of his jeans. My tongue reached the tight blond curls that started beneath his belly button. I was always entranced by these blonder hairs, the way they spread out along his body, lighter than the hair everyone else in the world saw and finer too. I brushed my cheek against their softness then moved my lips to the harder parts of him.
I swirled my tongue around him and felt his muscles tense. I let him go and licked a line on his body up to his ear.
“Take me to bed. I want you,” I whispered my voice deep with desire.
He nodded and picked me up off the couch, carrying me into the bedroom as I nibbled gently on his earlobe.
He smiled and set me down on the bed with a kiss. His kiss went on while he took off my shirt, but when I was half naked in front of him his mouth sought other places. He kissed down my neck and throat, finally reaching the swell of my breast. His tongue found my nipple, already hard from his attentions and made it harder still, teasing the sensitive flesh with his tongue. I leaned back, feeling the heat between my legs begin to build. I didn’t want to wait any more.
I pressed my body against him and wiggled off my pants; he replaced his tongue with his hand and used the other hand to help me get free of them. I captured him for another kiss, stripping his clothes off with brutal efficiency. Suddenly we were both naked, and I could feel him hard against me. He moved away from me to begin his kisses at my belly, while his hands slid under my ass
to lift me up. I arched my back and closed my eyes to wait for the sensation. He didn’t disappoint me; in an instant his tongue moved against my most sensitive flesh. He moved slowly, deliberately stroking me, while his fingers danced inside me. Even as the room began to narrow, I begged him for more, soon there was nothing left but the pulsing heat between my legs, nothing mattered in the world except that he keep doing what he was doing. I screamed and pushed myself into his mouth as the pleasure overtook me.
A second later the room came back into focus as I panted. “Should I give you a minute to catch your breath?” he teased, and instead of responding, I threw him onto the bed beside me. He was strong but willing to be moved, and a minute later I was on top of him, our bodies close. I kissed him deeply, rubbing my chest along his; a thousand parts of me brushed him, and the sensation stole my senses. I pressed against him, moving slowly while he asked for more in that Old German we shared in our intimate moments. I tilted my body backwards, feeling him at the new angle, appreciating the new pleasure it provided.
He surprised me and sat up to embrace me. We sat, curled together, our bodies one, and he took control. He pressed his body into me in a tantalizing rhythm while I watched the emotions play across his face. He called my name, burying himself deep inside me where I wanted him so desperately. I pressed down to meet his thrust as my own passion begin to build again. In an instant I forgot him and moved to satisfy my own desire. I buried my face against him and called his name; kissing the sweet flesh between shoulder and neck then biting down as the he erupted inside me and my own body gave way to shattering release.
We held each other in the center of the bed, still joined. I panted, desperate for air and extraordinarily jealous he didn’t need to breathe.
“I see I should have given you that minute,” he said.
I reached down with my hand to lightly smack his ass. “I think you’ve given me everything I needed, twice,” I replied with a satisfied grin.
“It was my pleasure,” he said, and we both laughed. “Should I bring you dinner in bed?”
Fire in Her Blood Page 9