“My girls,” he said. Both women walked into Kingsley’s arms like they were the reining members of the Kingsley Synchronized Walking Team and it had been prearranged.
The gesture caused a wave of heat to flow through Ian that he wasn’t able to interpret beyond happiness for the man who had this kind of love in his life. He hoped he was evolved enough for there not be an ounce of jealousy in it as well.
“How was the movie?” Ian asked as they returned to Kingsley’s room. He’d taken a seat at the table, and Nesta sat opposite him. Both Kingsley and Dot sat on the closest bed.
“Not bad, but the funniest scenes were the ones they showed in the previews,” Nesta offered.
“That’s true, good point,” Dot said.
Kingsley laughed. “Hey, wait a minute. You two went to a movie and are just now talking about it? I don’t know, Ian—I think they went out clubbing or something like that.”
“You might be right. They came back after us, and we were late.”
“Yeah, right, I’ve been biting at the bit for an opportunity to party with my mother.”
Dot crossed her legs and arms with attitude. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a fun girl.” She nudged her husband. “Tell them, Kingsley.”
“No, Daddy, don’t. TMI!” When her mother gave her an odd look, Nesta interpreted. “Too much information.”
“Can I get anybody anything from the. . .what, the soda pop machine down the hall?”
Nesta stood. “No, Daddy, I’m going back to my room, and I’m hoping Ian will be kind enough to walk me to the elevator.”
“I’ll do better than that—I’ll walk you to your door.”
She went to both parents and hugged them.
Ian bid them goodnight after inviting them to breakfast. They accepted and Dot, an early riser, offered to make wake-up calls.
As they walked to the elevator, Nesta said, “My heart jumped when you said you’ll do better than that.”
“I know it did. That’s why I said it.”
“I’ll get you for that,” she teased. “Did you see whatever you needed to see?”
“I guess I did. We went to two clubs, and things seemed fairly normal.”
“Is your job usually so easy? Or am I missing something?”
The door opened on their floor. “A little bit of both. I’m usually busier, and there have been some things you haven’t seen.”
“What?”
“I can’t talk about them, not now anyway.”
She smiled. He was thinking about future communications, and that pleased her. Earlier, in her parent’s room, she’d gotten the impression he was having trouble looking at her.
They reached her room, and he entered after her. He knew she was expecting him to stay—he could smell her desire in her pheromones. The wonderful scent was more maddening than anything to which he could compare it. How am I going to leave this alone? he asked himself.
She’d been looking for something in her garment bag and glanced up as if she heard him.
“What’s wrong, Ian?”
“Not a thing. I’m just a little tired.”
She smiled. “Then aren’t you lucky?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Between the two of us, we have four beds.”
He’d told himself he wasn’t going to sleep with her, but now, back in her room, he was feeling conflicted.
He’d never knowingly hurt another brother in any way. Ian knew there was nothing he could do if Fox decided to go nuts on him. But if he bedded Kingsley’s daughter again, now that he knew, what kind of brother was he? He looked at her while she searched in her bag; he thought she was the most perfect woman he’d ever known.
“What are you looking for?” he finally asked, hoping she hadn’t already told him and he wasn’t listening.
She re-zipped her bag and looked up, smiling. He was sitting in a chair because he didn’t trust himself on the bed. He didn’t know how to interpret her look, but damn, it was cute.
“Ian?”
“Yes, Nesta?” Just looking at her was causing him to harden. He wondered what she would think if he put the city guidebook on his lap.
She started walking toward him as she spoke. “I hadn’t planned to be with anyone while I was here. You know that?”
Ian nodded.
She stopped and took off her top. Her black lace bra looked like it was struggling to hold back her full, fetching breasts. He remembered their taste and licked his lips.
She sat on the bed and removed her shoes. Before standing she slipped off her slacks. Her bikini panties were black too. He exhaled when he realized he was holding his breath. When he’d seen she was going to remove her pants, he’d pictured her wearing a thong. He wasn’t crazy about thongs—he thought they looked uncomfortable. Her sweet little black bikini was so much sexier and a pleasant surprise. She stood again, and again she smiled her sly smile. He refused to listen in to her thoughts—he was having too much fun waiting to see what she’d do.
“I wore my only gown last night. Under normal circumstances I would wear it again. I couldn’t remember what I threw in my bag. I was hoping I had something cute in there?”
He wasn’t sure why she waited for an answer, but he nodded again.
“But then I realized we’ve already gotten beyond that madness. Haven’t we?”
“Nesta, I need. . .”
She’d reached his chair. She cupped his chin and lifted his face. “What do you need, Ian, tell me?”
As a Hunter, every one of his senses was stronger than any human’s. Her scent was so intense, it was making his blood boil. He thought it smelled like sipping sweet tea in a field of lavender. He couldn’t remember what he was going to say.
“You need?” she asked.
He looked away from her juicy body to think. His words came slowly. “Now that I’ve spent time with your father. . . .”
She put two fingers on his lips. “No, Ian, don’t say it. Don’t go there. Every guy I’ve ever crushed on has become a surrogate son to my father and my damn brother by default! I am not losing you to him. I mean it! We can stop right now—interrupt them from the sex they’re probably having, and we can call him and let him tell you that I am a grown-ass woman!”
She backed away from him and went to the telephone. She picked up the receiver. “Come over and talk to him!”
Ian jumped up and took the phone from her. He replaced it in the cradle. His head was spinning. He had no idea if she would have seriously called her father with such a question.
“Nesta. . .”
“Look at me, Ian.” She lowered the cups of her bra. “I think of myself as an adult.” She twisted the bra around and unhooked it. “Why don’t you?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Nesta.”
She stepped out of her panties. “Then don’t.”
“You never answer the way you’re supposed to.”
She laughed. “Is there a script somewhere? I didn’t get my copy.”
“See, like that answer right there.”
She threw back the bedspread on the bed they’d shared the night before. “I’m not going to beg a man to fuck me. I’m going to bed now, and because I’ve been thinking about you all night I’m horny as hell, and I’m going to have sex with or without you!”
Ian pictured that and started removing his clothes. Again, he wondered how such a young woman had learned to play men so well. Or was she just so honest it came off looking like art?
Under the covers and holding her tight, he asked, “Kingsley really did steal your crushes?”
“Yeah, but they were always older guys new to the city. They wouldn’t have had anything to do with me. My uncle has a lot of businesses in town, and he would hire guys who would stay with us for a few weeks. From about the time I was about fourteen, I would develop these big crushes on these great-looking guys.”
Ian laughed.
“No, seriously. Now that I think about it, some
of them could have been in your family.”
“So their skin was light?”
“Some of them were light, white brown and black, but still similar in a way I can’t. . .”
She stopped talking.
Ian waited for her to begin again, and when she didn’t he listened to her thoughts. She had finally put together what all the guys her uncle sent had in common. She was wondering if they were all part of something her parents had recently told her about.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine. I just had an epiphany.”
He kissed her neck. “An epiphany, uh, I was hoping for an orgasm.” He cupped her vee and inserted one, then another finger.
“That works too,” she said as she parted her legs a little to give him better access.
They moved like they had all the time in the world. They moved like they expected to be together again.
Later, as they slowly drifted to sleep, Ian felt like he was seconds from wetting himself. As he walked to the bathroom, he wondered if something was physically wrong with him, since the desire to urinate had never come on him so fast and so strong. He entered the bathroom and stood in front of the toilet. Nothing happened. He couldn’t force anything to happen. Maybe it was a dream, he told himself, but he hadn’t thought he was asleep. He turned to leave.
What he saw made his heart jump. “Fox, what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”
Fox was wearing a gray shirt and a very expensive black three-piece suit with gray pin stripes that Ian wouldn’t mind owning himself. His feet were bare.
The Pale Fox stared at him with a look in his light eyes that actually frightened Ian. It was the first time in his adult life that he really doubted his next breath.
“What it is? Do I need to return to Sacramento?”
Fox took a deep breath that Ian thought might have hurt Fox’s chest. About a third of his long dreads were dyed blue, and one of the blue ones was hanging across his brown forehead. At that moment his skin coloring was the reddish brown Ian associated with Mali babies. It was in the first two or three months of life that Ian believed the link of the ancient Dogons and Egyptians was most notable. The sun shone on the two people differently. By six months, Ian thought, the two populations looked very different. The coloring was all wrong for Fox, and for some reason, that too scared him.
“Sit down,” Fox said. The toilet was the only place to sit, but the lid was down.
He still hadn’t said anything else, but Ian was afraid to stop talking. He was afraid to treat Fox’s appearance any differently from his usual weird arrivals and disappearances. Fox walked around in a circle. The bathroom wasn’t big enough for it to look normal. Ian hoped the disappearance part was coming soon.
“No, I ‘m not leaving or disappearing. We both are,” Fox finally spoke in his usual whispery voice.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going somewhere that few Hunters have ever seen.”
“Where?”
“Some people refer to it as the underside of the river.”
“The other side of what river?”
“I said the underside, and the river is the Niger. It’s always the Niger, Ian.”
Ian felt the blood rush to his face. He had heard underside, but he’d thought he heard “other side” because underside made no sense. There was no doubt in his mind now that Fox was angry, but he had no idea why. He’s going to drown me. Ian wondered how Fox knew his thoughts about drowning. Ian had often thought it was the worst death possible.
“Blink, Ian.”
“What?”
He must have blinked while answering because he was no longer in the bathroom.
They were in a hallway. It was an extremely bright white hallway. Ian looked around but couldn’t find a source of the superior white lighting. There were no lighting fixtures of any kind present. The floor appeared to be white marble, and the walls were an ornate, cloth-like white wall paper with a satin finish. The floor was cold on his bare feet. As soon as the thought cleared his mind, he was wearing sandals and a floor-length white silk robe.
“Don’t talk, just listen.”
Ian nodded.
Fox began walking, and Ian followed. The hallway seemed to run on forever. Sometimes they would come to a three-way intersection, and Fox would take one path or the other. He clearly had a destination in mind, but there were no signs, doors, sounds, or anything tangible enough to make Ian feel they were in a real world.
“I don’t believe in sousing around in the business of my crew. I’ve learned the hard way to stay the hell out of your, I mean the collective your affairs. God gave you free will, and who am I to interfere? This is not to say I don’t worry about you all, and I hurt when I see you going down a crooked path. But for the most part I lay back and let you make that misstep while readying myself to give you a little nudge where needed. Do you understand where I’m going?”
Hell no, Ian thought, even less than usual. Fox had said not to talk, and Ian decided to remain quiet until that direction was rescinded.
“But about a month ago—” Fox continued. He stopped walking. “Maybe we should sit for a while.”
As soon as Fox made the suggestion, a pair of large, ornate door handles appeared on the wall in front of them. Ian looked at the wall. Ian couldn’t see any indication that a door was cut into the wall. The handles just seemed to be there, like low three-dimensional hanging art pieces.
Fox pushed on the handles, and the double doors opened into a large room. A ballroom. It reminded Ian of a space, on one of the college campuses he attended, where the students had weekly dances sponsored by various campus organizations. There were two plush recliners on the floor in front of them about ten feet toward the room’s center. The only color in the room came from the black chairs and a red three-legged table between them, with a circular surface about the size of a large serving platter.
Fox held out his hand to offer a seat. Ian sat. Fox looked to the wall on his right side, and it opened. A beautiful young woman entered, carrying a tray with two drinks. Ian thought she had one the most perfect bodies he’d ever seen. It was certainly easy to assess her figure—she was nude.
“Welcome back, My Lord,” she said as she bowed while placing the tray on the table. She
straightened up and asked, “Will there be anything else?”
“Not right now, thank you.”
Ian realized that Fox was speaking to her in a normal tone. It was the first time he’d ever heard Fox’s normal speaking voice. It was deep, rich, but well modulated and not at all threatening.
Both men ardently watched the young woman walk away.
“I’ll speak to you in this voice while I’m here. This is a living room—by that I mean a room that is alive. It would not let me or anybody else kill in here.”
Ian nodded, but he had no knowledge of rooms that were alive.
“About a month ago, I started getting flash visions of you in Valparaiso. I thought they meant
I should transfer you, but that made no sense because I don’t need anybody new there. Then I got
a report that there was a little increased activity. But I don’t always listen to my visions because
sometimes I’m wrong. One of my Valpo Hunters, Wade, had to attend a wedding in New
Orleans next weekend. Normally I wouldn’t even replace him, but I figured it was a good time to
send you just to see what was going to happen. I knew you weren’t in danger, so I figured it had
something to do with somebody you should meet. The more I thought about it, I remembered
how much you suffered in South America. . .”
Ian bristled—no Hunter wanted to be thought of as a person who suffers—but he didn’t
speak.
“Okay, maybe ‘suffer’ is a strong word, but I knew it was time for something new in your life. I’d never seen any evidence that you’re attracted to men, and Kitty is the only wom
an I have working in Valpo. I care deeply about her, just as I do you all, but I wouldn’t have put you with her in a million years. But I’ve never been one to understand matters of the heart. My name is not Amma, it’s Fox.”
Ian thought it interesting that he didn’t say I’m not God—i.e., Amma—and he referred to himself as Fox rather than Ogo. Then again, he thought, if I’m lucky enough to exit this place, why would I ever again question whether or not he’s a god? Only a god could bring him to another realm.
“It never dawned on me that Nesta would have any contact with you. I was negligent in my thinking. And if this ends badly, I will always share some of the blame. Keep that in mind. But by the same token, I won’t pay for it physically as you will. You may speak.”
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