“What?” was all Ian could say.
Fox laughed. “Well said, Hunter. You have how many degrees?”
“This is about Nesta?”
Fox stood, suddenly very serious again. “Damn right this is about Nesta. I couldn’t love that child more if she were mine. If anything ever happens. . .”
“Like what? I’m not going to hurt Nesta!” Ian realized he was shouting. He looked Fox in the eye and mentally apologized. “I like her a lot, Fox.”
“How many women have you liked since you left the Congo, Issa?”
Issa was the first name Ian had used in Mali. Fox used it to remind him that he knew all there was to know. Ian had no idea how many women he’d bedded over the years, but he suspected Fox had a good working number he could quote.
“I won’t hurt her, Fox. I really care for her.”
“Ian, there is a room beyond these walls that contains nothing. Do you know what I mean?”
Trick question? Ian wondered. “There’s not anything in the room?” he offered.
“Right. Nothing. Not even color. Do you want to see it?”
“No.”
“Great, because I’m really comfortable right here.”
Ian nodded.
“I like you, Ian, I always have, but I promise you for every tear that falls from my Nesta’s eyes in sadness because of you, I will sentence you to one year in that room. There will be no question about you being the cause, and I will know the exact count. One tear, one human, earth, year.”
Ian nodded.
“Talk to me, man. There’ll be no talking, no explaining, if you ever see these walls again.”
“They’re really nice walls, Fox. Some of the most expensive wall paper I’ve ever seen.”
Fox smiled. “You’ve never even seen anything close to this stuff. But thank you for noticing. This is it, your last chance to ever talk to me about this before I start counting tears.”
“Ogo, I care about her. I don’t have any intentions of making her cry.”
“And you think I’ll give you a break because you’ve called me Ogo for the first time in four hundred years?”
“What?”
Fox laughed. “You didn’t do that on purpose?”
“No, I don’t even think of you as Ogo, never.” Ian wondered why that bothered him more than being threatened with the room.
“Then that means you’re a true warrior and you fight back even when you’re not conscious of it.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Ian said.
“I called you Issa and you called me Ogo. It was your subconscious way of telling me we both can play this name game. It was a fight; you’re a warrior. I don’t want to lose you, Ian.”
“I don’t want to be lost.”
“So you’ll stop seeing her?”
“No, I won’t. I just told you I like her. Her father invited me to spend the week at their house. I wasn’t going to accept, but you just convinced me that I should.”
Ian started choking. It felt like he’d swallowed a piece of bread or some other food item and it was slowing growing. He gagged and coughed and tried to spit. Then it immediately stopped.
“Don’t fuck with me, Ian. You’ll never win.”
“I’m sorry. Not because I did anything wrong, but because you’ve known me for so long and you think I would be foolish enough to fuck with you. I said what I said because you forced me to realize I care enough about her to risk my sanity, and you know I would go insane in that room, why else would that be your threat? Anyway, you forced me to realize I want to explore what can happen with her regardless. Now, if you were, as you say, fucking with me, and you really don’t want me with her, regardless of my feelings or hers, then put me in the room now.”
Fox smiled. “I was hoping you would say that.”
Immediately, Ian was back in the bathroom. There was no sign of Fox anywhere, and he was again nude.
Ian looked in the mirror at himself. I don’t look any different, but oh my God. He palmed a handful of cold water and splashed it in his face.
Ian turned off the bathroom lights and returned to the bedroom. With the light of a night light near the front of the room, he could see a garment bag on the unoccupied bed. He glanced at it as he returned to Nesta, but he already knew what it was—the suit Fox was wearing and he’d admired. It would be brand new and tailored to fit Ian to a tee, because that was the style of the Pale Fox.
It negated nothing Fox had said in the white room.
“I was beginning to suspect you fell in. Really, if you hadn’t started singing when you did, I was going to get up and knock.”
“You heard me singing?” Ian wondered how Fox pulled that off.
“I’d have to be deaf to not have heard you singing, Ian.”
“Nesta, your uncle who owns all the businesses, the one who might want you to work for him, what is his name?”
“I rarely use his name, I just call him Uncle or Unk, but my parents call him Ogo or Fox.
Why do you ask?”
Ian felt the lump in his throat again. It immediately disappeared, but Ian wondered if he’d created it or if Fox was still nearby. “No real reason. I was just curious. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” He wrapped his arms around her and placed his chin on the back of her neck. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
Chapter Twelve
Ian was in the white room Fox had described so vividly. There was no way to kill himself. He didn’t need to eat or eliminate—Fox had thought of everything. He was on his back with his eyes closed.
He felt something at his feet, but he didn’t move or open his eyes. He’d been fooled before. There was a time, in the beginning, when he would have welcomed the intrusion of a mouse nibbling at his toes. The sensation moved up his leg, and this time it was so real, but still he didn’t move.
Hands, soft and warm, cradled his penis. It didn’t matter—he couldn’t get hard anymore. A tongue licked down to up. This was new. Lips engulfed the head. Really wet, warm, soft and gentle lips.
He thought about getting hard. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time.
He opened his eyes. The ceiling was a faint pink. His eyes moved from the center to the edge, where ceiling met wall. Two colors, faint pink and a darker color in the same family, but still very faint. He tried to move his arms and was surprised to feel them working with him.
There was a beat in his penis that hinted at life.
The warm, wet mouth engulfed him. So real, I’m finally losing my mind. Praise God.
And then the telephone rang as loudly as he’d ever heard one ring.
“That’s my mother’s wake-up call. She won’t expect me to actually answer,” said the voice at the foot of the bed.
His heart was racing. Was he in the white room dreaming about Nesta, or was it the other way around? Ian had never been more disoriented. “Nesta?”
“Is that a question mark at the end of my name? Who else would be down here this morning?
Are you doing the maid too?” Her voice was playful.
Morning person, he thought with a silent moan. “Good morning,” he said aloud.
“Good morning, Ian, Did you sleep well and all that, and don’t you just love this way of waking up?” she said quickly. Before he could answer, she again took his head fully in her mouth.
“I think it should be the law to wake up like this,” he said. He ran his fingers through her curls that he enjoyed so much. He listened in to her thoughts. They were jubilant; this was another first for her, and she was stoked. Her enthusiasm was infectious.
He wanted to be a gentleman and tell her she didn’t need to do what she was doing, but he couldn’t. He placated himself with the thought that had he awaken first, he would have done the same for her had the thought occurred to him. He even added that if they ever had another opportunity to wake in each other’s arms, he would make it a priority. Then he relaxed and enjoyed before his thoughts ruined the gesture.
&nb
sp; “Finally,” she said aloud as he hardened.
He smiled. Everything about her made him happy.
She stopped what she was doing and started moving around. He wanted to ask her what was happening, but she spoke. “If you don’t mind,” she said as she lowered herself on him.
“Who would ever mind?”
She had her eyes closed with a smile on her face as she rode him to their finish. He never let himself look away, not even when an unexpected moan escaped from deep in his throat.
They were basking in the afterglow when the telephone rang again. This time Nesta answered.
“Good morning, Mother. Okay, I’ll go knock on his door.” Then she hung up.
“Do you think she knows?” Ian asked
“I think she does.”
“Do you think she cares?”
Nesta laughed. “As much as she asked about you last night, I think she would do you herself given half a chance.”
“Umm, she is hot.”
“Ugh, stop it.” Nesta got up. “On that note, I’m going to jump in the shower.”
“I know a great way to save water while breaking your fall.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Twenty minutes later, Nesta and Ian joined her parents in the motel lobby. Ian noticed that Dot had a big smile on her face. Kingsley was cordial, but something had changed. He knows, Ian decided. He and Dot had talked about it, and she’d told him of her suspicions. Ian could see that Kingsley still wanted to like him, wanted to be as friendly as before, but now there was a glitch.
Ian wasn’t sure how to proceed, but he decided he would be as solicitous of Nesta as possible. At least her parents could rest assured he wasn’t going to be cavalier with her feelings.
Kingsley insisted on driving his own car, which put Ian in the back seat with Nesta. And it put them in Kingsley’s constant rearview mirror scrutiny. Nesta wasn’t helping matters any by sitting with her leg touching his, holding his hand, mentally reliving the previous night (he checked), and throwing off a hormonal scent that Ian prayed her father couldn’t smell.
“Really nice ride, Kingsley,” Ian said, when he decided they would have an accident if he couldn’t come up with something to divert Kingsley’s focus.
Kingsley smiled. He loved talking about his new Cadillac XLR. Both women sighed. For the next twenty minutes Kingsley described why he chose the XLR over a foreign model like the Mercedes or BMW. The restaurant was in walking distance of the motel, but the drive took twenty minutes because Kingsley wanted Ian to get a real feel for the ride.
“Listen to this,” Kingsley said as they parked. He turned on the radio, and exquisite sound surrounded them.
“Nice,” Ian agreed, dragging out the word and nodding. Both he and Kingsley giggled.“Yes, dear, it’s very nice, but we’re here now,” Dot said. She opened her door, and Nesta followed suit. They both knew that Kingsley could sit another hour in his Bose surround sound if they didn’t make a move.
There was nothing unique about the breakfast idea on Sunday morning in Valparaiso, Indiana.
“I really didn’t expect this to be a problem,” Dot said for the second time. “Why aren’t these people in church? We would be in church if we were at home.”
They were standing in the doorway of the restaurant after leaving Kingsley’s name. There had to be at least fifteen people ahead of them waiting to be seated as tables cleared.
Ian had to leave Nesta’s side to avoid embracing her as they stood. Dot saw it, and it made her smile. She understood that kind of compulsion. She followed Ian to the glass door, where he tried to appear extremely interested in the Valparaiso landscape.
“Hey, handsome,” she said. “My husband tells me you’re going to be a houseguest this week.”
“Only if you find that acceptable,” he said with his most charming smile.
“Turn it off, Hunter—I already like you.”
“He told you?”
“I knew when you walked up to the table last night. Why else would I have said what I said about the tall blond basketball players? I wanted you to go help my husband. I was scared to death.”
“Really? You handled that well.”
“I’ve been with him thirty years. That wasn’t the first time he went to help a damsel in distress. It hasn’t happened for at least the last six or seven years, though, and he’s not the same person he was. None of us are.”
She looked at her husband. To Ian the love was written across her face, and it made her even more attractive. At the moment, Nesta was telling Kingsley something in a very animated fashion that was tickling her father almost to tears.
“He handled himself very well. I wish I could have stopped to take notes.”
She smiled and nodded. Ian wondered if she’d ever seen him fight.
“So what’s going on here, Ian? Do you like my girl?”
“Very much.”
“Do you want some advice?”
“Can I stop you?” he asked, smiling.
“No, you can’t, good point.”
“Don’t let her father know, and whatever you do, don’t tell Ogo.”
“Too late for Fox—he paid me a visit last night.”
Her expression became very serious. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, only because I, apparently, can’t die of fear.”
She nodded. “He can be very scary, but at the same time, he’s the most loving being I’ve ever known.”
“Really?”
“Really. When I think about his life, it makes me cry.”
Ian tried to think about something tragic in Fox. “I don’t see it, and I’m usually a sensitive guy.”
“Oh, Ian, think about it like this: suppose everybody you love today will only live for thirty days from the time you meet them until the day they die. And that’s not all—halfway through your loved one’s lives, their health begins to fail, and you get to watch them deteriorate and die. Then next month you get to start all over with a new loved one. I think that’s why he loves babies so much—he gets longer with them. He won’t say how long he’s lived, but I believe it’s centuries.”
“Well, that answers one of the big questions surrounding Fox: is he an immortal. But the other thing I was thinking is he gets to know his Hunters and Trackers for a long time.”
“Yup, right up until one of them dies and he has to think about who sent them out there to fight. After Ro was killed last month he spent two days in bed. Just the thought of him being still for one day is almost inconceivable. When he finally got up, he went to spend time with Sam, her husband.”
“Really?” Ian knew it didn’t make him sound too smart to keep saying “really,” but the Fox Dot was describing wasn’t the one he knew.
Kingsley’s name was called by the hostess.
“Ian, please don’t mention any of the things I said about Ogo. He’s family, and I would never do anything to hurt him.”
“Understood.”
They were taken to a booth, and both men moaned. “Is something wrong?” the hostess asked.
“We’ll take this if the alternative means waiting any longer, but my friend and I have long legs,” Kingsley said.
The young woman, probably a college student, looked at Kingsley and then Ian. Her face revealed that she hadn’t noticed Ian’s considerable allure until that moment. She looked him up and down and smiled. “Yes, you both are quite tall. Just a second.”
She went to the podium where she kept her list. By the time she returned to where they were standing, another table had been cleared. She seated them. Nesta noticed that she had to touch Ian’s shoulder as she leaned over the table to pass out the menus.
Ian looked up at Nesta and was surprised to see her glaring at him. He listened in and heard her call the hostess a bitch. He wanted to shake the woman’s hand from his shoulder, but he knew that would grant her more importance than she deserved. He looked Nesta in the eye and smiled.
“If you folks require a
nything else, ask for me, Grace. I’m here until five.”
Ian wouldn’t have looked up at her even if he wasn’t intent on showing Nesta he had eyes for no one else. He thought the hostess’s statement was dumb.
“That was strange,” Kingsley commented. “If we had a problem, wouldn’t we have it this morning while we were here? Why do we need to know what time she gets off?”
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