Minion (37 page)

Magnificent, glorious warmth entered him and radiated out. Didn't she know that she was trying to use her body as a human shield to protect him from outside harm, and yet he was the very harm that she was grasping so tightly against her breasts?
Still she held him, her eyes siphoning a decision as she looked up, slaying him where he stood, in front of others who would never comprehend. Beautiful vision, they had named her correctly . . . still believing in him so much—and he couldn't promise not to manifest everything she abhorred.

“I wish you would just stay and be on our side.”

“I can't. Baby . . . listen—”

“It's so crazy out there and I keep seeing you hurt bad in my head. Don't leave; please . . . don't go back out into that madness. If a Templar of the Covenant came to you, then it's not too late.”

She closed her eyes and tilted her chin up and breathed deeply while shaking her head no, don't go. He raised his chin higher than hers and tried to fight the urge to close his eyes, too, and lost. Her protective squad had every right to just waste him on the spot; he knew it, but didn't care. Because at that moment, he couldn't resist breathing in her hair, and there was no force on the planet that could have stopped the tremor that she'd sent down his spine with her hand. He'd take a silver bullet for her—or whatever else they had for him, as long as it put him out of his misery.

“I gotta go,” he whispered to her, ignoring the very concerned team in his peripheral vision. They were becoming further and further away in his mind as her face tilted up toward his again and her lips parted.

“Why, Carlos? Has it always been like this? You know you have been dancing on the edge of disaster all your life, and this time, I think you're in too deep. Didn't you see the maps of Hell? Or if you don't believe, then look at what's in the newspapers. Isn't that alone enough? Where does all this lead?”

He couldn't answer her, as a power within Damali that was greater than fear, greater than self-preservation, greater than caring
what others might say, exuded from her and began seeping into his pores, and it was this thing called righteous conviction. She'd held her ground against him for five years on the point, and yet here he couldn't last five minutes in her arms . . . not with her team looking anxious and holding weapons. She had him trapped by her spoken words—truth. And he was bound by every other gift she'd been blessed with, and it began unraveling his instinct for survival, right at the foundation level . . . and replaced it with the next one up on the primal rung.

He'd opened his mouth to urge her to let him go, and she'd filled it with her own. Just like that. Right there. No argument. Her brethren were left dumbfounded. The lady that was like her mom stood paralyzed, wringing her hands. It happened so fast, a split-second reflex. Had been a long time coming—but still blew him away.

That's when his inner foundation snapped, discipline uprooted, logic vanished, and his fingers became tangled in her hair, despite the throats that cleared in the background, while his hand slid down the center of her back, and they hit a wall by the door with force, the seal between them unbroken. He had thought he'd crushed her spine, somehow, until she gasped, and that had only made him kiss her harder, swallowing the sound, her desire in his throat, his lungs, sending back his own deep reply, fueling a double-edged hunger which she answered with a hard rake down his back. Right then and there, as her nails scored his flesh, he felt himself lose it. He pulled back when his gums began to rip too fast. He took out the frustration on the cinder-block wall next to her. His cover was blown.