Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) (23 page)

I’ve never been a big fan of crying in front of people, and if I had to name the top-ten people I didn’t want to cry in front of, Jamaal would head the list. But there are some things in life you can’t control, and this particular burst of emotion was one of them.

Covering my face with my hands didn’t seem like enough, so I bent over double, pulling my knees up and burying my face against them as I hugged them. I felt the sheets sliding away from my skin, but I was too distraught to care. I imagined a manly stoic like Jamaal was appalled enough by my outburst not to notice the expanses of skin I inadvertently revealed.
These were not delicate, ladylike tears. These were wrenching, noisy, messy sobs.

I expected Jamaal to sit there and look befuddled, or maybe even to beat a hasty retreat so he didn’t have to witness my meltdown. When I felt the tentative touch of his hand on the bare skin of my back, it was almost enough to startle me into silence. However, this meltdown wasn’t about to let a sympathetic touch derail it.

Surely
now
Jamaal would retreat, I thought, but he remained beside me, his hand stroking gently up and down my back, more confident now that I hadn’t rebuffed him. For his sake—and yeah, okay, for the sake of my own dignity—I tried to get a handle on myself, but it seemed like the harder I fought to suppress the tears, the more determined they were to escape.

Jamaal slid closer to me on the bed. He slipped his arm around me and pulled me against his chest, one hand on my back, one on the back of my head. I resisted for all of about one and a half seconds, then melted against him, clinging to him as if he were a life raft in a stormy sea. He rocked me back and forth like a child, and he made no obvious attempt to get me to stop crying.

His acceptance of my tears, and his strong, silent support, warmed me from the inside out. And that was
before
he started singing to me.

I’d only heard him sing once before, but it was one of those rare moments in my life that I’d have loved to bottle up so I could experience it again. His
voice was a lovely unpolished baritone, and the tune had the soothing lilt of a lullaby, though I didn’t recognize the language.

There was a part of me that felt faintly ridiculous about cuddling up in a man’s arms, being rocked like a baby while he sang me a lullaby. That part of me was drowned out by the part that was touched and moved beyond words. Jamaal was not a man from whom I expected tenderness, and that was hardly surprising in light of the horrors of his life. But it was moments like this when I knew for sure that all the years of abuse he’d endured, and all the torments of trying to control his death magic, had not destroyed the decent human being he was destined to be, no matter how hard they had tried. There was a
reason
I felt such a strong connection to him, a reason I felt the need to reach out to him even when he tried to hold himself aloof.

My tears ran their course, slowing to sniffles and hiccups, but Jamaal didn’t let go of me, nor did he stop singing. I took as many deep breaths as I could manage. My head felt swollen and achy, my nose was completely stuffed up, and my chest hurt from the violence of my sobs. And yet for all that, I felt almost . . . peaceful.

Finally, the song ended, and I reluctantly extricated myself from Jamaal’s arms, wiping at my eyes with the backs of my hands, unable to look into his face when I felt so raw.

“That was beautiful,” I said in a scratchy whisper I could barely recognize as my own voice.

“Matilda used to sing it to me when I was very little,” he said. “I should hate it and want to burn it out of my memory, but it’s stayed with me all these years.”

Matilda had been his owner’s wife. She’d been unable to have children of her own, and had treated Jamaal like a surrogate child—right up until the time she found out her husband was Jamaal’s father. Then she’d insisted that her husband sell both Jamaal and his mother, and both their lives had gone to hell.

“What language is it?”

Jamaal chuckled, and even brief laughter from him was so rare that I had to look up at his face after all.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I think it’s Swedish or Finnish or something like that. Matilda’s family was from Scandinavia somewhere. I’m sure I’m butchering the pronunciation.”

“Whatever language it was, it was beautiful,” I told him again, still wiping at my tears.

He shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise. And possibly with the tenderness he’d just shown me. He started plucking at the string on his jeans again. I had a feeling that the discomfort was going to get to be too much for him soon, and he would retreat, leaving me alone to recover. Maybe that would have been the best thing for me, but the last thing I wanted was to be alone.

I reached out and touched the place on his chest where my head had rested. Not surprisingly, his shirt was damp.

“I’m sorry I got your shirt wet,” I murmured as I continued to skim my fingers over the wet spot.

“Nikki . . .” There was an unmistakable warning in his voice, but I didn’t feel inclined to listen, and despite the warning, he wasn’t pulling away.

“It must feel kind of clammy against your skin. Maybe you should take it off.”

He shook his head and pulled my hand away from his chest, but he couldn’t hide the flare of heat in his eyes. I’m not a ravishing beauty under the best of circumstances, and I didn’t want to know how awful I looked after a crying jag like I’d just been through. But I knew Jamaal found me attractive anyway, and I
was
sitting there in front of him wearing nothing but a bra and panties. Mismatched, and not exactly pretty, but I’ve found men rarely care about such things.

“We’ve given Sita enough fuel to feed her jealousy already,” he said, fingers still wrapped around my hand even as he verbally pushed me away.

I snorted. “Sita can bite me! And probably will, if she gets a chance.”

The dirty look Jamaal gave me suggested he didn’t find my attempt at a joke all that funny. I guess I didn’t, either, because I really didn’t look forward to having his psycho tiger even more mad at me than she already was.

“You can’t let her run your life, Jamaal.”

He tried to stand up, but I anticipated it and grabbed a handful of his shirt. He could have torn away from me easily, but he settled for a halfhearted glare instead.

“The death magic has run my life ever since I first became
Liberi,
” he growled at me. “Whether it’s contained inside me, or in the form of a tiger, it doesn’t matter. It always wins.”

He was trying to look and sound fierce and angry, but I could hear the wealth of pain under the facade. Still holding on to my handful of shirt, I got to my knees beside him so my head could be level with his as I looked into his eyes. It would have been more effective if he hadn’t turned his face away from me.

“You’ve always been fighting it solo,” I reminded him, then cupped my hand around his face so I could turn him toward me. There was fear in his eyes when he met my gaze, but there was desire, also. “You’re not in this fight alone anymore.”

“I have to be,” he said. I caressed his face, feeling the racing of his pulse beneath my fingertips. “It’s too dangerous . . .”

“After what I faced today, I’m not intimidated by a jealous cat.” We both knew that wasn’t true, of course. Only an idiot wouldn’t be afraid of a magical tiger with a grudge. “And besides, I think you’re worth fighting for.”

Jamaal closed his eyes as if those words hurt, but he leaned forward and rested his forehead against mine, so I guess they didn’t.

“I don’t want you to get hurt because of me,” he whispered, his breath tickling against my skin.

I kissed his temple and felt the shudder of desire that ripped through him. Encouraged, I started kissing my way down the side of his face. One of his
hands came to rest on my back, and one on my hip, just above the waistband of my panties. I took that as another positive sign and propped his chin on my palm so that his mouth was at the perfect angle.

His hands clamped down tighter when our lips first touched, and he held himself rigidly still, fighting his desire. But when I ran my tongue along the seam of his lips, he lost all that hard-fought control. A little moan escaped him as his mouth opened for me.

I kissed him hard and thoroughly, and he loved every minute of it. He shifted his grip so that both hands were under my butt, then effortlessly dragged me forward until I was straddling his lap, still on my knees. I pressed myself tightly against him, savoring the scent, the feel, the taste of him. When we’d kissed before, his tongue had been highly flavored by the smoke of his clove cigarettes, and I’d found it surprisingly erotic, perhaps just because clove cigarettes and Jamaal were so closely associated in my mind. I tasted them now, though the flavor was faint because he was smoking so much less.

I played with his braids while I kissed him, enjoying the coarseness of his hair contrasted with the smoothness of the beads. And all the while, I was aware of him hardening beneath me.

My hands slid out of his hair to caress the broad expanse of his back over the thin T-shirt he wore. I desperately wanted to get my hands on bare skin, but the last time we’d tried giving in to our attraction, it had all come to a screeching halt when I’d touched
his scars. I didn’t want that to happen again, so I forced myself to let Jamaal set the pace.

His hands explored my every curve while staying maddeningly clear of my erogenous zones. I wasn’t sure if he was doing it to torture me, or if even now he was fighting what was happening between us, trying to keep the distance I so badly wanted to remove.

I was determined to let Jamaal take the lead, but it was a powerful test of my self-control. Without even meaning to, I was grinding myself against him, and I had to clench my hands into fists to resist the urge to tug at his shirt. His mouth left mine as he trailed kisses down my throat. I arched into them and moaned, wanting him more than I could ever remember wanting anyone in my life.

Jamaal put his hand under my butt again, and I thought we were finally getting somewhere when he lifted me and laid me down on the bed. His body came to rest on top of mine, a warm, solid weight that might have crushed me if he weren’t partially supporting himself with his arms.

I thought I might spontaneously combust when he nudged the cup of my bra downward and sucked my nipple into the delicious heat of his mouth. My mind short-circuited with pleasure as my back arched off the bed. I forgot all about letting him set the pace, and about keeping my hands away from his scars. In that pleasure-fogged moment of carelessness, I slid my hands under Jamaal’s shirt.

If I’d been thinking rationally—or thinking at all, more like it—I might have expected Jamaal to
be so overcome by pleasure that he forgot whatever it was that made him so touchy about the scars. But either he wasn’t as lost in the pleasure as I was, or whatever emotional wound those scars triggered was far too deep to be defeated by sensual pleasure.

Whatever the reason, Jamaal’s body jerked as though I’d given him an electric shock, and every muscle in his body went tense and rigid. I desperately wanted to hold on to him, but my instincts told me that was a terrible idea, so I kept my hands to myself as he rolled off of me. He came to rest beside me on the bed, lifting his forearm to cover his eyes. His chest rose and fell with panted breaths, but the bulge in his jeans was fading before my eyes.

I had enough sexual frustration coursing through my body to set off an explosion or three, but I swallowed it down as best I could. Whatever Jamaal was going through right now was far more important than my carnal needs. I turned to face him, propping my head on my hand, but I didn’t say anything at first, giving him time to gather himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, arm still over his eyes.

“Hey, I blubbered all over you a little while ago and you wouldn’t let me apologize for
that
.”

He moved his arm so he could give me a look that was both skeptical and strangely tentative. “Not exactly in the same league.”

It was hard to shrug in the position I was in, but I gave it a shot. “It’s all emotional crap neither one of us is all that comfortable letting others see.”

“Still not the same,” he said stubbornly.

My heart ached for him, for whatever trauma had happened to him to make him so sensitive about his scars. I wanted to know what was behind it, but I knew I had to tread very delicately or risk scaring him off for good. I reached out and put my hand on his chest—over his shirt, of course—and felt the continued racing of his heart. The one thing I knew I couldn’t afford to do was ask him why having me touch the scars freaked him out so much, no matter how badly I wanted to know. He would tell me when and if he was ready, and he didn’t need me pushing at him.

“I’m sorry I let myself get carried away,” I told him. “I knew better than to touch you like that, and I had every intention of keeping my hands to myself.” I smiled at him, trying to convey the message that whatever was wrong, it was no big deal to me. “Maybe next time you should put some handcuffs on me.”

He growled and sat up. “There won’t
be
a next time,” he said, predictably. “I’m too fucked-up, Nikki. I can’t do . . . this.” He made a vague gesture with his hand, and I didn’t know whether his
this
referred to a relationship, or just sex.

“Maybe you can’t do it right now,” I said as gently as possible, “but I’m more than willing to wait.”

“You can’t fix me!”

“So you’ve said. And you’re right, I can’t. But I can be here for you whenever you decide you want to fix yourself.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.” He had closed down
entirely, the expression on his face distant and almost forbidding. If I didn’t understand so thoroughly his need to protect himself from the fear and the pain that welled inside him, I might have been hurt at being shut out like that. He slid off the other side of the bed, no longer able to look me in the eye.

I wished there were magic words I could say to make all his pain go away, or at least get him to open up enough to me to let me help him. But for now, he was out of my reach once more, and I blinked away the burning sensation of another bout of tears as he walked out of my room without another word.