Wildfire Gospel (Habitat) (38 page)

“No. I don’t want us to ever break up.” I pressed my lips against hers and we kissed the whole ride until the hotel, until our lips grew numb and swollen.

I couldn’t describe what the hotel room looked like back then if someone had a gun inside of my mouth and threatened to pull the trigger. But I could expound on La La’s silk vanilla panties that hugged the treasure between her thighs just right in the candle light, enough to make my fangs push through my gums and my claws rip out of my fingertips.

“Are you nervous?” I’d been licking and sucking on her nipples for ages. She writhed with each lapping and whispered my name over and over.

“MeShee, please.”

“Are you sure?” My words were unsteady pants.

“It’s all I dream about.”

“Tell me what you imagine.” I glided my hands down her flat stomach and slipped my fingers under her panties. Her center had flooded with her arousal. I purred so loud it rocked the bed and probably could be heard in the hotel room next to us.

Let’s lick her there.
Cheetah purred too. He hadn’t said much the whole time, but he’d been thinking the same thing I was. I pulled those wet panties away and journeyed down to her center, hunger for just the taste of her. “What do you see me doing, La La?”

“You ravish me and then it’s all ecstasy.”

Ravish?

I tensed and looked up at her from between her legs. “Huh?”

“Like in the books. The pirates catch the Mermaids, ravish their bodies, and the next thing you know the Mermaid is just caught up in this crazy sea of ecstasy.”

Fear ran through my veins.

Sea of ecstasy? Could I do that? I’m not a pirate. She had to know that. This is my first time too.

Let me try.
Cheetah offered.
I will mount her like no other.

No. No. I think I’ve got it.

My sexual education had been Graham sitting my twelve-year-old self down in the kitchen with a banana, strawberry, and a big hole carved in a watermelon. He’d caught me with a nudey magazine, groaned out loud in annoyance, and told me to go to the kitchen.

“You’ll be thirteen soon. It’s time you know about sex. This is your penis.” He showed me the banana. “This hole in the watermelon is the woman’s vagina.”

“What’s the strawberry?” I pointed to the little solitary fruit as it lay next to the watermelon.

“That’s the woman’s clitoris, but we’ll get into that later.” He rubbed his beard. “That may be too much for you right now, anyway. Too advanced. Let’s just focus on the basics. You put the banana in here, but remember, do not put it in before she gives you permission.” He talked more, but my horrified gaze remained on the strawberry. He blew out a long breath. “What? You’re not even paying attention. What is on your mind?”

My eyes widened in fear as I pointed to the strawberry. The nudey magazine that I’d stolen only showed breasts, big ones, small ones, and little itty bitty ones, but none showed females with their underwear off. I had no idea about strawberries and watermelons. “Why isn’t their clitoris attached to their bodies? Where do they usually put it? Do males have attachments too? Am I missing something? Will the strawberry be with them when we have sex or will it be in their pockets? How do I get them to take it out? What—”

“Dear God, stop! I can’t take any more of this stupidity.” Graham rubbed his eyes. “Stop stealing nudey magazines and looking at pictures you don’t understand. I’m going to get a drink. Perhaps, we should try this again later next year. I guess right now all you should really know is this.” He pushed the banana right in front of me and pulled out a butcher knife from under the table. “If you just happen to get permission from my daughter, to enter her … watermelon. This is what I will do.” He hacked off the banana into two even pieces. “But other females’ watermelons and strawberries are just fine. Okay?”

Shaking, I stared at the split banana. “Okay, Graham.”

“I’m hungry. You want that banana?” He got up.

“No.” I never ate another banana again. “You can have the strawberries and watermelon too. I don’t like fruit.”

He laughed. “Remember this if you don’t remember anything else from this lesson. If you want the female to come back after the first time, you better get a good liking to the taste of fruit, especially strawberries.”

Flabbergasted, I sat there with no idea what he was talking about, but that summer I ate a whole bunch of bowls of strawberries, hoping to figure out the answer.

Back in the hotel, La La moaned and bucked her hips into my face, “MeShee!”

I played with La La’s strawberry, licking that warm flesh and circling my tongue around it ever so gently.

Dear Shango. She’s so sweet.

My body drummed with need. I would explode if I didn’t get inside of her soon. She screamed in ecstasy. Flames burst out of her and burnt the shit out of my face. I fell back, rolling off the bed and slapping my head.

“Oh no!” La La yelled.

The flames disappeared just like that, which told me she’d taken them away. My skin itched as the damaged flesh crumbled away to reveal new skin.

“I’m okay.” I held my hands up in the air. “I’m fine.”

“We can’t do this if I’m going to hurt you and—”

I charged for her. She shrieked and dove to the other side of the bed. She was too slow and I hungered for her too much. I caught her foot right a she attempted to dodge me.

“Wait, MeShee.” She shoved me away, but it did nothing, but get a growl. Her breasts jiggled, those points so erect and wet from my tongue. I whimpered. The heat of my Season vibrated through my body. I had to have her, in any way. The need for release clamped down on my lungs and made it hard to breath. My fangs erupted. The tip of my erection ached so bad my gums hurt. My skin rippled. Sweat dripped from my forehead.

Mount her!
Cheetah roared.

“We should wait,” she said.

“Wait?” I whispered through my fangs. “Please, don’t make me wait anymore. Do you know how long I’ve been inhaling your scent and getting an erection? Do you know how many nights I lay next to you in your bed and restrained cheetah from taking control of my body and having his way with you? My beast and I crave you too much right now to wait. I don’t give a damn how much you burn me.”

She opened her mouth in shock. “I’m just saying that I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“I don’t care.” I picked her up, placed her back down on the bed, got on top of her, and spread those sexy legs.

“Are you sure?” Fire filled her eyes as she watched me pull out my hungry length. “When you … do the things that you do, it’s so hard to keep control of my fire.”

“Then don’t control it.”

“Don’t?”

I entered her, inch by deliciously warm inch. “Don’t.”

By the end of the night, La La had to call an emergency vehicle due to me being covered in fourth degree burns, so bad I couldn’t heal them right away on my own. La La cried the whole time. “MeShee this is serious. Stop grinning and purring! You’re hurt.”

I couldn’t talk because my tongue was a crisp husk as well as my erection, but damn if I couldn’t stop grinning. It was the best sex of my life.

Hot.
Cheetah purred right along with me.

Oh yes.

I like.
Cheetah said before chasing his burnt up tail into my core.

Deep in the wet soil within Graham’s backyard, the earth glowed a caramel light. I opened my eyes as much as I could buried so deep and tightened my hold around my teddy bear. My body flared with color, my color, my old complexion. La La called it caramel or sometimes golden. My scalp itched, but I couldn’t move my hands to scratch it. Seconds later, I didn’t have to. Hair pushed up through my head and fell down in corkscrew curls to my shoulders. A tear fell from my eye.

I’m back. I’m me again.

I still didn’t know what that meant. I would look like MeShack, but how much of me would I still be? Could I fight for XO and still go to school part-time? What about the frat? They would never accept me if they ever discovered what I was. None of the Shifters I knew would. The band probably wouldn’t care. They just wanted to play music and we were doing really well these days.

Will we shift again?
Cheetah’s head lifted.

I don’t know. We’ll have to take it day by day and ask Graham.

A euphoric feeling still blanketed me as a drowning weariness took over my body. I guess darkening my skin and growing my hair and used up a lot of energy. I could sleep for days. Yawning, I closed my eyes and rested in the soil. Thunder boomed up above and crackled in the heavens. Rain would come next. I enjoyed its cool wetness as it trickled down my newly tinted skin. I had to smile before I passed out, just one more time.

Things were finally working out.

Lanore

The Prime sat in his new nest high above my king size bed in my beautiful new bedroom. It was made of paint brushes, Vee’s new silverware, crumpled up newspapers used in the move, and the black gunk he kept vomiting out of his mouth and patting down to hold it all together. He was pretty proud of it. I thanked whatever god was up above that my comic books weren’t near. Ben had painted a stick figure painting of him next to Zulu, MeShack, and me. At the bottom, he’d written in scribbled letters,
my family
.

A huge ladder sat next to the nest. Zulu’s trustee fairy practitioner, Harmony stood on top of it. “Prime, look at me.”

He formed those black lips into a big frown.

“You will not eat this stick. I want you to say
aww
. Open your mouth so I can see down your throat and that is it.”

“And what will this accomplish?” Prime flicked the stick with his huge fingers. “I would rather eat it. Then it would have purpose. Have you considered this tool’s feelings of neglect?”

“It’s just a … just open your mouth.” Her voice squeaked.

I snapped my fingers in the air. “Prime, please listen to Harmony or you won’t get what I promised.”

He grumbled. “It better be a big fat joint of the good stuff.”

Harmony glared at me and raised one red eyebrow.

I cleared my throat. “He means joint venture into a buffet … of food.”

“That being said,” She stuck the stick on his tongue. He widened his mouth. She shined a light in his mouth, “Prime should not be ingesting or smoking any drugs. It’s not good for him.”

“Okay.” I pulled out my phone and headed for the hallway.

“Miss Vesta!” she called after me.

For such a tiny woman she sure is bossy.

“Yes?” I ducked my head back into the room.

“We’ll need to discuss your test results.”

I checked my watch. “Can we keep this down to five or ten minutes?”

She opened her mouth and looked taken aback. “Well yes. I can keep it down even shorter since you clearly have no time for your own health.”

“Thanks.” I winked at her, closed the door, and could have sworn I heard a few squeaky curses come from the other end.

The ride back from Nona’s apartment had been silent. Scary quiet. Zulu refused to discuss Nona or look into Cassie’s box. I wasn’t sure I wanted to rehash it all either. Harmony waited for us in the living room as soon as we entered the new place. Although she wanted to talk to me, I asked her to check the weird marks on Zulu’s body. He’d stayed silent the whole time, only answering with a yes or no, or then not responding at all. Tears fell from his eyes, but I was too scared to ask him what was on his mind. Too much had happened to him and us, he needed a break. In fact, we all needed a freaking break.

If I hadn’t been so angry with him, I would’ve held him, but the rage kept me back, while my heart made me stay in the room to make sure Harmony took care of him.

She did a few tests on his marks. He screamed in pain. It was hard to watch him suffer, but I ended up not having to watch for too long. So full of sorrow, Zulu gazed at me one more time and went into himself in the middle of the exam. Next thing I knew, Zulu had left. Prime returned and made a hasty nest out of paintbrushes above my bed, before allowing Harmony to finish her exam.

He claimed he needed to rest after the exam. I planned on taking one too, while I stood in the hallway outside of my bedroom and dialed Dad’s number.

“Hello?” he said and had to know it was me. I doubted anyone else called.

“Daddy?”

“Oh. It’s Daddy now.” Annoyance laced his voice. “What do you want?”

I rolled my eyes. “Can you tell if a person has tainted skin just from a photograph?”

“I’ve been in the skin business longer than most Vampires in this habitat have been alive. Of course I can tell tainted skin on a photograph. Why would you ask a silly question like that?”

“How would I know? Maybe it looks different on film.”

Chains jingled on his end of the phone.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

That didn’t sound like nothing.

I sighed. “If I have someone bring photographs of different people by, will you let me know which one is tainted and which one isn’t? I’m going to have several people guard all of Cora Pondo’s properties and take pictures of everyone going in and out. I figure she has to have a few faces she uses more than once.”

That weird noise sounded on his end again, but he simply said, “That makes sense she would do that. When I used to change my skins, pre-habitat years, I had five ones I used all the time. I might have worn a new one every now and again to stir things up, but I had five identities that I always went back to.”

“Good. I’m hoping that’s the same with Cora Pondo aka Mother Earth.”

“Is that all?”

“You’re acting jumpy.” I chewed the inside of my lip.

“I’m not.”

“Is Angel there?”

“No. She already left and went looking for you.” Yet, jingling chains came again. He cursed under his breath. The sound of a door closing came next. “Do you need anything else?”

I waited on the line for more sounds as if the wait could tell me if he was being deceitful or not. Dad used chains only two times, when he was keeping someone in the shed for another person, sort of like a bounty. The other time was when he was preparing to cut them for their skin.

“If I can’t find Angel, then I’m coming your way.”

“First of all, have I ever hurt any of your friends?”

“No.”

“And they’ve all had good skin too, right?”

“True.”

“So then stop worrying. Second of all, you threaten me again and come to this house, you make sure you have an army with you, little girl.” He hung up.

I blew out air and dialed him back.

Maybe, it isn’t fair to always accuse him of things.

“Yes, Lanore,” he hissed.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I’m just a bit on edge.”

He paused for a few seconds. “I’m sorry for my behavior out in the rain. You were being a dumbass and I don’t know how to deal with it when you act that way. I shouldn’t have kicked you or dragged you by your hair, but you were being a dumbass.”

“Ooo-kay.” I twisted my lips to the side. “I accept your apology.”

“Have you used any more of that demon fire?”

“No,” I groaned.

“Don’t. Wait until I’ve had more time to study it.”

“I already told you I wouldn’t.”

“Are you back with him?”

“No. I’m just helping him heal.”

“And what about MeShack?”

“He’ll always be my friend, but I can never trust him again after he cheated on me.”

He laughed. “And you think those two will accept that you don’t want them and move on?”

I had no response.

“Here’s my last bit of advice to you. Do you remember the science experiment I helped you with in eighth grade?”

“The one I failed?”

“The teacher was a speciest asshole that didn’t like Mixbreeds. It had nothing to do with your experiment.”

“Yes. I remember it. You had me paint a cage brown and place twenty Pixies in there, ten males and females. All of them were the same shade and color with black skin and white wings, except their eyes. Some had brown ones, a few had different colors. Other than that they all had the same little gray clothes, equal amount of sugar cubes, and bowls of water.”

“What was the first thing that happened?”

“After two day, they divided into two groups and lived on opposite sides of the cage. The ones with the different eye colors slept on the right. The brown eyed ones stayed on the left. The third day, when I put sugar cubes in the cage, the brown eyed ones snatched them all and wouldn’t give any to the colored eyes.”

“Correction. They did give them some sugar, but it was in rations.”

“Which I hated, but you wouldn’t let me sneak them anymore.”

“Because it was an observation of behavior. What happened on the fourth day?”

“I don’t like remembering this project.”

“What happened?” he barked.

“One of the colored eye Pixies figured out a way to make brown dye from scraping off the paint from the cage’s bars and mixing it with the water. He put it on his eyes to fit in with the other group and went blind.”

“Fifth day?”

“This isn’t really brightening my mood.” I scratched my head.

“Just tell me.”

“On the fifth day, the colored eyed males revolted against the brown eyed ones. Almost all of them died, except the blind one who just sat in a corner squeaking to himself.”

Goodness. No wonder my teacher failed me.

“Then the sixth?”

“That was the weird part. The brown eyed males were the only ones left, but then they started mating with the brown and colored eye females. I seem to remember each male had two mates to themselves. By the next day the females fought.”

Dad interrupted, “That went on for a while until there was only two males left with one female. By then, you cried and cried that I let them out. But was that enough for those three? No way. The men could have flown off and found another nice Pixie in our yard or through our house wherever you hid the stray ones you brought home, but they never did. Instead, they ran around our house messing it up and crapping rainbow poop all over my sleeper chair while they fought over that one little Pixie. I often wondered if she just had some really awesome …” He cleared his throat. “Never mind. The two males battled with tooth picks and needles until finally on day ten who was left standing?”

“No one. One male tried to kill the other, but the female got in the way, which resulted in both, the targeted male and her, being stabbed by the toothpick. Then the last one, just jumped off of the end of the sofa, didn’t use his wings, and took his life.”

“That was pretty interesting. Your teacher refused to show the pictures of it.”

“Probably because it would have gave the class nightmares. It sure gave me some.”

“Regardless, do you remember what I told you were the two lessons of the whole experiment?”

“No, because there were three dead Pixies at my feet.”

“Well, I said that this experiment should tell you two things. One, no one is meant for a cage. You put anything behind bars for too long, they’ll divide, conquer each other, and then turn into monsters.” He coughed. “The second lesson was simple, yet it is obvious you chose to ignore it.”

I laughed. “No. Now I know. You said, ‘Lanore, always remember. Men are crazy. Don’t ever deal with any of them.
’”

“And did you listen?”

“No.”

“Well there you have it. That’s your solution.” And then he hung up.

What?

I almost called him back to make himself clearer, but realized he was right, men were crazy and he was one of the craziest.

My bedroom door opened. Harmony walked out, wiping her hands on a towel. “The Prime needs some special antibiotics. I can make some tonight and have them sent to you. I’ll send my bill to Zulu’s accountant. Are you ready to talk?”

It sounded more like an order than a question. “Yes. Let’s go in the kitchen. I was going to make myself some spicy coffee.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking coffee, make tea instead.”

Yep. She’s pretty bossy.

“I don’t like tea.” I forced a smile. “I want coffee. I have a long night ahead of me.”

Harmony sighed and followed me into the kitchen as Vee put dishes into our mahogany cabinets. “Miss Vesta, you have more of a long night ahead of you? You’re expecting a child.”

Huh?

Vee dropped the dishes in her hand. They broke into pieces on the mint green tiled floor. I jumped back along with Harmony, but unlike Harmony who went to search for a broom, I stood there in one spot with my hands high in the air and mouth open as wide as possible.

Harmony returned with a broom and dustpan. “I take it Zulu and you did not plan this?”

Huh?

I had nothing to say. Vee came over to me, pulled my arms down, and guided me over to the closest stool. She sucked her teeth at Harmony. “This can’t be correct. I’ve been providing Lanore with birth control since she was eighteen. It’s a simply spell, but most effective. The magic attached to her ovaries and freezes them. No eggs leave. She hasn’t even had a period in how long?” Vee looked at me.

I laid my head face first on the counter. “Huh?”

“I don’t think she has had a period in years.” Vee took the broom from Harmony, leaned it near the wall, and chanted, “Breeze and follow.”

The shattered pieces lifted up as a juniper fragrance filled the space.

“Excuse me, but you’re an Air Witch.” Harmony pulled out glasses from her red jacket. “You have no idea about the intricate details of Fairy biology. When two of the opposite sex have bonded, all contraceptives are destroyed, heavy magic or not. It is time to breed.” She patted my back. “I told Zulu when he was young that if he ever claimed someone, he needed to come to me with his claimed first, so I could explain proper methods in avoiding children. His response was that he didn’t plan on claiming anyone. Six years later, he’s expecting a child with his claimed. The worst part about being a practitioner is the patients never listen.”