Djinn and Tonic (17 page)

He nods. “Ifrit. Got it.” I can see him thinking, and I know what’s coming next. “So then Miriam is like you?”
 

“Well, she’s a djinni,” I say, careful to enunciate the last word so it sounds like
gin-ee
. “But yes. I’m not going to get into the details right now, but we’re very similar in some ways, and completely opposite in others.”

I’m still sitting on his lap, and somehow my arms are around his neck, and it feels familiar and intimate and comfortable. He’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before, and the fear is largely gone. I don’t move to get off him, and I don’t think he’d let me if I tried. I expected more resistance from him than this, and it worries me, somehow.

There’s silence again, and I don’t know what it means.

“What?” I ask. “I finally tell you the truth about what I am, and you don’t say anything.”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t know how to respond. You’re some kind of magical wind-girl from Arabic mythology. I knew you were something other than a normal human girl, especially after what happened at the park. Now I have a name for it. Did you expect me to go all crazy? Freak out?”

I laugh, nodding my head. “Yeah, I did, I guess.”

“What the hell do you think I’ve been doing this past week?” He laughs. “I’ve been freaking out, trying to come to grips with the reality of making out with you in the middle of a fucking tornado in Hart Plaza.”

I’m remembering that moment, and I can tell he is too. His hand stops its slow circling on my back, freezes on the skin between bra and shorts.
 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I say. “My powers don’t usually get away from me like that. There’s something about you that makes me lose control.”

Carson shakes his head, brushing my hair aside with his other hand. “Don’t apologize. That was incredible. Kind of scary, but incredible.” He’s moving toward me, centimeter by centimeter as he speaks, and I don’t pull away. “Kind of like you. A little scary because, shit, if you can do that, what else can you do? But you’re also incredible. So beautiful, so amazing.”
 

His lips are moving against mine as he speaks, his breath warming my face. I’m spinning, dizzy, lost in his eyes, lost in the depth of emotion he’s showing me. He’s baring himself to me; letting me see his heart, see the inside of his soul. How can I reject that? How can I deny the effect he has on me, physically, mentally, and emotionally? I can’t, and I no longer want to try.
 

“So, knowing what I am, you don’t…you’re not…” I’m not sure what I’m asking, and I trail off.

“Afraid of you? As in going to run away? No. I’m more afraid of how strongly I feel for you than I am of who or what you are.” He smiles, and the next three words come easier than they did the first time: “I love you.”
 

He’s testing them out, tasting them, watching me to see how they affect me. He’s said it twice now, and he needs to know my response.

Terror is hounding me suddenly, gripping me. I can’t—I can’t. If I say that…if I speak those words to him…all is lost. I’ll be abandoning my family to Hassan’s mercy—a quality he does not possess.
 

Then, I realize a dark and terrifying truth: I’ve already abandoned them to him. I can’t be Hassan’s wife, and I
won’t
be.
 

The answer hits me like a flash:
 

I can take on Hassan. I’d rather die fighting him and just maybe win than offer myself up to him as a peace offering. There will be no peace, regardless of what I do. If I go along with this stupid betrothal, I’ll just get dragged into the wrong side of a war. Hassan is powerful and dangerous, but I
could
take him, under the right circumstances. If I got him alone, away from his men…it’s possible.

Carson is waiting, watching me think this through.
 

The decision is made, and I let myself go. Whatever happens next, I can at least enjoy this moment.

A smile curls across my lips, and my pulse picks up until it’s thundering in my ears. “I love you, Carson.” The words are whispered, almost inaudible, almost snatched away by the nearly imperceptible breeze in the room.
 

My words spark a fire.
 

He stands up easily, lifting me in his arms. I dissolve into giggles, which is just completely ridiculous. I never giggle. It’s embarrassing.

“What? What’s so funny?”

I take a deep breath and let it out. “This, the way you’re holding me, it’s just…so cheesy. Like a romance book. You’re gonna carry me across the threshold into my room, and lay me down and kiss me…and it’s just so classic, and it’s funny for some reason.” Carson just shakes his head and starts to put me down, but I clutch his neck to stop him. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
 

He laughs, kissing my throat, and the giggles are gone now, replaced by butterflies fluttering in my stomach. My bedroom door is open, my bed unmade, clothes on the floor; I’m not the neatest girl in the world. Carson either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. He sets me down on the bed, slowly, so slowly, a sexy smile on his lips. He’s showing off, demonstrating his strength, posturing. It’s so cute, so sweet, and so silly that I almost lose myself to giggling again, but then he kisses me.
 

It’s just a brush of lips against lips at first, a nudge, his arms planted on either side of me, one of his knees on the bed between my legs, the other foot on the floor. He’s still holding back, I realize, giving me an opportunity to pull away, to stop him, to tell him I don’t want this.
 

I hesitate for a split second: it’s now or never.

But I know I’ve made my choice. I lift up to deepen the kiss, start the fire raging with my palms on his sides, running up the ridged muscles to his back, gripping his shoulder blades and pulling him down to me. He moans low in his throat, but it’s not just a moan, it’s a growl, deep and primal, feral, lupine. He pulls back, and the magic has insinuated itself into him, I can see it glowing on his skin, golden specks floating behind his eyes, as if his irises and pupils were curtains and the magic was a storm of light raging in his skull.

Through the magic connecting us I can feel the question before he even speaks it. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise,” I say. “I promise. But don’t make me wait any more. I need this. Make love to me.
Please
.”
 

I need this. I need him.
 

He growls again, the sound rumbling in his chest buzzing into me, until I feel it as much as hear it. The ferocity and intensity I see in his eyes and feel in his trembling muscles sets me loose, and I know restraint is no longer an option.
 

I don’t use my magic often, preferring to live as normally as possible—which has also contributed to my overall lack of control over my natural abilities—but now I cast two spells, both for protection. The first is one of the most basic uses of magic, a spell that every ifrit child is taught while they’re still learning to walk and talk and run and speak, a spell I should use far more often than I do: a burst of magic sends a cocoon of energy around us to contain the winds that will inevitably blow out of control. The second burst goes within, flowing through my blood and tissue down to my womb, forming a wall around my cervix, protecting us from the impetuosity of this moment. I remember my aunt teaching me this trick when I turned sixteen, warning me against using it, telling me it’s not infallible, just like any other form of birth control, but that it will work in emergencies. I thank her silently, and then all thoughts are washed away by his lips on my neck, by his hands on my belly, by his weight hovering above me.

I kiss his shoulder, his clavicle, his neck, his jaw, the side of his mouth, feeling the hooks of love dig themselves deeper into my heart every time my lips touch his skin. I’m abandoned to the reckless foolishness of this act, fully aware of the heartbreak that will be engendered when reality catches up. I love him, fully and completely, and this moment might be all I have to show him, might be the only moment I will ever feel such love.
 

My nails claw down his back, eliciting a hiss from him. He’s kissing my breastbone, his lips shooting electric thrills through me, magical in their stinging pleasure. His hands are slipping and sliding on the skin beneath my bra, and I arch my back and thrust my chest against his, encouraging him to take it off. His forefinger slides under the elastic of the sports bra, and then another, brushing the side of my left breast with a fingernail. He knows how much I want him to touch my breasts, but he’s teasing me, touching his lips to my breasts above the fabric and then down between my breasts and back up to my lips.
 

A growl escapes my lips, and he huffs laughter against my neck. He likes the control, likes knowing he’s driving me crazy. I tug at his shorts, but they’re tied too tightly to just come off. I find the drawstrings and fumble at the loose knot, feeling a wicked desperation. I need to feel him bare against me, I can’t wait any longer. I’ve dreamed of this, fantasized about this, seen it waking and asleep, and now here he is,
finally
in my bed, and I can’t get his stupid shorts off. It’s almost comical.

Finally the knot is free and I slide my hands under the waistband and along the skin of his tight, muscular ass, cool and smooth under my palms. I leave them there momentarily, stopped mid-motion as he finally rolls my bra up over my breasts and lifts it free over my head, tossing it aside. I can’t even breathe as he moves his mouth from my ribcage up to between my breasts, one hand supporting himself on the bed, the other roaming with sadistic slowness along my side, tracing a tickling line along my underarm to elicit a rebellious giggle and shiver from me. His mouth is hovering over my breast, and I put a hand to the back of his head and arch my back, thrusting my boob against his mouth. He sucks at my nipple, pulling a whimper of satisfaction from me, and then he draws it out of his mouth, then uses two fingers to pinch and roll my other nipple, and I finally remember that I too have hands and a mouth.
 

I yank the shorts down but they snag on his erection. I tug them free and slide them down, rolling my weight into him and push him down onto his back. He tries to lift up and retake control, but I give a wicked smile and release the torrent of magic and elemental fury that has been building up within me all these minutes that have felt like a lifetime.
 

The field of protection directs the winds back at us, forcing them in a circle, as the bubble of protection forms a globe around us. The winds buffet us, slip beneath us and lift us from the bed in a stomach-dropping rush. The wind forms a cushion beneath us, holds us firmly aloft in a bed of down-soft, skin-warm air. Carson looks to either side, shifting his body to test the solidity of this magical bed, laughs a little nervously, and then returns his gaze to me, all thoughts of wind or magic lost.
 

I draw his shorts the rest of the way off first, teasing both myself and him, leaving his tight red boxer-briefs mostly on, pulled down on one side to reveal his hipbone. Straddling his knees, I look down at him for a moment, just delighting in the beauty of his form. He rubs his hands on my thighs, slips them under the spandex of my running shorts and back out. He wants them off, but I’m determined to draw this out as long as possible, to make both of us wait until we’re crazed with need.
 

I lean forward and rest my tits on his chest, tangle my fingers in his hair, kiss his forehead and his cheekbones and the tip of his nose. His hands run the length of my spine and back down, curl around my ass and tug at my shorts. I let him pull them partway down, let his hands feel my bare skin, then I draw away, kissing my way down his chest as I go, and he makes a frustrated growling sound in the back of his throat that is so pathetic I can’t help but laugh. I pull the winds back into myself, dropping us to the bed, letting them howl around us but not touch us. He’s tangling his hands in my hair and arching his back, reaching for me, but I continue my downward journey.
 

I come to his boxers and pause, looking up at him, locking eyes with him, then curl my fingers under the waistband and gently, slowly pull them down, kissing his belly just above his erection, sliding a hand underneath the hard length of his cock as I push his boxers the rest of the way off with my feet. My fingers wrap of their own accord around his velvety thickness, and my pulse hammers in my veins with excitement and desire and passion and delight at the feel of him, so much more perfect than I’d ever imagined.
 

He lifts forward and pulls me up, draws me toward him, rips my shorts off and drops them to the side. He rolls with me so we’re lying side by side, and now he leans into me and kisses me, and if I thought his kisses before were intense, I had simply no idea what I was in for. He kisses me with a desperation I didn’t think possible, as if he’d been drowning and I was his oxygen. His hands are clutching my face with a delicacy that makes my heart leap, and his tongue pushes between my lips to touch mine, probing and searching for my response. I don’t hold back, but rather put everything I feel into kissing him back. I delve into him and drown everything I am into the connection of our bodies and our mouths and my magic flowing out of me and into him, letting him feel even my fear and the forlorn realization that I might very well lose him soon. I let it all go, push it out of me and into the kiss.
 

The magic responds, filling us both, coiling around us, raging within us, pushing us closer than ever, leaping from my soul to his. I know he feels it, because he melts into me, pushing our bodies together so every inch of us is touching. For a wild, disorienting moment I see myself from the outside, through his eyes. But it’s not just physical, it’s emotional as well. I feel his love for me like a freshly lit inferno, a fire he hadn’t known he possessed, hadn’t known was possible. The fury of it is shocking to him, and to me, and I know he’d do anything to protect me. I can’t go there, though, can’t allow myself to think of all the reasons I need protecting. All I want in this moment is to revel in the pure, unadulterated wonder of it all.