“For you, Hope,” he whispered.
“For me?”
For centuries?
That didn’t make sense. She hadn’t known him that long.
And yet, she’d always felt like she’d known him forever.
A cold prickle razed her skin. “James… have you ever used your magic on me?”
His jaw bunched. “I’ve never used my djinn magic on you, Tahlee Hope.”
She swallowed. Something itched at her at his answer, but what? “Why me?” she asked. “I mean, if you’d never met me, would you be… a dangerous djinn?”
A wry smile pulled at his lips. “All djinn are dangerous.”
“Answer the question, James.”
He ducked his head and let out a shaky breath. “The darkness is powerful, Tahlee. And addictive. It’s raw and absolute and freeing. And until I met you, I believed it was my only existence.”
“Until you met me?” She frowned, heart thumping in her throat. “In the pub in Piccadilly?”
His jaw knotted again. “Until I met you. You changed everything for me. From the very moment you smiled at me, the darkness… it lost its allure. From the moment I met you, I controlled it. Always for you. Only for you.”
“Why?” It was a stupid question, but the only one she could ask. A creature with powers beyond her comprehension stood before her, telling her she was the reason for denying the malevolence within. What chance did she have of processing that?
He closed his eyes, that sheepish grin she loved so much playing with his lips. “I am better with you. I want to be better for you. I like who I am with you. Because of you.”
Oh wow.
The sheepish smile faded. “But tonight, I let the darkness out. I had to. The torment over what I’d brought to your life, it’s almost destroying me. If I could undo my own existence I would do so without hesi—”
She closed the distance between them, took his face in her hands and silenced him with a slow kiss. Ended the words before they could tear her apart. A life without James in it? A world without him? No, it was too horrific to consider.
She kissed him.
Gave him her heart.
How many times had she done that in their time together? Every time she’d kissed him, she gave her heart to James.
She kissed him, wanting to take away his pain. It didn’t matter that he’d hurt her years ago. Not at that moment. They’d sort that out. Later.
It didn’t matter he was a magical being thousands of years old with more power in his pinkie than she could ever imagine.
Right now, the important thing was taking away the pain she could see in his eyes. The grief she could see eating up his soul.
She parted her lips and sought out his tongue, offering and asking and leading and surrendering.
He groaned—this powerful being—and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back. Pulled her closer to his body with a gentle hug, as if scared she would stop him.
No way.
Three years she’d ached for his kisses. Three years she’d longed to hear his laugh, see his smile. Feel his gaze and turn to find him watching her, eyes twinkling with mirth and happiness and delight.
She’d never kissed him to take away pain or anger in all their time together. They’d never had a need for make-up sex. He’d never brought sorrow into their life together until he’d left it. From the second he’d entered her life, until he’d left so unexpectedly, he’d given her laughter and joy and contentment, and she kissed him now to remind him of that.
To drive away his darkness.
She smoothed her hands down his back and poured her soul into their kiss.
A part of her mind kept whispering that she wasn’t kissing a human, but she didn’t care. He was James. Her James. And human or not, he was hurting, and she would do whatever she could to take his pain away.
Kissing him may not make him feel human, she didn’t want it to, but it sure as hell would let him know she cared.
Loved him.
God help her, she always would, no matter what he was.
She sought his tongue again, stroking her own against it. He groaned, his arms drawing her closer still to his body. She melted into him, exactly where she wanted to be. Since his vanishing act three years ago, she’d convinced herself she was too busy to date again. Too busy for any kind of relationship. She had her vibrator and her work. She didn’t need anything else.
Kissing him now, being held by him, holding him, his heat seeping into her, his hands exploring her back, her hips, her arse, she knew her celibacy had had nothing to do with how busy she was. She’d wanted no one else but James.
No one else but James would suffice.
Scary as it was, it was a simple fact. She’d deal with it later, just as she would deal with his reason for abandoning her—whatever it might be.
Now…
Moving her hands between their chests, she popped open the buttons of his shirt and slid her fingers over his smooth skin.
He groaned again, the raw sound vibrating through her body as he tore his mouth from hers and gazed into her eyes. “I wish…”
Heart thumping, she rose up onto her tiptoes and nipped at his chin. “Wish what?”
Squeezing her arse, he let out a shaky laugh. “So many things.”
“Tell me.”
His nostrils flared. “Can I kiss you instead?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my second favorite thing in existence to do. Always has been.”
“What’s your first?”
His lips twitching, he hauled her off her feet and placed her on the massive bed.
“Oh.” She combed a hand through his hair and pulled him down to her, wrapping one leg around his hip to draw their groins closer together. “That.”
He shook his head, eyes smoldering. “Being with you in any and every way. That’s my favorite thing in existence. Just… being with you.”
“Then why did you leave?” she whispered.
Instead of answering, he kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her. Gentle, long, thorough, hungry, passionate kisses.
Kisses that moved from her mouth, journeyed down her chin, her neck, along her collarbones, and back to her lips again.
Kisses that awoke in her an unfathomable ache, an endless longing, an infinite desire.
She moaned and tugged at his shirt. “Take this off,” she ordered against his lips.
He didn’t move, didn’t break their kiss, but suddenly her hands were splayed against bare skin.
She gasped, tugging his head up with a fistful of hair. “You just genie’d yourself shirtless.”
“I did.”
“Do it to me.”
An unreadable light flickered in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Do it to—”
Her shirt vanished, the warmth from his naked torso pressing to hers.
She gasped again, a tingle of excited lust sinking into her center. “Naked. I want to be naked with you.”
His nostril flared again. “Is that what you wish for?”
She pressed her hips upward, aligning their groins closer together. “I wish we were both naked right now.”
The room’s air kissed her suddenly naked body. The only thing still on her was her necklace. “Holy crap,” she breathed, rolling her hips. His skin slid against hers, warm and familiar and perfect. “Could you always do this? When we were together?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“And I wasted that power?”
He laughed, the thick shaft of his erection rubbing against her folds. “I didn’t think it was all that bad without the whole phenomenal djinn power to lend a hand.”
She grinned, tightened her thigh around his hip and drew his head down to hers with a steady hand. “It was the best I’ve ever had.”
That enigmatic light flickered in his eyes again, and then he kissed her.
She gave herself over to the moment. To his kisses, his laughter, his smile, his to
uch. She rode the wave of pleasure they awoke in her, and when it began to build to a breaking point, she rolled him onto his back and straddled his hips, pinning his wrists to the bed on either side of his head.
He groaned out a laugh, like he used to every time she took charge, and pushed his hips upward. “Now this is power,” he said.
“And it’s mine to wield.” She wriggled on his hips, squeezing his sides a little with her thighs before leaning forward and brushing her nipples over his chest.
“Shite, Hope…” His eyes closed. His erection pulsed against her soft heat. “I’m yours. Always have been.”
For centuries…
His earlier words tickled through her mind again. Teased something deeper. Itched at her.
For centuries. He’d said he’d controlled his darkness for centuries, for her. To be better for her. But that made no sense. How could it? She’d only known him since—
“Always will be,” he murmured, opening his eyes. They glowed. Iridescent white. “Only yours.”
A tight shiver claimed her. Her nipples beaded. Her core flooded with liquid heat. She lowered her head and kissed him.
She’d ask him about it later. After.
Right now, she just wanted what she’d had three years ago.
She moved her lips and tongue over his, demanding more. Demanding everything.
He gave it to her.
A shudder of raw pleasure rocked her and she slid her hands down his arms, to his chest. The rapid beat of his heart beneath her palm ignited a base delight in Tahlee, and she lifted her head, smiling down at him, breaths shallow. “Do you have a heart like this in your realm?”
His eyes closed as he pushed his hips upward, grinding his length to the junction of her thighs. “Ever the journalist,” he groaned, part protest, part mirth.
She wriggled her hips, loving the way he groaned again. “Ever the journalist. Do you mind if I record your response?”
Laughing, he gazed up at her. “Now that was something we never did, make a sex tape.”
“Missed opportunity,” she agreed, reveling in the way his heartbeat quickened against her hand when she pinched his left nipple. “I have no clue where my phone is, otherwise I’d open the camera app and hit record.”
Devilish mischief flashed in his eyes—green and human once again. “I could conjure up a video camera and tripod if you like.”
A greedy flutter bloomed into life in the pit of her belly at the thought. “Tempting.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Or I could just do this?”
He flipped her onto her back, capturing her laughing squeal with a hungry kiss.
“I like that,” she said when he raised his head. She wrapped her legs around his hips, locking her ankles together at the small of his back. “And that,” she murmured as he nibbled a path down the side of her throat.
“I’m glad.” He flicked his tongue into the shallow hollow at the base of her throat. “And to answer your earlier question, yes. And no.”
She let out a chuckle at his ambiguous statement, and then moaned as he moved his mouth to the tip of her right breast. “Ela… elaborate,” she ordered, tangling her fingers in his hair as he drew her flesh deep into his warm, wet mouth.
He hmm’d around her nipple, sending a ribbon of tight pleasure through her, and then lifted his head a little. His eyes glowed white for a second then they were green again. “Are you sure I can’t distract you with this?” He dragged his thumb over her moist nipple, pupils dilating as she sucked in a shaky breath.
“Why not both?” she rasped, tightening her legs around his hips. “You tell me all about your djinn existence as you make insanely intense love to me?”
“I like that idea. Let’s do that.”
She laughed, and then moaned again as he captured her nipple once more with his mouth and sucked. “Oh yeah.”
He hmm’d again, longer this time, drawing deeper on the puckered tip, before lifting his head again and blowing on her wet flesh. His erection pulsed at the junction of her thighs, sending another ribbon of pleasure though her.
“In my realm,” he said, brushing her nipple with the pad of his thumb, “a djinn’s heart is all there is. We exist not as a substantial form, but as a potent nebulous force.” He nipped his way across her chest to her other nipple, flicked his tongue over it, and then worshipped it with his mouth for long, luxurious moments.
“S-so when do you… oh boy, that’s good…” She writhed beneath him, fist balling tighter in his hair. “When do you… take on human form?”
He continued to adore her nipple for a heartbeat, before releasing it with a pop and gazing down at her. “When we’re summoned.”
“You pick the way you look, or is it just the way you are when you get here?”
“I pick. I create my human visage.” Another flash of white in his eyes.
She arched beneath him, raking one hand down his back as she ground her sex to his. “I like your pick. You did well.”
His nostrils flared and he let out a groaning chuckle. “You’ve told me that be—” He stopped, eyes completely white.
“Told you what—” she began, before, in a blur of deep purple smoke, he repositioned himself on the bed, his head between her spread thighs.
His white eyes held hers for a split second down the length of her body, and then his tongue found the epicenter of her pleasure.
The rest of her words, her question, got lost in the waves of sensation crashing through her.
Bunching the bed’s duvet in her hands, she planted her soles on his shoulders and arched into his mouth, his name falling from her in a raw groan.
“Whoa,” she panted, gazing blankly up at the ceiling. “I forgot how good you were at this.”
He laughed against her heat, a low, throaty reprimand, and then propelled her closer to the edge of eruption.
The air swirled around them, misty and purple. “Is this you?” she asked on a wobbly breath. “This… this smoke?”
Another laugh, this one accompanied by soft, invisible caresses along her inner thighs, breasts and nipples. No, not invisible. The smoke… Tendrils of smoke stroking and teasing her skin.
“Does that answer your question,” he murmured, eyes glowing white.
He returned his mouth to her sex as a tendril of misty purple played over her rib cage, across her stomach, and up to her breast, flowing over her distended nipple with increasing pressure.
Wow.
“Wow,” she breathed, the dewy touch at once surreal and exciting.
Lifting his head, he blew on her wet folds. “Wow is a start. Tell me what you wish for, Hope.”
She laughed. “What I wish for? Are you kidding?”
He shook his head, eyes burning white.
Liquid electricity shot through her, sinking into her core. “Um… I don’t…”
“Hit me with it.” His lips curled. “Your most secret sexual wish.”
“So if I say, I wish for an orgasm so amazing I see stars, I’ll have an orgasm so amazing I’ll see stars?”
He nodded, a naughty smile playing with his lips.
She laughed again. “Sure. Alright then. James, I wish for an orgasm so amazing, I see stars.”
He raised his hand in front of his face and clicked. “Done.”
It began deep in the very core of her being. Bloomed out to the base of her spine. Radiated through her lower body. Ebbing and swelling and rolling through her; a pleasure unlike any she’d ever experienced. Bone deep, as if every fiber of her body, every molecule had suddenly become a vessel for concentrated pleasure.
She gasped, and then moaned and arched and clawed at the duvet. Heels digging into the bed, she slammed her hips upward. Tossed her head from side to side.
“Oh God,” she whispered, as another onslaught of intense pleasure rolled through her. Her vision blurred. Her body trembled. A distant part of her mind recognized James wasn’t touching her. Nothing was touching her. The pleasure erupting through her cam
e from… from… somewhere, but not his hands or tongue or—
“Oh God!” she cried again as another tsunami of pleasure crashed over her. She bucked her hips, her vision blurring into points of bright, swirling colors. “Oh God!”
The colors grew brighter. Brighter. Until, at the zenith of the most intense orgasm of her life, they burst into twinkling stars so dazzling, she cried out again and closed her eyes.
Pulse after pulse of pleasure filled her body, turning her cries into whimpers. She gripped the duvet, spent and exhausted, until the pulses faded away, leaving her gasping for breath and limp with bone-deep sexual satisfaction.
“Okay,” she mumbled, too drained to articulate anything. “That was… wow.”
“You’re welcome.”
She opened her eyes at James’s chuckled response.
Kneeling between her spread thighs, hands resting loosely on his own, he winked. “And you thought you’d have to rub something to get that level of—”
She grabbed a pillow from above her head and threw it at him.
It hit him in the chest, and he laughed.
“That was insane,” she said, pushing her hair from her face. Flipping hell, she was so sweaty.
“Good though?”
Shoving herself into a half-sitting position, she nodded. “You better believe it.”
He preened.
She lifted an eyebrow. “But…”
“But?”
“There was something missing.”
He frowned. “What?”
She smiled, moved onto her knees and threaded her fingers into the hair at his nape. “You.”
Realization flickered in his eyes. “Ah. Well, if you want me to do it the old fashion, no-djinn-power way…”
“That’s exactly what I want,” she whispered, tugging his head to hers. “You, moving inside me. Making me come with your—”
He kissed her.
And she kissed him back, flattening him to his back on the bed, straddling his hips once more.
He made love to her mouth with his tongue and lips. He explored her body with his hands. She let her fingers roam over his chest, his ribs, his hips. She cupped his balls, and squeezed his cock, loving the way he groaned into her mouth. The way his length grew thicker in her grip.
Hope's Wish Page 12
