by Nina Merrill
The thud of the front door slamming open shattered his spell and the various Lauras evaporated like fog in the sunlight.
The real Laura was home. Thank goodness the simulacra had been made of little more than well-ordered shadows and dust motes, easily banished, but still he was startled and discomfited, and more than a little confused when he looked up and found Laura leaning over the back of the sofa. She prodded at him, poking his belly uncomfortably near his jewel and his erection.
"Samir, you have to pay the cabbie. I left my purse at Lewis's."
"Laura?” he stammered. In that unguarded moment, half caught in his fantasy, he forgot to be formal, and reached up for her face. She had come to him at last and he would welcome her with a delighted passion as boundless and undulant as the desert dunes.
"Please, Samir! He's out at the curb!"
Laura sounded desperate, and was there a hint of a sob in her voice? Coming fully aware at last, Samir batted at her hands to make her stop. He sat bolt upright on his couch and clutched a cushion to his lap, where his cock had lifted his loose trousers into a pavilion of desire. Laura's fingers might encounter his erection, and then where would he be?
Through the east window he glimpsed the driver next to the cab in the darkness. Samir closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and collected himself long enough to go outside and shove money into the cabbie's meaty hand. A moment later, a clap of Samir's hands returned him to his place on the sofa. Laura hitched up her short dress and clambered over the sofa back. She was wearing neither shoes nor stockings.
Samir caught her as she lost her footing on the cushions. She plowed her face into his chest, as she'd done when she was a child, and howled.
Because he'd been alone he had turned off the air conditioner. The house was hot—that desert heat he loved so—and he had removed his helm and tunic. Her tears wet his skin, and he could smell liquor.
"What is it? What has happened?"
"...girlfriend..."
"What girlfriend? Whose? Lewis has another girlfriend?"
Violent nodding against his chest.
Samir sighed. “Did I not tell you I should have gone with you? Why will you not listen to me, my mistress?"
She smacked his chest with the flat of her palm and sat up. “You'd have killed him. Or me. Or both of us. God, I need a drink."
Samir looked down. She had left mascara and eye shadow on his chest. He rolled his eyes and waved his hand to vanish the smudges. “You need no such thing.” He caught her hand as she unfolded her legs and tried to stagger toward the door. “You have had plenty, I believe."
"I'm not drunk. I'm angry. There's a difference.” She sat again when he tugged.
Samir folded his arms. “Tell me."
"God,” she said again, swiping at her streaming eyes and nose with the back of her arm.
Samir grimaced and conjured a handkerchief for her instead.
"Thank you. I don't want to talk about it."
Of course she wanted to talk about it. He hadn't spent years listening to her tales of woe without learning how best to comfort her. “I will make you coffee, my mistress."
"By all means, make me coffee, my jinni.” Her tone was spiteful, and Samir knew the liquor was still strong in her body. Laura never ordered him about so rudely.
He vanished himself to the kitchen. There, he fished in the cupboards for the Turkish coffee pot. A moment later, Laura stood in the doorway, watching, scrubbing at her face with the hankie.
"She had a key."
"Who had a key?” Samir could guess, but he knew Laura had to tell it in her own way in order to get it out of her system. He took the beans from the freezer and ground them in the crank mill. Filtered water, then the pot was on the stove, heating. There were some things neither magic nor technology could improve. Coffee was one of them.
"I told you."
"You did not, my mistress.” He turned up the gas the tiniest bit. “Did he at least feed you a good dinner?"
"Yes.” Laura slumped against the doorframe. “He took me to a sushi place. And then we went dancing. We ... uh, had some tequila. Then we went back to his place."
"Where you left your shoes and your stockings.” His tone was stern and disapproving, and Laura looked abashed.
"And my purse. Would you fetch them?"
"The coffee will burn while I go."
"It won't. I'll watch the coffee. I won't let it boil too hard."
"You'll ruin it. You always do, my mistress."
"I promise. I can't leave my purse there, Samir! Please?” She came into the kitchen and placed her hand on his bare chest.
Without her shoes, the top of her head came to his chin, and he looked down at her sternly as she tilted her face up. She blinked a bit. Yes, she was quite drunk. He was certain she didn't realize her fingertips were teasing the nipple they covered, but he surely noticed it when a current of heat went straight to his groin at her touch. He took a step back, nodded and clapped his hands, vanishing to Lewis's place.
What he found there made him black with fury. Not only was the sleeping—and unshaven yet again—Lewis tangled in the covers on his bed, he was also tangled in the long limbs of a blonde. A naked blonde. And on the chair beside the bed, peeping from a heap of other clothing, was Laura's purse, her nylons, and her silky blue panties.
Samir swore an oath, grabbing all three items, plus the shoes he found beneath the chair. Then he pointed a terrible, rigid finger at Lewis and prepared to sunder him cruelly. How dare the man reject Samir's mistress? How dare he hurt her? How dare he...
...leave the pieces for Samir to pick up.
His right eyebrow arched upward. Indeed. He would pick up the pieces of Laura's life yet again, but this time he would be sure she saw how much he loved her.
Samir lowered his arm, and vanished without destroying Laura's very former boyfriend.
* * * *
This time she would not ruin the coffee. Laura watched carefully as the first drops of rich brown water splashed into the glass knob on the percolator's lid, then turned down the flame just so.
She felt the faint earthquake that accompanied Samir's rematerialization. She turned and smiled, pleased at the sight of her jinni, half-naked in the bright kitchen, his mane of dark hair coiling over his shoulder. He stood with her tan pumps under his brawny arm, and the misty pantyhose and tiny purse in one hand.
In his other hand, her blue panties dangled from an accusing finger. Her gaze slid to his angry face, and she felt herself blushing furiously, the smile gone.
"It's not like I lied to you about my plans for the evening, Samir.” She snatched the scrap of fabric from his hand.
"Because we focus on the snake, we often miss the scorpion.” He turned to the coffee pot and put her things on the counter.
"Oh, spare me your Bedouin aphorisms.” Laura scrambled into the panties and staggered a moment as her toe caught in the leg elastic.
"My family is Phoenician,” corrected Samir frostily. “Yours was Bedouin."
"Oh yes, of course, you're filled with the wisdom of the ancients, aren't you, my jinni?"
"And you are filled with the wisdom of the agave, aren't you, my mistress?"
Laura marveled how Samir's back could convey such rigid disapproval. He took the pot off the stove, reached for two tiny cups, and poured. He added three lumps of sugar to each cup, stirred and handed her one. Then he took her by the shoulder and steered her into the living room, to the couch. “Sit before you fall. And don't spill."
"You're worse than my mother ever thought of being.” But she sat.
The coffee was scalding hot and much too sweet and she longed to gulp it down. Instead, she sipped and tried to ignore the black look on Samir's face. She hated it when she disappointed him. His good opinion of her mattered, though she knew he must always do as she commanded. But this time it couldn't be helped. Lewis had really hurt her. The more she dwelled on the memory of the blonde opening the bedroom door and finding them on
the bed, Lewis's hand up Laura's skirt, the more upset she became. What hurt the most was the way Lewis had jumped away from Laura as if they'd been doing something wrong.
"She came waltzing in like she owned the place!” Laura exclaimed, giving voice to the memory. “I was so embarrassed. And Lewis—Lewis—just ... fawned over her. She was some old girlfriend. God knows why she chose to come back, but ... wow, is that relationship ever over!"
"It is good that it has ended.” His tone was stuffy, and Laura felt the last of the anger drain away into a pool of self-pity. She wanted to wallow.
"You don't care. You're only glad it's over because I wouldn't let you come with me on my dates with Lewis. Don't you understand that sometimes I don't like looking like an idiot who talks to herself?"
Samir set his coffee cup on the table and rose from the sofa. He stood, muscular legs spread, and arms folded, glaring down at her inscrutably. Even in her self-pitying, half drunk haze she could appreciate his beauty. His folded arms pushed the mounds of his biceps into prominence and drew attention to the strength in his shoulders. Though she liked his exotic look when he wore his turbaned helm, she preferred the loose waves of his dark hair spilling over his collarbones. The lustrous length of his hair never feminized his craggy face. A long leather belt wound twice around his waist to snug his loose trousers to his flat belly and carried the scabbard for his little dagger and a small leather pouch whose contents he had never shown her.
For the first time, Laura realized what a handsome creature Samir was. She'd always thought of him as attractive in a romance-novel-cover sort of way, but her stern jinni was nothing short of beautiful.
"You will apologize to me, my mistress. Your statements are unkind and untrue. Bound or not, I care."
She stared, thinking, but not about his words. She was thinking about Samir's physicality, and another question occurred to her in her uninhibited state. “Samir, do djinn have sex? I mean, you used to mock the boys I dated and tell me they were terrible kissers, but how did you know? I never see you with a woman—or a man, for that matter. Can you—"
"My mistress, you are still very drunk."
"Well, yes, of course. Too much tequila. Which reminds me—what about that guacamole? Did you go to Mexico after all?"
He threw up his hands at this shift. “Yes."
Laura gave a happy squeal and dashed for the kitchen, where a covered bowl of green goo waited in the fridge. She snatched the bowl, a bag of corn chips, and two sodas. “Come on! TV time. I need to watch something stupid to take my mind off this horrible night."
"Laura..."
"If you don't hurry, I'll hog all the pillows!"
By the time she reached the bedroom where the enormous television set occupied most of the dresser, Samir was already reclining, with all but the laciest pillow propping him up.
"You cheated.” She bounced onto the bed next to him and plopped the chilled bowl of guacamole onto his naked belly. There was a loud clink as the ceramic struck his jewel. Laura sobered and lifted the bowl. “Whoops. Sorry."
She examined his navel for a moment, then patted his tummy. “You're all right. That wasn't ‘sublimation’ either. Darn it!"
Samir didn't smile. Instead he opened the chips and the sodas. Laura sat cross-legged next to him and ran the channels with the remote. At last she stumbled across an old episode of Gilligan's Island and paused there to watch and munch.
* * * *
At least the sodas had caffeine in them, thought Samir. In her foolish enthusiasm, Laura had forgotten the coffee in the living room. And she had diverted the topic of conversation away from her disastrous date. Now they were on her bed—king size, for she loved to sprawl and watch television with him—eating guacamole and salty tortilla chips. He couldn't say he was unhappy with the way her evening had concluded. Plus he'd managed a nap, and an erotic fantasy or two.
After the monotonous show ended—an episode he'd seen at least thirty times over the past forty years—Laura resumed her surfing and ran across the one show that never failed to delight her: I Dream of Jeannie.
Samir groaned. “Laura, please. Anything else. Anything! A game of chess. Or I will grant you a wish."
Laura grinned at him, crunching chips and guacamole. She had a blob on her cheek and it distracted him. She was too attractive in the cocktail dress, with her legs bare and folded like a little girl's. “Nope. It's my favorite show. You know it is."
"It is filled with inaccuracies."
"That's why I like it so much! We know everything they've got wrong."
Samir sighed. The show was stupid and pointless. If he weren't so hungry, he would nap again. Instead he chewed, while Laura laughed.
"Why don't you have a bottle, Samir?” she asked, when the scantily clothed female genie on the television smoked herself into her bottle and was corked.
It had taken Laura a long time to get around to asking that question. Her mother had asked it immediately, and most designates of the past had wondered why he had no lamp.
Laura turned around on the bed to look at him, dropping a fair-sized splat of guacamole on his belly. “Whoops.” She bent and slurped it into her mouth.
Samir's entire body went rigid at the touch of her lips on his skin. She was thorough, too—her tongue sweeping away every molecule of avocado. He willed his manhood to remain quiescent and soft, but it had, as always, a one-track mind of its own.
"It's ... uh, not that sort of binding.” He could not speak coherently with her mouth on his skin and her hair brushing his belly and groin. And there was still a smear of guacamole on her cheek. He forced himself to continue speaking. “It is far worse than being imprisoned, to have almost complete free will and yet be so constrained."
He hadn't meant to reveal this most bitter thought, the one thing that stained his love for Laura, but his brain was not his own at the moment. His hand lifted, his index finger reached out, and she raised her head and looked at him, licking her lips, a growing understanding—mixed with sympathy and sadness—in her eyes.
It was fated.
He sat up slowly, as did she, and, when his mouth touched her cheek to rid her at last of the guacamole, her eyes closed. Samir felt her turning her head so her mouth brushed over his lips. Brushed past. Halted. And returned, so light a touch he might have imagined it, except for the heat swarming over his skin, and her breath against his mouth. Every impulse was to grab her, press her into the bed, thrust his tongue into her mouth, strip those silky blue panties from her and satisfy the vastness of his hunger this instant. But all those taunts about the feckless, unskilled boys of her youth rang in his head. He could not afford to become one of them.
Samir slammed the lid on the inferno of his desire, and concentrated on giving Laura the best kiss of her life. Drunk or not, rebound or not, here was his chance, and he was taking it.
Small tastes first. Gentle lippings, nuzzlings, warm and dry as the desert air. The light touch of his fingers at the hinges of her jaw, more to position her than restrain her. He could feel her willingness to participate in the easy tilt of her head and the soft parting of her lips. There was the tender arch of her upper lip to explore, curved and re-curved. And the lushness of her bottom lip, full toward its center, sweetly creased. The corners of her mouth, where he allowed his tongue-tip the smallest taste. Left—salt and lemon; right—a hint of avocado still. Samir felt her biting her lower lip and wondered what she was fighting against. He hoped it was her own desire, and slid his tongue toward the center, gently sucking her lip free of her teeth.
"Let me do that,” he breathed, and suited action to words. Her hitching breath and slight quiver was all the reward he could have wished for, but when her hands left her lap and clutched at his ribcage, a hot ball of triumph exploded in his chest and melted throughout his body, pooling at the base of his spine.
New, so new. Samir hadn't kissed a woman in years, except for those chaste kisses to Laura's cheek or forehead. Friendly kisses. Not kisses of passio
n. But even the passion he had known in decades past paled beside the blast furnace that was loving Laura. His fingers moved, one hand sliding into her hair to cup the back of her head. The others traced down her neck—ah, yes, the gooseflesh, beyond sweet—to her shoulder, where they found the narrow strap of her dress and fretted there. Not pushing her, not threatening to undress her, just ... hinting. Asking.
Laura's fingers dug into his ribs when he released her lower lip and transferred his nibbling attentions to the upper. He could feel her swallowing hard, then the slippery velvet of her tongue emerged and skimmed along his teeth before retreating. Ah, so she was giving up the fight, conceding the field, retreating to lure him. Samir released her lip from his teeth and waited, barely breathing, mouth still touching hers. Waited for the space of three stuttering breaths before he lifted his head to look down at her.
Her throat worked as she swallowed again. Her lashes rose heavily, revealing a thin rim of green around enormous pupils. Samir knew that look, the look of a woman whose eyes were darkened by desire. Laura met his gaze and held it, her grip softening. Awareness grew in her eyes, and Samir released her—perhaps the most difficult task of his life, letting go of her, but he hadn't survived multiple centuries without learning the finer points of seduction.
Don't push. Let the quarry come to you, willingly, but even more important, eagerly.
Laura drew a long, shuddering breath, and Samir waited for the excuse he knew must come. “I am so drunk, Samir."
Samir knew she wasn't, not any longer, but she needed time to assimilate this new experience. Any excuse would do.
He bowed his head, concealing his triumph. “You are tired, my mistress. It has been a difficult evening. I understand.” Sliding off the bed, he banished the remains of their snack to the kitchen with a wave of his hand. Then he took himself out of the room and closed the door behind him. His hand drifted down to the leather bag at his hip. He returned to his own room, donned his lightweight shirt, tunic and helm before transporting himself to the top of Camelback Mountain, where no one would disturb him.
