by Ash Krafton
He swallowed hard and looked away. “So. You weren’t just banishing me.”
She stroked his arm, wanting to soothe him. Touching him seemed as easy as smiling. Something else she seemed to have gotten right. “I have a duty, Burns. I can’t break the law.”
“They don’t throw people in jail for—connecting to another.”
Connecting. It was such a deceivingly simple concept.
“Well, I feel so out of my element right now I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.” She didn’t tell him just how deep a dilemma she’d found her way into. Deep enough that she didn’t think she could climb out, let alone examine the depths.
No matter, not at the moment. She peered at him, slipping her hand onto his. “Am I forgiven?”
“Nothing to forgive. You were doing the right thing. I just didn’t understand it.” He patted her hand, then stood to leave.
She couldn’t help but be dismayed. “Going already?”
“I do not want to, but I feel I should. I am feeling very…” He paused, giving her a slow sweeping gaze. “Impulsive, at the moment. Given how things usually go wrong when I act on impulse, I will leave. I don’t want to ruin anything. Not when it’s so…”
He cleared his throat but abandoned the thought. Instead, he opened the door, looking over his shoulder as he turned to leave. “Tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait,” she said. He couldn’t leave now. They were both so close to a breakthrough. Herself, especially. She spent her career listening and encouraging those who needed her help and she knew, at this moment, she truly needed him. “A wish. Do I still get one?”
He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, chin tucked. His eyes smoldered. This time, there was no anger behind the flames dancing in his eyes. “I can be persuaded to give you one. What is your wish?”
What a voice. It was everything a bedroom voice should be: deep, rough, smoky. His accent pushed it right over the line into the realm of Too Much Sexy.
She dug her fingernails into her palms. Too easy to get distracted when he used that voice on her. “I want to be like you.”
Surprise brightened his expression. “Like me?”
“Yes. Like you. You are so…” She shook her head, trying to find the right word. “Irritable sometimes. And you get excited over little things. Like my grandma’s junk.”
“Not junk,” he said, his tone sullen.
“See? You drool over it. You broke a sweat the first time I let you play with it. And you yell—you scream! You burn things accidentally when you get mad. On purpose when you think you need to make a point.” She glowered a little at the last part. She had to throw out that jacket.
“So…” He looked perplexed. “You want to burn things?”
She grasped his hand and drew him away from the door, closing it behind him. “I want to feel those things. I want that passion. About anything.”
“You are passionate about your work—”
“I am dedicated. Not passionate. I care because people need someone to care for them. But I’m not emotionally vested. I’m objective and dedicated and committed. I’m goal-oriented. I’m task-dependent.”
“But your wish—”
“I want to feel. Something, anything. I do, when I’m with you. But only then. It’s like my soul is on loan, and I only get to visit it when we’re together.” Until she met him, she didn’t complain. She didn’t know she had a reason to. “But now…Emotion. I’ve studied it all my life. I just want to experience it like everyone else. How can others expect me to fix something I never felt?”
He winced. “I can’t grant that wish.”
“But—”
“I’m a thief, Tamarinda. That’s how I grant wishes. I steal something from someone else and I give it away on a wish. Emotion isn’t something I can simply thrust into your heart. It’s like—it’s like faith. Either you believe or you don’t. No one can make you believe in something. It has to come from within.”
“But I want it, I do. Doesn’t that count?”
“I am a thief,” he repeated, his voice softer. “I cannot give you feelings any more than I can give myself a simple ring. I hate granting superficial wishes. Money, wealth, anything of the material sort. I possess those things briefly and it incenses me to know they are not mine. I cannot grant someone riches out of the thinnest air—I must steal riches from some other fool so that I can grant it to another. I cannot keep anything I steal. A slave has no property.”
“You are not a slave.”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “As long as no one wields my talisman, I am on holiday. As long as I am bound to it, I am a slave. These are facts that have endured for millennia. Just because I flaunt my apparent freedom, it does not change facts. A slave.”
“Oh, Burnsie.” What had it cost for him to apologize the way he did? An entire seashore, absconded…How high was the price of his magic?
Fierce emotions warred within his eyes, sorrow and anger and flickers of flame.
This was him. This was what always roiled beneath his surface, that cocky arrogance, that silly conceit.
She’d read tales about genies and their magic lamps but this was the first he’d spoken of his own constraints. Bound to a talisman? No wonder he’d bristled the day they met, when she spoke the word servant.
Pain.
He was a soul who dwelled in eternal pain, eternal in a sense she’d never fully understood before. He’d wandered from her, standing apart. His left arm wrapped his waist, his right palm over his heart, patting his chest in a slow cadence, emphasizing the futility of his words.
She ached, a sympathetic echo of what she imagined him to feel.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this,” he said. “These are not things to be told, not to be spoken aloud, especially not to mortal ears.”
“But you trust me.”
“I do. Even if you weren’t magically bound to your word…which still intrigues and delights me.” A twinkle surfaced briefly, a wry grin. “You feel—familiar. You draw me. That isn’t safe.”
She drew him? She’d swear to the opposite. Despite the rules, the expectations, she couldn’t keep a safe distance from him as a client any more than she could resist him as a man. She stole to his side and reached up for his hand, which still mirrored the panic of his heartbeat, and stilled it with a touch. She could be good for him, if he let her.
If she let herself. “For you, to be close to someone?”
His expression fell, regret weighing his eyes, his lips. He slipped his fingers around hers, holding her hand to his chest. He released his waist and gently lay his free hand on her hip, a ghost of an embrace. “For you, to be close to me.”
“I’m not afraid, Burns.”
“Why not?” He extricated himself from her touch and backed away, his pupils large and bottomless dark. “You aren’t a silly girl.”
“That might be why. I’m a woman. And you, I think, have something I need. Something I want. All I have to do is figure out how to get you to give it to me.”
He beheld her, something lurking behind his gaze, a word unsaid. When he responded to the innuendo, he did so just the way she’d hoped he would.
With his hands.
Chapter 20
Up until the moment he reached for her, he had been consumed by his darkest feelings, the feelings that had haunted him since his earliest centuries. For millennia he’d harnessed those feelings, packed them away behind a wall of glass, using the idea of them to fuel his quest. Harnessed. Controlled.
Never conquered.
And, as he closed in on his talisman—for the first time, it stood still, almost begging to be found—as he closed in on it, he comes face to face with a mortal who threatened to shatter that glass prison he’d built. Even now, the glass was cracked and chipped, the tight heat of pain and fear seeping out. He was still too raw, even after three thousand of the longest years, and the pain bit like a live wire.
&n
bsp; Tamarinda had been a target, he knew. A pawn in the game he had no choice but to play. She shouldn’t even matter, now. She’d given him the ring, the one that hummed in his hand and sang out the years to him when he touched it. It echoed with the feel of Solomon’s magic, hollow but recognizable.
But she was a target no more. He had the ring, stowed safely in his pocket. Why didn’t he leave?
Was it the shape of her hips? Love or not love, nicely curved hips were worth their weight in sculpted gold. That was a quality he appreciated in either form, flesh or fire. But hips weren’t enough to break his carefully-constructed veneer.
Was it the timbre of her voice, when she said she loved him? Such vulnerability, almost a taste of fear upon the words when she spoke them. He doubted she understood the true depth of love, at least how he understood it. A mortal never lived long enough to experience the breadth and width of the emotion, yet she seemed determined to try. Her voice betrayed her longing, and it appealed to him. The weakness, the vulnerability. It attracted the manipulator inside him.
It also resonated within him, with his own vulnerability.
She had turned to him, eager and innocent, and told him he had something she needed. Imagine. He—a beggar of a slave, with little more than a wild imagination and the power to temporarily entertain it—he had something she needed.
The only thing he truly owned was himself. He only knew one way to give it to her.
He reached for her, his arms open, his heart vulnerable, knowing he was powerless against her. He grazed his fingertips against her shoulders, folding her closer. Leaning down, he brushed his lips against her cheek, her forehead, her other cheek, coming to pause nose to nose. He inhaled her scent, the warmth of her skin, the fragrance of her hair, basking in the pleasure of being surrounded by a garden as lovely as she, lovely and exotic and breathtaking beyond measure.
She tilted her chin upward, leaning closer to his chest, pressing her hands against him. “Do you remember our dream?”
Our dream. It pierced him through, and his heart swelled against the sting of sweet pain. The implication of ownership, a shared union. It stirred his flesh, squeezed his lungs, made him dizzy. His voice was ragged. “Yes.”
“Do you remember how you kissed me?” Her heavy-lidded eyes, sleepy and sensual, threatened to drown him.
A soft groan slipped from him. He could not imagine a sweeter way to die.
He dug his fingers into her hair, deep auburn waves. It stirred the fragrance of her skin, the perfume drawing him closer. He breathed her in through his mouth. Intoxicating. “I do.”
“Do it again.”
He smoothed back the strands of her hair, tucking them behind her ears, framing her exquisite face in his hands. He licked his lips, wondering how sweet her kiss would be.
Slowly, he lowered his mouth to hers, delighting in the soft petals of her lips, the silk of her mouth. He savored the touch, the light taste of her breath, the perfection of the moment. His lips parted to catch her breath; he inhaled once before melting into the lushness of her mouth. He’d never known such intoxication.
She didn’t hesitate—she met his kiss with an ardent response, an urgency that surprised him.
He chuckled deep in his throat. Breaking the kiss, he smiled. “There is much of a tiger in you. I like it.”
“Is that what you find so familiar?” She slid her hands around to his back, pushing her fingertips up into the cords of muscle that rippled across his shoulder blades. “The tiger in me?”
“Perhaps. Are you hiding your stripes?” He grasped the bottom of her shirt and lifted it. She raised her arms, allowing him to tug off her blouse. Dropping it, he ran his palms down her bare back, sweeping to her waistline. The skirt was only held by a snap and a zip, both easily undone. A push of fabric and it slipped to the floor, baring her long, lithe legs.
“Hmm. No stripes. I was mistaken.” His fingertips lingered over the curves of her slender waist and he traced the lines of her body, memorizing them. This woman was his, in a way he’d never expected, never dared to hope. He didn’t want to miss a single detail.
He cupped her shoulders, kissing the tenderness of her neck. She shuddered against him, her flesh raised in goose bumps under his hands.
“You are cold,” he murmured. “Let me warm you.”
He sought her mouth again, his kiss no longer hesitant. He plundered her embrace, pulling her tighter to him, and she responded with a force of her own, drawing him deeper into her kiss.
Too much. It loosened his control on his physical form. His temperature shot up, searing hot and fever-pitched. She grinned and took his face between her hands, teasing him with a flutter of her long lashes, a pretty pout. She took him further from his restraints, and he desperately held on to his body, his flesh and bone.
All he wanted to do was dissolve into his true form, a writhing twist of smokeless fire. He held on to this body by his teeth, because this was the only body she could safely handle.
“This isn’t a dream.” The air burned to breathe, his heart galloped against his ribs. “This is real.”
“Is that a warning?”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes trained on hers. The sight of her, so elegant in her simplicity, so radiant in her innocence. Her splendor filled his eyes, his senses, in a way that all of Solomon’s treasures could never compare. “No. It’s just—I can’t believe you are real.”
She tilted her head and reached up to cup his jaw. “Burns?”
He swallowed, his breath choppy. “Yes?”
“Take me to bed. There are only so many things I can do standing up.”
His heart swelled, a rolling sensation that threatened to consume him. If he died, he would die having known absolute joy.
“As you desire.” He scooped her up into his arms.
He carried her into her bedroom, seeking places to kindle his fire. Ah. There, and there. Scented candles on her bureau, her night stand. He lit every wick with a single glance, easy to do when his own fire was already stoked.
She toyed with the curls behind his ear, dangerously close to a particularly sensitive spot. His entire body tightened when her fingers found it.
He let her slip from his grasp, sliding her down the length of his body onto the bed. So seductive was she, her open smile betraying her own anticipation. What had ever made him think she was hard-hearted? Not she, who wore hunger upon her face as an empress wore her jewels.
He rolled his shoulders, slipping out of his jacket and dropping it. Pushing it aside with his foot, he knelt on the bed, sinking down beside her. Oh, her heat. It radiated toward him, pulling him closer.
Her long dark hair spread out like silk against the pillows, framing her heart-shaped face. Hungrily, he let his gaze run loose over her, memorizing her. Too good to be real—if this were another dream—
But she was real, and reaching for him.
His heartbeat a hammer, his hand trembled as he reached to cup her cheek, drawing her face up to him. If only he could disappear in the scent of her skin and her hair. She wore no fragrance but her own, and it was the very scent to capture him.
Her hands pressed to his chest, she chuckled. “Your heart. It’ll burst.”
“Only if it breaks.” He curled the corner of his mouth. “And you’ll find I am harder than that.”
Her mouth wore a sweet smile below eyes that were heavy-lidded with desire. She unbuttoned his shirt, sliding it back over his shoulders. Brushing her fingertips across his chest, she toyed over the tender flesh. “Mmm hmm.”
Eyes closed, she leaned to press her mouth to the hollow at the base of his throat, spilling her breath, moist and hot, against him.
Real. His human heart had never been put through these paces before. He groaned, as if she squeezed him from the inside out. The room dimmed and he tunnel-visioned, seeing only her, wanting only her. Her mouth travelled up along his throat to the soft place by his ear once more, sending a crazy signal to every nerve in his body.
Seize her, love her. His body drummed out the commands. He had only to obey them.
If only that itch would stop—
A tickle along his senses competed with Tamarinda’s touch for his attention. He ran his hand over her stomach, up between her silk-wrapped breasts to rest at the base of her throat. Eyes still closed, she smiled, dreamy soft. Her lips parted, her breath audible.
Ready, she was. And wanting.
And wanted.
But that damnable itch.
He could suffer no more of it. He drew back, impatience fraying his expression.
“Something in this room is driving me insane.” He failed to suppress the distinctive layer of irritation in his tone.
Her eyes flicked open. “What?”
“Something...” Squinching his eyes, he gritted his teeth, feeling for the right word. “Old.”
She pursed her lips, gently scolding him. “So go find it, hug it, whatever, and come back to bed.”
“That’s just it. It’s right here. I’d swear you were wearing it.” He ran his gaze down the curves of her breasts, her waist. “But I am thoroughly sure you are concealing nothing.”
She laughed and toyed with her lower lip, tugging it with her slender fingers. “Very observant.”
“Still. Under the bed, maybe?” He slid off the bed and knelt on the floor. He closed his eyes and pulled everything in, reshaping himself with a sizzle and small puff of scented smoke.
Mice were not his favorite form, but there was no room for a tiger under the lady’s bed. The source of that itch was under here, somewhere. It had to be. He could feel it—
It felt—it felt like that chunk of his being that was the talisman.
Impossible. He had the ring. It lay wrapped in a cotton kerchief, in his coat pocket, on the floor near the bureau. This was different. That mental itch was right here. Right here!
It had to be. It burned his periphery like a tiny coil of hot wire. He explored the shoe boxes, the under-bed bins. Nothing. But still. Right here.
He skittered out and regained his human form. The itch intensified, humming along his nerves. He knelt against the bed, resting on his elbows. “Nothing. I will go mad! Off the bed.”
