“They are yours to command.” She threw away her coffee cup. It vanished as abruptly as her quiet mood. “That is my tale. Wish what you will, o master.”
The last word jerked him out of the romance of the story. It made the temptation of three wishes real and personal. Objectionable. “Don’t call me ‘master’.”
“It’s traditional.”
“Fuck tradition.”
She stared.
He grabbed the bottle and its cursed seal. “I will not own a slave. My great-great grandparents were slaves. It’s obscene.”
“I agree, but while you possess my bottle, you own my three wishes.”
He jumped to his feet, ready to fling the bottle down the mountain. “I refuse them. No. I’ll do better than that. I’ll use one.”
“Of course you will.” The tense line of her shoulders slumped.
Her lack of trust, her lack of hope, fed his anger. No one should be a slave.
“I wish you free.” He flung the bottle into the fire.
“Dear God.”
The flames exploded in purple light. Shadows thundered. The air and ground filled with strangeness. Ty staggered.
Laila’s exultant laughter cut through it all. The world steadied. She reached into the fire and extracted a purple stone. It resembled an amethyst but glowed with its own light. “The memory of my prison.”
Ty cleared his throat. “I think you have more than a stone to remember it by.”
She glanced around, then laughed. “I’d forgotten. I set the spell in the early days, when I still believed a human would wish me free. These are my belongings.”
Shelves crammed with old scrolls and ornaments rubbed shoulders with a massive table, chairs and a number of chests. Lamps burned with steady flames, incongruous beside modern computer and stereo equipment. Carpets unrolled and insinuated themselves underfoot. Paintings leaned drunkenly against the rocks.
“Wildly inappropriate for a mountainside.” She laughed again and flung her arms up. The belongings vanished, leaving the mountain bare once more.
“Where did you send them?”
“To a palace I once knew.” Her smiles turned suddenly to tears and she hugged Ty hard, burying her face in his shoulder. “Thank you.”
She felt like a woman, sweetly rose-scented, soft and vulnerable. For a moment rage surged in him that she’d ever been other men’s slave.
“You are the nicest man I know.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.
He glanced down at her and saw not a seductive houri such as legend recorded of genies, but a woman with a claim on him. Rescue a person and their life was forever your responsibility. The woman sniffing against his shoulder felt like a little sister. He rubbed her back.
“I will always look after you,” Laila said.
“You’ll look after me?”
“Of course.” She blew her nose then tucked away the handkerchief. “There are ties of blood, but also ties of loyalty and honor. You freed me. I have a right to care what happens to you.”
It was his thinking in reverse. Inarguable. Insane.
“So, what will you do?”
She gave his shoulder a reassuring pat. “First, I’ll blast that dragon that’s roaring up the mountain.”
Chapter Two
The dragon’s roar was a fireball of molten colors, swirling and melding in high temperature bad temper. It spiced the air with the scent of sandalwood and caramel.
Laila flung Ty headlong after her belongings. Like them, he’d be safe in her secret room in the White Rose Palace.
But she wasn’t afraid of a little dragon fire. She basked like a salamander in the shimmering heat.
The dragon paced forward, twice a man’s height at the shoulders, iridescent feathers glimmering on its folded wings, the long serpentine tail with its barbed tip lashing. Its taloned feet gouged the scorched, rocky ground. The right eye shone a sapphire blue. The left eye was empty socket. The reptilian skin was midnight black.
Its angry roar of flame changed. It softened and thinned to a ribbon and the dragon wielded it ruthlessly.
Heat flicked over Laila’s lips, along her throat, stroked the curve of her breasts, teasing and heating, and played down to nudge the junction of her thighs. She arched into the heated caress, shivering as the tongue of flame licked back up her body, fire kisses exploding with the taste of brandy on her lips.
It was appalling, wicked, exactly how Laila wanted to celebrate her freedom. Pure indulgence of sensuality.
But she didn’t know the dragon, didn’t know why he’d arrived in a killing temper, and really, reluctantly, she ought to summon some commonsense.
The dragon exploded into flame. Its whole body burned. From the heart of the inferno, a man walked out. He wore black. Black shirt. Black thigh hugging trousers. Black eye patch. His good eye glittered.
He brought the scents of the desert with him. Forgotten memories of sandstorms and burning horizons, of men’s sweat and passion. Only the strong survived in the desert.
Djinn survived in the desert.
Desire, reckless and powerful, flooded through Laila. She had earned this moment out of time—simply by surviving the aridity of her imprisonment.
The dragon approached with the lithe, deceptive ease of a hunter. He wore his power arrogantly, flaring around him, seducing her with the lure of matching strengths.
“You play with fire, djinni.” The dark accusation held a sensual challenge.
She answered with a single step that closed the distance between them.
“Oh yes, fire rose. Let me burn you.” He pushed his hand through the tangle of her hair and cupped the back of her head. The tips of his fingers flexed against her scalp with the tiny scrape of talons.
She vibrated with the pleasure of his touch.
He gave a half-laugh of approval. It husked in his throat, a feral note of satisfaction. “So silent? Don’t worry, you won’t need words. Whatever you want me to do, just show me. Your beautiful body will speak for itself.”
Her lips parted at the erotic thought of such a silent, sensual invitation. A skilled lover would read her needs in the pulse at the base of her throat, her quickened breathing, the tight swollen nipples revealed when he undressed her.
The dragon inhaled. “I can smell your sex.”
The dampness of her arousal, and he was a predator. At another time, her readiness might have embarrassed her. Here and now, reading the hunger in his expression, it pleased her.
She leant into him, placing her face against the curve of his throat and licking delicately.
“That better be an invitation, fire rose.” He dragged her against him, his arousal obvious as it pressed into her belly. His hand tightened in her hair and tilted her face up. “Kiss me.”
His mouth already had the harsh line of desire.
Laila kissed him recklessly, passionately, falling out of all thought and into the whirlwind they created together. She licked. He bit. Their tongues dueled. Exotic flavors of spice and wine merged with new meaning. They were his flavor.
Intoxicating.
He was too tall. She tried to climb up him, wanting to rub herself against his arousal.
His hand slid down her tummy and between her legs, halting her restless movement, concentrating her awareness. She rocked against his hand.
“You need to be naked,” he said.
She vanished her clothes, instantly.
“Fire rose.” He groaned. “So damn beautiful.”
The encouragement heightened her arousal. She slicked his fingers, moving over them, wanting them, him, in her.
Instead, he dropped to one knee and opened his mouth over her breast. He sucked deeply, strongly, swirling his tongue around the nipple.
She gave a tortured moan and clutched his shoulders, her body arching, coming apart as he slid a finger inside her and she clenched around the wanted invasion.
“A bed. We need a damn bed.”
His rough urgency heightened her senses
and then she was falling backward into the softness of luxurious bedding and her dragon followed her down, shedding his clothes in instant impatience and stretching over her, skin to skin.
She smiled, welcoming his weight.
“It’s not funny.”
No. It was glorious. She ran her toes up his calf and felt him jerk.
“I thought I could wait. The damn way you responded to my fire.” He stopped talking to kiss her hard, an assault of tongue and teeth, while he thrust into her.
The sensual invasion stretched her with exquisite near impossibility. Were all dragons so large?
He withdrew with equal, mind-shattering deliberation.
The tease was too intense for her to even think of guessing his length. It was enough that he was full and hard and…coming back.
He pushed a cushion under her hips and entered deeper yet.
She wrapped her legs around his waist to keep him there. At that spot, that moment of perfect—
“Burn for me.” He pushed them both off the precipice, free falling in the urgent demands of passion.
She strained against him, her hands sliding over his slick back, her thighs abrading with the friction of his, her whole body living their shared rhythm. Faster, harder, greedy for everything.
Ecstasy exploded, rippling through her muscles to the edge of unconsciousness.
His shout spoke of one final effort and the power of his release, pumping within her body, triggered another wash of pleasure. She enjoyed the reluctance with which he removed his weight, keeping one leg tangled with hers. She caressed his shoulder and smiled at the kiss he pressed to her soft breast. His mouth lingered.
Afterplay. The warm intimacy of pleasure.
“We can help each other, djinni.”
“Mm-hmm.” She agreed absolutely. She would play in his fire any day and she’d teach him that djinn had their own powers. He would enjoy—
“I can reclaim my eye and you can punish your master.”
She ceased tracing patterns on his skin.
“Working together we will both enjoy the vengeance. We’ll destroy the sorcerer. I hate to think of you forced to serve him.”
“I’m not. I don’t.” She wriggled from under his relaxed sprawl.
He pounced, flattening her once more to the bed. His breath was warm against her face. His eye glittered.
“Don’t tell me you have teamed with a sorcerer? Whatever he has promised you…he can’t free you from Solomon’s curse.”
“You must get a lot of exercise.” She tried to push him off, insulted that he could believe she’d ever work with a sorcerer. “Jumping to conclusions.”
“I’m a desperate and angry man, djinni.”
Ha. He’d made love to her with single-minded intensity. That meant he was easily side-tracked, impulsive.
Unless his seduction was a calculated ploy?
Pain flared through her. Mutual passion she could accept as an explanation for her reckless behavior. She was not sexually impulsive. But to be used, exploited, cut deep. Centuries of enslavement fueled her anger.
He’d taken her to bed because he wanted an ally against a sorcerer. He’d used her.
Her power flung the dragon off her, off the bed and onto his butt on the rocky ground.
She scrambled to her knees, summoning a robe and wrapping it around her. She saw the scorched devastation of the campsite. All Ty’s belongings were ash on the wind or else twisted metal and melted plastic.
Oh my God. She trembled with shock and appalled realization of what she’d overlooked. “You conscienceless bastard. You’d have killed Ty if I weren’t here.”
“Is that the sorcerer’s name?” The dragon strode back to the bed, naked and powerful. Anger simmered in his eye that she’d put him on his butt, kicked him out of his bed. “Did he order you to distract me with a seduction?”
“No, that was my mistake.”
“Is he your lover? Is that why you defend him, hide him? A djinni with a sorcerer master. Your enslavement has made you a boot-licking cur.”
She bounced up on the bed, glaring down at him. “I am no one’s bitch. Never. Never even when cursed. I am my own person.”
“I’ve had you.”
Bile rose in her throat that he could so crudely demean their experience. “I’ll scour your touch from my skin. I’ll wash away the very memory of you. I have to, or I’ll be sick.”
“Very dramatic.” He tried for a note of bored impatience, but he’d flinched at the taunt.
She dropped down on the bed, anger spent, joy gone, immeasurably tired.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “There was no sorcerer on this mountain. Ty is an American scientist. You caught the scent of sorcery, but it was ancient magic. Solomon’s curse. Everything is unexpected, tonight. Ty was given my bottle, and he freed me. He said he didn’t believe in slavery. As simple as that. Centuries of human lust for power, and in one instant a good man holds true to his beliefs and I am free. And for his reward, you try to kill him.”
“A man freed you? No sorcerer would.”
Laila nodded. “If you were hunting a sorcerer, the broken curse would have stunk of Solomon’s magic.” Her breath caught, half sob, half laugh. “Poor Ty. No good deed goes unpunished.”
“I’ll restore the American’s belongings.” The dragon dismissed the problem. “Damn it’s cold on this mountain.”
He dressed in an instant, jeans, black leather jacket, boots. He brooded down at her. “What was I to you? A moment’s celebration of your freedom?”
“More than a moment.” She smiled, but the humor slipped away.
“My name is Darek.”
She did laugh then, short and too high, and clutched her robe tighter. “We didn’t even know each other’s names.”
“So tell me yours, now.”
“Laila.” She gathered her strength and changed the robe for jeans and a fleece jacket. She slid off the bed and pulled on boots, letting them lace themselves.
The width of the bed stretched between her and Darek.
“I am impulsive,” he said. “You danced in my fire and your delight, your surrender to its heat, enchanted me. You weren’t afraid of my power or of me.”
“I’m not afraid now.”
He inclined his head. “But I offended you.”
A whore, a boot-licking cur. His insults and inferences had passed beyond offence into hurt. She folded her arms, hugging herself protectively.
“I learned an important lesson about freedom,” she said. “Thoughtless behavior brings its own punishment.”
“And rewards,” his husky voice urged.
“They’re fleeting.”
He sighed and turned away. “I’m sorry.”
She waited a space of three heartbeats, fighting for control of her emotions. “Me, too.”
The bed vanished. The swirl of air stirred the ashes of the burned campsite. Darek cursed. A couple of seconds later, hiking gear piled on the ground.
“You can tell your human I apologize—if he’s willing to believe in dragons.”
“Since Ty was compelled to believe in djinn tonight, I’m sure he’ll swallow dragons. I’ll tell him.”
What else was there to say between casual lovers who’d flung such abuse at one another? Yet Darek hesitated.
“What will you do with your freedom?”
“I don’t know. I have spent centuries in quiet scholarship. Perhaps it will prove an unbreakable habit.”
“That would be a shame.”
She glanced up at the regret in his tone.
“A woman who dances in dragon fire shouldn’t build her own prison. I am sorry I ruined your celebration, Laila. I am…honored you shared it with me.” He opened his hand and for a moment a fire rose glowed on the palm. “Good-bye, fire rose.”
He vanished.
The fire rose floated towards her. She captured it and cradled the rose gold flames. They quivered with joy, licking at her fingers.
Tears
threatened. She widened her eyes, denying them. Freedom oughtn’t to begin with tears.
She raised her hands level with her mouth, pursed her lips and blew. The fire rose tumbled twice and vanished. She was alone on the scorched mountaintop.
Alone and free to build her own life. What life?
She owed Ty his return to the campsite.
Chapter Three
Ty stared at the devastated campsite, then back at Laila. “There was a dragon.”
“Oh yes.” Her breath released on a huge sigh. “There was definitely a dragon.”
“Are you okay?”
No. “Of course. I’m a djinni, remember?” She smiled. “A free one.”
“I’m still not sure what that means.”
“By the time you return to America, it’ll mean no more than a half-disbelieved memory. But I’ll remember, Ty. Your generosity and decency freed me. I’ll leave you a phone number that will always reach me.”
He frowned, then shook his head and grinned. “I thought djinn used magic rings.”
“In many ways, technology is safer.” No one would attack him for an unidentified phone number. A magic ring was more desirable. It would mark him as one who’d touched magic.
“I can see why you might say that.” He looked around at the charred ground.
“The dragon sends his apologies. There was a misunderstanding, but we sorted it. You won’t be bothered by him again. The hiking gear is yours, by way of recompense.”
He crouched down by the new equipment. “And my passport and visa? Never mind. Fortunately I send a copy of my records over the Internet, so they’re safe. Over a month’s work.” He studied a replacement smartphone. “Why did the dragon burn everything?”
“Stupidity,” Laila snapped. “He mistook you for someone else.”
“Then they’re in danger.” Ty dropped the smartphone and stood. “I’d have died without you sending me away. If I freed you, Laila, you saved my life. Can we warn the person the dragon’s chasing?”
“The person deserves everything they get.”
“Even being burnt alive?” He was appalled.
“It’s safer than giving a sorcerer time to counterattack.”
Fire Rose Page 2
