by Sabrina York
“It is a magic lamp.”
“Yes. But you have to know how to ask, don’t you?”
Funny. He’d been here forever and hadn’t quite realized that. She’d figured that out in less than a week.
“And the mirror. I figured out how to make it show me everything.”
“It is a magic mirror.”
“Everything!”
She belched again and collapsed into his arms with a sigh. “Keeshan, I think I could stay here with you forever.”
He couldn’t respond. He simply could not. If he tried, he would probably dissolve into a mortifying puddle of tears. He would love for her to stay here with him forever. But she couldn’t. He couldn’t let her. He had to give her back her life.
“So what are you watching?” He kissed the top of her head.
She snorted. “Carter.”
The sinuous trail of jealousy snaking through his gut was unpleasant. “Why?”
“Do you know what that bastard did?” Her tone was virulent.
Ah, then. Perhaps there was no need for jealousy.
“What did that bastard do?”
“He stole my dissertation!”
“That bastard!”
She tipped her head to the side and nibbled her lip. “He tried to. Turns out he was too stupid to steal it.”
“Too stupid to steal it? How is that?”
Ah. This was bliss. Sitting here with her in his arms. Knowing he had to send her home…but not now. Not yet.
“He took it to the IHA Conference and presented it to two hundred peers.”
“Is that bad?”
She snorted. “He couldn’t answer any of their questions. I mean, not even the easy ones.” She peeped at him over her shoulder. Her outrage was adorable. So he kissed her. “You should have seen him sweating and stuttering and making things up. What a dweeb. I don’t know what I ever saw in him.”
“Neither do I.”
She punched him on the shoulder. “Stop it. Anyway, after that debacle his education was called into question and he had to go before the National Archeological Board and defend his credentials. And you know what?”
“What?” He loved it when her eyes shined like that.
“He kind of forgot to graduate.”
“No.”
She nodded gleefully and crammed some more popcorn into her mouth. “And he kind of forgot to tell anyone he never graduated.”
“No.”
“Yup. And get this, they kind of fired his ass.”
“And this pleases you?”
“It delights me. Maybe we’ll get a director who actually cares about the artifacts…” She trailed off. “Oh.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, though he knew damn well what was wrong.
“It’s just…”
“Yes?”
“When I go back…I won’t be here anymore. With you.”
He cleared his throat. “You have to go back sometime.”
“But not soon.” She nestled in deeper, nuzzling him like a kitten. When he didn’t respond, her body tensed up. “Not soon, right?”
He kissed her nape. “Not now.”
She took his cheeks in her hands and forced him to look at her. Her lips taut, she whispered, “It’s soon, isn’t it?”
He nodded. Just the hint of a nod. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t keep it from her.
“Ah, no.” A whisper, a plea. She kissed him so gently his soul start to weep. “No.”
“Aimalee—”
“No!” She wrapped her arms around his neck and wove her fingers into his hair and forced his mouth back to hers. To silence. “No. No talking.”
She kissed him for a long while and he allowed it, soaked it in. He memorized every movement, every taste, every heartbeat. He would need this, this memory, in the long dark days ahead. He let her consume him, gave himself to her bit by bit, kiss by kiss, touch by touch. If he gave enough of himself, maybe it would be like being with her when she left.
When he sat in this chair and watched her through the mirror. When he watched her living her life and loving another man. Having children and watching them grow. And then one day passing from this world to the next. He would watch her until then.
And then he would wait. Wait until she came to him again. Not remembering him again. Not loving him again.
Yes. He let her kiss him and he gave himself to her. And when the passion began to grow, he ignored it. Until she would not let him ignore it anymore.
“Keeshan?”
“Yes, Aimalee.” He could barely think with her touching him like that.
“Take me to the fantasy room.”
“You don’t want to go there.”
“I do.”
“It will bring your fantasy to life. Your deepest, darkest sexual fantasy. It will come to life. It’s not often pretty.”
“Take me there.”
So he did. Dreading the revelation, dreading what he might discover but too besotted to refuse her a single thing, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the seventh and final room in the lamp. They approached the door, prepared as they were, filled with intentions as they were, and the locked door opened unto them.
Keeshan stepped inside.
And stared.
It was Aimalee’s bedroom.
Gently he set her on the bed and gazed down into her shining eyes. “What exactly is your fantasy?”
She laughed, a tiny sniffle. “It’s nothing much. Not really.”
“Tell me.” He sat beside her.
“I want to be loved.”
“You are loved.” He kissed her.
“No, silly. I want to be loved…by a man I love. That’s all.”
He chuckled and levered over her, pressing her down onto the pillow. “We don’t need a fantasy room for that.” But then he stilled. “Do we?” He loved her. No doubt about that…but she’d never said it.
Perhaps his sudden uncertainty washed across his expression—it certainly washed across his soul—for she cupped his cheek and smiled. “No. We don’t. But it’s my fantasy. I want to make love with the man I love in my own bed.”
“Am I,” he swallowed, “the man you love?”
“Absolutely you are.” She kissed him. “Keeshan, I love you. With all my heart.” She blinked back a sudden swell of tears. “I don’t want to leave you. I am scared to death to leave you.”
He kissed away the dampness. “We will be together again.”
“It won’t be the same.” She kissed the corner of his eyes, one after the other. And he realized there were tears on his cheeks as well. “Just love me, Keeshan. Love me.”
“Ah Aimalee,” he said. “I do.”
But then he showed her. With his mouth, his lips and his body. He showed her. He brought her to the edge again and again until she screamed, begged and growled for mercy. And then when she was ready, when her body was weeping and wet, when she trembled and twitched and demanded to be filled, he did.
He slid inside her body, into her warmth, into the tight, slick cavern of her soul. He slipped in deeply and reveled in the delicate flutters, the desperate clutching of her cunt. He kissed her as he withdrew and then kissed her when he thrust once more, capturing her cries in his mouth, swallowing them and consuming them, as if swallowing and consuming a part of her would fill him up when he was alone once more.
When his body started to tighten, when hers began to shake, when the passion and the rhythm deepened and fled, when both their hearts began to skidder and thud in tandem, he let go of the leash. And he took her. Deep and hard and straight to the core. He took her.
The explosion was beyond anything he’d ever known. And he could tell from the wonder in her eyes she felt it too. Together they flew on wings of absolute, bone-deep ecstasy. And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only magic involved was the magic the two of them made. Together.
And then when she was sleeping, when he knew that a moment could never be more perfect than the moment the
y had just shared, when he knew his strength would not last for long, he let his hand slide up her side, over her perfect breast to rest on her chest, on the beating of her heart. And he traced the familiar symbol. Backward.
In a flash, she was gone.
He was left alone in the thin facsimile, this mockery of her room.
He buried his face in her pillow still infused with her scent and he wept.
Chapter Nineteen
When Aimalee awoke she was tangled in the shrouds of a persistent dream. It was aggravating because she could smell it, sense it, taste it, but when she tried to capture it, it wafted away.
She rolled over in her bed and draped an arm over her face to block the sunlight streaming through the window and tried desperately to remember. It had been so…pleasant. So warm. So real. But even as she reached for the memory, it danced away.
She groaned in frustration and rolled over. When she saw the clock, she groaned again. Damn it all. She was late.
She dragged herself from bed and padded to the bathroom. All through her shower she was haunted by snippets and sinuous trails of that tantalizing dream.
There had been man. She remembered as much. And phenomenal sex. But strange things like floating candles and mirrors that were televisions and…cheesecake. She definitely remembered that. As she stood at the sink, brushing her teeth and gazing blankly at her reflection, she tried to remember. But like a fog it was impossible to grasp and a filmy vision at best.
And all through breakfast as she ate her egg and toast and sipped her coffee, she was haunted by a lingering, incomprehensible sense of loss. Which made no sense—because it was only a dream.
She dressed slowly, still in a daze, and made her way to work, careful to avoid everyone. She simply wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
When she got to her office, she expected everything to return to normal. Her work had always done that for her—washed everything else away. But that odd, restless melancholy clung to her. She sat at her desk and stared at the items cluttered there, unable to dive in. Unable to make any sense of things.
First of all, these weren’t the same items she had been working with yesterday. They were all new and completely unfamiliar to her. There was an opened crate by her worktable filled with straw, so clearly these items had just come in and were waiting for her to catalog them. But she’d never seen any of them before. The artifacts from last night’s event were all neatly stacked on shelves by the far wall but there was something just…wrong about them. Like something was missing. But she couldn’t put her finger on it.
She was still in a numb stupor when the door to her workroom opened.
“There you are.”
Aimalee flinched. Sorcha was the last person she wanted to see this morning.
“For God’s sake, where have you been? You missed all the excitement.”
Aimalee picked up a clipboard and studied it. Flipped through the pages. She knew Sorcha was standing there, waiting for a response, but she had no inclination to engage.
“Did you have a nice vacation? Must be nice. Just taking off like that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Carter was pretty upset.”
“Carter?” Carter had been in her dream. Hadn’t he?
“But then, I suppose that’s a moot point…considering.”
“Considering what?”
Sorcha gaped at her. “Do you mean you don’t know? Carter was fired.”
Aimalee blinked. “Fired?”
“Yes. The idiot tried to pass your dissertation off as his own and the board found out.”
A vague memory washed through her. Sitting on a throne. Eating popcorn. Watching Carter get fired on television. She had dreamed that. Hadn’t she?
“After the big confab, he just disappeared. Didn’t clean out his desk or anything. But then you can hardly blame him, I suppose. It was probably mortifying. Getting hauled before the board of directors. Humiliated in the press. I would disappear too.” She laughed, a harsh, forced offering.
That Sorcha was amused by another’s trials churned in her gut and Aimalee turned away, repulsed by how much she disliked her coworker.
There was something else there too, something larger. A betrayal she could sense but just couldn’t pin down. “Did you want something, Sorcha? I’m busy.”
“Oh, yes.” She smoothed her hair. “The new director wants to see you.”
“The new director?”
“Bring your dissertation. He wants to discuss that with you.” Sorcha leaned closer and whispered in a cloying, conspiratorial tone, “He’s gorgeous.”
“Really?” Aimalee set the clipboard back on the hook.
“I don’t know where they found him but he’s got a pedigree like you wouldn’t believe. He worked overseas for the international archives and knows absolutely everybody who’s anybody. Did I mention he’s hot?”
“I believe you did.”
“Really, Aimalee. You really should show more interest. This man will have your career in the palm of his hand. He could make you or break you.”
Aimalee fished through her files to find a clean copy of her dissertation. She pulled it out and cradled it in her arms. “Unlike you, Sorcha, I don’t need to rely on a man to make me.”
Sorcha sniffed. “You don’t need to be pissy.”
“Not being pissy. Just telling it like it is.”
Sorcha puckered her lips. “There’s something different about you.” Aimalee shrugged and angled her way past Sorcha toward the door. “Did you get laid?”
Aimalee rolled her eyes and, ignoring the question, slipped out into the hall. She tried to ignore the emotions that question evoked, visions of a tall, handsome perfect man, of love and loving, the memory of a dream lover she just couldn’t shake, but the thoughts were rooted in her mind. She couldn’t brush them away.
In a haze she made her way to Carter’s office.
No. Not Carter’s office. Not anymore. There was some new boss. That was going to take some getting used to.
Oddly enough, she had no sense of panic, of betrayal at his sudden desertion.
It was as though her fixation on Carter had been simply erased.
This was turning out to be the oddest day.
“Hi, Marie.” She forced a smile as she greeted Carter’s secretary and Marie beamed back. Funny. Aimalee didn’t remember Marie grinning when Carter was her boss.
“Morning, Aimalee. Welcome back.” Aimalee was about to open her mouth and say she hadn’t gone anywhere—why did everyone think she’d been on vacation?—when Marie stood and crossed to Carter’s door. “He’s ready to see you now.”
“He?”
“The new boss? Mr. Keeshan?”
Aimalee nearly fainted as a wash of prescience flooded her.
Keeshan.
There was something about that name that made her tingle, down to her toes.
Marie winked. “I think you’re going to like him.” She knocked on the door and poked her head in. “Aimalee West is here to see you.”
A low murmur echoed through the door and Aimalee’s sense of unreality swelled. She knew that voice.
No. She didn’t know it. But she remembered it. Somehow.
Marie held open the door and Aimalee walked through.
There was a man sitting at Carter’s desk but this man was not Carter. This man was nothing like Carter. Sorcha had been right on. He was handsome. He was hot. But he was something more. Someone more.
Aimalee stared at him, her dissertation clutched to her chest. She’d never met this man but somehow she knew him.
He stood when he saw her and she boggled at his height, his breadth. And heavens.
The look on his face.
It was a hunger.
An aching unlike anything she’d ever seen in a man’s expression—leastways when he was gazing at her.
“Aimalee.” He said her name like a prayer.
She stood there mute, an idiot, as an odd emoti
on, a peculiar recognition swirled through her.
It’s him! her mind kept crying but she didn’t know what that meant.
It’s him, who?
She swallowed the drool pooling in her mouth and nodded jerkily. “Mr. Keeshan.”
He tipped his head to the side and gave her a crooked smile. “It’s just Keeshan, Aimalee.” He stepped out from behind the desk, looking heart-stopping in a crisp three-piece suit. She caught a whiff of his scent and little alarms started going off in her head. Her heart began to pound.
When he put out his hand, she just stared at it.
He wanted her to touch him? Glory be. What would that be like? He stepped closer and she took a step back.
“Aimalee.” She tried to ignore the dimples blossoming on both cheeks. “Aren’t you going to shake my hand?”
She tried to force her mind to function. She lurched forward and slipped her hand in his.
And her world exploded. Memory drenched her. Memories of Keeshan and the lamp and their kisses and loving. Their love. Everything came back in a flash.
A laugh bubbled up inside her. It was him. It was Keeshan! Her Keeshan.
He was here.
His pupils dilated as their palms met. His grip tightened and he yanked her closer. The next thing she knew, she was in his arms, her precious dissertation falling to the floor in a fluttering, forgotten sheaf.
“Oh Keeshan. Is it really you?”
His grin broadened. “You remember?”
“I do. I remember everything. But…how?”
He kissed her. Their lips met in a tingling wash of passion and relief. “I’ve missed you.”
She laughed. “It hasn’t been that long.”
“It’s been far too long.” Their lips met again and this time they clung. He tasted her. Groaned and tasted her again.
“But…what happened?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We broke the spell, Aimalee. Together we finally broke the spell.”
She cupped his cheek. “You’re free?”
“Yes. I’m free. And we are together. Could life be more perfect?” A knock came at the door and Keeshan frowned. “What is it?” he barked.
