Burn With Me (12 page)

Aziza smiled at the bright picture she presented. “I imagine you will. Do you need any help with that bag?”

“Do
you
need any help, my dear?” the women countered, her accent crisp and sure. “Not to be rude, but you do appear to have a heavier load than I this morning.”

She wouldn’t cry. Not in front of this kind woman. This stranger. “Late night,” she answered softly. “I just need coffee.”

“Of course. Coffee and this.” She plucked one of the roses out of her bag and handed it to Aziza. “To brighten up that pretty black outfit and remind you that we still live in a beautiful world.”

“Thank you. I-I should be going now.” Aziza gripped the stem and walked away as quickly as she could. If she didn’t leave now she would curl up on the older woman’s lap and cry like a baby until her life turned right side up again.

Breakfast,
she told herself firmly. Greg needed to eat. Needed fuel to help him heal.

Ram appeared beside her, walking in time with her swift pace.

”Who’s watching Greg?” She demanded before he could open his mouth.

”Shev. She has orders to behave, I promise.” When she just kept moving forward without another word he said, “That is a beautiful flower, Aziza. Though your roses here aren’t as stunning as the flowers in Qaf. That’s where I’m from, by the way. I’ll have to pick some for you. We have secret gardens that would rival the one you and I—”

“Don’t.” She stopped him without looking in his direction. Without slowing down. “Never mention that again. There is no you and I. If I’d known what you were, what would happen to me, it would never have gone that far. I would have wished you back into whatever damn bottle you came from.”

After a tense pause, he drawled, “I’ll ignore your attempt to stereotype my people and avoid lashing out by commenting on the fact that you are still wearing last night’s dominatrix getup. Instead, let’s address the more pressing issue of your foolish denials.”

She gasped. ”
Foolish?
” 

“If I’m correct,” he continued, “what you’re saying is that now that you know I’m Jinn, you
regret
how hard you came when I fucked you. That you wouldn’t be willing to feel my fingers pumping inside you right now. Right here, where everyone could see. Is that what you’re trying to make me believe?” 

“Yes, it is. I
had no idea
that you were real, or that the things you did were simply to jump-start my abilities.”

”That doesn’t mean you don’t want to do it again. We barely scratched the surface, precious one. That was merely the appetizer before the meal.” He moaned softly, a purely sexual sound that made her shiver. “You have no idea the things I could do to you. How I could play with you.”

”Bullshit. The dream, the garden—none of that was about me. It was about covering your ass.” God, that felt good. She needed to unleash her frustration on someone. On him, in particular.

“Covering my ass?” The question was laced with warning. “What an interesting phrase. What, I wonder, can it mean?”

She saw the bakery in the distance. Almost there. “I listened to everything, Ram. And I can’t help but remember what Te said last night. What he did by keeping Greg distracted so you could have your fun. Make me burn…weren’t those your words? Now why would he agree to that? Are his people just romantics?” 

She shook her head. “From what you and Shev implied, it doesn’t seem likely. And after what he was willing to put Greg through to bend the rules and give me a push in the right direction, I’m thinking you two decided before the meeting to speed up the process of whatever the hell is happening to me. Before you got your official okay.”

“And why do you think we did that, Aziza?” He no longer sounded amused or relaxed.
Good.
“Why would we have made such a dangerous decision?”

Her smile was hard. “Because whoever you think is after me killed the last people to hold your jobs. Maybe, if I’m fully switched on, you and Shev and Te won’t be in as much danger as you think you are now.”

He grabbed her arm before she reached the brick building and pulled her into the small alley beside it. “Clever. So very clever and fearless and smart, aren’t you?”

Ram dragged her body up against his, the yellow rose pressed between them. “There are other ways to
switch you on
, Aziza. They just aren’t as much fun.”

She was breathless. Her body—the traitor—reacted instinctively to his. “So you admit it.”

“Why not?” He shrugged, his head moving closer to hers, his emerald stare piercing. “I don’t
want
to die. Do you? Oh yes, I forgot.
You do.
That’s why you took those risks, isn’t it? Why you decided to live for the first time when you found out you were going to die?”

His grip tightened and he shook her roughly. “You know it won’t matter why this is happening or what you can do with your gifts. We are doomed anyway, because you’ve already given up. You
want
to be cursed because then you won’t have to accept what’s happened. Accept the loss and move on. Accept your life, or what’s left of it once you’ve checked off every item on your list.”

“You’re a bastard,” she whispered.

Ram licked his lips. “And you still want to fuck me.”

A low growl was the only warning she got before Ram was torn away from her. Aziza watched in shock as Brandon lifted the Jinn in the air and pressed him against the brick wall, his forearm pressing down against Ram’s throat.

“Wait.
Wait!
What are you doing here? And why the hell are you still following me?”

Her sexy giant wasn’t interested in her at the moment. He only had eyes for Ram. “I could kill you.”

Ram coughed and forced a smile. “You could,” he gasped. “But that would be incredibly stupid of you. I have my papers…my wrist.”

Aziza looked down at the arm he was trying to raise and noticed a gold bracelet. She hadn’t seen it on him before. The chain was slender and delicate, with a single square of gold that looked, for all the world, like a smaller version of one of her brother’s dog tags hanging from it.
Those
were the papers he’d been talking about?

And why was he pointing them out to Brandon?

“I don’t care,” the larger man barked, not letting up on the pressure. “Unless I get some answers about what your people are up to with this woman, it is within my rights to take you in for interrogation. Believe me when I tell you that I will not hesitate, papers or not.”

Aziza dropped the crushed flower and reached for Brandon’s arm. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Let him go, damn it.”

Surprisingly, he obeyed her immediately, loosening his grip enough for Ram to slip free. Then Brandon turned to face her, his expression softening. “He was following you. Accosting you. Do you even know what he is?”

She couldn’t take her hand off his arm. He was so warm. Strong. Just being close to him again made her feel less panicked and agitated. Grounded her. Aroused her.
Focus.
“Yes I do. He’s an asshole. And
you
follow me all the time, so what makes you any different? It’s apparently contagious. Or you’ve started a trend.”

“Trust me.” Ram’s laugh was raspy from lack of oxygen. He rubbed his throat and glared at the newcomer. “I saw you first.”

She sighed when Brandon’s muscles tensed beneath her hand. “We should ignore him while you tell me who you really are, and how you know about him in the first place. That’ll be sure to piss him off.”

“Nice,” Ram murmured sarcastically. “Do you actually think you can tame this beast?”

Brandon was looking down at her hand in fascination. “What are you?”

“Oh no.” Ram took a step forward. “There are already enough cooks in this kitchen. Don’t talk to him, Aziza. His kind would see us all separated from each other. He’s just a dog with delusions of authority. A true son of a—”

Brandon snarled and made a move as if to grab Ram again, but Aziza threw herself against the sexy giant, worried one of them might really hurt the other. “Stop!”

After a few seconds had passed she opened her eyes. Her face was pressed against Brandon’s T-shirt, the scent of sunlight and man engulfing her. She could hear his strong heartbeat. Feel his muscles bunch and flex though he’d stopped moving a moment after she’d asked.

His heartbeat. His breath.

That was all she heard.

Aziza lifted her head and looked over her shoulder. Ram was standing there with a challenging expression on his face as he waited for a blow that wasn’t coming. He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t blinking. “Ram? Ram, are you okay?”

She looked up at Brandon, who was watching her every move. “What’s going on?” And how many times was she going to say that this week?

When the warm sensation she’d thought came from touching Brandon intensified to burning, she looked down at her palm and gasped. “Oh my God.”

A perfect circle had formed in her palm again, branding her. It was different this time. The marking in the middle wasn’t writing—it was an image. An hourglass. As she watched, the top of the hourglass etched more deeply into her skin and filled with sand. Sand that was falling slowly to the bottom of the device. Marking time. “What the—?”

She moved past Ram and Brandon, out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. “Holy shit.”

Everyone she could see—the tourists, the cab drivers, the bicyclists—were all stopped. Frozen in the middle of a sentence. In the middle of a thought. Right in the middle of the goddamned street. The whole world had stopped. Everyone—except her and Brandon—still as stone.

She slipped one hand in her hair and tugged hard enough for it to hurt, feeling as if she might pass out. As if she were dreaming. The sand was still slipping through the hourglass. What, exactly, would happen if it stopped? What did it mean?

“Ram.” She turned to go to him, to slap him or kick him until he started moving again. He was the magical one. He would know what this meant. But why was he frozen along with everyone else?

“What are you?”

Brandon had followed her onto the sidewalk, taken one look around and pulled her into his arms to head back into the alley.

“Crazy,” she offered when he pressed her against the wall with his body, his arms holding her high enough that she could look into his golden eyes. “Completely, certifiably insane is my guess. And you?”

He studied her with an intensity that should have burned her skin. She watched him inhale, lean closer to her and breathe her in. “Certifiable,” he mimicked her words with his gravel-filled voice. “Completely insane. Part your lips.”

“Wh-what?” she stuttered in surprise.

Brandon pulled back enough to watch her reaction to his words. “Your lips,” he said slowly. As if the words conjured desires he wasn’t aware he had. “I have to know.”

Her lips parted, her tongue coming out to wet them unconsciously. “Have to know what?”

“If you taste the way you smell,” he growled, leaning in to lick her lips lightly, softly.

Aziza shuddered and he paused for a moment before murmuring, “Wider.”

She opened her mouth without hesitation and felt his tongue skim the top of hers, graze the edges of her teeth, pulling away just out of reach each time she tried to reciprocate. “Brandon.”

His cheekbones were flushed, his eyes more golden now. “It’s not enough. I need more. Need to know.”

He let her slide against his body until the heels of her shoes connected with the ground. But he didn’t release her. One large hand slipped between their bodies and reached for the waistband of her leggings.
Please. Oh, please
, she begged silently. “What do you want, Brandon?”

He flattened the palm of his hand on her stomach, sliding inside the clingy black fabric with the movement. “Don’t ask me that,” he rasped. “Don’t ask me what I want. Just give me what I need.”

His fingers pushed beneath her lace thong and into the curls that covered her sex.

“Oh
fuck
,” she moaned. His touch was like nothing she’d ever experienced. She’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted to feel him inside her. “Brandon.”

“Don’t,” he ordered again, but there was no force behind it. No aggression. His muscles were trembling against hers. His eyes practically glowing with need. “Cover your mouth now. Cover your mouth and don’t distract me or I will find something to fill it.”

She obeyed, lifting the hand with the steadily moving hourglass up to cover her mouth. Her lips tingled. She wanted to deny him. Wanted to find out what he would do. How he would silence her. But more than that, she wanted him to keep doing what he was doing.

When his thick middle finger slid inside her soaked sex she cried out into her hand, her toes curling in her flats.
Yes, this
, she thought.
This is real.
As raw and arousing as she’d imagined. Finger-fucked in an alley by her mysterious giant.
Yes.
And anything else he wanted. She didn’t know why, but she knew if he asked she’d gladly go down on her knees.

He removed his hand and she made a sound of denial before she realized what he planned to do. She watched him lift his finger to his mouth and slip it between his lips. His eyes closed and now he was the one shuddering. It was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen.

He took his finger out of his mouth and grabbed both her wrists before she had time to blink. Holding them up over her head, he pressed his erection against her stomach. “You can’t be this. It makes no sense.”

“Can’t be what?” she moaned. “What makes no sense?”

“You. You haven’t since I first caught your scent.” His voice was low. Thick with restrained passion. “I can’t think about anything else. I don’t know exactly what you are, but I know you’re dangerous to us. To me.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t the dangerous one. She wasn’t the one who promised heaven and then took it away. She’d never felt this close to begging. “I’m not. Taste me again, Brandon. Anywhere you want. Take what you need.”

He froze and she looked up at him through eyes glazed with desire. “Don’t stop.”

“Your hand.” His grip on her wrists tightened. “This wasn’t there before. When it disappears, will everything start again?” His voice lowered and he seemed to be talking to himself. “I know this. Why do I know this?”