Tales of the Djinn: The Guardian (43 page)

Right then he was too lazy. The tensions of
the day had knocked him out.

“That’s nice,” he murmured, his eyes still
closed.

The servant bent to kiss his neck where his
pulse was speeding up. Her lips were soft, her caresses gentle as
they stroked and admired him. He must have moved without thinking,
because his hands were on her hips.

“Nuh-uh,” she said, firmly removing them.

He almost recognized her voice, but her
actions and his rising interest distracted him. She kissed his
right nipple and then his left, sucking each quick and hard.
Sensation twanged through his nerves, hardening his cock
completely.

Did weeks spent trapped in a statue count as
abstinence? It felt like they did. His erection ached for release,
his fingertips digging into her narrow hips.

“No hands!” The woman laughed, pushing them
off again.

She rewarded him for his compliance, kissing
a soft path down his torso. Tangled curls whispered teasingly over
him. Wanting to obey her, since she was doing what he wished, he
grabbed fistfuls of smooth sheets. His thighs clenched, his pelvis
offering itself to her.

“Suck me,” he said gruffly, unable not to
ask.

“That’s the plan, Commander.”

Her teasing tone said she wasn’t afraid of
him. She proved it with her delays, dragging her face lingeringly
up each of his hipbones. The feel of her lips brushing him was
sufficiently enticing to make him curse.

“So impatient,” she scolded, giving his
throbbing shaft the briefest of kisses.

“I want you enough for two,” he said.

She didn’t ask what he meant. He wasn’t
thinking straight anyway. She smoothed both hands up his rigid
penis. Incredible sensations burst in it, as if his nerves had
regained the responsiveness of a teenager’s. He groaned, longing to
say “please” but managing to hold back. She pulled the flat of her
tongue up him, the trail of wetness useless for cooling his pent-up
heat. She flicked the tip against the concentrated patch of nerves
under his cock’s throat.

“Suck me,” he repeated.

“Yes, Commander,” her laughing voice
agreed.

She tipped him to her mouth, taking just his
head into her clinging warmth. He growled with pleasure. Her tongue
rubbed excitingly across his crest, her lips ringing him snugly. It
was too much and not enough. His fingers threatened to rip the
sheets they clutched.

“More,” he demanded.

She hummed around him and pushed down.

That
was exactly what he needed. He
moaned, bliss spreading out from his groin in waves. She sucked him
steadily up and down, as if she loved doing it. Her mouth was wet,
her tongue moving slow and firm. Her hands steadied him at his
base, increasing the pressure she could exert.

“God,” he gasped, loving that.

He was spiraling toward climax, urgency
building in his balls. Her hands shifted to his thighs, kneading
their bunched muscles. The sensuality made him writhe, a ripping
sound warning him the sheets were giving way. It didn’t matter. He
couldn’t hold back his request.

“Please,” he rasped. “Do that faster.”

She pulled in a breath and gave him what he
asked for. The noise of her rapid sucking made him crazy all by
itself. Though it wasn’t his nature to relinquish control, he let
her mouth devastate him, let the pleasurable imminence swell and
swell until its bounds simply had to burst.

He came with a low rough cry, hot lines of
ecstasy rushing out of him. The pleasure didn’t end when he
anticipated. She milked his climax, her unusual zeal dragging fresh
zings of pleasure up his penis. He couldn’t remember having a
better orgasm. Certainly, it was one of his more selfish. When he
was convinced it had ended, she cupped his balls gently. One last
delicious shudder rolled through him.

Curious to see who’d given him this delight,
he forced his eyes open.

Shock slapped him like cold water. He was
alone in his room. His seed soaked the sheets, but no woman sat
atop him. No woman was anywhere.

Heart pounding like a drum, he shoved off the
covers and sat up. He hadn’t just had a wet dream. The details had
been too real. He could have sculpted the woman’s lips, the
slenderness of her hands, the strength of her surprisingly firm
thighs.

“
No
,” he said at the conclusion that
came to him.

The female was his copy’s human, and she
hadn’t been sucking him. She’d been pleasuring his double. Arcadius
and his copy must be psychically intertwined. In the twilight state
between sleep and waking, he’d experienced everything the other was
enjoying.

“Hell,” he swore with great energy.

This was going to be awkward.

~

Elyse had finished having her way with
Arcadius. He lay in the bed breathing hard—an excellent sign that
her work was done. She crawled up and snuggled into him.
Now
she was ready to let her worries go.

“Wow,” he said. “I think I came hard enough
for two people.”

She smiled into his shoulder. He was silent
for a while.

“I could—” he began to say.

“No,” she refused firmly. “Sleep. You’ve done
enough today.”

She guessed he was more awake again. He
twisted around onto his side. She touched his cheek, petting the
soft bristles on his jaw. The massive space that surrounded them
made her feel both small and more intimate with him.

“I’m worried about my friends,” he
confessed.

She sensed this was hard for him. “Of course
you are.”

“The portal Iksander chose for Philip was
used. We think he succeeded in projecting through, but his original
was still beside it, not awakened. We don’t actually know how long
we can survive as statues—if, after a time, our spirits will slip
away and leave empty stone.”

Elyse hadn’t known that. “That’s a troubling
idea.”

“Yes.” Arcadius was silent for a bit. “Do you
remember the older man in the sage green robes, the one with the
pure white hair?”

“I think so.” So many people had been in and
out of his dining room Elyse’s memory was a blur.

“That was Philip’s father, the vizier.”

“He revived then.”

“Yes. He took Philip’s statue home.”

“That will be strange for him.” Arcadius
nodded. She tried to read what else was bothering him. “Are you
wondering if you should have brought the stone Iksander here?”

“He’s safer where he is,” Arcadius said,
though he didn’t sound a hundred percent certain. “From what the
other me reported, he wasn’t conscious of anything until he woke
up. Iksander’s original isn’t capable of minding being locked in a
treasure room. I just wish I knew he and Philip had made it to your
plane, and that they were okay there. I hate that we have to wait
months to look for them.”

“You wish you could protect them now.”

“
Yes
.” He pressed his lips together,
seeming embarrassed to have answered so emphatically. He came up on
his elbow and looked at her.

Elyse put her hand gently on his chest.
“We’ll do everything we can as soon as we can do it.”

“There’s so much to do here as well. This
curse has disrupted every part of our city.”

She patted his strong heartbeat. “Then maybe
you’ll admit it’s a little lucky there’s two of you.”

He laughed on a rush of air. When he settled
down again, he laid his cheek on her breast. She suspected he
didn’t let himself seek this sort of comfort often—or possibly
ever.

“I think I’m lucky you’re here,” he said. “I
think . . . having someone I can talk to like this, makes the
situation more bearable.”

She stroked his thick dark hair, wanting so
passionately to soothe him she concluded she couldn’t be far from
whatever
in love
was.

“You have me,” she promised the Glorious
City’s guardian. “And you have the other you and Joseph. Plus, your
account of Philip’s father makes him seem solid. Together, we’ll
get through this.”

“Together.”

His voice rumbled on her breast. She felt him
relax slowly against her, his arm across her belly, his leg sidled
over hers. The connection between their bodies felt natural and
good. She’d experienced similar things with David, but this was . .
. Her thought trailed off as she tried to pin down the difference.
This felt realer, ironically. Some part of her must have known
David was deceiving her. Arcadius wasn’t even human, but when he
confessed he loved her, her deepest instinct told her to believe
it.

I can trust him
, she thought.
Not
to be perfect but to always try his best
.

If she trusted him, maybe it was time she
trusted herself again as well.

Arcadius broke into her thoughts. “Elyse?” he
asked, sounding half asleep. “What exactly to ‘boyfriends’ do?”

She grinned and rubbed his back. “Don’t
worry. You’ll be great at it.”

He grunted, seeming to accept
this—provisionally, at least—as he subsided against her. The last
of her tension left her as his left him. She was aware of being
hopeful for his friends and happy for herself. She didn’t think
that was wrong, no matter how much hardship his city faced.

Happiness and love were the sort of medicines
most places could use more of.

The Brownstone

THE attractive man in the faded jeans and
black hoodie stood at the base of the brownstone’s steps and looked
up. He was tall and fit but no twenty-something. His
salt-and-pepper hair receded at the temples, and the lines around
his eyes were from more than smiles. The hang of his clothes
implied he’d once had more bulk. His intelligent face would catch
the eye of many females, from post-pubescent to not-dead-yet. He
had a great mouth, a lean jawline, and an expression that seemed
perpetually interested in everything around him.

At the moment, he was interested in the
building in front of him. The old dame had reached a certain
vintage but she had gorgeous bones.

He nodded at the signs she’d been taken care
of, narrowing his gaze at the new-looking door to the basement
unit. After two years, he supposed changes were inevitable. With a
small shrug of resignation, he dug a set of keys from the front
pocket of his jeans.

A woman he didn’t recognize came out the
front entrance. Her trim business suit and the miniature terrier at
the end of her leash suggested she was taking her pet for a
last-minute before-work walk. The warming weather allowed her to do
this without a coat. The man didn’t doubt the dog also appreciated
the milder temperatures. It opened its mouth and panted but didn’t
bark at him.

“Going in?” the woman asked, noticing his
keys and judging him no danger. The quick flick of her gaze over
him said she thought he was good looking.

“Yes.” He accepted the door she was holding
open. “Thank you very much.”

She smiled and he smiled back, in response to
which she flushed slightly. The man saved his grin for when he was
alone in the vestibule. Whatever else he’d lost during his
travails, his charm had survived intact.

Inside the lobby, everything seemed all
right. The floor was clean, the old-world wood panels no dustier
than usual. On the bulletin board for tenants, beside the wall of
mailboxes, he spotted a hot pink flyer. The message on it warned
residents they needed to send rent to a new address.

That brought a frown to the man’s animated
face. The address was familiar, and he didn’t disapprove of the
choice. It was, however, a reminder that events he
did
disapprove of had occurred here.

He couldn’t help that now. He had to put it
behind him and move on. Up the stairs he went, even his fit legs
beginning to burn by the time he reached the fifth floor. On the
sixth and last floor, he stopped.

A little old lady in a pale polyester
pantsuit was laboriously shoving boxes out onto the landing. The
boxes were small—to enable her to handle them on her own, he
supposed—and she had about a million. As she slid them from her
apartment into the hall, she muttered beneath her breath about what
was the world coming to if you couldn’t trust your friends or the
god damned movers and this hellhole of a city was too dangerous for
anyone with sense.

Every few mutters, she thumped the carpet
with her aluminum walker. The man fought his instinctive urge to
assist her.

“Moving out?” he asked with a politeness he
didn’t feel.

“What’s it to you?” she snapped peevishly,
not bothering to turn around.

“Well,” he drawled, resting his rangy
shoulder against the wall. “It saves me having to evict you, which
I’d be inclined to do, considering you betrayed my daughter and
almost got her killed.”

That motivated the old lady to look at him.
Her double take was comical.

“Mr. Solomon.” She goggled at him through
thick glasses. “We heard you fell into a volcano!”

“Luckily for me, reports of my death were
greatly exaggerated.”

He beamed at the shocked woman. Short of a
reunion with Elyse, this was more fun than Leo Solomon had hoped
for.

# # #

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