"Ah, but that would be telling," Jonathan said. "Do yourself a favor. Go home before you get hurt worse than you have to be." And he vanished. Just like that.
I didn't trust him to be gone, either, but there wasn't anything I could do about it if he chose to hang around in invisible form. I made a short circuit of the bathroom, pacing, and finally dumped the towel and got into the shower.
I was halfway through soaping my hair when the hot water ran out. Guess I'd spent too much time staring into space and being intimidated by the most powerful Djinn in the universe.
Being human sucks.
###
When I came out, chilled and breathless, with my hair wrapped in a loose turban and my body wrapped in chill bumps, David was still flat on the bed, reading.
But he let his book fall to his chest and looked at me directly. Maybe it was the chattering teeth. "Cold?" he asked. I tried to nod, but the shivering probably sent a clear yes anyway. He got up and came to me, and put those warm, broad hands on my arms. As he glided them down, fingers dragging on my damp skin, heat bloomed. Water disappeared. By the time he got to my fingertips I was shaking for an entirely different reason, and warm as if I'd spent an hour out sunning myself by the pool.
"Better?" he asked. His voice had a low, rough edge to it, and as he raised his eyes I saw flickers of orange swirling. His hands circled both my wrists, and I felt an impulse in him to pull me closer … an impulse he resisted. I could feel things like that, thanks to this nifty new master/Djinn bond we'd developed since I'd finally claimed him. Feel the breathtaking, scary strength inside of him, and how very careful he was about its use.
"David — "
When he looked up, his eyes were shifting colors to bronze, a breathtaking, alien color that sent shivers up and down my spine regardless of the toasty warmth. "I know he was here," he said. "I was ready if he — " Flares of gold in those eyes. His skin caught fire in a golden flush, entirely Djinn; he controlled it and kept himself flesh and blood and bone. "Jo, I don't know how we do this. He knows we're coming. He's ready. He knows what you can do, what I can do — and he can beat us. It will hurt him, but he can win. Our one chance was to get in under his notice, but if we can't do that …"
"It doesn't matter. There are lives at risk. You know Kevin — do you trust him with the kind of power Jonathan represents? Hell, with any kind of power? I don't. We both saw what he did to his own stepmother." I bit my lip, watching him. He was still holding my wrists, and warmth pulsed up into me from his touch. "David, this may not be safe, but it has to be done. Somehow."
"I know."
"I just — " I was on verge of tears, suddenly. Adrenaline and exhaustion carbonating together in my blood. "God, I just want to rest. I just want to forget."
He let go of my wrists and put his hands on my face, tilting it up, and then he kissed me, and all of the fear and exhaustion melted away. His lips were damp and hot and silken, and he tasted like the chocolate shake and a dark, male undertone that made me moan and suck the taste off his tongue, and God, stopping at a motel? Best idea ever.
He broke it off and studied me with a warm, yearning distance of about an inch between us. "You should rest." His breath moved over me like his touch. His voice vibrated inside me, deep inside. I resonated to his sound, his touch, everything about him.
Rest was just about the farthest thing from my mind. "Later," I promised breathlessly, and swayed toward him. Our lips brushed, lingered, slid away.
Teasing. "Maybe I need to relax first," I murmured. Another gentle slide of our lips, not quite a kiss. "Maybe I need to spend a long … time … relaxing."
And unspoken, we were both thinking that somewhere out there Jonathan was lurking. Maybe focusing his attention on us. There was no hiding from him.
David's eyes were brilliant, molten copper, and his skin was a hot inhuman gold, and he was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
"A long time," he whispered, and we were breathing the same intoxicating air, living in each other's space, each other's skin. He was hot enough to melt me.
"Yes. I think maybe that's a very good idea."
He picked me up and carried me to the bed, and for a long, long, long time, Jonathan and the crappy motel décor and the world waiting to destroy us beyond the door ceased to matter.
###
I woke up and it was dark and quiet outside, just a low plaintive moan of wind
rattling the big windows. I rolled over on my side, instinctively searching for David's warmth — the night had gotten cold, the way the desert does once the sun disappears — but he wasn't there.
Wasn't anywhere.
I sat up slowly, listening, but there was no sound in the room except for a low, slow drip of water from the tap in the bathroom. The clock showed me a dim glow that, when I squinted and blinked, read 3:27 a.m.
I got up, found clean underwear and some not-to-badly-wrinkled rolled up blue jeans and a knit shirt in my bag, toed on shoes and walked outside into the still, chill night.
The sky was unbelievable. Clear from horizon to horizon, a black bowl crowded with stars. I stopped, staring, and craned my neck back to get the full effect.
Dizzying. I breathed in deep and felt clean, cold air fill my lungs. I wished I was an Earth Warden, because this seemed to be a place where having a connection to the land would be amazing … even dull as I was to that side of things, I could feel a kind of power here, a slow, strong pulse that made me want to lay down on the ground and let it flow through me.
When I let out my held breath, it came out as white mist. Colder than I'd thought. I shivered a bit and looked around. Except for my Dodge Viper crouched in its space, looking like a wildcat ready to spring, there were only two other cars — one, a sun-faded Ford pickup with a missing tailgate, was parked at the office, so I figured it was the manager's. The other was the dusty old Cadillac with its coating of road dust, parked in front of the last room in the motel.
As I stood there, wondering where David had taken off to, and why, I heard someone open a door and close it. When I looked over, I saw that someone had come out of the Caddy's room — a man, medium height, slender, wearing a black knit shirt and black jeans, with a sleek-looking black leather coat over the monochromatic ensemble. He had close-cropped brown hair, military style, and as I watched, he leaned against the cinder-block wall and lit up a cigarette. I realized I was staring when he cocked an eyebrow at me, and went back to studying the sky. The moon was almost full, a big white eye staring back.
"I hope you're not a werewolf," the man said.
I looked at him, startled. His cigarette glowed hot red, then subsided to embers. He blew smoke out into the clear, still air, and it hung indecisively between us.
He made a lazy gesture up at the sky with his free hand. "Moon," he said.
"Full."
"Not quite," I said.
"Not quite full, or not quite werewolf?"
I showed teeth. "Either way, I don't eat strangers."
He sucked smoke and considered me silently. I wasn't sure about him. If I'd really been what I appeared to be — a young woman, alone, in the middle of nowhere in a deserted motel, vulnerable — then I'd have been deeply worried.
But I wasn't, and he was right about one thing: I was a man-eater when I needed to be. Even if David had taken a long walk and wouldn't be around to defend my honor, I was quite capable of doing it myself.
I drifted up into the aetheric, which was just as still and silent as the desert in real-world; it was layered in white and silver and velvet blues, and it was full of that silent pulse, too, that powerful sense of being. But the Man In Black was just a man, not a Djinn, not a Warden. Hence, nothing to be worried about.