Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1) (25 page)

A flicker of heated joy lit up his face. His fingertips fanned out, reached around, and enveloped my rear as he shifted nearer.

A small sound drew my gaze to the door. I turned, unable to close my mouth as my teeth hadn’t yet retracted. Harper stood there, one hand over her mouth—one still holding her Sig—staring at me.

I was suddenly aware of my nudity, horrified by the sight my best friend was gaping at. Dammit. “Harper.” The word came out distorted around my mouthful of teeth. I backed away from Amun, covering my breasts with my arms, but she fled without so much as a curse.

“
I
t could have gone worse.” Amun lounged on the sofa with an arm thrown over his eyes.

I stopped my rapid stride across his living room, the hundredth I’d made since our arrival home. “How on this green earth could this night have possibly gone worse?” Fog inhabited my head, obscuring most of the details of the previous two hours. Neither of us had said a word since Elias and Connor had dropped us off at my car in front of the pet shop.

Benny squeaked at me from beneath Amun’s sofa. I took it as his agreement with me. Either that, or he was still put out with me for taking him to a strange place.

Amun sat up, running fingers through his curls. “You could be dead. Connor, Elias, or Harper could be dead. At least we know who Celeste is now, and what she wants.”

“Not that she’ll return to the aquarium.” Groaning, I slumped down on the arm of the nearest chair. “Celeste knows we’re onto her now, and we have only two days left. How do we catch water with our bare hands, Amun?”

“I wish I knew.”

“I don’t understand what she said about not being able to kill me herself. She could have drowned me at the pool.”

His look suggested I’d overlooked something obvious yet again. “Your instincts and primal fear would have kicked in, no matter how hard you might have tried to control them. She knows that.”

Anger. Imminent death. Yes, I supposed they would have. “My power would have split the earth in two to protect me and taken the entire building in the process. I take it she couldn’t hold the water around me with her talent?”

“Not for long enough to drown you. Water depends on a foundation to support it, so although the water jinn are powerful in some ways, they aren’t in that way.”

I contemplated that in silence for a while, a little more confident with my newfound knowledge.

Thoughts of my best friend’s expression before she’d left crawled to the forefront. “All these years I’ve been insisting to Harper that I’m human, and now she knows I’ve lied to her. Does anyone outside the jinn know about these strange teeth that pop up whenever I’m…when I’m around you? Does she know what I am?”

Harper had left the aquarium on her own and didn’t answer at home. I still had her cell phone.

Amun offered a sympathetic smile, and I blushed as I had every time our eyes met since we arrived at his place. I still felt naked, my nipples pebbling at the memory of his chest flexing against them.

“Few others know we have them. It’s usually reserved for…” He took great interest in his intertwined fingers.

“For what? And what did we do back there? Some instinct took over me, driving me around like a bloody robot. I can’t remember all of what happened after I changed myself into a marble giant. What did I say to you? And how can I speak a language I don’t know? It’s different than the one I use to speak to the earth. It’s older, isn’t it? As ancient as the earth itself.”

At his continued silence, I moved to kneel on the sofa beside him, resisting the urge to shake the details out of him. “In the van on the way from the aquarium to my car, why was Connor looking at me as if I’d done something remarkable? And why did you shush him when I asked why?”

Scowling, Amun jumped up and strode toward his bedroom, shedding his shirt I’d worn out of the aquarium because my clothes had been destroyed. “We should get to bed if we’re going to be any use at all tomorrow.”

“Don’t you dare walk away from me!” I followed him and tugged him around by the arm. “Tell me this instant what we did. I bit you, for heaven’s sake. Normal people don’t go around biting one another. And the words had ceremony written all over them.”

“You won’t like it.” His fist tightened around his balled-up shirt.

“It’s done, anyway. Tell me.”

Gaze downcast, he leaned against the wall. “Our marking teeth emerge when two jinn spirits are attracted to one another, and sometimes when we’re afraid, or enraged, or…aroused.”

I mirrored his pose on the opposite wall. “That’s what you meant the first time you kissed me. You wanted to know if the attraction went both ways, and the appearance of my fangs, or whatever they’re called, let you know that?”

He nodded. “Exactly right. It’s happened to me a few times when I thought I’d found a match, only to discover the affection was one sided.” He held up his hand at my raised brow. “You don’t have to kiss to know if jinn spirits approve of one another, so please don’t look at me that way. My ten-year-old self did not go around kissing women. Simply being near someone you find worthy can bring out the teeth. Kissing ensures a quick response.”

“Okay, so we’re attracted to one another. What about the marks?” I rubbed my side, surprised to find it tender but not painful. Touching it sent a pleasant humming sensation along my flesh.

“When a jinn female chooses a lover she deems worthy and her jinn spirit approves of, she marks him, as you did. It lets other females know a claim is pending.” He stroked fingers over the oval bite on his shoulder as if he found his pleasing, too.

The lazy smile and sense of peace that fell over him stirred deep joy in my soul and warmth between my thighs. “If the female chooses to bespell him, he has no choice but to bow to her wishes, even if he finds her physically repulsive.” His grimace induced my own.

I bristled at the memory of Celeste touching him. “Are you saying you’d have no choice but to climb into that witch’s bed if she beckoned? If I hadn’t intervened?”

“Once she spoke the incantation, I saw and heard nothing but her. She was the sun and the moon, life and death, beginning and ending. I’d have bowed to her will in all things, yes, and I would have enjoyed it.” The foul turn of his lips suggested he didn’t want to be hers. I liked that more than I should have. “But I would have ceased to be who I am.”

“What kind of Neanderthal organization is this? She bites you and says a few words, and then forces you to sleep with her, and suddenly she can drag you around her cave by the hair and you have no power to stop it? You’d love it? Love her?”

A scoffing noise spilled from his lips. “Close enough, yes. As I said, they’re old ways, not used in modern times.”

“That’s the most barbaric thing I’ve ever heard. Why would she want someone with no free will?”

“She cares nothing for me, Baylou, like her mother before her. She wants my compliance and my seed, and nothing more.”

I eyed him with suspicion. “Tell me you didn’t bespell me.” Searching my thoughts, I seemed to be myself, though what I’d almost done with a man I hardly knew filled me with dread.

The smile blooming on his lips stretched them wide. “A male has no power that way. Though, when the attraction goes both ways, the male can mark her in return, as I did to you.”

Brows pinched together, I tried to process all he’d said. “Hold on just a minute. What are you saying? That by some jinn custom, we’re now
married
?”

“No, not married. We’re more like engaged. There’s another custom we have to observe before pledging ourselves to each other fully.”

“What sort of custom? Another ceremony of sorts? Was I about to find out back there when we almost…” No words came to mind to finish the sentence that wouldn’t have embarrassed and shamed me further. Perhaps Mum had been right about my loose morals. I’d almost had sex with Amun in the middle of someone’s office in a public aquarium. Good lord, what was wrong with me?

A flash of something dark swam across his eyes before he averted them. “We would have, if Harper hadn’t interrupted. It’s complicated. I wouldn’t know how to explain it, but I know from stories it’s intense, the most significant moment in most jinns’ lives.”

Always vague.

Shivers preceded a full body shudder as I considered that. With so many questions piling up, I went on to the next one. “But what does the mark mean? Are you saying you belong to me and you can’t,
you know
, with anyone else?”

“Once we consummate our union, yes, that’s what it means. For now, it means we’ve made promises to one another, that you’ll make me your Taru, your lifelong lover, for lack of a closer term.”

“And Celeste, does my mark prevent her from trying to claim you again?”

Smiling, he nodded.

My relief found an exit upon a rapid exhalation. “And me? What does this mark on my side mean for me?”

“It means I return your affection, that I enjoy your company, and our union is mutual, stronger than a one-sided bond. Jinn women can choose and mark as many lovers as they like.”

Really? The men were limited to one, and the women had harems? Now I’d heard everything. No bloody way. I was a one man woman, and there would be no compromise on that no matter what jinn customs dictated.

With my curiosity sated, the full realization of what we’d done slammed into me. “Why did you let me do that to you when I didn’t know what it meant?”

Palm thrust up, he took a step one way, and then came back. “I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid that when the time came, if you knew what it meant, you’d let your modern upbringing overrule your jinn instincts. I thought you wouldn’t mark me.”

Breath heaving, he leaned toward me, his temple resting against mine. “I want to be yours, Baylou. Since the moment I met you, I’ve wanted to wear your mark with pride. Doesn’t it please you to see how happy it makes me? To know I care as much for you as you do for me, even if you won’t yet admit it? I know you don’t fully understand, but don’t make it into something wrong.”

An intense twinge of something announced itself inside me when I saw where I’d bitten him, when he touched it with reverence. “Even if I do, I don’t want to own you, Amun.” Despite my words, my hands explored the planes of his stomach, climbing higher across the swell of his firm chest while Mum’s voice shouted insults at me.

“Let’s finish our union.” He left a trail of burning kisses over my ear, across my cheek. “Even if we lose this fight, I want to know what it is to be
Taru
to Baylou Hudson, the most powerful earth caller I’ve ever known.” His lips feathered across mine. Fifty thousand volts zapped through my center, turning me to molten stone.

Need thrummed in my soul, to touch him, to keep him, to strip him bare again and stare at him forever. To taste his lips and feel his weight upon me, to explore the far reaches of his tight body with my mouth and fingertips. The instinct engulfed me, burned away conscious thought, and left me with an endless hunger for him.

I knew, then, he could be my beginning and ending, my life and death, my sun and moon. If I allowed him to be. It wasn’t love, not yet, but the potential was there. It was fire as Mum had said. It would burn through and leave me ash, and I’d crawl out, wishing for one more second of that exquisite pleasure, even if it meant he’d raze me to the ground again.

His chest rumbled with primal, non-human sounds. “Let us revel in power, and blood, and flesh, and announce to the world that we are one.”

As the flesh and blood part pierced my haze, I shoved him away, panting. “I don’t even know what that means, yet I want it more than air.” A shake of my head sent hair fanning across my tired eyes. “You want to know why I’ve avoided you all this time? I’m scared of how I feel around you, and the more time I spend with you, the worse it gets. Back at the aquarium, I lost my mind. Something took over me, and I wanted it to. It was beautiful and terrifying. Flame and forbidden promises. I was more animal than woman, something primal and untamed, a beast I had little or no control over. I feel like I’m going to forget who I am altogether and get lost in you, as you were lost in Celeste.”

I backed away with effort, my hands patting the wall in search of a door to put between me and him. “I need time to think about this, and I need to sleep so I can figure out what to do about Celeste.”

His eyes shimmered with sadness and self-doubt, but he didn’t pursue me as I darted into the spare bedroom and slammed the door closed.

Too exhausted to do much else, I turned off the light, collapsed on the bed, and curled around the pillow, trying to forget the unspoken words that had gripped him. How many times had he been rejected? Why did that thought trickle into my consciousness and burn me with guilt? I would not jump into bed with a man I barely knew, no matter what he wanted. Even if I did, I’d never set myself free to enjoy it lest my emotions get the better of me and cause mayhem that would hurt and condemn us all.