A taking.
To take Asrial . . .
He could not deny her—nor could he deny himself.
His pants vanished, leaving him naked for the first time since . . . He could not finish the thought, could not remember ever having been naked. He had forced himself to unravel those memories of happier times. The loss ate at him, as if surrendering them had been a betrayal of her—his betrothed. But better the loss than to have clung to fine sentiment and still have failed; his sanity would not have survived that.
With a wordless exclamation, Asrial took him in her hand, her eyes blazing, her touch sure. Hooking her leg back over his hip, she held him to the entrance of her body, unwavering in her desire.
Trapping her against the wall, he took her slowly, taking care as he pushed into her, not wanting to rush this stolen moment.
Damp heat gripped him, firm yet yielding. Delight coursed through his veins like the potent wines of Mehr, an elixir made more precious by its rarity. A shudder ripped through him. He had forgotten what it was like to make love. He felt like a boy all over again, discovering the pleasures of the flesh and the mysteries of women.
It was a good thing he did not need to breathe. His chest was tight, all his senses focused on that one point of contact. He could not have gotten air past his heart in his throat.
Impatient for more, he lifted her by the thighs and sank even deeper until he was seated to the hilt. He stilled, the better to savor the hot clasp of her body.
Asrial wrapped her legs around his waist and locked them tight, a rapt smile curving her lips. “Finally. I’ve wanted this for so long.”
She rode him leisurely, arching her back and raising her breasts to rub against him, strength and grace in her every move. The double friction felt too good to be true, twin lashes of delight to scorch his senses. She rolled her hips, her breath hitching on a gasp of need.
At that sound, his restraint snapped.
He drove back in, fast, forceful, grinding into her, glorying in the storm of raw sensation that blazed through him. The illusion of life and freedom was intoxicating.
Clinging to his shoulders, Asrial kept up with him, her strong body accepting his thrusts with a vigorous welcome, sweat trickling down her neck. Her breath came short and fast, blending with the wet slaps of their lovemaking.
Pleasure built with each thrust and her every quiver, gust upon gust of sensation fanning the flames of desire.
And yet ...
Though she moved over him, around him, arousing him to greater heights, the sensations only continued to build, adding fuel to the fire. Pressure grew in his balls, higher, tighter, sharper, until it was almost pain.
And still it built . . .
Romir finally understood. No amount of trying would span the gap to orgasm. There could be no release for him. That much was denied him.
All he had left was Asrial—her pleasure, her release, her ecstasy. That much he could share. He watched her face as he drove into her, watched the vital expressions displayed so openly, so honestly.
Asrial shuddered around him, her ripples of pleasure communicating flesh to flesh the ultimate in rapture. They rushed through her again and again, whetting the edge of his need. She cried out, joyful, triumphant. Without reservation. Her eyes went blind, her face slack, as she surrendered to it—to him.
The pounding in
her ears quieted to a gentle beat as her heart slowed, no longer urgent. The shoulder under her cheek was firm, solid, whole. That was good, since Asrial felt exactly the opposite—all light and floaty, like she was in a zero grav zone. Free of all cares, as though nothing could go wrong.
She could get addicted to that sensation. It felt good. No, it felt better than good. It was fantastic.
Movement. She was moving. The bulkhead slid along her back as Romir sank to his knees. He moved inside her, still thick and eager, triggering another blast of delight through her veins.
Romir laid her on the deck, and she let him, too euphoric to help. She really should have insisted on the full cycle much sooner. They’d wasted decs in a holding pattern.
All her thoughts circled back to sex. No surprise after that prolonged orgasm that had blown through her like a supernova. It had wiped all other considerations from her mind. Taking a deep breath, she squeezed him with her inner muscles, encouraging him to take his release, but unfortunately those were the only parts of her that were up to the challenge.
Hunger throbbed,
a clawing, bone-deep urgency that could never be relieved, never sated. Pain sang in his loins, the sweet flutters of Asrial’s body keeping it honed, teetering one short impossible step from shattering.
Pressing against him, she moaned again, low and soft and blissful. The fast pace of her breathing eased and the urgency of her touch with it. And slowly, eventually, thankfully, so did his need.
Romir stretched out beside her on the hard floor, shaken to the depths of his soul. For the first time since his capture, he had truly made love to a woman—had performed as a man.
He had chosen to take Asrial and be taken.
This was one memory he would be hard-pressed to unravel, so deeply was it seared into his being, carnal pain and all.
Long moments later, Asrial smiled at him, like a contented
shera
after a successful hunt, temporarily sated. Her eyes sparkled with a lazy light, as though yellow stars hung in the dark brown depths.
Despite the ache of no release, Romir found he looked forward to once again being her prey with pleasure. Whenever she wanted him would be fine.
With a sigh, she stirred, raising her hand to his hip. “You didn’t finish.”
“I have no seed to give. This form mimics life, but it is not life. Release is impossible.” He did not mind—too much. Bringing her pleasure was enough. And in any case, he deserved the pain; it was only his due.
She stilled. “What do you mean by that?”
He took her hand, set it on his chest where his heart did not beat, and waited.
“What?” Asrial frowned, confusion knitting her brows.
“Can you feel my heartbeat?” He released her, leaving her to touch and press where she would in search for what was not there.
Her eyes flared wide, her cheeks losing their color the longer she found silence. “But you breathe.”
“Simply habit. I only need air to speak.” It hurt to see the contentment in her face replaced by tension, but he could not look away. This was the reality the gods had cursed him with.
“You . . . disappeared. Turned into smoke.” Her eyes grew wider, the irises thin rings of starless brown. “You’re really a djinn.”
Eight
Asrial pulled her
clothes back into place, needing a semblance of propriety for this conversation. Sprawling naked on the floor of the work cabin wouldn’t help. A reminder of her panic wasn’t conducive to calm discussion.
Though Romir hadn’t moved from where he lay, he wore his loose pants again. She couldn’t avoid the truth any longer. However fantastic it might sound, he really was a djinn—she had to accept that, though he was nothing like she’d imagined djinn to look from her mother’s stories.
Certainly she’d never imagined djinn doing what she’d been doing with Romir just now. Directing all her attention on smoothing her already wrinkle-free carbon silk pants, she fought down a flush. “You mentioned a prison.
That
is your prison?”
No longer glowing, the flask sat among the other relics in the work cabin, looking innocuous. Freed by the brush bots of the dust from the ruins, it was now a burnished brown that her fingers itched to touch.
Romir’s glare at the flask bordered on hatred, diluted as it was by heavy measures of weariness and desolation. “Yes, I was captured by the Mughelis and forced to become . . .
this
.” He flickered in place, gone for the space of a heartbeat, incontrovertible proof he was not the ordinary man she’d told herself he was.
She’d been so willfully blind, ignoring the evidence of her senses. No longer. She had to educate herself about this bizarre shift the universe had taken, approach it the way she approached new territory on the Rim. “Why did they do that?”
“Power. It is efficient, you see. In making djinn, they received a new weapon, reduced the risk to their vyziers, and weakened those forces resisting them.” He recited the reasons as though narrating an educational vid.
“They made people into weapons?” Asrial’s stomach threatened to rebel, lurching in protest at this talk of war. “Why?” What reason could justify such atrocity?
“For territory. The
padsha
, the Mugheli ruling class, are expansionist. When they invaded Parvin, we were just the next in a savage grab for territory. Despite everything we tried, they conquered much of our land, our world.”
The story of lust for power resonated, striking close to home: an enemy that cared only about winning and didn’t count the cost, that saw people as tools to be used and discarded. Her father had withdrawn from that game in the hopes of sparing his followers from retaliation from the Dareh.
Asrial rubbed the cold-prickled skin on her arms, reminding herself that this wasn’t about her. The situations weren’t comparable; technically, House Dilaryn and House Bintanan had been on the same side. “And you were captured?”
Romir stepped away from the flask, backed up until his back was against a bulkhead, as if he was afraid of standing too near. Perhaps he was. “We were losing. The Mughelis were too powerful, too ruthless. We thought to escape.”
“To where?”
“We found another world, benign and suitable for our needs—Omid, our hope.” For a moment, his eyes brightened with happy memory, but she couldn’t tune out his words.
Another world?
Did he mean a planet other than Maj? Her breath caught at the scope of such a project. To be able to connect two points light-years apart . . . within atmospheres! Her first instinct was to scoff. None of the conglomerates was capable of such a feat. Even the most advanced ships couldn’t perform long-distance Jumps with any degree of safety while within a planet’s gravity well.
But then she remembered the force walls in that hidden complex that were far more advanced than anything in the market and had to admit the possibility. After all, a civilization that had djinn could have comparable achievements in other fields.
“It was our greatest working, a full thousand of our strongest weavers acting in concert. We wove a portal. But some of us had to stay behind to anchor it and to unravel the weave before the Mughelis could seize control of it.” The muscles on his cheeks twitched almost into a smile—but they didn’t make it that far.
Happiness faded. His face became bleak, his eyes distant, seeing some place other than the
Castel
. “We tried to hold them off, so as many as possible could escape. Fought too long. Unraveling the weave took too much out of me. They caught me . . . then they remade me into a weapon and used me against my people.” He squeezed his hands into fists, his eyes tight, his mouth twisting bitterly. “I should have killed myself before then.”
Suicide? Romir?
Shocked by the scathing heat in his last words, by his conviction, by the chance that he might still entertain thoughts of self-termination, Asrial grabbed his arm. She could sympathize. There was a time, shortly after pirates killed her parents, when she’d felt the same. Now she no longer had the latitude to indulge her whims, not with Amin relying on her, but she still remembered the despair that consumed her life, that black hole that swallowed all light and nearly swallowed her, too. She didn’t want that for Romir. “They’re dead now, these Mughelis you speak of. They’ve been gone for thousands of years. You won.”
He gaped down at her without comprehension, his mouth working wordlessly.
“It’s true. The complex where I found that”—she flicked her free hand at the flask—“was deserted. There are no people on Maj, only ruins.”
“That is . . . impossible. The Mughelis, vanquished?” Romir looked lost, his eyes blank of all expression, his face slack with disbelief.
“I’ve gone there several times. I’ve flown over the whole planet, and the only sentients I ever saw there were other Rim rats. There are no
Mughelis
”—she stumbled over the word, trying to pronounce it the way Romir did—“left. According to the archaeologists, the Mougal civilization died out around two and a half thousand years ago.”
“Then so are my people.” He bowed his head, his hair falling forward and concealing his face. The desolation in his voice tore at her heart. Had he hoped to return to them?
Asrial knew the need for family, for connection—a link to something greater than herself. Amin and her cousins were what had kept her sane after the pirate attack. Though she saw them only infrequently, the knowledge that they were there if she needed them had carried her through some desolate times. “But didn’t you say some of them escaped to another world? Omid was it?”
“By your account, that was thousands of years ago. There is no guarantee that they survive to this day. Less, in fact. Refugees in an unfamiliar world, lacking the resources the Mughelis had.” His head stayed down, his shoulders curved. Hiding behind his hair, drowning in sorrow.
She bit her lip, foiled by his logic. What now? What could she say that would make a difference?
Frigging crap, she wasn’t equipped to handle this. This was like heading into deep space without a star chart. She hated feeling so useless, and she hated seeing so vital a man despondent. The Romir who warmed her sheets was daring, seductive, reaching for what he wanted without giving thought to the cost. That first time, he’d seduced her in her sleep, not bothering with an introduction.
“That’s no reason to give up. Just establishing that portal must have been a miracle, a chance in a lifetime. This is the same.”