It made no sense to her. He actually looked like a Lomidari, but that didn’t sound like a Lomidar name nor was it a name from Ruxil or Cyri or Hagnash or any of the dozen or so races she frequently encountered. Why would her subconscious come up with an unfamiliar name?
She snorted to herself. What did it matter? He wasn’t real.
Satisfy the urge, and get it out of your system.
“Romir.” The name melted on the tongue like high-grade xoclat. Dark, rich, exotic, and not exactly good for you. A guilty pleasure. To be taken in small bites.
Those silver eyes sharpened, focusing on her with the intensity of a laser cutter.
Asrial swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “You can try.” So she was dreaming. When she woke up, rested, she’d be fine. No harm in indulging her subconscious.
He didn’t join her on the bed as she’d half expected, getting down on his knees instead, which put his head lower than hers. It somehow made him seem less imposing.
Watching her, he took her hand and raised it to his mouth, brushing his lips against the backs of her fingers. The gesture struck her as cautious . . . and courtly. None of the men she’d met at the station bars would have done that.
He turned her hand over and pressed a kiss into her palm, the heat of it sending a shiver streaking through her. Still, he held her gaze, and she couldn’t look away despite the intense intimacy of his unswerving regard.
Her heart skipped a beat, then scrambled to triple time, banging away like a laboring torsion pump. He hadn’t touched her anywhere else, but she was already more aroused than she could remember being in a long time. The hunger she’d thought sated by the session with the pleasure wand was back, magnified to a yawning chasm. Air was suddenly a precious commodity; she couldn’t get enough of it into her heaving lungs. She pressed her thighs together against the throb that had sprung to sudden life between them.
He stared at her as though committing her features to memory, as if his life depended on it. His lips on the base of her thumb stirred her awareness, sensitizing her to the rasp of his stubbled cheek.
Spirit of space, when her subconscious cooked up a dream man, it didn’t stint on the details.
“That all you’re gonna do?” The words came out husky—a breathless invitation instead of the challenge she intended.
Emotion flared behind his eyes, unreadable, his jaw tensing under her hand. But despite her complete nudity, he merely placed his other hand on her hip, his touch tentative. He seemed to hold his breath—expecting her to object? He had a long wait coming, if that was the case. The innocent contact dazzled her senses like fireworks the magnitude of a stellar flare. She placed her hand on top of his, urging him into motion.
Those silver eyes widened, then released hers to transfer his gaze to where she touched him. His hair slid forward, a black curtain concealing his expression. He caressed her over and over from waist to hip, acting as flesh-starved as she felt, petting her with rapt attention. Slow and slower. Deliberate. His focus unwavering. This wasn’t the grab and grope of the station bar scene, eagerness lubricated by a few drinks. It was more temptation, a seduction in measured steps—not that she had much experience in the latter for comparison.
Despite her growing excitement, she didn’t feel any need to rush. The simple contact satisfied some unspoken need inside her, a craving she hadn’t known was there.
Asrial had to marvel at the extent of her imagination. His grounder’s tan—the golden brown of good caffe—was stark against her spacer’s paleness. Did she harbor some proclivity toward grounders she’d never admitted to herself?
He leaned toward her, coming lower and closer, his approach gradual—like watching a flower bloom. Until his firm lips brushed her side, but only barely. More sensed than felt. His breath was heavier than his kiss. When he finally mouthed her skin, he was gentle, careful. Savoring her like a sip of expensive Nikralian brandy. Worshipping her as if she were truly a sovreine, not a Rim rat.
This was the sort of sensation no pleasure wand could give her. Another person’s heat. Another person’s touch. The dampness of a stealthy lick. A wave of shivers swept her, raising prickles on her skin.
She closed her eyes, but that only heightened the sensations. His large hand on her belly and along her hip and down her thigh. His mouth on her side. His stubbled cheeks. His hair sliding over her body in a silky caress.
Wanting his mouth on her breast, she twisted her hand free to sink her fingers into his hair, around the back of his head, and urge him higher. He hesitated before complying, the delay doing strange things to her breathing. When he nuzzled her, his lips were almost reverent in their attentions. Finally he set his mouth to her breast, took an aching tip between his teeth, and nibbled ever so gently.
The tiny bite kicked desire into overdrive, plasma hot and exhilarating, a wild ride through a lightning storm. A moan escaped her, thin and throaty. She arched into his caress, unable to help herself as he drew on her, sucking her nipple with clever lips, his tongue stroking hard and catching it against his palate.
Need grew, twisting and warping into a blood-boiling, bone-melting hunger, the deep throb like the
Castel
’s engines about to take off. Fractured starlight filled her veins, glittering with the promise of ecstasy.
Asrial ground her other hand against her mound, trying to soothe the tension gathering there. She couldn’t take much more. These days she wasn’t used to delaying her release, not when it could be had with a pleasure wand. “Finish me.”
He stilled. For a long moment, he did nothing, merely held her, even his mouth on her breast unmoving. He stared hard at her, a piercing look of fulgent silver, all virile intensity.
She held her breath, the hand in his hair clenching.
When he finally moved, he tugged her legs over the edge of the bunk and spread them. Wide.
Heat rolled through her, anticipation making her wetter.
Oh, yes!
Him inside her, filling her.
To her surprise, he remained kneeling, hooking her legs over his shoulders and parting her curls to press his mouth between her thighs.
This was what her subconscious craved? She’d have thought it was the full cycle she missed: penetration and vigorous pumping and heavy breathing and—
He flicked his tongue over her nub.
Pleasure burst in her core, an explosion of raw sensation, and she didn’t think at all.
Believing her
the enemy, the first time he had touched her had been a guilty pleasure. This time there was no guilt, only pleasure: knowing he was not commanded, that the desire moving him was his, not another’s—his choosing, his willing. Her pleasure was his gift to her; it was his choice to bestow it upon her.
Asrial, she called herself. A name of an angel, from the gods Romir thought had abandoned him. She had returned to him his name. This pleasure was small enough recompense.
Licking her intimately, he drew her scent into himself and the incredible information it communicated to him: female, alive, unharmed, healthy, free of pain and fear. Such a glorious scent he had not smelled in uncounted years.
He nibbled on her tender flesh, unable to believe the change in his fortune. The salty cream of her surpassed all tastes in his war-torn memory, tempting him to gorge his senses.
A soft mewl of surprise rewarded him, even as her hot dew anointed his lips with a kiss of a different sort. She gave of herself, accepting vulnerability. It shook him, this generosity of hers. In his recent experience only those with overwhelming confidence in their power were so casual of their weakness.
Her slender legs tightened around him, squeezing his ribs as she arched into his kisses. Her hands caught his head, holding him to her, the touch—the urgent pressure—sending a breathtaking bolt of exultation through him. The constriction did not bother him, bereft as he had been of any contact for so long. The tight clasp of her legs was a pleasure in itself.
The approval inherent in her actions encouraged him to further liberties. He tested the entrance of her body with his tongue, wondering if she would now object. That thrust was almost more than he dared. In the back of his mind, he waited for the inevitable command to desist, for the flood of absolute compulsion that would prove his continued enslavement.
“Aaah!” The wordless exclamation replete with pleasure was the song of angels to his ears, her gasps and purrs pure delight of themselves. His heart raced at her response, filling him with an almost forgotten sense of power.
He sucked on the nub of her desire, rolled it over his tongue like the precious indulgence it was. Only the gods knew if he would have it again.
She cried out again, exultant, joyful. A sound he could never tire of hearing, so potent did it make him feel.
Driven to have more of her gasps and moans, he licked her delicate flesh, dipped his tongue again into her, thrilling at his temerity.
Asrial tossed her head in a frenzy of delight, her skin flushed a delicate pink. An angel on the cusp of ecstasy. She cupped her breasts, stroking herself in a breathtaking display of feminine seduction, revealing a depth of desire that shocked him.
How could she allow herself to be so vulnerable?
But Asrial did.
She surged against him, eagerness in every line of her body. She participated in her own seduction, leaving herself open to his wondering eyes. Unmindful of his scrutiny. Unafraid to display her pleasure.
And when her release came, she withheld none of her delight. Her body jerked and twisted and arched in a gratifying display of carnal satisfaction. And more. She screamed. She shuddered. She swore.
Romir soaked it all in, taking it into himself—her cries, her scent, her pleasure—immersing his soul in her ecstasy. The potent elixir of freedom.
A reminder of his manhood.
He could barely remember a time he had not been djinn, when he had been free to love and be loved, before he had been bound into unthinking, unwilling service. Asrial’s generous display recalled the possibility of being more than a slave.
The lines on her face eased, going slack as the crest passed. Her body relaxed, losing the rigidity of transport, until she lay stretched out before him, panting. Her breaths slowed to sighs, the rise and fall of her breasts easing with every heartbeat. Until she slept. With a smile on her face.
Romir eased her legs back onto the bed, careful not to disturb her sleep. He kept watch, unable to tear his eyes away. Not wanting to.
In repose, her features softened, gaining an innocence that belied her sensuality. The air of peace about her was a sprinkling of water to a parched soul, crumbs to a starving man, air to a drowning one. Such fanciful comparisons should have been meaningless—his hateful existence eliminated the need for water, food, or air—but he could not deny the attraction.
Had he convinced her?
Likely not. He doubted she would have surrendered so readily to sleep if he had, in the arms of a strange man. But still the illusory display of trust warmed him, a thawing of the frozen emptiness where his heart used to be.
He had time to convince her. He had nothing but time.
Perhaps once he had convinced her, he could understand what had happened, how his prison had slipped from the hands of the Mughelis. All he knew for certain was, his rescue had not been deliberate.
Maybe then he could believe it was true.
Four
Asrial woke slowly,
indulgently, her body humming with contentment. Her dream had been so vivid, the memory of it alone sent a thrill of sweet delight singing through her. Sighing, she stretched, awash in a buoyant sense of well-being she hadn’t felt since she’d learned of Amin’s accident.
What a lovely dream. She half regretted waking up. If tech heads could replicate the effect reliably, offices would rattle and there’d be a new conglomerate within three years. It would shake up interstellar economies.
She laughed at the whimsy.
At the top of her stretch, she opened her eyes and turned to get up. And froze.
A man sat on the floor of her cabin, long black hair flowing over a bare, broad shoulder, his arms resting across his knees like a wall. Silver eyes met her gaze, intent, alert, wary, and somehow . . . bewildered.
“R—Ro—Romir. Romir . . . Gadaña.”
The introduction in the dream returned to haunt her.
The dream hadn’t been a dream?
Aghast, Asrial snatched her pillow to her chest; her stunner wasn’t under it where it should have been. They stared at each other in silence, her heart doing its best to break her ribs, its triple time echoing in her ears like a laboring drive. In the limited space of her cabin, he was so close that she didn’t dare look away to search for her stunner.
How could it be? She was well-rested. Her last physical—taken to reassure Amin before this trip—detected no illness nor abnormality. She couldn’t be hallucinating.
“I am—a djinn.”
Impossible.
Djinn were children’s tales.
“What is this place?” The same question he asked in her dream—which obviously hadn’t been a dream. He sounded sincere, the same now as he had then. He didn’t look stupid, he’d gotten past her security, so how could he not know?
“Someone put my prison here.”
She thrust the memory away. Children’s tales had no place in the real world.
But, Spirit of space, how did he get aboard?
He—Romir—continued to stare at her, the weight of his silence demanding an answer.
Asrial decided to humor him. While he hadn’t made any moves she’d consider aggressive—aside from being aboard the
Castel
and in her cabin—she didn’t want to push her luck quite yet. Just because he’d handed back her stunner that time didn’t mean he was safe.