CHAPTER 12

ZURAEL rose onto an elbow and gently brushed the hair away from Aisling’s face. She slept deeply, with the insensibility of the dead. And though her bare skin was warm against his, he shivered as he remembered returning close to dawn to find her curled in a ball on the red dirt in the shaman’s workroom, unresponsive to his touch and voice, her skin chilled and pale.

“Aisling,” he whispered, leaning down to trail kisses over her soft skin, to touch his lips to hers and tempt fate by doing it. How had she come to matter so much to him? When had the thought of her death become unbearable?

He curled his arm around her waist and pulled her more tightly against him, pinned her unresisting thighs to the sheet. He was hard, as he always seemed to be when he was with her. But it wasn’t the ache in his cock that guided his actions or urged him to cover her completely. It was the desire to possess her, to protect her.

She stirred as if responding to his closeness, his need to know she was whole, undamaged, safely returned from the spiritlands. Some of the worry loosened in his chest, burst in a wave of heat that had him touching his mouth to hers again, almost daring her to wake, to defy the future by taking his breath and spirit as easily as she’d summoned him from his father’s kingdom.

Movement ended the moment. Zurael turned his head and saw the ferret.

Aziel was in the doorway, bold now where he hadn’t been willing to show himself earlier in the face of Zurael’s anger at finding Aisling still as death on the floor.

A knock on the door came and Aziel turned, retreated to the living room. Reluctantly Zurael left the soft heat of Aisling’s flesh, slid from the bed and pulled on a pair of pants. More of his tension left when her eyebrows drew together and her mouth formed a frown over his absence.

He forced himself from the room to answer the front door. It was Nicholette.

Her gaze went behind him, searching for Aisling, then down to the ferret, who wound himself around her ankles like a cat before disappearing back into the house. When Zurael didn’t call for Aisling, she said, “I brought fresh bread and vegetables from our garden. It’s not enough, not nearly enough for what Aisling did. But it’s all we can spare. We’re leaving Oakland.”

Nicholette’s knuckles were white where her hands gripped the coarse burlap. She offered the sack to him and he took it.

“Please tell her we’ll never willingly talk about what happened. Tell her no one knows Nicholas is safe. His client will never accept that her precious son brought about his own death. If she learns that Nicholas is alive, she’ll blame him and find a way to have him arrested.”

Fear settled like ice in Zurael’s chest. Dread tempted him to ask how Nicholas came to be alive and free while his client’s son was dead. Caution kept his lips sealed. If Aisling had summoned another Djinn…

Aziel returned, carrying Nicholette’s necklace in his mouth. Her worry faded. Laughter and warmth shone in her eyes, highlighting her exquisite beauty and delicate features. She was breath-taking, though Zurael didn’t desire her physically.

Nicholette knelt and took the necklace from Aziel. She stroked his head and back for long moments before slipping the chain over her neck and standing.

“I need to leave now.”

“I’ll pass on your messages.”

Nicholette spared one last look at Aziel, then turned and hurried away. Zurael watched her for a few minutes, felt the eyes of unseen neighbors noting his presence, but even that couldn’t pull him from the icy foreboding of his own thoughts.

He returned to the bedroom, intent on rousing Aisling, demanding answers. But the sight of her sprawled in the center of the bed, the covers kicked away to reveal splayed thighs and pink-capped breasts distracted him. Lust flared, as fast and dangerous as a flash fire.

Zurael crossed the room and stripped out of his pants without being aware of doing it. His cock was a hard ridge along his abdomen, his testicles a heavy, full weight.

He wouldn’t yield, he told himself as he knelt on the bed next to her. But then her eyelashes fluttered, parted, and he was captured in blue shaded to violet, in a whirlpool of desire he had no resistance to.

“Zurael,” she whispered, and he answered her call, responded to the subtle arch of her back by leaning over her.

With a moan, he latched on to a nipple, sucked and bit as she twisted and writhed, moved so his chest hovered above her face. She captured the loose strands of his hair and pulled him downward until she could press her mouth to his flesh.

Razor-sharp desire spiked through him when she bit down on his nipple. His hips jerked with each touch of her tongue, each suck, and he would have surrendered his seed if she hadn’t taken his cock in hand, cupped his testicles and prevented release with the tight band of her fingers.

“Aisling,” he panted, and did the unthinkable. He yielded his power to her. Submitted by repositioning them so he lay on his back and she knelt, her knees on the mattress near his head, her sinful mouth kissing downward toward his throbbing penis.

He palmed her breasts. Tortured her nipples and kissed the silky skin of her belly, bathed in the scent of her arousal when he was presented with her heated lower lips.

A shudder went through him as her mouth captured his cock head. He wouldn’t beg, he told himself, she would be the one to plead.

His hands abandoned her breasts in order to cup her buttocks. He pressed his lips to slick, swollen folds. Probed her wet core with his tongue.

She bucked, whimpered. Took his penis between her lips and sent raw pleasure through his shaft-and he knew the depth of the lie he’d told himself.

Her name became a plea in his thoughts as liquid hunger consumed him. His hips jerked, lifted off the mattress in urgent rhythm.

His cock fought to surge deeper, but her hands prevented it. Had she asked, he would have done anything she wanted if she’d just take him further into her mouth, if she’d just bring him to completion.

A soul-swallowing lust held him in its grip. He was consumed by a carnal claiming he would never have allowed himself with another Djinn.

Aisling’s fragile, delicate beauty was a trap he couldn’t escape. The more he thought to possess her, the more possessed he became.

His tongue stabbed through wet folds, licked over the tiny head of her clit. “Aisling,” he whispered and nearly cried when finally she gave him what he craved beyond anything else.

She took him deeper. Stroked him with her tongue. She sucked on him until his mind was white heat and screams of unbearable pleasure as orgasm claimed him.

He felt boneless beneath her. Echoes of his release trembled through him, but he had the presence of mind and discipline to return what she’d given him, to send her over the edge with his tongue.

THEY showered and dressed. Zurael waited until Aisling was in the kitchen, pulling loaves of bread and freshly harvested vegetables from the burlap sack he’d left on the counter, before he trapped her between his arms.

Somehow he resisted the urge to press against her, to get lost in the sultry heat and sweet allure of her. “Nicholette was here. She and her brother are leaving Oakland without telling anyone he’s alive. They want you to know they’ll never willingly reveal what you did.” His voice became barely more than a growl. “What name did you call last night, Aisling? Who did you summon?”

“Irial.”

Zurael went rigid with shock. Fear for her froze the air in his lungs. It made his heart stutter and miss a beat.

Aisling turned and placed her hands on his chest. Calm blue eyes met the molten, raging gold of his. “He would have killed me if he could. He intended to. But when he saw Aziel on my shoulder, his anger disappeared completely. He asked me if I trusted Nicholas with my life since he’d witnessed everything. When I said I did, Irial agreed to free Nicholas. What happened after that, I don’t know. I couldn’t stay any longer.”