Alphas Unleashed (15 page)

A smile twitched on the djinn’s lips. The man had a gorgeous mouth, well-defined full lips that looked like they’d been drawn by an artist. Kissable lips.

What? Oh God, no. She didn’t have time for such fancies given her screwed up life. She wrapped her arms around herself.

Rayez struck a modeling pose. “I come from a very far off land and this is what the men wear there,” he said. “It’s our native outfit.”

“That’s cool. It makes you look like a genie and that’s super cool,” Cade said.

Heat rushed through her. Could the earth please open up and swallow her? Now. “Okay, it’s time for bed,” she chirped and grabbed Cade.

“Thank you,” Raze said with a half bow to her brother. “And good night. May your dreams be bright.”

When she returned from tucking Cade back into his bed, Selene found Rayez studying her books. His rugged features somber and thoughtful. Beautiful. Her hands itched for her camera again. “Thank you.”

He pinned her with his dark gaze. Flames seemed to flicker once more in their depths. “For what?”

Being subjected to that intense gaze, breathing in his exotic scent of smoky sandalwood made it hard to think, talk. She swallowed and pushed words out. “Thank you for the soup. Thank you for being so gracious and kind to my brother despite…” She stopped and swallowed again. She clasped her hands together, the chill of her fingertips seeping into her. “Despite all I did. For what it’s worth, I really am sorry.”

He gave her a slow nod. “Why did you do it?”

His quiet question had her taking a deep breath. This was it. Her one chance. “It’s a long and rather fantastic story, I think we better sit down.”

They sat next to each other on her lumpy couch. Even though there was a decent amount of space between them, Selene was acutely aware of him, and the heat radiating from his body. He sat with his arms resting on his knees and hands loosely clasped. She noticed the veining on the back of his large hands and the calloused fingertips. What would it be like to run a finger over those veins and have him touch her in return?

The thought left her throat parched. “I better get some water,” she croaked, half-rising. “Want anything?”

He gently pushed her back down with one hand. In the other he held two bottles of chilled water.

Yes, of course, genie. Selene grabbed a bottle, opened it and took a drink. “Thanks.”

She started at the beginning about how her mother, tired of being a single parent, had considered Warren to be their savior and married him. At first, things had been better and Warren legally adopted them.

“Where was your real father?”

“I don’t know if my Mom even knew his identity, and she never really spoke of him.” She shrugged and continued.

“My mother died when I was thirteen and Cade was two, and that’s when things began to turn strange.” Selene picked at a loose thread on her tee-shirt.

The next part of the story stuck in her throat. Would he believe her? The one time she’d tried to share the story with a kind teacher, she’d ended up seeing a shrink to deal with her grief and imagination. And Warren had gotten a lot of sympathy. She gulped down some more water to wash away the bitterness of the memory.

“I passed out at the reception after the funeral,” she said, her voice breaking. “Everyone blamed my being upset and the summer heat. Obviously, I was upset and June in Houston is hot. But many years later, after I knew the truth about my stepfather, I wondered if someone hadn’t slipped me something in a drink.”

Rayez shot her a sympathetic look and took her left hand in his. His warmth chased away the chill in her soul, reassured her.

“What happened?”

“I woke up around dusk in my own bed. Warren sat in a chair next to me. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights so his face was in half-shadows. I still remember being terrified, until he asked me how I felt. His familiar voice comforted me,” she shook her head and shared a rueful smile. “I was so naïve.”

He responded with a gentle squeeze. “You were a child.”

She nodded. Truth. Warren had conned masses, he had money and knew magic, a thirteen-year-old hadn’t stood a chance in hell against him and his plots. “Anyway, there was a cut on one of my palms that he just shrugged off and I felt weak, like I’d woken from a long illness rather than an afternoon swoon.”

She paused for another drink. “After that, mysterious cuts would appear periodically on different parts of my body, usually parts hidden by my clothes,” she said. “And usually after blackouts.”

Selene fast forwarded to the next highlight. “Then when I turned fifteen, he turned me into a dopplegänger.”

She skipped over the details about being taken into Warren’s secret workshop hidden deep inside the house, stripped naked, bound and drugged with a hallucinogenic drink. There’d been spells, pain and blood. The need to throw up engulfed her as she remembered every single fucking detail. Details that were too raw, too personal to share.

The girl who’d entered that room remained trapped there. While she, a shade of that girl, had walked out with a story no one would believe and a life that was a lie.

“It’s a painful process,” she said, adding clinical characteristics and uses of a dopplegänger.

“Blood magic.” Rayez’s horrified whisper resounded in the room.

Strangely, the words comforted Selene. A relieved breath whooshed out of her as she sat up straighter. “You know what I’m talking about.”

The angles of his face hardened. “In the ancient times, there used to be human magicians who used blood—animal or human, willing donor or not—to make their magic more powerful.” His lips curved in distaste. “That’s why djinns were warned to keep away from humans. That’s why it was good the old ways have been forgotten.”

“Not totally forgotten,” Selene said, placing her empty bottle on the coffee table, next to the beer bottle. “He learned about blood magic, the trick of marrying widows to get to their children and about djinns from his mentor, a witch called Edgar. Apparently, he’d gotten hold of an ancient text.”

Selene stopped and stared at him. “Wait, can he use your blood to become even more powerful? Is that why he wanted you?”

Rayez shook his head. “Djinns don’t have blood, we are made of essence or what humans call matter,” he said. “But blood magicians are dangerous to us because a powerful one can enslave a djinn or several.”

The enormity of what she’d almost done caught up with her. “Oh.”

Rayez narrowed his gaze at her. “So that’s where you and I come in. Warren sent you to get me. How did he know about me?”

She intertwined her fingers with his. It just felt right. “Yes,” she said. “He did this scrying spell from time to time to locate djinn presence within a certain area. You apparently popped up on this magical radar. I’d been watching you for a while before we met.”

His hand stiffened in hers and he tried to pull away, but she held on tighter. “I’m so sorry, Rayez. He’s doing that blood magic on Cade. The doctors think it’s some rare type of blood disease, but I know. If I don’t listen to him, he weakens Cade to the brink of death.” A sob interrupted her rush of words and tears leaked down her face. “I know he’s planning to do to Cade what he did to me and I can’t let that happen.”

Rayez reached over with his free hand and wiped away her tears. The stroke of his thumb, both rough and gentle at the same time, made her eyelids flutter close. God, his touch felt so good. She wanted more.

“I can’t lose Cade. He’s my kid brother and the only family I have left.” She licked her lips. “That’s why I need your help.”

Finally, she let his hand go and clasped her hands in her lap. She looked away at the picture of Cade playing on the monkey bars at the neighborhood park. “But I’ll understand if you refuse to help me. Us.”

Chapter 5

Rayez stared at the woman who refused to meet his eye. Selene’s last words, spoken in flat-toned resignation, sucker punched him in the gut, left him speechless. She was used to getting the worst case scenario in life and expected the same from him. She deserved better.

Technically, he couldn’t refuse. But after hearing her story, after watching her and Cade together, he genuinely wanted to help them.

He scrubbed his hands over his face. How to go about it…that was the question needing to be answered. “I’m assuming you’ve tried to limit contact between Cade and Warren through legal means?”

She jumped to her feet and started pacing again. “He is a model citizen, a celebrated philanthropist, and the most popular mayor in decades,” she said. Her gut churned. Going against Warren also meant risking her comatose body. God only knew what he’d do to it out of anger.
Whatever the cost,
Cade came first
. “If I brought these charges against him to people who had no clue about magic, I’d be the one to lose Cade because I’d be locked up in a psych ward faster than you can say abracadabra.”

Selene stopped and gazed at him with hope brightening her eyes. “But I have a plan…of sorts.”

“Hit me with it.”

She dropped back on the couch, closer than before. One of her knees touched his thigh, and just that bit of connection was enough to send his mind tripping. What would it be like to hold her against him, touch in different places and in different ways?

He dragged his gaze back to her face and his mind to the matter at hand.

“If you agreed to help, I was thinking I could take you in the bottle to Warren and then you could come out and whoop his ass with your genie powers,” she said.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Rayez couldn’t keep the smirk off his face. “As much as I’d loved to whoop his ass, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “FYI, we prefer the term djinn. It’s much more dignified.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, scrunching up her nose in apology and looking utterly adorable. “But why won’t it work?”

Rayez gnawed on his lower lip and tried to figure out how he should answer her. Did he trust her enough to share the truth about the bottle and give away his slight advantage?

He looked into her unusual lavender eyes. He’d seen resignation, determination, fear, love and hope in them. He’d seen her ruthlessness, her desperation, and her caring.

Without thinking, he reached out and brushed the back of his knuckles down one side of her face. She was soft and hard, vulnerable and strong. She was someone he actually admired. And, she was a woman who intrigued him, made him care.

“You bound me to the bottle and whoever has the bottle has power over me,” he said. He was surprised at how steady and soft his voice sounded. None of the trepidation came through. “If you give the bottle to Warren, I’ll have to do what he asks.”

He saw hope vanishing from her gaze, leaving behind speculation. “So right now you have to do whatever I ask?”

His neck prickled and he steeled himself to be asked to perform some ridiculous trick or another. Humans, so disbelieving at first, always wanted to test out their powers. “Yes.”

She grasped his hand. “So you’re trying to help me with this situation because I inadvertently commanded you to?”

Guilt flushed through him about his earlier deception. “No,” he rasped. “I mean, there is the compulsion. But I also want to help.”

“Why?”

“Because Cade is a good kid. Because no one deserves to be only half-alive and enslaved,” he said. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

She raised his hand to her lips and brushed a soft kiss across his knuckles. “You’re a good man, Rayez.” Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “So tell me, how do I release you from this binding?”

A jumble of emotion—disbelief, elation, and a heart-stopping need to kiss her—flooded him, clogged his throat. He stared at her for a long moment, then cleared his throat. “You have to say you release me, using the same name he gave you, and then break the bottle.”

She nodded. Selene dragged in a deep breath, exhaled. “Okay, here goes—”

A sudden loud blast, like a clap of thunder landing right in the room with them, had Selene shrieking and leaping into his arms. The lights flickered, and a split second later they were plunged into darkness.

Rayez’s heart hammered hard against his ribs. All he was aware of was Selene. Her enticing lavender scent, the tickle of her silky hair, and her warm soft body pressed against his. Damn, she felt good. He licked his lips and froze in place, afraid he would give in to his wants if he dared to move.

Creator, he wanted to do so much. He wanted to kiss her and taste her. He wanted to bury his nose in her curtain of hair and inhale her scent. He wanted her naked and under him. He needed her.

Her warm sweet breath caressed his jawline. Fuck. She’d leaned closer. His breath strangled in his lungs and he opened his mouth to say something, anything, to break the dark and silent intimacy that had his dick straining and his balls in a headlock.

“Sel! Where are you?” Cade’s thin panicked cry saved them both. They jumped apart as if struck by lightning.

“Uh, I’m coming. Stay where you are,” she called out. Her voice held a husky edge of need. She stumbled forward, stepped on his foot. “Oh! So sorry!”

His brain kicked into gear and he quickly called up a few candles worth of djinn fire. He held them in his palms. At that first moment of illumination, their eyes met and held. He saw desire swimming in her eyes, and his lips parted in answer.