Bound to Seduction (13 page)

“
Your
wish,
hayaati
. My
command.”

Tariq was pretty sure he’d never been so
satisfied.

Mira lay draped over him, her chest rising
and falling with her labored breaths, her hair a wild tangle of
silk all across his sweaty skin. He ran his fingers through the
thick blond mass, loving the feel of it—and her—against him as she
tried to slow her breath, as they both came down from another
rocking climax.

His heart pinched when he thought of what
would happen next. They were safe out here on the water, but as
soon as they went back to shore, Zoraida would expect results. And
when he refused, the sorceress would become enraged. He didn’t want
to lose his brothers, but he couldn’t damn Mira. She was as
innocent as they were. And he could no longer sacrifice one for the
good of others.

“Where are we?” he asked as he stared up at
the ceiling.

“On a boat,” she said, her voice vibrating
against his chest, sending tendrils of pleasure all through his
skin. “I already told you that.”

He smiled, even knowing all the danger that
loomed ahead for both of them. With her, he felt light, alive,
loved. And that’s what he’d hold on to. Even when his brothers were
gone and Zoraida took her fury out on him. He’d remember this
moment with her and everything she’d given him and know his choice
was worth it. “That’s not what I meant, smartass. I meant, where is
the boat?”

She pushed up on one arm and looked down at
him. Her eyes sparkled in the low light, and his heart cinched down
even tighter as he looked into her beautiful face. “You need to be
more specific, djinni. I’m not a mind reader, you know.” She
grinned again. “On the Columbia. Off Sauvie Island. Don’t worry, we
aren’t drifting. I dropped anchor.”

He wasn’t worrying about that. He was
worrying because they didn’t have much time. They needed to get out
of this bed and strategize. He needed to teach her to recognize the
influence of Ghuls so she could defend herself when he was gone.
But he didn’t want to do that yet. He just wanted to stay here and
be close to her, even though doing so was only prolonging the
inevitable.

He brushed a lock of hair back from her
face. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the water. I miss
it. Thank you for this.”

“Your kingdom is near the coast, isn’t it?”
When he nodded, she said, “You sail a lot?”

“I used to. Not much lately.”

“I guessed,” she said, pushing up to sit on
his legs.

He loved that she wasn’t self-conscious
about being naked with him anymore. Loved the way she trailed her
hands down his chest. “Let me guess? Your research?”

That Cheshire-cat grin returned once more.
“Something like that. But I didn’t bring you on this boat just
because I thought you might be missing the water.”

“You didn’t?” She shook her head, and his
brow lowered as he tried to read her expression. “Then why?”

Resting her hands on his chest, she leaned
down and kissed him. “Because I love you.”

His heart turned over, and he opened to her,
drawing her tongue into his mouth one more time, hoping it would be
enough. Knowing it wouldn’t.

She ran her hands over his shoulders as she
kissed him. Down his arms and back up again. He lost himself in her
kiss. In the sheer perfection of her. In all the love he’d never
had before. Her fingers trailed down to his wrists. She grasped his
arms, tugged them above his head. He smiled as she kissed him. As
his desire built all over again.

Okay, one more time. Then he’d get serious.
So long as they were out on the water and she still needed him,
he’d let her do whatever she wanted. For however long it took. When
she was finally sated, then he’d refocus.

“I love when you touch me like this,
Mira.”

She pushed his hands together over his head.
“Good. Because I have a feeling in a minute, you’re going to be
really mad.”

His brow dropped as she pulled away from his
mouth. And then something cold and metal snapped over both his
wrists.

He jerked his head back, looked up. But
before he even saw the cuffs, he knew they were iron. Knew because
it zapped his energy and made him weaker than he’d been in
years.

His gaze shot back to Mira. She quickly
climbed off him. A guilty look ran across her face. “What are you
doing? Mira, uncuff me right now. Iron—”

She winced. “I know. Iron makes you weak.
But trust me, Tariq, there’s no other way.”

He watched in shock and disbelief as she
tugged on her clothes. Of course, she knew. She’d researched his
tribe extensively. He jerked on the iron cuffs with what little
strength he had. But they were secured to a hook in the wall, and
all his efforts did was jangle metal against metal. “Mira. What…?
Why…?” He pulled hard again. Knew he was growing weaker with each
second. “You have to let me go.”

She tugged the comforter over his naked
body. Then leaned down so she was close to his face. “I know she
can’t see us on the water. Or hear us. But I also know you’d never
let me do what I’m about to do, so I had to cuff you.”

She ran her fingers over his jaw, and
instinctively, he leaned into her touch, even as anger pushed up
his chest. “Mira, listen to me—”

His words cut off when her fingers moved
down his throat; then both hands spread across his collarbones as
if she were feeling for something.

Panic spread through his entire body as she
began uttering words in an old language he’d only heard once. Words
Zoraida had spoken when she’d bound him to the opal. And his eyes
grew wide when the opal he wore in his realm—the one that was just
like Mira’s but invisible here—materialized against his chest.

Her fingers closed around the opal, and she
muttered more magical words that broke the clasp.

“Mira,” he gasped, eyes wide with disbelief.
“How did you—?”

“Find your brothers, Tariq,” she whispered
against his lips, just before kissing him one last time. “My wish
has been fulfilled.”

No.
No
!
“Mira!”

A vortex of black smoke materialized in the
room. Horror enveloped Tariq as the smoke cleared and Zoraida stood
in the center of the salon. Tariq jerked on the cuffs, but he was
so weak now, he could barely move. “Mira, run. Get out of
here!”

She had no idea what she’d just done. By
voicing her wish was fulfilled, she’d brought Zoraida’s wrath down
on her. He couldn’t protect her cuffed to this wall. Panic made him
yank and pull and do anything to break free.

“Water,” Zoraida announced, glaring toward
Tariq. “Clever, djinni. Remind me to punish you for that.”

She turned her icy gaze on Mira. “Your wish
is fulfilled, human. That means your soul belongs to me.”

Mira didn’t even flinch as a wicked grin
spread across Zoraida’s face. Did she know Zoraida was a sorceress?
That she could torture Mira, enslave her, kill her at any moment?
That panic morphed to a full-blown terror that whipped through
Tariq like a hurricane. “Mira, run!”

“Maybe,” Mira said in a calm voice, ignoring
him. “Maybe not.”

Zoraida’s eyes narrowed. “What do you have
behind your back?”

Slowly, Mira pulled her right hand forward
and opened her palm. Tariq’s opal glimmered in the low salon
light.

Fury flashed in Zoraida’s eyes, shot from
the opal to Mira’s face. “How did you get that?”

Without answering, Mira tugged a curved
bottle made of yellow glass from behind her back with her other
hand. One Tariq had seen sitting on the shelf near the bed when
he’d first come onto the boat. Gaze locked on Zoraida, Mira held
Tariq’s opal over the bottle, then said, “Your hold on him ends
here. By the magic in the Key of Solomon, I free him from his
chains.”

No. He
wouldn’t be able to protect her. Zoraida would kill her for sure
for this.
No
!
“Mira!”

Zoraida’s eyes grew wide as saucers. Before
she could lunge forward, Mira dropped the opal into the bottle.

Zoraida screamed. The liquid in the bottle
fizzled and popped, and then the opal disintegrated. Fire erupted
all through Tariq’s body, exploded out his fingertips. His body
lurched off the bed as if he’d been shocked with a
ten-thousand-volt electrical current. Voices echoed in his ears.
Mira’s. Zoraida’s. But the black smoke was already circling in.
Already pulling him back. The cuffs broke free of his wrists. His
vision blurred. Through a haze, he reached out for Mira, but the
roar of the vortex swirling around him was too strong, the force
too great. And then, before he could stop it, he was flying across
time and space, heading…he didn’t know where.

* * *

Mira swallowed hard as she stared into the
face of the enraged sorceress. Power radiated from her body,
churned in the air. But the hatred in her eyes… It was like nothing
Mira had ever seen before.

She couldn’t wonder where Tariq had gone.
Couldn’t focus on the hurt she’d seen on his face when she’d cuffed
him. He was safe now. He was free. That was all that mattered.

“You,” the sorceress growled. “I will make
you pay for what you’ve done.”

Mira took a step back. Braced herself for
the sorceress’s fury. She didn’t have a weapon, nothing to protect
herself. What little magic Claire’s research had garnered had
already been used to free Tariq. She’d known it would come down to
this. That she’d be left alone with an irate magical being when all
was said and done, but she hadn’t realized just how frightening
that would be.

“It was worth it,” Mira managed in a shaky
voice, trying to stay tough. Trying not to let this…thing…see her
fear. “To get him away from you, it was worth it.”

The sorceress’s eyes turned red. She lifted
her hands and threw them forward. A burst of electrical energy
sizzled from her fingertips, flew through the air. Mira screamed.
She knew she did. But the blast never hit. It went right through
her and slammed into the wall of the boat, opening a hole in the
side that rocked the boat from side to side.

Mira stumbled, hit the wall of the boat.
Frigid water poured into the cabin, seeped around her feet. But she
was too focused on the sorceress’s eyes, growing wider with
disbelief and fury, as she glanced from her hands to Mira’s
face.

There was nowhere for Mira to go. Panic
spread through her chest, threatened to overwhelm her. And then she
thought of the Firebrand opal.

Her wish was fulfilled. It wasn’t bound to
her anymore.

She quickly reached up and flipped the clasp
on the chain around her neck. Excitement speared through her when
it opened and the opal fell into her hand.

Across the cabin, the sorceress yelled,
“No!”

But Mira didn’t hesitate. She dropped the
opal into the bottle, just as she’d done with Tariq’s stone. Only
this one didn’t sizzle and pop. It bobbed in the liquid she’d
enchanted with magical words Claire had given her, then seemed to
hover, suspended inside.

The sorceress screamed, and Mira looked up
just as another vortex of light and smoke and energy spun through
the room. But this one didn’t disintegrate. In a roar so loud it
shook the boat, the sorceress, her magic, every bit of her twirling
tornado was sucked into the bottle.

Barely able to believe what had just
happened, Mira slapped the top down on the bottle, securing the
clasp. Inside the yellow-tinged glass, the Firebrand necklace still
floated, but there was no sign of the sorceress. Just a crackle and
sparkle of magic that told Mira she and her power were in there
somewhere.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. She’d done it.
She’d saved Tariq, she’d managed to save herself, and she’d trapped
the sorceress.

Her hands shook. Her heart raced. Slowly,
sound returned. And a shiver racked her body. She looked around the
salon, half filled with water from the gaping hole in the side, and
realized the boat was sinking.

She scrambled for the stairs. The boat
groaned and jerked to the side, knocking her off balance. The
bottle slipped from her fingertips. She went under the steadily
rising water, kicked hard to come back up. Sputtering, she looked
around for the bottle. It was floating on the steadily rising
surface of the water. Heading for the hole in the side of the
boat.

She had to get to it. She couldn’t lose
it!

She swam hard for it. Her fingertips grazed
the glass, but she couldn’t reach it. Before she could get her hand
around the neck, it was sucked out of the boat and disappeared into
the river.

Mira’s head went under. Water swirled around
her. Lungs burning, she kicked hard to get air. When her head
popped up, she gasped, so close to the ceiling. Oh God, she wasn’t
going to get out. She was going to drown down here.

She swam as hard as she could. Finally
reached the stairs, now at an angle as the boat filled. Water
poured over the deck, into the salon, but she fought against the
current and pushed through until she was on the drastically sloped
deck. She didn’t bother looking for a lifejacket, knew there wasn’t
time. Hands on the grab rail, she struggled to the edge and pushed
off, sailing into the river, hoping she’d jumped far enough out so
the boat didn’t suck her down with it. Praying she’d live.

Because as much as she’d been willing to
sacrifice herself for Tariq, she didn’t want to die this way. Not
when they were both finally free.

Mira drew a deep breath, lifted her hand,
and knocked on the office door. Three days had passed since the
events on the boat. After being rescued by a passing ship, she’d
filed a report with the harbor police about the “electronic
malfunction” on board that had caused the sinking, apologized to
her boss for wrecking his boat, then cashed in the rest of her
vacation time. She needed a couple of weeks to chill out and
recover mentally from what had happened, and she had one person she
needed to thank in person.