Djinn and Tonic (16 page)

The thought of having to choose, of being forced into marriage to Hassan, brings the rage boiling back to the surface. My legs burn with renewed energy, pushing me along the concrete of the sidewalk, past people strolling in groups, and homeless people with shopping carts, ignoring the whistles and leers and the stares of awe as the winds push me and magic blazes through me until I’m running faster than a normal human ever could.
 

They think they can just decide what I’m going to do, and with whom? They think they can drag
me
into their stupid business deals and use me like some kind of pawn in their idiotic games of chess?
 

I
don’t
think so. I want no part of their drug deals and their stolen cars and their laundered money and their crates of guns. I’m done with them and their archaic, outmoded, chauvinistic, patriarchal way of ruling everything. They won’t control me. I will not allow it. I won’t be dragged into a war, either.
 

The wind is carrying me away and my rage is clouding my sight, so I don’t see him emerging from a doorway. I slam into him and we go rolling along the ground in a tangle of sweaty limbs.

Carson ends up beneath me, and his eyes are wide and glittering with emotion as they bore into me. I can feel his heart beating, and I can smell him. He’s as sweaty as I am, and I realize he’s emerged from a gym. His hair is mussed and wet and sticking up in all directions, his limbs are slick, and his muscles are hot and swollen. He’s shirtless, and his muscular torso is hard beneath me; I can’t seem to stop my hands from running along the lines of his abs to his chest, and I feel his heat radiating into me, the smell of male sweat hot in my nostrils.
 

His hands are on my lower back and edging downward, his lips inches from mine. I can feel the effect I’m having on him. He’s hardening and lengthening beneath me, pressing into my belly, and before I can shut it away the thought is blowing through me: I want him inside me. My body is a traitor, my desire for him howling inside me, turning me liquid, leaving me helpless in a puddle on top of him. His hands are cupping my ass hungrily now, squeezing and kneading and pushing and pulling, grinding me into him. My thighs are shaking, and my breath is coming in ragged gasps against his mouth.
 

We still haven’t said a word. Our eyes are locked on each other, his ocean eyes swallowing me and subsuming me in their emotive depths.
 

I haven’t seen this man in over a week, and it’s like I never left him. All my thoughts of duty and family, djinni and ifrit, all of it is blown away by the way he’s looking at me in this moment. My decision whether or not to return home no longer exists. Hassan, my father, Nadira, none of them exist. There’s nothing but Carson, his hard body, his lips on mine, his hands on my flesh.
 

I force myself to slide off him, but arousal makes even that into a sensual slither of skin against skin. He shudders as my hands run along his belly to his thighs and rest there, longer than they should. Finally I manage to get to my feet, but my legs won’t hold me up.

Carson rises to his feet, much more gracefully than I did, and he’s careful to leave a gap of several inches between us. I’m grateful for that space, as I don’t trust myself not to attack him just yet, but I hate the distance separating us. I want so badly to push myself against him, tell him to take me home, take me to bed.
 

The silence continues, awkward, full of a million unspoken sentiments.
 

God, I want you.
 

He’s thinking it, I’m thinking it. His fingers are curling into fists, clenching and unclenching in a constant rhythm as if willing his heart to slow to a normal pace. I’m still breathing hard, panting and heaving, but it’s not entirely from the run. I can feel my breasts swelling in my sports bra with each breath, and I don’t mind Carson’s wandering gaze. I’d strip the bra off and show him all of me, if we weren’t in the middle of a sidewalk in downtown Detroit.
 

“Hi.” He breaks the silence, finally.
 

“Hi.” The weeklong avoidance looms between us, and I sense his questions trying to break free from him, but he contains them.
 

“I missed you,” he blurts, and then shuts his eyes briefly, embarrassed.
 

“I missed you, too,” I tell him, as much to relieve his embarrassment as anything else; although god knows it’s the truth.

“You did?” The hope in his voice is palpable, and it sets my heart to thudding again.

“More than I should’ve. I mean, it’s only been a week.” A bead of sweat rolls down my neck to disappear between my breasts, and Carson’s eyes follow its path before jumping back up to meet mine, searching.

“Felt like a year,” he says. “It’s been rough.”

“It wasn’t easy for me either, Carson. You have to know that. I didn’t want to…” I trail off.

“Didn’t want to what? Walk away? Leave me with more questions than answers? Leave me wondering if I’d ever see you again?” Carson’s voice is thick and tense.
 

He’s upset, and I don’t blame him. I’m glad he’s at least showing me what he’s feeling.
 

“Yeah, that too—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“You did, though. The way you said goodbye, it sounded like you meant forever. Like you weren’t intending to see me again.” It sounds almost like an accusation.

“Yeah, that was the idea. I didn’t…I mean—” The explanations stick in my throat, acidic and rotten. They’d be lies, or half-truths, and I can’t feed him those anymore. All I have left is either the truth, or more evasions. Or running away.
 

“Don’t
fucking
lie to me anymore, Leila!” His eyes blaze anger, the words hissed, so vitriolic I flinch at their force. “Tell me the truth.
Please.
Or just…just go and stay gone! No more evasions, no half-truths. Either tell me the
goddamned
truth—and
all
of the truth—or stay away from me. I love—” The word is out before he can choke it back down, and my heart is pounding in my chest, exploding with a hurricane of emotions: love, fear, sadness, excitement, disbelief. “Shit,” he whispers, more to himself than to me.
 

He looks up at me, eyes suddenly intense with something akin to fury. It’s the look I imagine is in his eyes when he breaks a door down to
chase a fugitive.
 

“Fuck it,” he growls. “I said it, I may as well own it. I’m in love with you. It’s crazy, it’s stupid, it’s
way
too soon, and it’s bound to get my heart broken because you obviously can’t and won’t trust me with the truth, but there it is.”

He’s suddenly wavering in my vision, blurring and splintering, and I realize I’m crying. Adrenaline, anger, and desire have been propping me up thus far, but now all that is knocked aside by his admission. Thumbs wipe away my tears, strong, gentle, and callused, brushing the loose tendrils of hair back behind my ear. Sobs are stuck in my throat, collecting and damming and overflowing.
 

I will
not
break down. Not here. Not in front of him, not now. I breathe deeply, close my eyes, force the shuddering breaths to steady. But then his arms pull me close, and his wet, sweat-slick chest is against my cheek, and his tender strength and man-smell and heat all gang up on me and break down the dam to let the flood of tears out. A sob escapes, and my legs give out. He catches me, scoops me up into his brawny arms. His car must be nearby because he helps me into the passenger seat. I slump into the seat, kicking aside Mountain Dew bottles and empty Styrofoam coffee cups.
 

I’m wracked with sobs, unable to stop or slow them, and I’m not even sure why I’m like this, but it doesn’t matter because I just can’t get hold of my raging emotions. His hand is wrapped around mine, and he’s not saying anything, not telling me it’s okay, not telling me not to cry. He’s just holding my hand and letting me sob. I’m distantly aware that he’s driving, and I don’t care where he’s taking me. Minutes pass, and the storm of tears isn’t subsiding. It’s not just him, not just his sudden and horribly timed declaration of love—it’s everything. Father, Hassan, the threats against my family, being alone here for so many months…it seems like everything is conspiring to make me completely lose it. I’ve pushed all my problems and emotions down into a tiny, fragile bottle, and now it’s all pressurized and exploding out of me.
 

Wind batters at the windows, leaking out of me to lift bottles and cups and wrappers up off the floor of the vehicle, sending it all swirling in mini-tornadoes at my feet, bottles racketing off the windows and the ceiling, smacking me in the face, knocking against my calves. I can’t stop the leak of power right now…all I can do is try to contain it, keep it manageable, keep it from spiraling out of control.
 

Eventually Carson stops the car and helps me out, and I see my apartment building through my tears. The fact that he knows where I live is not a surprise. I try to fish my key out of my bra, but fumble and drop it back down between my cleavage. His fingers are hot against the skin of my breast, and he’s gentle and careful in the way he finds the key, not erotic at all, which only makes me cry harder. He more than half-carries me into the living room, sits on the couch with me on his lap as if I were a child. He reaches for the box of Kleenex and presses a handful to me. I dab at my nose and collapse against him.
 

I hate myself for doing this. I have to get a grip on myself. I try to wiggle free, but he holds me in place.

“Don’t,” he says. “It’s okay. To cry, I mean. I don’t know what’s going on with you, and you don’t have to tell me. We’ll get to that. I’m here, okay? I’m here for you. Don’t fight it. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”
 

I make a sound in protest, trying to speak, trying to tell him…I don’t know what. He shushes me, rubbing my back and kissing my temple. Which
really
helps my attempts to stop crying, of course. Right. His tender affection is making it even worse.
 

He loves me. I speak the words in my mind:
Carson Hale loves me
. They echo in my head, reverberate through my heart. He shouldn’t, he doesn’t even know me. But then…he does, though, doesn’t he? He’s seen my powers, felt them, experienced them, and he’s still here, comforting me. He’s suspected at least some of the truth regarding Father being a criminal, and he’s put up with my constant lies and evasions.

Yet here he is in my living room, holding me as I bawl like baby when he doesn’t even know why, and he isn’t asking, just holding me and kissing my cheek and my jaw and my forehead and shushing me and caressing my arms and somehow making it all seem bearable.
 

At some point my sobbing slows and I’m able to wipe the tears away and clean my dripping nose. My breathing evens out, and I sit up straighter on his lap. I’m a tall girl, and I’m in shape, but he makes me feel small, his muscular presence surrounding me like a blanket.
 

I can finally look at him, meet his eyes. Yes, they burn with questions, curiosity, the drive to know, but they also burn with passion, desire, and love. Seeing love in his eyes as he looks at me, that makes my breath hitch again, makes hope well up inside me, and I’m quick to stomp it down. He reaches up and pulls the band from my hair, carefully, slowly, brushing through my thick black tresses with his fingers.
 

That’s all it takes.
 

I’m lost, now, buried beneath an avalanche of my own need. The intensity I see in him is matched within me, and I can’t fight it, I can’t push it away or pretend it’s something else.

Our eyes are connected by a thread of tension, and I can feel the magic skirling up within me, bubbling up out of my core where it comes to seep out of my skin through my pores, and the wind is blowing, gentle and steady and warm. The magic is crawling on my skin, coating me with glowing gold like specks of light, pinpricks of sun on my flesh. I’m watching Carson’s eyes, and I know he sees it releasing from me. He doesn’t flinch away when the magic latches onto him and coils around his hands, sliding onto his wrists and forearms and biceps, seeping into his pores, in the reverse of how it emerged from me. His breathing stops and his eyes widen as he feels the slippery heat of the magic binding to his cells, to his blood and muscles.
 

When it works by itself like this, there’s no telling what the magic will do, since my control over the magical aspect of my powers is rudimentary at best. I never got—never
deserved
—the training my male cousins got. I worry for a moment, but nothing happens, other than the continuous flow of sunlight particles from me to Carson and the thrum of power inside me. I have to fight to keep the storm under control, keep the winds from blowing this place apart.
 

Carson opens his eyes, and I can see the question.

“Ask me, Carson,” I whisper.
 

“What
are
you?” Wonder is in his voice, and a little fear.

“I’m an ifrit,” I say, knowing the word likely won’t mean anything to him.
 

“A what?” Confusion wrinkles his forehead.

“Ifrit,” I say again. “Like a djinni, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, so to speak.” He shakes his head and shrugs, and I sigh. “You’d call it Arabic mythology. Djinn and ifrits are beings of magic and elemental power. The word ‘genie’ comes from the word ‘djinni’.”

“Like genie in a bottle? Aladdin and all that?”

I can’t help but laughing. “That’s the popular American version, yes, although it bears no resemblance to my people whatsoever. The genie in the bottle is as close to what we are as the Hollywood version of cowboys and Indians is to the historical truth.”

“And you’re an…
eef
-rit?” He butchers the word, and I roll my eyes at him.

“Ih-
freet
,” I correct him. “Ih-
freet
.”