The Price of Freedom (3 page)

“Offering myself as a worthy opponent.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No.” She didn’t believe him. “You’re bound to your master’s wish.”

“Yes, and his third and final wish was for me to remove you from your guardianship of Ilias.”

“Ah.” Mischa dropped the dagger and reached for her sword.

The Sword of Good and Evil vanished from her hand. Mischa stared in disbelief. The willful weapon simply refused to fight Rafe.

She flexed her empty hand and dropped into a fighter’s crouch.

“A street brawl.” The chorister groaned with disapproval. “In heaven.”

“I hate to say it.” Rafe’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “But he’s right. There are better venues.”

“Such as?”

Rafe seized her wrist. The movement was as fast a snake’s strike. Before Mischa could evade him, he spoke a single word.

They fell out of heaven.

“I shall complain to the authorities,” drifted after them.

“Do that, squeakvoice.”

Mischa lashed at Rafe with her free hand and her feet.

He released her. In fact, he vanished.

She tumbled to a halt, sprawling in midair. She looked around quickly. Nothing but blue sky and clouds.

One cloud rose up and engulfed her.

She spluttered and tried to change form. As energy she could surge free. But every move she made Rafe countered. She could feel him rubbing against each tingling atom. Tighter and tighter he wrapped her and plunged them both downward until, with a shock of resistance and release, they dropped into a desert oasis.

Mischa found herself pressed into warm sand by the weight of Rafe’s body.

“We were interrupted last time.” He knelt up and tore her tunic.

She grabbed his wrists, panting with the effort of the past few minutes.

He froze above her, staring at her body, then his gaze met hers.

“God, help me,” Mischa said. The heavy slam of desire frightened her. In all her centuries of guardianship she’d never felt this terror. She wanted him.

“You are beautiful.” Despite her resistance, Rafe lowered his hands to brace himself on either side of her body.

Her fingers uncurled and slid from his wrists to his toned biceps.

“We won’t be interrupted this time. I swear.” He brushed her lips, soft and coaxing. Hungry.

She traced the tense muscle line of his upper arms, found its turn and indentation, and pressed. Both thumbs dug into the painful, numbing pressure points.

As his arms collapsed, Mischa dematerialized. She flew out from beneath his body in a swarm of lights. There was a time to fight and a time to retreat.

“Ow.” Mischa rematerialized a few meters above the palm trees. She hadn’t meant to reappear, and her whole being buzzed in a disagreeable, thwarted way. She pushed her hands against empty blue sky. “Let me out.”

Orange flames glowed to white as she summoned a blaze and threw it against the invisible barrier. The fire hit it and curved back. She swatted away its fierce embrace.

“Sword!” But the Sword of Good and Evil still refused to obey. Her empty hand flexed. Mischa scowled. Rafe had tricked her and carried her off to a prison. But what prison could hold an angel?

She mightn’t be a chorister, but she had been trained in the use of her voice.

“Hallelujah.” The last note rang out, growing in intensity until the air shimmered and the earth shook.

Mischa vengefully hoped it had deafened Rafe, but she didn’t waste time looking for him. She kicked out and once more struck the invisible shield.

“Ow.” Pain added to her rage. It shouldn’t have been able to withstand her attack. As a guardian, she had the power to destroy cities. One infuriating, sexy djinni oughtn’t to be able to hold her.

She glared past the palm fronds and tangled luxuriance of fruit trees to where Rafe lay on the sand. He rolled onto his back and smiled as he met her glare.

“You—” She didn’t think, only acted, streaking down to stand over him. Her toes curled into the warm sand.

“Beautiful.”

“What?” She glanced down at herself. “Oh.” She blushed and stamped her foot. She had rematerialized in her torn tunic, which meant, in vulgar parlance, Rafe was getting an eyeful. “Lecher.”

“Only with you.” He sighed as she rewove the tunic into a more modest garment with a single sweep of her hand. “I don’t mind if you look at me.”

“I don’t want to,” she said pettishly. It was only half a lie, she assured her conscience. She didn’t want to
want
to look at him.

At some point during her fight with the barrier, Rafe had removed all his clothes.

“This is not paradise, for you to walk around naked,” Mischa said.

“Who said anything about walking?” Rafe stretched.

Unbidden, her gaze followed the ripple of muscle. “Oh my.”

“What would make this paradise for you, Mischa?”

“I—” She stopped. He was swelling, hardening, lifting under her gaze. She had never had a lover, had always thought she was one of the many guardians best fitted to celibacy. Now she wondered how Rafe would fit her.

How deep would he plunge? How tight could she hold him? She remembered how he’d carried her here, merging his energetic form with hers. How would it feel if that explosion happened in passion?

“Mischa?”

She was breathing too fast and her legs felt wobbly. She never felt wobbly.

“You see how much I want you,” Rafe said, his voice raw. “I have not wanted a woman in centuries.”

“I’m an angel.”

“And therefore above desire?” He laughed. “I don’t believe it. You’re a lover, warm and willing. If I were to touch you, I’d find you wet and swollen, as slickly eager for me as I am hard. You, your desire, has done this to me.”

“No.” She tipped her head back, breaking eye contact with him and trying to deny the desire between them.

“Yes,” he said fiercely. “Touch me and know it, Mischa. Take me into your heat. Ride me. Whatever your passion, angel, I can match it. I can feed it. We’ll burn together.”

She dropped to her knees, straddling his hips. The touch of his skin against the inside of her legs was unbearably arousing, building on the passion of his words and the seduction of his dark eyes.

If she lowered herself just a few inches, she could take him. The knowledge was there in their fractured breathing.

“I can’t,” Mischa whispered. It would be a betrayal of her duty. She was here because Rafe’s master wished to destroy Ilias. “I can’t.”

Her thighs trembled. She wanted to collapse onto Rafe, to surrender her tortured thoughts to the bright flame of desire and forget.

“Damn you, Rafe.” She struck his chest with her fist, stood and ran.

Neither orange trees nor the star jasmine impeded her as she fled. She had no clear destination—just away. The palm trees gave way to a short stretch of grass, and then there was only desert.

Mischa hit the invisible barrier at full speed.

She cried out at the pain and crumpled to the sand. Her tangled emotions spilled out as tears. Frustrated desire mingled with hurt that to Rafe she was only a convenience.

But compassion reminded her how he’d first been abandoned and then bound. She cried for his pain and for her own confusion.

When she raised her head, sand stuck to the tracks of tears on her face. She rubbed at the irritation, then gave up and rested her forehead on her hunched up knees.

“Have a drink, then bathe in the pool. You’ll feel better.”

She turned her head and looked at Rafe. He stood beside her on the sand, holding out a glass.

“Thank you.” The glass was cool in her hand, the water clear and sweet.

Rafe waited till she’d drained it. He wore Bedu robes and sandals. Beneath the hood of the robes his face was shadowed. “Bathe. I won’t watch.”

She handed him back the glass and nodded wearily. When she was fresher, perhaps she’d be able to think.

“I’ll wait at the tent.” He strode away, a tall, proud and lonely figure.

Mischa closed her eyes and concentrated on stretching her cramped limbs. She had cried herself calm but hadn’t reached any decisions. Now Rafe’s care for her comfort unsettled her. The laughing seducer had vanished. The somber stranger standing in his place meant new calculations. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to defeat him. Could she talk herself free?

“Sara warned me.” Mischa walked slowly down the reed-fringed pool. A smooth bank of pebbles gave access to the water, which shone blue, reflecting the sky. Everything was perfect. As with the invisible barrier, it convinced her that Rafe was among the most powerful of the djinn. What game was he playing?

She coiled her hair high on her head and shed her tunic.

The water closed over her body with a soft, accepting ripple. It should have soothed. Instead, she shivered in involuntary delight. Here, so close to Rafe, her senses were heightened. They found pleasure in even ordinary things.

A pink-and-white water lily floated close. Mischa investigated and found soap inside. She inhaled its scent of wildflowers, and the sweet, free fragrance enticed her out of the pool to lather herself thoroughly as she stood on the pebbled shore.

Never had she been so aware of her body as the soap slid over her skin. Her nipples reacted to her own touch.

“Why now? Why him?” She splashed back into the water and dunked herself. She would not think of Rafe while she was naked and vulnerable. She would not think of how his skin would feel slick against hers.

“Aargh.” She screamed quietly at her own mutinous mind and body.

She stamped crossly out of the pool and up the pebbled bank. Her tunic had vanished, but a Bedu-style robe hung from a spiky pomegranate shrub and there were clean sandals. The light sand-colored robe covered her from head to ankles and was silk soft against her skin. She rolled the sleeves back one turn to leave her hands free and looked around.

Behind a stand of oranges she could just see the roof of a tent. Its desert color stood out against the greenery of the oasis. Mischa wondered what it implied, that Rafe hadn’t built a permanent dwelling here. Despite the solid, invisible barrier, did he intend the oasis as only a brief stopping place? Or was he simply so much a part of the desert that he preferred its traditional accommodations?

She walked quietly to the tent, but Rafe heard her approach.

“Please, be at home.” He swept aside the flap.

She bowed her head in acceptance of the courtesy and entered.

Inside, the tent gave the lie to its plain exterior. Carpets with intricately patterned scenes hung on the walls and covered the floor. There was the scent of coffee and mint tea and a hundred savory odors. A feast lay on a damask cloth. Cushions tasseled and plain were scattered invitingly.

Mischa backed out hurriedly. She took a deep breath of the fresh oasis air.

“I don’t intend to poison you.” Rafe spoke behind her. “Or rape you.”

“Is it rape when my body wants what my mind knows is wrong?”

“It is your decision.”

She could feel him behind her, close enough that if she leaned back she would rest against him. Her breath shuddered.

“My decision is to talk, out here.”

“So, talk.”

She turned unwillingly to face him. “Why am I here, Rafe?”

“Many reasons.” He had pushed back his hood, and the evening light showed the strong bone structure and dark skin of his face. “Many reasons.” He held out his hand. “Walk with me?”

The urge to take his hand was unbelievably strong. Mischa stared at the hand, palm up, powerful and unmoving. She looked from it to Rafe’s eyes.

He was watching her face.

Accepting his hand would be an act of trust. For all her strength and independence, she would be giving something of herself into his keeping. Was she insane to consider it? Sara had warned her to be careful.

But, in offering his hand, could Rafe be reaching out to her?

She stared at the secrets in his eyes, wishing she could read them.

In the silence, a bird sang high and sweet in the trees.

She touched his hand, and his fingers closed tightly around hers. If she hadn’t been staring intently, she wouldn’t have seen his tiny blink of relief and the fractional relaxation of the tension holding his shoulders. She gripped his hand.

They turned toward the pool and took a path around it.

Rafe marveled at the sensation of his hand held firmly in Mischa’s. It made him her captive, yet he’d offered his hand willingly. Where had the gesture come from? He had invited Mischa to trust him—and she had.

A limited trust, but no one else had ever trusted him.

When her hand touched his, accepted his hold and curled tight, the emotion that had stormed through him was terrifying. The triumph was threaded with sweetness. Not lust, but satisfaction and desire. He’d wanted to draw her against his heart and hold her while the world spun away.

He rubbed his thumb slowly over her knuckles and reflected on the strange sensation of being joined to another person.

Behind them, in the orange trees, a dove cooed to its mate. A flash of wings showed the laggard lover flying home. The harsh wind of the desert gentled and stirred the orange blossoms. Closer at hand, jasmine starred the edge of the path.

“Rafe, why did you bring me here?”

The gold of the evening sun striking across the desert caught Mischa’s hair. The way it was wound atop her head made her look as if she wore a crown.

He stopped walking and tucked a damp tendril behind her ear. “I brought you here because the oasis is the most beautiful place I know. I have retreated here many times over the centuries. This time, I’m not alone.”

“I will not feel sorry for you.”

“Pity?” Rafe glared down at her, soft feelings evaporating like water on the hot sands. “I do not ask for your pity.”

“Oh, yeah?” She pulled her hand from his.

He was surprised, even in his anger, at the sense of loss.

“Telling me you’d be alone if I weren’t here. What’s that if not a bid for sympathy?” She had her hands on her hips, the soft Bedu robe bunching as her fists clenched.

“It is the truth.” He bit out the words. The neck of Mischa’s robe gaped, but he refused to be distracted. “This is my home, but I am rarely here.”

“Too busy, locked in a bottle,” she said snidely.

The barb hurt. His face assumed its usual mask of disdain. He had learned young how to protect himself. “It is true I am not free.”

“Rafe, I’m sorry.” Mischa reached out with words and gesture. She caught his left hand and held it between both of hers. “I should never have said—”

“That I am a prisoner?” He made the mistake of looking into her eyes. They were as wide and sorrowful as a hunted doe’s. “It is my turn to refuse your pity.”

“Compassion, not pity,” she corrected. “But please accept my apologies. It seems my temper is not under as strong control as I’d hoped.”

“Your temper.” He laced his fingers through those of her left hand. Amused memory lightened his mood. “What of the poor chorister I rescued from you?”

“Him?” Mischa snorted. “He didn’t deserve rescuing. Imagine saying guardians are contaminated by contact with the world. What a pinhead.”

“Does the world corrupt you?” He started walking again and she fell into step. Their joined hands swung between them.

“I don’t think so. I think those of us who choose to be guardians are naturally less bureaucratic in our rule following. We do what has to be done.”

“You are pragmatists.”

“Yes.”

Mischa squeezed his hand, a reward for his understanding.

“That gives me hope,” said Rafe.

“Oh?” She sounded cautious.

The path narrowed. Their shoulders brushed and their clasped hands bumped against their thighs. Rafe could smell the faint floral soap Mischa had used. The warmth of her skin released its violet undertones, sweet and secret. When he glanced down, the neck of her robe showed her cleavage. He had yet to hold her breasts, to tease them and suckle.

He remembered how he’d healed the wound over her ribs. Her whole body had responded to his power, healing then surging in honeyed need. He had ached with his own response. If Haya hadn’t called, they would have been lovers.

“The man who holds my djinni bottle is Umar Haya.”

The path ended at the crest of a dune. A stone bench was situated where they could watch the moon rise. Rafe waited for Mischa to sit, then sat beside her, keeping hold of her hand. She let it lie in his, cradled on his thigh.

“Of all the men who have controlled my bottle, and therefore me, Haya is the nastiest. Others have been crueler or greedier but he is the one most filled with hate. Hate keeps him alive.” Rafe paused. He could feel Mischa’s tension beside him. “Hate rules his wishes.”

He waited for her to process what he’d said. Haya hated with a demon’s hate, and he wanted the man Mischa protected dead.

“That’s awful.” She released his hand. But then she shocked him. She pressed her face into his shoulder and put her arm around his back. Her free hand caught his hand. “How horrible to have to obey a man like that. I’m so sorry.”

Uncertainly, he touched the head pressed against him. The blond hair fell loose from its coronet and tumbled down her back. His breath caught at her loveliness.

“I thought it would disgust you to learn the things I’ve had to do.” He despised the vulnerable note in his voice but he couldn’t hide it.

Mischa pulled back far enough to study his face. “Do you enjoy killing people, hurting people?”

“No!”

She nodded, approving and unsurprised. “Then the guilt is with the men who command you. I am sorry that you have to live with the nightmares of their devising.”

“I am not helpless.” He filled his hands with the glory of her hair. Such generous beauty. “I have learned through the centuries how to guide a man’s wishes and how to interpret those wishes. I deliver the stated wish, not their dreams.”

“Which means what?” she asked cautiously. But her body was not cautious. He could feel it softening into his and the rippling response as he caressed her hair.

Desire heated his blood. She hadn’t recoiled in disgust at his confessions so far. Perhaps she was strong enough to hear everything, understand and allow the feelings between them full rein?

“Umar Haya’s first wish was for a ground-to-air missile launcher. When he found my bottle in an abandoned settlement, he recognized it for what it was but his twenty-first century mind wouldn’t believe it. The first wish was by way of a test, and since he’s a terrorist, the weapon was an obvious desire.”

“Was he shocked when it appeared?” Mischa asked.

She didn’t seem to notice that he now had his arm around her and that the softness of her full breast pressed against his side.

“Shocked.” Rafe mused on the word. He had crashed the missile launcher into the compound in a dust storm of chaos and howling winds. Haya had ignored the shouts and curiosity of the men under his ragtag command and hurried to inspect this realization of his dreams. The light of fanatical hate had shone in his eyes as he’d understood what he could command.

“Haya got over his shock pretty fast. Disappointment helped.”

“Disappointment?” Mischa twisted to look up at him. In moving, she apparently realized how intimately high her hand had slipped on his thigh. She blushed and went to remove it.

“Disappointed,” said Rafe firmly and trapped her hand where it lay. “Haya wished for a missile launcher. He didn’t specify the missiles to launch with it.”

“Ah.” She stopped trying to withdraw her hand. “Clever.”

“Haya can always buy missiles.” Rafe dismissed her praise. He released her hand slowly, stroking his fingers along hers, over the back of her hand and finally caressing her wrist. His reward was the involuntary flex of her fingers into his thigh. A small approving groan reverberated in his throat. He hid it with a cough and continued. “Hopefully, when Haya gets the missiles, he’ll insist on firing the first shot personally.”

“Why?” Mischa flexed her fingers.

He looked at the secretive curl to her mouth and knew she’d meant the slight movement. She was curious, titillated, by his response to her. Her robe had fallen, exposing the top of her breasts. The soft fabric hinted at the press of peaking nipples.

He licked his lower lip, thinking how she would taste…the sweetness and the wildness, the innocent passion and curiosity that inflamed him.

“Why hope Haya fires the first shot?” Mischa recalled his attention by squeezing his thigh.

Rafe growled. “Because the damn missile launcher is sabotaged to explode.”

“Oh.” Her hand flattened against his thigh and her eyes went blank for a moment.

He wondered if she was judging him on his ruthlessness. After all, he’d answered Haya’s wish in a manner designed to kill the man. In his mind, Haya’s evil justified his own action. But would a guardian see it the same way?

Mischa reached a decision. Rafe knew it when her hand unfroze and the heel rubbed thoughtfully along his thigh. She was thinking things through, but the rhythmic friction blasted his mind and hardened his body.

He caught her wrist.

She hardly noticed, frowning intently. “Rafe, you acted like a guardian.”

It wasn’t the condemnation he’d expected.

“You judged Haya’s heart, presented him with a choice and respected his free will, but if he chooses negatively, his own choice will damn him and save the innocent.”

“I am not a hero, or a guardian, or even good,” he said with increasing impact.

“Aren’t you?”

“No.” He lied and tricked to survive, but he’d not live a lie when he made love to her. She had to know what it meant that he was djinn. “When you spoiled Haya’s second wish to crash the plane Ilias Aboud was in, thereby killing him, Haya made a third wish. I manipulated him into that wish. I told him Aboud had a guardian angel. Haya believes Aboud is a strong hope for Middle East peace and wants him dead. I knew he’d use his third wish to remove Aboud’s protection, to remove you.”

He felt Mischa’s stillness, her withdrawal into herself. Good. It meant she was listening. When she took him as her lover, she’d have no illusions.

If she took him as her lover.

“Haya wished for me to remove your guardianship of Aboud. His third wish. Now he commands me no longer.”

“You are free?” she asked uncertainly. She sat straight and resistant in the shelter of his arm.

“Free?” He laughed bitterly. “My bottle waits for a new owner. I am never free. I can only steal time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This.” He took his arm from her rigid shoulders and gestured at the oasis fading into the shadows of night. The first stars pricked the sky. “Until Aboud dies, I can keep you here under the terms of Haya’s third wish. We might have fifty years. When Aboud dies, the wish is complete. You can no longer guard him, and I set you free. I return to bondage in the bottle until another man discovers it and releases me to fulfill his three wishes.

“I have to steal my happiness, Mischa.”

“At the price of Aboud’s life?”

“And if it was?” he demanded with sudden anger. “What do I owe him?”

“Nothing,” Mischa said dully. She stood and tightened the tie on her robe, closing the neckline. “You don’t owe anyone anything. You have been cruelly treated. I just hoped—”

“That I was not a djinni?” He stared at her, equally disenchanted. “I hoped you’d see deeper than my nature.” He clenched his fists. “I narrowed Haya’s rage, manipulated it. He didn’t remove all Aboud’s guardians, just you. I thought others would fill your place while you stayed here.”

There was silence while neither moved.

“You kept Ilias safe,” said Mischa.

“I am not cruel.”

“Oh, God. I’ve gotten this all wrong.” She rubbed her face. “You confuse me. I’ve never felt like this before. It’s like I’ve lost control of my body to you.”

“I created an angel-proof barrier to keep you in, but that is all.”

“It’s not that.” She brushed aside his wounded dignity. “It’s how you make me feel.” Her voice lowered. “I want you.”

He walked across to her and raised her chin. “Is that so bad?”

“Yes. No.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“When you’ve decided, let me know.” He released her. He controlled the desire to punish her with a heated kiss, to brand her with the need she fought to deny. He walked away.

“Hell.” Mischa stared at the moon and made no apologies for swearing. She had hurt Rafe, hurt herself and was still confused.

Rafe had brought her here, to his home, in what he regarded as stolen time. He’d anticipated a few decades of pleasure, loving as spirits could in spectacular dances across time. From his perspective, the decision was moral. They were hurting no one. They enjoyed each other.

But she was his prisoner.

Was it her status as captive that made her hesitate? She cared about Ilias and the other people she guarded, but there were other guardians. Rafe had calculated correctly. Others would fill in her absence. And she had abundant holidays owing.

She could stay here till Ilias died.

She could take Rafe as a lover or expend her energy trying to break free.

“What do I want to do?”

The moon rose in the sky, white and pure.

If she took Rafe as her lover, then she had to trust him. Would he forgive her earlier lack of trust, the preconceptions by which she’d seen him as a djinni rather than a person? He had his own code of honor, and she’d questioned it.

She shivered. Imagine being trapped in a bottle, freed only to be used. If he stole time, stole pleasure, who could blame him?

It was in her power to freely give him pleasure.

A jackal’s howl carried on the night wind. In darkness, the predators were hunting. But darkness could be a beginning as well as an end. Spring began in the dying days of winter. Happiness could grow from two strangers reaching out.

“Tell the truth, Mischa. You want him.”

And because the truth can set you free, she started walking around the lake to Rafe’s tent.