I turned to look at him, and caught the unguarded pain in his face before he could hide it from me. He was tired, and he was anguished. Worse, he was despairing.
"Stop that," I said. "What's happening?"
"It's getting larger," he said. "I had to expand the containment to keep it within the boundaries. You can't push yourself this hard."
"I know that, and yet I'm not seeing I have much of a choice. How's Lewis?" He didn't want to tell me, but I think he knew I wasn't about to let him slip away without an explanation."Fighting his guilt," David finally said. "He blames himself for the deaths. He feels he made a tactical error."
That wasn't unexpected. "He made the right choices at the time. We had to give it a try."
"I know. He's afraid that he rushed into it. He's afraid that he allowed personal issues to color the decision."
"That'll be the day," I said, and then wondered what that meant. "Personal, how?" Please, let it not be about me.
"Rahel," David said softly. "He can feel her suffering, just as I can. Bad Bob is making sure we can feel it."
Bad Bob had a Djinn named Rahel in his clutches - one of David's New Djinn, and someone I could almost call a friend. He could do whatever he wanted to her - the curse of a Djinn being bound to a bottle, of having her will taken away. And she couldn't fight back. The nightmare dimensions of that stretched on and on into the darkness, because I knew how sick Bad Bob's imagination had been even years back. God only knew how much worse he was these days, with so much Demon in his body that I wasn't even sure the old Bad Bob was still around in any form I would recognize.
Rahel had done me some very kind favors in the past. She was never to be trifled with, or underestimated, but unlike a lot of the Djinn, she did care, however remotely, about the fate of individual humans - and the fate of the human race.
David, as her connection to the power source of Mother Earth, would feel every injury done to her. I wasn't sure, but I thought that her connection to Lewis was more about personal feelings than old-fashioned lines of fealty. She liked him. He liked her. Maybe it went deeper than that. He'd never felt the need to tell me, and I didn't ask. I had thought their relationship was more of a hookup than love, but I could have been wrong.
I put my hand on David's cheek and looked him full in the face for a long, long moment.
"How bad is it with her?" I asked him. I didn't want a kind evasion. I didn't want anything but the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and he could sense that from me.
"Is he going to destroy her?"
"Eventually," he said, and gently took my wrist. "There's nothing more I can do for Rahel just now. She would want me to focus on those I can help."
"You've done all you can for me, too."
"Yes," he said, and I could see he hated to admit that. "I'm slowing it down, but that's all I can do. It's deep, and it's still growing. But I intend to keep trying. I'm not giving up, not on either of you."
He wasn't saying anything we didn't both know, but I could hear the frustration in his voice, and the anguish. I slipped my arms around his neck and the two of us cuddled close for a moment. His lips found mine, long and lingering.
"You're tired," he murmured. Like the gentleman he was at heart, David slipped the bra back up my arms, turned me around, and fastened it for me. He even buttoned up my camisole. "I want you to rest."
I was more used to him undressing me. This felt... warm. Intimate in a way that seemed more personal than unbridled passion. It was the kind of thing a husband did for a wife - an everyday kind of gentleness.
It made me crave him so badly.
"David?" My voice came out very small. "I can't sleep. Will you stay with me? Just for now?"
His arms wrapped around me and his head rested on my shoulder. I felt a shudder go through him, some emotion I couldn't name. When he looked up, the intensity of it was enough to shatter my heart.
"I'll stay," he said, and eased me down onto the bed. "I'll stay as long as you're awake."
"Big promises, Mister Big Shot," I said. "What if a cat gets stuck up a tree in Peoria? I bet you'd go running off to the rescue."
"You know how seriously I take a vow. Unless I made one to the cat, you're my priority." He tapped me gently on the nose, and there was humor in his face now. "Clothes off or on?"
"Oh God, off. Off off off."
We were naked before our backs hit the mattress, thanks to David's wondrous Djinn fabric-vanishing powers. The duvet settled over us like snowfall, but it was warm beneath it, so warm, and when his lips touched mine it was a dreamlike kiss, damp and gentle and sweet. I rested my head on the pillow of his arm and moved in closer, drawn without a word being spoken. His fingers brushed hair from my face and feathered it back, then lingered on my cheek, drawing heat down to my chin.
"Please," I whispered. "Please make all this go away. Just for a while. Can you do that?"
"I'm only a Djinn," he said. "Not God Himself. But I'll do what I can." His lips brushed their heat down, taking all the time in the world, pausing in unexpected and vulnerable places. The inner aspect of my forearms. My wrists. The delicate skin just beneath my breasts. He began to suck, drawing my blood to the skin with slow deliberation.
He left a map of visible kisses down my body, a slow and thorough awakening of my entire body that made me writhe silently, sheets fisted in my hands.
Oh, I forgot. I forgot everything.
Gradually, his mouth became demanding. Challenging. Nips of his teeth, strokes of his tongue. My control slipped, and I made a tortured sound in the back of my throat, rising up to meet him. I didn't want seduction right now. I wanted to be ravished, and he could feel it echoing out of me like a ringing bell.
I could tell the exact second that his control slipped gears. His body language shifted, tensed, and he raised his head and looked at me. My already quickened pulse jumped, because the look in those Djinn-bronze eyes was feral. Wanting. I sat up and met him halfway through the space and devoured his mouth, hungry and desperate, full of feverish need and frantic energy. It fed back through the link between us, striking like lightning through a grounded circuit, shorting out whatever defenses we'd kept built between us.
When I pulled back, David's eyes were no longer bronze. They were fire, with pupils of absolute darkness. Mine, I thought incoherently. Mine. I didn't know if that came from me or from him. It had the force of a Djinn emotion, something vastly more complex than simple human possessiveness.
David growled and put a hand on my chest and pushed me all the way back full length on the bed. He followed, not quite putting his weight on me. Brushes of his hot skin teased and tortured us both. He ran his palm lightly over the rising tilt of my left nipple and flicked his tongue over the right, and the difference in sensations made me gasp. His hand was light, delicate, and burning hot; his mouth was heavy, demanding, and deliciously wet. I bit my lip and felt my whole body shudder in response. I heard an answering sound from David - need, lust, love, wordless reassurance.
We were both on the knife-edge of control. David had never fully let his Djinn instincts out to play before, not like this. I think he'd been too afraid - afraid of hurting me, afraid that I'd be shocked by the depths of his needs and desires.
I knew better. I put my hands around his face and held him still for a moment, staring deep into those inhuman eyes.
And then I nodded. No words, and none necessary.
His skin took on a dusting of gold, and then darker shades, until he seemed more metal than flesh - but it was flesh to the touch, warm and soft and firm. He tasted like exotic spices - cardamom, saffron, wild honey from the rocks. Everything about him was different, and yet everything was exactly the same.