would have failed.
In addition, anyone seeing her now would know she’d been rolling on the sofa with a djinni. He might be the definition of desire, but he’d be the final nail in the destruction of her reputation.
On the other hand, if she didn’t call for help and went along with the djinni to Vince, she could be alert for a moment of distraction. One moment was all she’d need to dematerialise and escape to heaven’s security. The djinni himself had said he couldn’t follow her to heaven.
She felt a twinge of regret that she wouldn’t see him again but squashed it. He was no good for her self-control. Even now his fingers were tracing the outline of her ear, generating liquefying heat—and that was an innocent touch.
No, there was no question about her best option.
“If you’re going to introduce me to Vince, my name’s Sara.”
The djinni smiled. His hands dropped from her hair to her shoulders and he kissed her on both cheeks. “My name is Filip.” He kissed her on the mouth, just a fleeting reminder of his flavour and excitement. “Let us hope Vince has his dentures in.”
Chapter Two
Vince didn’t wear dentures. He was in his late fifties, a square bull of a man with iron-grey hair ruffled now from sleep. There was nothing sleepy about his eyes. He woke to full alertness, as hunters did.
Belatedly Sara wished she’d spent just a smidgin more time researching him and not just his library. She’d been so intent on her adventure she hadn’t stopped to think.
“An angel?” Vince knotted his dressing gown cord while he studied Sara. His suspicious gaze flicked to Filip. “She doesn’t have wings.”
Filip shrugged.
“You said you caught her in the library?” Vince went back to studying Sara.
“Her second visit.”
Sara breathed carefully, controlling her muscles so an involuntary movement didn’t reveal her feelings. Vince Ablett intimidated her.
Her hand tightened around Filip’s. He wasn’t intimidated by Vince. He looked tough, confident and amused. She was glad he hadn’t led her into Vince’s room with a manacle grip at her wrist. She’d have hated being presented like a slave girl. Instead, Filip held her hand like a lover.
But she couldn’t trust him, either. She flexed her fingers, loosening her clasp. She had to remember he was djinn.
Millennia ago Lilith, Adam’s first and unfaithful wife, had mated with demons. She’d produced seventy-seven offspring, all djinn. The djinn weren’t angels or demons, but they had the powers of both. Perhaps it was out of envy that Solomon bound them to the service of humans. Each was trapped in a bottle, released only to grant a human master’s three wishes.
Only one djinni had ever broken the curse and been freed from his bottle. It had required the human holding his bottle to relinquish their power over him by wishing him free. His name was Rafe, and he was her cousin’s husband. The other seventy-six djinn were still bound and all of them caused trouble when they could.
It was understandable. The djinn had been robbed of free will, bound before they’d had a chance to choose redemption. Sara could pity them. Their existence was a solitary limbo. When they had an opportunity, they wreaked havoc.
Just as Filip had wreaked chaos with her senses and common sense.
She swallowed, her mouth dry. Had she really just had her first orgasm in a stranger’s library?
“What do you want in my library?”
Sara jumped, but Vince couldn’t possibly know her guilt, and surely the djinni wouldn’t tell him about…about what they’d shared. She snuck a glance at Filip.
Humour lurked in his face. There was a hint of crinkle at the tanned corners of his eyes. His thumb stroked a hidden message against the soft skin of her palm.
She snapped her attention back to Vince. She could justify the knowledge she intended to steal because it would save a child’s life—if she was in time. But she would not share the stolen knowledge with
F. Paul Wilson, Alan M. Clark