Awaken to Pleasure Read Free Page B

closed his fist and extinguished the flame. Watching her, he appeared to ponder what to say next.
    “I am not a witch.” He hesitated, and then continued. “And I understand your fear of magic. But do you not see? You have it, too,” he said. “Here, in your village.”
    He stepped closer; Moira retreated, though she hated the weakness it showed.
    But the even bigger weakness was her fear of magic, and of all that it represented.
    “We don’t.” She fought to keep her voice steady, though her skin crawled at the very idea. “That was the deal. The humans would stay in these domes that we built and let the witches have the rest, but only if all magic was kept out. That’s what the force fields are for—to keep magic out. So how the hell did you get in?”
    “What is science but a kind of magic?” Though his eyes were still on the knife she held, Boone took a step toward Moira, then another. It terrified her, but at the same time the woman she had once been—the wild urchin on the street who’d had to fight to stay alive—recognized and appreciated his strength.
    “No. Science is nothing like magic. And don’t come any closer.”
    “Science. Dark magic. Belief in forces beyond those of this earth.” Closing in on her, Boone closed his fingers over the blade of Moira’s knife. She watched, stupefied, as the blood ran down his palm.
    And then as it disappeared.
    “Magic is the transformation of energy in one form or another. Just like your science chooses one form, so too do the witches choose to steal theirs from the earth. And mine comes from another source altogether. It does not mean that I am bad.”
    Moira couldn’t take her eyes away from the smooth skin of his palm, skin that should have been split in two. “But if you could get in, why can’t they?”
    “My energy…my magic…is attuned to you right now. So once you passed through, so could I.”
    Reaching out, Moira ran her fingers over Boone’s healing wound, then snatched them back when she felt that little spark between them that she’d first recognized outside of Gale’s hut. Her brain kept screaming at her to slide the knife into his chest—if she could—because magic had never brought anything good to her life.
    But her gut—something that she had relied on when she’d had the dangerous job of searching for treasure out in the plains—told her that this man wouldn’t harm her.
    Though she’d be an idiot to just take that feeling at face value.
    “Why are you here?” she asked again. “I’ve made it clear I want you to go.”
    “You have my lamp in your possession. Where it goes, I go. Once you have made your wish, passed the lamp on, only then will I leave. I will move on to my next Master or Mistress.”
    Moira cast a glare at the offensive thing.
    “So you’re, what, a genie?” Moira stared, incredulous, at the half-naked hunk as what she considered complete nonsense spouted from his lips. She took a step backward, deciding to humor the potential lunatic who was back to lounging against her tub.
    Years ago she’d thought the primitive furnishings and simple ways of life inside the dome had been a strange contrast to the life she’d had before. In that lifetime, she’d been living in a big city, with easy access to electricity, running water, even luxuries like chocolate.
    How did that compare to now having a half-naked man in her home, telling her that he’d come out of a little bottle?
    Maybe she’d been killed by the witches after all, and was stuck in some kind of in between.
    “I’m a djinn, yes.” His lips curved up in a smirk. “That is why I live in the bottle.”
    “A
djinn
. Right.” She smiled nervously, wondering if perhaps she just had a crazy person in her house rather than someone with magic. But that didn’t explain his hand. Or the fire, though it had been blue and not purple or green. “A djinn who can only grant sexual wishes. Who lives in a bottle that I stumbled over on the plains.