That was when Khalil arrived. He exploded into the house in a blazing rush and formed in front of her. He was back to his original form. In black. His hands were on his hips, his eyes shone like supernovas, and he was glowering.
Oh dear. Himself did not appear to be happy. Grace was fairly certain that was not her problem either.
“I looked for you,” he said. “You were not in the bar’s immediate vicinity.”
“No, I wasn’t, was I?” she said. “Did you have fun on your first date?”
“I do not believe that is how dates are supposed to go,” he informed her.
“Is that so?” She sat on the couch. “How do you believe dates are supposed to go? And what do you think went wrong?”
“That son of an ass put his hands on you,” he said edgily. “He insulted you.”
She shook her head. “Nope,” she said in a calm voice. “That’s not what went wrong. Would you like another shot at answering, or should I just tell you?”
He remained silent, watching her.
“Okay, here we go,” she said. “You were wrong. I was wrong to go out with you. The date itself was wrong. We made the decision to go out, and it all snowballed from there. Of course the date was a disaster. It was going to be a disaster no matter what we did. We are about as different as two different creatures can get. You’re a prince of the Djinn—and I still have no idea what that means.…”
“It means nothing,” he snapped. “It’s an honorific. All the male elders in the five Houses are princes, and the female elders are excellencies. They’re titles of respect, that’s all.”
“All right,” she said, letting go of that. “So what, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I’m mortal. You’re not. I’m human, and you’re not. We come from very different cultures; we have different expectations, abilities, and goals for our lives, and—”
“Stop,” he said. “You’re wasting time.”
Again, he caught her openmouthed. “What?”
“We’re still on our date, and you’re wasting time.” He glanced at the living room clock. “We have forty minutes to go before midnight.”
“You can’t be serious,” she said faintly.
“I am completely serious,” he said. He prowled close, took her hand and yanked her to her feet. “You made a bargain. You’re going to stick to it.”
“Khalil, no,” she said.
“Yes.” He looked ruthless. Worse, he looked about as calm as she had felt mere moments ago. “Not everything that happened was a disaster. You had fun up to a certain point. You laughed and were happy. I was watching you. I understand the stories your face tells so much better than I did before. I know what your happiness looks like now.”
She shivered as his intense male energy slid against hers, and they aligned again. That strange thing they did together felt more than good. It felt incredible. She struggled to ignore it and whispered, “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, with such confidence it shook her. It really shook her. “The kiss wasn’t a disaster. It was perfect.”
She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to think about that kiss, because he was right, it had been perfect. His wonder, their tender exploration. “I…don’t think it counts when you weigh that against everything else.”
“Of course it counts,” he said. He stroked her cheek, down her neck, and along the edge of her neckline. He watched where his fingers trailed, his expression turning hungry. He told her huskily, “I had to release my other form so I could transport back. I do not have the Power to create it a second time in one evening. Although I want to, very much.”
Grace’s heart started to pound. She swallowed hard and whispered, “I shouldn’t have left you like that.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone at the bar,” he whispered back. His fingertips trailed down her bare arms, then his hands settled firmly on her hips. He lowered his face to hers, slowly, eyes intent.
“We should have left as soon as we saw how busy it was.” Her eyelids felt so heavy. They fluttered shut.
“I should have kissed you a second time in the car. And a third time.” His mouth settled over hers, and he kissed her deeply, in a spiraling aggression that she met with her own escalating urgency. He growled at the back of his throat and muttered against her lips, “This is not the same. But it is still so damned good.”
Arousal pulsed through her in a gush of heat, agonizing and delicious. Her nipples peaked, and the delicate, private area between her legs ached. Khalil hissed against her lips, and his energy roared in response, a flash fire of raw sexuality.
“Is it…less?” she asked.
“No,” he murmured. “It is different, that is all. But I want to know what it is like to make love to you the way humans do. I have never made love to anyone like that before.”
Never?
She whimpered. “Make love?”
He ran his hot mouth over her cheek and down her neck. “Make love,” he said against the tender skin at the base of her throat. “I want you to teach me everything you know. I want us to teach each other. I want you to show me how good it can feel to be skin to skin. But right now, Gracie…” He lifted his head and looked down at her gravely. “Let me show you how I can make love to you.”
She didn’t even think to say no, because that was how far he took her in a single conversation, how much farther they had come since they had first met. Instead, she looked up into his starred eyes as she slipped her fingers into his midnight hair, pulling it free from the tie as she told him, “Yes, please.”
He smiled as he stroked her face. Then he kissed her again, and all his aggression and intensity came roaring back as he drove deep into her soft, inviting mouth. His sexuality danced along her skin, and her hunger for him flashed hotter, brighter. He groaned, or she did. The silk of his long hair tangled in her fingers as she fisted it, kissing him back with jerky, out of control movements. Then he lifted her up.
Not with his hands.
His presence intensified, and her feet left the ground.
It took a few moments for realization to sink in. Breathing heavily, disoriented, she stopped kissing him. “Wait—are you…?”
“Wait, what?” he asked, cupping her face in both hands as he nipped gently at her lips. At the same time, his large, strong hands spread across her back. “Am I, what?”
What?
She dragged her mouth away and looked around wildly.
She was suspended a few inches off the floor, completely supported in midair. Her feet didn’t dangle. Her knee wasn’t strained in the slightest. Khalil watched her expression with a heavy-lidded gaze, his lips curved in that sinful, sensual smile.
As his hands—both his hands—slid under the hem of her top and spread around the sides of her rib cage, resting against her skin.
And long, hot fingers slid through her short hair, cupping and massaging the back of her head.
And two hands slid down her thighs, to the sensitive skin at the back of her knees, cupping them firmly.
She stared at him, blank with shock. “Khalil.”
His smile widened, a tender, mischievous look. “Relax, I’ve got you,” he murmured. Then his smile was burned to vapor by the incandescence inside of him, and all that was left on his elegant face was savage hunger. “My gods, I can feel you everywhere.”
Because they were aligned, Power to Power, male to female, his presence surrounding and sustaining her. Her lips trembled as she whispered, “I’ve never felt anything like it, like you.”
His diamond eyes blazed. “Good.”
His head drove down, and he took her mouth again, hard, and she lost track of everything. Her thinking burned to ash.
His hands were everywhere at once. Literally. Clever fingers teased her tank top up and caressed the underside of her breasts, trailing in decreasing circles until they reached her pink-tipped nipples. He rolled the sensitive tips between thumbs and forefingers.
While c
lever fingers edged their way under the hem of her shorts, tracing the crease where her buttocks met her thighs, easing around to the front and teasing the sensitized skin of her inner thighs before they burrowed gently underneath the elastic of her panties.
While the clever fingers supporting the back of her knees coaxed her legs apart.
And he kissed and kissed her, hungrily, gently, changing the tempo and the pace and the depth as he dug in deep with his tongue, and then he eased back to lick lightly at the corner of her shaking mouth.
At the same time, his hot, moist lips ran along the back of her neck, and he licked the racing pulse at her throat.
And his mouth followed up the curved line of her ribs as he unfastened her bra. He squeezed her breast gently as he took her nipple in his mouth and suckled.
As he squeezed and kneaded her other breast gently and took that nipple and suckled, nipping at it carefully with his teeth.
Oh, my gods, he was suckling both her breasts.
At the same time.
While he tore away her shorts and panties, and growled into her mouth as he kissed her, and drove his tongue onto the soft, fluted flesh of her labia, and licked his way to the stiff little bud of her clitoris. She flung out her hands, groping uselessly, desperately for something of him to hold on to, and he clasped both her hands in his warm, firm grip as he worked her everywhere.
And even as he drove her to the most intense, mindless frenzy she had ever been in, she felt him press a tender kiss at the base of her spine.
It was beyond perfect.
He was everywhere, everywhere, hard edged and hungry, exploring the most private areas of her body with tender greed. She flung her head back and shrieked, muscles trembling from the strength of the passion that poured out of her. It poured into him and came back, stronger and harder, only then it was his passion, driving into her.
He said against her lips, “I’ve got to come inside of you.”
“Then get the hell in here,” she screamed. She sounded like she felt, completely insane.
He pressed at her swollen, aching entrance, and it felt good and right, a thick, hard cock pushing into her emptiness, filling her up, while at the same time he flicked at her clitoris with his tongue and licked at her labia and sucked on her nipples and stroked so gently down her back and held both of her hands like he was her very best friend. Somebody was swearing raggedly, an incoherent stream of profanity, and she thought it might be her…
And he said, “Grace.” Just that.
Even at the height of her insanity, the sound of his pure voice pulled at her. She opened her eyes.
He had lost his physical form and any semblance to being human. Black smoke swirled around her. She rested in the center of the cyclone. His crystalline eyes were right in front of her, glowing with Power and emotion. She thought she caught a glimpse of long black hair, blowing across a hint of his elegant face.
The queen of all epiphanies cracked her wide open. She was driven beyond thought, language or all sense of her own form.
That was when he came inside of her, in a furious blaze of incandescence, and she could tell this was his true climax.
Both of her Powers, the one she was born with and the one she inherited, rose up to claim him, even as he blanketed her with his own bright, immortal Power. As they tangled together, closer than lovers, she felt her own physical body peak. The most exquisite completion of pleasure rippled out of her. She felt his presence shudder as it hit him.
His ravenous aggression transformed to reverence. She could feel every nuance of emotion in him, from an intense male satisfaction that he had brought her such pleasure, to his own shocked wonder at their joining and a deep wellspring of caring.
There was no way to hide anything from each other. She was so purely naked, she felt helpless as a newborn. She fell back into the shell of her physical body and realized she was shivering spasmodically. His physical form solidified as she came back into herself. He was naked and on his knees, his cock still pressed inside of her. She sat in his lap, legs splayed wide, her arms resting limply around his neck. His arms clenched tight around her.
“You destroyed me,” she whispered as she shivered. The words never even struck her as histrionic because they were so true. She was back in her body, but she wasn’t yet in control of it again. She wasn’t even the same person.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered into her hair. He rocked her. “I’ve got you.”
She put her head on his shoulder. She got a sense of movement as he took her up the stairs. She was fairly certain he didn’t walk. Then they reached her bedroom. Her long unused bed was simply made with sheets and a bedspread. He eased her down on the bed. She turned over to curl on her strong side.
He settled into place behind her and wrapped an arm around her, spooning with her.
He didn’t have to. His presence was absolutely in her bedroom, with or without his physical body. He must have wanted to. He must have known she needed it. She felt his lips against her shoulder. Then he put his face in her hair.
He rubbed her thigh gently. Eventually her shivering stopped.
They didn’t speak. She, for one, had nothing to say.
She had learned another thing she couldn’t unlearn now that she knew it. Her slippery slope hadn’t thrown her down a hill. It had, instead, shoved her into an entirely different dimension. She had always scoffed at people who fell in love when they had sex. She’d always been convinced that they confused an intensity of experience with the real emotion.
But Khalil had shattered her understanding of what it meant to make love. She had reformed into someone else, a humble stranger to herself.
That stranger knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had been falling in love with him for a while. And she could not imagine ever wanting to make love with anyone else again. He had taken all of her desire with such complete effortlessness she had not even been aware at the time that she was giving everything she had to him.
She closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Even in her sleep, she felt the last miniscule shift in the lunar cycle that brought the Oracle’s moon.
Grace slid into a dream. She walked the property at night. It was so dark she couldn’t see where she was going. She had lost her flashlight. The stars fell and surrounded her with light. Then she was swimming in a dark sea, and the stars that surrounded her were the bright sparks of countless souls.
The water carried her forward, faster and more powerfully than she had expected. She was caught in a riptide. When she looked to either side, Petra and her grandmother were swimming alongside her.
You’re going the wrong way, Petra told her. Her sister sounded the same as she ever did, full of exasperated affection. You’ve got to turn back.
I don’t know how, she said. I don’t know where I’m going. I only know where I’ve been.
You’re almost out of tuna, her grandmother said.
No, I’m not, Grace said. I just bought two cans.
Don’t stay in the house when you bake the casserole. It’ll get too hot. Her grandmother smiled at her.
Gram, why don’t you come to see me? Grace asked. You would enjoy hanging out in the kitchen with the other women, and I’d really like to talk to you.
But her grandmother was gone. Then Petra was gone as well, and the water pushed Grace faster and faster, until she was tumbling down a black tunnel. It was like being born, except she was going the wrong way, into the cavern, not out of it. Then the water spewed her onto the cavern floor at someone’s feet.
A tall woman knelt in front of her. She held the gold Oracle’s mask in front of her face.
As soon as she looked at it, Grace knew that mask wasn’t a fake. It was the real deal, down to the tiny scratches from countless ages on the shining, precious surface. She studied the eyeholes, trying to figure out the identity of the person behind the mask. But there were no eyes. The holes were black but not empty. Instead, they were filled with something unbelieva
bly vast and Powerful.
She said, That’s weird.
The vast woman considered her. What will a mere mortal do with an immortal Power?
I don’t know, Grace said. None of this is going the way I thought it would. Will you help me?
The gold mask’s perfect, inhuman lips curved into a smile. I will, but in order to reach me, you have to go the wrong way. You can only find me if you go very deep.
You’re Nadir, Grace said. Of course you are. Where else would the goddess of the depths be? How far down do I have to go to reach you?
Try drowning, said the goddess. The dark sea filled Grace’s nose and mouth, and she thrashed. Don’t worry about that, Nadir told her. You left your body once tonight. You can do it again if you want to badly enough.
“Grace,” said Khalil. And she felt it again, the conviction that when he called her in his unearthly, pure voice, she would go anywhere with him, anywhere at all.
Nobody should have been able to follow her, but Khalil could because he had no body. Black smoke swirled through the cavern, out of which crystalline eyes like stars focused only on her. He ignored Nadir completely.
The goddess looked amused. You’re right, Nadir said. He isn’t friendly.
Burning hands reached for Grace and pulled her out of the sea.
Grace plunged awake. She was lying on her back. Khalil must have turned on the bedside lamp. It threw a soft gold light over everything. He leaned over her. Black hair fell around his face. He was frowning sharply and shaking her by the shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” she asked blurrily, as she stared at him.
She had not really seen him nude before when they made love. Or perhaps she had, since she had seen his real form. This body he chose to wear was perfectly fashioned, from the heavy ripple of muscle across his wide chest and shoulders, to his tapered stomach, lean hips and long legs. Her gaze fell to his groin where his genitals were as perfect as the rest of him, his penis lying in a graceful curve over the twin mounds of his testicles.