Page 11 of Be-Djinn At The Beginning

“Do you want me to discover it with my husband?” Bea asked in a barely suppressed moan.

“No,” he said, as his own hand shook where he touched her.

“Do I ask you for too much?”

“No,” he said, this time bending low to press his lips to her forehead as he dipped his fingers slowly in and out of her slick heat. “Never. Never once.”

His purpose was giving too much to greedy souls, and he took pleasure in making them regret it. Now he found himself desperate for her to ask more of him, to hold his talisman and call his name and wish for the moon so he could spend eternity giving it to her. No, he did not want to send her off to another man who would more than likely never touch her like this. He did not want to lose her forever. He did not want to stop hearing these delicious sounds.

Sahar slid his fingers up through her petals to find the precious pearl of nerves where he knew she would be most sensitive. As he circled it, she cried out sharply and threw her head back against the tree trunk with a loud whack.

“Ach, Bea.” Sahar stilled his fingers, reaching behind to cup the back of her head. “Are you hurt? Look at me.”

Bea was seeing stars, but hitting her head seemed to have very little to do with it.

“I’m not hurt.” She reached up to squeeze his shoulders—great heavens, he was gigantic. His shoulders felt like mountains. “Though I think it will hurt very much if you stop.”

“Sweet damnation,” he growled, searing her throat with hot kisses and the barest graze of sharp teeth as he resumed his attack between her thighs, circling her clit in earnest now that he was done pretending. The slick sounds his gloves made were driving him half mad, and her gasps buried against his chest claimed the other half of his sanity. He kept his other hand behind her head, shielding her from further injury, as he worked her in increasingly tight circles as her breathing quickened.

Bea was in a panic, clawing at his jacket and squirming under his touch as a great monster reared up within her, snapping and pounding closer with every stroke. She felt ill—weakened. Was this dying? Why did it feel so powerful and so beautiful and so massive? Why did it feel as if something much bigger than her body was creeping up from her hips, about to tear her apart?

“J-Jack—Jack, what’s—going to—happen?”

“It will be lovely,” he said, lips against her neck. “Breathe, keep breathing. I’m here.”

Those words broke the storm inside her. She looked up to assure herself that he was there—that it was him—but that skull mask stared back at her where the face of her mysterious friend ought to be.

Bea’s hand snatched for the mask and pulled it off before he could stop her. There he was—not a painted face at all, but skin a deep purple like the evening sky, freckled with stars shimmering in the far off glow of the bonfire. He had a long and wide nose, a shock of curled hair, and eyes that shone white like two little moons in the dark of the woods.

With that, she exploded. Her body clenched around his fingers so hard it felt she might be crushed. Wave after wave of pleasure slapped her in the face until her eyes watered. At last, she was exhausted, collapsing against his grip with shaking limbs.

She kept her eyes on his face, grappling with the shock of what he had made her feel and the realization that all this time, he hadn’t been a man at all. Some part of her had always believed he was fooling with her, telling her stories to frighten her, but here was the evidence—beautiful and strange and somehow familiar.

Sahar was frozen. What had he done?

Never in his many hundreds of years had he felt such a pounding in his chest, such a delicious agony. The appetite of a carnivorous thing only kept at bay for the sake of her—and there she was, pink faced and panting and wild haired because of him, because he had shown her what a human man surely would not. He wanted to hold onto this feeling until the world crumbled, but it was shattered by the realization that she saw his face, and was clearly horrified.

Some creature had just touched her—a creature she couldn’t name, a creature that had been insinuating itself into her life since she was a child.

She must hate him.

Sahar stepped back, pulling his hands away.

“Forgive me,” he said, for the first time in his life, before he disappeared in a whisper of smoke and stars.

6

ONE FOR PETER, TWO FOR PAUL, THREE FOR HIM WHO MADE US ALL

Dear Jack,

Forgive you? How could I possibly forgive you when you disappeared at such a moment? And yet how can I possibly hate you for it after the sensations you caused?

Must you always leave me with more questions? Where did you go? Why did you leave me? What manner of man are you? Have I offended you so deeply?

Dear Jack,

Please write to me again and ease my fears. I would not end our friendship this way.