Djinn and Tonic (19 page)

It’s not just lust; I knew I was falling in love with her
before
we made love; what we just experienced only made it all that much more potent. No, my emotions are involved in this, not just my dick. I’ve spent long enough thinking with that particular part of my anatomy to know, but I need to be sure. I can’t go any further with her until I’m sure this is a real thing, a true relationship rather than mere sex.
 

I try to imagine a relationship with her
without
sex: the fact that I can visualize spending day after day with her both in bed and out of it tells me I’m probably on the right track. I like talking to her, I like sitting with her and telling her about my job; I trust her, even though I probably shouldn’t since she’s clearly keeping a whole slew of things from me. Something tells me she has a good reason for withholding whatever it is she’s hiding, though, and she
did
promise to tell me everything. I in turn have to listen with an open mind and not pass any judgment before I have the facts.
 

One thing still bothers me, though: I feel as if she’s planning something, like this has all been part of her goodbye to me, like she doesn’t plan to come back. There’s no way in hell I’m gonna let that happen. My finely-tuned instincts tell me she’s getting ready to do something she doesn’t want to, something altruistic and stupid.
 

“I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth,” I whisper to her, “and I’ll save you from whatever it is you’re planning to do. I just found you and I’m not going to let you go.”

She hears me, stirs, and rolls over to face me. “Hmmm? D’you say something?” she mumbles, a muzzy, contented smile on her face.
 

I lie down next to her, put a hand on the swell of her ass, caress the length of her body from calf to breast and back down, kiss her lips with all the tenderness I can summon, trying to impart all the love I feel into that gentle meeting of lips. Her eyes are still half-closed but she kisses me back, stretching languorously, cat-like, a slight moan escaping from the back of her throat as she arches her back and curls her toes, every muscle tensed and quivering. As the stretch ends she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me closer to her. There’s something at once cute and erotic in the way she stretches, the motion languid and lazy, sexy and sweet, stirring both my heart and my dick at once.
 

We pull apart at the same moment, my body not quite on top of hers.
 

Leila brushes errant locks of hair away from her eyes. “So what were you saying?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say, not quite ready to tell her what I’d really said. “I was just talking to myself.”

She wrinkles her nose, irritated. “Uh-huh. Fine, be that way. Don’t tell me.”
 

I sigh, shaking my head. “You really want to know?” She nods, and I take a deep breath. “What I said was, ‘I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, and I’ll save you from whatever it is you’re planning to do. I just found you and I’m not letting you go.’ That’s what I said.”
 

My heart is thudding in my chest and I’m suddenly nervous, although I can’t pinpoint exactly why. Leila is frozen, her dark eyes wide and frightened. A tear trickles slowly down one cheek, and I brush it away with the edge of my thumb.

“Why does that make you cry?” I ask.

“Because you can’t,” she says in a hoarse whisper.
 

She turns away, pulling the thin fleece blanket up to her shoulder. I follow her so my chest is to her back and put my chin on her arm.
 

“Why not? What is it you’re hiding from me? What is it that has you so scared? Is it me? Is it us?” I tug at her gently, but she resists.
 

“No, it’s not you, and it’s not us.” Her eyes go to mine. “You promised you weren’t going to ask.”
 

 
“You made me a promise too.” It’s quiet, a reminder.

I push my forehead against her arm, frustrated that I’ve trapped myself with my own promise. “Yeah, you’re right. I did promise that, but I just—I wish you’d tell me. You won’t scare me away. I can help you. Whatever it is, I can help you. We can do it together.”

Leila laughs, but there’s no humor or amusement in the sound. “Not this, you can’t. No one can.”

Silence hangs still and heavy between us.
 

Leila rolls into me, her dark gaze intense and sad. “I know I did, Carson. It’s just…it’s impossible to explain. And if I tell you everything, you’ll want to be all manly and try to fix it, but there’s no way to do that. There just isn’t.”

“You don’t know that. I’m a cop, I have resources you may not have considered.”

“This isn’t a situation any amount of resources can fix, Carson.” Leila scooches up, pulling the blanket up with her, tucking it under her arms.
 

“Okay, maybe…maybe I can’t fix anything, and you’re right, I
will
want to do something about it—that’s just how I’m built. But even if I can’t do anything, I still want to know. And…” I blink slowly, hesitating to say what I’m thinking.
 

“And what?” Leila asks.

I let out a breath. “Whether or not I can do anything to fix your problem or not, I’m falling in love with you, Leila, and I think I deserve to know the truth.”

Leila’s eyes slide closed, pain on her beautiful features. She just breathes for a moment, and her expression hardens, tenses. “God, Carson. You’re right. You do deserve the truth. You deserved the truth a long time ago.” She reaches out and touches my cheek with shaky fingers. “I haven’t kept it from you because I don’t think you deserve it, or because I don’t care for you, or—I mean, I…I kept it from you to protect you. But you deserve the truth, so here it is: I’m betrothed.”

The word hangs in the air between us, almost visible. “Betrothed?” I can’t quite manage a full breath. “Like…engaged to be married?”

“Sort of, but not quite. It means I’m supposed to be getting married, yes, but…engaged is—it’s something you agree to, voluntarily. Like, if you asked me to marry you, and I said yes, we’d be engaged.” Leila won’t look at me when she says that last part. “Betrothed is different. My family is old-fashioned, I guess you could say. Djinn and ifrits, since we’re not really human, we don’t age the same way. We still age, as in we’re not completely immortal, we just live a lot longer. So my father…when I say he’s old-fashioned, I mean it’s because he’s lived in the human world for several centuries, and he just doesn’t care to change with the rest of the world. He’s stuck in the thirteenth century, and I mean that
very
literally. He believes in betrothal, as in
arranged
marriages, and he believes in marriage for political alliance rather than love.”

I don’t even know where to start. “So…who are you betrothed to?” I’m choking, suffocating, pain constricting around my chest like a steel band.

A thought crosses my mind:
if her father is stuck in the thirteenth century, then how old is Leila?
But that’s a line of thought I just don’t have the mental werewithal to pursue yet.

“I am betrothed to an ifrit prince named Hassan al-Jabiri.” Leila frowns, thinking. “Well, ‘prince’ isn’t really the right word, but there isn’t one in English that fits. In ifrit culture, we don’t really have family units as you would think of them. We have clans in the traditional sense—groups of families spanning several generations, ruled by a patriarch, the most powerful male of the family. But since we live so long, a clan usually comprises hundreds of people. And we’re not just a family, we’re…an entity. Politically, in a sense. Like a city-state. Historically, a clan would usually rule an entire village, or even a city if the clan is big and powerful enough. And the patriarch controls the clan’s wealth, makes stratetic decisions, arranges marriages, alliances, things like that. My race, ifrit, we have a tendency toward violence, both internally and externally. Clan fighting clan, that kind of thing, trying to claim territory, assets, whatever. In my family, the Najafi clan, my father is the patriarch. Hassan is the heir to his clan’s patriarchy. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s it. And my clan and Hassan’s are both very wealthy and very powerful. Each one controls huge amounts of wealth and wields influence on many aspects of human society, controlling local politics in some cases and organized crime in others—although the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, obviously. An alliance between the Najafi and al-Jabiri clans would be a huge,
huge
deal. Like a multi-billion-dollar merger between corporations, essentially. And it all hinges on me marrying Hassan.”

I’m not sure what to say. “So…this Hassan…is he a good man? Do you love him?”
 

I’m trying to pull myself back together, trying to gather the pieces of my breaking heart.
 

She’s
betrothed
? What the fuck?

“No! Carson, you’re not understanding.” She snuggles closer to me, puts her hand to my face and kisses me. “It’s not like that. I
hate
Hassan. He’s a pig…he’s an evil, violent sociopath. Hassan is…he’s a criminal of the worst kind, a killer and a drug dealer and a thug. I…I
hate
him. My father arranged the betrothal against my will, and he and Hassan are trying to force me to go along with it.”

“Force you how?” A gleam of hope pierces through the cloud of darkness descending on me; hope, along with a growing rage.

Leila doesn’t answer right away, and I can tell she’s trying to gauge how much to tell me.
 

“Don’t,” I growl. “Don’t give me any more partial-truths. Don’t hold anything back and don’t lie to me. I
love
you, Leila, and I’m not going to just sit around and do nothing, but I can’t make the right move if you don’t trust me.”
 

Everything she’s told me so far seems unbelievable at best, and impossible at worst, but her eyes shine with truth. I have to accept what she’s telling me, even if it seems ridiculous.

“Okay, Carson. All right.” A weight seems to lift from her shoulders, and she draws a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “If I don’t marry Hassan, he’ll hurt the rest of my family. He’s…powerful. Not just in terms of wealth or influence or whatever, but in terms of ifrit powers. He’s dangerous. He’s got the backing of his entire clan, hundreds of other ifrits at his disposal. And my father,
my
clan…we used to be a force to be reckoned with. We used to be one of the most powerful clans in the world, but my father has…how do I put it? His hold has slipped, and Hassan’s father is cunning and tricky. He roped my father into business deals that went bad, tricked Father into owing him a debt. I don’t know how or what, I just know Father has had to do other deals to absolve
that
debt, and it just keeps piling on, one thing after another, and he finally had to figure out a way to get rid of it all. I have no brother, so Father has no heir to take over the patriarchy. I’m a woman, so I don’t really count.
 

“And on top of all
that
there’s been a feud between our clans that goes back a thousand years. We’ve fought the same stupid battles over and over again over the centuries. Father’s brother died in one of those fights, and I’ve lost cousins here and there, too. Our clans have both been significantly lessened because of the feud, and they’ve tried again and again to make a truce, but it’s never lasted. Someone always kills someone else and the truce is off.”

“So they see this marriage as a way of ending the feud once and for all?” I ask.

“Yeah. If I marry him and we have a baby, the clans will be related by blood, and the fighting will
have
to stop. And it
has
to
stop, because the djinn are threatening to start a war, and that’s a war no one will win, especially not your kind.”

I’m trying to absorb what she’s telling me. “A war? About what?”

“Does that really matter?”

“No, not really, I guess,” I say. “I’m just trying to understand the situation.”

“It would take a lifetime for you to understand it all, and I don’t say that to sound condescending, it’s just that there are so many layers to all this, the ifrit-djinni enmity as a whole on top of the feud between my clan and Hassan’s, and then there’s my family’s position within our clan, plus our clan’s position among the other ifrits, and then there’s Farouk al-Jabiri’s hold over my father…”

“No, you’re right. I don’t need to know all that stuff. You can explain it to me another time. The important thing is figuring a way out, for you.”

“There
isn’t
a
way out, Carson. I’ve got less than a
week
. Hassan is going to come for me, and he’ll drag me back to Chicago one way or another. If I put up a fight, he’ll kill everyone I care about, you included.”
 

My blood is boiling, my heart thudding with rage, my vision going red. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
 

“Carson,” Leila pleads, “you
don’t
know
him. You don’t understand what he’s capable of.”
 

“And you don’t know what
I’m
capable of,” I growl. “I’ll deal with this Hassan jackass, and I’ll deal with his pals. Trust me.”

Her eyes are fixed on mine. She looks like she wants to believe me but can’t quite bring herself to do so. “Please, Carson, please don’t. I can’t watch you get hurt. You’re…you’re not an ifrit, Carson, you’re a
human
. You’ve never seen an elemental battle…Hassan is a fire elemental like Miriam, except he’s spent his entire life knowing what he is and being trained to control his powers. He’s got dozens of armed men under his command, and each of them is an ifrit. This isn’t a Rambo movie, Carson. You can’t just go in guns blazing and hope it all works out.”

“So what? I’m supposed to just go ‘oh well’ and let you marry this sick douchebag?”
 

She won’t quite look at me. “You’ll get killed trying to stop him, and I couldn’t handle that.”

“So what was your plan? Make love to me and then…what? Just disappear in the morning? Go off and marry this asshole and let him do whatever he wants to you?”