Genie Knows Best (8 page)

Samantha uncrossed, then recrossed her legs, and Kal admitted he might have a thing for
her
. Then she smiled at him, and there was no
might
about it. All those fantasies he’d had during the long lonely nights in his lantern… He definitely had a thing for her. One their kiss had only heightened.

His cock hardened and he grabbed something off Stavros’s desk to hide the evidence.
Kharah
, here they were, discussing urban blight, and he was thinking with his dick.

But it’d been too long since he’d held a woman, let alone one as beautiful as Samantha. Her smile lit up the place in a way the sun with its brutal intensity couldn’t, and made him burn even more. And with the way Monty had talked about her, Kal felt as if he knew her.

She tapped the desk with her fingernails. “It’s a shame what’s happened here. I wish there was some way to make this town what it once was.”

Stavros caught his breath.

So did Kal. It was a brilliant solution, and one that would have her going through a thousand and one wishes in no time. He’d break his previous record of three days. That master had been a seven-year-old who’d gotten the lantern for his birthday. The kid had barely slept for getting all his wishes out. Then he’d barely slept while playing with everything he’d wished for.

The parents would have been better off keeping Kal’s services for themselves and giving the kid a few things, but those maharajas… They liked to do things in a big way.

But Kal hadn’t complained, and master number four hundred and forty-three had come and gone in three days. He didn’t want Samantha to go in three days.

Though
he
wouldn’t mind her coming…

Kal pressed the metallic thing harder against his groin, hoping it’d cool him down. But heat seared him as he imagined Samantha naked beneath him, writhing in pleasure as he traced his fingers and lips all over her body, bringing her to her peak. Her skin would be damp, moist from passion smoother than silk, with that lilac scent of hers as potent as any aphrodisiac a mystic could concoct.

He shifted his stance, trying to hide the evidence of his thoughts, but when his sash snagged on the thing in his hand, it brought that whole area into focus. Especially when he realized what had caused it, what he held, and where it was situated.

A vegetable slicer.

Kal practically threw it across the room.
Son
of
a
Sumerian!
That thing was dangerous.

“Kal?” Samantha put her hand on his knee. “Are you okay?”

Definitely not. And with her hand where it was, so close to where his body was screaming for it to be, even less so.
Zift
, Samantha was more dangerous to him than the slicer. Forget about keeping her longer than three days. He’d be better off in a lot of ways if they broke his record in the next three
hours
.

“I’m fine, Samantha. But I can’t just wave my hand and grant that wish. You need to be more specific.”

Then she cocked her head and nibbled her bottom lip—the one he’d run his tongue over and had gently drawn between his teeth—and he realized he was only kidding himself. There she was, concentrating on servicing the community, and he was concentrating on servicing
her
.

She’d tasted so good. Had felt even better. That little gasp she’d made in the back of her throat when he’d brushed the side of her breast—and don’t think he hadn’t wanted to cup her. Stroke her. Feel her nipple pebble between his fingers and beneath his tongue as he took his time exploring all her hidden secrets, bringing them both to the pinnacle over and over, only to back off at the last minute to savor the sensation, that heightened sense of being before they both tumbled over the edge—

Maybe he should have held on to that slicer.

Kal shook his head. Enough already. For the past two thousand years, he’d done nothing but try to hurry things along, and now, when he was so close, he wanted to make it last? Savor it? Savor her?

Kal gritted his teeth and shifted his legs to dislodge her hand. He had to keep his focus on the ultimate prize—and Samantha wasn’t it. She couldn’t be. Genies lived forever and Kal knew, firsthand, the pain of watching someone he loved die. He’d lived—barely—through the death of his parents and brothers and sisters. Even the baby, Noor. He’d been young when he’d been Chosen to enter The Service, an honor his parents had been so proud of. He had, too.

But none of them had realized the consequences of immortality. Of what watching them grow old and die would do to him. How it’d leave him alone and, with his jail sentence, without support. Without anyone left to care about him or believe in his innocence. No one to be there when he got out.

Well, except Dirham, of course, but as supportive as the fennec was, it wasn’t the same.

And Samantha couldn’t be. She was his way out, and the quicker it was over, the better. He had to focus on clearing his name and getting his life back, not the sexy hint of her tongue as she pulled another little bit of her bottom lip between her teeth, or the sparkle in her eyes, or the way her shirt lovingly cupped her breasts, the dip in her navel that he’d like to taste, the flare of her hips with the low-riding harem pants—

Kal cleared his throat and dragged his mind off that delectable image. He wasn’t an animal, for gods’ sakes. “So where do you wish to start, Samantha?”

Her
earlobe
would
be
a
good
spot, followed by the soft hollow beneath, the graceful curve of her neck, down between her breasts—

So much for not being an animal. Kal raked a hand through his hair. Could he just keep his focus—and his dick—where it belonged already?

“What about we start here? With this office and then the buildings around it? Sound good, Stavros?” Samantha’s fingers threaded through her copper curls, and Kal couldn’t help noticing the way the diffused sunlight flashed golden fire on the strands. Couldn’t help wanting to feel those curls slip through his fingers.

Over his chest.

Along his abs.

Lower
.

“Sure,” said Stavros. “And then I’m thinking storefront revitalization. A whole spectrum of colors. Maybe neon; it is the twenty-first century after all. The road could use some sprucing up. A few spruces wouldn’t be amiss, either. A whole new landscape, too. The dodos have been asking for their own fruit-tree grove, and the phoenixes really need a new aviary. They keep lighting theirs on fire and then moving on to someone else’s, and pretty soon we have all the birds laying eggs atop the street lanterns. Ever get hit on the head by a huma egg?” He rubbed his head. “Suckers hurt. Not to mention, lost eggs decrease the population.”

Samantha turned a brilliant smile Kal’s way. “Can you do that, Kal?”

Oh he could do it all right. And her. Whatever she wanted. And that’d be only the beginning. Then he’d—

He felt both her and Stavros’s gazes on him. Ah. She’d meant her wish. He willed his blood to cool. “Yes, Samantha, I can.”

One more wish coming up. One step closer to losing her.

Kal’s chest tightened. What was wrong with him? He’d been without a woman for long periods of time before—part of the whole genie thing—but this… He needed to get away from her. Find a willing woman somewhere. Take the edge off. Then he could focus on what he’d been striving for for the past two thousand years—and that
wasn’t
Samantha.

“Kal?”

Samantha’s green eyes sparkled in the way the gems of Izaaz used to and called attention to the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, so light no one would know they were there without getting up close. But he knew. He’d been up close—and very personal—and just the memory of how personal held him immobile for a few seconds.

Luckily, she took his silence to mean something else. “Oh, right. I wish you’d fix Stavros’s office.”

“As you wish, Samantha.” Kal cleared his throat and waved his hand, on his way to fulfilling wish number sixteen. At this rate, they’d blow through the other nine hundred and some in no time.

He should be happy about that. And he would be. In a minute or so. Or a century or two.

Then an explosion rocked the town and purple hellfire rained down from the sky and Kal couldn’t afford the luxury of time.

Bart and Maille had left their building.

The scene in the street really did look like a pair of gunslingers had come to town. Maille was blasting awnings to a crisp, and Bart was searing destructively beautiful calligraphy onto the walls with a laser beam of firepower like a graffiti artist on acid. Smelled like acid, too. Of the sulfuric kind.

Another explosion rocked the town, and the gnomes popped back into their drainpipes like sea anemones on the sea floor, while the fairies took off for parts unknown like a flock of hummingbirds.

Another blast of purple sparks followed Maille to the ground, encircling a palm tree in a ring of fire, torching it and turning it to ash in no time flat. At this rate, the town would be in cinders by dinner.

Samantha strode across the dusty road, her mind whirling like the scene in front of them. She didn’t have any experience in renovations other than a week on a Habitat for Humanity project, but taking Kal up on his “wish is his command” directive would solve that problem.

Samantha walked around a leaning pole with a genie lantern on top. “Kal, I wish you’d fix that.”

Kal waved his hand, and orange glitter seemed to spout from his fingers as the pole went erect really quickly.

That was
so
not a word she needed to be thinking about. She’d noticed his reaction to her touch back in Stavros’s office—and she was well aware of her reaction to him charging across the street toward the two dragons. Kal, in full-on genie glory, was definitely not a typical guy.

Bart seared the spire off a building with another blast of fire, torching a window into a molten lump of glass that cooled as it fell, only to shatter when it hit the sidewalk below it.

Maille’s neck frill ruffed up like a medieval queen’s best court finery. “That’s it, you self-important sauropod. I told you to leave me alone. This town isn’t big enough for the both of us.”

“You’ve got that right, Maille.” Kal waved his hand, and sparkly orange muzzles appeared on the dragons’ snouts. “I sent you to the Forum to work things out. What are you doing back here?”

Maille crossed her dragon arms—something Bart wasn’t able to do since he didn’t have any—and pointed one long, lime green claw at the muzzle.

Samantha didn’t want to be out in the open when that came off so she slid behind Kal.

Kal waved his hand, and the muzzle disappeared. “No fire or I put it back. I’m not going to risk Sam.”

Maille blew the sprinkles off the end of her nose. “Sit down and talk it over? Yeah, we did that. Done. Check. Mate. Or rather,
stale
mate. Which is what ol’ brat is. A stale mate.”

“And you’re a lying, heartless witch, chain-Maille!” Bart scratched the sand like an angry bull preparing to charge—which he then did, his run turning into flight so fast that anyone else would have ended up in his vicious talons, but Maille took to the air and outmaneuvered him.

Kal sighed and crossed his arms. “This is getting us nowhere.”

Samantha came out from behind him, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun the dragons had flown toward. “It’d be so much better if they couldn’t blast each other.”

Kal turned his head slightly, a devilish smile on his lips. “Is that what you wish?”

Samantha smiled back. Nothing like being on the same page. “You know? It is. I wish they couldn’t blast each other. Or fly, either.”

“As you wish, Sam.”

Two seconds later, Maille and Bart—at least she thought they were Maille and Bart—floated down from the sky amid a shower of sparkles.

In human form.

“You didn’t! You couldn’t!” Maille screamed, fire threatening to erupt from her eyes. Better there than her throat.

The same height as Samantha, Maille was full of muscle, with a purple stripe bisecting sleek, black hair that hung to her knees, and almond-shaped eyes that tilted up at the outside corners—and not because she was smiling.

Far from it.

“You cursed brat, and I don’t mean my idiot ex. Seriously? You wished this on us? Where are my scales? My beautiful scales?” Maille twisted to look at her back, now covered in a replica of the outfit Samantha wore but in red. “And my wings? You got rid of my wings? How could you?”

“Chill out, hothead,” said Bart in a surprise move. Balding and about a foot shorter than Kal, Bart was a beanpole whose vest and billowy pants hung on him. And he, unfortunately, could
not
pull off curly-toed slippers. Especially fuchsia ones. “Girl’s got a point. You can’t go around destroying the place.”

“Me?” Maille lunged toward her mate, who, even though he had arms now, seemed to forget that fact as he leapt out of the way with all the speed his dragon self had had. “You should have thought of that before you went out ‘bowling’ all night with Laverne.”

“I’d wish they’d stop talking for a minute, Kal,” Samantha whispered.

Kal chuckled and waved his hand. The dragons’ mouths clamped shut, and a giant stopwatch appeared in the air behind their heads. “As you wish, Samantha.”

The air suddenly got a lot clearer, in terms of dragon smoke and noise pollution. But the two dragons looked like they wanted to blast
her
with fire.

Samantha mentally kicked herself as the seconds ticked down. She shouldn’t have added the time stipulation.
Semantics
.

“Now, let’s try this again, you two.” Kal walked toward them.

“I can’t believe you did this, Kal.” Maille said when the second hand hit zero and the new muzzles disintegrated in a shower of orange dust. She flung her arms and stomped her feet. “We haven’t been in this form in, what? Five thousand years? We evolved beyond this, for gods’ sakes. All our training, all our study, and you reduce us to this?”

“All your training didn’t make you any more civilized, so I suggest you get over it. Work out your differences in this form before you destroy Izaaz more than it already is. The place is supposed to be a haven, but you two have turned it into a hellhole.”

“You can’t blame that on us,” said Maille, the fingernail she was pointing at Kal still lime green and long enough that it was starting to curl. “Have you seen the usury the leprechauns are putting out there? And the gnomes are threatening to tunnel under all the buildings and make them unstable unless they get some payola. And let’s not forget the
peris
. Oh, no. Everyone thinks they’re so sweet and lighthearted and beautiful, spreading happiness and good cheer wherever they go, but it’s enough to make you puke. And where’s their glitter? Their sparkle?”

A gnome popped out of a drain spout. “I’ll tell ya where it is, you bigmouthed Gila monster. It’s buried under all the rubble you and your friends keep heaping on us. Can you blame them for not wanting to waste any more of it? I wouldn’t if I were them.”

“And you, Maille,” the wyvern sneered—which would have had much more impact if he still had a beak full of pointed teeth. “Shall we count the ways you’re so blameless? Let’s start with the hatchlings. When were you going to tell me?”

The leprechauns showed up next and Samantha felt as if she were in a three-ring circus. Then a pack of furry little creatures with pointed ears and mouths full of spikes as nasty as Maille’s showed up, and it became a four-ring one. Five when the unicorns trotted back out. Six with the centaurs.

And then Samantha lost count as hundreds, if not thousands, of creatures filed into the streets, hurling insults and clumps of sand all over the place.

Kal kneaded the back of his neck and looked at her. “Anything else you want to wish for?”

Samantha straightened and rolled back her shoulders. No wonder the place looked like it did. “Yes. Let’s take care of a few things.” She rubbed her hands. “First, I wish you’d make all of them immobile and quiet.”

“Done.” He made a karate-chop move with his hand and peace reigned as the glitter settled onto the street. It was a big improvement.

“Next, I wish you’d shore up those buildings.”

“Gotcha.” He waved at the droopy buildings lining the street, making them perk up. The way his abs rippled, framed by his orange vest and highlighted by glitter, made
her
perk up.

Samantha shoved that image from her mind. She had a job to do. “And the trees. I wish they were orange—er, green.”

So much for the job.

“Absolutely.” Another wave of Kal’s hand, and the landscape got prettier—though more of an orangish-green than full-on green, but if she had him change the trees back, she’d have to come clean about why. Bad enough her subconscious was duking it out with her libido, she didn’t want to have to come out and admit something like that.

Kal waved his hand again, and the coconuts turned into sparkling gemstones. “Anything else you want to wish for, Samantha?”

She started counting tasks off on her fingers. “A better road surface. New paint on the buildings. Water for the fountain. Trash cans. A working café with outside seating. How about a monorail-type system? Good for the air and less flammable than carpets. Oh, and the fruit trees. That aviary. What else? Where’s Stavros? He’d know.”

Kal grabbed her hand. “Whoa there, Bob Vila. You have to make wishes. I can’t grant off a list.”

“Oh, right. Okay. Here we go.” The
I
wish
es flew out of her mouth, and the long, crumbling staircase at the far end of the street—à la Rome’s Spanish Steps—rebuilt itself, chunks of marble that had broken off onto the steps below flying back into place as if she were watching an earthquake video in reverse.

The dull, gray stone structure ringing the platform at the top became shimmering amethyst quartz that extended from the wall of sand behind it, down the stairs, to the new road. Made of malachite bricks, the new surface slid over the old like spilled milk on hardwood flooring. As the road turned to color, jets of water in the dry fountain that ran the length of the median erupted into gravity-defying patterns. Grass grew so green it was almost emerald, and mosaic tiles bloomed along the sidewalk. All of this slid beneath the frozen citizens in a reverse magician’s trick of yanking the tablecloth out from under the dishes.

The buildings Kal had shored up got a new look, too. Jewels popped into the pockmarks like popcorn, and the balconies lost their rust and gained a white coating. Trumpet vines and enormous honeysuckle grew in place of the dead leaves, and like the brigand of
peris
she’d seen earlier, hummingbirds darted from behind the buildings to claim the new flowers.

Overhead, sand sifted onto the glass ceiling, proving it really was there, and providing some much needed shade to parts of the city.

Kal brushed his hands to sweep up all the glitter when she stopped to take a breath. “We’re going to have to think about that monorail system, Sam. It’s a good idea, but maybe we should set the rest of the city to rights before we start any additions.”

“Good point. I think we’ve done enough for now. You want to set them all free?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want, Samantha. What do you wish?”

She wished he’d kiss her again—and even if that was inappropriate, it was understandable.

Samantha tucked her curls behind her ears, hiding her face that was probably as red as the rubies over the Nut Shop as she did so. “Um, yes, Kal. I wish you’d let everyone go back the way they were.”

Kal waved his hand and life returned to normal. Well, as normal as this place could be.

Sort of.

A collective sigh happened, but no one moved. They just stood there, blinking. Shock. Surprise. Maybe some awe? That might just be hero worship in Miraj’s eyes.

Kal squeezed her shoulder. “Good job, Samantha. You’ve made them speechless. Let’s hope appreciative, too. But in my experience, they’re about to get very greedy. I’d suggest we head somewhere else until the initial shock wears off.”

Samantha knew all about greedy. Knew all about people wanting things from her. But, here, in this place, she understood it. These people—er, beings—needed something to motivate them, and hopefully, what she and Kal had done would be that impetus. Though human nature—and troll and dwarf and fairy nature, too, presumably—would want to take the easy way out.

She knew all about that, too.

Unfortunately, the shock lasted only a few seconds. Then everyone and their brother began rushing toward Samantha, shouting out their wishes like dragons with fire bolts.

Samantha felt like a translator as she listened to someone’s wish, then parroted it to Kal in her own words. Clothing started to appear in the shops, nice cars along the side streets, even an Xbox in someone named Newton’s newly renovated king-sized bedroom. Self-serving ovens, self-sweeping brooms, forever-flowering fruit trees… the citizens of Izaaz had a better imagination than the crew at Disney.

“Rain, lass. Make it rain.”

“No, make it snow! We’ve never had snow in Izaaz!”

“Snow? Are you out of your cotton-pickin’ mind? We’re not prepared for snow!”

“So wish for a snowmobile.”

“Or a snow blower.”

“Or skis! Yeah, let’s go skiing!”

“Then we’re going to need a mountain. Can you wish us the perfect ski mountain?”

“With bunny slopes,” hollered Miraj.

“And a lodge with a big stone fireplace,” said the phoenix, bursting into flame again.

“And a Matterhorn cliff,” said Stavros, getting into the act.

A mountain? Cliffs? Ski lodge? Snow? Samantha shook her head. The wishes were getting out of control. And so was the mob. They had formed tight circles around her and Kal, and were pressing in.

She moved closer to him. “Um, Kal? About your idea to get out of here. I think now would be a good time to take you up on that offer. Where can we go?”

“Anywhere you’d like, Samantha. What appeals to you?”

If she were home, she’d head to Antoine’s Day Spa. “This place doesn’t have a spa, does it?”

“It has whatever you wish it to have, Samantha, but in this case, you’re lucky. The thermal pools here are the perfect reason for a spa. And since it is my job to see to your comfort, you don’t even have to wish to go there. I’ll take you. A gimme, if you will. A simple yes is all you need to say.”

Kal looked at her with those warm, chocolate eyes, and his arm brushed her breast. His breath was warm against her temple, and saying yes to him became anything but simple.