The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance (Trisha Telep) (Kitty Norville 0.50)

So, I don’t swim. Instead, I put on my bikini of the season and lie out on the sand, and occasionally tickle my toes in the rushing cool surf when I get overheated. But sometimes, as I bake on the beach, I watch people playing in the waves, and I long to be having that much fun.

“We should go out there,” David said. Reading my mind, as usual.

I turned my head and skinned my sunglasses down my nose to meet his eyes. My lover was lying in the sun in a pair of black swim trunks and nothing else - a very pleasant picture indeed, and not just for me. David is a Djinn, one of those old-time genies from the bottles; he can be anything he wants to be.

For me, he?

?s always the same: tall, with the lean, sleek muscles of a runner. Defined, not bulked. His skin is this gorgeous tint somewhere between gold and bronze, a shade you’ll never find in any tanning booth or bottle, no matter how hard you try. He was slightly turned towards me, raised up on one elbow. David likes to wear round, scholarly glasses, but he’d left them off today, and it raised his hotness alert level from smoking to nuclear. His hair was a little shaggy, and it caught the light in gleams of auburn and gold.

“Out where?” I asked, as I allowed my inspection to move from his gorgeous face to his strong neck, his firm chest, down to the ridges of his abdominal muscles. “Because you look good right there to me, mister.”

David has the most sincerely dangerous smile I’ve ever seen — dangerous not because it is so lovely (although it is that) but because it just brims with possibilities begging to be explored. The first time I’d seen him, we’d been enemies; the second time, he’d been trying to help me, or I’d been trying to help him, however you score these things. But it had been that smile that had thrown me off balance, and made me vulnerable to him.

Still did.

“You never swim,” he said. “You should. Seems like a waste to have all this ocean at your front door and never enjoy it to the fullest.”

“I enjoy it academically,” I said. “Besides, I need to work on my tan.”

“Your tan is perfect,” David said, and drew a gentle finger down my arm, soft as a feather. “I want you in the water.”

The hot flash that washed over me had nothing to do with overheating. “Public beach,” I said, but it was a weak defence, at best. His smile widened.

“We don’t get many vacations,” he said. “When we do, we should make the most of them. And you know I can keep us from being seen, no matter where we are.” Two fingers this time, dragged slowly and provocatively down the tender inner aspect of my arm. “No matter what we do.”

I was having trouble keeping my breath. “Man, you’d make a very dangerous criminal.”

“So I have,” he agreed. “From time to time.”

Different masters holding his bottle, I thought, but I didn’t say that. David wasn’t in a bottle any more. David was the conduit, the power connection between the New Djinn - Djinn who’d once been human - and the sleeping power of Mother Earth herself.

In short, he was the boss.

On the other side of the organizational chart were the Old Djinn, or - as they liked to call themselves - the True Djinn, which tells you something about their arrogance. They had a conduit, too, his name was Ashan, and he was a right bastard who didn’t like David, didn’t like me and didn’t like humanity in general cluttering up his planet.

Mutually assured destruction kept the peace between the Djinn.

“You’re going to have to tell me a story sometime,” I said. I rolled over on my side to face David and propped my head on my arm. My long, dark hair slithered over my shoulders and cascaded down, curling at the ends in the moist breeze. “About that part of your life.”

“I’m not sure you want to know.” He considered that for a moment, and from the wry twist of his lips, he knew how wrong that was. “All right, I’m not sure that I want to tell you.”

“If we’re together, we’re together. Good times and bad.”

“I’ve got plenty of bad,” he said. “I’d rather make some new experiences with you. Pleasant ones.”

“After you tell me a story.”

He tried to suppress a smile. “Can it be a bedtime story?”

“You wish. Something personal. About your - criminal past.”

I think he might have actually started to open up to me. His lips parted, and I saw the resignation on his face - and then a shadow fell across both of us. A big shadow, maybe twice as broad in the chest as David, with biceps as large as my thighs.

A bodybuilder. One with so much overdevelopment that you could almost smell steroids in his sweat. He’d adopted a stiff military-style haircut, and a lot of truly ugly tattoos.

And he had friends. Four of them. Although none of them was anywhere near his desperation-level of intimidation. Lots of tattooing and attitude. They weren’t exactly fitting in, but then, they didn’t intend to.

Muscles stared down at David with what I suppose he thought was ferocious menace. “Move,” he barked.