Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

She said cautiously, “What do I have to do to get ready?”

“Whatever you like.” He paused. “Dress casually.”

“All right…when do you want to leave?”

His satisfaction dissipated. Really, she did not look as excited as he had expected about the prospect of this date. “Whenever you like.”

She looked down at herself, then back up at him. “Maybe we should just go and get it over with.”

He scowled. “Fine.”

He stood and held his hand out to her. She stood as well, more slowly, and walked into his arms, and they blew away.

Away from Louisville. Away from Kentucky. Away from the Northern Hemisphere.

From Earth.

Khalil had studied Grace’s needs and practiced, until he was confident he could keep her wrapped protectively in the right pressurized temperature, provide her with the right UV filter, and the perfect air for her to breathe.

He brought her to the moon with a flourish. The near side facing the Earth, not the far side, since he thought they should take the trip in stages. She turned in his arms to look around at where he brought them.

“W-wha…”

“I told you it would be somewhere special,” he said, in the invisible bubble he had created for them.

She screamed.

He smiled smugly. Yes, this second date destination was worthy of a happy scream. Very few humans had walked on the moon. He knew how rare this opportunity was. Surely it should make up for what had happened on their first date.

Grace kept screaming. She turned and clawed at him. “Oh, my God. Oh. My. God. OHMYGOD!”

His smile vanished. He tried to get hold of her in a gentle but tight grip. That was more difficult than he expected. She seemed to have acquired a half-dozen arms and legs. He informed her, “You may stop making noise any time now.”

Somehow she had climbed halfway up his body before he managed to grasp her waist. He plucked her off and set her on her feet. She started to climb up his body again.

“Are you having fun?” he asked suspiciously.

“We’re on the fucking moon!” she shouted. “There’s nothing here!”

He stared at her. “I don’t think you’re having fun.”

“No air!”

He shook his head. “Think about that logically. Could you have possibly said those words if there truly was no air? Of course there’s no air or atmosphere outside this bubble—”

“Ofcoursethere’snofuckingairhereorfuckingatmosphereonthefuckinggoddamnMOONyouGODDAMNFUCKINGCRAZYMORONICDJINN…”

“ Grace ,” he roared in her face.

He put so much Power into his shout, her screaming snapped into silence. Her breathing hitched as she stared at him. “Look at me,” he said. “Keep looking only at me. There is no danger. You’re perfectly safe. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you. You’re mine. I will never let go. I will always protect you. You are my life now. Do you understand anything I’m saying?”

Her breathing hitched again. “I’m breathing,” she whispered. “On the moon.”

“Don’t look away!” he ordered, as her eyes started to slide sideways. Her gaze snapped back to his. “I’m sorry I scared you. I wanted to show you somewhere special that I love to go. I thought you would love it here too. Do you need to leave?”

“I d-don’t know, give me minute,” she said faintly. “I’m having some serious instinct issues. You always make me feel like Darrin, and I’m not Darrin, dammit.”

“All right.” He rubbed her arms. “But I don’t know what any of that means.”

“Soon as you said ‘date,’ I knew something calamitous was going to happen. You are never, ever— ever —going to surprise me like this again, or I swear, I will throw my expulsion spell on your ass for a week.” Hitch. “And I mean hard, Khalil.”

“Never again. I promise you, I am never doing anything like this again. Just tell me if we should leave.”

“Hold on.”

He watched, bemused, as she took several deep breaths, as if she were about to dive under water. Then she slowly, slowly turned. He pulled her back against his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around her. Her whole body was shaking.

“Oh, my fucking God, I’m on the moon,” she said. After all of that, she sounded almost conversational. “No helmet. No spacesuit. No oxygen tank. Just you.”

Khalil had learned caution the bitter way. He asked carefully, “Is that a good thing?”

“It’s the most.” She shook her head and sucked in more air, gripping onto his forearms as they crossed her chest. Tilting her head, she looked up at the immense, graceful orb that was Earth. “It’s the most gloriously insane thing I’ve ever seen. You crazy Djinn.”

Well. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

He rested his chin on the top of her head with a deep sigh. This whole dating thing wore him to a frazzle.

Grace could only take a few more minutes on the moon. Then after such an extreme adrenaline rush, she felt as if someone smacked her on the back of the head with a two-by-four.

He was speaking, calmly, in that gorgeous pure voice of his, while he rubbed her arms with his hot, big hands. “The far side is pretty spectacular too.”

“I will go anywhere with you, anywhere at all,” she said. “With a little warning. And in increments. But right now we’ve got to leave.”

“As you wish.”

She turned in his arms, clutching his waist as the cyclone took her.

Khalil rematerialized them in the guest bedroom they were using at Isalynn’s house. As soon as the ground had firmed underneath her feet, Grace turned away, took three dizzy steps and collapsed on the bed.

“Kiiiick in the head,” she said into a pillow.

The bedsprings creaked as Khalil sat beside her. He rubbed one of her legs.

“I love you like crazy,” he whispered.

Her breath caught. Like crazy. Yes, that was how she felt too. Crazy outside of herself, like when they had made love and she literally left her body. She reached behind to grip his hand. His long fingers closed over hers, hard.

“What you did with my father—that was bloody magnificent, Grace. Few creatures have been able to face Soren down like that and win.”

“I did have something of an inside scoop,” she said. “And forty or fifty Djinn to back me up.”

For a while on Sunday, the visions of possible futures had never left her. Then they had passed as the Oracle’s moon had passed, leaving her anchored where she belonged, in the here and now. But she still remembered some of those possibilities, glittering strange horizons she hardly dared to contemplate.

She sensed him leaning over her, an impression of bulk and strength. Something happened, a tight compression of Power, like when he had pulled all of his rage into himself, only this compression was deeper and harder, a diamond being pressed out of thin air.

Frowning, she lifted herself up on her elbows and started to turn over. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder blade. The sensation lingered on her skin after he lifted his mouth away.

“Promise me something,” she said.

He traced the hairline at the nape of her neck lightly with the tip of one finger. “Anything you like.”

“Don’t change,” she said. “Not permanently, not without talking to me first.”

His finger stilled. He said nothing.

This time she did turn onto her back.

While he was still dressed in the same T-shirt and jeans from that morning, he wore his human skin again, those regal, elegant features with the touch of beard along his lean jaw, and the trace of laugh lines at the corners of his muted eyes and unsmiling mouth. His long hair was loose, still shining and black, but indefinably different. She put a hand to his chest, and there was the blaze of his Power, hidden deeply inside his body like a gleaming pearl.