Rachel Caine - Unseen

I stood, turned, and straddled his lap as he sat on the couch, kneeling on the cushions to either side. At that distance, there was no possibility of barriers or mistakes for either of us. And I kissed him.

There was something so astonishingly sweet to the taste of him, sweet and spicy together, heady and overwhelming and powerful in ways that I could only dimly grasp. Kissing him seemed to temporarily still a howling hunger inside me, but it only moved to a different place to set up new, strange aches. While our lips were sliding together, damp and striving, I couldn’t feel the pressure of the world around us, the weight of all that responsibility and fate and desperation.

All I felt was light, and silence, and a trembling, silvery sliver of breathless anticipation.

I pulled back just far enough to breathe into his open mouth, “Is that clear enough?”

“ Claro ,” he whispered back. He put a finger to my lips and said, “We can’t do this here, querida . Ibby. Come with me.”

I nodded, and followed him to the bathroom—not the one in the hall, which was close to Ibby’s room, but the one in the master bedroom. He closed the door after me and turned the lock, as I stripped away my white leather jacket. It would need repairs later, a simple enough matter when I had energy to spare, but for now it simply looked grubby and battered. I began to unbutton the soft pink shirt beneath, but Luis reached out and stilled my fingers. “No,” he said. “Wait. I know you already made it pretty clear, but—I just want to put it out there. You sure you want to do this? All the way?”

“I already said that I did.”

“Cass—” He shook his head. “Okay. Then slow the hell down, will you? It ain’t a race to the finish line.”

He took his time at it, slowly slipping each button through its anchoring hole, and tracing warm fingers down over the revealed pale flesh. Three buttons down he uncovered the pale pink of the satin bra I wore, and I felt his heartbeat move just a bit faster. Mine was well ahead of his, heating my flesh to warm ivory, pounding in my temples and veins, pooling heat like sunlight into the lower part of my body. Preparing me, I realized.

He slipped the blouse from my shoulders, and I shivered, though the air in the bedroom was warm enough. The shivers intensified as he trailed his fingertips over my bare skin. He bent very close and put his lips to my ear. “Turn around,” he murmured. I did, not moving any farther away from his body than the movement required. He unhooked the clasp of my bra and slipped the silky straps down my arms. The fragile thing fell to the floor, next to my shirt. Then he reached around my waist and unsnapped the leather pants, then unzipped them and slid them slowly down my bare legs. I found myself leaning back against him, mesmerized by the simple, catastrophic explosions of feeling in my body as he slipped his hand inside the thin underwear ...

I gasped and bit my lip as an entirely new sensation fired through me, and found myself pressing against his fingers. A sound escaped me, completely beyond my control. I had no idea what was guiding me, but it must have been something coded deep into the human form. I’d always thought that Djinn who grew fond of wearing skin were somehow flawed, but now—now I understood. There were delights in a Djinn’s natural form, of course, but nothing quite so ... intense.

“Easy, girl. We’ve got a long way to go,” Luis said, still in that low murmur that somehow only intensified the pleasure I was taking from his touch. “Let’s get these off of you first.”

He pulled his hand away, which made me almost cry out in protest, and slipped the underwear down my legs. I realized that I was naked, but I didn’t feel exposed or vulnerable. Quite the opposite. I felt ... powerful. Clothed in trust.

I turned to face Luis, breathing hard, and found that he was still dressed. I helped him pull his charred, ragged shirt over his head, and before it hit the carpet I had my hands on him. I’d seen him without his shirt before, but that had been like looking through an obscuring filter. Now, in this moment, I saw how beautiful he really was. The light and shadow of his muscles as they tensed and relaxed; the smooth, velvety skin, the deeper brown of his tightened nipples. The dark hair that drew a line straight down beneath his waistband, and tickled my fingers as I unfastened the riveted button. It yielded with a soft snap, and I unzipped his pants and hesitated, not sure what he wanted of me. Luis gave me no signals. He watched me with intense, opaque brown eyes. I could feel the emotions roiling inside of him, and when I looked at him in Oversight, overlaying the aetheric world native to the Djinn with that of the human reality, I saw him glowing in incandescent, intense colors—colors of passion, of need, of life itself. Breathtaking, and overwhelming.

I looked into his eyes as I carefully slid his pants down his legs and left him in his underwear—tight, defining a growing tribute to our attraction. Then I took a deep breath and pulled those down as well.

Then, with nothing between us, and before I could allow any sensible objections to overcome me, I stepped forward, pressed my body against his, and kissed him.

Power flowed out in a torrent from him at that first touch of our lips, thick as melted amber, drenched with the essence of all living things, the slow pulse beat of Mother Earth herself. I felt my skin scrubbed clean, and my hair blew back in an invisible wind. I felt ... reborn. New. Perfect.

His lips warmed to fever heat against mine, damp and urgent and sweet to taste, and I shuddered against him as his hands traveled down my spine to the small of my back, then caressed the swell of my hips. His lips parted, and I felt the soft stroke of his tongue against mine. My blood felt on fire now, and my heart pounded hard. I didn’t know how much of what I felt came from his use of Earth power, and I didn’t care. It was intense and beautiful and utterly involving.

I couldn’t believe I had avoided it for so long, being daily in his company. I’d yearned for it, and yet I hadn’t even known why.

An odd sensation—the areas of the flame tattoos on his arms felt different. The flame tattoos seemed warmer, as if the dark borders banked in actual fire instead of only ink.

Luis broke off the kiss and buried his face in the hollow of my neck, breathing hard. His breath pistoned hot against my skin and fluttered my pale hair. “Slow down,” he finally said. “You’re going to get me off too soon. Relax. I told you, it’s not a race.”

“Then what is it?” I asked. “Because my body seems to want to rush to the finish.”

He laughed. “Stop feeding back my energy and I’ll show you. Shower first, though.”

“We’re clean.” Thanks to that initial burst of power from him, which had scrubbed our skin and hair and left us deliciously fresh.

“That’s not why we take the shower,” he said. “You trust me?”

“Yes.” I always had, at a very deep level. This was not different ... and yet, it was. This was a physical kind of trust that I found hard to imagine outside of this moment, and yet here and now it seemed perfectly inevitable, and perfectly right. “Of course I do.”

He slipped his hand down to grip mine. “Then come on. Get wet with me, girl.”

Somehow, that phrase had connotations I had never really considered ... ones shadowy and exciting, a sudden burst of spice on the tongue. It made my breath quicken, and my pulse beat faster.

I allowed Luis to pull me along to the bathroom. That door, too, he shut behind us, and locked with a quick snap of his wrist. He sensed me watching him, and raised his brows. “Only so Ibby—look, I don’t want you to think I’m trying to push you into anything. Is that what you think? Because you can stop this anytime you want.”