by Dante King
Without opening my eyes, I said, “If it isn't my favorite djinn.”
Renji must have stopped because the low-key movement of the air ceased. Then, she said, “Was it one of the girls or one of the boys that tipped you off that I was coming, Mike?”
Diplomatically, I said, “It was a joint effort, really.”
Wayne and Garth began to chatter that it was, in actual fact, Pan who had given the initial warning, but they were interrupted by Cyan and Brenna who snapped that Pan had given a warning—hardly helpful. The argument in my head might have ratcheted up a notch and become quite distracting, had it not been for a deep telepathic growl from Noctis. The Chaos Dragon had the effect of silencing the quarreling dragons more quickly and efficiently than a ding around the back of the head might have.
I opened my eyes and saw that the blue-skinned djinn was standing over me and smiling down at me.
“That was a very fatherly thing to say, you know,” she said. “Very much like a man who is trying to keep five young dragons from squabbling in his head.”
I smiled back up at her. “That obvious, huh?”
Renji nodded.
“Is it hard?” she asked.
I made a show of sitting up a little in the water and looking down at my body.
“Um, not yet,” I said innocently, “but if you were to get in here with me, I’m sure that it would only be a matter of seconds...”
Renji chuckled low in her throat. “I meant,” she said, “is it hard keeping five young dragons in check when you share a mind with them?”
I shrugged as ably as I could while floating. “Noctis doesn’t take too much shit. He’s pretty good at playing the role of bad cop.”
Renji cocked her head to one side, her silver braids falling across her shoulder. “Bad cop?”
“You know, good city watchman and bad city watchman,” I tried. “When someone is being interrogated, there are two people; one plays the mean role while the other pretends to be the subject of the interrogation's best friend.”
“Ah,” Renji said.
I eyed the robe that the djinn was wearing speculatively.
“What have you got on under there?” I asked.
“Just my skin,” Renji replied.
“My favorite outfit of yours,” I said approvingly. “What are Tamsin and Hana up to?”
“They went to go and check out that enormous market that was outside the arena,” Renji said. “There were a few stalls there that caught Hana’s eye. Potions and weapons and the like.”
“And you didn’t feel like a bit of retail therapy?” I asked. “Didn’t feel like playing the tourist while the chance presented itself? I don’t know what it is about this place, but something tells me that we’re going to want to make the most of any downtime that we can. You know how it goes with us—it won’t be long before the fecal matter hits the rotary impeller.”
Renji nodded. “Things do seem to have an inclination to go somewhat banana-shaped whenever we go probing into them. But I did not feel like going with the other two. There was something that I meant to tell you. Something that I wanted to say to you, Mike.”
I patted the surface of the water.
“Well, I’m all ears,” I said, “but why not step down into my office for a chat?”
“All ears?” Renji asked.
“Well, maybe not one-hundred percent ears,” I replied, grinning archly.
With the lack of diffidence that was so typical of a branch of warriors who had only counted females amongst their ranks for however long it had been, Renji unfastened the tie of her silk robe, slipped deftly out of it, and tossed it onto a bench seat.
In the brief space of time that she stood on the edge of the enormous bath naked, I feasted my eyes upon her flawless blue skin. She had more curves than Highway 36. Her silver hair, fastened into its customary intricate silver braids, fell across her shoulders in thin, shining ropes. With the ring through her septum and her flashing silver teeth, Renji could have been a work of art in her own right back on Earth, or the alter ego of some unconventional popstar.
The djinn slid gracefully into the hot water, her well-muscled limbs stretching and tightening hypnotically as she lowered herself into the tub. Against the dark marble that the bath was made of, Renji almost blended in.
“So, you wanted to chat to me about something?” I asked, trying my best not to just grab her straight away, as she sounded like she had something specific on her mind.
Renji ducked her head under the scented water and reemerged, wiping water out of her eyes.
“I just wanted to say how happy I am that I have been seen as worthy to become the mother of one of your children, Mike.” There was a note of bashfulness in her voice.
“Oh come on now, Renji,” I said. “There’s never been anything about you that ever made me consider whether you were worthy or not. Look at you! You’re gorgeous, and as capable a fighter as I’ve ever laid eyes on. You’re one of the most highly respected administrators in the Academy, for goodness’ sake! There was never any doubt as to whether you were worthy—whatever worthy means, in this mad world of ours. You’re fantastic, and the fact that you and I created Brenna, well, I feel like the lucky one, you know?”
Renji, easily treading water as she was about half a foot shorter than I was, beamed at me.
“That’s very kind of you to say, Mike,” she said.
“It’s just the truth, Renji,” I said sincerely.
“Speaking of Brenna,” she said. “I also wanted to voice my awe at this dragonling that we have created. She is…”
“She’s magnificent,” I supplied. “As are the rest of them. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but I think that the Mystocean Empire is going to be a force to be reckoned with if we keep this up.”
Renji raised her fingers to her lips and gestured around the room. I nodded, a little chagrined. She was right, chances were that these walls had ears. I’d have to start putting my James Bond hat on unless I wanted Shaykh Antizah to gain an upper hand—presuming that he actually was as two-faced as my gut told me that he was. On that score, I still didn’t have anything concrete to go on. Nothing but a vague sense of disquiet at the man’s shadowy motives.
“It’s going to be interesting to see whether or not Shaykh Antizah honors our agreement,” I said as Renji swam slowly backward until the slanted floor of the bath rose enough for her to stand. “To see whether his pride will allow him to show us how to get into the Subterranean Realm here.”
“Hm,” the djinn said thoughtfully. “Yes, I have been mulling that same thought over in my mind, ever since he let you out of the arena unscathed. There is something about this place, about the Shaykh Antizah, that does not sit well with me, though I can’t think of what it is exactly.”
“All that talk of masters and those beneath them and people sticking to the positions that they were born into was what ran like my fingernails down the blackboard of my soul.”
Renji splashed her face with more warm water and exhaled in a gratified manner.
“Yes, there might well be something afoot,” she said. “Something that is taking place beneath the surface of this seemingly placid and flourishing land.”
“I’ll say,” I muttered. “A part of me doesn’t want to get involved. I just want to get in and out and complete our mission and, hopefully, get back to base and find out that Penelope has unearthed how to get a bear cub to digest an Etherstone.”
“You are worried about Rifa?” Renji said.
“A little,” I admitted. “It just feels like Wayne and Garth all over again, you know. That feeling of being on the clock. I don’t want to let the little guy down.”
Renji gave me a warm smile. “If your past exploits are anything to go by, Mike Noctis,” she said, “then there will be no chance of you letting Rifa or anyone else down.”
I nodded, using my hands to propel myself slowly through the water until I was floating next to Renji. “So yeah, I am a little worried,
but if there is anything to dig up in the Grand Library, then Pen will find it.”
“Indubitably,” Renji agreed.
“Then there’s this other, larger part of me,” I said. “The part that gets the feeling that if there’s some sort of moral fuckery taking place in Akrit, if there are some people that are getting downtrodden or exploited in some way, then it is up to those who have the ability to make sure that fuckery is discontinued.”
“And that would be us?” Renji asked with a knowing wink.
“Part and parcel of being a dragonmancer as far as I see it.”
Renji stepped toward me. “Very noble,” she said in her slow, soothing voice. “As for now, though, why do we not take a rest from politics and government intrigue for just a moment.” She put a fingertip to my brow, just below my hairline. “Here, you have missed some of the blood that you were coated in. Allow me…”
“If you insist,” I said, forcing my mind to stop its whirling and worrying about the future and to just enjoy the present.
“I do insist,” Renji said to me.
Renji spent the next quarter of an hour or so bathing me; washing away the grime and sand and blood that I had managed to miss the first time around. The djinn soaped my long brown hair and rinsed the dried blood out of it. She then washed down my back and, more distractingly, down my front. There had been a lot of dried sweat across my broad, muscled chest and the djinn was most astute at making sure that every inch of me was clean; from collarbone to navel and beyond. By the time that I was all shiny and clean, I was, ironically, also ready to get down and dirty once more.
Renji could not help but be aware of this—a raging hard-on is a pretty tricky thing to disguise when you’re naked in a bath with someone, even if there is an apparently bottomless supply of bubble bath.
“It would seem that you have something on your mind, Mike…?” she asked coyly as I took her by the waist and pulled her toward me through the water.
Renji was covered in a fragrant, oily film from whatever exotic ointments and balms the attendants had used to infuse the bath water. She was finger-lickingly slippery and smooth. I ran my fingers up and down her supple and limber limbs and across the skin of her back and ass.
“Hmm, well you told me to try and clear my mind and enjoy the present, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Did I?” the djinn asked in a low, slow voice. She reached down under the water and cupped me in her hand. Stroked me. Squeezed me.
“Are you concentrating only on the present, Mike?” she asked me innocently.
“I do find that my mind has been somewhat focused on now and only now,” I said, and Renji giggled. Thankfully, I could mentally silence my dragons and ensure that they couldn’t watch what was going to happen next.
My hands traced the curve of Renji’s round ass and moved across the front of her thighs and down…
Renji slipped from my grasp and headed for the side of the giant bath.
“Here, what do you think you’re—” I began to protest.
“Not here,” Renji said quietly. “Not in a place where the walls could have so many ears, and the movement of watchers might be masked by the splashing of water and the hiss of steam.”
Like the most erotically minded selkie that ever lived, Renji pulled herself up out of the bath, waggling her ass right in my face so that I could make out every titillating inch of her undercarriage.
“You present a compelling argument,” I said, almost swallowing a pint of bath water thanks to my hanging jaw.
I followed Renji out of the bath, water streaming off my naked body and dripping on the tiled floor of the sumptuously appointed bathing and steam room.
The djinn led me around the tub, her hips sashaying to and fro in that way that women have been using to confound and bamboozle the minds of their fellow men and women since we came out of the trees and started messing about with fire.
At the far end of the bathing room, wreathed in sweet-scented steam that parted like the mists of some hidden vale as we approached, there was a door. On going through this door, Renji and I found ourselves in a wood-paneled room about the size of a generous CEO’s office. It reminded me of a cross between a dojo, a sauna, and a yoga room.
There were stacks of bamboo and wicker mats set around the place, a few sparring dummies of different designs and a pair of what looked like masseuse tables over in one corner. On the opposite side of the room were a few elegant chairs and a small table set out next to a burner that reminded me a little of the hookah pipes that you could sit and enjoy at certain bars in the Hollywood area of LA. Near this little set up were a series of brass pipes that ran out of the floor and then up into the ceiling, each with an ornate valve.
“What do you think this place is?” I asked.
Renji, who was the chief administrator of the Armory back at the Drako Academy, looked around us thoughtfully.
“Looks to me as if it is a meditation room of sorts,” she said.
“What kind of meditation room has combat dummies in it?” I pointed at the wooden mannequins with their multiple arms.
“The mats and dummies would indicate that whatever meditation takes place in here, it might not necessarily be the peace-driven kind,” Renji said. “That’s not to say that people cannot find peace in combative situations, as contradictory as that sounds.”
“I can understand that,” I said, knowing exactly what she was talking about. “Sometimes, when you’re in a fight there’s this sort of tranquility that comes with it. A simplicity, you know. Like, nothing else matters in the world except what is taking place between you and your opponent. All that is real is you and them and the space that divides you.”
Renji nodded. “You. And them. And the space that divides you,” she repeated. Her blue fingers traced the cut lines of my abdominals.
“Yes, we know that you are a great fighter,” Renji said, and she looked up at me and her eyes glittered, “but my mind is hazy as to your prowess as a lover!”
My mouth contorted into a theatrical O of affronted disbelief.
“You cheeky minx!” I made a grab for the lithe and gorgeous djinn, but the woman slipped away like an eel, laughing good-naturedly at me.
“That bath has dulled your speed, Dragonmancer Noctis!” she teased me. “Your muscles are too lax, your mind all soft and unwound.
“Is that right?” I laughed as the naked djinn danced backward with a cat’s grace, her alluring, still wet body catching the light of the magical lamps that had popped into existence when we had opened the door to the meditation room.
“Prove to me that I am wrong!” Renji chuckled, goading me on by pushing her captivating tits together and shaking them at me. “And remind me how your prowess as a lover equals that as a fighter!”
I bounded across the space that had grown between us, leaping clean over a six-foot wooden fighting doll that looked to be moved by a complicated series of levers and chains. The naked Renji ran away from me, and I chased her around a series of slender, gilt posts. The djinn was giggling and gasping as she dodged and jinked away from me. Eventually, I caught her behind a stack of wicker mats, against which leant a collection of fighting poles, and tickled her mercilessly in the ribs.
“Look at me,” I said as Renji writhed breathlessly in my clutches, “a byword of suavity and chivalry usually, and you turn me wild like this! It’s probably pretty unbecoming of guests staying with a Shaykh, you know.”
“And you have such a deep respect for our Shaykh host too,” Renji managed to say between laughs.
I stopped tickling the djinn and pressed her up against the piled stack of wicker mats. The staves that had been leaning against the matts toppled over with a clatter. Renji looked up at me and flashed me that perfect silver smile of hers.
“Damn, you’ve got a set of gnashers on you,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“It has been remarked on,” Renji said coquettishly, in her deep, slow voice.
I
cupped her beautiful face in my hands, my fingers tracing the lines of her ears and the perfect rows of her braids. Then, I kissed her, and my hands slipped down the back of her neck, following the line of her spine, before cupping one tight asscheek in each hand.
“My goodness, but is that how hard they are working at you at the Drako Academy?” I said, pecking at the corners of the djinn’s mouth, while my hands kneaded her buttocks. “You’ve so much to think about that you can’t even remember the magic that we made when we fucked?”
Renji giggled into my mouth, kissing me back with a fierce and careful deliberation. Her tongue flicked out and ran teasingly across my teeth and lips.
My fingers ran across her shapely ass, downward and inward, pulling her tight, full asscheeks apart. I could feel, on the tips of my fingers, the heat coming off Renji’s sex. The knowledge that she was so eager and so ready pushed my own sex-drive up into the red.
“Ah, ah,” Renji scolded me gently, wriggling away. As she backed off, she held my bottom lip gently between her teeth.
I groaned, enjoying the painful pleasure of it.
When Renji released me, I said, “Now, what’s all this playing hard to get bullshit, gorgeous? You know that’s not how we do it.”
Renji gave a little pout. “Not usually, perhaps, but we are in a Shaykh’s palace, Mike, and a lady can’t help but get ideas above her station in such surrounds.”
“Ah, I see,” I said. “So, I treat you like the lady that you are and in return...?”
“And in return,” Renji said, taking my hand and slipping it down her smooth stomach and onto the warm wetness of her pussy, “you get your reward for being such a suave and chivalrous gentleman.”
I could deal with that. Hell, it wasn’t such a bad proposal was it, all things considered?
I ran a finger through Renji’s slippery sex, circling her clit briefly, before pulling it out and sucking on the digit thoughtfully.
“Fine,” I said. “I shall do my best, my lady.”
“Good boy,” Renji said, as sternly and sensuously as any queen. “Now, damned well get on your knees and please me and my uncontrolled passions.”