by Marie Hall
“You are very unlike what I expected,” he said softly.
She sighed. “Stop trying to be my ‘friend.’ What is it you really want?”
“I want much,” he said unapologetically, “but perhaps for now I simply wish to talk.”
“You wish it”—her lips tipped into a large smile—“do you?”
“Ha.” He held up a finger. “Let’s not be hasty. I’ll have to start minding my words around you. You’re quite devious.”
Mood turning suddenly serious, she nodded. “These are the rules, as I must give them to every master. I cannot kill for you. I cannot make anyone fall in love with you. And I cannot take you back in time.”
“Good thing I have no need of any of that, then.”
“Well, I’m sure I’ll be finding out soon enough what it is you do want. You all always tell me in the end.” So saying, she lay back, spreading her arms to either side of her and closed her eyes. A tiny smile graced her full lips.
The creature intrigued him. She’d been pleasant, oddly, even enjoyable to talk with. If there was one thing Robin prided himself on, it was his ability to read a person. To know immediately whether they meant him ill, or could be someone he’d depend on.
Of course, he’d been wrong once before. So wrong, in fact, that it’d cost him almost everything.
She was still, not moving, just breathing deeply, and it was that stillness that entranced him.
“What are you doing?” he finally asked.
“Have you ever been trapped in darkness for so long you thought you’d never feel warmth again?” she asked without opening her eyes.
Unable to resist from touching the tendril of hair that’d slipped across her breast, he answered in a heated whisper, “No.”
The touch of her skin beneath his was electric. Her eyes snapped open then, snaring his own, asking without words what he was doing.
In truth, Robin didn’t honestly know. He pulled his hand back as though it was nothing, as though he’d not felt the shock of her move through all the way through him.
“What did you do to me?” he asked with a voice grown hoarse.
She sucked in a breath, scooting away from him, as if to gain distance between them. Bits of grass stuck out in her hair when she sat up.
Robin curled his fingers into his lap.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered breathlessly.
The genie wasn’t unaffected by him—the thought was strangely satisfying.
“Hm.” He snorted. “I seriously doubt that. You know something.”
She nibbled the corner of her lush lower lip with straight, white teeth, making his gut clench with the need to replace those teeth with his tongue, his mouth.
Her breathing increased and blood flooded her cheeks. The air between them was suddenly fraught with tension, with their mounting need.
He cleared his throat, glancing away, reaching for a safer topic. “Stories abound about me and my men, most of them patently false.”
“Hm. That sounds interesting.” She grinned. “You know all about me, I’m sure.”
“Not really, sweetling, I know very little about you, in fact.”
She shrugged a delicate shoulder. “You know more about me than I do about you. You want to know my story, I want to know who you are.”
He hiked up one leg, dropping an elbow across it in a casual pose. “I could always just wish it out of you, keep my true story a secret.”
A sly grin crept across her face. “Yes, you could. But what a waste of a wish.”
Robin chuckled. “True enough.”
Why was it so easy to talk with her? Instead of questioning her, trying to figure out what’d happened back there, or delve deeper into her story, he was the one sharing his story. And if it weren’t for the fact that he could see the truth, could understand that she meant him no harm, he’d walk away now. Lock her back inside her lamp and toss her down a pool just as John kept telling him to do.
But he couldn’t, because being with her, talking to her, it felt right. Vital, even. It was all he could not to give in to the overwhelming temptation to touch her.
“As you well know, and nearly gave John a heart attack over, I am Robin Hood.”
She laughed. And not just a simpering little lady laugh, either, but a full-scale eruption of it. He tipped a brow.
Her eyes grew wide as she held up a hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh.” She giggled harder. “It’s just that”—she squeezed her eyes shut, knuckling a tear from her eye—“it’s just…well…” She shrugged, not finishing her thought.
He said nothing.
“And the other two? Merry Men, I assume.”
He nodded. Why was she laughing?
She picked up giggling where she’d left off. “Oh, you have no idea,” she huffed between breaths. “This is too funny. Way too…oh God, you’re pulling my leg, right? You have to be pulling my leg.”
Frowning, failing to see the humor in any of this, he cocked his head. “Pet, if you don’t watch yourself, I may just forget my olive branch and be the bastard you thought I was.”
“No. No, it’s not that.” She held up a hand, her face still red from laughter, and hanging on to her stomach as though in pain.
“Then what is it?” he snapped.
“Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Mel Brooks?” she finally said, gleam in her eyes going dull at his blank look. “Right. Okay, well, it was one of my dad’s favorite movies when I was growing up. Anyway, never mind. Wasn’t laughing at you, just, you know, whatever.” She rolled her wrist.
“Your father?” He ignored the “movie” thing for a moment. “Genies have no fathers.”
“Oh, I have a father. And a mother, too. In fact, I was born on Earth.”
That was a part of her story he’d never heard. “Tell me your story, genie, and leave out none of the details.”
Chapter 7
The man confused her, Nixie watched as he walked over the hill toward the men he’d left to camp several yards away from them.
His eyes had been distant and his thoughts his own, leaving her feeling perplexed by his sudden serious turn of thought.
Nixie had done as he’d asked, and even if he’d not compelled her to do it, she believed she might have still shared all of it with him. There was no way for her to really describe what it was she felt when she was around him. But from the moment they’d sailed through the air and held hands, something had passed between them. Something she could hardly comprehend, but it was like…she needed him.
Not for love.
Not for sex, either. Though yeah, she totally had the hots for him. Gah, that man was the definition of her kryptonite. Open a dictionary, look up Nixie’s Achilles heel, and she suspected a picture of a man that looked exactly like Robin would have been right next to it.
But it wasn’t just his looks, or the way he talked, or how hot and cold he sometimes was…there was something, a rightness about him that made her want to be totally open with him.
It actually freaked her out a little bit.
Robin had listened intently, pausing her telling of it every so often only for clarification. The man had literally seemed to hang onto her every word and every idea she’d had about who he was when they’d first met had been thrown on its axis. He was nothing like the Mel Brooks version of Robin Hood.
Intelligence had burned in his eyes and when he’d asked her questions there always seemed to be reasons behind it, though hell if she could make sense of why it mattered who her father actually was, or the fact that her family tree boasted of having a fairy godmother in it.
Robin was a master at interrogation. She’d found herself telling him everything. Literally every little tiny detail of herself. Where she’d lived, whom she’d dated, how many masters had come before him. Why she’d killed Josiah as she had. Everything—it’d all come pouring out of her. It was only after she’d answer that she wondered if somehow he was compelling her to do it, becau
se why in the world had she told him her food likes and dislikes? That mattered not at all to her being his genie.
She frowned, rubbing at her temple.
One thing was certain: Robin didn’t strike her as the type who’d be asking for the typical wishes of riches and power, though what it was he did actually want, she was no closer to figuring out.
Which made him both intriguing and very, very perplexing. Robin had left her to hang back alone with her lamp. Not that she could do anything about it. Her lamp had been rubbed by him; ergo she was bound to him. Period.
The sky was now completely dark, and the forest rang out with the sounds of night creatures on the prowl. Closing her eyes, Nixie listened to the sounds she’d secretly feared for decades she’d never hear again.
The absence of it made her appreciate it even more now. The wind smelled so much crisper. The sky was a deeper shade of blue than she’d ever remembered it being before. The grass beneath her was soft as velvet. And that apple, the first bite of food she’d eaten in seventy-nine and a half years—thanks to Robin, she now knew how long she’d been trapped—it’d been ambrosia.
The snap of a twig had her opening her eyes. It was Robin, back with a lit torch and a plate of roasted meat in hand.
“Take this.” He thrust the plate at her distractedly.
Too tired to take offense, Nixie took it. The rich, oily scent of it made her stomach growl.
“I’ve eaten. You may have whatever you want,” he said as he walked a perimeter around them, gathering up twigs and other things he could burn.
Nixie didn’t have to be told twice. She ripped off one of its hind legs and bit down. At a guess, she’d say the meat was rabbit. It settled crispy and sweet on her tongue, tasting slightly of grass, but still delicious.
Nix was working on her second leg when he finally spoke up.
“You’ve given me much to think about.”
His blue eyes pulsed like neon in the night. It was unnerving and even slightly sexy. They weren’t always glowing either, that was the strange thing about it. Almost like the color was tied to his emotions.
The meat in her mouth suddenly didn’t taste so delicious anymore. Setting her plate aside, she wiped the back of her mouth.
“Did you compel me earlier, Robin?” She’d had no intention of asking the question, but the longer she thought on it, the more sense it made.
“And if I said yes?” The light of the flame drew shadows and hollows upon his face, making her feel slightly breathless and out of sorts.
The man was undeniably attractive.
“How?”
“It’s all in the eyes.” He smirked.
He didn’t even seem contrite about it. The man was really annoying sometimes.
“Why? None of what you asked me seems all that important—”
He held up a finger. “I learned you know very little of Kingdom. The rules, the way we govern ourselves. You’re bull-headed, and prone to taking offense easily—”
She gasped, mouth falling open, ready to rip him a new one.
Full lips stretching into a satisfied smile, he nodded. “Am I wrong?”
At her silence he continued.
“You still ache for the comforts of home, but the banishment has lessened the pain a degree. You’ve now gotten to the stage in your curse where you’ve accepted your fate. You’re not happy about it, but you’re willing to deal with it, though you still count down the days to your release. You’re a genie without a compass, you were tossed into our world, and know very little of who you are or how to behave yourself. Which makes you easily led—”
“All of that from what types of food I like to eat and where I used to live—you think way too highly of yourself,” she snapped.
“You granted one of your masters a bottomless pit of sweets. You took her literally at her word. Most genies are duplicitous tricksters, so much so that anyone who owns you knows they must think long and hard on how they should phrase a wish, and yet you give them all they want and more.”
She scowled, breathing just a little bit harder. “You’re a bastard. And now you won’t get what you want. So thanks for the heads up.”
“Already been established, but in fact, I’m not trying to be one now. And yes, pet, I will get what I want.” He leaned back, resting the weight of his body on the log behind him, confident and sure in his assertions, and she hated him just a little bit for it.
“Why run the risk of telling me all this? Don’t you know it’s just as likely to make me harden my heart against you?”
“Because I no longer believe the stories of you are true. Granted, you did kill a man, but I’m sure I would have done the same had I been in your shoes.”
Flustered by the sudden, bright glow of his eyes, she glanced off to her left. “What have the stories said about me?” she finally asked a second later.
“That you’re a beacon of death. Many have searched for you, genie, but twice as many have chosen to let you rot in your prison, hoping you were never released.”
Those words stung. Silly that they should bother her, but they did. “So why tempt fate, what if I was the demon of the stories?”
Reaching into his shirt he pulled out another apple. Her mouth watered at the sight of it.
“Where in the world do you keep hiding those things?” she asked, there’d been no lump under his shirt, she knew because she couldn’t seem to stop herself from staring at his chest, remembering the way the muscles slid and moved as he’d walked earlier.
Nixie wetted her lips.
He tossed her the apple. “Magic pocket. If it can fit inside, I can wish for it.”
She took a bite and it was as sweet and crunchy as she remembered the last one being.
“As to you being the demon, well, it was a risk I was willing to take.”
“You say I’m soft,” she murmured a moment later, “and I’ll give you that, maybe I am, I haven’t granted as many wishes as others, but I’ve seen enough to know these things rarely end well. You want a piece of advice, don’t wish for things, even when I grant them. They rarely turn out the way you’d like. Sometimes what we need most is what we already have.”
It was his turn to frown.
“I’m not an idiot, genie, I’m not swayed by avarice.”
She swallowed her bite of apple. “Then tell me once and for all, what is it you want?”
He hesitated only a second before answering, “The keys to my kingdom.” Then shoving off the ground, he got up and paced for several minutes and it pained her to see the contemplative look on his face. To recognize that she might be the one known as a demon, but he’d been haunted by them.
It was clear in his tight posture, in the way his eyes stared off into the distance. She’d never really cared before what the wishes would be. Never wondered. Because they were almost always the same.
But with Robin, she did wonder. Did want to know what was going through his head.
With a sigh, he shoved a hand through his hair and resumed his seat. “If you’re ready, then come settle down, pet, we’ve an early morning.” He patted the grass beside where he’d made his bed for the night, and then promptly rolled over, as if she were no longer worthy of his attention.
Disappointed in him didn’t even begin to describe how his words made her feel. Feeling just a little on the rebellious side, she crossed her arms, determined not to get into her lamp until she was good and ready to do it. She would not lie beside him, even though that was clearly what he intended.
“Not greedy, huh?” Nixie muttered, peering into the darkness where he lay. They were all the same, even the ones who believed themselves honorable. With a disgusted sigh, she slipped into her lamp and the exhaustion of the day helped her to forget where she laid her head that night.
~*~
Screams and shouts were what woke Robin up from a restless sleep.
Shaking the dreams away, he sat up, staring at the inkblot dotted landscape warily. The night was unusually
silent. He frowned.
He could have sworn he’d heard something. But maybe it’d just been—
“Release me!”
The sound of her voice was like a jolt of adrenaline. He’d had the lamp tucked under his shirt. He patted his chest, and that was when the panic really gripped him. Where was the lamp? Where was the genie?
Mouth grown suddenly dry, still not even certain what was going on, he raced across the bridge and toward his men’s camp. Why was the genie with his men? What had happened last night?
He could hardly remember anything for the fog in his head.
“Let me go!” Nixie screamed even louder. “Just listen to me, just listen!”
“No, no words. I told Robin you were a devil, and whether he believes me or not, I’ll be saving him from himself.” John’s raspy voice sliced through the night.
Pulse pounding out of control, Robin sprinted into camp, breathing heavily as his muddied brain tried to make sense of the chaos before him.
The genie was on the ground with John straddling her waist, a furious look upon his face as he kept his hand clamped on her shoulders. Behind them stood Maurice and Thrane, their faces bloodied and bruised.
“What is this?” Robin snapped, finally able to speak around the thousands of thoughts rolling through his head.
John glowered. “I wake up to discover the genie walking amongst us, the lamp in our camp, and Thrane and Maurice trading blows. She’s beguiled us all, turned us against each other—”
“I haven’t!” she screamed, voice thick and gravelly as she kicked out her feet. Turning to look at Robin, her eyes silently pleaded with him. “Why do you think I didn’t slip back into my lamp when I had the chance? I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Maurice and Thrane glowered at the ground, both men silent and breathing heavily. What the devil had happened? And how had he slept through it?
“Release her.” Robin turned to John.
John looked aghast. “You cannot be—”
“Now.” Robin’s tone brooked no argument.
John snapped his hand back as if burned, then slowly stood, but still glared down at the furious genie.