“Aha! So what you’re saying is I’m an easy mark because I played the field.”
“Yes!” She jabbed a finger into the air to punctuate her point. “And let’s not be coy. They named the field after you. And now you’ve ruined everything. How dare you be celibate, Sloan Flaherty.” She shook her finger at him. “I feel like you did this just to spite me.” Or maybe he was just lying to keep from hurting her feelings . . . God, that would suck. If she couldn’t get the man who’d sleep with Satan to sleep with her, she might as well just forget foraging the veils for her hunky genie soul mate.
But Sloan interrupted her thoughts with a very serious statement. “I did it because my life needed to change.”
“Why?” Why did it need to change when she needed it not to change?
“I’m not answering why until you answer why. You brought the dirty up first. You tell me why you suddenly want to have sex when, if I get even a little too close to you, you all but run away from me. Talk or forget it.”
She was just going to be honest. He didn’t need to know the whys and wherefores, just that they were. “Sometimes when I’m caught off guard, I panic a little. More importantly, intimacy is difficult for me, really difficult for me. But I’ve worked long and hard to get it together and—and . . .”
He folded his arms under his chin and shot her a playful smile. “I guess you haven’t worked hard enough.”
“What?”
“A one-night stand does not intimacy make, Jeannie. It’s meaningless, and I don’t have meaningless sex anymore.”
“That’s so unfair.”
“I didn’t make that choice just to piss you off. I made it for a reason, and I made it long before I met you.”
“I’m still considering it was just to spite me. I just thought . . .”
He gave her a knowing smile, the muscles of his biceps flexing when he shook his finger at her. “I know what you thought. You thought, because I was a real chick hustler, I’d require very little of you when I was done banging my gong. No fuss, no muss. Then you could run right back to the cave you hide in that keeps you from having a relationship.”
B-I-N-G-O. “Yes!” Yes, yes, yessss.
“Well, guess what, Jeannie Carlyle? Not gonna happen. It’s obvious you have issues with intimacy. You have clear issues with men in general, judging by the way you cringe if I so much as brush against you when you don’t see it coming. And FYI, I hate it. I want to annihilate whoever made you feel like this. It’s keeping you from a lot of pretty great things. But guess what else? No can do. If you don’t want to share with me what made you so afraid, if you think I’m somehow unworthy of your trust, you’re not gettin’ a piece of this.” He slapped his ass, sharp and jarring. His delicious, hard, tight, encased-in-boxer-briefs ass.
“Is it because I’m not blonde?”
“It’s because I want making love to you to count.”
Jeannie’s breath caught in her throat and her stomach tingled. “So you’ve thought about it?” His honesty made her feel less like she was a desperate Sloan groupie and more like she was on equal footing with him.
Sloan nodded his dark head, reaching for her fingers. “Oh, you bet your sweet genie ass. I’ve thought about it every night since I met you.”
“Which is all of two nights.”
“That’s a lot in One-night Stand-ville,” he teased, his breath fanning her face.
Her throat began to constrict. Fear. Effin’ fear controlled everything she did, said, thought. But she just couldn’t. Not yet . . . “I can’t talk about it, Sloan. I just can’t.”
“And I can’t be your one-night stand,” he drawled with finality.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “You so suck right now.”
Sloan caught the tip of it and chuckled, the gesture somehow intimate. “Back atcha.”
“I can’t believe you went and got morals. Did you shop online for them?”
“I can’t believe you went and forgot yours.”
“Maybe I never had them.”
“Maybe you’re a liar.”
“I chose you because I thought it would be uncomplicated, and I could trust you to be gentle with me.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “Oh, you can trust me to be gentle with you. I’d never hurt you, Jeannie. Never. I’m going to assume the animal that did this to you really did some number on you, but I’m not an animal, despite my origins. I’m also unavailable for one night.”
“Would you consider two if I like it?” Her grin was mischievous even if her bravado was shaky.
“Two’s still closer to one than I’d like. And make no mistake, Jeannie. You’ll like it.”
She shivered in response to his confident words, tucking her chin to the bed to keep its trembling hidden. “I can’t know that unless you let me try it out for myself,” she taunted, letting herself run her fingers over his forearm.
He caught them and brought them to his lips, whispering a kiss over her fingertips. A hot, promising kiss. “Or unless you tell me what happened to you, and we work through it—together.”
She just didn’t understand. “You hardly know me. Why is what you think happened to me so important to you?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes pierced hers for a moment, and she was suddenly grateful it was dark in the room. “I just know that’s how it has to be with you, or it can’t be at all.”
“How definitive.”
Sloan smiled, obviously pleased with himself. “Yeah.”
“So are you proud of yourself for turning temptation down?”
“I’ll probably be in the shower later regretting that I turned temptation down, but for now, I’m feeling pretty good about it.”
“I feel like an idiot.”
“How long did it take you to work up the courage to ask?”
“Does the time frame matter?”
“Not really.”
“It was a little impulsive on my part. In fact, it was a lot impulsive. I don’t typically make decisions without thinking them through a hundred times over. So thanks for crushing my first attempt at impulsivity,” she teased.
But Sloan’s expression was serious. “I’m not asking you that to humiliate you, Jeannie. I’m asking because I want to know how long it took for you to be comfortable enough to do it.”
She didn’t know if she’d ever be totally comfortable in an intimate setting or requesting intimacy, but semi-comfortable wouldn’t upset her. Yet, even though she’d been turned down, she wanted to pat herself on the back and call her therapist to tell her she’d finally taken a chance. “Comfortable? Nothing about this rejection is comfortable.”
He shook his head again, his luscious lips pursed. “I’m not rejecting you. I’m requiring you to give me something more of yourself. If and when we make love, Jeannie, I want you to enjoy every nasty, dirty, sweaty, hot moment of it, and I want you to do it because you want something more than just some relief from a long stretch of lonesome. I’m not a guinea pig. I’m a man who’s interested in making love to a woman. A woman who wants more than just a dip of her frightened toes back in the intimacy pool only to yank them out if the water gets too rough. I want a woman who wants to explore something deeper. You’re that woman. If you decide you want to join me in a venture like that—I won’t be far away.”
Her heart raced at his words. Words she was inclined to believe and she couldn’t quite figure why they were so believable, coming from a player like Sloan. “I don’t want anything serious, Sloan. I can’t get involved. I just wanted to attempt to reenter a world I haven’t dabbled in for a long time with someone I’ve come to like. Someone who isn’t or wasn’t afraid to be honest about who he is . . . Uh, was.”
He cupped her jaw, making her want to curl her cheek into his warm palm. “Can’t or won’t
, Jeannie?”
“Maybe a little of both.”
He brushed her hair from her eyes with a tender finger. “This is killing me, you know.”
“Saying no to sex?”
Sloan laughed, but it wasn’t the warm chuckle it had been ten minutes ago. “No. What’s killing me is that you’ve equated an intimate relationship with the loss of your independence—like you lose you or something. Don’t ask me how I know that’s what freaks you out. I just do. You seem to think that somehow, if you become involved with anyone, they’ll take everything away from you and make it theirs. That it’ll be something you can’t ever get back. That’s not how deep, equal relationships are. At least from what I’m told—or what I’ve seen with Marty and Keegan. You saw it, too. They had a little power struggle over OOPS, but Marty asserted herself and told my bossy brother he couldn’t have what was hers. He realized he’d gone too far and overstepped into a place Marty’s damn protective of and backed off. His temper flared and he spoke irrationally. She checked it. They worked it out. End of. That’s what I’ve observed as healthy.”
Her next admission was brutally honest, and the first time she’d shared her feelings with anyone other than when she was in therapy. “I’m not as afraid of you as I am of me.”
“Care to explain? Or is that asking too much again?”
Her lips trembled and her heart crashed in her chest, but she was determined to just spit it out. “I’m afraid that thing most women have, the thing that keeps them from losing themselves entirely to someone, is something I don’t have. The thing Marty has. She told Keegan no without an ounce of fear. And to me that said she’s secure about her place in his life, but even more, she’s secure with herself. I don’t have that alarm bell that says, ‘No. You can’t take this from me. It’s mine. Live with it.’ In light of that, I’d almost rather be a one-night stand than become involved.” She swallowed hard when he leaned back and glanced at her with obvious confusion.
“Then we both have our lines in the sand, don’t we?”
She shot Sloan a tentative smile. “Couldn’t we blur them a little?”
“Not this time. Go big or go home.”
“You’re a stupidhead.”
“You’re a beautiful woman with a dilemma.”
“I could have just lied to you to get you into bed, had wild, uninhibited sex with you, and given you the I’ll-call-you-in-the-morning routine. You know that game, right?”
He winked. “Oh, I know that game. I owned that game, which is why I’d have never fallen for it. You can’t pull that with me because I’m the master—you’re nothing but a noob to this rodeo. Know why I know that?”
Her chest rose up and down with laughter. “Werewolves can read souls, too?”
“No, ex-shitheads like me can read when someone’s lying like you. You’d have failed miserably. Not to mention, there’d be no getting away from me even if you did have regrets. Or have you forgotten we’re a magical genie couple.”
There was that. It was why she’d asked in the first place. Because being near him all the damn time had awakened sparks of desire she hoped to fan into a flame. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Sloan dropped a light kiss on her cheek. “Then clearly you didn’t think this through to the end. Oh, and do me a favor? The next time you want to sleep with me—look me in the eye and ask me. When you can look me in the eye and tell me you want me as much as I want you is when I might reconsider.” He dropped back to the floor and sighed. The rustle of the covers below her was a signal he was preparing to sleep, and suddenly, their conversation was over.
And to think she’d opened up a brand-new package of flannel pajamas for this nonevent. Her last-minute plans to woo Sloan to her bed of iniquity had made her do it.
Still, she smiled.
She’d done it. She’d propositioned a man all by herself and he’d said no.
Yay, healing.
CHAPTER
10
“So where are we?” Sloan asked from beneath a clear, cold November night sky. He eyed the glass front of the door with discreet silver etching.
“We’re at the Jeannie-needs-therapy store. A place where she can forget that the king genie, and probably the only man on the planet who can help us, has been nabbed.” Oh, and that Sloan wouldn’t sleep with her. He’d probably sleep with a zombie—just not if that zombie was her.
The next morning and afternoon had been filled with Nekaar’s unsuccessful attempts to help her control her magic and teach Mat how to fly and become invisible. He’d brought the Djinn Book of Magic or something like that, complete with laws and bylaws and more laws. A book that also contained spells she’d have to learn, curses she should avoid, and even a section devoted to choosing the right harem pants for your frame. It was harder than studying for the SATs.
They’d begun with small things like wishing her dead plants back to life. According to Nekaar, she should be able to harness her magic and keep it in control.
Jeannie had told him to tell that to the jungle she’d created in her bedroom, complete with a palm tree. Her fingers didn’t allow her to keep anything in the air for more than a couple of seconds before it broke or grew flapping wings. And when she’d attempted to curse her—as Nekaar called it—fashion-apocalypse wardrobe and change it to something cute and flirty, it caught fire.
Mat hadn’t fared any better with flying. He could only top three miles an hour, according to the speedometer attached to him, and getting him started was on par with attaching jumper cables to a dead battery.
He chugged and sputtered, hacked phlegm-filled coughs, left trails of dust, and could only stay in the air for less than a minute. And forget invisibility. He was as invisible as an elephant in the room.
There was lots of lavender smoke, a whole lot of swearing, and the end result? She sucked at being a genie and her sidekick magic carpet really was brokeback. Nekaar had assured her it was just practice, and after more lessons, both she and Mat would excel at their new skill set, but Jeannie had her doubts. If she didn’t get control of this madness soon, for sure she was going to minimally create the apocalypse.
The long day had finally taken its toll on her and she needed to walk, not just to take care of business, but to let off some steam and fight her damn caged-tiger demons. Risking someone might make an errant wish while she was in public troubled her, but Nekaar assured her he would hover from his realm and protect any innocent bystanders by creating a spell that shielded her from granting a single wish.
But that spell would only last for a couple of hours, he informed her; making haste was advised. Yet, Jeannie had no choice but to do what she planned to do next.
Jeannie yanked the door to the store open with determination, trudging in with Sloan in tow. Soft music played, adding to the atmosphere of the seductively dim lighting.
His eyebrow rose when his eyes instantly went to the worst possible display. “Dildos?”
She grabbed aimlessly at a package that read, THE CRIPPLER II. “You have an aversion to sparklies? Or is it the color pink?”
Sloan looked confused. “No. I just . . .”
“You just what? Thought that ugly girls don’t like to wear pretty lingerie or masturbate?” Oh! Oh, yes. She’d said it. Anything to keep her cover.
He leaned into her, his whisper silky and hot, his body big and radiating the sort of warmth that almost made her purr. “No. I just thought purple was more in your color wheel.” He looked at the display and grabbed The Crippler II in purple.
Okay. He won this round of lewd and lascivious.
Putting his hands on her shoulders and pulling her flush to him, Sloan eyed the racks of lacy underwear, row upon row of lingerie in pastels, and bras with fuzzy marabou on them. “I like,” he said, with a smile in his voice.
She waved a dismissive hand up at him a
nd ran her fingers over an ivory camisole like she cared what kind of fabric it was made of. “And to think I so worried you’d rather be at the army-navy store.”
His smile was deliciously amused when she turned and pulled from his embrace. “So you’re into this kind of stuff?”
Jeannie gave him an uncomfortable shrug. “Sort of.” Total lie. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought anything but Hanes underwear. The ones that didn’t give you a wedgie were some of her personal favorites. This stuff was all too revealing and much more suited to someone who had far more confidence than she ever would.
But she’d needed to get Sloan away from her house, and somewhere she could call Fullbright at a location where Sloan’s big wolfie ears couldn’t hear her do it—yet still manage to be in their accepted range of coupledom.
How she’d explain Fullbright when he showed up with guns blazing was a whole other problem she couldn’t dwell on. But he had to be kept informed. If Victor was on the hunt again, the hell he’d hurt more people while she was still alive to prevent it. If he was looking for her, he was looking for all of them.
She grabbed a bunch of whatever lacey item was in front of her and turned to Sloan, who was watching her intently. Her face was red. She just knew it. After last night’s conversation, looking at lingerie made it appear as though she were baiting him.
But she knew the dressing rooms here, and they’d afford her just the privacy she’d need to make her call. So let Sloan think what he wanted. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to go try these on. I think I can get into the dressing room and still manage to be within our range. You chick watch, okay? Or better still, imagine this”—she held up a teeny tiny scrap of silk—“on a hot blonde. Dream away, lover. I’ll be right back.”
He slid his big body into a chair in front of a set of mirrors and smiled again. Clearly, a store of this nature was like homecoming to him. “You bet.”
The Accidental Genie Page 19