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displays of affection.”
    â€œBeast.”
    Those eyebrows went up again, dangerously high. His smile turned dark. “Oh, you really don’t want to know how true that is.”
    I felt a tiny little tremor inside. Sometimes, David could be like a pet tiger—glorious and terrible. He wasn’t just a sweet-natured, nice, agreeable guy, although he was certainly capable of being that. It was just that he was capable of anything. Everything. Djinn weren’t fluffy little bunnies you kept as pets, they were dangerous . David was gentle with me, I knew that. But sometimes, occasionally, I would see the vast, dark depths underneath, and I’d get dizzy and breathless.
    And hot. Dear God. Spontaneous-combustion hot.
    He knew, of course. I saw it flash in his eyes.
    I said, “I’m not afraid, you know.”
    His hands—everything about him—went still. Wind brushed over us with curious hands, ruffling my hair, belling his coat. It tasted of ocean. Palm trees rustled and shook out their fronds over our heads.
    â€œMaybe you should be. You don’t know enough about me.”
    Well, he was right. He’d live for eons. He’d seen human civilizations rise and fall. I barely knew a fraction of who David was, and what he was.
    Sometimes I just forgot.
    â€œTry me,” I said. Cherise’s glitter-bright flirting had reminded me, with a chill, that I wasn’t some sweet young girl anymore, and next thing I knew I’d be buying in the Women’s World section where dowdy clothes go to die. Reading Modern Maturity . Learning to tat lace and make scrapple. I wanted to know David. I wanted this to be something bigger and deeper and forever, or as far as my forever could go. “If we’re going to stay together, then you can’t just show me your good side, you know. And I mean it. I’m not afraid.”
    He looked uncommonly solemn, and he didn’t blink. There was a hint of the tiger in those eyes again. “I don’t think you understand what you’re saying.”
    I heaved out a sigh. “Of course I don’t understand. Everything about the Djinn is one big, dark, booga-booga secret, and just because I’ve been one doesn’t mean I got the operating manual—”
    He stilled my lips with his, in a damp, slow, breathless kiss. His hands slid up into my hair, stroking those achingly sensitive places behind my ears, at the nape of my neck . . . I lost my train of thought.
    Which made me jump tracks to another one when he let me up for breath. “We need to get you home.” What that really meant was, to put him back in his bottle—yes, Djinn really had bottles, glass ones; they had to be glass and they had to come with stoppers or a way to seal them, no exceptions. The worst case I’d ever seen had been a soap-bubble thin ornamental glass perfume bottle; it was stored in the Wardens Association vault in the U.N. Building in New York, because that thing would shatter if you so much as gave it a hard look.
    David’s was a somewhat sturdy ornamental kitchen bottle, the blue-glass fancy kind that store flavored oils and decorative grains. I kept it in a very safe place, right in my nightstand drawer next to oils, lotions, and other things I wouldn’t want casual visitors to inventory.
    Which inevitably led to thoughts of my bed, soft sheets, cool soft ocean breezes sighing over my skin . . .
    â€œYes. Let’s go home.” His hands slid over my shoulders, stroked down my arms, and lingered on my hands before letting me go. The heat from him stayed on my skin. Afterimages of light.
    My car was parked over in the far corner of the lot, away from casual door dings. She was a midnight blue Dodge Viper, and I loved her dearly enough for her to qualify as my second-favorite-ever ride. The first-place winner had been a Mustang, also midnight blue, named Delilah, who had gotten scrapped around the time I