Read Windfall for Free Online Page B

mouth.
    We fell onto the bed with a bouncing jolt. I didn’t need to undress him; where my hands landed, his clothes just misted away to reveal an incredibly beautiful expanse of flawless golden skin. His eyes turned vague, half-lidded, as I stroked my fingers over his chest and down. His muscles tensed underneath them, corded cable.
    He rolled us over, his weight balanced on top of me. I couldn’t stop an involuntary arch in my back, and once I saw the answering glitter in his eyes I kept moving my hips. He moved back. Long, slow, hot torture.
    â€œYes,” I whispered.
    He kissed me. Not romantic, this time. Demanding. Driven by something I didn’t fully understand. I’d never seen him like this before, full of a kind of frantic hunger, as if he wanted to consume me, possess me.
    Own me.
    This wasn’t equal. It couldn’t be equal, because I still held his bottle, and I’d claimed him. It was a master-slave relationship, no matter how nice the master, how willing the slave. It bothered me.
    Just at this moment, I wondered if it bothered him, too.
    He was too weak. If I set him free, he’d fade into smoke and hunger. Lose himself.
    I couldn’t let that happen. Right or wrong, I couldn’t let it happen.
    Â 
    I lay awake, later, curled against his warmth as he drew lazy magical patterns on my back. They must have been magical. Every place his hand traveled left pools of pulsing silver light inside of me. Parts of my body ached. Other parts tingled and burned. There was a bright, sun-hot throb on my neck, and another several on the insides of my thighs, and I felt as if I’d been completely, breathtakingly destroyed. If that wasn’t being totally possessed, I couldn’t imagine how much more I could take without shattering.
    His hand glided down to the small of my back and stayed there for a couple of beats, and I felt a very, very small stirring inside.
    I turned my head and looked at him. He didn’t meet my eyes.
    â€œWe need to talk,” I said.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œI don’t understand how this is supposed to work.” I rolled over, took his hand, and placed it over my womb.
    And we both felt the stirring inside. His eyes flared, then went dark.
    â€œIt’s been three months,” I said. “Nothing’s changed.”
    â€œYou’re not—” He stopped, shook his head, and those long, gorgeous fingers stroked gently over my skin. Caressing me, but caressing inside me, too. “It’s hard to explain.”
    â€œBut I’m pregnant . Right?”
    â€œThat’s what’s hard to explain. She won’t—grow like a human child. She’s like a seed, waiting for the sun. Just . . . waiting.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    He didn’t answer that one. “I should have asked you first,” he said, and his hand moved again, drawing silver.
    â€œIt would have been polite, yeah.”
    â€œI did it to protect you.”
    â€œI know.” At the time, it had been the only way he had known to ensure I’d survive a trip to Las Vegas; and facing down the one Djinn he couldn’t protect me from—his best friend, Jonathan. And it had worked, too. Jonathan hadn’t killed me. He’d even shown some signs of thinking I was a little better than pond scum, which was a huge improvement. “Tell me how this is supposed to happen, then.”
    He shook his head again, David-speak for I don’t want to talk about it. I waited him out, watching his face. He finally said, “It may not happen at all. Djinn children are rare. Even then, they’re only born to two Djinn. A Djinn and a mortal . . . it’s not . . . She exists inside you as a potential, but—she may never survive.”
    â€œJonathan said she could only be born if you die.”
    His eyes slowly came up to meet mine. “That’s . . . probably true. We come from death,