His self-deprecation is almost as comforting as the bubble of smoke. Like this, it doesn’t feel like we’re barista and billionaire. Just two people sitting quietly in the dark. “I’ll take the improvement on principle, even if you don’t get full marks,” I reply.
“I am aware that’s a low bar to clear. I’m still grateful to clear it.”
I find myself smiling. It doesn’t surprise me, not anymore. “I’m prepared to grade you generously tonight, Rakan. Don’t waste it.”
When he speaks again, the words hold a strange softness. “Thank you, Iris. For being here, and for staying, even if you didn’t want to.”
“Maybe I wanted to, but I just didn’t realize it,” I blurt out.
He’s standing closer than he was when the smoke began. Or maybe I am. I’m not sure which of us moved. Was the movement a single step or a series of small adjustments? I don’t know that either. But between us, there is only the smoke, while a slow song has begun playing somewhere on its other side.
I’m not stepping back.
“Dance with me, Iris,” Rakan murmurs. “I haven’t asked a person to dance in roughly four hundred years, and I would prefer not to lose my nerve now.”
I already know the answer I’ll give. So does he. But when he closes his fingers around mine, he doesn’t press. He draws me toward him by half a step. His other hand finds the small of my back through the silk, and the heat bleeds through the dress into my spine. I rest my hand on his shoulder.
We begin to move.
Inside the smoke, my whole world becomes focused on him. He’s holding me so close now, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why we haven’t done this before.
I lift my eyes to his. The gold in them has gone darker in the low light.
I let my hand slide from his shoulder to the side of his neck. The skin there is hotter than his hand. His pulse beats once, hard, beneath my fingers.
The song outside is still going. We are still, technically, dancing.
5
Diversion
Rakan
The Obsidian Lounge has been my haunt for longer than I can remember. Night after night, I come here, a ritual Sigurd and I forged from a shared whim.
Never in all these years has a song moved me. Never has a dance threatened to crack my composure.
But when I pull Iris’s small body against mine, everything changes. “You smell so good,” I whisper, burying my nose in her hair.
She doesn’t reply, but I don’t need her to. As the song shifts into something more sensual, she curls her body closer to mine.It feels like the most natural thing in the world. As natural as wishing is to humans.
We Djinn don’t make wishes. Not for ourselves, and not often. But if we did, I’d probably wish to stay in this moment forever.
I slide my hand lower, down over the slit at her hip. “Tell me to stop, Iris,” I murmur, pausing just over the edge of the dress. “Because if you don’t… I’ll make my own guesses.”
She doesn’t say a word. Instead, she lets out a small gasp, an answer that needs no language. I slide my hand beneath the silk and along the inside of her thigh.
Three thousand years of granting wishes have taught me to recognize want in all its forms. I’ve heard it pleaded, whispered, screamed, demanded. I’ve heard it reduced to begging and escalated into fury. Iris’s want is different. Silent, in some ways. She isn’t asking at all. Instead, she is letting me find out.
And what I find is that she is drenched. Underneath her dress, her panties are soaked in her juices. The realization goes straight to my groin, an aching throb I would prefer not to examine on a crowded dance floor.
“How long, Iris?” I ask, and the question comes out harsher than I’d like. “How long have you been wanting this?”
The smoke around us thickens on its own, and I let it happen. I need a moment to focus before I have to look at her again.
“Don’t ask me that here, Rakan,” she replies, her voice low and unsteady. “Take me somewhere I can answer you properly.”
I don’t need to be told twice. I hold her even closer and wrap the smoke around us both.
