Awaken to Pleasure (2 page)

Boone’s booted foot nudged Moira’s ankle. The resulting knife of pain brought her back to her senses. She shoved at his chest, hard, until he eventually rolled off her and they both lay on the ground, panting, shielding their eyes from the late-afternoon sun.

“What the hell, buddy?” Moira knew that, after the apocalypse, most people had begun to indulge in the physical comfort of sex whenever, and wherever, they could. Hell, she’d been one of them, for the rioting sense of a blistering orgasm made her forget, for a moment, the horror of losing all that she had loved in the brilliant, horrifying fires of magic. But she had moved past that need now, or so she thought, and she was damned if she’d fuck some strange man in the sand right outside of Gale’s little store. The perverted little man would watch the whole thing through his window, no doubt. Yuck.

She pulled herself to a sitting position and dusted sand from her cloak before turning accusing eyes to the slightly hurt face of the man who called himself Boone.

“Is that not what you wished for?” he asked, scratching his head. “You rubbed the lamp and called me. You came through the door and pushed me to the ground; I thought that that was your wish.” He seemed to think that this was a genuinely sufficient explanation and blinked, startled, at Moira’s reaction.

“You’re crazy,” she informed him briskly as she pulled herself to a standing position. “Absolutely certifiable. What lamp? I don’t have a lamp. And what’s all this wish nonsense?” She shook her head, disgruntled, as she heaved her rice sack back over her shoulder.

“But you touched me. That communicates your wish to fornicate.” Boone seemed genuinely puzzled, and Moira wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to scream.

“Look, buddy, I touched you because I was leaving, and you were in my way. I am not going to fornicate with you, as you so quaintly phrased it, because you stopped in for a sack of rice and thought that you might get a bit of a bonus from the female. So good riddance.” Muttering under her breath about idiotic, good-looking men, she stalked off.

* * *

Boone pressed his lips together as he watched her walk away. He hadn’t understood half of the words she’d hurled at him, but he knew from her tone that none of them had been complimentary.

And he’d felt…strange…pressing up against her that way. He’d watched her since she was little, after all, and that was something to think on.

But there were stirrings in the wind. When he’d heard them, he’d known that it was time for him to come to her again. He had seduced his last mistress into wishing him where Moira would find him.

And to keep the girl safe, she had to think of him as nothing more than what he was—a genie who granted wishes.

Not the banished witch destined to keep humanity’s only hope safe.

Since most of the women who rubbed the sapphire on the lamp took one look at him and decided that their wish would be that he bring them physical pleasure, the safest disguise was for him to act as he had with the others.

But damn it…despite his best intentions, she had grown into a damn fine woman. He had enjoyed himself as best he could in the arms of those with whom he had no choice but to obey, but here…

Here was a woman he actually wanted. A woman he knew was strong and true, as well as fair of face.

Shading his eyes, he watched her appealing figure grow smaller and smaller as she stalked off into the distance. She had a lovely figure—curvy hips, ample breasts. He sighed, then started after her. Since she hadn’t rubbed the lamp again, he was stuck outside of its cool interior—damn curse—out in the blistering heat, following around a woman whose touch would be tainted with the lie between them.

“Some things are more important than your cock,” he muttered to himself as he stalked his way across the sand. This woman was the one who was prophesized to kill the queen of the witches…and like a multiheaded serpent, once that head was gone, the rest would slowly wither away.

He didn’t know where, or how. But since he was the one who had had the vision, he had known that he was the one destined to keep her safe. Knowing he had only enough power to save one on the night that the witch fires raged, he had chosen to save her.

And for it he had been cursed. Was condemned to live in a bottle, doing as his master or mistress demanded. And some of the things they’d demanded sickened him to the core.

But none had hurt so much as the disgust he had seen on young Moira Connor’s face the night he’d saved her and let her parents die.

As he followed behind Moira, he tried not to torture himself with the sway of her hips.

The best way to keep her safe was to keep their relationship light and sexual, just as he always did. It was his skill—a woman once seduced into his bed would do anything to keep him.

So Moira wouldn’t make a fuss when he stayed close. Close enough to make sure that Shiloh would never find out about her.

And yet, as the winds that blew across the plains carried the whispers of magic to his ears, he sensed he was already too late.

Chapter Two

Moira’s skin was flushed from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Try as she might, she knew that she couldn’t blame the now-setting sun, at least not entirely. No, she’d be lying to herself if she refused to admit that it was the memory of the stranger’s avid mouth on hers, of his hard body pressing her against the ground.

She couldn’t get it out of her head. And, she admitted as she pushed through the force field that kept the witches out of the gilded cage that was Mavi, it was driving her crazy.

She shook her head impatiently as she strode over the muted cobblestones, past the clear pool with its trickling falls. Still, the deep blue of Boone’s eyes haunted her, as if it had been burned into her brain, and the memory spread the burn down, down between her thighs.

It made her uncomfortable, because those eyes reminded her so very much of that horrific night in her past.

But this man was her own age. He wasn’t the one who shared the blame in her parents’ deaths. And yet she still had no business lusting over him. No business thinking of pleasures at all.

She didn’t deserve them.

The streets of the haven were quiet—it was late afternoon, and so most of the residents were just waking up from their late afternoon rests. Her ankle throbbed as she hauled the sack of rice to the door of one of the older women in the haven. Hanna would see that the rice was distributed fairly… and she also wouldn’t question where it came from.

Moira felt the need to take care of others. But she didn’t want to be singled out for doing it.

With a muttered oath, she crossed the last patch of stone to the wooden door of her small thatched hut and stepped gratefully inside, hoping that familiar surroundings and a chance to put down the heavy rice sack and elevate her sore ankle would dissipate the dregs of her odd mood.

Instead, the memory of Boone’s intense azure eyes only reminded her of the other place she had seen that color today. Frowning a bit, she pulled the tarnished bottle out from the depths of her cloak and ran her thumb experimentally over the winking sapphire.

A knock sounded at the same instant that her fingers connected with the royal-hued gem. Curious, she crossed to the entryway and opened the door, the bottle still cradled in the palm of her hand.

On her doorstep stood Boone. He was sweaty, dusty and bare to the waist, and Moira felt her heart skip a beat as she eyed the rugged appeal of the man.

As her hormones went crazy, rioting around her in veins, she tried to remember that the intense sexual tug that she felt for him was likely just the result of going so long without the physical act. But as her eyes dipped to trace the planes of his flat belly, which was lightly dusted with golden hair, her mouth went dry and she had to physically take a step back to restrain herself.

More than that, the sight of him brought her a calm that she hadn’t felt since…before. Before her life and her world had been changed forever.

Boone eyed the silver in her hand and gave a snort of disgust, which brought Moira to her senses; she realized that she had been staring, mouth agape, like a baboon. “You couldn’t have rubbed the sapphire just a little bit earlier?” he grumbled, and her spine stiffened at his offensive tone.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to follow me to my home and then to insult me,” she informed him, icicles dripping off of her every word. “And I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, at any rate.” Planting her hands on her hips, she narrowed her eyes in a glare that would have had most men running for cover. Boone, however, merely snorted again, cast her a seductive smile that seemed more than a little bit practiced and pushed past her, making his way toward the wooden bathing tub that sat in the corner of the room.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” She scurried after him as he bent over the water, splashing it over his sweaty face. Dripping, he turned to face her, his expression caught halfway between a sneer and sheer puzzlement.

“I do not understand you,” he told her, reaching for the rough linen cloth that hung on the wall above the tub. Scrubbing it over his face, he cocked his head. “You summon me, and yet you do not want me. And you are angry. No woman has ever done this before. If you do not wish for sexual pleasures, then what is it that you wish for?”

At his words, Moira would have sworn that she could feel the nerve endings in her brain sizzle. As the confusion played over her face, Boone sighed.

“Because you have the lamp, you are to be granted one wish. And you must make your wish within one day. If you do not, you will lose your privileges, and I will cease to exist.”

He reached out to twine a strand of Moira’s soft curls between his fingers as he spoke. Her breath caught at the touch; she struggled to listen. And a struggle it was, for his words made no sense to her at all.

“There is a connection between us, is there not? More so than what I have felt with any other woman.”

Moira was startled by Boone’s directness. She was rarely caught off guard…and she didn’t know quite what to do about it. So she found herself stammering out an answer. “It might be that that’s true. But it doesn’t matter.”

Her well-trained eyes caught a hint of guilt flashing over the man’s face, but when he held out a hand, sparked a small blue flame in it, she forgot all about it.

“Witch fire.” The screams of her parents echoed in Moira’s head as she rapidly backed away from the tub where he was perched, her ankle shooting little darts of pain through her body as she searched frantically for a weapon. “You’re a witch. One of them.”

Her heart pounded a rapid tattoo in her chest, her fight-or-flight instinct screaming at her to get away from him, to get him and his dirty magic the hell out of the haven. The instinct didn’t blend with what she felt from him emotionally, but adrenaline wasn’t rational.

But how the hell had he—and his magic—gotten through the force field?

“Get out of my house.” Reaching out blindly, Moira’s fingers made connection with the knife she’d used to cut bread that morning. Pointing the blade toward Boone, she gestured to the door. “We don’t have magic in the haven.”

To her consternation, Boone looked crestfallen.

“The flame was a poor choice.” He closed his fist and extinguished the flame. Watching her, he appeared to ponder what to say next.

“I am not a witch.” He hesitated, and then continued. “And I understand your fear of magic. But do you not see? You have it, too,” he said. “Here, in your village.”

He stepped closer; Moira retreated, though she hated the weakness it showed.

But the even bigger weakness was her fear of magic, and of all that it represented.

“We don’t.” She fought to keep her voice steady, though her skin crawled at the very idea. “That was the deal. The humans would stay in these domes that we built and let the witches have the rest, but only if all magic was kept out. That’s what the force fields are for—to keep magic out. So how the hell did you get in?”

“What is science but a kind of magic?” Though his eyes were still on the knife she held, Boone took a step toward Moira, then another. It terrified her, but at the same time the woman she had once been—the wild urchin on the street who’d had to fight to stay alive—recognized and appreciated his strength.

“No. Science is nothing like magic. And don’t come any closer.”

“Science. Dark magic. Belief in forces beyond those of this earth.” Closing in on her, Boone closed his fingers over the blade of Moira’s knife. She watched, stupefied, as the blood ran down his palm.

And then as it disappeared.

“Magic is the transformation of energy in one form or another. Just like your science chooses one form, so too do the witches choose to steal theirs from the earth. And mine comes from another source altogether. It does not mean that I am bad.”

Moira couldn’t take her eyes away from the smooth skin of his palm, skin that should have been split in two. “But if you could get in, why can’t they?”

“My energy…my magic…is attuned to you right now. So once you passed through, so could I.”

Reaching out, Moira ran her fingers over Boone’s healing wound, then snatched them back when she felt that little spark between them that she’d first recognized outside of Gale’s hut. Her brain kept screaming at her to slide the knife into his chest—if she could—because magic had never brought anything good to her life.

But her gut—something that she had relied on when she’d had the dangerous job of searching for treasure out in the plains—told her that this man wouldn’t harm her.

Though she’d be an idiot to just take that feeling at face value.

“Why are you here?” she asked again. “I’ve made it clear I want you to go.”

“You have my lamp in your possession. Where it goes, I go. Once you have made your wish, passed the lamp on, only then will I leave. I will move on to my next Master or Mistress.”

Moira cast a glare at the offensive thing.

“So you’re, what, a genie?” Moira stared, incredulous, at the half-naked hunk as what she considered complete nonsense spouted from his lips. She took a step backward, deciding to humor the potential lunatic who was back to lounging against her tub.