Genie, No Bottle Read online

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  Amber Quill Press

  www.amberquill.com

  Copyright ©2007 by Nina Merrill

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  GENIE, NO BOTTLE

  By

  NINA MERRILL

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  ISBN 1-59279-671-7

  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  www.amberquill.com

  Also By Nina Merrill

  Unloved

  DEDICATION

  For Sheliak, that faraway star that nevertheless sheds light in shadowy corners.

  GENIE, NO BOTTLE

  "Imagine ... creamy flesh, so ripe.” Samir spoke as close to Laura's ear as he dared—close, but not quite touching her with his mouth. His breath would do the work of caressing her skin, since his hand must not. “So smooth and tender. Silk on the tongue."

  "Mmm.” The noncommittal noise told Samir she wasn't really listening to him.

  "And the bowl—golden and cool, a vessel fit for a princess. I will bring it to you on bended knee. Its value is nothing compared to your own beauty, my mistress."

  "Samir, I'm trying to find an error here.” Laura reached behind her absently, her palm cupping his cheek for a moment, before her hand returned to the computer's mouse. Samir closed his eyes and relished her warm touch.

  "Salt. Lemon. Crisp tortillas.” Ah, there was his reward, the fleeting prickle of gooseflesh over her neck as his breath tickled her skin. She was beyond sensitive there, though she didn't seem to realize it. She lifted a shoulder to rub away the gooseflesh, never taking her eyes off the computer screen, and Samir's mouth touched the cloud of her hair and the hard roundness of her skull. It was almost—almost—enough. Yet it would never satisfy his longing for her.

  "Samir!"

  He moved away and sprawled grumpily on a credenza behind her desk, propping himself on one elbow, like a sultan on a velvet-bolstered divan. “What is so enthralling about these screens and screens of numbers?"

  It mattered nothing to the course of the world whether or not this corporation Laura worked for found a few thousand dollars. Laura worked too hard as it was, and almost never permitted Samir to use his magic to ease her path. She needed some rest, a change of pace—just a little time away from her tasks. His petulance sometimes coaxed her into doing what he wanted, but it was an unreliable tool at best.

  "We should be out in the sun. We should be in Mexico, choosing three tree-ripened avocados—"

  "Mexico is too far to go today for junk food. I have a date tonight, and if I don't find the missing money I'll miss that as well.” Laura never took her eyes from the screen, scrolling through the figures.

  Samir scowled and flung his jeweled dagger at the wall, where it sank to the hilt in the soft wallboard, without so much as a satisfying quiver. “We could be in Mexico in moments. Come, give me your hand and we will step on my flying carpet—"

  "Fix the hole, Samir,” Laura ordered quietly. “And please control yourself."

  "Yes, my mistress. But you love guacamole.” And I love you. He summoned the dagger to his hand and considered using it to slit the throat of Lewis, her blue-chinned swain. Samir knew Laura inside and out, and he sensed in the next hour or two, as she dressed for her date, she would tell Samir to stay away for the evening.

  That only meant one thing. She'd be having sex.

  But not with Samir.

  He supposed he couldn't blame her for dating Lewis. Lewis treated her well. He was kind and affectionate. He wasn't a pimply, shallow youth, even if Samir felt he should shave more often and not rasp Laura's peach-soft skin. Lewis brought her tokens of his high regard, though they were trinkets compared to the jewels Samir would have showered upon her had she permitted. And Laura was too passionate, too earthy, too much a woman, to deny herself the pleasures of the flesh.

  Pleasures Samir longed to share with her.

  From time to time, through the centuries of his enslavement to Laura's family, Samir's designated master or mistress had turned to him for sexual favors. But Laura had never asked him to appease a physical craving. Samir supposed it was his own fault, the result of the many times he had mocked or derided the young men of her acquaintance as she grew up. He had never felt quite comfortable suggesting himself as an alternative, though he'd remained hopeful.

  These days he found himself plotting new ways to showcase his own attractions—his muscled body, his jinni magic, his eternal thoughtfulness, his competence. Laura never seemed to notice. It was depressing. Not to mention the continual fear that one of these men would impregnate Laura. She was the last of her line, and one of her children would become Samir's master or mistress. When that happened, Samir would be bound to the new child and the wonderful relationship with Laura would end. His love for her would not.

  Laura. Samir could have sung her name at dawn from the tallest minaret in Bokhara, or cried it from a pier at dusk in New York, or whispered it in the glare of noon with the toss of a coin in a fountain in Rome.

  How could she know what she meant to him? How could he tell her? What more could he do to show her? Laura of the green eyes and brown, honey-touched hair, the soft smiling mouth, the pointed chin. She'd been a kind and thoughtful child, and she'd grown into a kind and thoughtful woman, less beautiful than the ancient princess for the love of whom Samir had been cursed, but a thousand times more worthy.

  She looked up from the numbers, as if sensing his dimming mood. “You go to Mexico, Samir. It's all right. I don't mind."

  "It's not the same.” He pouted for her benefit, hoping she'd take pity on him now that he had her attention. “I enjoy our travels together."

  "Maybe this weekend.” She bit her lip, and Samir hooded his eyes so she would not see him staring at the compressed flesh. “Um ... Samir..."

  This is it, he thought gloomily. She was a bit ahead of her usual schedule. “Yes, my mistress?"

  "Tonight might be ... kind of a ... special night, you know?"

  "And by this you mean you want me to vanish."

  "Well ... yes. You can stay at home—I'll be at Lewis's place for the night, so you'll know where I am and you won't worry, but ... a little privacy would be welcome.” Her eyes were clouded when she looked at him. She knew how he hated to be shut out of her life for any reason.

  "I should be there to protect you."

  "Oh, for God's sake, Samir! You'd think Lewis is planning to murder me, the way you talk."

  Samir frowned. He didn't think Lewis was planning to murder Laura at all. His fear was that Laura liked Lewis far too much, and would choose Lewis as her life partner. If only he could find a key, some fatal flaw within Lewis, and reveal it to Laura. But he couldn't do that if Laura wouldn't permit him to escort her on the date. The years of Samir actively guarding his mistress were over now that Laura understood how to command him and limit his meddling. “His intentions are far from honorable."

  Laura laughed. He tipped his head back to watch her upside-down as she rose and came around the desk. Samir tipped his head back further, one eyebrow raised. The metal spike of his turbaned helm touched her belly. A vision of another spike, farther below, and more like velvet than steel, tormented him. He was glad his loose trousers and heavy tunic concealed his hips. She bent to kiss his concerned forehead, but her throaty chuckle ruined the innocence of the kiss. “As are mine, my jinni."

  As always, when she kissed hi
m or called him “my jinni,” Samir felt a warm glow rather low in his belly. In fact, it wasn't his belly at all. Despite his despair at hearing her plans for the evening, he was still smitten. He reached up a hand and cupped her cheek. “I will escort you there, my mistress, and when you have ... when you are ready to come home to me, simply call my name and I will fetch you."

  "I'm going alone, Samir."

  The growl erupted from his throat before he could prevent it, and he sat up without warning, almost striking her chin with the helm's spike. He clapped his hands together and vanished from Laura's office.

  * * * *

  Laura sighed. Sometimes Samir simply didn't understand she needed time of her own. Likewise, she couldn't imagine he wished to spend all his time with her. When she'd bought the house, she'd chosen one with a large, east-facing room just for him, and furnished it the way she thought might make him feel most at home. It was for him, yes, but also for her, to give her the privacy she craved, without hurting his feelings. She tried not to impose on him or ask him for magic he didn't freely offer.

  Laura was nine years old before she realized not everyone had a jinni. On her ninth birthday, Samir explained the curse laid upon him and her family. Long ago—millennia ago—her family's name had been Jarrar. Samir had paid too much attention to their spoiled, beautiful daughter. They'd sought the services of a powerful sorcerer to rid them of the jinni. Their princess was meant for better things, they'd thought.

  The sorcerer did as they asked, but when he named his price, it was too steep. He wanted their daughter in exchange for ridding the family of the pesky spirit. They refused, and, in his jealous spite, the sorcerer cursed the Jarrars, condemning them to wander far from their beloved desert for ten centuries. For good measure, he bound Samir to them in a life of servitude, so neither would ever be free of the other. The family roamed the world until the curse wore away, leaving them in Phoenix, Arizona with their tame jinni, at virtually the same latitude they had started. Across the continents and centuries of their wandering, the family names came and went, through marriage or clerical errors.

  Though the family's curse had expired, Samir's own binding would continue unto infinity, unless he found a way to remove the sky-blue jewel lodged in his navel, the manifestation of his binding. The binding was specific. Samir belonged to the person in each generation who could see him.

  In many ways, having Samir around was like knowing Santa Claus was real. Special things happened when Samir was in a good mood. The Brussels sprouts too horrible for a child to consume without gagging? Vanished. Not enough swings at the park? The set enlarged enough to hold one for Laura. The high school locker door stuck? A quirk of his eyebrow solved that. Couldn't sleep? He was always ready to talk or play chess or magic-carpet her away to some exotic locale.

  In other ways, having Samir around was like having a pesky brother who never left the room. He showed up in classrooms when she least expected it, sitting smirking in the teacher's chair with his curled-toe boots on the desk and his arms behind his head. It made him laugh to watch her struggle not to react to his presence. He'd had a fondness for appearing in the mirror while she stared at her teen-age reflection or practiced coquettish looks, daydreaming of cute boys at school. He changed her radio presets to stations he preferred. He wouldn't do her homework for her, but delighted in telling her something on the page was incorrect.

  In high school and college, however, the most aggravating thing was Samir's self-assigned role of chaperon, and the comments that accompanied his assessment of each of her boyfriends.

  "He's an unattractive youth. A lip like a camel's. Does he spit as well?"

  "Does your father know you're dating this young man?"

  "His hands should be in his pockets and not on your more obvious assets. In Phoenicia, we would cut them off at the wrists for such offenses."

  "It is time you sent this one home. He brings nothing but trouble. Do not lie down with scorpions."

  "He thinks this is how to kiss a woman? Oh, the things I could teach that boy. If he were worthy, which he is not."

  And on, and on. Most dates ended with the young men wondering why she was irritated, never knowing the source was someone they couldn't see or hear. Now that she was a grown woman, Laura had no qualms about using Samir's binding to force him to butt out of her love life.

  One must, after all, be firm with jinni. Given an inch, they'd take seven leagues. A girl needed privacy, even from her closest friend. Even if he was aggravatingly right about the men she dated. She'd never found a man to compare with Samir, and she suspected she never would.

  As a child, she had tried to help Samir break the curse. She had tried everything she knew to pry the sky-blue jewel from Samir's navel. Cooking oil. Vaseline. Ice. Her father's cordless drill. A hammer and chisel. When she got out her little pocketknife, Samir at last drew the line and explained to her he suspected only magic could lift the curse, and he had been given only a one-word clue many centuries ago—sublimation.

  The dictionary hadn't helped her understand the concept at nine years of age. But her junior year in high school she encountered the word in her chemistry class and rushed home with shining eyes—naturally, the one day Samir had chosen not to follow her around school—to announce she knew the solution. Sublimation of a substance meant it transformed directly from a solid to a gas, such as the evaporation of dry ice. Samir had obligingly gathered up his tunic to expose the sky-blue jewel in his navel, and the two of them had stared at it for an hour, pondering how to render its diamond-hard material gaseous. That day, she'd sprawled on her stomach on the bed next to him, her feet waving in the air.

  "What do you suppose would happen if we could get your jewel to sublimate, Samir?"

  He'd thought for a while. Laura had wondered why he was taking so long to answer. Surely, in all the many centuries since he'd been bound to the Jaynes, he'd had time to figure that out.

  "I believe my binding would be at an end, and I would become human. Unless there is a secondary curse laid upon me."

  "Oh, but—then you could die, couldn't you?"

  Samir looked at her with his chocolate-velvet eyes. “I would have my free will again, and be only a little less than I was when I offended in the first place: a man."

  "But you could die!” The idea that Samir might one day be gone was intolerable to her. Her dearest companion from her earliest moments, he knew all her secrets, her loves and her hates, her longings and her fears.

  "I have lived long enough.” He soothed her, stroking her little-girl cheek.

  "But I give you your free will! You don't ever have to work magic for me again! Give me a wish and I will wish you freed!"

  Samir had kissed her wet eyes, one by one. “My little mistress, as long as I am bound, nothing gives me more pleasure than to serve you.” Then he'd smiled his wide, slow smile. “You have been reading the stories of Scheherazade again, haven't you? But just think how you have helped me. None of my other masters and mistresses ever came to me with so much as a definition of the word, much less attempted a solution."

  Now that she was a grown woman, she often pondered the nature of the curse and what might break it. But while she longed to do whatever she could for Samir, in her heart she didn't truly want to break the curse if it meant he might vanish from her life. There seemed to be no good alternative for her. Break the curse, and Samir would become mortal and eventually die, or perhaps leave of his own free will. Not break the curse and leave him a bound slave for the rest of her life. Not break the curse, marry and have a child, and lose him anyway.

  Laura sighed and rested her forehead on her desk. At least with Samir gone from her office and no longer a distraction, she could focus on the problem at hand. The missing money at last emerged from a combination of three incorrectly entered transactions. Laura sent an email with the corrections to the company auditor, turned off her computer, stretched, and sighed again. Another problem solved, in time for her date.

 
; * * * *

  Samir turned his head lazily on the cushion. She swayed toward him, dressed in floating veils and glittering silver coins. She was only one of several, each dressed in different costumes, yet all twins of Laura. This one, though ... the dancer ... there was something about her, something more Laura than the others. The delicate coin girdle about her waist rang like tiny, sweet bells with each twist of her hips as she undulated in her dance.

  A second Laura knelt beside his divan, where he lounged like a pasha, and offered him sugared tea flavored with rose petals. A third held his foot in her hands, massaging it with strong strokes of her oiled fingers and thumbs. Her hair fell over her hands in a nut-brown wave. Yet another rubbed his temples and stroked cool hands over his brow. Samir knew it was foolish to indulge again, but he could not help himself. It was only for a few minutes after all, and his mistress was away for the evening.

  The dancing Laura drew his eyes time and again, growing more real with each passionate glance. Samir crooked a single finger and a veil pulled loose from the waist chain she wore, drifting to his hand. He lifted the fragile silk to his mouth and buried himself in her scent: musky red amber and lemon. The hot fragrance of an afternoon spent tangled in bed, wracked by pleasure and tumbled in citrus blossoms. She appeared momentarily surprised by the veil's removal, but a knowing smile replaced the look. From nowhere, she conjured a date, dark and rich and sweet as honey, and placed it between his lips before dancing away just out of his reach.

  No matter. Another crook of his finger and a second veil floated away, followed by a third. One last crook and the spangled brassiere's catch gave way. She covered her creamy breasts with her palms, fingers separating the slightest bit to allow her nipples, hard little carnelians of flesh, to peep between. Samir licked his lips and summoned her forward. His erection pointed to the sky, achingly hard and hungry. With a saucy sway or two, she settled astride him on the divan. He grasped her hips and pushed inside her with a slow, rocking thrust. Her head fell back and she gasped, “Samir. Oh, my jinni. Oh."