Wish Me Nothing Page 3

  “Your loss, moon pie. Ahh, we coulda been so good together,” he whispered before moving away from him.

  Vaughn rushed to Ar’s side and looked at Shan’s smug face.

  “He stronger than you also?”

  “No. In fact, this one seems to like it when I beat the shit out of him on a regular basis.”

  “Ah yes. I remember. It seems like just yesterday when you used those big strong hands all over my body. Teaching me a les-son and punishing me to where it hurt so good.” Shan shuddered, leaning back against the wall and smirking again. “So Ar, am I in need of more punishment? Will you let your toy watch this time?”

  He ran his hand up the middle of his naked chest and pinched his nipple.

  Vaughn looked between Ar and Shan. “Um...Ar? Should I leave you two alone?”

  Ar let out an exasperated breath. “Shan, stop it now. You’ve had your fun; what do you want? What purpose for your visit?”

  “Better question is how the hell did he get in here if you protected this house?”

  “I couldn’t keep him out; we share the same bloodline.

  Vaughn, meet my baby brother.”

  Vaughn looked between Shan’s blueness and Ar’s tan-ness.

  “Sorry, don’t see the resemblance.” He chuckled a bit madly, then stopped. “Wait a second, he’s your brother and you two...did that together? Damn, that’s...well that’s...okay, that’s kinda interest-ing.”Ar gave him a droll look. “We did not have sex! His personal-ity alone would wither my erection.”

  “Oh stop it, Ar. You’re making me blush here.” Shan pushed off of the wall he leaned on and swayed over to them. “So, you two ready to get this party pumping?” He gyrated and thrust his hips toward Vaughn.

  Vaughn moved closer to Ar. “You did say you could take this one, right?”

  Ar situated himself between Vaughn and Shan. “What do you want, Shan? Why are you here?” Vaughn could hear the irritation in his voice.

  With Shan still in his Djin form he easily winked over Ar’s shoulder at Vaughn. “Why dearest brother, I’ve come to help you and your toy. I figure if anyone gets the pleasure of terminating you it should be yours truly, not those idjits who think they call the shots.”

  “So you’ve come here to kill your own brother? What type of family do you come from, Ar?”

  Shan rolled his fire and ice eyes at Vaughn. “You aren’t the sharpest toy in the box, cupcake.”

  Vaughn flipped him off, from the safety of standing behind Ar. “It’s sharpest tool in the shed, fruitcake.”

  Shan smiled wickedly at him. “You’ve never played with my sharp toy, baby boy. And speaking of playing...time to act nice to me, considering my dear old brother plans to leave you in my safe and loving embrace for a little while. Ain’t that right, big bro?”

  “I seriously doubt that!” Vaughn’s voice rose an octave or two. He waited for Ar to back up his declaration, but his lover’s quietness unnerved him. Especially since this was not the moment for it. “Ar? You don’t really expect me to stay with this walk-ing hormone, do you?”

  Vaughn felt at a distinct disadvantage standing behind Ar, not able to judge his eyes while talking to him. He circled around and placed his palm on Ar’s well-defined chest. He completely ignored the snickering coming from the blue man now at his back.

  He didn’t believe in his heart that Shan meant him any true harm, at least not at this moment.

  “Nice toy, nice nice nice.” Shan’s whispery condescend— ing tone scraped down Vaughn’s nerves like fingernails down a chalkboard. “You don’t want to get broken while I play with you, now do you?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he threw over his shoulder before turning to his boyfriend again. “Look at me, Ar. You aren’t leaving him here with me alone; you wouldn’t do that to me.” The confidence in his voice wavered.

  Breathing heavily, Ar finally looked down at Vaughn. “He won’t hurt you. I promise it.”

  “Of course I won’t, cutie patootie. I already told you I’m real good at it. It won’t hurt at all, well, not after the first couple of minutes at least.”

  Ar growled as he looked over Vaughn’s shoulder. “Let me rephrase that. He won’t touch you.” The glare he bestowed upon his brother dropped the degrees in the room by at least ten. “If I come back and Vaughn tells me one thing that upsets me, you will die tonight. Do I make myself clear?”

  Vaughn looked over his shoulder at Shan, wishing he could slap that fake-ass pondering look right off that blue face. Too bad he couldn’t even reach that high without a step stool or he might have.“I’m a little hazy on the stipulations. Now if our little human here winds up fully satiated when you get back, will that upset you? Or do I only have to worry if I don’t perform to your stan-dards?”

  Vaughn quickly moved out of Ar’s path as he stormed Shan.

  By the time Ar stood in front of Shan, he’d fully Djin’d out and grown a whole head taller than Shan. Vaughn stepped back a few more feet as Ar raised Shan off the ground with just one clawed hand around his throat.

  “He is not our anything. Vaughn belongs to me and me alone. Remember that, dear baby brother.” The sarcasm dripped through the room over those last three growled words. “I can tear you apart with just my mind. Shall I demonstrate?”

  Shan’s own claws scrabbled at Ar’s hand around his neck, digging in just enough, it looked like, to let him talk. “Geez, choke a Djin for joking. And you wonder what’s wrong with our species? Sense of humor, Ar, get one. I won’t touch your toy unless he wishes me to. Even you can’t interfere with that.”

  “It will be a cold day in hell when I wi—” Vaughn stopped abruptly, both Shan and Ar swinging their heads quickly to eye-ball him, Shan with a stupid smile and Ar with murder in his demon eyes.

  “Almost had you, toy. Almost had you.”

  Ar threw his head back and roared. One quick movement of his upper body and Shan flew across the office and into the book-cases, the force of the impact toppling the whole mess to the floor.

  “I have to go, Vaughn. He will protect you until I come back.”

  “You just got back. Why do you have to go again? Where are you going?”

  “I came back because I felt Djin entering the house. But I must employ some allies for your future safety. I’ll move quickly, you won’t be with him for long. You don’t have to trust Shan. Trust me. Please can you do that?”

  Vaughn looked up at his Djin lover and placed his hand on Ar’s neck. Ar closed his eyes at the touch. “You would touch me in this form?”

  “I would touch you in any form, Ar. And I trust you also. You go do what you have to and hurry back to me.”

  Ar bent forward as if to kiss Vaughn, then hesitated. Vaughn pulled on his neck to encourage him the rest of the way and closed his eyes, praying that wrong would turn right and this kiss wasn’t their last.

  His lips touched the fullness of Ar’s, and even though he felt the edges of Ar’s pointed teeth slightly, this kiss felt as right as the ones he had shared with Ar throughout their relationship. He felt the tenderness and love. Those feelings alone gave him the courage to go the next step. His tongue flicked out and tasted the thick lips, then gently slid into Ar’s mouth. He gingerly touched upon those deadly teeth then passed them to tangle with Ar’s soft and meaty tongue. They dueled in Ar’s mouth and tasted each other until the sound of clapping broke the moment.

  Regretfully, he pulled away and looked over to Shan, who still lay on the floor covered with the books and shelves that had fallen on him.

  “Oh isn’t that sweet...the human has accepted the monster.

  I hate to break up this erotic moment, but if you two don’t fuck right now in front of me, then Ar, you better get going.”

  Ar’s hand carefully cupped Vaughn’s face and turned it back to him. “I won’t be gone long.”

  Closing his eyes, Vaughn still felt the ghost of Ar’s hand warming his cheek even after his lover no longer stood in front of him.

  “I hate when he does that,” Vaughn mumbled under his breath.

  A heavy arm slung over his shoulders. “Yeah, annoying twerp, isn’t he. Horn dogs you up then leaves you high and dry. I can fix that problem you got rising there.”

  “No, you really can’t. And no touching me, remember.”

  Vaughn pointedly removed his arm and walked out of the room.

  He heard the footsteps following him. “Now, how can we truly get to know each other in the biblical way without touch?

  It’s like one of our top five senses. A sense that Djin and human alike share and benefit from, might I add? Anyway those weren’t die-hard rules Ar dished out, more like helpful guidelines meant for me to break.”

  Vaughn ignored him and headed to the kitchen for an ice cold beer. God knew he could use it after everything that had hap— pened. On second thought, he turned left instead of right and headed back to the bar. He needed something stronger and fucking far quicker than beer this time.

  He poured himself a double shot of tequila and downed it in one gulp.

  “Love a man who can hold his liquor. You sharing?”

  “No. Can’t you protect me from the other side of the house?”

  “Yep, I’m that good, all right. But...I’d get no enjoyment out of it. So, you want to blow this tutti frutti stand? I know how to save Ar, but only you can do it. You interested?”

  “Popsicle stand, you idiot,” Vaughn whispered to himself before downing his second double, then turned and looked up, just to realize he didn’t need to look so far up anymore. Ar stood in front of him licking his lips and measuring every inch of Vaughn’s body with a lecherous look that had never graced his face before.

  “Oh fuck that! You...um...change out of Ar’s body immediately!”

  “But I thought you liked this body.” Shan ran his hands over his stomach and down to his crotch, massaging himself and wag-gling his eyebrows.

  “Do it now, or we’ll see how invincible you really are!”

  Shan let out a dramatic sigh, then waved his hands around him as if evoking some specialized magicks. An unnecessary show, Vaughn knew from just watching his boyfriend do the same thing without waving arms, but he stood and waited. Shan came up with an obvious younger “relative” of Ar.

  “Better, your highness?”

  Vaughn ignored his comment and went back to what he said before. “What did you mean that only I could save Ar?”

  Shan hopped on the bar and sat cross-legged, grabbed Ar’s bottle of single malt and swigged straight out of it. “Well, my hon-ey bun, we Djin aren’t the only magickal things around. You humans hold your own form of powers. Put your powers up against ours and, well now, you got a helluva show and a whole lotta fun.”Vaughn looked at him skeptically. “What would I have to do?”Shan’s smile made him even more uneasy. “Well, my sweet toy, that’s simple enough.” He extended his hand towards Vaughn and sang, “Why don’t you come with me little girl, on a magick carpet ride?”

  Chapter Five

  “He won’t hurt your human. Now sit down and listen to what I have to say.”

  “Why did we let him live again?” Ar tossed himself on the armchair in Tark’s office and eyed his grandfather.

  “Because he’s the baby, and we need all the family we have.

  We supply each other’s safety. We may have allies and friends outside of the family, but they’re not in the same league as you children. I’m not even in your league.”

  Ar leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

  “What’re you mumbling about, old man? You’re one of the stron-gest Djin around. They allow you to use your magicks to keep this place going because of that fact. As long as you deplete yourself here, they don’t have to worry about you out there. You’ve created your own prison cell that you can’t escape from.”

  “What you see as a prison cell I see as my salvation. You don’t know much about your father and nothing about your grandmother. Many centuries ago your mother and I decided on the secrecy for your safety. I’m afraid that our silence may have en-dangered all of you, though.”

  Tark took a deep breath and sat in the chair next to Ar.

  “You know, Tark, even though my curiosity levels just reached new heights, I’m a little crunched on time right now. We playing twenty questions here or you just going to tell me?”

  Tark patted his hand. “Always wanting the last page first with you. You never had the patience to enjoy the story. Your grandmother”—he breathed in and out deeply—”Beautiful. Simply beautiful. And loving and gentle and she stole my heart from the moment I saw her. I remember that day like yesterday. I just grant-ed the third and final wish on a horrid man. I always had a soft spot for humans. I couldn’t fathom marking the good and kind ones, so I always marked the ones that needed a lesson taught them. The others ridiculed me mercilessly, but I didn’t care.

  “Well this horrid man made his final wish, greed the sin he chose for himself. His eye had wandered onto the neighboring shepherd’s daughter. The cretin didn’t want love, though. He wanted ownership. In his mind he who held the gold held the power. Such a trite and wrong cliché. So he mistakenly wished for wealth.”

  Ar snorted. “Love the original ones, right? How did you grant it?” Tark waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Insignificant de-tails. Needless to say he became the wealthiest man sentenced to hang. And none of his money could save his soul. But that young girl that he wanted, well, I couldn’t get her out of my head. I com-pletely forgot about finding another mark. I forgot about every-thing but her. I took up residence at that old man’s farm as his long-lost nephew and wooed her. I even got up the nerve to show her my true self. She didn’t forsake me. She touched my blue face, traced my jagged teeth and told me no other genie could possibly be as handsome.” He chuckled. “Like genies paraded in front of her on a regular basis.”

  “Grandma? She was a human?”

  Tark nodded his head, his eyes glazed over in memories. “Yes.

  When she found out about her pregnancy, her joy overflowed.

  Not even my speechlessness stopped her happiness. You see, I didn’t think that humans and Djin could have children. Djin take human lovers all the time. None have ever become impregnated.

  “Oh but she blossomed with her pregnancy, with my child growing fat in her womb. Only a handful of close friends knew.

  Then the time came for your father to join us. The labor proceeded relatively easily. He entered this world in a matter of minutes, screaming up a fit. What I didn’t know, couldn’t have fathomed,” he stopped and shook his head sadly. “It took too much out of a human woman to give birth to a Djin child. Your father drained the life from your grandmother when he took his first breath. I lost my love, but gained a son.”

  “I don’t know if that tradeoff would appease me, Tark. If I had to choose between Vaughn and a baby I don’t know or love yet, I’d choose Vaughn without a second thought.”

  Tark smiled softly at his grandson. “That’s what you would think. But your grandmother loved your father even before his birth. She read to him, sang to him, a hand always fluttered to her belly, and her eyes lit up. He looked so much like her; even in his true form, he still resembled her amazingly. Watching him smile and remembering her love, I determined to keep my son happy and healthy...and alive. I quickly created this bar and put all my power into his safety, knowing that others would target him as a freak of nature. Most left us alone thanks to ignorance of your father’s existence, but a select few grew curious.

  “Then your father met your mother. Even in her youth, Savey carried herself with grace and accepted your father had mixed blood. She didn’t care. His heart beat good. They lived many years in peace and happiness. But when you were born the trou-ble started.

  “The ones that figured out your father’s origin settled for turning the other cheek. They wouldn’t openly go against me.

  When they realized that your father continued his blood line they rebelled. Your parents stayed hidden most of the time. They knew they shouldn’t provoke anyone and have more children, but they loved each other so much that soon you had three younger brothers and a sister. When their sixth child joined your clan, the big-oted haters finally caught up to them.”

  “You see, they should’ve stopped at Blithe.”

  His grandfather cuffed the back of his head. “Enough of that, boy. It was prophesied for Shan to enter this world.”

  “That’s a scary thought. What’s this prophecy?”

  “That, Ar, is for another day. I do have a point to my story, though. Pote stood with the original pitchforkers. He front-lined the attack that killed your father. Maybe not publicly, but he was one of the forces behind it. Taking my only son didn’t appease their fear of the unknown. Now they want my grandchildren. If I had the power, I would kill them all. Unfortunately, I’m invested too heavily in Wish Me Nothing; redirecting my abilities would be disastrous for the family. Keeping this place going so you have a safe haven when needed is the best help I can offer at this moment.”

  “I can’t kill Pote, I’m not strong enough. Maybe...maybe if this happened in another two to three hundred years I’d stand a chance. I just need to focus on keeping Vaughn safe.”

  A crash from the bar had them both on their feet. The door blew open and three Djin entered, one dangling Blithe like a rag-doll by her neck.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry Tark, I couldn’t hold them off.” Blithe spoke around the hand grasping her neck.

  “Let her go!” Ar’s demand was spurred by sheer anger at the audacity of these Djin, since his grandfather’s magicks made it impossible for them to do Blithe real damage.

  “Follow us to the grounds and we won’t focus vengeance on this bitch, yet.”

  Chapter Six

  Vaughn looked at that ominous hand Shan offered. “If this is a trick Ar will kill you.”

  “If this is a trick Ar will be dead anyway. But I love the faith you put in a monster.” Shan laughed.