Firestorm by Rachel Caine Page B

jeans and battered hiking boots, and God , he looked good enough to eat. Relief flashed through me like a concentrated burst of lightning, and then recent history caught up to me like the following thunder. I sat up in a hurry, heart thumping so hard, I saw red spots, because my brain finally saw fit to remind me that David, about thirty hours ago, had been intent on killing me.
    â€œEasy,” he said, and reached out to draw a fingertip over the tender, sensitive skin on the interior of my right arm. Heat and friction, real as it could get. “It’s all right. I’m myself, at least for now. Blow your nose.”
    He wasn’t a dream; he was here. Really here, physically.
    I really did need to blow my nose. I did so, in as ladylike a fashion as I could, wishing all the while—mostly stupidly—that I’d had some kind of warning, that I’d been able to shower or to brush my hair or change my clothes or…hell. Anything.
    I tossed the tissue at the trash can nearby. He gave my underhanded girly throw an assist with a wave of his finger, not even looking. Two points.
    â€œI didn’t know if you were alive,” he said softly. “Not at first. I remembered coming after you, on the beach, and then—nothing. I thought I’d hurt you. Killed you.”
    The look in his eyes—God, it made my heart break. I swung my legs over the side of the bed. We were close enough that our knees brushed.
    David leaned forward, moving slowly, the way animal trainers do with skittish creatures, and he slowly extended his hand toward me. Traced the line of my cheek. “I can’t stay long,” he said quietly. “But I want to try to protect you, as much as I can. Help you. Will you let me?”
    I couldn’t say no to him, not when he sounded like that. Soft and a little desperate. I stayed where I was. I didn’t reach back to him, though every cell in my body screamed for me to do it; I just watched him, until he drew his hand back. He put his elbows on his knees and focused on my face with an intensity I remembered from the first time I’d met him. Had I fallen in love with him right then, at first sight? I’d fallen in lust, for sure. Lust had been no problem at all. Still wasn’t. But more than that—and I only realized it now, looking back on it—I’d lost my soul to him somewhere along the way.
    And I couldn’t regret it. Even now.
    His fingers moved together restlessly, as though fighting an urge to reach out to me again. “You’re all right?” he asked. “Not hurt?”
    â€œNo. I’m all right.” Minus a few dozen cuts and bruises and minor aches. Nothing to speak of, really. “What the hell happened?”
    His face went still. Masklike, the way Jonathan’s had been in the dream. His eyes turned dark and filled with secrets. “Jonathan decided to play god,” he said. “He’s dead.”
    I had a sudden, aching suspicion. “Did you kill him?”
    The flash of anguish, before he locked it down again, was answer enough. David had been an Ifrit for a time, half alive, preying on Djinn for his life force. Damned and doomed and broken…dead, in every way that mattered. He’d gone after the biggest, brightest power source available to survive, and that had been Jonathan. Driven by the basic instinct to feed, he had turned on his own best friend.
    Just the way his best friend intended, the coldhearted, calculating, manipulative bastard.
    â€œDavid, don’t,” I said. “You know he wanted to die. He just—used you. Suicide by Ifrit.”
    â€œNo, it was more than that.” He swallowed and looked aside, keeping his thoughts to himself for a few seconds before he continued, “What Jonathan was, is—necessary. Someone needs to stand where he stood. Nature abhors a vacuum.” He attempted a smile, but it looked painful. “I was the closest Djinn to him