Chapter 22

Tam didn’t want him to stay the night.

It wasn’t merely the fact that the intense desire she’d experienced had been so thoroughly doused beyond the point of rekindling. That desire was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was heat, it was pressure, it was longing to the point of ache. The physical disappointment of the aftermath would have been enough for her to turn him away.

She had allowed him to carry her to bed and there hadn’t been a single thought of protest, not a drop of remorse or regret. She wanted to—

She’d really wanted to. And he just flipped a switch on her and stalled the whole thing. It was tough, physically and mentally, to come down from that peak.

But that wasn’t why she wanted to be alone. It had been what he didn’t say.

When she asked him if he was on her side, he said nothing. That meant one thing.

No.

She’d dressed and showed him out, without as much as a goodbye. Why bother? A goodbye at that moment would have carried so much more than a simple parting of ways. Bad enough the unspoken no carried with it an impossible overcasting of betrayal.

That betrayal was wounding, even for someone who didn’t have real feelings to get hurt.

He’d left without protest, without a single flicker of regret. He simply skulked past on his way out. Not a wink, not a look, not a word. Just more nothing. And it was all too much.

She crawled into bed and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, trying not to think about the scent of his skin, which lingered on the pillow. It laced every breath she took. He was still there.

Finally, she sat up and turned on the lamp. Enough was enough. There was only one way to get through the night. She had to approach the whole mess in a logical Kerish kind of way, the way she’d handled every other event in her life. No emotions. Facts only.

He was a genie. Bound to a talisman, a slave to its magic. Being a slave was an undesirable condition. It had been his personal hell for several thousand years.

She was his talisman. She was his living hell. She represented everything that was abhorrent to him. He had no reason to be on her side for anything.

She flipped her pillow over and flopped back down onto it. All that made her sound as violently negative as Beth sometimes did. Yet, she knew it was impossible to resist. There was no way to not approach it emotionally. Burns was the epitome of emotion and everything he said, every gesture, every expression, was ladened with feeling. And whenever she was with him, she was ladened with it, too.

If she kept thinking about their quandary, it would spiral, bigger and bigger and completely out of control.

That was definitely not the Kerish way.

How could this have ever gotten as far as it did? How could it even be possible? A magic charm? Really? That’s why she’d lived her entire life like a paper doll? Flat and two-dimensional—

Except when he was near.

So. She scrubbed her face with her hands. She and he. Woman and man. Talisman and genie. Forever and intrinsically bound together.

The realization didn’t frighten her. She always knew she was odd, somewhat off-center, even if she didn’t understand where center was. Talisman or not, she was still who she’d always been. She was intrigued by him, right from the start; she enjoyed his company, his grandiose way of proving his points, and she cared for his feelings. She wanted him to be happy and would do whatever she could to help him get there. And lately, she had been falling in love with him.

Why should being a talisman change anything?

If anything, wouldn’t it make them more of a pair? A key to its lock? It would give another layer of reason for them to be together. Alone, they’d be missing something. No one else could be what they could be for each other.

Right?

Wasn’t that part of the whole phenomenon of love?

Even if it wasn’t, there wasn’t another person on the planet who had made her experience such thoughts, such ideas. For the first time in her life, she knew the taste of her own tears. Because of him.

Even if it wasn’t love, it was the closest she’d ever come to it. That alone was worth pursuing and protecting.

But not tonight. She stared at the ceiling, seeing his shape in the shadows. Tonight, she had difficulty getting past his unspoken no.

She might not have feelings for him to hurt, but it was still the closest anyone had come to doing it. Those tears hadn’t been happy ones.

That alone was worth remembering.

She lay awake for several hours, Burns tumbling over and through her thoughts. Two ideas—hurt and love. Warring inside her. Each one quite possibly the biggest thing she’d ever encountered, each one worth a lifetime of have nots.

Sometime around three, she realized she couldn’t hold on to both feelings if she wanted to retain her sanity. And she knew which one she wanted.

She sat up in bed, his name burning on her tongue. His number. She didn’t have a phone number for him. All she knew was his address, and she shuddered to think about driving there in the dead of the night, not knowing if his door would even be there.

Didn’t matter. She was going. She had to.

She dragged on a pair of jeans and snatched a sweatshirt out of the closet, didn’t even bother with real shoes. Her slippers would suffice. A quick swig of mouthwash in the bathroom, a finger-rub to dispel the worst of her smeared mascara. She grabbed her keys and her purse, ignoring the trail of lights she had left on through the apartment.

She had to get to him before he disappeared forever.

Yanking the door open, her breath caught, his name still searing her lips.

Burns.

Standing in the hall as if he had been ready to knock.

Her heart in her throat, she silently begged him to say something. Please, God, just say something—

His eyes, soulful and love stricken, pulled her in with their gravity.

“Yes.” His voice was rough. “Yes, Tamarinda. I am on your side. I can be on no other.”