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Chapter 19

The Morning After II

~ARRIK~

“How long of a walk is it, Arrik?”

Dolly fucking Jones is behind me, trotting along like a lost child, the luciflor reflecting in her enormous fucking eyes. Her eyelashes are freakishly long enough to frame them. If she ever wore glasses, I bet they’d butt against the glass.

She catches me staring at her.

“It’s how I got around before genies invaded my life,” I mock her for her earlier statement.

She turns up her nose in that self-righteous way. “It is possible to be curious about the agenda of our day and not be whining about how far we have to walk, you know.”

I didn’t think there would be any more ‘our’ days. Probably why I’ve made this impulsive, stupid fucking decision to take her from the safety of the motel room and into a city full of people who would love to own or sell a stray human when my absent little brother explicitly ordered me not to. But he wouldn’t want me in there with her another moment. Not after I woke up with my throat against her breath.

I feared I woke her when I returned her to her vessel, but she seems to think it was a dream. I don’t see how it would benefit the situation to correct her right now .

“Maybe you should just appreciate the scenery and company,” I quip before she can reverse mind-read me.

“Maybe you should stop being so withholding to the prey creature already involved in a power imbalance with you,” she bats back, brows scrunched in irritation.

I did miss this.

“A half hour, depending on how fast your expert human legs can take you.” I intentionally nudge her as I walk past to further the charade of normalcy, but she’s not buying it. I have no idea what’s going on in there. Too many emotions to see clearly. It’s like a goddamned storm.

I want to quell it. I want to whisper into its hair.

Unwise. It’s too close to the other things I want to do to her, and I worry about the resonance that may occur. I don’t know how much of this is real and how much is influenced by whatever succubus magic she might possess, but I know the things that live between the cracks in her mind. Velis is an idiot for leaving us alone like this.

The rocks crumble beneath our boots along a narrow walkway used by emergency services—and other invisible travelers, apparently.

One bumps into me.

I pull Dolly away from the center of the walkway and shield her with my body against the railing while trying to discern who we’ve just passed.

“Arrik.”

“Shh, we aren’t the only ones who had this idea,” I warn her, squinting into the void around us.

“Arrik!” Cold hands shove into my chest.

“What?”

“You can’t do that.” Her angry eyebrows are in my face.

“Do what?”

“Djinn-handle me!”

I’ve djinn-handled her this way since I met her.

Does it feel different for her now ?

Buried inside her is a feeling. It’s something similar to fear. But it’s not fear.

I don’t know how to handle this situation.

I set my hands in a position of surrender. “I’ll try to refrain from touching you.”

The overalls are saggy in the back. The tank top beneath molds to her chest. I meant to put her in a bulky sweatshirt. I don’t know how she ended up in that, but I fucking love women in overalls.

Fuck you for this, Velis.