The Cowboy Genie's Wife: A Paranormal Romance (The Dirty Djinn Series) (7 page)

“What are you thinking about?”

“All this hard work you do on your farm ... ranch ... whatever ... it’s been good for you, hasn’t it?”

“Guess so. I like it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll magic a busted fence fixed if there’s a wish in the air for it, but I’m content to do it the long way too. Work kept me busy, and as long as I wasn’t busy, I wasn’t being miserable over you.”

“So it’s back to being my fault again?”

He threw his arm over his eyes and groaned. “I only mean that ... babe, my left ass cheek is sitting in a puddle of your juice from our sex. I’m hard and my right nut is twitching. Can we not ruin this morning?”

And then he was there, warm and inside her. He hadn’t asked permission, but he didn’t need to, not anymore. She couldn’t be harmed in this magical place. The lamp had accepted her as its ... her ... mistress long ago. Only two people could ever enter these safe and hallowed walls.

His eyes never left hers. She couldn’t say the same. With each stroke, her lids fluttered shut, and she struggled to maintain some grasp on reality. He hadn’t grown larger, just colder, perhaps. Rougher, from the years of her absence. Sex with her husband had been sweet and fun and sometimes intense.

This was hard.

Dirty.

Jagged.

This wasn’t sex full of the memories of last week or a saccharine segue from a romantic comedy movie night. This was frantic, the barely controlled frenzy of a man reclaiming something and wrenching it into his arms. Each body-filling pump was a glorious assault, and she returned in kind.

She bit.

She pulled.

She slapped his face.

He held her neck.

And when the end came, when they both had so little left that all existence shattered but them, she collapsed against him in a certainty that defied labels, definitions, and explanations.

She was his.

He was hers.

They simply were.

When she woke up again, she was alone.

As much as it pained her to leave the mattress of a million pillows, she wrapped a bundle of the brightly colored silks around her and eased herself to her feet. Lotus flowers of every shade of pink and purple guided her path to the floor-length mirror on the far wall. It looked old, ancient even. And she might have fallen for it ... if she hadn’t purchased that same one on sale at Pier One two years ago.

She had to buy it because it reminded her of this place. That’s what his lamp was. A strange mishmash of ancient and new. A flat-screen across from a medieval tapestry. A Bedouin tent, inside a djinn’s lamp, with a grapevine going up the side.

She’d compared notes with the wives of his brothers and knew that as crazy as this lamp was, it could’ve gone far worse.

She sprinted across the way to the wandering wardrobe, as the fabric walls moved and shuffled around her. She hated that thing. It never quite settled like the rest of the furniture. She’d gone naked here plenty of times because of it. Today, it was almost as if it sought her out. The thing played at being completely average. Wooden. Two doors that opened to five drawers.

A giggle erupted at the stray memory of when she’d first opened it. Five drawers? Sure. But a million different sections inside each one. She held out her hand but hesitated in wishing for her private drawer.

Had Fazil found it among the great multitude?

Had he tossed everything in a fit of rage?

The wardrobe hummed a faint grumbling sound. Then, a drawer popped open. Tears blurred her vision. She’d cried more in these last few days than in the past five years. That she couldn’t control it was ridiculous, and yet, the story of their life together brought on the waterworks again. Here, she kept the tiny things of their love. A pressed flower from a fair in the nineteen forties. A hilarious collection of driver’s licenses. She cringed at the ones from the seventies, laughing at the scorch marks from when she’d tried to burn them in the eighties. Thank God, he’d stopped her.

The walls shifted again, lighting a new path. One might be persuaded into thinking it wanted her to see something. Weird things happened in this small and infinite space, but she’d chalked it up to Fazil’s presence and the general spirit of their love.

She missed you.

The words of her husband that she’d dismissed so thoroughly came back to her once more. She stepped on the glittering pathway. It flickered in response, growing in intensity the farther she went inside.

She’d explored this lamp for years, but never had the gall to say that she’d seen all of it. There had always been another room, another door, even a kitchen—though Fazil long claimed to have sent it away.

The air grew smoky, like burning wood, only it didn’t choke or sting her eyes. Another left turn and the silks gave way to wooden walls and a crackling fireplace, complete with a wagon wheel on the mantle. “Oh, good gracious!”

Underneath the antlers of some poor creature rested every manner of cowboy boots. This was a lesson in and of itself. Some with pointed toes, others rounded. And spurs—actual freaking spurs. Then there were the hats.

Black hats.

Brown hats.

Tan hats.

White hats.

She grabbed the largest she could find and popped it on her head. Before she could wish for a mirror, one materialized on the wall before her—right beneath the blinding display of belt buckles.

Something twinged in her chest. She’d screwed up on so many levels. But she’d woken up with a lot more hope today than yesterday. He hadn’t given up on her, and she sure as Arizona horse shit wasn’t about to give up on him.

Without warning a presence rested on her shoulder. Heavy and solid. It was every bit the sensation of being pushed out the door. Did the lamp want her gone? What was it ... what was
she
up to now?

Rosa held tight to the hat, wrapped her free arm around her legs, and tugged her head against her knees before wishing herself out of the lamp. Lesson learned the hard way long ago. She would wish herself inside the thing if she were close enough, even without seeing it. But the lamp always spit you out wherever it was. Top shelf, in a kitchen cabinet, wherever.

This time, though, she landed on a king-sized bed with a tray of orange juice and mango slices. Bless him. Fazil had never been one for love notes, but this counted as one in a mighty big way. She had a little of both before placing the tiny lamp on the side table and scurrying naked from the room and toward her husband.

She should have scurried a little faster. Or slower. But damn her timing. Just as she passed the top of the stairs, a group of men in cowboy hats and business suits walked from the living room to the front door. Fazil had his hand on the door, facing her.

He coughed.

One of the men followed his gaze, right to her burning red face. That guy coughed too.

In fact there were a lot of coughs and a lot of backward glances to the front door. She hoofed it down the hall, but Fazil’s laugh hit her like a two-by-four. Oh, she’d kill him.

“Honey?”

Damned if she’d answer him from her crouching position of burning humiliation at the edge of the hall.

“Rosa, baby, don’tcha wanna wish for something?”

Hmmm ... going back in time couldn’t happen. She very much doubted he’d grant allowing her to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment.

Maybe.

He cleared his throat. “The longer you wait, the tougher it gets.”

Right.

Some of the men grumbled, asking Fazil what he meant, but she got it right away.

Memories were mercurial things. Terrible and exciting ones blossomed over time. The mundane ones had a tendency to burrow deep, erupting at the most inopportune of moments.

Djinn weren’t neurosurgeons. They could erase memories, but it could turn ugly fast. The less rooting around Fazil had to do, the better. She couldn’t stand the thought of driving these men to madness because of her idiocy.

After wishing the men lost the memory of her boobs flopping up and down, she spider-crawled back to the bedroom, pausing to thank the good, sweet Lord for a husband with such particular talents.

She threw a sheet around her and jetted to the window to survey the damage below. Apparently, there was none. Fazil and the men looked at maps and tablets as if nothing ever happened.

Her husband glanced in her direction, winked, and waved for her to join them. One of the men started to turn, but she dipped behind the curtain in time to avoid future embarrassment.

Seeing the men again ... rather, seeing them for the first time from their perspective, didn’t count as a fun time. But Fazil might have a good reason for it. They’d both need to know if the wish took hold.

The men were all out pointing off in various directions when she scurried down. Overly dressed in jeans, a long-sleeve plaid shirt, and baseball cap, she shuffled into the room and waved.

“Gentlemen, may I introduce you to my wife. She’s a little shy. Say something, sweetie.” He turned back to the men before she could open her mouth. “I tell her to imagine that everyone else is naked, but well, what are you going to do?”

She elbowed him but listened in as he finished up on some sort of oil-drilling deal.

“Your husband must have been born under a lucky sign,” the man in the tan ten-gallon hat said. His comrade, brown ten-gallon hat, agreed. “Yep, we did test drilling on Janet Dickey’s property, but it must have been a ghost deposit.”

Fazil clicked his tongue and sighed a sigh of biblical lamentation. “Shame. They’ve never seen anything like it. Poor woman went from a millionaire to right back where she was. Damndest thing though, that line somehow, someway, cut right through our property. I told them I don’t know anything about any oil, but I’d be happy to work out a leasing agreement. I just feel so sad for Ms. Dickey. Maybe you could bake her a pie or something?”

She frowned and bit her lip, one hand resting on her chin. “That might help.”

The ten-gallon crew joined in on this whole thing of faux-feeling-bad-ness for a good three minutes before shaking hands and going about their day.

Fazil didn’t say a thing as their cars kicked up dirt on their way down the winding path.

“On a scale of zero to one hundred...”

“Yeah?”

“How much of this is your doing?”

Fazil huffed and counted fingers on both hands, before cocking his head to the side. “Ninety. Well, one hundred percent my doing. Still, not my fault.”

She folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. “You just said that a hundred percent of it was.”

“I was content to let her have oil. She’d have her run, and I’d have mine.”

“Then she flipped your car?”

“Then she flipped my car.”

“I can’t imagine she’ll take this lying down.”

“I don’t want to imagine how she takes anything. Here’s what I do know. She deserves it. She spied on me. She almost killed you, and she’s crazy enough to believe that we’re magical creatures.”

“We are. You are. Me mostly by default.”

Fazil twisted with his hands on his hips, cracked his back, and then pointed to a wheelbarrow and a shovel. “That doesn’t mean she isn’t crazy. C’mon, help me clear this pen.”

“I wish the pens were clear.”

Fazil stopped dead in his tracks, whipping around and wagging an accusatory schoolmarm finger. “That’s lazy as crap.”

“But?”

“I’m so glad you’re back.” He ran and scooped her up, and she couldn’t help giggling as he twirled her around over his head.

Soon he had her on the ground, her stupidly still-clothed legs wrapped around his back. She didn’t care that dirt was in her hair, along with who knew how many bugs and microbes. The scent of the ranch? However impossible she’d thought it the first day of her arrival, she was almost used to it. In his arms, she didn’t notice it at all. Her only focus was this man above her, grinding his jeans into hers. She started to work on his belt buckle when his butt started to vibrate.

He pulled the offending phone from his back pocket and slammed it on the ground next to her. “Let’s ignore that.”

“Agreed.”

Only, they couldn’t. As her mouth attacked his, as she clawed at his shirt, the phone kept on vibrating. It stopped, presumably to go to voicemail, but picked up again seconds later.

The man knelt, gloriously. He plopped one knee between the apex of her legs, rough and hard against her damp pants. One hand grabbed the phone, the other worked on her shirt, before he froze above her, a cocky smile wrapped across his face. “Why, it’s little Miss Janet. Hello?”

She could hear the woman’s swearing from where she rested, and a niggle of guilt settled in. It must have shown on her face. Fazil mimicked a steering wheel swerving and shrugged in that
Hell, No! Are You Crazy?
way that men sometimes do.

Janet must have just received a phone call.

Janet was not pleased.

Janet was out for blood.

He ended the call before the raving stopped and licked at the small scar she had near her chin. “She says we used magic to take her oil, blah, blah, blah. She intends to make us pay.”

“And you’re not concerned,” she asked, smacking his bum for his gross underestimation of the situation.

“Bigger fish to fry than that.”

“No kidding. Hey, about
that
, what if we went back? Check things out for ourselves?” She’d left in a haze of terror but harbored no misgivings about returning with Fazil at her side. Things looked a lot better from there. He’d protect her.

And...

Well...

If he protected her, then she could protect Manny.

He saw right through her, and she read it all over his face. “She could hurt Emmanuel.”

Fazil sighed and rocked back, squatting over her. “Janet doesn’t know anything about him. One, we’d be putting him in more harm by contacting him. And two, before you ask, no, we can’t bring him here.”

“Move,” she said, rolling out from under him and rising to her feet. “I’m not going to abandon him now.”

“I’m not asking you to. Please, baby, let’s not fight about this. I’m going to send him the best doctors that money can buy. We’ll find an even better home and—”