Gale Force Page 0,27

Cherise asked. "Because if you are, I need a barf bag. Or a video camera."

David didn't glance toward Lewis, and I had to fight not to. "Nothing that couldn't air on the nightly news," he said. "Word of honor." He held up his glistening hands. "Ready?"

"Oh, yes."

I closed my eyes in total, animal satisfaction as his fingers massaged sunscreen into every inch of my feet, then worked their way slowly up my legs, my knees, up my thighs, seeking out every ounce of tension in every muscle. He skipped areas that might have led to excessive moaning (not that I wasn't moaning already) and moved on to my hips, my stomach. What he did to my shoulders should have been in the Kama Sutra. It felt . . . healing. And yes, sexy as hell.

"Turn over," he said, low in his throat, and I glanced up to see that wicked, lovely spark in his eyes. "Time to do your back."

Oh, and he did me. Thoroughly. I was a boneless, purring heap by the time he'd finished. David pulled up another lounge chair and parked himself next to me. When I looked at him, he was showing more skin than I could remember seeing from him before in public; he had on a simple black pair of swim trunks, and nothing else, and it was spectacular. I let my gaze wander down the clean sculptural lines of his chest, bump over his taut abs, and found myself staring none too subtly at his swim trunks.

"Jo," he said. I heard the curl of soft reproach in his voice.

"Sorry," I said. "But you're worth a rude stare or two, you know."

He smiled. I couldn't tell if he found me amusing or arousing, or both. He took in a deep, slow breath without replying and turned his face up toward the sun. I remembered how it felt for a Djinn, that almost sexual pulse of warmth and energy. Gave new meaning to the term hot.

It was a long, lovely afternoon. Lewis read a book.

Kevin and Cherise played cards. There were cold beers, and all in all, it was just . . . perfect. Peaceful. There was weather out over the Gulf, but it held politely off, stacking up its clouds at the boundaries of the low-pressure system in neat storage ranks.

I wished it would never end, but of course eventually it did. As the afternoon cooled, and the clouds began to move in, David kissed my fingers and murmured, "I have to go."

"I know," I said, and opened my eyes. His were brown, almost completely human in color as well as in the emotion they contained. I wondered from time to time what Djinn really thought about us, about the tedious nature of human existence, but David really seemed to delight in participating when the opportunity presented itself. "You're being careful, right?"

That got me an ironic tilt of his eyebrows. "Look who's talking."

"Exactly. You're consulting an expert here. Nobody better at getting into trouble than me." I rolled up to a sitting position, facing him. "I mean it, David. I dreamed - " No, I didn't want to talk about that. The image of him lying broken in the street, pierced by that black thing . . . no. "I mean, I'm just worried you're not taking this seriously. About the antimatter. "

That earned me a trace of a frown. "It's not that I don't take it seriously. It's that for the Djinn, it's invisible. We can't see it, touch it, measure it. It doesn't exist to us. How can I possibly watch out for it?"

"If it doesn't exist, how did it end up inside a dead Djinn?" I demanded. He kissed my fingers again.

"Jo, I already told you, there is no dead Djinn," he said. "Believe me, we'd know. We always know. None of us is missing."

He kissed me again, an apologetic good-bye, and that was it. He misted away, off about his business, and I felt a sudden chill. Cherise had thrown a couple of wraparound robes in the beach bag, and I donned one, shivering in its terry cloth embrace.

Lewis noticed. I suspected he noticed a hell of a lot. "Let's get you back in bed," he said. "You're checking out tomorrow. Don't want you relapsing."

Not that there was much chance of it; with Lewis's Earth Warden treatments, and David's Djinn-powered supplemental healing, I'd have to be damn stubborn to screw up that badly.

But I felt cold - cold and scared,