Caught in the last moments before Khalil had left, Grace had a difficult time going to sleep. The warm humid summer night pressed against her skin. She kept reliving the rush of heat that had roared out from him, flashing over her psyche. It altered her understanding of pleasure and desire. She did not think she would ever be able to respond to a mere physical embrace again.
Would he climax during lovemaking, as humans did? Her body throbbed. She kicked off her sheet, curled on her side and slid a hand between her legs, pressing against the hungry, empty ache. When she finally slept, she dreamed of his huge, invisible hands sliding down the contours of her body, easing her own hand away. Long, clever fingers dipped under-neath the shorts and panties she wore and caressed along the folded lips of her labia, at the edge of her clitoris.
Her hunger spiked, reverberated back and forth between the physical and the psychic, the one intensifying the other. She needed to climax so badly. It had been so long since she had felt pleasure, and she had never experienced anything like this before, but she needed his physical form too, needed him sliding into her, filling that empty ache, moving with the kind of rhythm her body craved…
She plunged awake before completion and struggled with disorientation. For one heart-pounding moment, she balanced between a frenzied hope that Khalil was really there and a shocked need for him to not be present, to not have taken his lack of human sensibilities to that extreme.
She cast out her awareness, searching for him—and he wasn’t there. The quiet, darkened house was serene, and she was quite alone. Her dream had just been a dream. That left her to settle into disconcerted disappointment. She didn’t want him present, but she still ached with emptiness and wanted his touch. She tossed and turned for the rest of the night.
Early Saturday morning, when the children woke, she started another long, full day feeling disgruntled.
The temperature had already reached eighty-six by the time she drove Chloe and Max over to Katherine’s at eight o’clock. Katherine gave Grace the phone number of someone who had a twin bed and was interested in exchanging it for Chloe’s toddler bed. Grace also took all the serving plates with the lids, along with the set of four heavy linen napkins, to give to Katherine, who was overjoyed.
Katherine was also intensely curious, and Grace’s explanation for how she had gotten them took a good twenty minutes. By the time she returned home, it was a quarter to nine.
Brandon was the first to arrive. He was a stocky man with pale blue eyes that seemed to weigh everything. Grace didn’t especially care for the sensation. It left her feeling like he was judging her and found her lacking. That feeling intensified in their first conversation that morning.
“We only have twelve people coming from a smattering of local covens,” Brandon said. “Not the eighteen we’d originally thought. Apparently there’s a rumor going around that you’ve had a Djinn hanging around.” He studied her coolly. “He isn’t here now, is he?”
Taken aback, Grace muttered, “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, he’s not. I can’t believe six people canceled because of that.”
Brandon shot her a sidelong glance. “Djinn are Powerful and unpredictable. They make folks nervous.”
“Folks need to get over it,” she snapped.
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Her ready temper flared, but before she could say something she might possibly regret later, Brandon asked her for a list of projects. Since he was about to spend the day working on her property, she decided it was probably best to just let the subject drop. For now.
It was the height of summer, and everything was overgrown. She hadn’t had the time or the energy to keep up the fenced-in backyard. As a result, the yard was too unkempt to take the children out to play. The main issues, she told Brandon, were mowing the property (not an insignificant task, since it took a good ten hours for a single person to sweep through the open areas on a riding mower), moving a dresser downstairs to the office, and getting the backyard in shape so she could take the children out to play.
She said, “We used to keep more of the property mown, but right now I’ll be grateful to have the area around the house, the main path to the back, and the grass by the driveway cut down.”
He nodded as he listened. He had turned his attention to studying the house. “A couple of the guys are bringing their riding mowers,” he said. “We can get the whole property done this time around.” He pointed at the roof. “Got some tiles missing. That roof won’t make it through the winter.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I know.”
That earned her another assessing glance. “Well,” Brandon said after a moment. “Winter’s several months away yet.”