Thin Air

He blinked. “My coat?” He wasn’t wearing it at the moment, but it was draped over the back of his seat. Olive- drab, vaguely military from an era about a hundred years ago.

“Yeah. You don’t even need a coat, right? You don’t get cold. And it’s very…specific.”

His eyes widened this time. “Let me understand. We’re on our way to stop a Demon wearing your skin from ripping a hole through this world to hers, possibly allowing other Demons to pour through, and you want to talk about my fashion choices?” He paused for a second. “Wait, coming from you, that actually might make sense.”

I didn’t answer. The plane rattled its way through another set of bounces, and I didn’t have enough breath in my lungs to curse, because my diaphragm didn’t want to function. Maybe, if I held my breath long enough, I’d just pass out. That would get my mind off of the flight.

“The coat was given to me,” he said. “By someone I cared about.”

“Yeah? What was her name?” Shot in the dark, but not much of one, and I had a fifty-fifty chance of being right, even at the Djinn level.

“Helen,” he said. “The coat belonged to her son. She lost him in the war.” Oh. I searched for a way to get him to tell me the rest, but he shook his head. “Wardrobe choices aside, Jo, while Venna might not have thought it was possible to share a Djinn’s memories with you, I think it might be, if I’m careful and limit the scope of what we’re doing. But you have to promise to let me lead.”

Which took me down another path altogether. “You dance?”

That got a definitely odd look. “Of course I dance.”

“Have we ever danced?”

He braced himself against the bulkhead, turned sideways in the seat toward me, and extended both his hands. “Find out,” he said.

I didn’t move. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because…it just feels-it feels wrong. I don’t want an info-dump of how I feel about you.”

He lowered his hands to rest on his thighs as he considered that. “You’re not sure how you feel.”

“Yes-no. No, I am, I just-look, I want to build memories, not just stuff myself full of how other people see me. It’s confusing. And it’s kind of painful.” I met his eyes directly. “And it would be cheating for you to show me how deep this goes for you right now. It could scare me off. I don’t want to be scared off.”

I bit my lip in agitation as the plane’s engines shifted to a deeper thrum. We hit a patch of slick-as-glass air, then steadied out. For the moment.

He didn’t seem to have a response to any of that. I pulled in a deep breath and said, in a rush, “Did you sleep with her?”

“Who?” His expression went from blank to shocked. “You mean Helen?”

“No! No, I-wait, did you?”

He ignored that, finally getting my point. “You mean, did I sleep with the other you. The Demon.”

I nodded. For a few long seconds, there was nothing but the sound of the aircraft, the distant buzz of what other people were saying, and the pounding of my heart.

“Even if I did,” he said carefully, “it was because I thought she was you.”

“And you didn’t know the difference?”

He had the grace to look ashamed, and a little sick. “I didn’t have a lot of time to think it through. And to be honest, I don’t think I wanted to question it. Not when…”

“Not when you’d been bracing yourself to lose me forever,” I said. “Right?”

“Right.”

I felt my lips curve into a smile I couldn’t control. “You sure you’ve got the right one now?”

His eyebrows slowly rose. “Fairly sure.”

“Maybe soon we can upgrade that to completely sure.”

“Maybe?”

“Well,” I said, “privacy’s an issue.”

He gave me a slow, wicked smile. “It really isn’t,” he said, “if that’s all that’s stopping you. I’m fully capable of giving us all the privacy we want. Right here. Right now.”

I had to admit that kick-started my heart into a whole different speed. I looked around at the cabin mutely. “They’re Wardens,” I pointed out. “Well, except for Cherise.”

“So they are.” He didn’t seem much concerned. “Trust me. They wouldn’t notice a thing.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He looked very seductive all of a sudden-it was indefinable, how he shifted from business to pleasure, but it was a definite and unmistakable change in his body language. All of a sudden I was hyperaware of the clean, cool lines of him, the way his black T-shirt hugged his chest…the full, rich softness of his mouth.

“You’re doing this,” I murmured. “No fair.”

“Doing what?”

My attention fixed on his lips. I wetted my own lips with my tongue, suddenly remembering a ghostly echo of how he tasted. Half-remembering, anyway. I definitely needed a reminder. “Djinn charisma,” I said. “You’d better have a good excuse.”

“Oh, I promise you, it’ll be good,” he said. Bastard. I caught myself leaning forward and thought about stopping myself, but there didn’t seem to be all that much reason, and deep down, I didn’t want to even try.

So, I kissed him.

He tasted rich and warm and real. His lips were damp and firm, smooth as silk, warm as sunlight, and I sank against him with a moan. I’d missed this. My body had missed it, not just my mind, and my body stuck my mind in the backseat, bound and gagged it, and took the wheel.

David’s kiss filled me with an exhilaration and heat that my skin could only barely contain, and when I opened my mouth to the gentle stroke of his tongue on my lips, he bent me back, cupped my head in his large hand, and got down to business. The boy knew what he was doing, and French was definitely something in which he was fluent. The warmth in me coalesced into specific aching places.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I was on his lap by that time, feeling thoroughly and satisfyingly ravished, and his hands started to roam. Innocently at first, fingers dragging down the line of my throat to my collarbone, tracing curves and lines. Then down. As he felt the resistance of each button on my shirt, it gave without a whimper of friction.

Had I ever been magically undressed before? If I had, it was a memory worth keeping. There was a breathtaking sense of being out of control, but utterly safe in his hands. By the time he’d worked his way down to my waist, the shirt was open and loose, and my bra underneath seemed more like a display case than a cover.

Because he’d made it transparent.

“Um…” I pulled back, cheeks flaming. I could still hear the other Wardens talking, moving around, coughing. Somebody was playing a personal stereo at high volume to be heard over the turbulence and engine noise.

Surely someone-probably Lewis, with my luck-was going to look back and get the topless show. Not that I minded making extra money, but it seemed excessive. Not to mention unprofessional, if I had to work with these people later.

“They can’t see or hear us,” David said. “What they’ll see, if they actually do look, is the two of us talking. It’s what they expect to see.”

Maybe, but still…I found myself gathering up the gaping halves of my shirt and pulling it together. “Sorry,” I said. “But this is just too strange. It’s not that they might see me; it’s that I can see them. It’s distracting.”

“Oh.” David looked briefly chagrined. “Sorry. I didn’t think about it. You always-” He broke off before uttering whatever sordid bit of my personality he was about to disclose, and instead vaguely nodded toward the rest of the plane.

Which disappeared behind a milky white wall. I reached out and touched it, and my fingers registered a cool surface, not quite solid.

“Soundproofed,” he said. “But if you want out, all you have to do is push.”

I took my hand away and looked at him. “I don’t want out,” I said. I meant that in so many ways. “Any chance these seats fold out into a bed?”