Jack and Djinn (The Houri Legends, #1)(10)
“No,” she protested, “I really do need my brakes fixed.”
“There’s only, like, a hundred garages closer to you than this one.” Jack was rubbing his hands on his coveralls, but they never seemed to get any cleaner.
“Yeah,” Miriam said, “but I was hoping you’d cut me a deal. And the mechanics at those other garages are all ugly. And rude.”
“And that makes me…what?”
“Nice. And…not ugly?”
Jack laughed. “Thanks?”
Miriam went for broke. “You know what? You’re right—I really did come just to see you. I can’t thank you enough for what you did the other night.”
Jack’s eyes hardened. “Anyone in their right mind would’ve done the same thing.”
Miriam shook her head. “Not everyone. It’s happened to me before, just like that. There was a guy walking out to his car, and he started to say something, but Ben just glared at him and the guy left.”
“Well, he was a f*ckin’ coward, then.” Jack shook his head. “Listen, I’m off in, like, twenty minutes. I just have to finish one last thing. Do you wanna grab a burger or something when I’m done?”
Miriam told herself she shouldn’t. Just go home. “Sure, sounds good,” she said, feeling butterflies in her stomach.
Jack was as good as his word, emerging a little more than twenty minutes later, the top of his coveralls unzipped and thrown back, revealing a white tank top and hard, toned arms, a Celtic knot tattooed on his left bicep with what she guessed was Gaelic script underneath it. Miriam left her car at the garage and sat behind Jack on his bike, enjoying the ride immensely, trying not to think about how much she was liking the feel of Jack on the bike in front of her, how intoxicating his scent was, the sweat and the engine oil and faint deodorant.
He took her to his apartment, an aging red brick two-story building in the Ferndale area. “I’ve gotta clean up real quick. Come on up.” Miriam just nodded and followed him to a second-floor apartment, a neat and sparsely furnished one-bedroom. It smelled of oil paint and turpentine. A canvas sat on an easel in a corner of the living room, where a TV might usually go. There were faint pencil sketches on the canvas, but nothing Miriam could identify.
Jack followed her gaze and shrugged. “I love to paint. The garage pays the bills, but the painting is where my heart really is.” He swept an arm at the apartment. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He stepped into the bathroom, pulling his shirt off on the way, and her gaze followed the rippling muscles in his back, the shift of his biceps. He closed the door, and Miriam turned to a stack of canvases leaning against the wall near the galley kitchen. She flipped through them carefully. He was talented, she realized, although she was no artist herself. There were landscapes, still lifes, portraits. One painting in particular caught her eye, a depiction of a candle flame seen from close up. It looked completely real, the candle and the wick just barely visible at the bottom of the canvass, the wax caught mid-drip and pooling near the wick. The flame was hypnotic to Miriam, as if she could feel its heat, see it wavering and dancing in the darkness. Staring at the painted flame, Miriam felt some coiled energy deep in her core expand and unleash, sending waves of heat from her in distorting shimmers.
The thrust of the power was consuming her, burning her, pressing on her chest so hard she couldn’t breathe; she had to get it out, had to release it somehow. Miriam extended a finger to touch the image of the flame, and at the moment of contact the painting began to dance and waver, becoming impossibly real. She felt heat coming from the painting, so hot she thought it might scorch her skin and catch her clothes on fire. When her hand left the surface of the canvas, the dancing candle flame went still, returning to its painted image.
Jack spoke then, and she jumped, gasping. “Like it?” he asked, his voice at her ear. She could feel the heat radiating from his body. She didn’t have to turn around to know he would still be wet, his hair mussed and damp, a thin towel wrapped around his angular hips, looking like it might fall off at the slightest touch. She took a deep breath and turned to face him. She forced her gaze upward, keeping her hands at her sides.
“It’s amazing,” she said, not certain whether she was talking about him or the painting.
“You can have it if you like it that much,” he said. He seemed to have picked up on her unintentional double entendre, returning its meaning in the tone of his words and the smile in his eyes.
“Really? I would love it. It would go great in my room.” She was sure she was blushing. She hadn’t blushed since high school. She was almost thirty, and blushing. What was wrong with her?
“I’ll bring it over sometime, then.” He was inches away, looking down at her. Miriam’s hands were lifting on their own, tracing the lines of his abdominal muscles, drifting toward the “V” where his torso met his hips and groin. Her fingers followed the rolled rim of the towel, inching it farther downward, loosening it. She hadn’t meant to touch him, but where her fingers brushed his skin she felt an electric tingling, a flutter of wings in her belly.
She withdrew her hands, but Jack’s fingers pinioned her wrists in a gentle but implacable hold. His eyes roamed her face, flitting from side to side, down her neck, and down to the expanse of her cleavage. She had no memory of moving, but somehow she was pressed up against him, her breasts crushed to his bare, damp chest, her chin tilting upward, her eyes on the hard angles and planes of his face. Jack released her hands, but she couldn’t bring herself to move them—she couldn’t pull her palms away from the hot skin of his sides. Her lips parted, and she watched as he slowly bent over her, one of his hands cupping the curve of her lower back, pulling her flush against him, and the other palming her cheek, his thumb grazing across her lips just before he angled his mouth over hers.