Chapter Five #2
He tilted his head, expression thoughtful. “It is comfortable,” he said at last. “I have made it pleasing, and I have all I could want. But I cannot leave it for the outside world unless my master removes the stopper.”
“Do you want to go in your bottle?” She laughed bitterly. “I don’t blame you for wanting to get away from me. I’m a total mess. And I just—”
“It is not that I wish to leave. I wish you to be...calm,” he said gently. “Not to rage against yourself when I willingly gave all that you asked. Not as a slave. As a...as a friend. Do not hate yourself, Felicity.”
I can’t promise not to hate myself. Not after what I’ve done.
“I don’t order my friends around,” she whispered.
“I’ll just leave the stopper out. You can come and go as you please.
I, um, won’t have Naked Day again. Or ask for lattes.
Or anything. You can be...like a roommate.
” She managed a weak smile. “I’ve been looking for one.
But you don’t have to pay rent or anything.
It’s paid up for a couple of months. Maybe you can find something else to do besides genieing in the meantime. Get a normal job. I’ll help.”
Dimitri smiled sadly. “This is what I am,” he said. “It is not something...I can change.”
“Not with that attitude.” Felicity tried to say it teasingly, but it came out mostly broken.
“I...I truly am sorry. For not believing you and for... Well. I’m going to go, um, get dressed.
You can do whatever you want to do. I’ll figure out a way to, um, make this all up to you.
And I promise never to use the W-word for anything, ever again. ”
Felicity backed away toward her room, shame suffusing her. When she’d closed the door securely, she flopped back on her unmade bed.
What the fuck was even happening?
She knew, with the small portion of her brain that could actually think, that she hadn’t made a wish for sex.
She’d asked for a footrub—had she even used the W-word for that?
—and everything else had progressed somewhat naturally, at least in the rarefied universe in which she invited a genie to Naked Day and said yes every time he asked if she wanted more.
She hadn’t felt like she was flexing the power differential.
And she had honestly thought she was dreaming, because in the real world genies didn’t appear to give a girl lattes and footrubs and oral sex.
But if he hadn’t been able to say no, if he’d been compelled to do what she wanted, even if she hadn’t wished it in words...
She was a monster.
She couldn’t turn herself in to the police—they’d just laugh at her and tell her that slavery had been abolished.
And then if they questioned Dimitri, he’d clearly lie through his teeth.
And what cop was going to arrest a woman for letting a man who insisted he was willing and eager go down on her?
They barely prosecuted crimes to begin with.
And she was pretty sure the law didn’t account for genies and wishes, anyhow.
But she’d fix it. She’d help him find a place in the world that didn’t require him to submit to anyone’s wishes.
And she’d never touch him again. As the right thing to do, and as the actions of a friend, and as penance.
It was the only way she could live with herself.
Dimitri glared at the closed door to Felicity’s room until he was certain she was not going to return anytime soon, then willed his return to his bottle. He needed privacy to work out what he had done wrong.
He could not ask her to wish him free. His throat had closed every time he tried to speak the forbidden words.
He’d known it would, and yet he’d tried, because shouldn’t he be allowed to tell a mistress who was genuinely distressed about his slavery the means to free him? But no. Those rules were immutable.
And she had been traumatized by their experience.
Not because she had seen how he was manipulating and seducing her in the direction he wished, but because she thought she had been the abuser.
That she had taken advantage of him. Which was both infuriating and somehow touching.
That she wanted to treat him as a man, not a slave.
None of his previous masters had ever recoiled at his servitude. Not even Harold.
And he could not explain to her that no matter what she wished, he would be her servant until she exhausted her wishes. Which would be never, if she kept her promise.
As well as her promise to never touch him again.
He flung himself upon his round bed, burrowing into the mound of cushions in vexation.
It had been glorious. Glorious. She had responded to his touch like a goddess, begging for more, and he had felt wanted as a man for the first time in centuries.
Had been drunk on her desire, so enthralled that he’d spent in his trousers just on the bliss of her ecstasy.
He’d wanted more. Wanted to thrust against her, feel the slide of silk and her spendings on his cock.
He’d wanted her to wish him free just so that he could be inside her. Not even so he would be released from his bonds. Just for the pleasure they could find together.
But he could not say the words to her. And before he had found something clever, or even remembered what Aziz had told him, she had been lost to her own remorse.
He needed to touch her again. To taste her. He needed to hear those sounds she’d made as she urged him on.
But he had to play the game.
You can be like a roommate.
Well, he would take that challenge. He would be her roommate, and he would still find a way to seduce his freedom from her.
He would make her yearn for his touch, until her accursed morals gave way to desire.
Until she realized that the only way she could have what she wanted with a clear conscience was to wish for his freedom.
It was so simple. But she had to realize it herself.
The campaign would be long. He’d been foolish to expect otherwise. But he could do it.
He groaned and punched a pillow.
This would be so much easier if Felicity were less honorable.