As I'm back on the Djinn again - re-editing old novel Heart of Flame - here's an excerpt from another short story of mine, Chimaera, which is set in modern-day Turkey, where a tourist is stalked by a fiery stranger all the way to Istanbul:
Still he doesn’t smile. He reaches out and lays his hand on the railing of the building at his right, and the iron gate swings open soundlessly at his touch. Let me get this straight: he doesn’t push the gate, but still it moves. I am distracted enough to glance at the structure beyond the rails. It’s the ruin of some traditional looking building, not too big. You see them around in the city, usually mosques that have for some reason fallen into neglect. This one doesn’t have a visible minaret though it does have a dome, so I assume it is a bath-house. Grey swathes of plaster hang from the stonework. The crumbling walls are overgrown with some sort of creeper that has withered to dried sticks in the Turkish summer. Back home kids would take one look and deliver the verdict Haunted.
He lifts his hand in a gesture of invitation.
I must be out of my mind. I must be begging for trouble. I walk past him through the gate, under the archway of the outer wall, into the derelict hamam. I hear him follow me, his feet quieter on the rubble than mine. We pass through an antechamber. We’re inside a room that must have been domed and tiled once, but is now open to the sky. Most of the tiles have fallen and are loose underfoot. It is absolutely silent in here too. My heart is in my throat as I turn to look at him.
He moves upon me with grace but with a terrible eagerness, gripping my arms and pressing me back against a pillar so he can kiss me. He tastes of cardamom. He tastes of sin. He’s more beautiful than I have words for, and my guilt is no more than paper in the flame of my hunger for this man, burnt to ashes. His body presses against me, just at the groin so that there is no mistaking his intentions, and I feel like I’m going to melt or explode or both. His hands find my breasts, pushing up under my respectable long-sleeved blouse, fingers closing over the nipples jutting through the rough lace of my bra. I moan into his mouth, covering his hands with mine to make him squeeze me harder. He pulls from my lips so he can look down at me, his eyes alight with pleasure. We’re both panting.
‘Who are you?’ I ask.
He nuzzles my ear, licking the lobe, teeth teasing my skin. ‘Ifrit,’ he breathes.
It doesn’t occur to me that this is not a name.
I don’t have time to think about it, anyway: he pulls me away from the pillar, scoops me up bodily and plants my bum on the top of a block of masonry. I’m almost at eye-level with him now. My feet dangle.
Now he can afford to draw breath. He stills me with a touch to my cheek, then unpicks the buttons down my blouse, his big hands incongruously delicate, just far enough to reveal my bra. He scoops my breasts out of their cups so they lie displayed on the taut fabric, pouting at him. I think my nipples look ridiculously pink against his brown hands, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He plays with them until I gasp and wriggle, drawing them out to stiff points then punishing their temerity with obvious delight.
‘Harder,’ I moan. ‘Please.’
His eyebrows rise but he obliges with a long, cruelly judged pinch that has me seeing stars. Then he arches me over backward, supporting my spine so he can get his head down and suck my nipples, biting me softly. I hang in space, trusting myself to his hands and his teeth, tears burning in my eyes, feeling and hearing his hot sucking kisses. I must be mad, I think, but my thighs are apart and he’s standing between my knees and his free hand is pushing my full skirt right up, it’s warm on the smoothness of my thighs, it’s probing into the moist flesh between them.
I gasp: “Yes! Oh yes!’
With a good strong pull he sets me upright in my seat again, breathless and wide-eyed. He needs both hands to help me wiggle out of my panties. My desire is laid bare. I blush, biting my lip, and crooking his own in a dark smile he wraps his arms around me, crosses my wrists at the small of my back and loops the elastic and lace of my panties over and over them, until I am bound with the evidence of my guilt.
Now I have to trust him. Now I’m helpless to catch myself if I overbalance. Now I can’t fend him off, even if I want to. He kisses me again, lingeringly, but it doesn’t work to distract me from the advance of his fingers up between my thighs, parting my inner lips, delving into my wet welcome. Like his kisses, his touch is expertly invasive. He works my wet flesh with every finger until I’m so slippery I feel I’m going to slide from my perch, until I’m flushed and gasping and splayed. Then he steps back just enough to be able to loosen his cotton trousers and scoop his cock and balls out over the waistband.
He’s both circumcised and shaven, which is a bit of a shock to my English sensibilities, his balls bulging in a smooth, loose scrotal sac. I strain against my bonds, wanting to touch them, but all I achieve is making my breasts jiggle. He slides his fingers deep into me again, then strokes my juices over his cock, working up a bead of his own lubrication. Then he picks up one of my feet and drapes it over his arm, holding me to stop me falling. His hand snakes around my waist as if we are about to dance – and it still feels like a strange waltz even when he shrugs my raised leg right up to his shoulder. He kisses me again, his mouth slow and hungry. He’s still kissing me when his big cock rampages up my slit and, discovering the gate it’s looking for, slides home.
God, he is big.
He stretches me to the limit. He fucks me slow and hard and deep. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he wants, and I have no choice but to give it to him: in this waltz, he leads. And what he wants is to make me come, so I do it: on his pumping cock, on his wicked fingers. I shriek as I come, my voice echoing under the sundered dome.
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