greatest city in both the Seen and Unseeen Realms. He was silent for many heartbeats, then turned to the beautiful Ifrit kneeling before his throne. He considered her for more heartbeats, his ancient face twitching as he thought, his hands stroking his long, white beard. He had expected this news for three hundred years, ever since that twisted crone had pronounced her prophecy. If he could, he would have every last member of the Jann put to death for their insolence. Alas, laws stronger than death bound his race, and he could not shed their blood without...consequences.
“Zaritha, see that the Jann whore does not reach this mortal,” he rumbled like the sea pounding a rocky cliff; power filled his voice.
A smile appeared on the Ifrit's lips, her eyes glowing red with her inner fire.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Baghdad – 1156 AD
“I am entrusting the greatest flower of the Jann to you,” Kalsom binti Abdullah pronounced, her eyes hard as flint.
“I will take ten men and travel night and day to reach Mosul,” promised Wafi as the Jann crone placed the brass lamp into his hands. “Allah willing, I will not fail.”
The crone nodded, then vanished in a cloud of yellow dust.
Wafi and his ten men rode hard across the lands, traveling northwest from Baghdad, the mother of cities. On their third day, the Crusaders found them. Wafi cursed his bad luck—the Crusaders never traveled this far from the Levant—and drew his scimitar, spurring his horse at the damned infidels. A knight led them, heavily armored, and his scimitar scraped off the metal plates of the knight's breastplate.
The knight's sword opened a cut in his side. Waif toppled to the sand. He tried to command his limbs to move; they ignored him. The knight dismount, armor clanging, and approached him. He couldn't see the knight's face past his visor. The knight bent down, opening the satchel at his waist. Wafi tried to protest, but his life was bleeding out, and his body was rebelling against his commands.
I failed her, Wafi thought as the knight picked up the brass lamp, then the darkness took him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Acre – 1160 AD
Alphonse of Toulouse fingered the brass lamp as his boat slipped anchor, heading out into the Mediterranean to take the knight home. The lamp vexed him. He could sense there was something important about it; that some Moorish spell had been placed upon it. He was certain of it; the column of fire had led him to those Moslems for a reason.
For this lamp.
The voyage was long, boring, and puzzling over the lamp occupied his time.
As they sailed past Sicily, a storm rose up, howling with all the rage of hell. Alphonse almost imagined a woman's voice in the wind, laughing in malicious delight. The ship's keel broke, and the knight sank beneath the waves, clutching the lamp. His dying thoughts were full of frustration—he had never found the lamp's secret.
South Hill, Washington – Thursday, January 16th, 2014
The loud, annoying, repetitive beep of Kyle's alarm woke him. He rolled over, slapping at the clock. Only his hand fell short, landing upon a warm, soft lump that gasped. A person... Kyle's thoughts tried to ponder that—
He bolted upright. There was a woman in his bed.
Aaliyah, his wife, smiled at him as she rubbed sleep from her dusky face. His heart sped up as the blanket slipped down to reveal her round, firm tits topped with hard, dark nipples. He tried to remember that he had a girlfriend named Christy. A beautiful girlfriend. But the sight of those breasts—
“How would you like to be satisfied, Kyle?” she purred, stretching. “My mouth, my pussy, or maybe someone else. Fatima perhaps, or her mother, Faiza? Maybe your girlfriend Christy? I could arrange for Megan again. Name the woman, and she'll be eager to please you, my love.”
Her fingers grasped his hard wood, polishing it with skilled hands. He fought off his baser urges. Fucking Fatima would almost be like fucking his own sister, they had practically
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