“That, too. Yes. Look, I’m not proud of the years I spent—”
“Years?” Radha blurted, allowing a sharper edge to invade her tone.
“Um,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe three hundred.”
“Centuries? You preyed on desperate women for centuries?”
“They weren’t so desperate when we left them,” he said bitingly.
“You whore!” Darcy chortled.
Radha shook her head. Yeah, she’d known he was a jinn. That humans would pursue him relentlessly for his skills, but to know he’d played with their fears—
“It wasn’t quite as sordid as you’re imagining right now. I never took advantage. If they wished for a child—”
“You what? Pointed them in your buddy’s direction, or did they rub your lamp?” she said, glancing down at his crotch.
With his lush mouth thinning, he quipped, “You know that’s bullshit. I don’t live in a damn lamp.”
“Enough!”
Ethan’s roar rattled the dishes.
He pushed up from his seat. “Can you find him?” he asked, glaring at Khan.
“I know someone—his human handler, I guess you’d call her.”
“Find him. If he can’t be persuaded to come, bring him anyway.”
At that moment, little Tor let out a wail. As did Esme who now rested in one of the mermen twins’ arms.
All anger bled away from Ethan’s face as he lifted his son from his highchair. “Find him,” he said more calmly as he patted his son’s back. “And you,” he said to Radha, “Choose.”
Back at Radha’s cottage, her large floor loom rattled and groaned loudly enough to be heard on the porch outside. Usually a soothing sound, Khan winced when he heard a crash.
“I’m guessing I’m guarding the witch tonight,” Nikon drawled from where he stood, leaning against the porch railing.
“What was your first clue?” Khan growled from his seat on a long padded bench.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think you dropped from number one choice to bottom of the list when you let slip that you whored with the vanir.”
“We didn’t whore. We were partners in a…venture.”
“To impregnate women. I’m surprised the witches didn’t ask how he manages to do it. Get infertile women preggers, I mean. Does he fuck them?”
Khan shot up from his seat. “He doesn’t give them his seed. They don’t bear his children.”
“But he does fuck them…?”
Feeling as though he wanted to strike something, in particular the satyr’s grinning face, instead, Khan gripped the railing. “After he…lies with them…they’re repaired. Temporarily. Readied for their husband’s seed to take.”
“Damn. Bet he’s had thousands of miles of c—”
His voice was cut off by Khan’s hand pressing his throat. “And satyrs aren’t horny fuckers?” Slowly, he let go.
Nikon rubbed his neck. “Women like what we can do, even if they don’t really know precisely what we’re doing, if you know what I mean.”
“You throw a glamour that hides your true appearance, confusing them. How is that any less reprehensible than what the vanir does? At least, he leaves them able to conceive.”