Naughty Karma

Chapter Eighteen What Dreams May Come

”Max? Max, where are you?” Frustration warped into uncertainty and fear as she shoved through the racks, bending frantically to look beneath them for a small head with dark curls. He was always so curious, chasing energy trails and wandering ghosts. Why had she let him out of her sight? He could be lost, scared, anyone could have him—

The dream melted, blurring and fading. Karma swam up toward consciousness. A lost kid, wandered off in a department store. Lucy and Jake’s kid. Not even born yet. No sense sounding a warning. It might never even happen. Years away, buried in a thousand possible futures, and for some reason this time the fear hadn’t felt quite so personal. Like it really was Lucy’s fear, rather than hers. An echo.

Still, in the residual fog of sleep, it was hard to shake the thought that Max needed her. Max, who didn’t even exist yet. Half-remembered agitation tried to linger in the wake of the dream, but then it too faded. She felt heavy. Tired. So tired. Instinctively, she resisted the urge to sink back into sleep, forcing her eyes open. There was a man, long limbs overflowing the chair, sleeping. Her resistance evaporated and she closed her eyes, falling back into the cotton softness of sleep.

Karma stretched, blinking blearily up at her ceiling. Her mouth was dry as the Sahara and her stomach was on the spin cycle, but other than that, she felt good. Rested. She hadn’t been catapulted out of sleep. She’d actually slept well. It was almost enough to turn her into an alcoholic. She could handle the hangovers if she slept that soundly every night. She wasn’t even that hung over and she still remembered her dreams, but with a safe distance. As dreams, not as prisons.

Snatches of the night came back to her, little fragments of memory. They’d succeeded, she remembered that, the feel of it, the victory, the kiss, but everything after that was a blur. Had Prometheus really thrown her over his shoulder? Had she sung to him? She never sang. But it seemed her time with Prometheus was an exercise in deleting the phrase I never from her vocabulary.

Had she really seen him sitting in that chair, that godawful chair she’d bought on impulse because she’d felt that strange, eerie compulsion that she needed it, even though it didn’t match a damn thing in her apartment? She turned her head to look at the chair—

And saw a long, lean body sprawled out in it.

Apparently, she hadn’t imagined Prometheus’s presence in the night. Karma’s stomach took another discomfiting roll. He looked good in the chair. Like it had been made for him. Maybe it was.

Ridiculous. Karma shook away the thought and sat up, noticing for the first time her attire—or lack thereof. Her blouse was half-buttoned, her skirt rucked up around her hips. She looked half-debauched. Another memory popped up—like the jack-in-the-box from hell—of her swinging her leg across Prometheus’s lap, telling him she was going to kiss him. She groaned, covering her face with her hands.

“Good morning.” His voice still held the rasp of sleep. “Sleep well?”

Too well. And it was too intimate, hearing him like that. She didn’t want to lower her hands and face him. He didn’t belong here.

“Or good afternoon, I guess.”

That brought her hands down. “Afternoon?” She whipped around to gape at the clock. Twelve-fifteen. Twelve-fifteen. She’d slept the entire morning away. “How is that even possible? I never sleep in.”

Prometheus shrugged, casually evicting another I never from her lexicon. He stood, stretching the kinks from his back. “It’s not like it’s a crime. It’s Saturday. Everyone sleeps in on Saturday.”

“I don’t.”

“Relax, Karma. Even you are allowed to sleep in once in your life.” He shot her a look and she was suddenly aware that she was in her bed, half-clothed and rumpled.

She tugged up the covers, but that didn’t make her feel any less vulnerable so she flipped them aside, wrapping herself instead in her most businesslike manner as she crossed to her closet. “I only meant that I have a very busy day.”

His voice followed her into the closet though he, thankfully, did not. “Is that your way of telling me to get the hell out?”

“Of course not, but I’m sure you have places to be,” she called as she quickly stripped out of her slept-in clothes and pulled on a pair of crisp slacks and a bulky sweater.

When she emerged from the closet he was leaning against his chair—no, not his chair. Her chair. Nothing in her apartment belonged to him.

“The beauty of my life,” he said, “is that I get to be wherever I want to be whenever I want to be there. So no, I don’t have places to be. I can spend all day teaching you how to relax.”

“Well, I can’t. I have a date.”

She didn’t know why she told him that, but as soon as she said it she felt calmer, like she was back on even footing with him.

Prometheus’s eyebrows flew up, calculation rolled across his face and his expression sharpened. “Since when do you date?”

“Since now.”

“I’m serious, Karma. When exactly did this guy show up for the first time?”

“Yesterday, not that it’s any of your business.”

“A little after three o’clock? What does he look like?”

“Tall, dark and handsome,” she snapped. Then dread added to the already unstable mix in her stomach. “Oh God, what did you do? Summon a demon to ask me out?”

“No, of course not.” But he wouldn’t meet her eyes even as he waved a hand to brush away her concerns. “Never mind. It’s probably nothing. Just do me a favor and don’t make any deals with him, okay?”

“What? I can date other men but I can only negotiate with you?”

He smiled, a quick, merciless, predatory smile. He stalked toward her and she held her ground, refusing to retreat. He loomed over her, brushed a thumb over her lower lip and her breathing quickened. “Sweetheart, you go on your date. Have a good time. But we both know you’ll only be thinking of me.”

She expected a quick, forceful, claiming of a kiss. She was braced for it, ready to defend herself against his domination, but she was completely unprepared for the soft, sweet brush of his mouth over hers. The gentle, coaxing invitation of his lips. She felt her knees loosen and just when she was certain he would press his advantage, overpowering her, branding her, he pulled away.

And winked. “Just something to think about on your date.” He pressed a finger to her lips like he was marking his place and then he was gone.

Leaving her with a lot to think about and defective knees.