“Did you like growing up in foster care?”
The chair legs thumped as they slammed back to the floor. Prometheus wasn’t relaxed anymore. His black eyes bored into her. She hadn’t meant to say it. Her filters were down and that knowledge that sometimes hit her had popped out of her mouth before it had even really had a chance to register on her brain.
“No one likes growing up in foster care.” He reached for the bottle, refilling their glasses by hand.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You pulled that out of thin air, didn’t you? Post-cognition too, huh? Some fucking gift you’ve got there.” His face was tight. She’d never seen him angry before. She’d been furious in his presence, but he’d never gone past I-don’t-give-a-damn on the emotional spectrum. It was a little scary, seeing him like this. She felt the most animalistic part of her brain screaming at her to run like hell, there was a pissed off predator a few feet away from her, but she stayed perfectly still, watching him.
“Does it all make sense now?” he snapped. “Why I don’t give a shit about my birth name? Why I can’t understand why you wouldn’t have any curiosity about your birth father? What is with that? I’ll never know who my biological parents were and that shit makes me nuts. How does it not make you crazy?” He lurched up out of the chair, his long legs covering the ground to the couch in three strides.
Karma rose, the room swooping dizzily for a moment, and followed, drawn toward him like a tether connected them. She knew the answer to his question, but she didn’t say it. She had a family. Her parents. Jake. Sure, she’d been different. The ocean of power inside her had set her apart from them, made it so they could never wholly understand her, but they had always loved her. That’s why she didn’t need to know who had supplied the sperm to create her. Prometheus hadn’t had that. He’d been alone, trying to figure out who he was in a vacuum.
It was easy to picture him—she wasn’t sure whether it was imagination or some facet of her abilities supplying the images, but she saw them all the same. Smart, independent, resourceful, often in trouble. The system would not have rewarded his defiant brand of ingenuity.
She toed off her heels and sank onto the soft, ivory leather of the couch beside him, careful to keep all traces of sympathy from her expression. He wouldn’t want it. The topic was a minefield and she was too fuzzy to navigate it well, so she hid the way the thought of him as a kid made her ache, letting him see only the respect she had for what he’d become.
She raised her glass to him. “To hacking out a place for yourself in the world.”
That obsidian gaze landed hard on her. He went preternaturally still and for a moment, she saw the predator, pure and unvarnished, looking back at her. Her stomach clenched. Then he blinked, something unlocked and suddenly his mouth was twisted in a wry smile, his glass clinking against hers. “To hacking it out.”
Karma took a breath, belatedly realizing she’d been holding it, and they both drank. After the tension of the moment, relief made her head spin. Or maybe that was the alcohol. The vodka slid over her tongue like silk now and pooled pleasantly with the warmth in her stomach. She could focus on him, but the rest of the room had taken on a distant, fuzzy quality. Houston, we’ve achieved orbit. She frowned, squinting blurrily at the ice clinking merrily in her glass. “Why isn’t the ice melting?”
“Magic,” he rumbled. And just like that, he was relaxed again. How did he do that? He stretched an arm along the back of the sofa, his fingertips grazing the back of her neck as he lazed there, like a lion sunning in the afternoon. Even when he relaxed, he brought to mind predators. There was probably something seriously wrong with her psyche that she got a charge out of the little shivers when he made her feel like prey. It certainly said something about her defective survival instincts, but everything was loose and liquid right now, her entire body warm and mushy, and she couldn’t make herself care. Or move. Especially as his finger began to repeat a slow, deliberate stroke down the nape of her neck.
She’d always been sensitive there, but it had never felt quite like this, like every single individual cell was humming. His fingertip was an electric charge, sizzle sizzle sizzling down her spine and out to her extremities in warm, heavy waves. She was tuned to his touch, each new stroke awakening another inch of her body she’d never known could be erogenous. And that was just from brushing the back of her neck. What would happen if she gave him carte blanche with her body? The thought worked a delicious shudder through her.
Why was she resisting this? Why was she resisting him? He was this wild, sexy, utterly unpredictable, insanely masculine specimen of a man. She was never going to meet anyone else like him and she was wasting it because she was too much of a prude to listen to her own body, which was currently screaming at her to pounce on him.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“Mm?” His eyes were closed, head lolled against the back of the sofa.
“About casual sex.”
His finger stilled on the back of her neck, then resumed its lazy stroke. “Oh?”
“And fun.”
“Sex should be fun,” he rumbled agreeably, still without opening his eyes or moving a muscle. “Otherwise you’re doing it wrong.”
“I’ve definitely been doing it wrong.” The profoundness of this statement seemed to echo in her thoughts, distracting her.
His lashes lifted, the ebony depths they veiled watching her with careful neutrality. “Now that is a shame.”
“I agree.” His hand fell away from her neck and she resisted the urge to pout and demand it back. She tucked her legs up underneath her so she was kneeling, facing him. “I need more fun in my life. And more sex.”
He plucked her glass from her hand and set both tumblers on the floor. “That’s enough of that,” he muttered under his breath. Then, louder, “Why don’t we see about accessing that gift of yours?”
“Okay.” She swung a leg over his so she was seated, straddling his lap.
Chapter Seventeen
Save a Horse, Ride a Warlock
“Whoa. Ah, hi there.” If Prometheus had made a list of likely things to happen tonight, having Karma mount him like a cowgirl wouldn’t have made the top five hundred possibilities. Her skirt, which he’d never seen so much as wrinkled, bunched high, exposing the smooth lean stretch of her thighs.
“Hi.” She looped her arms around his neck, smiling dopily. “It worked last time when you kissed me.”
“I remember.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands—a gentleman would keep them to his goddamn self, but Prometheus was no gentleman, so he gripped her hips, squeezing gently, testing out the feel of her and discovering he liked the hell out of it. “I also remember that you wanted no physical contact to be one of our ground rules.”
“I have too many rules.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, but I’m pretty sure I’m only agreeing with the Stolichnaya. The Karma I know lives for her rules.”
“Do you know me? Do I know me? Does anyone?”
“I know that you’re a flirty, weirdly philosophical drunk. Wasn’t expecting that one.”
“I’m not flirting. I’m making a pass.” She frowned, peering close into his eyes. “Am I doing it wrong?”
“You’re doing great.” If the erection he was sporting was anything to go by, she was world class. “But we’re here to practice working your gift, remember? Now that you’re loose—”