Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

At that, she turned to face him and met his crystalline gaze.

Those ageless, inhuman eyes held such piercing clarity, when she looked into them she felt as if she fell into forever. She couldn’t look away, and he didn’t. With the whole of her attention on him, she felt her own energy settle into alignment with his, and it was an entirely new experience that felt right somehow, comforting and good. It held a completeness she had never known before, his maleness to her femaleness, his Power touching the Oracle’s Power that resided inside her, along with her own, unique Power of the spirit. She felt enfolded, warmed, almost as if he had physically reached out to put his arms around her. A strange expression flickered across his face. He frowned slightly, tilting his head as he stared at her.

Up this close, the shining flame of his own Power was fierce and inexhaustible, a pure, unceasing roar that was…

It was sexy. Not just a little sexy. Awesome, kick-in-the-head sexy.

For the first time in months, she felt a pulse of arousal.

What?

Shocked and disconcerted, she pulled away. His hand fell from her arm. Breathing unevenly, she sat in a rigid, upright position and stared straight ahead. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.

His fiercely male presence filled the house, just as it had last night.

And he was no longer entirely indifferent to her.

“Now you have interested me,” murmured Khalil.

“I have no idea what you are talking”—she could barely squeeze enough air out of her lungs to get the words out—“about.”

He chuckled, and the husky sound was even more dangerous than that from the night before. It shivered along her exposed nerve endings with as much sensuality as if he had trailed his fingers along her bare skin. “I think I might like it when you lie,” he said. “It makes my truthsense feel so superior.”

She tried to glare at him but was afraid she might have just ended up looking panicked and confused. Outrage, where was her outrage when she needed it? “Of course superiority would matter to you.” Her attempt at scoffing came out more like a squeak, and she had a sudden impulse to get her sheet from the futon and pull it over her head.

She never saw him move. Suddenly he was bending over her from behind. He whispered in her ear, “You know, our truth game is still open, and it’s my turn to ask a question.”

She started shaking her head then her whole body decided to join in, as she shivered. They were supposed to be talking about something scary, but there were so many scary things in her life right now, she had lost track. What were they supposed to be talking about again?

“We’re on a new round of questions,” she whispered back, unsteadily. “So it’s only your turn if I don’t end the game.”

“Are you going to end it?” Tiny puffs of air from his words tickled her ear.

She shivered harder. Smart. Dumb. Oh, Damascus. “I–I don’t know.”

He cupped her shoulders. “Are you cold?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, wide-eyed. His eyes shone, and his expression was heavy lidded, languorous and wickedly knowledgeable. This time she didn’t even try to verbalize, but instead shook her head again. She felt as if she had lost contact with gravity and was floating in midair.

Khalil gave her a slow, keen smile. “What are you, then? You’re shivering.”

She fought to get some grounding, to push back. “You’ve just asked three questions, and I’ve answered two of them. No matter how you look at it, it’s my turn now.”

His smile widened into a grin. The look was stunning with his elegant features. He was not just prince of his House. He was also prince of mischief. “I concede,” he said. “It is indeed your turn.”

“I won’t be rushed,” she warned. This time she would be sure to make her question count, if she had to sit down at the computer and write drafts until she got it right.

“Take your time,” he purred. The pure sound licked over her skin. “I am in no hurry.”

Where had the irascible, antagonistic Djinn gone? He had been replaced by one who oozed sensuality and sin. She heard herself blurt out, “Do Djinn even like sex?”

Oh, God, she didn’t just ask him that. Why did she always have to take the dumb route? She squirmed and felt herself flush, not just on her face but all over, so that she could actually feel heat pulsing off her body. She would give anything to hide under her sheet.

If he was stunning before, the expression on his face now turned downright electrifying. “With the right person, we enjoy sex very much,” he said in a gentle, unhurried reply. “We enjoy it in a leisurely fashion, and we devote all of our attention to it. And our lovers crave it.”

Grace felt like she was about to leap out of her skin. He still bent over her as she sat in her chair, and he had braced one hand on the edge of the table. The memory of every boy she had kissed in high school, along with the lovers she had taken in college, burned away under Khalil’s intense, incendiary attention, and all he had done was flirt with her.

What would kissing him be like? Her mind whited out, and she coughed. It sounded suspiciously like a whimper. “Well, okay. I guess I blew that round again, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Did you? I found your choice of topic extremely interesting.”

She shook her head. “I just blurted it out.” Her voice sounded jerky, the words disjointed. “I was going to ask you something really clever and useful.”

He laughed. The deep sound of his mirth filled the room. “We have both been caught using our questions poorly. I have not been so foolish in a long while.”

If she were to choose how she viewed what just happened, she decided she would feel a small, sneaky sense of triumph for goading (coaxing? flirting ?) him into the foolishness, because excuse me, at his age, he really should know better. She wasn’t sure that it made up for her own foolishness, and she suspected she had been quite a bit more foolish than he, but she wasn’t too proud to take any victory where she could find one.

And their whole exchange had been too strange, too intense. A strategic escape might be in order. She swiveled around in her chair to face the table again, grabbed her iced coffee and buried her nose in the glass.

Still chuckling, Khalil moved back to the table to take his seat. With her head bent, she took small sips, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He sobered and grew thoughtful. After a bit, she thought it might be safe to put down her drink, but she didn’t let go of it. Talk about foolishness. As if holding a glass of anything would ward off a Djinn who was determined to do something.

Khalil’s gaze darkened. “As much as I have enjoyed teasing you, we still must talk about this morning.”

All thoughts of flirting blew away. Her shoulders sagged even as she nodded. “Yes, of course.”

She put her elbows on the table, her forehead in her hands, and turned her attention to what she had been circling around since it happened, the memory of the voice that tore down the stars.

While she appreciated that Khalil had been trying to reassure her in his own way when he told her not to be frightened, she didn’t think he understood that the vision itself had been terrifying, and she was reluctant to open herself up to the possibility of having another one.

Her hands clenched into fists as she poked at the memory. To her immense relief, it remained distant, disconnected from her.

She hadn’t realized how much she had tensed until Khalil put a flattened hand to her back. He said, “Talk.”

“I’m not getting anything else,” she said. “It’s gone now. The vision definitely came for Cuelebre.”