Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

But this. This.

He wrapped his arms and his Power around her. His head was just an illusion. He did not know why it felt so heavy. Still, he rested it on her slender shoulder, and she stroked the back of his head.

“You cannot take it back,” he said. His voice was muffled against her skin.

“Take what back?” she asked.

Their bargain. The truths they had exchanged. Her angry, funny quips. The gifts of food, drink, laughter and compassion. Her permission to visit with the children. Her promise to call him so he could watch over them. The claim to friendship.

He raised his head. He said, “Any of it.”

Her skin was flush with gentle color like a ripe peach. Her lips looked exceeding soft, full and luscious. She opened her mouth to say something again, to question, argue, prevaricate or to say something unbearably wise.

He decided he wouldn’t let her. So he cupped the back of her head, tilted her back and kissed her.

Grace couldn’t remember an evening she had enjoyed more. Watching Khalil with the children was a breathtaking experience, one small, miraculous moment unfolding after another.

Yes, his alien appearance and strength emphasized their human fragility, but their bright happiness at his companionship emphasized his gentleness and the care he took with them, and they blossomed under his attention. Grace told herself she kept a close eye on him to make sure nothing else inappropriate like the doggie-cat incident happened again. But that was such a bad lie, she couldn’t fool herself. She was watching him so closely because he was such a pleasure to watch.

He learned fast with the children, and now he asked questions when he wasn’t sure about something, instead of arrogantly assuming he knew the answers. And it was such an unexpected pleasure to share a laughing glance with him whenever Max or Chloe did something hilarious or goofy. The pleasure brought with it a bittersweet memory of watching Petra and Niko’s exchanged glances of amusement over their children’s heads.

Learning to enjoy his companionship was spiced with the sense of immersion in his male presence. At times she felt like she was swimming in a sea of his Power, buoyed and sustained, all tiredness washed away by his dynamic energy. Then he made his quiet confession about his daughter that was filled with so much pain, her heart went out to him.

Something she did, perhaps the fact that she had the temerity to hug him, made him angry. Or maybe his own pain made him angry.

It was probably dangerous for her to think she might understand him. Dangerous, when he took her in an unbreakable hold and he looked at her so angrily, and she knew that he could crush her without a second thought, and she also knew he wouldn’t. He looked at her as if he might hate her, eyes ablaze, his marble face set like stone.

And then. Then.

You cannot take it back , he said. Any of it.

Michelangelo’s genius took her in his arms. His head arced down to hers, inhumanly fast, his carved features cut with intensity. She had no chance to react before his hard mouth settled over hers.

He did not engage in any tentative, preliminary exploration, as had virtually every other male (boy) she had ever kissed. Khalil’s kiss was a hectic, headlong plunge into her mouth. She lost her breath at the shock and the strangeness of it, clinging to his shoulders.

His mouth and body were hot to the touch, his Power scorching. She shivered at the sensations, and the muscles in her legs trembled. She felt his fierce energy slide along hers, and it was extraordinarily erotic, almost more intimate than a physical caress. Her skin felt hypersensitive all over, her arms and her nipples and the heavy, full undersides of her breasts and the private, moistening place between her legs, so inadequately covered by her clothes.

She dug her fingers into the raven hair at the back of his head and hung on, her mouth moving jerkily under his in a clumsy attempt to kiss him back. Fractured thoughts and impressions swirled in her head, blasted by a cyclone. His familiar energy, the exotic sensation of his mouth, the blast of pain, anger and sexuality that roared out of him. His hunger and his need.

He cradled the back of her head in the palm of one hand. His other arm circled her low at the waist. His hold tightened on her until her feet left the ground.

She felt weightless, as if she was floating in him. The fastening that kept his hair pulled back was a simple strip of leather, and it came undone underneath her fingers. The black, silken mass tumbled to his shoulders.

He lifted his head and looked down at her. His expression was tight and remote. The crystalline radiance of his eyes blazed like lighthouse beacons in the darkness, warning of treacherous, storm swept seas. His lips glistened with the moisture he had taken from her mouth. All she could do was stare dumbly at him as she trembled all over, for he was so rampantly glorious, it had stolen her voice.

He eased her down again until her feet touched the floor. She wasn’t sure she would be able to stand on her own.

But then she had to, because he let go of her and vanished without a word.

Khalil’s kiss burned in her memory that night and through Wednesday. She woke up at night, aroused, her skin damp with a light sheen of sweat, her sheet tangled around her legs. He had used his mouth with such experienced sensuality. Clearly he had taken human lovers before. Realizing that after the fact was devastating. It brought into the forefront of her imagination thoughts of what he might be like as a lover, something that once would have seemed barely conceivable but was now urgently compelling.

Sensations and images flashed through her mind. The feel of his hard mouth taking hers, and the sense of limitless strength in his enormous body. The sheen of his raven hair as it broke loose and framed his ivory, inhuman face and incandescent eyes. The heat contained in his physical form and his scorching, true presence. His regal demeanor, his pain and his anger.

Khalil’s pain and anger didn’t bother her especially. Grace understood pain and anger, rather more than was probably good for her. But what she did not understand was that he had seemed angry with her. What had she done, or not done, to make him angry? She brooded on that the next day.

Her preoccupation made her stupid. She managed to put the salt and pepper shakers in the refrigerator, and when they were out running more errands and she stopped to get gas, she drove away from the pump without replacing her gas cap. Luckily when the cap fell off the hood of the car, it rolled to the edge of the gas station’s parking lot, and she was able to find it easily enough when she drove back to look for it.

She also had a difficult time focusing on what had happened in the back meadow, but she forced herself to concentrate. Because of her own impetuousness, she had put herself in danger, and she couldn’t afford to do that again so cavalierly. While the children napped, she concentrated on running through the mental exercises her grandmother had taught her. She pulled up the Oracle’s Power carefully, and when she let it go again, she did so slowly in a controlled fashion.

By the time she had finished practicing a few times, she was able to call the Power up at any time of the day or night, no matter where she was. While she would never forget how dangerous it could be, working with it had a different quality than it had that first wild, tempestuous time. It no longer strained to flow away from her or bucked to get away from her control.

Early in the morning, she spent over an hour carefully looking for evidence that the strange ghost was still influencing it, but the serpent woman really had relinquished her hold and was nowhere to be found. The more Grace worked with the Power, the more readily it came to hand. Now if she could only figure out what all of it meant, but she thought that might take years or even decades. She made a silent promise to Chloe to work as hard as she could to make it hers irrevocably. Immortal Power or not, she planned to take it with her when she died. Then Chloe, along with any other female descendants Grace might have, would be truly free to explore destinies of their own choosing.