Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

That was Grace’s destiny. It was the first thing in her life, including college, that she embraced wholeheartedly.

By the time Khalil showed up Wednesday evening to read Chloe the promised story, Grace thought she had the whole incident with him figured out.

She thought it was possible to sometimes hurt too badly to accept comfort. Maybe by offering him the hug, she had touched something he couldn’t bear to have touched. If that was so, she wasn’t sure what to do next. It didn’t seem quite the thing to apologize or to bring it up so they could talk, but keeping silent felt strange too. She felt adrift at sea, unable to make a decision as to how to move forward.

Khalil did not show up until after supper. By then she had tied herself up in knots. She and Chloe were picking the day’s toys up and stacking them in the living room toy box. Max stood at the coffee table, hanging onto the edge while he chewed on plastic toy keys. He was teething and had become obsessed with chewing on anything he could get his hands on.

Khalil appeared in silence, but she could feel his arrival at her back. Her pulse leaped. She turned from the toy box, tangled up in pleasure, self-consciousness, discomfort and confusion.

Whoa. He seemed bigger when she hadn’t seen him for a day.

His arms were crossed. He wore plain black. Even though she had seen him assume other colors, black seemed to be his go-to color when in physical form. His hair was bound back again, and his pale, elegant face wore a closed expression. He held his energy tight with rigid restraint. Looking at him was like running full speed into a wall.

Oblivious to the undercurrent of tension in the room, Chloe sang out a happy greeting, skipped up to him and flung out her arms. He gave the little girl a slight smile and picked her up. “What shall I assist you in reading today?”

“The terrible, no good day!” she said.

“That is an excellent choice,” he told her. “I would have picked it too.”

He carried Chloe over to the bookcase where she leaned over to retrieve the book, then they settled in the armchair. Max let go of the coffee table, fell to his diaper-padded bottom and scuttled over to them eagerly. Khalil scooped the baby up too, and he began to read to them.

Aside from a glance and a nod, Khalil didn’t speak to Grace. Her leaping pulse twisted into a heavy sludge, and her own energy clenched into a hurt knot. So that’s what it was going to be like, was it?

Fine. Screw him.

Their laundry pile had turned into a mountain. She was determined to catch up before people arrived on Saturday. She went into the kitchen to switch loads, fold clothes and diapers, and carry most of them to the children’s bedroom. After she had put their things away, she straightened and dusted, changed their sheets, and then she went into the half bath, which had somehow turned into a disaster area. She cleaned the mirror, scrubbed vigorously at the sink and toilet and mopped the floor. Then it was time to switch the laundry around again and fold more clothes.

The house felt too close, and the fans did little more than push the humid air around. The ghosts sighed and murmured with vague restlessness. Outside, the crickets and cicadas began to saw their nightly symphony. Grace felt toxic with sweat and dust, bathroom cleaning chemicals and anger.

She had been lonely, the kiss hadn’t meant anything, and he was clearly regretting it. How many mistakes did that sentence encapsulate in the history of relationships?

She was standing at the kitchen table, slapping folded diapers into a growing pile, when Khalil spoke in that low voice of his that was much too pure to be human. The purity shivered over her skin and through her awareness. Her hands stilled, and she closed her eyes, aching as she listened to it. He spoke with a deep clarion power she imagined renegade angels might use, as they called one another to war with God.

Then she realized the depth of her own foolishness. How could someone that wild and regal, that immortal and pure, be interested in someone as flawed and uninteresting as her? He was a prince of his kind, while she didn’t even know what the term prince meant to them. She was the antithesis of her own name, graceless, churlish and rough. She fingered her chapped knuckles, and her throat ached when she tried to swallow.

She hadn’t hurt him. She hadn’t been important enough to hurt him.

Belatedly, she caught up with what he was saying. “…and I thought you would not mind if I put Chloe and Max to bed.”

She looked over her shoulder. Khalil held the children in his arms. Max was sound asleep on one huge shoulder, and Chloe had her head down on the other shoulder. She was knuckling her eyes and yawning. Grace met Khalil’s gaze briefly to nod an assent before she turned back to the laundry.

He clearly didn’t want to talk with her, and she didn’t expect him to come back into the kitchen. She finished folding the load of laundry, grabbed a washcloth and went over to the sink to wash her face and the back of her neck. Then she sponged off her bare arms. She was too tired again to climb the stairs for a bath. Tomorrow she wanted to go upstairs while the kids were down for their afternoon nap, and she would run a bubble bath that reached the top of the huge, claw-foot tub in the upstairs bathroom and soak until they woke up.

For the first time, she had worn shorts in public that day and simply ignored the sidelong looks people gave her scarred legs. The cool, moist cloth felt good on her overheated skin. She couldn’t twist her bad leg and lift it in the air to wash, nor could she balance her whole weight on it to lift the other leg, so she had to sit at one of the kitchen chairs when she washed her legs and feet. She rinsed and remoistened the cloth, sat down and—

Khalil’s tremendous hand came down gently over hers.

She froze. She didn’t blink or breathe, and she didn’t look up. She just stared at his hand as he eased the cloth out of her unresisting hold.

“You will allow me,” he said. Said, didn’t ask.

She would?

He knelt on one knee in front of her, an immaculate giant with his regal, severe expression still closed to scrutiny. She blinked as he took her bad leg and lifted it with care. He began passing the washcloth over her overheated skin, from midthigh, down very lightly over her knee to her calf.

“I saw you limping earlier,” he said. “You should have put on the brace.”

Lightning danced through her muscles. The washcloth felt cool and refreshing as he stroked it along the contours of her leg with a delicate sensitivity that surprised her. She could barely hold herself still. She managed to articulate, “I’m hot and cranky, and I didn’t want to wear it.”

“That was foolish,” he said.

“It was none of your business,” she said.

“Have you begun checking the babysitting roster yet?”

“I haven’t had time,” she said shortly. What did he think she was capable of, anyway? There were only so many hours in a day. Then she realized she had never told him what had happened in the back meadow. The realization felt odd, and it led her to another realization: just how very much she had begun to confide in him.

He didn’t seem to take offense at her tone. He merely nodded as he curled the washcloth around her bare ankle. Then a prince of the Djinn washed her foot, set down her leg gently and reached for the other, and she couldn’t stand it. She grabbed him by the wrist and told him, “Stop it.” Her voice sounded as raw and as graceless as the rest of her.

He stopped and looked at her. Kneeling as he was, their heads were at the same level. She fell into forever again as she looked in his diamond eyes. He looked stern, still rigidly contained and impossible to read. He said to her, his tone deliberately even, “We will play the truth game now, just one more time.”