Thea Harrison - Oracle's Moon

“I love you too,” she said, because her sense of direction for picking out all the dumb routes in her life was pretty much infallible. She watched as the impact of her words changed his expression drastically, and she started to babble. “I know it’s stupid. I thought the age difference between Hugh Hefner and his girlfriends was bad. And who has time for this sort of thing, right? I think it happened when you put Max on your lap for the first time.…”

She never finished the sentence. Khalil slid his hand to the back of her neck. He lifted up her head as he lowered his face, and she got caught in the middle, as his mouth settled over hers, and it didn’t matter if the Oracle wasn’t supposed to be able to prophesy for herself, because in that moment Grace knew she would love him unconditionally for the rest of her life.

He kissed and kissed her, like he had before, gently, hungrily, spearing into her with his hot tongue, and she burned everywhere he touched her, all over her body and deep in her soul. “You will call me,” he said against her lips. “Swear, Gracie. I cannot stand it if you do not call me.”

“I swear it,” she murmured. She felt desire take fire in him again. He had cracked her wide open before, and it was too soon, too much for her to reach that insane, intense outpouring of passion again. She wasn’t ready for it, but at the same time she needed it and him. She dug her fingers into his hair and started to shake.

“Shh, be easy,” he said. He gripped her by the hip, gently, as he rested his forehead against her collarbone. His desire remained steady, banked. “Your Power is still roused. I do not like how it has been dangerous for you.”

His own stern control helped her to find hers. She rubbed her face as she checked the strange landscape she had become. “It doesn’t feel roused,” she said. “Maybe it feels stronger to you because today is the Oracle’s moon. The Power flexes with the lunar cycle.”

He lifted his head, frowning down at her. She could feel him scanning her carefully. It felt delicious, like he was physically running his hands gently down her limbs. Underneath the weight of his body, she stretched and sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “It is stronger than it was last night. But it’s more than that. It’s different. I don’t think that difference is because of the lunar cycle.”

She confessed, “I’m starting to lose the sense that it’s something separate from me. It feels like we’re knitting together.”

His mouth tightened as he shifted to her side. He settled his body alongside hers and propped his head in one hand. “You are.”

She watched his face curiously. “How does it look—or feel?”

“It’s beautiful,” he said with obvious reluctance. “But then you were beautiful before. It’s a dark vein marbling your energy. If this continues, I don’t see how it will pass on to Chloe or to anybody else.” He met her eyes. “That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

She smiled. “Yes. That’s exactly what I wanted.”

“It’s changing you,” he said. His own gaze was shadowed with worry. “Are you sure that you’re all right with that?”

“It changed me the moment it left my sister and came to me,” she told him. “I’ve kicked against it, cursed and yelled at it, then finally accepted it. Now I’ve claimed it, and I want to know what I can make of it. And what it’s making of me.” She bit at a fingernail. “That means I need to keep experimenting. That expulsion spell I threw at Phaedra was meant to get rid of dark spirits. I only threw it at her because I lost my temper and got desperate. That spell never would have had the strength to physically throw anybody before. She bled a light-colored liquid that soaked back into her. I didn’t know you could bleed.”

“We don’t, at least not in the way humans bleed. When the bodies we create sustain damage, the part of our Power that has become physical leaks until we fix it.” His hand resting on her hip tightened. He growled, “You don’t experiment alone anymore, do you hear me? Forget that, you don’t experiment without me. In your dream your grandmother and sister said you were going the wrong way. You need someone else present to help you in case things get out of control again.”

She nodded as she curled against his side. Her eyes felt dry and gritty. She closed them and turned her face into his chest. He cupped her head, holding her gently against him. “That might have been what they meant. I’ve certainly been doing things differently from how I’d been taught.”

“I see another truth,” said Khalil quietly. “You’re discarding the rituals your family has used for generations. You exorcised the ghost, or at least you persuaded the ghost to leave you, and you claimed the Power. It is as though the Oracles that came before you needed all the rituals and the steps in order to access the Power, because they were substitutes, while you are actually becoming the Oracle.”

She held her breath as she considered his words. Was he right? She couldn’t tell. Exhaustion weighed her down again. She muttered, “I’m tired of thinking about all of this right now. Khalil, I had a long day, and I need to get some more rest. I have to pick the kids up in the morning.”

“Then stop thinking.” He kissed her forehead. “While you pick up the children, tomorrow morning I am going to do what I should have done before this.”

She pressed her lips against the smooth skin of his chest. “What’s that?”

“I am going to find out where Therese lives,” he said. A stiletto of malice crept into his voice. “I would like to know how she enjoys it when someone looks through her things. I’m also interested in what I will find when I do so. And after that, I think I will find this witch Brandon. I might even introduce myself to Jaydon Guthrie. Then we will see what tale this Oracle’s moon tells.”

She snorted, a small exhalation of air. “I have another human saying for you,” she said drowsily.

“What is that?” he asked.

She smiled and told him, “Just let me know if I ever piss you off, so I can have a chance to apologize.”

Amusement danced through his energy. “Sometimes you have made me very angry,” he said. “And I have not noticed that you are overly eager to apologize for that.”

“Mmm.” It might be time for a strategic distraction. She stroked his presence with hers in a lavish, languid caress.

He caught his breath then whispered, “Go to sleep, dearest.”

Her heart kicked and pleasure rippled through her at the oddly archaic, beautiful endearment. Then she sighed and did just that.

I love you too , Grace had said, and that was a far more radical thing than simply calling him friend.

Too.

As if she had already known something he hadn’t.

Khalil held himself tensely while he watched Grace sleep. How had this young human woman become so precious to him so quickly? It had happened in less than two weeks. A mere handful of days.

He had been at war with Lethe for longer than some civilizations had existed. Often he had taken years to decide where he might go on vacation. When he had met Leo Tolstoy in 1906, the Russian novelist had intrigued him so much, Khalil decided he would consider reading War and Peace , and he had still not yet made up his mind. It wasn’t that he was indecisive; he simply had no reason to rush anything.

He had never bothered to count time before, but he started to now, and it began with counting each breath she took. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest in agonized amazement. She would take only a limited number of breaths in her lifetime, and then she would stop breathing forever. Max and Chloe, those bright-eyed baby birds, would live for such a short, short while.