by Vivi Andrews
Logic had its day, but instinct was ruling the show now and instinct knew exactly what it needed. A tall, fierce warlock who took no prisoners and asked for nothing from anyone—until he came to her.
She slammed out of the front doors, straight into a storm. Inside the building, she’d barely been aware of the thunderheads gathering, but now wind and rain slapped her in the face, soaking the delicate silk of her blouse and plastering it to her skin in seconds.
She shivered, even though the rain was warm; Prometheus hadn’t left.
He strode toward her like a warrior intent on pillaging, head down, body tense. The rain began to pound, needles of it smacking into her skin, but Karma stood immobile, making no move to shield herself as she watched the freight train of sexual intent driving toward her. Lightning flashed and Prometheus lifted his head. He jerked to a stop when he saw her standing five feet in front of him, breathlessly watching him come.
His inky black gaze started at her sleek Louboutins—getting ruined in the deluge—and worked over her calves and the snug pencil skirt, pausing to study her soaked blouse as it outlined every curve, then rising to the length of her neck, her lips. When his eyes locked on hers, there was a stretching moment, a raw fraction of a second, when time seemed to shudder to a stop. The rain hung suspended in the air, flags froze on the breeze, and all that existed, all that was real, was the fierce hunger etched into every line of his face.
Then something snapped in him, some measure of control, some veneer of humanity, and he was on her. There was no time to prepare for the onslaught. The kiss was open-mouthed and already three steps down the road to mindlessness. His arms bound her to him, lifting her off her feet and up for a better angle. His tongue plunged between her lips, thrusting and tangling, and she met his frenzy with her own, clinging and pressing herself tight into his body. He growled into her mouth, the predator in him she’d always sensed no longer lurking beneath the surface but on full display. And she couldn’t get enough.
He broke the kiss, pulling back until they were eye to eye. Savage satisfaction pulsed through her at the look of raw lust on his face. She’d put it there. She’d done that. He lowered her until her feet touched the ground, his eyes shuttering. A little shiver of uncertainty spiked. He wasn’t ending things here, was he? Not now, God please not now.
Thunder rolled, reminding her of the storm that soaked them both. He set her away from him and rumbled darkly, “If you don’t want to do this right here in the parking lot, run.”
Karma gasped. The eroticism of the image—him driving into her against the side of the building, the storm providing all the cover either of them cared about, drenching them—was nearly enough to buckle her knees. She couldn’t think of a coherent response. Couldn’t think. Logic was gone. Thought was gone. It was all instinct. And when he growled low in his throat and took a step toward her, instinct surged in a flood of adrenaline and she ran.
She didn’t look back, but she could feel him behind her, the push of his magic raising the hair on the back of her neck. Through the lobby, into her office, she opened the panel, swiped her thumb to call the elevator and didn’t even have a chance to pull her hand back before he was spinning her, pinning her to the doors as the silk screen parted, his mouth back on hers. His hands locked around her wrists, pressing them to the door above her head and she pushed back, resisting so she could feel his strength trapping her exactly where he wanted her. She arched against him and he ground his hips into her, the hardness of him a luscious length against her abdomen.
The doors opened and she fell back, only his grip on her keeping them both from tumbling to the floor. He lifted her, spinning them both, and she felt a pulse of magic push against her skin as he carried her into the elevator like she weighed nothing more than a feather. Karma broke away, twisting to reach for the down button, but Prometheus caught her hands and dragged her mouth back to his, the down button lighting without either of them coming within a foot of it. Her lips curved against his—you had to appreciate a man with such varied talents.
The doors opened on her apartment and he lifted her again with one arm and a cushion of magic. She trembled against him, the tingle of his power leaving her highly sensitized wherever it touched. He strode quickly through her apartment, past the box with his rapidly beating heart trapped inside. In her bedroom, he dropped her onto the California king and stood over her, feet braced apart, looking down at her with a feral light burning in his eyes. He was pure, erotic temptation, but the time for tempting was done. They’d already fallen headlong into sin territory.
He shrugged off his jacket and it vanished with a flick of his fingers. As he stripped off his black T-shirt over his head, Karma reached for the buttons on her blouse.
“No,” he growled, stopping her with a look. “I’m going to do that.” His fierce frown didn’t ease until she took her hands away from the buttons, lifting them over her head. He nodded and went back to stripping off his own clothes, leaving her nothing to do but watch the show. And what a show it was. He wasn’t bulked up with muscle, but there was poetry in the composition of his limbs, each smooth, lean muscle curving into the next in a graceful, lithe strength. His boots and socks went the way of the jacket and T-shirt—disappearing before they could leave a drop of water on her floors. He reached for the button of his jeans and Karma came up on her knees.
“No.” She stopped him with a hand over his, feeling deliciously wicked as she echoed him. “I’m going to do that.”
He kept his hands on his zipper, looking for a moment like he would protest, before that devil’s smile that could make her wet just from a look curved his lips. He lifted his hands and stacked them behind his neck. “Be my guest.”
The denim was stiff and she took her time peeling it back, easing the zipper down slowly. He was commando beneath and Karma leaned forward to press a kiss against the tattoo on his abdomen, teasingly close to his cock as she eased it free. She looked up at him and tugged his jeans a bit lower as she wet her lips. Heat flared in his eyes. “Enough.” Instantly, his jeans were gone and he stood before her, naked, willing and oh so able. She still had all her clothes on, right down to her Louboutins, and the contrast gave her a momentary illusion of control. Only the illusion though. They were doing things Prometheus’s way—a fact put to proof when he pressed her back to the bed and unbuttoned her blouse. With his teeth.
Her clothing peeled away, piece by piece, and he traced each inch of exposed flesh as he revealed it, his hand searing her with the warmth of his magic, leaving her skin dry and tingling in his wake. He removed her shoes and stockings last, taking his time over the length of her legs, before he came onto his hands and knees above her on the bed. His earlier frenzy seemed to have eased, soothed by the meticulous way he’d familiarized himself with every inch of her bare skin. There was still something of the animal in his eyes when he looked down at her, but now he looked puzzled by her, like she was prey who’d suddenly stopped running from the hunter and the hunter wanted to know why.
She reached up, threading her fingers into the hair at the base of his skull and dragging his mouth down to hers. “Stop thinking. Just kiss me.”
And he did. But it wasn’t the kiss she was expecting. It wasn’t the feral, animalistic ride. Not at first. No, this kiss started out sweet. A closed-mouth press of lips, teasing and sliding, coaxing and luring. He waited until her lips opened on a gasp before he snuck inside, a flick of his tongue, a suck on her lower lip, a nibble on the upper. The kiss was seduction. She’d thought she was already seduced, but as he lowered his body down to press against her, she realized she hadn’t begun to comprehend the word. Especially as the first spear of magic rolled off his tongue into her mouth.
His power spread through her body, leaving a liquid warmth and sparkling eagerness in its wake. It left her aware, almost on a cellular level. Not only of him, but of everything. The air, the light, the sounds—they were all simultaneously broken down to their most base parts and elevated
to their most divine level. It was exquisite, that profound awareness, and it made every touch an exercise in intensity.
She was caught up in the symphony of a dust mote sparkling in the air when Prometheus shifted, sliding down her body, and with a brush of his tongue, the first lick of magic drove high inside her, yanking her from deliciously buzzed to orgasmic in the space of a heartbeat. Karma keened and fisted her hands on the duvet, grabbing for any fixed point as the world dipped and spun. More magic rolled on a condom as his hands were occupied elsewhere. He pressed a finger into her, then a second, curving them until she moaned, taking up a rhythm that had a scream building at the back of her throat, everything tight and wet and clenching down as she reached for another orgasm, fighting for that release, until he levered himself up over her, growled, “Stop trying to control everything, damn it,” jerked out his fingers, flicked her clit with a blast of magic and drove his cock up into her as she came and came.
She lost time—a second, a minute, a lifetime—who could tell? She came back to herself moaning. He had her wrists pinned over her head with one hand, her legs drawn up and wide apart as he plunged in to the hilt. There was nothing sane or human in his eyes and she shivered, the sight of that raw animalism almost enough to send her over again.
He jerked out of her all the way and she gave a little whimper of protest, causing him to grunt, “Not hard enough.” He flipped her onto her stomach, grabbing pillows and shoving them beneath her hips until she was elevated to his liking. He slapped her hands on the headboard, holding them there for a moment as the warmth of his chest pressed along the length of her spine. He spoke against her ear. “Hold on.” Then he was sliding in, high and hard and fast, over and over, and all she could do was press back and try not to cry from the bursting intensity that exploded along every nerve ending in a series of lightning strikes as he poured himself—his magic, his body, his tattered soul—into her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Prisms, Rainbows and Kaleidoscopes
Casual sex was supposed to be fun. Fun. Karma could think of a few words that would apply, but fun was cotton candy. This was Russian roulette. This was wild, primal and animalistic. This was instinct and heat and…fucking. No. No fun here. Just bone-melting, mind-wiping, raw, hot sex.
She lay utterly spent on top of her duvet, beside a pile of pillows, and avoided looking at Prometheus. Not because she was embarrassed, but because she had a feeling it would be like looking straight into the sun. She wasn’t ready to ignite her retinas yet.
“You were right,” she said, directing the comment at the ceiling, rather than the man who had collapsed face down beside her, one arm wrapped possessively around her stomach.
“I usually am,” he mumbled into the sheet. “What am I right about now?”
“I was doing it wrong. Sex.”
He grunted. “Most people are.”
Most people aren’t doing it with you. Karma frowned, burying that thought. It was great sex. Great sex could happen with anyone. It wasn’t him. Though the magic sure hadn’t hurt. She’d never known power could do that.
Karma closed her eyes and assessed her body. Replete. That was a good word. She felt exquisitely replete. Languid and lovely…
And sticky.
As soon as she was aware of it, it began to bother her. Prometheus could probably feel fresh and clean with the same magic he’d used to get rid of the condom, and maybe other women could lie around smelling of sweat and sex, but Karma was not that woman and no amount of wild, no-holds-barred sex was going to transform her into that one. She opened her eyes and rolled out of bed, keeping her back to Prometheus as she padded to the bathroom, still not ready to look into the sun.
A warm washcloth went a long way toward making her feel human again and the bright light of the bathroom brought a welcome dose of reality. Still no regrets, but no hearts-and-flowers swoony intimacy either. It was what it was—two people coming together for one thing, and only one thing.
The woman in the mirror didn’t look any different—except for the suck mark darkening on the pink pad of her lower lip with an intimate bruise. She’d probably left marks on him too. Only on the surface though. Yes, it had felt like her very soul was splitting apart and remaking itself around a chunk of his, but that was just good sex. It wasn’t personal.
A tap on the door and at her invitation his image appeared behind hers in the mirror. Her heart rolled over with a jarring thud.
She watched him in the mirror as he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Thinking too much again?” His lashes lifted and his onyx gaze met hers in the reflection.
Not the sun. She’d been so very wrong to even think to compare him to the sun. He was a black hole, filled with intense, frightening gravity, sucking her in. And just sex? Please. That was wishful thinking. The man who made her heart thunder in her chest like this was not just anything.
Her life had been as orderly as controlled chaos could be before she met him, but it had also been stagnant. Prometheus had certainly changed that. All work and no play really had been her motto until he showed up and started making her crazy. She’d hated his interference with her perfectly contained world, but on some level she’d looked forward to the challenge her run-ins with him always represented, to knowing that her heart would race—even if it was from vexation—and she would feel that thrill again.
He’d shaken up her black-and-white world and what had been revealed wasn’t a world of muddy gray. It was color. Prisms and rainbows and kaleidoscopes.
But she couldn’t say any of that. Wouldn’t have wanted to, even if it wouldn’t have sent him running for the hills. She didn’t want to think about how she felt about him or what the future might hold for them—it was too impossible to imagine they might actually have a future, so she closed that box in her mind and focused on the now. It was all anyone could ever be sure of anyway.
Karma turned in his embrace, hooked her arms over his shoulders and said, “Why don’t you make me forget how to think?”
Prometheus smiled, that wicked, devil’s smile, and he did.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The On Switch
“Karma-cita!”
Karma looked up from the follow-up email she was sending to a former client, a smile curving her lips as her new sister-in-law and horny-ghost-transcender-extraordinaire struck a pose on the threshold of her office, Shirley Temple dimples flashing.
“Did you miss me?” Lucy asked as she continued into the office, followed by Jo, Brittany and Mia, the pack of them carting an assortment of takeout boxes.
“Immensely,” Karma replied, a little surprised to find it was true. Jake’s absence had been a hole in her life. As much as she liked Lucy, she hadn’t expected to miss her, but she had. Now that they were back from their honeymoon, it felt like a puzzle finally coming together after a bizarre scavenger hunt to track down all the pieces.
She’d never really thought of her consultants as her friends—more as her errant children, and the strict and distant mother didn’t get to partake of the girl talk—but as Mia, Jo, Brittany and Lucy pulled over chairs and made themselves at home around her desk, she was beginning to realize she had a place in this circle.
“We come bearing Chinese and Thai, since we couldn’t agree on what to bring,” Jo said as she popped open a carton of kung pao shrimp.
“Not that I don’t appreciate lunch, and the company, but to what do I owe this feast?”
The others looked to Mia who made a face. “I lost a bet with Chase and my payment is that I have to spend lunch away from my lab being social with nonscientists. He suggested I harass you.”
Karma couldn’t help but grin. Mia would happily live in her lab twenty-four seven, and lately she’d been spending a lot of those hours running tests on Prometheus. Trust Chase to find ways to break her out of her scientific rut.
“And when Brittany said Mia had called to check your schedule because she was going to surprise you with lunch, Jo and I i
nvited ourselves along because I am way behind on all the good gossip. Like a certain Karmic Consultants puppet master who appears to be getting rather cozy with a certain warlock?” Lucy scooted forward to the edge of her chair to pluck an eggroll from a box. “I need details.”
Karma felt a flush climbing her cheeks. She couldn’t exactly deny they’d been getting cozy. It had been a week since they’d found his heart and Prometheus had spent every night driving her capacity for thought right out of her head. She’d been sleeping soundly—even sleeping in, which had led to Brittany opening the office a couple times when Karma was late to rise. Her receptionist had seen Prometheus sneaking out several mornings. If their affair had ever been secret, the secret was out in the open now.
She’d been surprised when she’d woken up that first morning and he’d still been there, but he’d been so casual about it, as if it was the most natural thing in the world—and as long as he acted that way, it had been. They’d said goodbye with easy distance—nothing so intimate as a good morning kiss—and he’d gone to be prodded by Mia and look after his shop, only to return that night and back her against her desk, whispering about how he’d been fantasizing about spreading her out on it ever since he’d first seen her lording over the world behind it.
She still couldn’t quite look at her desk without flashing back to that night.
They’d fallen into something of a routine. Fierce coupling, lazy intimacy in the midnight hours, long, blissfully uninterrupted hours of sleep, and then cool, professional morning partings. It was comfortable, in its own way. But comfortable in the way a house of cards is comfortable. She was always watching for it to come tumbling down.
Luis had reported in that morning with his findings on the maenad who’d contracted with Prometheus for his heart. They knew as much as they could about her and were as ready as they would ever be to summon her and get Prometheus’s heart back in his body where it belonged. They’d scheduled it for two days from now. At dawn, since the handmaidens of Bacchus were said to be most potent at night and weakest in the breaking day. Not long now and Prometheus would be free.
