Naughty Karma: Karmic Consultants, Book 7 (17 page)

He grabbed Karma’s wrist and yanked her hand off him. “Enough.”

She could have resisted, kept probing—he hadn’t been kidding when he said she could Hulk-smash him if she let herself—but her head wobbled on her neck and her face fell into an exaggerated pout. “What?”

Karma Cox was drunk off her ass and about five minutes from passing out cold.

“Come on,” he growled. “Let’s get you home.” He was rapidly approaching sober, but she was in no shape to drive and if he put her on the back of his motorcycle, she’d probably slide right off. “I’ll call you a taxi.”

She snickered, apparently finding this hysterical. “I think I can walk it.” Using him as balance, she shoved herself to her feet and staggered a zigzagging path across the room to where a black Chinese screen painted with a red and gold dragon hung on the wall. She opened a panel on the wall, swiped her thumb across it, and the screen parted to reveal an elevator. “Ta-da!” She twirled, going for some kind of Vanna White flourish, but the movement was too much for her and she tumbled into the elevator to land flat on her ass, giggling “Whee!” the whole way.

Apparently, they had reached the happy drunk portion of the evening. He should be recording this. No one would ever believe Karma had said, “Whee!”

Prometheus crossed to the elevator. She’d managed to get herself into a semi-seated position, wedged into the corner. After her somewhat half-hearted attempt to restore her clothing to order, her blouse was held closed by only two buttons and her skirt was back down around her legs rather than hitched at her hips. All of her attention was fixed on wiggling her stockinged toes when his shadow fell across her and her head weaved and wobbled to the side so she could look up at him.

“You’re
tall
, you know that?”

He crouched down in front of her so she didn’t injure herself trying to look him in the eye. “You live in the basement?”

“Mm-hm. Jo calls it the Bat Cave. Thinks I don’t know. But I know. I know
all
.” She waggled her fingers in front of her face, frowning at them. “I can’t feel my hands. The vodka stole my hands, Prometheus.” But the vodka had also stolen her enunciation and Prometheus came out
Promshuss.
“Your name is hard. Ima call you Steve. Okay, Steve?”

“No.”

She pouted. It was disturbingly adorable. He found himself regretting his why-the-fuck-do-I-need-a-camera-on-my-phone stance. The blackmail would be priceless.

“C’mon, Steve. Please?”

“Fine, whatever, call me Steve.”

“Or I could call you Betty and you could call me Al.” She giggled, then closed her eyes and began to hum.
Very
off tune. Music was most definitely not one of her gifts.

“I think in that scenario, I’d rather be Al than Betty. Can you stand?”

“Nope.”

“Okay then.” Prometheus straightened and pushed the down button. The elevator eased into motion so smoothly he barely felt it, but Karma moaned.

“Oooh, that isn’t good.” She flopped onto the floor, pressing her cheek to the carpet and groaning. “That’s bad. I don’t like bad.”

The elevator stopped moving and the door slid open without a sound. Prometheus crouched next to Karma as she huddled in the fetal position on the floor. “Karma?”

“The room is moving, Steve. Make it stop.”

“It has stopped. Come on. Up and at ‘em.” Prometheus frowned, not sure where the hell that had come from. He’d never said
up and at ‘em
in his life.

“I’m gonna sleep here,” Karma announced. “The floor is my friend.”

“Better than being your enemy, I guess, but you can’t sleep there. Come on.” He gave her shoulder a little shake and she moaned, swatting at him. “Wouldn’t you rather sleep in your nice, comfy bed?”

She mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “Fuck off, Steve,” but he figured he must be mistaken.

“Karma.” He bent to singsong in her ear. “Karma, I’m looking through your things. Violating your inner sanctum. You’d better wake up and stop me.”

She smiled sleepily. “Mm-hm. Thas nice.”

Prometheus cursed under his breath. This was why he wasn’t the good guy. He had no freaking idea how to do it. But he’d gotten her wasted in the name of training. The least he could do was get her into her own bed before he ran like hell in the opposite direction.

He pulled her up into a sitting position, propping her back in the corner. She sagged there bonelessly, a soft snore escaping her lips. He got an arm under her legs and another behind her back, but when he tried to stand she slithered out of his arms to puddle on the floor again. Prometheus cursed and hitched her up again. Her body was sleek, but she was no lightweight and she wasn’t exactly helping, flopping in his arms like a rag doll. Even with his telekinesis stabilizing her, he barely got them both out of the elevator without braining her on the wall. Once in the apartment, he flipped her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to keep from dropping her. And through it all, Karma snored softly, oblivious.

He looked around him, taking stock of Karma’s Bat Cave. It was one giant open room—loft style, the support beams exposed, each room flowing into the next. In style it was similar to the office above. Tidy, elegant and so perfectly feng shuied it could have been the showroom at a Chinese museum. It was beautiful, but somehow sterile, her taste for quality and need for control visible on every surface.

Karma stirred, making a low, puzzled noise from her position slung over his shoulder. He braced an arm around the back of her thighs to keep her in place and made his way to the far side of the apartment where the space was dominated by a California king bed, the bed frame set low to the ground. Matching bedside tables flanked the bed, and a giant armoire dominated a nearby wall, carved in the same style as the headboard. The only thing that didn’t fit—in fact the only thing in the entire apartment that didn’t seem a part of the whole—was the chair. Positioned facing the bed, the massive wingback chair looked like the kind of thing stodgy guys in smoking jackets would read Dickens in while thanking viewers like you on PBS—provided the stodgy guys in smoking jackets were built on the scale of WWF wrestlers. He couldn’t picture Karma there. Imagining her in the bed was much easier, but that way lay madness.

Prometheus flipped back the covers and rolled her onto the bed. She’d probably be more comfortable out of her clothes, but she’d probably also kill him when she woke up if he laid a finger on her while she was out cold, so she’d just have to be uncomfortable. He tugged the covers back up over her, patting them awkwardly. Was that all there was to tucking someone in?

She’d probably be hung over in the morning. Since it was his fault, he fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and a bottle of aspirin from the cupboard in the bathroom. When he returned, she was twisting restlessly beneath the sheets, her aura agitated.
I hate the dreams
. He remembered the fierce way she’d said it, the feeling of being locked inside someone else’s future. He set the water and the aspirin on the bedside and brushed her hair away from her brow, reaching out with a tendril of energy to soothe her.

Her eyes popped open. He jerked his hand back but she caught it between both of hers, clutching it tight. “Don’t go,” she murmured. “Promise you’ll stay.”

She couldn’t know what she was saying. The Karma he knew couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. But she was clinging to his hand with such desperation, he heard himself saying, “Of course I’ll stay. Sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”

She sighed, nodding sleepily. “Good. You stay.” Her eyes fell closed again as her hands went lax around his.

He stepped back, frowning down at her as she slept, peaceful again. She couldn’t really want him to stay. That was the alcohol talking. She’d probably thank him if he let himself out. Sure, he’d promised to stay, but they were only words. He’d never worried about keeping his word before.

The chair caught his eye. It would fit him perfectly. As out of place in the room as he was. Still he had no good reason for folding his limbs into the chair to keep vigil over her dreams. He wasn’t that guy.

He didn’t know why he stayed.

Chapter Eighteen

What Dreams May Come

”Max? Max, where are you?” Frustration warped into uncertainty and fear as she shoved through the racks, bending frantically to look beneath them for a small head with dark curls. He was always so curious, chasing energy trails and wandering ghosts. Why had she let him out of her sight? He could be lost, scared, anyone could have him—

The dream melted, blurring and fading. Karma swam up toward consciousness. A lost kid, wandered off in a department store. Lucy and Jake’s kid. Not even born yet. No sense sounding a warning. It might never even happen. Years away, buried in a thousand possible futures, and for some reason this time the fear hadn’t felt quite so personal. Like it really was Lucy’s fear, rather than hers. An echo.

Still, in the residual fog of sleep, it was hard to shake the thought that Max needed her. Max, who didn’t even exist yet. Half-remembered agitation tried to linger in the wake of the dream, but then it too faded. She felt heavy. Tired. So tired. Instinctively, she resisted the urge to sink back into sleep, forcing her eyes open. There was a man, long limbs overflowing the chair, sleeping. Her resistance evaporated and she closed her eyes, falling back into the cotton softness of sleep.

Karma stretched, blinking blearily up at her ceiling. Her mouth was dry as the Sahara and her stomach was on the spin cycle, but other than that, she felt
good
. Rested. She hadn’t been catapulted out of sleep. She’d actually slept
well
. It was almost enough to turn her into an alcoholic. She could handle the hangovers if she slept that soundly every night. She wasn’t even that hung over and she still remembered her dreams, but with a safe distance. As dreams, not as prisons.

Snatches of the night came back to her, little fragments of memory. They’d succeeded, she remembered that, the feel of it, the victory,
the kiss
, but everything after that was a blur. Had Prometheus really thrown her over his shoulder? Had she sung to him? She never sang. But it seemed her time with Prometheus was an exercise in deleting the phrase
I never
from her vocabulary.

Had she really seen him sitting in that chair, that godawful chair she’d bought on impulse because she’d felt that strange, eerie compulsion that she
needed
it, even though it didn’t match a damn thing in her apartment? She turned her head to look at the chair—

And saw a long, lean body sprawled out in it.

Apparently, she hadn’t imagined Prometheus’s presence in the night. Karma’s stomach took another discomfiting roll. He looked good in the chair. Like it had been made for him.
Maybe it was
.

Ridiculous. Karma shook away the thought and sat up, noticing for the first time her attire—or lack thereof. Her blouse was half-buttoned, her skirt rucked up around her hips. She looked half-debauched. Another memory popped up—like the jack-in-the-box from hell—of her swinging her leg across Prometheus’s lap, telling him she was going to kiss him. She groaned, covering her face with her hands.

“Good morning.” His voice still held the rasp of sleep. “Sleep well?”

Too well. And it was too intimate, hearing him like that. She didn’t want to lower her hands and face him. He didn’t belong here.

“Or good afternoon, I guess.”

That brought her hands down. “Afternoon?” She whipped around to gape at the clock. Twelve-fifteen.
Twelve-
fifteen. She’d slept the entire morning away. “How is that even possible? I
never
sleep in.”

Prometheus shrugged, casually evicting another
I never
from her lexicon. He stood, stretching the kinks from his back. “It’s not like it’s a crime. It’s Saturday. Everyone sleeps in on Saturday.”

“I don’t.”

“Relax, Karma. Even you are allowed to sleep in once in your life.” He shot her a look and she was suddenly aware that she was in her bed, half-clothed and rumpled.

She tugged up the covers, but that didn’t make her feel any less vulnerable so she flipped them aside, wrapping herself instead in her most businesslike manner as she crossed to her closet. “I only meant that I have a very busy day.”

His voice followed her into the closet though he, thankfully, did not. “Is that your way of telling me to get the hell out?”

“Of course not, but I’m sure you have places to be,” she called as she quickly stripped out of her slept-in clothes and pulled on a pair of crisp slacks and a bulky sweater.

When she emerged from the closet he was leaning against his chair—no, not
his
chair. Her chair. Nothing in her apartment belonged to him.

“The beauty of my life,” he said, “is that I get to be wherever I want to be whenever I want to be there. So no, I don’t have places to be. I can spend all day teaching you how to relax.”

“Well, I can’t. I have a date.”

She didn’t know why she told him that, but as soon as she said it she felt calmer, like she was back on even footing with him.

Prometheus’s eyebrows flew up, calculation rolled across his face and his expression sharpened. “Since when do you date?”

“Since now.”