Sweet Nothings: A Karma Café Novella (5 page)

Her obvious inexperience as a do-me-on-the-counter girl?

Oddly enough, that sort of cheered Bianca up. She might be inexperienced, but she was willing to change that. She remembered the broad planes of his chest and the delicious sprinkling of hair that’d tapered between his sculpted pectorals down his belly. To that towel.

Whew. She blew out a breath.

She wanted him.

And she could have even had him.

She could have proven to herself that she had what it took to handle a sexy guy. A little experience, and she could be the kind of woman who had booty calls, wild affairs. Regular sex, dammit.

He could have been her do-me-on-the-counter guy.

But instead of telling Anja they were busy, she’d run out the door like she was being chased by a knife-wielding crazy man.

“Help me,” she said, her words just a hint above a whisper.

Anja had no trouble hearing her, though.

“In what way? Because I draw the line at passing notes to your crush and asking him if he likes you.”

Bianca made a face. She’d have stuck out her tongue, too, but that’d just cement her image as a silly schoolgirl. Still sweet and innocent, pure as driven snow.

She was so tired of that image.

Tired enough that she lifted her chin in determination, pulled back her shoulders and gave Anja a resolute look.

“Help me seduce him.”

Anja’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out.

“What do I do?” Bianca insisted. “You said yourself that he’s not indifferent. So why wasn’t he flirting back? Why didn’t he take the hint that I wanted to get beneath his towel?”

"Why didn't you take his hint and pull the towel away?"

Brow furrowed, Bianca threw up her hands. "Why can't you just answer the question I ask instead of the one I'm afraid to face?"

Anja’s laugh was both wicked and sympathetic. The other woman crossed the room to a large altar centered under the northern window. An hourglass shaped woman handcrafted in ceramic held center stage with crystals and blooming flowers scattered around her. Anja poured a small amount of clear liquid into a stone bowl at the Goddess' feet, lit a cone of incense so the air was blanketed in an aromatic fog, then lifted a wooden box and took out a silk-wrapped package.

"We'll do a reading," she said, returning to sit opposite Bianca on a round tufted pillow. Her smile was reassuring, but Bianca's stomach still knotted.

She'd known Anja for years. The other woman had never been shy about showcasing or offering her talents. But as often as Bianca had watched her lay out the cards for others, she'd never been brave enough to get a reading for herself.

The gilt edged cardboard rectangles flashed as Anja unwrapped them from their silken cover. They felt like fire in Bianca's hands when she took the deck to shuffle. Energy zinged, either from nerves or sparked from the rapid movement of the slender cardboard, prompting her to quickly hand them back.

The room was silent, intently so, except for the sound of the cards sliding against each other. Anja laid them out, face up in the shape of a triangle, with one card in the center. She looked at the spread, her brow furrowed in concentration. The room dimmed, as if the sun had scurried behind a cloud, making Anja’s dark eyes glow like black jewels.

Despite her nerves, Bianca leaned forward to see if she could catch a clue, but it was like trying to read a foreign language in picture form. The images on the cards were pretty. Exciting, and a little scary, but she had no idea what they meant.

She looked across the table at Anja, ready to ask what she saw. But the other women's expression didn't invite comment. Instead, Anja muttered to herself, her words indistinct as she tapped the card that looked like a tower toppling into the ocean with the tip of her magenta fingernail. She lifted it and stared at the remaining cards, then shook her head and set it back in its place.

Nerves started to unravel in Bianca’s stomach, leaving an ill feeling of disquiet behind. She wanted to ask what it meant, but where before she’d hesitated out of respect for the woman practicing her art, now she was simply afraid of the answer. Because whatever it was, Anja didn’t look happy.

"You're killing me here," Bianca finally muttered when the silence made her feel like she was standing on an ever-shrinking knife-edge about to topple into a vat of boiling oil.

Anja's reassuring smile didn't hide her sigh.

"You're at a crossroads," she finally said. "Life is made up of choices, of changes. Change often makes people hesitate, but it is necessary for growth."

"Isn’t that a little clichéd?" Bianca asked skeptically. Not that she doubted the truth of all of that esoteric, woowoo stuff that Anja lived by. She just didn't understand most of it.

She'd spent enough time with overprotective friends to understand prevarication, though.

Anja gave another sigh, this one impatient. Then she tilted her head and gave Bianca a direct look.

“You have choices,” she pointed to the card of a blindfolded woman standing on a stormy beach surrounded by swords. “There are many options open, but you're blinded to most. All of the options will require trust. But there’s risk with all of them, and possibilities of getting hurt."

Her lips trembling while her heart pounded, Bianca stared in horror, first at the cards and then at Anja’s sympathetic face.

“But that sucks.” She jumped to her feet and sending the couch swinging. “I wanted to hear about sex. I wanted ideas that’d help me go back over there and seduce that hot guy. I didn’t want the latest doom and gloom update.”

She’d spent over two-thirds of her life dodging doom and dwelling in gloom. It was sex time, dammit.

“Choices,” Anja said again with a determined look that made Bianca sit back down and stifle her pout. “Remember that sex is a choice. Seducing or avoiding the man across the hall, those are choices, too. All of them require you risk something. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to take a chance? Because the reward if you do could be phenomenal. Or the price heavy.”

Phenomenal. She’d bet anything sex with a guy who stretched a towel like that was beyond phenomenal. But was she willing to pay whatever price Anja might be seeing?

Bianca squinted at the cards, trying to get a hint of what that price might be. How big? How painful?

She took a deep breath and tried not to freak out. Focus on something else, she thought, scanning the cards. A couple featured naked people, which was encouraging. Naked was definitely the right direction.

But...

“What’s this one?” Bianca sat back down and tapped The Tower card herself. She was surprised the lightning didn’t leap off the cardboard and zap her finger.

“Destruction.”

Holy shit
.

She should have asked about the naked people.

“If I seduce him, my life is destroyed?” Talk about a cold shower. She’d rather stop at the naughty toy store on her way home and get a new battery-operated boyfriend than risk that,
thankyouverymuch
.

“No. The Tower is coming, regardless of what you do about your love life. If you seduce the handsome man next door, you will be visited by huge changes in your life. If you avoid him altogether, those changes are still arriving. The change is already in motion. The only question now is the result.”

Needing to move, ready to run, Bianca leaped from the swinging couch, sending it flying back then forward with such force that it almost knocked her over on its return. Ignoring it, she paced from one end of Anja’s small living room to the other.

“I don’t want change,” she muttered.

She hated change. She still had nightmares of all the changes her father had brought into her life. Changes that’d sent her running away from home for the first time at the tender age of fourteen, and three more times in the next two years before she’d actually escaped. Changes had made her turn her back on her family, her life, her entire world to escape them.

“How do I stop it?” she asked quietly, not caring that her words came out a plea.

Anja would know. Anja could do anything. Could fix anything, make anything happen.

But her friend just shook her head.

Bianca slid into a panic attack.

She hadn’t had one in five years, but the feeling was as familiar as falling asleep. The room swirled in a hazy fog. Black spots danced across her vision. Her lungs clenched and terror gripped her belly with greasy fingers.

“Anja, you have to help me.” Bianca, croaked, shoving the words through the vicious grip fear had on her throat.

The dark haired gypsy looked at the cards again, her face troubled. As if she were fighting her own inner battle. Then, with a quick grimace, she nodded and rose.

Coming over to Bianca, she took her hands.

Her touch was instantly calming. As if she’d pulled a plug, releasing all of Bianca’s fear, panic and worry. It was like melting into a puddle of tranquility.

“You have to face it,” the dark haired woman told her, the words quiet and intense.

Bianca swallowed hard, fighting the fear trying to claw its way back up her spine.

“Once you do, it’ll be gone forever. Face what scares you, and you will own the power. You will be in control.”

“Are we talking about my life here, or sex with the towel-draped hottie?” she murmured, remembering Anja’s warning that change was coming regardless.

“Facing your fears with the man could very well be the key to giving you the strength and confidence to face down the other changes,” Anja advised compassionately.

Right. Instead of a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, she’d ask him to go down instead.

“So if I face my fears, go across the hall and seduce a man who is totally out of my league, who pretty much made it clear that while he might get a woody on my behalf, he’s not willing to do anything about it, then I’ll be in control?”

Didn’t that sound like fun?

Actually, Bianca’s body insisted, it did. If it worked.

“How hard did you really try?” Anja asked. “Did you seduce him or just flutter your lashes a little?”

“I said hi, introduced myself and offered to turn the water back on,” Bianca muttered. Then she defended, “I was distracted by his mostly naked, totally gorgeous body.”

“That’s not enough.”

“I know. But I don’t know how to seduce a guy. I mean, I do. I’ve read plenty of romance novels. But I just don’t know how...” Her words trailed off and she finished with a helpless jerk of her shoulders. “You’ll help me? Please?”

“The Miner girls would kill me.”

“Are you really afraid of them? C’mon, they’re all short,” Bianca teased. It was true, though. At five-six she was the tallest of all of them, and Anja towered over her by at least three inches. Bianca’s smile faded. “I need to do this, Anja. I need to face my fears. I want control of my life.”

At least, she thought she did.

Mostly she wanted to hide from the idea of change. But maybe if she focused on the sexy fun instead, Anja’s doom and gloom prognostication would pass her right by.

It was worth a try.

And she had to try something.

Staring at her with troubled eyes, Anja pushed one hand through her tumbled curls, then gave in with a sigh.

“Fine. I’ll whip you up a little something that will help.” At Bianca’s excited look, she shook her head and held up one hand. “It’ll help you overcome your own resistance. Make you a little braver. You still have to do all of the seducing.”

Bianca’s confidence dimmed a little, but her smile didn’t.

She was going to do it.

She was going to be brave.

She was going to seduce the hottie.

She was going to overcome her fears.

And, by damn, she was going to have the best sex of her life.

Chapter Five

Twenty-two hours later, Bianca wet her lips, wiped her damp palms on the hips of her tightest jeans, adjusted the collar of her blouse, then forced herself to knock.