He interrupted her. “Are you able to pay your debt?”
“Of course,” she told him. “As long as it doesn’t affect the kids—”
He cut off her words by simply putting a hand over her mouth. Eyes blazing, he leaned closer until the only thing she could see was him, and the only thing she could feel, all around her, was him.
“You will call me,” he said. “For the rest of your life, you will call me. I don’t give a shit whether or not you’re in the mood. I don’t care if your cause is useless or if I am too late or if you can fix the whole damn problem by yourself or if you just get scared. You will call me, Grace. You will call me.”
Her eyes widened. He was not quite in control of his physical form. It rippled, or his hand simply shook with the same emotion that shook through his voice. His eyes weren’t just blazing. They were too bright, even for him. She listened to not only what he had said, but to what he had not said. Underneath his anger was another emotion.
You scared me, he had said earlier, and he wasn’t used to experiencing fear. He was too arrogant and Powerful, too accustomed to the complacency of living a very long life.
She curled her fingers around his wrist and urged his hand away from her mouth. His jaw worked, but he allowed her to shift his hold. The tips of his fingers stroked across her lips.
“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.”