Naughty Karma

“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