Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(19)

He could give her hands something to do. It almost fell out of his mouth. Somebody should hit him.

He gestured to the cards laid out on the table. “How are you doing that?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. The cards have been doing that ever since someone in New York gave them to me.”

He held his palm a few inches over hers as she handled the cards. Warm, aged Power pressed gently against his palm. “These are old,” he said. “Really old. How long have you had them?”

“Since January. Some strange woman stopped me in the street, told me the cards wanted to come to me and pushed the box into my hands.”

“Objects of Power often have wills of their own, and they influence the world in ways we don’t understand,” he said. She frowned, clearly not liking that thought. He asked, “What happened to the woman who gave them to you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. That was the last I saw of her, and the cards have been doing this ever since. I found a discussion about it in an online forum. The general opinion was that it meant upcoming events would have ‘life-altering significance’. I feel like the cards are shouting at me, only I have no idea what they’re saying.”

Life-altering significance. Yeah, he could agree with that, but for all seven of the Major Arcana to keep showing up repeatedly, he was pretty sure the significance was about much more than one person.

Somehow she had ended up in Nirvana at exactly the right time to save his life. As an old object of Power, the deck might be exerting influence on the world in ways that had nothing to do with her understanding what the cards might be trying to tell her. He had heard sacred stories of items that the gods threw into the world to enact their will. The Machinae, they were called. The machines.

But those were legends. As far as he could tell, this was just a deck of cards.

“When we have time, I’ll do a real reading for you,” he told her.

Her head snapped up. “You know how to read the Tarot?”

“I’m not as good as my grandmother. She’s a bruja,” he said. At her blank expression, he added, “A witch. She lives in New Mexico. I learned what I know from her, since she raised me.” Talk about nature’s prodigious gifts. He hadn’t even grown up poor. A competent bruja made good money, and his grandmother lived in a stylish three-bedroom ranch in a suburb of Albuquerque. She’d paid all of his college tuition and even indulged his serious obsession with snowboarding.

Claudia set aside the cards, ran her fingers through her sleek, pale hair and massaged the back of her head in a tired-looking gesture. “So what are you doing getting shot and beat up in Nevada, Precious?”

Arousal pulsed again as he watched her, and his unruly penis stiffened further. He wanted to push her hands away and take over the massage, to soothe away that tiredness until she turned to him with as much desire as he felt. He wanted any damn excuse to put his hands on her again. Fuck. He pivoted and stalked down the miniscule hall toward the bed alcove until he was out of her sight.

“I’m a Peacekeeper with the Elder tribunal,” he said. He snapped the sheet from around his waist, wadded it and threw it hard at the bed.

“You’re with the Elder tribunal police force? That’s an elite posting.”

For crying out loud, his c**k jumped just at the sound of her voice. “I’m not a senior officer. This was supposed to be a minor assignment.”

“Involving the mine.”

He palmed his erection, thought of her sitting just a few steps away, and his hand might have slipped a little so that he stroked himself once or three times.

Yeah, he was pretty sure that masturbating as he talked with her while she was unaware of it was sixteen ways to wrong. Which also had abso-f*cking-lutely nothing to do with the greater issues at hand. As it were. He turned and let his body fall forward until his forehead hit the wall with an audible thunk.

Claudia said, “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I need to splash off some of this antiseptic smell. I’ll be just a sec.”

He sidled into the Lilliputian-sized bathroom, flipped on the cold water and stepped into the shower. The shock of frigid spray was like a slap in the gut, and just what he needed. After ninety seconds and a swipe or two with the soap, he stepped out, toweled off and yanked on the sweatpants. They were tight all over, stretching across his thighs and bu**ocks, and they were extremely snug across his pelvis, but at least they provided a minimal kind of covering.

This time when he strode back into the living area, Claudia’s gaze fell lower than his bare chest. For the briefest moment she looked stricken again. He could have sworn a touch of color washed over her cheeks.

Do not, he said sternly to his cock.

For a wonder, this time his c**k listened to him.

She bent her head and rubbed the back of her neck. Then she looked at him from underneath her brows, and her gaze was steady and level. Damn, this woman had emotional ballast. Was he going to find everything about her a crazy kind of hot?

“Luis, we need to talk about the invisible elephant in the trailer, because there isn’t room for it here,” she said.

That sounded like it might be a prologue to a brush-off. He wasn’t sure, since he hadn’t ever been on the receiving end of a brush-off before. He decided he wasn’t going to be on the receiving end of one this time either, and he went on the offensive.