Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(19)

As they talked, he appeared to relax. Or at least he was less menacing. He might be indifferent to her, but she wasn’t indifferent to him. She wished she didn’t enjoy the sense of being immersed in his intensely male presence, but she had to admit she did. To be honest, she wanted to roll around in the sensation like it was catnip.

Instead she sighed, tugged her lip and spun the chair. She said, “That’s why you were Mr. Grumpy Guts when you showed up.”

“Mr.…” He shook his head and snorted. “Stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what, spinning the chair?” Feeling childish, she put a bare toe to the floor and deliberately shoved the chair into another rotation.

“Stop pulling at your lip,” he ordered. “It is time for a new round of questions, and it is my turn to ask you something.”

She sighed and stopped pulling at her lip. Inwardly, she was rather pleased with how the whole truth game had gone so far. Not only was she learning something, but Khalil was unexpectedly entertaining…in an entirely rude and insufferable sort of way. It wasn’t as though she liked him. But conversing with him beat lying sleepless on the futon and freaking herself out at every stray nighttime noise. And frankly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this long of a conversation with another adult. She would pay for it in the morning when the children woke up at the crack of dawn, but she would have paid for her sleepless night one way or another.

She said, “So ask.”

Khalil regarded her with a heavy-lidded gaze. He took so long, she stopped her chair and scowled at him. That was when she noticed he was looking at her brace, his expression curious. He asked, “Why do you wear that black contraption on your leg?”

Her gut clenched. His question was as artless as a child’s, but it still hurt. She breathed evenly through pinched nostrils until she could unclench enough to answer. She said shortly, “I was in the car accident that killed my sister and her husband. My knee is damaged, so sometimes I have to wear a brace.”

He frowned. “This is also why you use a cane.”

She looked down at her leg, nodding. Suddenly he was crouched in front of her chair. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Don’t do that!”

But his attention was on her leg. He was still frowning. “I want you to show me.”

She almost lashed out at him, physically as well as verbally, but his fascination was so alien, so outside normal human boundaries of behavior, it caught her own attention. Slowly she unbuckled the straps on the brace and pulled it off. Her slender leg was bare from the ragged edge of the cutoff shorts to her naked foot.

Khalil took hold of her, one huge hand at her ankle and the other slipping underneath her knee, and he pulled her leg out straight. His hands were quite careful and inhumanly hot, as if his physical form contained an inferno of energy. While he studied the mass of red scars, she studied him by the indirect light of the computer screen. Her stomach clenched again as he probed her knee with a light tendril of Power, but she let him explore the injury in silence.

He wasn’t exactly compassionate. If he had been, she would have shoved him away. No, his impartial attitude had a strange effect on her. She found herself relaxing and studying her own knee with dispassion, as if it belonged to someone else. It was the first time since the accident that she had been able to do so.

“This has been cut open,” he said. He sounded shocked.

“I had to have a couple of surgeries,” she said. His quick diamond gaze met hers, and she shrugged. “I’m lucky to be alive, but that doesn’t stop me from complaining.”

“Your flesh is so fragile,” he murmured. “And even though you are still healing, it is too late to repair your knee by Powerful means.”

She said drily, “Even in the witches’ demesne, doctors with that kind of Power are rare. I didn’t have health insurance or the money to pay for that kind of treatment. I guess the concept of permanent physical damage must seem pretty foreign to you.”

He shot her a quick, upward glance from under frowning brows. “I understand permanent damage,” he said. “I have struck down my enemies before, both those bound in flesh and those who are folk of the air. Djinn can be damaged. My daughter is.”

Surprise pulsed. She said, “I’m sorry.”

Instead of replying, he took the brace and fitted it around her leg again. She took over to strap it into place. Her voice was a little hoarse as she said, “It’s my turn to ask you a question.”

“Yes,” he said. He sat back on his heels. His expression had turned inscrutable.

It was her turn to fall silent. Somehow asking him about dates, mates, sex and TV seemed too childish given the turn in their conversation. She studied him, considering questions and casting each one aside. Either one of them could put an end to the truth game after she asked him her question and this round ended. She wanted to make sure she asked something as useful as possible.

His expression turned irritable. “Are you going to ask me something or pay the forfeit?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t try to rush me. We didn’t negotiate a time limit on asking our questions.”

“Very good, human,” said Khalil. He sounded surprised and somewhat amused. “You might learn to be an effective bargainer, given enough practice.”

“The more you talk and distract me, the more time I might need to think,” Grace warned.