Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(31)

“I won’t be rushed,” she warned. This time she would be sure to make her question count, if she had to sit down at the computer and write drafts until she got it right.

“Take your time,” he purred. The pure sound licked over her skin. “I am in no hurry.”

Where had the irascible, antagonistic Djinn gone? He had been replaced by one who oozed sensuality and sin. She heard herself blurt out, “Do Djinn even like sex?”

Oh, God, she didn’t just ask him that. Why did she always have to take the dumb route? She squirmed and felt herself flush, not just on her face but all over, so that she could actually feel heat pulsing off her body. She would give anything to hide under her sheet.

If he was stunning before, the expression on his face now turned downright electrifying. “With the right person, we enjoy sex very much,” he said in a gentle, unhurried reply. “We enjoy it in a leisurely fashion, and we devote all of our attention to it. And our lovers crave it.”

Grace felt like she was about to leap out of her skin. He still bent over her as she sat in her chair, and he had braced one hand on the edge of the table. The memory of every boy she had kissed in high school, along with the lovers she had taken in college, burned away under Khalil’s intense, incendiary attention, and all he had done was flirt with her.

What would kissing him be like? Her mind whited out, and she coughed. It sounded suspiciously like a whimper. “Well, okay. I guess I blew that round again, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Did you? I found your choice of topic extremely interesting.”

She shook her head. “I just blurted it out.” Her voice sounded jerky, the words disjointed. “I was going to ask you something really clever and useful.”

He laughed. The deep sound of his mirth filled the room. “We have both been caught using our questions poorly. I have not been so foolish in a long while.”

If she were to choose how she viewed what just happened, she decided she would feel a small, sneaky sense of triumph for goading (coaxing? flirting?) him into the foolishness, because excuse me, at his age, he really should know better. She wasn’t sure that it made up for her own foolishness, and she suspected she had been quite a bit more foolish than he, but she wasn’t too proud to take any victory where she could find one.

And their whole exchange had been too strange, too intense. A strategic escape might be in order. She swiveled around in her chair to face the table again, grabbed her iced coffee and buried her nose in the glass.

Still chuckling, Khalil moved back to the table to take his seat. With her head bent, she took small sips, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He sobered and grew thoughtful. After a bit, she thought it might be safe to put down her drink, but she didn’t let go of it. Talk about foolishness. As if holding a glass of anything would ward off a Djinn who was determined to do something.

Khalil’s gaze darkened. “As much as I have enjoyed teasing you, we still must talk about this morning.”

All thoughts of flirting blew away. Her shoulders sagged even as she nodded. “Yes, of course.”

She put her elbows on the table, her forehead in her hands, and turned her attention to what she had been circling around since it happened, the memory of the voice that tore down the stars.

While she appreciated that Khalil had been trying to reassure her in his own way when he told her not to be frightened, she didn’t think he understood that the vision itself had been terrifying, and she was reluctant to open herself up to the possibility of having another one.

Her hands clenched into fists as she poked at the memory. To her immense relief, it remained distant, disconnected from her.

She hadn’t realized how much she had tensed until Khalil put a flattened hand to her back. He said, “Talk.”

“I’m not getting anything else,” she said. “It’s gone now. The vision definitely came for Cuelebre.”

Khalil said, “The voice mentioned the Great Beast.”

“Whether he wants it or not, it’s his prophecy.” Her forehead crinkled. “Although I think whatever the vision is about, it might be bigger than just Cuelebre. It felt global or elemental in some way. I had a vision of stars being blacked out in the night sky.” The sight was so unnatural, she couldn’t stop another shudder.

His gaze sharpened. “I did not see anything. I only heard the voice. Did you recognize the landscape?”

She shook her head. “No. It might have been symbolic, but I’m not sure. Oracular visions can come in a variety of ways. They can be from the past or from possible futures, or they can be a dreamlike sequence of images that has particular significance to a petitioner. My grandmother and Petra could tell the difference, but I haven’t had enough experience yet. This was only the third time I’ve accessed the Oracle’s Power. My second time was with Carling and Rune.” She gave him a twisted smile. “Both my grandmother and my sister, Petra, said the same thing. The Oracle sees a lot of weird shit. They also said they—we have a kind of built-in defense mechanism that helps us gain distance from the visions after we have them. The visions we see come for other people. We’ve got to let go of them or go crazy. Petra thought that might also be why the Oracle sometimes blacks out. I think I’m starting to understand what she meant.”

“Is it normal that both Cuelebre and I heard it?”