Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(79)

His long fingers came underneath her chin. He tilted her head up. “Pay attention, I’m talking to you,” he said irritably. In contrast to his tone, the expression in his gaze was concerned.

“So that’s the noise I keep hearing,” she said. She glanced at the bedside clock, which read 1:42 A.M. She hadn’t even slept an hour and a half. She yawned hugely until her eyes watered, and her eyes drifted closed as she sank back against the pillows. While it was wonderful to stretch out on her bed, and frighteningly awesome to be in bed with him, the upstairs of the house was stifling, and he was far too hot.

Hey, she had a check in her purse. She could afford a higher electric bill. She muttered cagily, “I’ll have sex with you again if you close all the windows and turn on the air-conditioning.”

She was trying to bargain away something she would beg for anyway. For someone who always chose the dumb route, that was actually pretty smart thinking. She turned her face into his bicep and sniggered, even as her eyes watered more.

Oh gods, what he had done. Even more than the sheer physical impossibility of the lovemaking, he had broken her wide open.

He hissed a curse. She jumped as all of the upstairs windows slammed shut, and the ancient air-conditioner unit that was propped in her bedroom window clacked on.

Her eyes flew open as he took her by the shoulders and hauled her upright. “I said pay attention,” he snarled.

He looked entirely disturbed, and despite their nudity, not at all loverlike. Suddenly she felt wide awake. “I’m paying attention,” she told him. She frowned as her mind kicked into gear. “I was having a weird dream before you woke me up.”

“I woke you up,” he said between his teeth, “because you were acting weird.”

“What happened?”

“That old Power you inherited. You know how you said it sits deep at the edge of your consciousness?” She nodded. Now that she was really paying attention to him, his hard grasp on her relaxed. He smoothed back her hair. “I can sense it. It feels just as you described, very deep, like it sits at the edge of thought. While you were asleep, it…rose up.”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean, it rose up?”

“It filled you up like you were an empty glass. Then it spilled out of you and filled the room. That’s when I woke you.” His sharp diamond gaze searched her face. “What happened?”

She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. I just had a dream.”

“About what?”

“It’s hard to describe. It was very dreamy.”

“Try.”

The air-conditioner was running at full blast. The window unit blew frigid air on her exposed skin. Shivering, she pulled the bedspread and top sheet down and climbed under the covers. After a second’s hesitation, Khalil joined her. He pulled her into his arms, and she settled against him gladly and rested her cheek against his smooth, hot skin.

It wasn’t just that his heat had suddenly become welcome. He chose to hold her. Maybe he did it for her, but he did it unasked, so he must have done it for him as well. His presence wrapped her up as securely as his arms did, and he didn’t try to take her strength away. He offered her a chance to rest against his, and it felt so good.

Once she started talking, she didn’t stop. She started with the dream and worked her way backward, and she told it all wrong, because everything came out in a tangle.

The dream. The goddess. Hitting Phaedra with an expulsion spell that knocked her across the cavern. How everyone acted earlier that day, everyone except Olivia. Either Brandon or Jaydon or somebody had lied, or she simply didn’t understand, or maybe she had misheard, but it was strange how the story had shifted from eighteen people who had planned to come to work that day to twelve. The talk she’d had with Isalynn, postponing her duties as the Oracle, practicing with the Power until she could call it up at any time, whether it was daylight or not, no matter where she was.

Talking to him was as beyond perfect as his lovemaking had been. It was such a relief to unburden herself. Although he occasionally asked her for clarification, he didn’t rush her or appear impatient in any way, and he didn’t try to stop her.

At least not until she told him about the ghost of the serpent woman.

His physical form dissolved, and caught by surprise, she fell forward. Her nose squashed in the pillow he had been leaning against, and the hair at the back of her head whipped around as a cyclone rampaged her room. Cautiously she braced herself on one elbow and lifted her head to look around.

She had never been very interested in knickknacks, and earlier her small jewelry box had traveled downstairs along with her dresser. That was probably a good thing, since her bedside clock, along with three somewhat dusty paperbacks and the lamp, crashed to the floor. The window curtains blew into knots, all the upstairs doors banged shut then blew open again, and the windows rattled.

Somehow the lightbulb in the lamp hadn’t broken. The light shining from the floor threw elongated shadows over everything. The familiar surroundings looked ominous and strange.

And he felt absolutely furious.

Was he having his version of a shit fit?

She sank back down on the pillows and put an arm over her head. She said to the cyclone, “I hope you know you’re picking everything up again and replacing anything you break.”

He cursed, and the light flickered wildly as the lamp jerked off the floor and landed back on the bedside table. “You tell me that your sanity and your life might have been in danger, and I find this out days later?”