Naughty Karma

Chapter Twenty-Four Prisms, Rainbows and Kaleidoscopes

Casual sex was supposed to be fun. Fun. Karma could think of a few words that would apply, but fun was cotton candy. This was Russian roulette. This was wild, primal and animalistic. This was instinct and heat and…fucking. No. No fun here. Just bone-melting, mind-wiping, raw, hot sex.

She lay utterly spent on top of her duvet, beside a pile of pillows, and avoided looking at Prometheus. Not because she was embarrassed, but because she had a feeling it would be like looking straight into the sun. She wasn’t ready to ignite her retinas yet.

“You were right,” she said, directing the comment at the ceiling, rather than the man who had collapsed face down beside her, one arm wrapped possessively around her stomach.

“I usually am,” he mumbled into the sheet. “What am I right about now?”

“I was doing it wrong. Sex.”

He grunted. “Most people are.”

Most people aren’t doing it with you. Karma frowned, burying that thought. It was great sex. Great sex could happen with anyone. It wasn’t him. Though the magic sure hadn’t hurt. She’d never known power could do that.

Karma closed her eyes and assessed her body. Replete. That was a good word. She felt exquisitely replete. Languid and lovely…

And sticky.

As soon as she was aware of it, it began to bother her. Prometheus could probably feel fresh and clean with the same magic he’d used to get rid of the condom, and maybe other women could lie around smelling of sweat and sex, but Karma was not that woman and no amount of wild, no-holds-barred sex was going to transform her into that one. She opened her eyes and rolled out of bed, keeping her back to Prometheus as she padded to the bathroom, still not ready to look into the sun.

A warm washcloth went a long way toward making her feel human again and the bright light of the bathroom brought a welcome dose of reality. Still no regrets, but no hearts-and-flowers swoony intimacy either. It was what it was—two people coming together for one thing, and only one thing.

The woman in the mirror didn’t look any different—except for the suck mark darkening on the pink pad of her lower lip with an intimate bruise. She’d probably left marks on him too. Only on the surface though. Yes, it had felt like her very soul was splitting apart and remaking itself around a chunk of his, but that was just good sex. It wasn’t personal.

A tap on the door and at her invitation his image appeared behind hers in the mirror. Her heart rolled over with a jarring thud.

She watched him in the mirror as he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Thinking too much again?” His lashes lifted and his onyx gaze met hers in the reflection.

Not the sun. She’d been so very wrong to even think to compare him to the sun. He was a black hole, filled with intense, frightening gravity, sucking her in. And just sex? Please. That was wishful thinking. The man who made her heart thunder in her chest like this was not just anything.

Her life had been as orderly as controlled chaos could be before she met him, but it had also been stagnant. Prometheus had certainly changed that. All work and no play really had been her motto until he showed up and started making her crazy. She’d hated his interference with her perfectly contained world, but on some level she’d looked forward to the challenge her run-ins with him always represented, to knowing that her heart would race—even if it was from vexation—and she would feel that thrill again.

He’d shaken up her black-and-white world and what had been revealed wasn’t a world of muddy gray. It was color. Prisms and rainbows and kaleidoscopes.

But she couldn’t say any of that. Wouldn’t have wanted to, even if it wouldn’t have sent him running for the hills. She didn’t want to think about how she felt about him or what the future might hold for them—it was too impossible to imagine they might actually have a future, so she closed that box in her mind and focused on the now. It was all anyone could ever be sure of anyway.

Karma turned in his embrace, hooked her arms over his shoulders and said, “Why don’t you make me forget how to think?”

Prometheus smiled, that wicked, devil’s smile, and he did.