Naughty Karma

Chapter Nine The Amateur Boy Scout

Prometheus arrived for his summons at Karmic Consultants on Monday morning prepared to suck up like there was no tomorrow.

No ass left unkissed, that was his new strategy. Especially if that ass is Karma’s. This was his chance to play the Boy Scout—since it had become apparent he wasn’t going to get the upper hand unless he earned Karma’s trust, something that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen if he acted naturally. His new plan consisted of bombarding them with so much sweetness and light these Karmic goodie-goodies wouldn’t know what hit them.

He shoved open the front door with an absent pulse of magic, both hands filled with lattes and muffins that should damn well taste better than ambrosia after he’d paid the GDP of a small country for them at the Starbucks around the corner. You’d think a caramel macchiato was liquid gold for what they were charging for the things.

On any other day he might have taken the time to drop a hex charm or two on the corporate bastards as a punishment for price gouging, but today he was being a good boy. No matter how much that halo might chafe.

The ray of sunshine seated at the receptionist desk looked up as the door shut behind him, her brown curls bobbing as she beamed at him with enough cheer it was a miracle rainbows didn’t shoot out of his ass. “Welcome to Karmic Consultants! How can we help you?”

“I’m Prometheus. I believe Karma’s expecting me.” He flashed his most charming smile and extended a Styrofoam cup of caffeinated temptation. “Nectar of the gods?”

She ignored the proffered Starbucks manna as her eyes lit up with a blinding enthusiasm rather than any sort of cognitive awareness. Nobody home at Casa Receptionist.

“You’re Prometheus!” she parroted with a disconcerting delight he’d never before heard associated with his name. “I’m Brittany. I’m the one you summoned a demon to stalk. Not that I hold that against you. The things we do for love, right? Karma’s with a consultant at the moment. If you’ll have a seat, I’ll let her know you’ve arrived.” She bounded out of her chair, waving him toward the seating area off to one side of the lobby.

Wary of her enthusiasm, Prometheus obediently took a seat and barely eavesdropped at all when she plucked up the desk phone and murmured into it, alerting Karma to his arrival. When the bubbly brunette hung up the phone, she looked up to find him watching her and beamed.

“You don’t look at all like I expected,” she enthused, rounding the receptionist desk to perch on one of the waiting area chairs opposite him. “Like Spock.”

Prometheus couldn’t tell whether she was saying he looked like Spock, she’d expected him to look like Spock, or that Spock didn’t look like she expected him to either. None of which gave him any clue how she expected him to respond anyway, so he tried the peace offering route again, thrusting out the Styrofoam tray. “Starbucks?”

She blinked, returning from whatever planet she visited in her off moments. “Hmm? Oh, no, thank you. Luis is still holding a grudge about that whole kidnapping, demon-summoning thing and made me promise not to accept anything you’ve touched.”

He jolted, sloshing the coffee onto the lids, startled more by her honesty than the blatant distrust. “Smart man. Who’s Luis?”

She bounced on her chair like a five-year-old with a secret. “My boyfriend.” Her eyes flicked to the door to Karma’s office then back to his face. “How long have you been in love with Karma?”

If he’d been drinking, he would have sprayed the lobby with coffee. As it was, he jerked like she’d Tased him and the four brimming cups of liquid gold macchiato tumbled toward the floor in a hot caramel tidal wave. Prometheus caught them before the first drop of liquid could touch the carpet, reversing the flow and wrangling the coffee back into cups that were suddenly neatly vertical again.

“Whoops.”

Bubbles the Receptionist gaped at him, mouth open, eyes saucer-wide. “You… Oh my. You just…gosh.”

Only a woman like Sunshine here could make the word gosh work for her. Prometheus set the coffee beside the artfully splayed magazines on the table and gave a shrug. “Figured you didn’t want the rug to stain.”

That seemed to snap her out of her shock. She blinked, beamed and bounced. “Yep. I don’t have the first idea how to get a coffee stain out of a rug, but I’m getting really good at laundry!”

There was something very wrong with Karma’s receptionist. No one should be that excited about laundry. One of Prometheus’s favorite magical perks was that he hadn’t had to do a load of colors in twenty years. “Uh-huh,” he said, in what he hoped was an encouraging tone, not an I’m-mentally-fitting-you-for-a-strait-jacket one.

Before Brittany could wax rhapsodic on the joys of laundry, the door to Karma’s office opened. Prometheus came to attention in his chair, but the figure exiting the office and sealing it after himself could not have been more opposite from the elegant, contained proprietress of Karmic Consultants.

He was Latino, slightly above average height—which meant Prometheus towered over him—and thick, black tribal tattoos marked his arms from his wrists to where they disappeared into the short sleeves of his black T-shirt. He might as well have tattooed “Badass” on his forehead.

Sprinkles the Wonder Secretary sprang out of her chair. “Luis!”

Ah, the infamous boyfriend. Not a pairing he would have predicted. The gang banger and the cheerleader. It was like an after school special gone wrong. Prometheus came to his feet as well, as Luis stalked to the brunette’s side.

The boyfriend raked him with a distinctly unfriendly gaze. “So you’re the asshole.”

“Luis,” Brittany scolded.

Prometheus grinned. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever been called. “That’s me. And you are?”

“I’m the poor bastard who’s stuck with you. Rodriguez. Exorcist.” He instinctively shoved his hand out to shake Prometheus’s, then seemed to think better of it and used the hand to urge Sunshine behind him. “Karma wants you to shadow me.”

Prometheus’s grin dropped from his face. Shit.

He’d been counting on his ability to worm his way into Karma’s good graces, but it looked like her graces weren’t even going to be present to be penetrated. Bad enough he had to play at being a white hat. There was no way he was going to trail along behind an exorcist, watching without doing a damn thing as the fool bungled his way through Demons 101. He should be teaching a master course on demons to Karma’s staff, not playing at being some tattooed punk’s sidekick.

“I don’t shadow.”

“Nullifying our agreement already?”

Prometheus whipped around at the sultry sound of Karma’s phone-sex-operator voice. He hadn’t even heard the door to her office open again, but there she stood, framed by the doorway. Composed, controlled. Queen of all she surveyed.

Damn if that didn’t make him want to muss her up. But he was being a good boy. If it killed him.

“Of course not.” Prometheus smiled his most earnest smile—which, admittedly, wasn’t very earnest. “I simply thought you would want to take advantage of the full range of my significant abilities.”

The exorcist snorted. Karma didn’t even blink.

“I don’t trust you,” she said flatly. “I trust Rodriguez. You will do as he says, when he says it, and if he has a positive report I will consider allowing you more leeway. You’re on probation, Prometheus. Don’t push it.” She gave him an icy smile. “Besides, Rodriguez and Brittany are two of my employees you’ve wronged. You want to show me how reformed you are? Start by making amends with them.”

Prometheus eyed the pair. Brittany didn’t look like she needed amends—if she even had the brainpower necessary to understand what amends were. She beamed at him encouragingly. Rodriguez, on the other hand, looked like he would cheerfully cut open Prometheus’s mid-section to jump rope with his intestines. Prometheus returned his gaze to Karma’s. “I’d rather make amends with you,” he said, giving amends the dirtiest, most suggestive inflection and taking a step toward her, crowding into her space until jasmine and ginger teased his nostrils.

She didn’t even give him a twitch of reaction, but her energy flared and he thought he saw the slightest hint of color touch her high cheekbones. Damn, he loved her feigned indifference, that near-constant resistance to the attraction that crackled between them whenever he got too close. Karma wasn’t the type to fall easily into his arms, but the push and pull of simmering heat and cool disdain were aphrodisiacs in their own way.

She dismissed him with a slow, disdainful lift of one eyebrow, looking past him to the Starbucks on the table. “I don’t drink coffee.”

With that, she disappeared back into her office, the door snicking shut behind her. Prometheus stared at the wood panel for a long moment, tempted to use a bit of telekinesis to throw it open, to see if she was hovering on the other side, as intently aware of him as he was of her.

“Come on, cabron,” the exorcist grumbled. “I don’t have all day.”

Prometheus didn’t have the time to waste staring at doors either, but something told him this doorway was worth laying siege to. He wondered if Karma realized her defenses were already under attack.

“Hey. Pendejo,” the exorcist snapped.

Prometheus pulled his attention away from the door. “I’m coming.” Like a good boy.

Karma leaned back against the solid wood of the door, trying to reclaim her center.

She should have resisted the temptation to see how Prometheus would react to learning Rodriguez was going to be his keeper. Temptation had never done her any favors. Always better to walk in the opposite direction—quickly and calmly, like an evacuation drill.

She pressed her hands to her face, feeling the heat pouring off her cheeks. Why did that man unsettle her so? It wasn’t attraction, necessarily. It was more a vulnerability—like he had found a crack in her façade and she couldn’t maintain her perfect autonomy around him. He made her feel human—when that was the last thing she wanted.

Why him of all people?

She didn’t like it and she couldn’t afford it. A woman couldn’t juggle all the balls Karma had to keep in the air to run Karmic Consultants smoothly if she was moony-eyed over a tall warlock with unnaturally white hair.

Ciara needed her. Her clients needed her. Karma couldn’t afford distraction.

But still she listened to the voices in the outer office until she heard the street door slam behind Rodriguez and Prometheus. Only then did she push away from the door and cross to her desk, her heart rate returning to a normal speed as the distance between herself and the warlock stretched farther.

Keeping temptation at arm’s length was good. A few counties away would be even better. For her own selfish sake, Karma hoped those demons had nested far out in the country, taking Prometheus miles and miles away from the refuge of her office.