“We don’t, at least not in the way humans bleed. When the bodies we create sustain damage, the part of our Power that has become physical leaks until we fix it.” His hand resting on her hip tightened. He growled, “You don’t experiment alone anymore, do you hear me? Forget that, you don’t experiment without me. In your dream your grandmother and sister said you were going the wrong way. You need someone else present to help you in case things get out of control again.”

She nodded as she curled against his side. Her eyes felt dry and gritty. She closed them and turned her face into his chest. He cupped her head, holding her gently against him. “That might have been what they meant. I’ve certainly been doing things differently from how I’d been taught.”

“I see another truth,” said Khalil quietly. “You’re discarding the rituals your family has used for generations. You exorcised the ghost, or at least you persuaded the ghost to leave you, and you claimed the Power. It is as though the Oracles that came before you needed all the rituals and the steps in order to access the Power, because they were substitutes, while you are actually becoming the Oracle.”

She held her breath as she considered his words. Was he right? She couldn’t tell. Exhaustion weighed her down again. She muttered, “I’m tired of thinking about all of this right now. Khalil, I had a long day, and I need to get some more rest. I have to pick the kids up in the morning.”

“Then stop thinking.” He kissed her forehead. “While you pick up the children, tomorrow morning I am going to do what I should have done before this.”

She pressed her lips against the smooth skin of his chest. “What’s that?”

“I am going to find out where Therese lives,” he said. A stiletto of malice crept into his voice. “I would like to know how she enjoys it when someone looks through her things. I’m also interested in what I will find when I do so. And after that, I think I will find this witch Brandon. I might even introduce myself to Jaydon Guthrie. Then we will see what tale this Oracle’s moon tells.”

She snorted, a small exhalation of air. “I have another human saying for you,” she said drowsily.

“What is that?” he asked.

She smiled and told him, “Just let me know if I ever piss you off, so I can have a chance to apologize.”

Amusement danced through his energy. “Sometimes you have made me very angry,” he said. “And I have not noticed that you are overly eager to apologize for that.”

“Mmm.” It might be time for a strategic distraction. She stroked his presence with hers in a lavish, languid caress.

He caught his breath then whispered, “Go to sleep, dearest.”

Her heart kicked and pleasure rippled through her at the oddly archaic, beautiful endearment. Then she sighed and did just that.

Seventeen

I love you too, Grace had said, and that was a far more radical thing than simply calling him friend.

Too.

As if she had already known something he hadn’t.

Khalil held himself tensely while he watched Grace sleep. How had this young human woman become so precious to him so quickly? It had happened in less than two weeks. A mere handful of days.

He had been at war with Lethe for longer than some civilizations had existed. Often he had taken years to decide where he might go on vacation. When he had met Leo Tolstoy in 1906, the Russian novelist had intrigued him so much, Khalil decided he would consider reading War and Peace, and he had still not yet made up his mind. It wasn’t that he was indecisive; he simply had no reason to rush anything.

He had never bothered to count time before, but he started to now, and it began with counting each breath she took. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest in agonized amazement. She would take only a limited number of breaths in her lifetime, and then she would stop breathing forever. Max and Chloe, those bright-eyed baby birds, would live for such a short, short while.

Once he had thought they lived such small lives, outside of politics and world concerns and violent struggles for dominion and Power. Now he realized how big their lives really were, because their lives were everything that mattered. They were the only thing that mattered. The joyous surprise in each discovery they made together was more precious than the treasure of kings, more suspenseful than the most spectacular of car chases, more beautiful than the most exotic of landscapes.

He studied Grace with meticulous care. As uneasy as it made him, the patterning of her light, fiery energy entwined with the dark Power really was quite beautiful. The pattern flexed and breathed, a part of her living presence, flowing through her life. He had been worried that the darkness would taint the Power she had been born with, dull the bright strength that was so uniquely hers, but it didn’t appear to be doing that. In fact, it looked like the dark Power reinforced what had already been there.

How would it change her? Was he right? Was she actually becoming the Oracle in a way that none of the others that came before her had?

As he had told her, he was no healer, nor was he any expert on human physiology, but he still examined her body as carefully as he knew how, to see if the Power changes might be toxic to her in any way. She appeared perfectly healthy to him, her young body strong and filled with vitality.

Her cheeks were flushed with a soft rose. He noticed that her thick eyelashes were a rich, tawny mink, darker than her short, fine red-gold hair and eyebrows. Her hair would probably never lie down in a sleek cap, because she was always running her fingers through it. The rucked bedsheet was only partially tucked around her torso, exposing a generously rounded, pink-tipped breast.

He let his gaze trail along the graceful dip of her spine to where it disappeared under the cover, noting how the sheet followed the swell of her round, firm ass.

He remembered the taste of her desire, the feel of her delicate, stiff little clitoris against his tongue, the exquisitely curved petals of her labia, and how she sucked in those precious shocked breaths of hers as he ravished, sucked, licked her everywhere, everywhere, and the interplay of her physical pleasure with the vibrancy of pleasure in her spirit was so goddamn beautiful it was symphonic, ineffable. Then her remarkable spirit had opened wide as he had pushed into her welcoming body, and he had fallen into her so far he could not imagine how he would ever wish to come out again.

And he needed to know, needed to know, what it was like to take her, human skin to human skin, but he had squandered too much of his energy earlier on foolish, useless things, and he would not be able to fall deeper into flesh again until he had rested and fed.

He wanted to stroke her all over, but that would disturb her sleep, and she needed to rest. He held his hand a few inches over her head and imagined, remembered, what the silk of her hair felt like. Then he clenched his hand into a fist and struggled to tamp down the desire raging through him, because it was really quite extraordinary that she could sense that too, and if he didn’t control himself, he might wake her up that way as well. She was the most alive and sensitive creature he had ever met.

Even though he tried, she still sensed something. She stirred and murmured. Without fully waking up, she reached up to take his hand and pull his arm around her. He sank down, wrapping his body around her while surrounding her with his presence.

You destroyed me, she had said.

If that was true, she had destroyed him as well.

He was too old to have allowed just anybody to do so. He did not think he would have allowed her, except that those incredible, loving children had acted as a stealthy vanguard and stole their way into his heart. When he dropped his defenses and opened up to them, Grace somehow became the engine that drove his existence.

He buried his face in her flyaway cloud of hair.

I love you too.

Love.

Too.

He drifted, resting until the sun broke over the horizon. Then he began to absorb energy from it. He could get more nourishment faster if he shifted out into direct sunlight, but he felt too lazy and comfortable to move.

Grace shifted and sighed, and her presence came to alertness. At least somewhat. “I might have figured.”

Excellent. Now that she was awake, he let himself do what he had been wanting to do for hours and hours. He stroked down the curve of her back. “Might have figured what? I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No,” she murmured. She rubbed her eyes. “With the kids gone, I thought I would be able to sleep past dawn for once, but I think they’ve got me trained too well.”

She felt so warm and soft. He pressed a kiss to the sleek curve of her shoulder blade. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep?”

She shook her head and reached behind to stroke his hair.

Desire lit a slow-burning fuse. “Good,” he muttered. “Because I’ve been waiting such a long time to do this.” He cupped her breast and flicked the tip of his finger over the distended tip of her nipple. “Hours and hours. And hours.”

She groaned and arched, pushing herself into his grip. He squeezed and caressed her as he ran his teeth along the sensitive cord at the base of her neck, and she shuddered all over. He felt her go into a meltdown, the core of her gushing with molten heat. Her presence twined around his, and her hunger for him was so damn sexy it incinerated every one of his intentions for going slowly and gently.

He rose over her as he pulled her onto her back. She wound her arms around him, her fine features etched with passion, and gods, it was such a damn fine thing to have a hard c**k to push inside of her. He had the presence of mind to make sure she was moist and ready for him, and then he entered her, and she was tight as a fist, and he need, need, needed to know what that felt like when he wore a more human skin.

But for now he dug in as deep as he could, and he couldn’t wait to go slow. Because he had to take advantage of the things he did have right now, and he was so damn greedy for everything she could give him, he licked on her ni**les, and yanked at her hair so her head tilted back, then he bit at her neck and suckled ravenously at that exquisite little bud at the core of her pleasure while he thrust his hard c**k into her.

Then she screamed again. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Her climax convulsed her body and threw her spirit wide open. He dove into her, a silent spear of need, and then his own cascade of pleasure took him over.

For an endless, pulsating moment, he couldn’t see or hear. When he came back to himself, slowly, she was sucking in air in rapid gasps as she clung to him. Her gaze was unfocused and tears streaked from the corners of her eyes. He sank a fist into her hair and kissed her while he ground against the gorgeous, swollen flower of her body, and she squealed, a helpless, surprised sound, and climaxed again.

The fabulous pleasure rippled out of her, into him, and he sent it back into her, growling.

Again, he said in her head.

In her head, in her body, in her spirit. In. He pushed in.

She shook all over. “I can’t—I can’t—”

You can. Gracie, give it to me again. He bit her neck and sucked her hard and washed over her in a sheet of flame, and this time she sobbed out loud when she came.

He came with her. He came with her every step of the way. Power to Power, presence to presence. For an uncounted amount of time they floated together, entwined. Then she fell back into her body, and he returned to himself, wrapped around her again, with her and yet alone.

She huddled against him, and he covered her. She was shivering. He went with her there too, as the muscles in his body quivered. He realized his fist was still clenched in her hair. He would probably have to do something about that sometime. For now he held on.

“I think I went blind that time,” she whispered.

Her lips were swollen and trembling. He covered her mouth with his, caressing her gently. He wished he knew how to describe to her what he felt.

I started counting time for you.

I want to change who I am for you.

You are my Grace.

He was too full, and there weren’t enough words.

He said, “I did not know I needed grace until I met you.”

Then as she held him tightly, he knew that what he said had been enough.

He settled back against the pillows and pulled her into his arms, so that her head was on his shoulder. She hooked her leg up, resting it across his hips. He drifted that way, and she dozed until close to eight o’clock. “I have to get moving,” she said. “I told Katherine I would pick up the kids around ten.”

“There’s plenty of time,” he said lazily.

She groaned and rolled onto her back. “No, there isn’t. I want to go to the store before I pick them up. I promised Chloe some glow-in-the-dark stars for their ceiling, and I want to buy them a little inflatable pool so they can play in some water today. They’ve been too cooped up in the house lately.”

He sighed, stretched and accepted the inevitable. “That sounds like a good day,” he told her. “And I have people to see and things to discover.”

“I would say be careful, but…” She rubbed her face and looked sideways at him. “Maybe instead I should say, please don’t start an inter-demesne incident.”

He smiled.

She pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

He snatched at her hand before she could pull away, and he kissed her finger.

In the bathroom, water started to gush in the tub. Grace startled and frowned. Khalil told her, “I started a bath for you.”

Her mouth opened. Then shut. She said faintly, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Do not fret about me. Pick up the kids and enjoy your day, and I will see you later, if that is acceptable. May I use your computer while you bathe?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling at him. Her multicolored eyes glowed in the morning light. She looked so beautiful in that moment, unself-conscious in her nudity. The sheet was tangled around her legs, her hair stood up in feathery tufts, and her face was marked with sleeplessness, but this time she was not, by any means, pale. Her smile turned into a grin. “Do you know, I think that ‘thank-you’ sailed totally past you this time.”