Fated: Karma Series, Book Three Read online

  He walked out, leaving me with my memories of the past. I couldn’t take a step forward without them dragging like a weight around my ankles. I guess that’s what pasts do, weigh you down, anchor you in another time and place. Sometimes it’s a beautiful bay, with sail boats and warm breezes that uplift you, and other times you’re holding onto your last breath in the cold waters of Antarctica and hoping to crawl your way back out alive. Good or bad, we all had them, and they didn’t sit idly by, forgotten in the rearview. They walked beside you, tainting everything you saw.

  Chapter Five

  In two minutes, my neighbors—also known as the condo next door’s current weekly rental—would be pounding down my door. Or worse, it might be the cops banging their sticks, trying to gain entrance.

  Or maybe not.

  We hadn’t exactly become a close-knit unit in the two days that they’d lived in the building. They might not have even heard the high-pitched scream when I walked into my living room, not prepared for company.

  After all, Fate was early, and although I was used to him strolling in without an invite, I thought he’d be preoccupied with his boys until later. He must not have liked that plan, and instead of telling me he did what he felt like doing, in typical Fate fashion.

  So there he sat, fully reclined with an arm running along the back of the couch like he owned it, hogging up all the space in my small condo with his larger than life presence. He was dressed in black from head to toe, ready for our covert mission, and looking as tempting as the devil handing up my heart’s desire, trying to lure me in for one small taste.

  His head didn’t move but I saw his eyes flicker, taking in the still damp exposed flesh.

  I gripped the towel around me closer, not from fear of him ripping it off but to keep from dropping it myself and letting the devil take me. When I saw him look at me, like the way he was now, I could almost feel his hands gliding over my skin. Memories kicked in to full gear. They always started an avalanche of heightened senses.

  I liked to pretend sex with him hadn’t been that good. Problem was, it had been. Of course, Cupid had been involved. Logic dictated that he must have added some extra bonus points on because I’d only had sex with Fate twice. We should’ve still been in the awkward getting to know you phase. I tightened my grip. Yeah, it had been Cupid for sure.

  “I thought you weren’t coming for another hour?” I licked my lips after I said the words and then had to stop my hand mid-motion as it sneakily approached my hair. I might not have been sleeping with him but my body kept sending the signals that I was interested. Every time I let my guard down, a little sneaky telltale sign would slip out. From the look on his face, he was reading me like a scholar well-briefed in the ancient language of desire. It was probably where that smirk had crept up from.

  This was all Cupid’s fault. Maybe I should sleep with him just to prove it wouldn’t be that good again. Yeah, that was a plausible excuse to do what I wanted, a solid reason for walking straight into my emotional demise with eyes wide open. That would surely make me feel better when I was picking up the tattered pieces after he dumped me. I mentally snorted at my own twisted thinking.

  “I was running early.”

  That was a lie. Some people thought Fate ran late, later and sometimes early. I knew him well enough at this point to know he just didn’t give a shit about time. He came and went whenever he felt like it and that was when he meant to get there.

  He stood and my lips parted. I shut them quickly before my tongue had the chance to moisten them again. Goddamn it, they weren’t even dry. I’d just put on lip balm.

  “You didn’t forget that there is a psychopathic non-human creature running around this town wanting us both dead? Maybe a little heads up, next time, so you don’t scare the hell out of me?” I leaned my shoulders against the wall and realized my back was arching. Why was I not sleeping with him? Sometimes I couldn’t keep the reasons straight. Oh yeah, this week it was the perfume. I wasn’t sleeping with him because he was a flirt and he bought Mother perfume.

  No, that wasn’t it. It would be a disappointment. That was the most current excuse. Or was that why I should sleep with him?

  Nope, that wasn’t it, either. Now, I remembered. He’d crush my heart like a meat pulverizer.

  While I was flipping back and forth between do or don’t quicker than they were serving up flapjacks down at the diner, he was getting closer to me, close enough that I could smell him, feel the heat he threw off and that other certain energy that was pouring off of him right now at levels not seen since Chernobyl.

  If I didn’t move soon, I’d be in trouble…or ecstasy. He was close enough that he had to tilt his head downward to look me in the eyes. “Malokin won’t.”

  “Won’t what?” My brain was getting fogged with Fate pheromones. He should bottle this stuff up and sell it. He could make a fortune, not that he needed it.

  “He won’t give you a warning.”

  My chest rose and fell with his words; they seemed to take on a different meaning. His eyes darted to the tops of my breasts above the towel and watched a drop of moisture drop from my hair to travel their surface. I had an image of his tongue licking it off. He moved another inch closer and I was torn between running or staying right there and dropping my towel.

  Another inch. I should move. I should go into the other room and stop this; I should be running from him. I stood there as he moved yet another inch closer.

  And another.

  A palm landed on the wall on either side of my shoulders. He was everywhere but not touching me at all. I felt overwhelmed and longing at the same time. My back arched further, my body seeking the contact that my heart feared.

  “How long are we going to play this game?” he asked, his eyes moving from my mouth and back again.

  “What game?” Was he changing the rules on me? Did he want to talk? Warning bells were flaring as loud as a car alarm outside my door. Sleeping with him was one thing. In no way was I ready to talk about it, too. Oh no, that would be way too intimate. If I slept with him, I might still be able to pretend I wasn’t attached. If we talked, it would be out there and somehow real.

  “We both want this.” A jolt shot through me as we made contact. His hips pressed against mine, letting me know exactly how much. His head tilted down to mine, closing the gap and I couldn’t or didn’t want to stop him. I couldn’t decide which and my brain wasn’t functioning on full steam. My libido had kicked it out of the wheelhouse.

  His tongue brushed across my closed mouth as I tried to keep myself in check. His teeth nipped at my lower lip, pulling on it, teasing me, tempting me to play.

  My lips parted on a moan, not able to reject the invitation and his tongue dipped inside and tangled with mine; trying to draw me into a kiss I was still attempting to fight. But I knew I’d lose. I didn’t have the will to resist completely.

  His hand came up, cupped my cheek, his thumb under my chin. Tilting my head back slightly, his lips followed the line of my jaw working his way toward where it met my neck, only breaking to whisper, “Come on, I know you want it too. Why not have a little fun?”

  I’d had fun with him before. Then watched his back as he walked away taking all the fun with him. Fun. That was all this was to him.

  I stiffened.

  So did he.

  His head pulled back. “I don’t understand what the problem is.” His eyes were intent on mine. He really didn’t get it, and I wasn’t going to explain. It was bad enough without the words.

  I would’ve stepped away but his arms were there again, on either side, blocking me. “What is the problem?” he asked, repeating himself. “Those other times, they weren’t only Cupid. We both want this.”

  “It might not be a good idea is all. We work together.” I turned my head because if I kept looking at him, I was going to go down again, hard and quick.

  “Why? It’s not like it would be the first time for us.” He took the opportunity of my exposed neck, ki
ssing his way upward toward my ear where the tingle of his breath made it hard to remember what was stopping me. “I can see the way you look at me,” he whispered in my ear.

  His hands went to my waist and lifted me to my toes for better access as his chest brushed against mine. We were flush from the shoulders down.

  He stopped talking and so did I, as I let the sensation of being so close absorb into my senses fully. God, I missed this but it was dangerous.

  How did you tell someone that you cared more? It didn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make the other person magically love you equally. Why did I just use the word love? Why did that word even pop into my head? No, I didn’t love him. The word made me go stiffer than rigor mortis.

  Sensing my hesitance again, he took a step back.

  “Go.” The word was a pardon and a sentence from his lips.

  “What?” I asked, partly sad he was letting me off the hook and not understanding why. The logically side of me was screaming run but still had a death grip on the steering wheel.

  “Go. Now.”

  Logic won and I hurried into my bedroom, taking the coward’s way out. I shut the door, my whole body alive and tingling, my hands shaking. I got dressed quickly, feeling much safer fully dressed when Fate was so close by. I tugged on a pair of dark jeans that would fade into the night and the first dark tank top my fingers touched on in the drawer.

  Fate was standing a few feet from the door when I came back out. “Do you have something with long sleeves?” he asked. The mood of a few minutes ago still hovered in the air between us, also evidenced by the slightly deeper sound of his voice, which was not quite back to normal yet.

  I grabbed a dark sweatshirt I’d left on the dinette chair and tried to avoid his eyes. He was like some sex Medusa; if I didn’t look in his eyes it would all be okay.

  “Let’s get going,” I said, looking to break the tension that was still there.

  “Sure.” My words seemed to jolt him from whatever sexy trance he was in.

  I followed him out of the condo and settling into our purpose for the evening somehow took the edge off of the mood, enough to make it bearable anyway.

  “I’ll drive,” I said as we made our way to the parking lot.

  His step faltered for a minute and I paused to look at him. “What?”

  “You need a new car.”

  I stared at my Honda. All the sheen was gone from her paint and there was rust eating away at her wheel wells. “I like my car.”

  It was true that I hadn’t at first. I’d resented everyone else having a better car but now I was sort of used to her. We’d been through a lot, my Honda and me, and she’d always pulled through. She’d never once stalled at an inappropriate time. Not that she didn’t stall, but she seemed to know when she could slack off.

  “We can’t go after people in this thing. It sticks out too much.” He had a look on his face like a kid with a plate of lima beans in front of him.

  “And you think your car is more low key and appropriate?” I asked, pointing toward the flashy Porsche. “Trust me on this, no one’s looking at my old Honda.”

  “That’s part of the problem, I don’t want to look at it either. I propose we get another car for the bucket list.”

  I scrunched up my face, feeling bad at casting aside my old car. “I don’t know. It feels wrong somehow.”

  “You don’t have AC. I can’t drive around like that.”

  “I do have AC,” I said. “You just have to turn it off when you drive over thirty. Why? You think your fancy sports car makes you better?”

  “What makes me better has nothing to do with my car. I just like to actually move forward when I hit the gas as opposed to how you occasionally slide backward.”

  “That only happened once and we were on a hill!”

  “Look, I’m not forcing you to ride in mine. I’m compromising. Me. Compromising. For you.” He raised his eyebrows, stressing with his expression how difficult this was for him.

  “You do have a problem compromising.” I nodded in agreement.

  “That wasn’t what you were supposed to say. I am not the only one with this problem. And if we are going to make it as a…team, you need to as well.”

  I was fairly certain team was his second choice of words. Was he going to say friends? Coworkers? He was trying. I had to take what I could get.

  But I wasn’t very fond of compromising either. I crossed my arms, sighed and I knew I must have had a puss on my face but I finally forced out the word, “Fine.”

  “Was it really that bad?” he said, laughter in his tone.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a used car lot around the corner. You can pick. Tonight we take the Honda. Tomorrow, we get a real car.”

  He wasn’t exactly asking but I answered anyway. “Okay.”

  Chapter Six

  A lifetime ago—or more accurately, last month—I’d saved a man on a yacht. Thinking back on it now, it felt like a different person had done that. It had been my first “save” job, robbing someone from death’s hands—and by death’s hands, I mean the process of the body dying, not my buddy back at the office—so that I could deliver them into Malokin’s. He wanted them for his own nefarious needs, the exact details of which I had blissful ignorance of.

  I’d never been a willing participant but Kitty’s life had been hanging over my head as Malokin’s noose had tightened around my neck. I hadn’t known until then how much I would hate being under someone’s thumb. How could I have? I’d never been a puppet before. If it hadn’t been for Kitty, I would’ve taken my chances and told Malokin to do his worst, even if that meant being strangled by the threads that held me.

  And here I was now: new marina and agenda, same yacht and target. It wasn’t surprising that they had decided to move the yacht to a new location after what had happened.

  I hesitated only a second before I turned off the engine, parked in a spot between a Mercedes and a Lamborghini.

  Fate threw me a look that said, yeah, we blend, before climbing out of the car. The Honda was making some especially foul smells today so I followed quickly. He might have a point.

  We walked through the parking lot and then toward the slips filled with boats.

  One of the things I hated about remaining here, so close to where I’d been born and raised as a human, was it was filled with memories that flooded back when I least expected them. The last time I’d been at this marina was when my number could still be counted among the homo sapiens.

  I’d gone on sailing trips from this place, back in better days when the only worries we’d had were if we’d brought enough booze and sandwiches. I wished those were the only things that came to mind now. I’d even settle for those memories to be the second or third of what came to mind, instead of being buried under a whole lot of ugly crap.

  “This guy, this was the first time I did something for Malokin.” I walked down the dock, staring up at the changing sky and wondering about all of the things I still didn’t know. “It keeps me up at night wondering how my saves contributed to what’s happening now.” It might have been the most honest thing I’d ever uttered to Fate.

  He looked at me as if he understood, right down to the sleepless nights. “Something was going on way before that. Maybe it helped him, maybe it didn’t, but this was coming either way.”

  He sounded so sure of it that it was easy to cling to the belief he was correct. I remembered the day I went to Montreal on one of my first jobs. Things had seemed off then, even to my novice transfer sensibilities. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “You know I’m right. I was searching for the cause way before you got involved.”

  He had been. I’d thought at the time it was a fool’s errand. Now look at me; if he’d been a fool I was now a court jester dancing to the same tune.

  “Even still, I didn’t help things.”

  Fate stopped in the middle of the walk and grabbed my hand to stop me as well. “Kitty would be dead if y
ou hadn’t done what you did. He would’ve killed her.”

  “Would you have done it? Helped Malokin to save Kitty?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer, and that was all I needed. I’d known anyway. As playful and flirty as this newer version of Fate could be, it hadn’t been that long ago for me to have forgotten what he’d been like when I’d arrived and what I knew he was deep down—black and white, all steel and sharp edges. He would’ve let Kitty die.

  “You think I’m soft?” I didn’t know if it was a question or an accusation.

  “No. Everyone has to follow their gut. You did the only thing you could live with.”

  He looked at me like he believed in what he was saying, even if it was the exact opposite of how he would’ve dealt with it. I nodded and started walking again. So did he.

  “Don’t judge your actions against mine. We’re different.”

  Don’t judge. That was a joke. How could I not? Everyone judged whether we admitted to it or not, usually saving the harshest criticisms for ourselves.

  “What about Murphy or Luck? What do you think they would’ve done?” I asked, fearing the worst. Was I the only one that didn’t have the heart to let her die? Or was what I called heart actually just human weakness? Maybe they were right; transfers were inferior.

  “It doesn’t matter. It was your choice to make.” His eyes, that sometimes burned so hot, were cold as he said it.

  “But it’s not what you think I should’ve done. Admit it.” I could see it there in his face, and I needed to hear it. “I can handle the truth but respect me enough to say it to me. I don’t need to be handled with kid gloves.”

  “I would’ve let her die.”

  That hadn’t taken much prodding. “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “To me it does.”

  He didn’t speak and I thought he wasn’t going to explain. We paused within view of the boat, he finally said, “Because I couldn’t let anyone have that much control over me.”

  I’d expected something along the lines of sacrificing one for the greater good.