Naughty Karma: Karmic Consultants, Book 7 by Vivi Andrews Read Free Book Online Page B

gun clearing the holster, but Karma didn’t even blink.
    “Ronna?” she asked, the low rasp of her voice giving nothing away.
    “I’m fine.” The touch reader brushed a hand across her forehead, huffing out a breath. “He’s a doozie. I wasn’t quite prepared for it.” She put a hand on Holloway’s arm, giving a little shake until he lowered the gun he didn’t seem to realize he’d been pointing at Prometheus. “It’s okay. I’m good now.”
    During the millisecond their skin touched, colors had flashed in Prometheus’s mind like a kaleidoscope on speed, images beyond his control. He didn’t want to think about what she might have seen.
    “Are you all right to continue?” Karma asked.
    Prometheus almost said no before he realized she was speaking to her reader.
    “Yeah,” Ronna assured her. “Yeah, we’re good to go.”
    He would have objected that no, they most certainly were not, but Ronna had already grabbed his hand again, gripping it between both of her small, soft ones. This time there was no crazy kaleidoscope crash through his brain. Just a hum beneath his thoughts, a tingle where her fingertips brushed his skin.
    “Ask,” Ronna intoned in a voice devoid of emotion.
    “Have you ever knowingly or directly harmed any of my people?” Karma’s voice cracked out, aggression in every syllable.
    He wanted to lie—tempted to see if he could fool the reader—but he didn’t have the balls to test Karma on this one. “No. Never. I don’t intentionally harm anyone. That isn’t what I do.”
    It was the bald truth—though not due to any virtue lying dormant in his soul. Magic was a vengeful mistress. If he abused her, used her to harm anyone, that harm would come back on him threefold. In spite of what he’d said to Ronna about liking it rough, he wasn’t that masochistic.
    He didn’t cast curses. He created them, packaged and sold them, but he didn’t need the universe to bitch-slap his ass to know that actually casting bad juju was the mother of all dumb ideas.
    “Truth.” Ronna’s single word seemed to hang in the room.
    He felt Karma’s energy shift, the tension draining from her even though her posture didn’t change a single millimeter.
    “Do you have any plan, intention or desire to harm any of my people?”
    “None.”
    “Truth.”
    Another near invisible easing shifted the air around Karma. “Have you lied about any aspect of what you want me and my people to do for you?”
    Time to test the reader . Prometheus pumped energy into his shields and projected honesty for all he was worth. “No.”
    “Lie.”
    Shit. Prometheus’s internal flinch stayed internal. All Karma and her gun-toting guard dog saw was a cocky smile and a can-you-blame-me shrug. “It’s what I do.”
    Again Karma didn’t move a muscle, but he sensed…disappointment? He’d expected anger or even a smug self-satisfaction that she’d been right about him, not this feeling that she’d hoped for better from him, even as she expected the worst.
    “What do you really want from me?”
    “Your help reclaiming my heart. I didn’t lie about that.”
    “Truth.”
    “What kind of help specifically?”
    “Locating my heart, summoning Deuma and breaking her ties to me so I live to see November.”
    “Truth.”
    Come on, Karma, he silently urged. Be satisfied. Don’t push it.
    “Is that all you want from me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Lie.”
    Damn it. He couldn’t get anything past the damn reader.
    Karma gave him a long, exasperated look before asking, “What else are you trying to get from me?” with the air of a woman who wouldn’t stop asking until she had wrung every last drop of the truth from him.
    He couldn’t let her get that far. There were pieces of the truth he didn’t want her to see. Like the fact that she could strip him of his powers without killing him, leaving him disgustingly normal for the rest of his all-too-natural life. Or the fact that in the last couple months he’d set in motion