Fated: Karma Series, Book Three by Donna Augustine Page A

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, kissing 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