Page 61 of Duke's Daring Bookworm
“I don’t need this card to see that you are overwhelmed.” This card showed a woman surrounded by nature. A snake emerged from her head and, like the card with the cups, it was upside down. The snake’s mouth opened on a scream directed right at me. Overwhelmed was exactly how I felt when I looked at it.
“You feel stuck.” She pushed an upright card toward me. The colors on this one were muted compared to the others on the table. Two women sat in an open field on the face. Except that wasn’t right. The same woman simply stared at an alternate version of herself in a mirror. The woman in the mirror was bound and pleaded with the woman in the field for her freedom, but she already was free. I could see it on the card as clear as day now. She only thought she wasbound.
Sparks lit along my spine, sending tingles through my whole body at this realization.
“You doubt yourself. You’re afraid.” She pushed the last card to me. This one had a young girl with vibrant red hair that flew around her in a riot of color and shapes that solidified into a lion on one side and a lamb on the other. She faced a raging storm but seemed unafraid. Bravery, the card said, except it was upside down.
Rather than halting like before, my breathing kicked up, causing my head to swim. I didn’t like being bared so completely.
Yes, this was me. She wore the parts of myself I didn’t like to examine, the parts I liked to keep tucked away, but here she sat in front of the stranger with all the bits of her ripped open—raw and bleeding.
“No, they don’t always tell us what we want to hear. The cards can be a real bitch sometimes. These especially.” She spoke of them as if they were sentient as she gathered them and took up her practiced shuffle again. “Now, did you come with a beau? Someone special?”
“I—I came with Duke. He’s…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. He was my best friend. Yes. He blew my mind with sex better than I could have imagined. Yes. He was kind and knew me, and I never felt invisible or judged. He saw me in a way no one else did. He was all of it. Everything. How could I explain any of that and not sound insane?
“Oh, the cards will tell us who he is,” she said confidently. Five cards fell out of her hands at that declaration and landed with an echoing thud on the table. I leaned forward, drawn in by the glinting gold lines despite the uncertainty spiraling through me.
Carefully, like she could sense my hesitancy, or maybe because time seemed to slow around me, she flipped each card and arranged them on the table. Three on top and two below.
The last card drew me in like a moth to a flame. A man stood with his hand out, beckoning me in. His hair hung long and wild, alluring, like not even nature or gravity controlled him.
As I stared at it, the face transformed, the hair lightened and curled into gentle waves, still defying gravity. An achingly familiar smile played at his lips that asked me to join him. Duke. The Devil. Both. One. I knew exactly what would happen if I grabbed that hand and followed him into the dark. Arousal burned low in me at the thought.
Lyra’s low voice rolled through me, but I couldn’t concentrate on her words. Thoughts of Duke crowded out everything else, leaving me with memories of his touch that brought me so much pleasure as he reverently traced every inch of me, of the way he tasted, smelled, felt. My body cried out for him, even now, wondering when I could be with him again.
I wanted to follow him into the dark, and that realization thrilled and terrified me in equal measure.
“This Duke of yours is quite the catch… well, traditionally speaking. Wealthy, good in bed, and a heart of gold. So, what is it? Why am I sensing that you aren’t sure about him?”
“He’s not mine.” The words sounded foreign to my ears, but not untrue. Sure, we were having sex, and he’d been my best friend since we were little. My friendship with him was the most significant relationship in my life and wasn’t that a little pathetic. None of that made him mine, though.
Lyra shuffled the cards again.
A sinking feeling pulled at my gut as several cards fell out of her shuffle. Part of me believed this. I stared at the cards, eager and terrified in equal measure.
She flipped each one over and the riot of colors matched my swirling emotions.
Eight cards filled the space between us. More than either my reading or Duke’s. Enough cards that they tested the limits of what this table could hold.
The first card on the table showed a girl being swept up in a storm, “the fool” written clearly on the bottom. I felt like a fool sitting there desperate for more and terrified of what they were going to say. My heart thumped loudly in my ears.
“A beginning. A chance.” She tapped the card that had me entranced, surprise surging through me at the meaning. “Most people get this one wrong when they first see it. We are all fools at some point. Innocent is a better word for it, but it shows that whatever this is between you is just the beginning.”
I gasped. A persistent part of me, one I tried desperately to ignore, was afraid that my time with Duke was about to come crashing down in a fiery ending. It terrified me he might finally see me for the freak I was and ran. Of course, he had thirty years as my friend to see that, but it’s different now and I only had myself to blame. I literally begged him for this.
“Hmm.” She tapped the second card. A set of scales filled the card held by a woman with a bright red blindfold across her eyes, on the verge of flying away in the wind. I didn’t need her to tell me this one meant justice, but knowing those symbols and understanding what they meant for my… time with Duke were two different things.
She touched the card next to it. Three women embracedeach other, clearly very close. Friendship, companionship, happiness, the card promised me.
“Were you friends first? Close in some way?”
“Yes, for my whole life.” We were so young when we met I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in my life, my closest—and sometimes only—friend.
“You balance each other out,” she said, tapping the justice card again. She looked at me and smiled. I didn’t know what that smile meant, but tingles ran down my spine anyway, like she looked inside me and read everything. “That’s good. Friendship is always a good place to start a relationship. I’ve had to learn that the hard way.”
She smiled at me, and I huffed. I couldn’t muster a full laugh, though, because the last card on that top row was upside down and worry clawed at me. I didn’t want to risk our friendship. I couldn’t.
“You’re afraid.” The piercing, all-too-knowing eyes were on me again. I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat, but it didn’t budge. “You want something you feel you can’t have and you’re afraid to take it.”
