Poisoned Kisses (6 page)

Afterward, her body tingled with sensation, every single hair seeming to stand on end. They were quiet, her hands stroking the hair from his damp face as he nuzzled her breasts. It’d been a quick release of tension—and now he seemed to want more. She did, too, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex this tenderly. At least, it’d been tender by Kyra’s standards, and tender wasn’t her way. Somehow, she and Marco had connected. Maybe it was because they were so much alike.

Or maybe it was because she was pretending to be someone else.

The thought was so sobering, so unsettling, that she stopped the trail of his lips down her stomach. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Everything was wrong. What’s more, his bandage had peeled away just enough so that she could see the crudely stitched wound. The threads looked frail and tattered as if the poison was eating them away. What if even a little bit of his blood dripped onto her skin again? Just being this close to him, she was taking her life in her hands, and yet, why
did she suddenly fear it was her heart most in jeopardy? “It’s just…”

“You regret it,” he finished for her.

No. She didn’t regret it. And that was the problem. “It’s just—I’m not sure I’m the kind of woman who does this.” What she meant, of course, was that she wasn’t the kind of
nymph
who did this. She took lovers, certainly. But this encounter with Marco had the potential to be so much more. And that frightened her out of her wits.

As the silence stretched on between them, his shoulders tensed in the firelight. She could see she’d angered him, broken the thread of tenderness between them. When he spoke again, it was guarded. Sarcastic. “What, Ashlynn? Are you afraid I’m not going to respect you in the morning?”

“Maybe,” Kyra said, but that was a lie. She was afraid that, in the end, she’d be just like all those silly, sentimental nymphs who mistook sex for something more, and lost themselves in the bargain. “You wouldn’t be the first man to judge a woman in the morning for doing exactly what you wanted her to do the night before.”

“I’ve had too many one-night stands to judge you,” he said. So he meant this to be the only time. Kyra wasn’t sure why this should’ve bothered her, but it did. Her disappointment must have shown, because he said, “Look, I know I said some un kind things when we broke up…”

In spite of herself, she was desperately curious about how Marco parted from his ex-lover. “Like what?”

“Don’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “I know you remember what I called you. And I’m sorry. You were lonely when I went overseas and you were inexperienced. He took advantage of that. You were an innocent and I blame
him
not
you
.” An
innocent?
Kyra made a mental note never again to impersonate someone like Ashlynn Brown. She couldn’t pull it off. In fact, she’d better cut off this conversation quickly.
Any trip down memory lane was likely to mess her up. She didn’t share his memories and she wasn’t the woman he was reminiscing about, but she wasn’t sure she could bear for him to realize it so soon after the tender intimacies between them. “Well, we’re different people now.”

“We are. And though I’m sure you don’t like to think of yourself as the kind of girl who gets down and dirty in the middle of the living room…if you ask me, a little naughtiness suits you.”

“So you’re saying that you like me better now than the way I was?”

If only he hadn’t paused to think about it. If only he’d given her any real answer at all. But what he said was, “I’m not sure my opinion matters… I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“Charming.” Kyra tried, and failed, to keep the acid from her tongue. “Is that how you are with your other women? ‘Hey, thanks for last night. Let’s order some pizza!’”

Marco arched a brow. “My
other women?
”

“Weren’t you just bragging about all your one-night stands?”

His brow arched even higher. “Are you jealous?”

“Should I be?”

“I just take fleeting pleasure where I find it. I don’t deserve much more than that.”

“That’s not true.” Now she knew that he wasn’t an arms dealer for the cash or for the power. He was a
crusader;
he had the idiotic notion that what he was doing would help people.

She ached a little at the break in contact as he withdrew from the tangle of limbs and couch cushions, but she liked looking at his body in the firelight. He was as hard and scarred as an ancient legionary, with dark hair that trailed down his chest and thinned out on his belly. She wanted to rub her face against it, and her arousal frustrated her. Meanwhile, he found his towel, wrapped it around his waist and padded
barefoot, apparently intent on foraging for food. “I’ll cook us something.”

She opened her mouth to stop him, tried to spin some quick lie to explain why the fridge was empty, but she was too late. He threw open the door, then looked at her from across the countertop that divided the living room from the kitchen, incredulous. “Don’t you eat?”

“I told you—I just moved in.”

His eyes narrowed. “You keep saying that, but I don’t see any boxes.”

“They’re still back at my old place,” Kyra quickly lied.

That’s when he flung open the freezer and found the food rations she’d stored when she’d planned to lock him in the dungeon. She hadn’t planned to starve him, after all. “What the
hell?
”

“Doesn’t everybody love Salisbury steak?” But she couldn’t keep the guilt off her face, and she pulled the blanket tighter around her, anticipating a truly horrible confrontation.

To her surprise, he laughed. And it wasn’t one of his dark bitter laughs, either. This one was rich and warm and it made her fingertips tingle. “Ashlynn, you have about twenty trays in here. It’s bad enough that you’re subsisting off craptastic frozen dinners, but every single one of these is the same!”

So she wasn’t caught, after all. “Variety makes me nervous,” she chirped in relief.

“I remember that about you.” He pulled two boxed dinners out of the freezer and tossed them on the countertop. “This is all congealed gravy and high sodium—you keep eating this stuff, and it’s going to kill you.”

No,
she thought. There was only one thing in this world that could kill her and that was him. “Marco…I’ll take care of dinner if you want to clean up. Your bandage—”

It was the wrong thing to say. His hand quickly went to his cheek as awareness dawned in his eyes. For a few moments
he’d given pleasure, taken pleasure and laughed. For just a little while, he’d forgotten he was a monster.

Now, she’d reminded him again and it seemed to turn him to stone.

M
arco checked his bandage, relieved to find that he wasn’t dripping blood. How could he have been so damned reckless? What if his cut had opened up again while he was on top of her? What if he’d poisoned her? He was usually so much more careful about this. But somehow when their bodies were joined, Marco had forgotten about his poisoned blood. He’d forgotten about wars, he’d forgotten about Africa, he’d forgotten about his many faces, his mother’s madness and he’d even forgotten his father’s death.

And that was all because of
her
. Because of Ashlynn Brown. The same woman who couldn’t even wait until he’d come home from his tour of duty to return his engagement ring and run off with another guy. Ashlynn had wounded his pride, but that was all. He’d been so young that he’d already fallen out of love with her—if he’d ever been in love with her to begin with. Or is that just what he told himself? Because if he’d really stopped having feelings for Ashlynn, how could he explain what just happened?

He couldn’t explain it, or maybe he just didn’t want to. Furious with himself, Marco riffled through the bathroom cabinets to find a clean bandage. He’d been surprised at Ashlynn’s rather well-stocked medicine cabinet. Not just your standard aspirin and Band-Aids, but a full first-aid kit and some pretty heavy-duty sleeping pills. He couldn’t help but wonder what kept her up at night.

After he’d redressed the wound on his cheek, assuring himself that he wasn’t going to bleed on anything, he looked for something dry to wear. A towel wasn’t going to cut it. He went into her bedroom. The bed looked as if it’d never been slept in, but Ashlynn had always been a neat freak that way. He opened the closet and found two bathrobes hanging on the back of the door, neither of which looked as if they’d ever been worn. Also, to his extreme shock and surprise, he found a pair of shiny silver handcuffs.

He actually did a double take, pulled them out and tested them. Yep. Real handcuffs. What the hell kind of life was Ashlynn living now that her bedroom closet contained bathrobes and handcuffs but hardly any clothes?

Something about this house was
so
wrong, and under any other circumstances he’d have marched to the kitchen and demanded an explanation. But did he really have a right to ask? This was his high-school sweetheart he was dealing with here and he had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that he was intruding in her private space.

Leaning against the door frame, he listened to the wind howling outside. The temperature outside was dropping, and every tree was slowly being trapped in ice. Just like him. Trapped here in this damned house with a woman who was as familiar as a lover, and as mysterious as a stranger.

The last time Kyra had cooked, microwaves hadn’t been in vented, so she opted for the oven and set a timer. Not long after, Marco came back from the bathroom wearing one of the
bathrobes the real estate agent had left there as a welcoming gift. He tossed his bloody bandage—as well as the towels he’d used—into the fire.

“Does that get rid of the poison?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Hopefully.” He didn’t look up at her—just stood there watching everything burn. “You know, I’m not sure that I really believed any of it until I changed faces in front of you. Until I showed you, I thought maybe it was some madness. Now that someone else knows…”

It had been a reality check. She could see that it was all hitting him now in a way it hadn’t before. It had never occurred to Kyra that he kept this monstrous secret from everyone. She’d always thought a friend might have known, or his family, or even some of the men who worked for him. But of all the people in the world, he’d shown
her.
He’d told
her
everything. He’d trusted
her.

No… He’d trusted
Ashlynn.
And now she was going to have to keep abusing that trust to keep him out of her father’s clutches. It made her sick.

Marco used the poker to push the burning towels farther into the flame. The smell of his blood as it burned was not pleasant, but it seemed to bother him more than it did her. “Ashlynn, when I changed faces in front of you, why didn’t you scream?”

The question startled Kyra. “What?”

He leaned against the fireplace. “I showed you something that should’ve frightened you, repulsed you, and yet…you reached for me.”

She’d reached for him because he’d needed her, and it’d been a long time since anyone had. But that truth cut too closely to the bone, so she smiled and said, “Well, there’s a storm and I didn’t have a phone to call the police, so sleeping with you seemed like my only other option.”

Clearly, it was the wrong joke to make. He looked as if
her words had dealt him a body blow. He set the poker aside and motioned toward the rumpled couch where they’d been intimate. “So you slept with me because you’re afraid of me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I’m not afraid of anything,
she told herself. Except for her father. And some of the other war gods. And of Marco’s blood. And of the emotions swirling inside her now… “Marco, if I was afraid of you, why would I come anywhere near you?”

“It happens all the time. Women end up in bed with men that scare them.” Marco’s mind seemed somewhere else. Somewhere like the Congo. “Sometimes women find themselves trapped in a bad situation. Maybe they find themselves captured by enemy soldiers and they think it’ll be worse for them if they resist.”

Oh, the horrible things he’d seen. The images, the experiences of war, really
had
poisoned him. “But it wasn’t like that between us, Marco. I kissed you—”

“So what? Sometimes in Africa, those same women seduce those same dangerous soldiers in the hopes of some gentleness. It’s a survival instinct.” His voice was getting colder. More clinical. “They take a horrific circumstance and turn it into something familiar, something over which they have some semblance of control. It doesn’t make it any less wrong to take advantage of it.”

Frustrated, Kyra asked, “Is that what you want to believe happened here tonight?” She was incredibly uncomfortable with her impersonation of Ashlynn Brown. The play-pretend wasn’t protecting her emotions, which felt now like they were right on the surface of her skin. He was trying to ruin everything. He was trying to take the one moment of connection she’d felt in centuries and turn it ugly. “Do you think that a
good girl
like Ashlynn wouldn’t have sex with you willingly?”

He tilted his head at her use of the third person.

She was so disoriented that she’d nearly given herself away, but she couldn’t stop herself now. She was angry and didn’t know why. Maybe it would make her feel better if he was angry, too. “Or maybe it turns you on to think I didn’t want it.”

Marco gave her a sharp look, then the flats of both his hands slammed down on the mantelpiece. “After all these years, you still don’t understand the first damned thing about me!”

They stood there, facing each other, he in the bathrobe, she clutching the blanket around herself. Then the beeping timer on the oven split the night. Kyra turned toward the kitchen, but Marco grabbed her by the arm. He was fast, just like he’d been when they’d fought in the hotel. And remembering his strength, how they’d brawled, Kyra flinched. “You
are
afraid of me. Did you think I was going to hit you?”

Of course, he
had
hit her before. Mind you, he’d been fighting for his life at the time… “No—no,” Kyra stammered, unable to spin a quick lie.

Marco swallowed, letting her go. “Get dressed.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get dressed,” she said, nostrils flared.

“Who knows how long you were floating in that ice water before I pulled you out? You could have hypothermia. Put some clothes on.”

“Oh, is that an
order?
” she asked sarcastically.

“Ashlynn—”

“You’re not a soldier anymore, Marco, and I don’t take orders from you. I don’t care how much money you have, I don’t care how many guns you own and I don’t care how many governments you’ve helped topple—”

He reared back. “Is that what you think I do?”

In spite of their argument, maybe this was an opening for her to persuade him to give up arms dealing. To warn him
about Ares before it was too late. Wasn’t that the whole reason she was here? “Yes, Marco, that’s what I think you do.”

He looked as if he were going to deny it, but then he started coughing. “What’s that smell?” She smelled it, too. It was smoke. Dinner was burning. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Get dressed.”

Kyra fetched a robe while trying to think of what to do next. She hadn’t planned to sleep with Marco and now everything had changed. For now, she didn’t need to chain him up—the storm had trapped him here with her. But what would happen when it let up? How could she keep Marco away from Daddy and the other war gods who would try to use him for their own purposes?

“So I noticed you aren’t wearing a ring,” Marco finally said, cutting around the burned edges of his dinner and into her thoughts. “Didn’t you marry that asshole?”

Kyra didn’t know anything about Ashlynn’s life and wasn’t sure she could keep faking it. Should she just reveal herself as a nymph now? Marco had told her his secrets, so why shouldn’t she share hers? Because he might
kill
her, that’s why, and she was every bit as trapped here by the storm as he was.

Kyra stirred the mashed potatoes in the tray. “Things didn’t work out.”

“Sorry to hear it,” he said, taking a bite.

She glanced at him and saw his smug expression. “No, you’re not.”

“Sure I am…” His body language was all arrogance.

“You’re not sorry, Marco.”

“Okay, so I’m not sorry. I hated that guy. There’s nothing worse than being in a war zone knowing that your buddy is back home stealing your girl. And you know what else? While we’re telling the truth here, I don’t remember you caring so much about toppled governments. I must’ve written you a
hundred letters about Rwanda, and you never took an interest. All you wanted to know was when I was coming home and what flavor wedding cake we should have. Remember?”

Kyra was developing a distinct dislike for the woman who she was pretending to be. What kind of silly, self-absorbed little girl had Ashlynn Brown been? But maybe that wasn’t fair. Marco was remembering a teenage girl, not a woman grown. “Don’t you think people can change?”

He stared down at his fork. “Sure. Just not usually for the better.”

He was going back to that dark place inside himself where he was so much harder to reach. She had to stop him, distract him. She slid her tray over to him. “You can have the rest of mine… It’s all burned and…really terrible. I guess it’s not exactly the kind of fare a big shot like you is used to.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve seen too much starvation to turn my nose up at food,” he said, taking her tray. “This would be a feast for some kids. And when I’m out in the field, I eat MREs.”

As the storm continued to howl outside, Kyra settled farther down into the corner of the sofa, pulling the bathrobe around her for warmth. “An MRE?”

“It’s a military acronym. Meals Ready to Eat,” Marco explained. “You can eat them cold, or add a little water, or heat them up.”

So he really did still think of himself as a soldier; it’s just that he was fighting a war all by himself. “Do you steal them from the army?”

There was just enough offense in his tone to let her know she was crossing a line. “I wouldn’t steal food from soldiers. You can buy MREs at any good camping store.”

“Let me get this straight…” Kyra said, appraising him anew. “You’ll steal weapons and resell them, but you won’t steal MREs?”

“It’s totally different,” he said, as if she just didn’t get his moral code.

“Why
do
you steal weapons, anyway?” she wondered. “There are enough folks involved in illegal arms trade that would sell them to you.”

“I don’t want them to profit from it.”

She noticed he was rubbing his shoulder again and her guilt bubbled back up. After the accident, he’d been worried about calling an ambulance for her. It hadn’t occurred to her she should call one for him. “Do you need some—uh, some medicine? For your shoulder?”

“No. My shoulder always hurts,” he explained. “There’s still a bullet fragment in there.”

Kyra had seen it, sensed it, a little sliver of evil embedded in the bone. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch it, and when she did, his fingers tangled with hers. “Ashlynn, don’t.”

She ignored his warning. “You insulted me before, when you said that I’d only slept with you because I was afraid of you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression sincere. “But you
are
afraid of me. I see it in your eyes.”

Kyra looked up, lifting her chin. “There are a lot of things that people want that also make them afraid.”

His grave look turned just a little bit smug. “Like what?”

Like love,
Kyra thought. Everybody wanted it, and everyone was desperately afraid of taking the risk. But she said, “People are afraid of change. People are afraid of knowing too much about problems that seem overwhelming to solve.” That struck a chord in him, she could tell, and when his fingers closed tighter around hers it seemed as if she couldn’t pretend to be Ashlynn Brown for even one more second. “People are afraid to tell the truth. I need to tell you the truth about something, but I’m afraid to. I need you to promise…”

“Promise what?” Marco asked, dipping his head closer to her.

What did she want him to promise? Promise not to kill her? Promise not to leave? Nymphs always asked mortal men to make that promise, and they never kept it. Never. Kyra’s voice quavered. “I need you to promise that you’ll believe me.”

He was about to answer her—his lips were actually parted in promise—when a loud creaking noise erupted from the basement, startling them both. “It’s your pipes. They might be freezing.”

Cursing under her breath at the interruption, she watched him get up. When Kyra bought this stupid old house, plumbing wasn’t something she’d worried about. All she’d cared about was whether or not she could fit a man-size cage in the basement.