Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  “I’m watching for kettles of vultures,” Kyra said, as if this were the obvious answer. “Or really, any suspicious birds. Daddy and the other war gods like them. Eagles, owls, vultures—almost any kind of raptor…”

  She sounded batshit crazy, but he was starting to believe her. Or maybe he just wanted to believe her because it made him feel like less of a dupe. What she’d done to him wreaked havoc on his emotions. But he’d enjoyed himself, hadn’t he? Last night he’d made her scream in pleasure and it should’ve made him feel smug, but it just made it difficult to keep his hands steady on the wheel.

  He tried to forget the way her wild abandon had affected him. He tried to force out of his memory the way it had felt to be inside her. She’d been pure sex, pure need. It had felt like the most honest thing he’d ever experienced in his life, and it had wrecked him. In fact, it must have bewitched him; how else could he explain why he’d really taken her with him?

  He wanted a cigarette. Badly. But he’d be damned if he’d let her see that weakness in him so he grabbed a stick of mint gum instead. Probably for the better—he needed both hands on the wheel. Nobody should be driving in these conditions, but that meant the roads would be empty and that was a good thing.

  When he passed up the ramp to the highway, Kyra said, “I thought we were headed for Toronto.”

  “We have to make one stop first.”

  He could have sworn that his brusque tone made crystal clear that he wasn’t going to discuss it, but that didn’t stop her. “Marco, don’t you understand that we have to get as far away from here as possible? Do you want Daddy to hunt you down and turn you into one of his pets? I know I told you Ares isn’t omniscient and all-powerful, but that doesn’t mean he can’t follow a trail.”

  Tension thumped behind Marco’s temples. “My mother buried her husband yesterday and I don’t know when, or if, I’m ever going to see her again. I’d like to say goodbye.”

  That shut Kyra right up. He could see she wanted to argue. Her lips parted—goddamn, those killer lips of hers—but then she snapped her mouth shut again and…turned into Ashlynn Brown. Her skin didn’t reform itself—she just looked different whenever she wanted to, and it pissed him off. “Stop that right now.”

  Kyra obediently, and apologetically, shimmered back into her own form. “I just thought that if we’re going to see your mother, I should look like someone she knows. She shouldn’t have to see my real face.”

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “It’s different,” she replied.

  In Marco’s line of work, he’d seen a lot of unusual faces. Hell, he’d worn a lot of unusual faces. Faces of white men and black men. Asians and Arabs. He’d worn the faces of Tutsis and Hutus. And in the end, none of them were that different—though sometimes people treated him as if they were. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you look, Kyra.”

  She wound her fingers in her lap. “My face frightens some people.”

  Glancing sidelong at her, he supposed he could see why. Her eyes weren’t just dark, they were completely black—without pupils—like some kind of starless night. Her lashes were dark, too, as if someone had smudged them with permanent eyeliner. And when he wasn’t too busy thinking about how hot her lips felt on his body, he could see that they were shaped like an intimidating archer’s bow. But he liked them. He couldn’t imagine anybody not liking them. “You have the face of an ang—”

  “Don’t say it,” she snarled, turning in the seat to face him. “You were going to say that I look like a fucking angel, weren’t you?”

  He was caught off guard by her vehemence. “You sure don’t talk like one.”

  She tensed in the seat beside him, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “So sorry that I’m not more like your demure little Miss Ashlynn in pearls and basic black with a perfect manicure.”

  That was a vivid—and accurate—description of Ashlynn. And in truth, he should’ve known the difference between the two women last night. But the combination of nostalgia for his old flame paired with Kyra’s fiery personality had been so potent, he hadn’t wanted to question it. He’d just wanted to hold her down and spend himself inside her. Part of him still felt that need. He had to get it under control. “So why’d you pick Ashlynn to impersonate, anyway? If you can look like anybody, why her?”

  Her silence, her reluctance to answer, hung like gunpowder in the air between them. Kyra just stared out the window, and for a moment her gaze was so intense he feared she was going to do whatever it was she did before to cause the car accident.

  “Is that your mother’s street?” Kyra asked as they came to the empty intersection—the one with only a few tire furrows in the snow. “Because the police are there.”

  Of course they were. Marco worked his jaw. “My sister called the authorities.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kyra said, and actually sounded as if she meant it.

  But Marco didn’t want her pity. “What would you know about it?”

  “I have siblings, too,” Kyra confessed. “Most of them, more terrible than I could ever describe. My brothers—Deimos and Phobos—are the literal incarnation of dread and fear. I haven’t spoken to either of them in centuries…but your sister is actually trying to do right by you. She might not know how to express it, but she’s worried sick about you and the life you’ve chosen.”

  Marco snorted.

  “It’s true,” Kyra said. “I saw it when I looked at her. And I don’t just mean that I saw emotions in her eyes. I can see deeper than mortals with my powers.”

  “You’re telling me you can see through people’s bullshit?”

  “I can see through anything if I concentrate.”

  Marco actually hovered at the intersection, not sure if he should let the police arrest him or not. He hadn’t chosen the life of an arms dealer to hurt his family. He’d chosen it because he’d made a promise to the victims of Rwanda. They had no real voice, no one to fight for them but the general, and even he couldn’t do anything for them without the weapons Marco provided.

  Marco kept driving.

  After Kyra left an anonymous message with authorities that there was a woman locked in a cage in the basement, Marco used Kyra’s cell phone to call Benji and tell him to turn around. As soon as they pulled into the parking garage beneath the Grand Palace Hotel, Benji was waiting with a crew, ready to dispose of the stolen car and get Marco out of the country. “We have a new mobile phone and papers for you upstairs,” Benji said when Marco stepped out of the car. “You can be at the airport and on a flight within the hour.”

  “Good work,” Marco said, tossing Benji the keys—though he probably didn’t need them; Benji could hot-wire a car in his sleep, but his attention was riveted on Kyra.

  “What about the pretty girl, Chief?”

  Marco watched as the young West African looked her up and down and gave her a flirtatious wink. Marco didn’t like it. He also didn’t like that the nymph was in disguise again. But Benji had asked the question of the hour. What the hell was he going to do with Kyra?

  He’d kept his promise to her—he’d taken her as far as Toronto. He’d gotten her out of immediate danger. If he had any sense, he’d part company with the woman—nymph—right here and right now. But instead, he found himself saying, “Take her upstairs.”

  When Marco’s young tough opened the passenger side and hauled Kyra out, it took everything she had to keep from slamming the kid’s head against the hood of the car. But he had a gun and Kyra didn’t relish the idea of being shot again today. In fact, this was the third time in one day that someone had her at gunpoint, and the mortal hubris was starting to infuriate her. The sudden flash of murderous rage must have shown in her face because Marco said, “Careful, Benji. She’s a hellcat.”

  Benji grinned at her, trying to charm, rather than frighten her. “What fun is being careful?”

  The young man’s flirtation didn’t surprise her—after all, he couldn’t see her true form. When Benji looked
at her, she made sure he saw some pretty thing who might welcome his attentions. What did surprise her was the way Marco’s eyes darkened with a possessive warning. She’s mine, they seemed to say. Then he actually reached out for her arm and physically yanked her away from Benji and into the elevator.

  Why did that flash of petty human jealousy please her so much? She should have been offended by his blatant attempt to claim her. But if she’d learned anything about him in the past twenty-four hours, it was that the things Marco claimed as his own, he protected. The people, the places, the causes. And she couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have him care about her that intensely.

  No. She couldn’t let herself wonder that. That was just her nymph’s nature trying to grasp at straws and turn them into hearts and flowers. Pathetic. She had to shake it off. “Just where are you taking me?”

  “Behold my innermost sanctum,” he said wryly. Just then, the elevator doors opened to a luxurious suite. A quick glance around showed that it had an excellent view of the snowcapped Toronto skyline and the retreating storm clouds. Carved wooden masks adorned one vaulted wall, and the decor was done all in black, green and tans. The colors of Africa.

  “You live here?”

  He loosened his tie as the elevator doors shut behind them. “Sometimes.”

  Kyra rubbed her arm—he’d yanked her away from Benji so roughly that it actually still hurt. “It’s a little extravagant, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose you live in poverty up on Mount Olympus, or wherever…”

  “I live in a villa apartment.”

  Then she wished she hadn’t said it, because it clearly made him curious. “In Greece?”

  “No. In Italy. Where we met. I was born there near a shrine to Hecate.”

  One didn’t reveal such things to mortals, and with good reason. His lips twisted in mockery. “And I suppose your villa apartment is just a modest little place. Just a comfortable bed for you and whatever guy you’ve picked up at the local nightclub.”

  Damn him. “I don’t bring men there. I don’t bring anyone home with me. Ever.”

  With that, Kyra stormed back to the elevator and punched the buttons, since it seemed to be the only way out. Unfortunately, it also seemed to need a key. “What am I? Your prisoner now?”

  Marco was already pulling off his rumpled jacket. “Turnabout is fair play. Isn’t that what you said to the vulture, Angel?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Kyra punched the elevator button again, for good measure.

  “You can’t escape that way,” Marco said, pulling his tie free of his collar. She wished she didn’t like the sound the silk made as it passed over his rough hands. “Even if the doors opened and you took the elevator to the ground floor, you’d just have to deal with one of my men.”

  It struck Kyra for the first time just how extensive Marco’s organization was. He wasn’t just a lone gunrunner. He had people who worked for him—probably all over the world. He’d made for himself his own little empire. “One of your men? Like the goon who stuck a gun in my ribs? What’s his name? Benji?”

  “He’s harmless. I’ve known the kid since he was a teenager in Sierra Leone. He can crack a safe in seconds. He can smuggle a crate of rockets past customs officials in any country in the world without getting caught. But at the end of the day, I don’t think he could ever hurt anybody.”

  “But I could,” Kyra insisted. “I should have broken his arm.”

  He unfastened his shirt buttons, one by one. Gods, she loved the way he moved. “Are you really that vicious?”

  “You don’t want to find out,” Kyra said, nostrils flaring. “I didn’t have to come up here with you, you know.”

  “I know,” Marco said, working at his cuff links. “But I knew you’d come peaceably.”

  “That was a risky assumption on your part.”

  “Not that risky.” He stalked toward her, eyes locking on hers. She tried not to stare now that he had his shirt all the way unbuttoned. His chest was bared to her. “I knew you’d come. After all, we have unfinished business between us.”

  They certainly did, but the way he was closing in on her made her think that another discussion about arming the downtrodden peoples of Africa was not foremost on his mind. His hand came to rest on the wall behind her and he leaned in. His closeness was making her nervous and excited at the same time. So much so, that Kyra found her eyes dropping like some shy damsel.

  He caught her by the chin and forced her to look at him. “I know you’re not Ashlynn. You don’t have to pretend you’re demure.”

  The feel of his callused fingers brought back such sharp memories of pleasure that Kyra felt weak at the knees, just like in all those mortal movies where the fair damsel swoons away. And it wasn’t just arousal; she could have handled that. No, this feeling was something different from lust, and wholly unfamiliar. She felt as if she was being turned inside out and it was more than she could bear.

  He was going to kiss her. If she didn’t stop him, he was definitely going to kiss her. And she wanted him to. But nothing had changed. She hadn’t fulfilled her destiny. She hadn’t conquered the hydra within him. She hadn’t killed him. She hadn’t captured him. And she hadn’t even persuaded him to give up arms dealing. Everything Kyra had tried to do had failed, and she couldn’t add a humiliating love affair to the list.

  So when Marco tried to pull her into the kiss, she fled—actually fled—to the opposite side of the room. She had thought herself no coy Daphne to fly fleet-footed from a suitor, but now she was starting to understand why so many nymphs ran. He would change her—hell, he was already changing her. The only safety was in retreat. And yet, there was nowhere to go. She was stopped by the glass window that showed her the dizzying height at which she was being imprisoned. Staring out the patio doors that overlooked the city below, Kyra felt like she was in the sky, so high up, higher than Olympus—a discomforting height for a nymph of the underworld. It was why she hated flying. She didn’t belong up here. And she didn’t belong with this man.

  “Afraid of a little kiss, Angel?” Marco chuckled.

  “Aren’t you in a hurry to get out of the country?” Kyra asked. “Do you really have time for this?”

  Marco put a mocking hand over his heart. “Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware that you were the kind of girl who needed leisurely wooing.”

  Kyra was about to make a scathing reply, but then he came up behind her and the words died on her lips. “You’re an excellent actress,” he said with his mouth by her ear, that incredible voice unraveling all her resolve. “But even you can’t pretend you don’t know where you want to end up.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Underneath me,” Marco said.

  She found herself exhaling a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Maybe it was his words, or the sound of his voice, or the intimate sensation of his mouth that made a wondrous flutter go through her. A flutter, damn it! It was like some exquisite swarm of winter butterflies had been unleashed inside her, all vivid and angel-winged.

  Gods above and below, Kyra had to put a stop to this. She was the siren seducer of men, not the seduced. She took lovers and discarded them at her whim. Kyra broke away and turned to face him again. “I think you’re a little too sure of yourself. What happened between us last night was—”

  “What?” he broke in, his eyes narrowed in challenge.

  It was nothing. It was fake. It was a ruse. It was just to trick you into my dungeon. There were a thousand lies she could have spun, but she couldn’t seem to say any of them. Face-to-face with him like this, his breath warm on her cheeks she couldn’t coax even one more lie to pass her lips.

  This time he did kiss her and she let him. Really, there was not much choice in it. It might be the only thing that would stop her heart from slamming out of her chest. Besides, it was only a kiss. It couldn’t possibly make her as vulnerable as she’d felt last night with him in the dark. They’d been so good in the dark.
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  Kyra closed her eyes at the taste of his mouth—some combination of mint gum and sorrow. Swaying with the sensation of his lips on hers, Kyra’s arms went limp and it comforted her when he took her wrists and put them at the small of her back. He’d done that before, the first time he’d taken her to bed, but this time, he didn’t pull her closer into his embrace.

  Instead, she felt the cold bite of metal on her wrist.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, half-dazed, rousing herself too late to stop him from handcuffing her to the handle of the sliding door.

  “I found these in your bedroom. Think of it as foreplay,” he said, and for a moment, she almost believed him. She could feel the ridge of his arousal beneath his pants, hard against her thigh, but she didn’t think this was sex play. Kyra gave a good tug, only to find she was well and truly fastened to the door.

  She’d set out to capture him and now she was the one in chains. She started to struggle, but as he caught and cuffed the other wrist, his kiss smothered her angry protest. Her fury only ignited a scorching heat across her skin as he took full advantage of her arousal. His strong hands cupped and kneaded her breasts.

  She tried to get her hands free to push him away, but when she tried, the cuffs only rattled against the door. If he’d been any other man, she would’ve bitten him and forced his tongue out of her mouth. But if she broke Marco’s skin—if she made him bleed that toxic blood of his—it could kill her.

  With his tongue tangling with hers and her nipples aching at his touch, she was completely at his mercy and it was sweeter than she could have ever imagined. She groaned when his hand trailed down her belly. There was no way of escaping the insistent fingers that slipped under the lace edge of her panties and stroked her. Even if there’d been a way to move out of his reach, his hand at the nape of her neck held her still. And gods help her, she liked it.

  A sharp clench of sexual need tightened her belly. She swayed where she stood as he etched slow circles over the slick source of rapture between her trembling thighs. It wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right, to want a man this much. To have him touch her, arouse her, give her pleasure without being able to do anything in return…it made her so vulnerable she couldn’t breathe. She started to inhale in short, panicked bursts.