Poisoned Kisses

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 unkind 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.

Chapter 8

Marco 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 invented, 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.

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