Free Poisoned Kisses by Stephanie Draven Page A

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 ifher 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