Poisoned Kisses. Stephanie Draven

desperate, and resigned. “I’m just going to look for my phone, Ashlynn. I’ll be back.”

      Kyra hadn’t meant to cause such a horrible accident. She’d only been trying to cause a little fender bender. At most, she’d hoped for a broken axle—something that would incapacitate his rental without doing any real damage. She’d never intended to total the car. And no matter what Hecate would say, this time she really hadn’t been trying to kill the hydra.

      The problem was that Kyra had never encountered a storm like this; she hailed from a warmer part of the world. It was the ice that hadn’t figured into her plans. Now, she deeply regretted that oversight. Why, she’d been so disoriented after the accident that she’d nearly touched the poisoned blood on Marco’s cheekbone!

      Fear of death didn’t come naturally to Kyra; it was still a reflex she was learning. If he hadn’t stopped her from touching him, what might’ve happened? But he had stopped her. He’d even told her the truth about the poison in his blood—at least, he told Ashlynn the truth.

      She should be healed by now. But ever since the poisoning, her powers of recovery were decidedly slow. She actually felt too weak to get up and follow Marco. He said he’d be right back, but she was afraid he’d just disappear again into the snow, and every day he was free to sell weapons was another day of death and destruction. Every day he was free made it that much easier for Ares to find him, and bend the hydra to an even darker purpose.

      At least, that’s the reason she told herself she was afraid Marco would disappear when he walked out that door. But there was another reason, too; she was shaken. Shaken by the accident, and even more shaken by the way he’d pulled her out of the ditch and carried her to safety in a strong and protective embrace. Why had he been so tender with her? Not with her, of course. With Ashlynn. She must remember that he was seeing a woman he once cared about. Even so, if a man could behave that way, could he still be a monster?

      Marco usually traveled with a driver, but he hadn’t wanted Benji or any of his employees nosing around his hometown, so he’d rented the car. Now, as Marco climbed over the twisted metal and fished his ruined cell phone out of the icy water, he counted that decision a mistake. There’d be questions about the wreck when the authorities found it. Meanwhile, he was in the middle of nowhere, alone with Ashlynn Brown for the first time in years and without a working phone. How in the hell had this crash happened, and why couldn’t he remember?

      He found her purse in the snow and carried it inside. She was still on the couch, but she’d found another blanket. That was probably a good sign—that she’d been able to get up on her own—but she still looked stunned. They were both shivering, soaked to the bone, but he said, “I’m going to have to walk to a neighbor’s house and call you an ambulance.”

      “In this weather?” she asked. “My closest neighbor is a mile away.”

      Marco glanced out the window with frustration. The snow was really coming down. He’d planned to be well on his way to Toronto by now. But that was before he nearly killed his ex-fiancée in a car wreck. “I don’t have a better idea.”

      “You’re not dressed for a hike through a storm,” she said, eyeing his ruined dress shoes and sodden overcoat. “And I don’t need an ambulance. I’m okay.”

      “You looked dead out there,” he said, the memory of it still churning like bile in his stomach. “You looked dead,” he repeated, unable to fathom how quickly she seemed to have recovered.

      “But I’m fine. I just have a few bumps and bruises. Besides, in your profession, I’m sure you’ve seen people hurt much worse.”

      He stooped in front of the hearth to start a fire. “My profession?”

      Kyra watched him, noting the way his shoulders tensed. His emotions were like a tinderbox just waiting to flare up. She remembered the dark expression on his face in Naples and the way he’d frightened her, and she wondered what the hell she was doing. This wasn’t the way to lure him into the basement dungeon. Still, impulse control had never been her strong suit. “They say you’re a gunrunner. I’ve seen your name on the news.”

      “Since when are you interested in the news, Ashlynn?”

      Kyra sighed inwardly. Just her luck to have chosen to impersonate the one clueless woman from his past who wouldn’t care about his illegal enterprises. “Maybe I’ve changed.”

      Marco arranged a few logs in the grate. “Maybe we both have.”

      “So, is it true?” she pressed. “Are you an arms dealer?”

      He lit a match and started the fire. “It doesn’t matter.”

      “It mattered to your father,” Kyra countered.

      He rolled his muscular shoulders, but didn’t turn to look at her. Still, she knew her arrow had struck true. “You know, Ashlynn, I do what I do so that people like you can live your safe little lives and never have to think about the horrors of the world.”

      “You broke your father’s heart,” she said bluntly.

      Marco silently stabbed into the fireplace with a poker. Then he exploded all at once. “What else is new? You remember how he was. I wanted to do something with my life so that other people wouldn’t have to suffer like my mother suffered, but he couldn’t get over the fact that his only son didn’t want to work in the family business. The only thing he cared about was that stupid restaurant.”

      That’s crap, Kyra wanted to say. But instead, she kept Ashlynn’s sweeter demeanor. “No. Your father just thought he’d escaped a world of war. He didn’t want to see his son back in it. But at least he was proud of you when you were a soldier. It was when you amassed your own private arsenal to sell to criminals—that’s what he couldn’t forgive.” Kyra knew this, because these were among the last things Mr. Kaisaris had said before she led him to the entrance to the underworld.

      Fortunately, Marco didn’t ask her how she knew. He was too pissed. “My father didn’t understand and neither do you.”

      “I understand that you cause wars.”

      “Gunrunning doesn’t cause wars. It simply prolongs them.”

      Ug! He sounded like Ares himself. Wrapping her blanket more tightly around her, Kyra wondered if he knew how chilling his words were. “And that’s better?”

      “It is better,” Marco said, turning to face her at last. “You see, there are some things civilians don’t get.“

      Civilians? Did he still think of himself as a soldier? Even now? Fighting some war the rest of the world had forgotten? “Why don’t you educate me, Marco.”

      “Sometimes the only thing that keeps people alive is war. In some places in the world, ‘peace’ only comes after a massacre. Fighting isn’t the worst thing that can happen, especially when it means you live to fight another day.”

      “How can you say that? You used to be a UN peacekeeper.”

      “Because when I was a peacekeeper in Rwanda, they killed eight hundred thousand people in one hundred days. Which is how I know peacekeeping is a joke.”

      Kyra opened her mouth to reply, but the fire and his temper weren’t the only things burning; where his blood had dripped onto his collar, smoke rose from the cloth. She recognized the potent scent of it and it immediately reminded her of how Marco’s blood had literally stopped her heart. Kyra pretended not to notice, but he caught her glance. “I need to get cleaned up,” was all he said.

       Chapter 7

      While Marco showered, Kyra took his clothes into the small laundry room off the kitchen, and put his shirt and slacks in the dryer—his jacket was a lost cause. He’d told her that once his clothes were dry, he’d hike through the storm to find a phone. Kyra thought he was a menace to himself and society for