Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  “Are you looking for Poseidon?” Damon asked, pulling her back from the memories that haunted her. “You won’t find him today, but this island is lovely and the water is warm, so why don’t you take a swim?”

  It was an abrupt change of subject, as if he couldn’t bear to speak of such things a moment longer. Truthfully, Renata needed a few moments to gather her wits, too. She looked down at the dress she’d been sleeping in for three days and wanted to be rid of it. “As an immortal, can you conjure up a swimsuit for me out of thin air? Do you have that power?”

  “No,” he said. “But I can make it so that you’re not the slightest bit afraid. I can consume your fears—make you so fearless, you’ll happily strip naked and step into the sea.”

  Renata shivered. The sun-warmed patio stones were toasty beneath her feet and the day was warm, but still, Renata shivered. Whether it was the way he spoke to her, the hungry look on his face, or the words he spoke, she couldn’t say. But neither could she help wondering what it would be like to swim naked, to no longer be self-conscious about the scars on her back, to be unafraid to let a man see her completely and utterly exposed.

  Still, Renata was confused. “You said you and your brother instilled panic and terror…”

  Damon leaned forward over the table until his face was inches from hers. Then with great deliberation, he pursed his lips as if he might kiss her. Instead, he blew a soft breath upon her face and it stirred happier memories inside her. She smelled jasmine, the scent of her mother’s perfume, and she felt the tension loosen in her shoulders. The thought that she was being held captive against her will seemed far away, unimportant. Instead she felt she was only the guest of an impossibly handsome man at his beach house retreat.

  “I can terrify,” Damon told her with sad eyes. “But I can also take some of it away.”

  His face was still inches from hers, and she wondered what he had done to her that she so wanted to kiss him. More than that, she wanted to reach out with the fingers of a sculptress and trace the lines of his mouth. Would his lips feel smooth like marble, rough as granite, or soft like her own? “But why would a Son of Ares want anything to do with me?”

  Too late, Renata realized she’d spoken the question aloud. But Damon didn’t look surprised by it. “Because, Renata,” he said, simply. “You’re a gorgon.”

  Chapter 5

  A gorgon? Renata didn’t know whether to laugh or be deeply insulted. She’d studied ancient art in school. She knew that gorgons were monstrous harpies with metal claws, snakes for hair, and faces so hideous they turned anyone who looked at them to stone.

  Not her disfiguring burns, nor the scars left after plastic surgery, nor even a single bad-hair day had ever made Renata feel so ugly that she’d have called herself a gorgon. Not even in jest.

  “What? Literally a gorgon?” Furious, Renata shot up out of her chair and stalked to the edge of the little patio, wondering if she should leap into the sand and just start running away from Damon as far and as fast as she could. But something made her stay. “What are you saying? I remember being a child—I remember my father and my brother and my mother. You’re saying I’m Medusa in disguise?”

  “Medusa is dead,” Damon said, very seriously. “A vigilante named Perseus cut off her head.”

  A flash of her little brother’s severed hand passed through Renata’s mind and deep tremors shook her. She was so overcome with revulsion she couldn’t speak.

  “You see, Renata, not all gorgons are immortal. Some gorgons are not born—they are made.”

  “How? How are they made?” Renata demanded to know.

  “They’re forged of righteous rage against a horror they were helpless to stop. That’s what happened to Medusa. That’s what happened to you.”

  Renata turned back to him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “And so what does it mean? I have no scales, no claws, and my only snake is an escaped pet python.”

  “Your monstrosity is on the inside,” Damon replied.

  It was, quite possibly, the most hurtful thing anyone had ever said to her. It wounded her so deeply her muscles all tightened, like she’d been struck, like she’d been shot.

  Damon’s shoulders sagged as if he realized he was hurting her, but felt he must continue. “Some might say that all the rage you feel, all that ugliness, is coiling around your heart.”

  Some might say that. Like all the men who had ever tried to love her. Is that why she’d driven them all away with her remoteness and secrecy? Had she been afraid they would see her ugly inner gorgon?

  “How am I any different than all the other survivors of war-torn countries? What good is it being a gorgon?”

  “Gorgons take revenge,” Damon said, coming towards her.

  Together they watched two seagulls battle for a scrap of food in the surf, each bird fighting with angry shrieks.

  “I don’t take revenge,” Renata said, bitterly. “I run and hide. I’ve never gone back to Bosnia and I never will. I can’t even face the men responsible for what happened to my family. I can’t face them.”

  “I know you can’t,” he said, touching her arm lightly, as if to comfort her. “So you turn them to stone. Two of them now have died after you carved them. Did you think it was an accident?”

  No. Not in her heart. Somewhere inside her, she had known it was more than coincidence. She had thought it’d happened because she wished them dead, and now Damon was telling her that she had the power to make those wishes come true. She couldn’t deny the small thrill of empowerment that flowed through her, alongside the guilt and horror. If she was a gorgon, it meant she never had to see these evil men, never had to face them or relive her story. She only had to put them into her artwork to end their miserable lives.

  Being a gorgon meant never being a victim again.

  Tears wet her cheeks, but she didn’t remember crying. She wanted to say something, but her throat closed shut. Damon tried to make her look at him, but she turned away and her stony gray eyes fixed upon the depthless ocean and all its secrets.

  Damon tried again. “I didn’t tell you this to hurt you—”

  “A boat is coming,” she interrupted, forcing herself to speak over the lump in her throat. Her voice sounded foreign and far away.

  Damon looked as if he weren’t ready to let the matter drop, as if he wanted to encourage her to talk about the confusion swirling inside her, but he seemed to think better of it. “The boat is early,” he said, clearly frustrated. “But the boat is for us. It’s time to go.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked, fists clenching at her sides. “I won’t go back to Bosnia.”

  “I won’t ever force you to go back there,” Damon reassured her. “But we must leave this place now. The cell phone reception is terrible and there’s no internet connection. I have work to do in the real world.”

  The real world? Renata wondered what that even meant anymore. “What kind of work does an immortal do?”

  “We do any kind of work we like,” Damon said. “My aunt is a professional benefactress. She has always had a special eye for the gifted and a unique way of fostering their talents. She has a stable of favorites. Meanwhile, my brother is in law enforcement—he feeds off the fear of crime victims.”

  “And you?” Renata asked.

  He eyed her with scant amusement. “I’m a security consultant for the global banking industry.”

  “Security,” she sputtered with surprise.

  He towered over her with barely constrained menace. “Trust me when I say that I’m an expert at frightening people away from taking things that don’t belong to them.”

  Renata didn’t fight against leaving the island with him. She hadn’t seen the point. Did she really want her kidnapper leaving her on a secluded island by herself? Moreover, she was still in shock at everything he’d told her. Her hands were cold and she couldn’t catch her breath. And as the boat ferried them towards their destination, she almost didn’t care where they went. As
long as it was somewhere far, far away.

  Chapter 6

  Ever since Renata sipped the ambrosia, time had passed in fits and starts. She was unable to keep a firm grasp of it. Had it been days or weeks since she’d been kidnapped? Worse, she didn’t even know where she was.

  Asia. They were somewhere in Asia. That was all Renata was able to surmise from the penthouse window. The billboards that hung over the sprawling streets below were covered with symbols she couldn’t read. Chinese? Korean? Japanese? She just didn’t know. Renata saw thousands of cars, bicycles, and even the occasional covered rickshaw pass beneath her, but from the isolation of her skyscraper tower, there was no way to call for rescue.

  Except for the oriental bathroom with the stylized waterfall tub, Damon’s penthouse was thoroughly Western in its sensibilities. The floor was black marble. The sofas were leather. The accent pieces—mostly Greek amphorae—were genuine antiques. The apartment was spacious, sparse and masculine. Renata might have marveled at the luxury were it not for the advanced security system that had turned this apartment into her prison.

  Until they were safely ensconced behind the steel doors and motion sensors, Damon hadn’t allowed her any privacy, but inside the penthouse, he gave her his bedroom and contented himself to sleep on one of the sofas.

  And as soon as he left her alone, in the darkness that shielded her from the monitors, she slipped the little business card and the sketch wrapped around it out of her bra, and into the pillowcase beneath her head.

  In the morning, Renata wandered into the wood-slatted bathroom and saw that a bath had been drawn for her. Fed by an artificial stream trickling over a decorative rock outcropping, the foaming bath beckoned. She peeled off the green dress she hoped never to see again, then climbed into the tub.

  “There are new clothes for you on the bed,” Damon said, interrupting her tranquility. He was standing in the doorway without a care for her privacy. Instinctively, Renata sank lower into the water, letting the bubbles cover her nudity.

  She knew he wanted her to say something, but she was silent.

  “I had to guess at your size,” Damon said. “But my people did their best. If you make a list of things you need, I’ll make sure that you have garments to wear that are more to your liking.”

  Again, Renata knew he was looking for a response, but she gave him none. Instead, she reached for a sponge and pulled it under the water, letting the rough texture scrape across her fingertips and awaken her inner sculptress. Or her inner gorgon. Which was which?

  Damon crossed his arms. “You’re still not speaking to me, then.” It was a statement, not a question, but instead of retreating and leaving her alone, he stepped into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub.

  Renata felt exposed. She wanted to tell him not to sit so close to her, but that admission of discomfort would make her even more vulnerable. A few moments more of awkward silence passed before Damon asked her, “Is there something I can get you, Renata? Is there something you want?”

  “I want my mother,” Renata said, before the thought had even fully formed in her mind.

  He seemed uncomfortable. “Do you really want to involve your foster mother in this?”

  “I want my real mother, but not you or anybody else can give her to me, because the soldier took her away.”

  “Tell me,” Damon said.

  Renata didn’t like talking about it. It was her pain. Her sin. Her secret. She could express herself in sculpture, but it had taken her therapist years to get her to open up. Did he really think he could handle what she had to say? “After the explosion, I was badly burned,” Renata said, tentatively. “My mother tried to take me to a refugee camp for help. As we hurried down the scorched side of the road, she kept telling me to be quiet, that the enemy would hear me screaming, but I was in so much pain. I couldn’t stop and so the soldier heard us. He pointed a gun at us and took her into the woods. I heard my mother cry out, over and over, but I never saw her again.”

  The rush of the waterfall over the rock garden filled the room as if to hush her sad tale, and Damon was silent for a long time. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it was my fault. If I had been quiet, they wouldn’t have taken her,” Renata cried, and her eyes made clear that she would brook no argument.

  The tilt of Damon’s chin lost its imperious angle. He stared down at the floor. Finally he asked, “Did you ever look for her?”

  “After the war, when I was old enough, I called everyone I knew in Bosnia. My foster parents even hired an investigator. I’d hoped that with the publicity for my art that someone might come forward, but…”

  He reached into the tub for her wet hand and clasped it in his own, his fingers twined with hers as if he was tugging something inside her, shaping it, the way she would shape clay. Then he was leaning closer to her. Was he looking at her with pity, or something else? Was it sympathy or desire she saw in his eyes, or both? And why, after having told this stranger her secrets, did she now want him so badly?

  Maybe she just wanted to lose herself in a kiss, to forget about wars and gorgons and feel something warm and real. Or maybe it was something more base and raw—she couldn’t say. But in that moment, something made her offer her lips to him and something made him take them.

  It was, at first, a gentle kiss. But then she reached up and wrapped her dripping arms around his neck. He seemed to tense, then snap.

  His hands went to her hair, his lips crushed down upon hers, and he started to pull her against him, heedless of the warm water they were spilling upon the floor.

  His grip tightened and he kissed her hungrily, as if he were made of the same fury that was inside her. She parted her lips for him, and his tongue captured hers as if in triumph. Renata’s breath quickened as the electricity of their kiss sparked through her, but then he was trying to lift her up out of the water, and she flailed, desperately gripping the edge of the tub to stop him.

  His voice was throaty. “I want to see you. I want to touch you.”

  “I have scars,” Renata replied, breaking apart from him and slipping beneath the water, denying the ache of her body for more.

  “I don’t care,” Damon said. “You’re beautiful, so beautiful.”

  Renata knew that the surgeons had repaired the worst of her damaged skin. That in reality, only faint traces of her injuries remained. But in her mind, she always imagined that her scars were deformities so ugly that seeing them would turn a man’s desire for her to something brittle that would crumble away. Were her scars her gorgon skin? She couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  Perhaps sensing that she could be persuaded, Damon offered her a towel, holding it open for her so that all she had to do was step out of the tub to him and come into his arms. She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to, but she said, “I’m not ready yet.”

  Damon looked as if he might argue, but then slowly nodded. Whatever had been about to happen between them would wait.

  He set the towel on the edge of the tub and leaned over to kiss her again. This time, a tender kiss, filled with self-control. “Renata, I know that hearing the truth about what you are has frightened you. I can take that fear away, if you want me to.”

  “I’m not frightened that I’m a gorgon,” she said. “I’m sickened. You tell me that I can kill with my hands, just by forcing stone into the shapes I see in my mind. That I have killed…before.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” he said simply. “You can’t be blamed. You didn’t know what you were doing when you carved those men. Now that you know, it won’t happen again.”

  She eyed him carefully. “How do you know it won’t?”

  “Because, Renata, I’ll never let you sculpt again.”

  Chapter 7

  Later that night, Deimos received the phone call he’d been dreading.

  “You had no right to give the gorgon ambrosia,” his twin brother snarled into the other end of the phone.

  They had not seen one another in years, bu
t Damon could still imagine the way his twin scowled when he said it, black eyes glowing like coal.

  “It was only a tiny bit,” Damon replied. “But I have enough to make her immortal if I choose, so don’t push me.”

  “It’s our crafty aunt who will push you, not me.” Static crackled on the line. “How long do you think you can keep the gorgon away from us?”

  “I’ll keep her as long as I have to,” Damon replied.

  “We will find you.” It was a threat. “You can’t hide her forever. I know all your haunts.”

  “No, you don’t. Not all of them,” Damon replied much more calmly than he felt, then hung up before the call could be traced.

  Just that morning, his men reported seeing an owl perched on the penthouse balcony—probably one of his aunt’s many spies. Luckily, this foreign place had many old gods of its own who would not take kindly to her showing too much power here.

  Still, it was time to move again.

  Renata had been subdued since their kiss in the bathtub and she did not argue when he asked her to pack her things and board the plane again so soon.

  This time he took her to his snow-covered chalet in a northern country.

  As their entourage marched up the trail, Damon marveled at the way Renata’s cheeks turned rosy in the cold, and how the falling flakes settled into her wild black curls. He first thought perhaps she was only a local beauty, that her mortal charm might fade against a different backdrop, but now he saw that she was captivating in any setting. If only he could know what went on behind those stormy gray eyes of hers.

  Once they were inside, she stared out the frosted window panes over the pine-dotted hillside and asked, “Where are we?”

  He no longer felt the need to keep it from her. “Finland.”