Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  Norse territory. An unfriendly place for his aunt, he hoped.

  Renata let her breath fog the checkerboard window while her fingers explored the crevices between the rough-hewn logs that made up the cabin walls. It made him sad to see her sculptress fingers still grasping for every sensation, but some things could not be helped.

  When he’d planned Renata’s abduction, he’d been thinking only of how to keep her powers out of destructive hands. He’d thought he’d have to keep her chained and that she’d fight him every step of the way.

  But Renata hadn’t triumphed at the knowledge that she had the power to kill. She’d been sickened by it. She’d actually used that word. She wasn’t some murderous monster who would take justice into her own hands, renewing the cycle of revenge that turned old grievances into new ones and led to war.

  Why hadn’t it ever occurred to him that she might not want to use her powers for revenge? Why hadn’t he considered that she might simply become his ally instead of his enemy? Maybe he didn’t need to keep her as his prisoner. Maybe if he needed to keep her at all, it was only to protect her.

  Or to be near her.

  Yes, he mustn’t lie to himself about that. He remembered the way he’d kissed her in the bath and how she had responded. He remembered the taste of her, like slow-flowing honey. She’d stopped him before he went too far, but left the promise of more. “I’m not ready yet,” she’d said.

  He could respect that, for now.

  The next morning, Damon found her in her room, curled up next to the fire, wearing a bathrobe. “I hope you enjoy crepes,” he said, coming into her room bearing a tray.

  “You’re delivering me breakfast now?” she asked. “Don’t you have people for that?”

  He was glad to see her in better spirits. It was, he suspected, her fierce resilience that drew him to her, that made him want her so much. “Yes, I have people for this, but I wanted to bring it myself before I went out.”

  She blinked. “Out? Where are you going?”

  He hadn’t left her alone before. He’d been too worried that she might run. But he felt he knew her better now. She wouldn’t run from him, and if someone tried to take her, they couldn’t make her kill.

  “I have some work to do, but I won’t be long,” he said.

  “So I have to stay here alone with your goons?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “My goons, as you call them, will stay out of your way. If you need me, for any reason, they can reach me on my cell phone.”

  Renata smiled and waved as he left, as if he were her lover and not her captor. But in her mind, she replayed what he’d said after they kissed.

  When he’d told her he’d never let her sculpt again, her heart had hardened against him. Her art was her life. It wasn’t just her job; it was her vocation, her identity. She was an artist, and she’d worked hard to become a success in a profession where so few ever made it.

  She didn’t know precisely how long she’d been away from her studio, but she already missed the feel of her tools in her hands almost as much as she missed her pet python. Poor Scylla. Had anyone found her? Renata had been gone so long she wondered who was feeding her snake. Who was, even now, comforting Renata’s foster mom and telling her that Renata would be all right?

  Renata had let herself grow complacent. She’d let herself fall under Damon’s spell and forget that he was holding her against her will. She resented the security system, the monitors that tracked her every move. And in an act of rebellion, she now climbed beneath the covers and pretended to nap.

  Using the coverlet as a shield from the cameras, Renata carefully extracted the paper from her pillow case, and unfolded it from around Ms. Kokkinos’ business card. She spread out the sketch of the soldier who had taken her mother and stared at it. She was no longer afraid of him. Tracing the lines of his face with her fingers, she knew she held power over this villain now. She could take his life just by carving his likeness in stone. Why didn’t Damon want her to use her powers to give men like this one the ending they so richly deserved?

  Perhaps because Damon was some kind of demigod of war, it made sense that he’d want to protect the evil men who helped him instill terror. Perhaps this is why Damon was shielding these wicked criminals from her righteous anger. Somehow, Renata knew she had to escape him.

  Just then, she realized that Damon hadn’t bothered to unplug the phone by the bedside. He’d trusted his cameras to warn him if she was doing anything he didn’t want her to do. But if he was gone for the day, Renata had to wonder if his goons were as diligent at spying on her as he was.

  Turning in such a way that the comforter obstructed their view, Renata snaked her hand out and pulled the bedside phone beneath the covers. Then she waited, her heart pounding as she pretended to be asleep. One. Two. Three. Renata counted the seconds, forcing herself not to move too quickly lest she alert anyone watching.

  Renata’s first instinct was to dial 911, but then she realized that she was in a foreign country. Did they even have 911 in Finland? Panic frayed her nerves as she realized that she’d never been able to remember country codes. Who would she dial for help?

  In her hand, she held the business card. Ms. Athena Kokkinos, it said, and below was printed the number, international country code and all.

  She began to dial.

  She had only pressed three numbers when the door flew open and Damon burst in, warmth in his tone. “Renata I forgot to tell you—”

  Startled, Renata let the comforter slip, and now the telephone was in plain sight. She and Damon stared at one another as her fingers hovered over the buttons, frozen in fear.

  “Who are you calling?” Damon demanded, all the warmth gone from his voice in an instant.

  When Renata didn’t answer, he charged towards her and plucked the business card from her hand. When he read it, a terrible shadow passed over his eyes, and he grabbed the phone. “Did you reach her?”

  Renata scrambled back on the bed to escape his wrath. “No, no, I didn’t get that far,” she babbled, knowing she shouldn’t provoke him further, but unable to keep her own temper from rising. “But you can’t hold me captive forever. Some day, some way, I’ll get free of you. You can’t watch me every second.”

  “And when you do, you’ll run to her?” Damon growled. “Even knowing what she wants you to do with your powers?”

  “Why shouldn’t I run to her?” Renata demanded. “Why shouldn’t I save the world the burden of having to hunt these men down? They killed my family. I can return the favor.”

  “Who killed your family, Renata? Do you even know? Was it the Serbs, the Bosniaks, the Croats, the Montenegrins? Who killed their families before?”

  “There’s no moral equivalency,” she snapped. “Don’t equate what happened to them to what happened to us.”

  “I’m not,” he started to say, but she was already clawing at him for the phone. She was on her knees, her legs tangled in the blankets as her nails dug into his black dress shirt.

  She got hold of the phone and held on to it with all her strength. “Let me call her, Damon. You can’t stop me from sculpting.”

  The more she wrestled with him the more it seemed to enraged him. “Let go of the phone,” Damon snarled.

  “You’ll have to break my fingers first!” Renata shouted.

  His jaw clenched as he brought his face close to hers, warning, “I’ll do just that, Renata. I’ll break your fingers, one by one, before I let you pick up a chisel again.”

  The force of his threat carried on his breath as it puffed into her face. It had the scent of gunpowder and the iron tang of blood. It carried the stench of corpses and carrion. It carried the very essence of dread. It was more than just a scent. It was a power that overwhelmed her. It was terror in its most primal form, and Renata could not fight it.

  A thousand snakes of terror slithered inside her, coiling and striking her conscious mind. As the memories of her childhood flowed over her, she fell back on the bed and beg
an to scream. Her scream came from such a deep part inside that it exploded out of her and scraped her raw. Her scream was a mixture of keening and rage, of grief and frenzy.

  A mirror across the room from the bed shattered, glass shards scattering across the wooden floor like shell fragments.

  What had he done to her? He was killing her.

  Renata screamed again and the cabin windows rattled ominously. She was hurting her own ears and her skin felt like it was on fire. She was burning, burning. She would make the whole world burn with her.

  “Renata, stop!” Damon was shaking her.

  She saw him shout the words, reading his lips rather than hearing the sound. All she could hear was her own scream. She felt like her fingernails were fraying, hurt slicing through her, and she couldn’t stop screaming.

  It was agony.

  Damon pushed her down, smothering her body with his own, urgently offering his flesh as the only respite from the pain. “I’m sorry!” he was whispering. “I’m going to take it away.”

  Desperate, she pressed her cheek to the bare skin of his chest where she’d torn his shirt. Where his skin touched hers, she felt the familiar tingle, the tug at the fear inside her, as if he were drawing it out of her, as if he were devouring it.

  His mouth was open in silent feasting, twisted in a grimace. “Give me your terror. I’ll take it away.”

  Renata didn’t fight him. She let him have it all. Every nightmare, every secret, every horrible burden she carried. And as he drew the terror from her, Renata’s screams turned to whimpers as she shivered against him.

  Slowly, he eased her from dread to contentment, and her breathing calmed, easy and languid. In a rush, she scented the woodsy smoke of a warm meal spent in her father’s lap, then the cherry Popsicles she used to bring her littler brother, which made him smile and stick out his red-stained tongue.

  Damon gave her back these happier memories, eased her down into the bed, and let them flow over her.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, in his arms, but soon found that she was as calm and relaxed as she’d ever been. She wanted to tell him that he’d taken enough, but he kept holding her, kept pulling from her the fear, the tensions, and more. He lay gasping on top of her, as if he were now the one in terrible pain.

  He had taken the poison in her and pulled it into himself. He had saved her. She knew it as sure as she knew her own name. He had saved her, and he was the only one who could.

  Beneath him, she felt her body tighten again, but this time with arousal. She wasn’t afraid anymore, not of anything. Not of her wants, not of her needs, not of the raw desires that ached in her belly and breasts. Like she had in the bath, Renata wrapped her arms around his neck, but this time without restraint. Writhing beneath him, she kissed his neck, his chin, his mouth.

  “Renata—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “I want you,” she said, and started to unbutton his ruined shirt. “I want you to see me. I’m not afraid.”

  His expression was pained. “That’s because I consumed your fears. I went too far.”

  Undeterred, she pulled his shirt over his shoulders, and now that she saw the carved lines of his muscled chest, she wanted nothing more than to run her fingers over them. “Even so, I want you,” she said again, reaching for his belt with a wanton freedom she’d never felt before.

  He growled low in his throat, as if it was taking his every effort to resist her. She felt the hardness between his legs, but still he held back. “Not tonight,” he said. “I took your inhibitions from you—this isn’t right.”

  “Inhibitions only stop me from doing what I want to do,” Renata said. She was wet, she was wanting, and she could not help but grind her hips. “You gave me terror—you can give me this.”

  It was too much for him. Using one arm to lift her up, he used the other to untie her robe. They undressed in haste, clothes kicked off and left crumpled wherever they fell. His mouth came down on her nipples and they hardened in reply. His thighs pushed between hers, splaying her beneath him. Then he was pushing inside her, filling her, and she arched up to meet him stroke for stroke.

  Her nails dug into the sculpted muscles of his arms as his hips battered her own. Renata had never made love like this before. Never let herself moan aloud, never let herself guide a man’s hands to touch her in just the way she wanted to be touched—not that Damon needed guidance. His hands were everywhere, until finally she was shaking at the precipice and with an artful thrust of his pelvis, he pushed her over the edge.

  This time, when Renata screamed, it was with pleasure, and the music of it was a delight to her own ears. Damon wasn’t far behind her. He let out an animal sound as he flooded her. Then together, they lay tangled and entwined.

  Afterwards, Renata let him roll her onto her stomach and plant rows of kisses upon her back. She wasn’t afraid. He’d been right. He could make her so unafraid, she’d strip down and swim naked in the sea. He could make her fearless, and it was the greatest gift anyone had ever given her.

  As he kissed each tiny scar on her back with reverence, she sighed with contentment. At long last, she turned and rolled into his arms, caressing his face, his chest, and memorizing each line.

  Perhaps it was her sculptress’s touch that brought regret to his handsome face. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not?” Renata asked, quite certain that this was one of the best things she’d ever done.

  “I frightened you,” he said. “I went too far, always too far.”

  He looked tortured, so Renata tried to comfort him with a kiss at the corners of his clean-shaven upper lip, and inhaled the soapy scent of his skin. “Those screams had been inside me for a long time. Perhaps they needed to come out.”

  “Even so, I threatened to break your fingers.” He took her hand from where it cupped the curve of his cheek and kissed each fingertip in turn. “It was unforgivable.”

  “I know you wouldn’t really hurt me,” she said.

  “You don’t know that,” he said. “You don’t know me.”

  She knew him. She might even be in love with him. He knew what she’d done. He knew what she was—a gorgon. He’d even seen her shatter mirrors, yet his attraction to her had not crumbled away. He knew her secrets, yet still thought she was beautiful. “I feel like I’ve always known you, Damon. The first time I saw you, your face was familiar, and I don’t think it was only because you look like your brother.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. His eyes clouded over like a storm and he sat up in the bed, pulling the coverlet to his waist. “You don’t even know my true name.”

  Renata was still too free from fear not to ask. “Then what is your true name?”

  “Deimos, Son of Ares, and I feed upon fear. Terror sustains me. And I have hurt you, Renata. More than just tonight, more than you know. When I told you that you were a gorgon, you thought I was calling you a monster. But I’m the monster.”

  “Deimos,” Renata repeated with wonder, trying the new name on her tongue and finding it pleasurable to say. She reached for his hand, but he was already up and out of the bed, finding his clothes and dressing.

  “Do you know why my brother, Phobos, and I both look familiar to you? Because we were there the day of the explosion. We were both there the day soldiers ripped your life apart.”

  Renata tilted her head, searching her memories.

  “The warriors in Bosnia called on the old immortals and we answered,” he said. “My brother and I drove our father’s chariot, spreading fear and dread. I saw you burning. I heard you scream that gorgon’s scream that shattered windows and stopped soldiers in their tracks.”

  Renata remembered that now, how the fighting had stopped, how the soldiers had retreated long enough for her mother to scoop up her wounded body and try to get her to safety.

  “And when you screamed,” he continued, “It froze my blood inside me. I’ve carried this stone inside my heart ever since. I swore that I’d n
ever drive my father’s war chariot again.”

  Renata whispered now, “Did you ever drive it again?”

  “No,” he spat. “Mortal men create enough fear to feed me—never again will I help them make more.”

  Renata wanted to reach out for him, but as he pushed his dark hair back from his face he warned her away. “Every bad thing that has ever happened to you in your life is my fault. So you see, Renata, I have no right to touch you, no right to love you. And it won’t happen again.”

  Chapter 8

  Since they’d made love, Renata’s sense of fearlessness had faded, but she was still left with longing. She needed to talk to him, but he’d stayed away.

  Everything had changed.

  This time, when the goons came to fetch Renata and whisk her to the airport, Deimos wasn’t with them. She was comforted to be back on his private jet, but it alarmed her that he wasn’t on board.

  When the plane was in the air and the pilot had taken off the seatbelt sign, one of Deimos’s men delivered the crystal decanter to Renata. It was accompanied by an envelope with her name written in florid script.

  Renata wondered if drinking more of the ambrosia-laced spirits would lift her mood, for she feared what lay coiled and lurking within the envelope. Mustering her courage, Renata tore the envelope open and found that it contained the sketch, the business card and a short, handwritten note.

  Renata,

  I’m sending you home because I was wrong to have taken you in the first place. You have to make your own choices about how to use your powers, just as I’ve made my own. If you want to sculpt, then sculpt. I have no right to control, imprison, or decide for you. I can’t protect you, but the ambrosia can. The more you drink, the less mortal you’ll be. Don’t share Medusa’s fate.

  Renata’s studio looked smaller and shabbier than she remembered it, but she was grateful to see that Marta, the gallery owner, had found her python while she was away. Renata pressed her hand against the glass cage and watched Scylla’s forked tongue taste the air. Renata lifted her nose to do the same, but didn’t smell anything, comforting or otherwise.