Sins of the Flesh

“Dagan?” Roxy’s voice was low, drowsy and incredibly sexy. “What is it?”


“Not sure,” he said, leaning over the side of the bed to reach for his boxers and jeans where they lay in a heap on the floor. When he’d taken them off, tidy had been the furthest thing from his mind. “Might be Alastor. Might be Mal. One of them’s in trouble.”

“Is it bad?” Roxy pushed to a sitting position, her dark ringlets tumbling over her shoulders. She was a gift he’d never expected—and certainly didn’t deserve. And she was his.

He felt her eyes on him as he reached into the pocket of his discarded jeans for his phone, but she didn’t ask questions. She knew that he and Alastor and Mal—and before his murder, Lokan—shared an unbreakable connection. They couldn’t climb inside each other’s thoughts, but they could sense when any one of them needed the others. Sort of a psychic 911.

And right now, Dagan’s gut was telling him that one of his brothers was dealing with something less than pleasant.

His gaze slid back to Roxy. The sheet was tangled around her hips, leaving the endless length of her sleekly muscled brown legs and all of her torso, including her luscious breasts, bare. He made a vague gesture. “Could you…ah…”

With a laugh, she prowled across the bed, pressed her mouth to his then rose, taking the sheet with her.

“I’ll do better than just covering up. I’ll remove the distraction entirely,” she said and padded toward the bathroom.

The fact that she instinctively understood his need for privacy—no questions—warmed him. A second later he heard the shower turn on. Which meant she hadn’t removed the distraction entirely because he had inordinately fond memories of that shower. He was building quite a repertoire of them, in fact.

His phone rang before he could dial.

“You okay?” Dagan asked.

“Peachy,” Alastor replied, his voice tight. “I’m okay. You’re okay. Which means Mal isn’t.”

“Yeah.” Dagan was already on his feet, holding the phone in one hand as he dragged on his jeans with the other.

He froze as the discomfort crackling along his nerve endings ramped from a simmer to a rolling boil. Whatever shit was going down with Mal, it was getting worse fast. He was in trouble. In pain. Both Dagan and Alastor had sensed it, and given the timing of Alastor’s call, he’d felt it first, which meant he was closer to the source.

“He’s alive,” Alastor said. Unlike Lokan, he didn’t say. “And it’s probably something he can handle himself. He might not like us bursting in like a couple of anxious babysitters.”

Dagan inhaled sharply, the agony of Lokan’s murder far too fresh. Each of them had felt his brutal death, in vivid Technicolor detail.

“I’d rather have him pissed at us than dead.” He zipped his fly and reached for his T-shirt. “Where are you?”

“At Kuznetsov’s condo. Mal called me to come and retrieve an item of interest. I have it with me now.” Alastor paused. “And I have another item of even greater interest that Naphré and I retrieved earlier this evening.”

There was an edge to his brother’s voice that made Dagan sit up and take notice. Whatever Alastor had to tell him, it wasn’t something he’d risk on an unsecured line.

Alastor gave him an address. “We’ll discuss it when you get here. And by the way, Kai’s in the lobby doing cleanup.”

“Why’d he call Kai?” Dagan asked, immediately on edge. It wasn’t like Mal to call one of Sutekh’s minions without calling his brothers first.

“No bloody idea,” Alastor replied. “You at Roxy’s?”

“Yeah.” Dagan trapped the phone between his ear and shoulder as he pulled on socks and boots. “Can you get a general fix on Mal? A direction? I’m picking up a world of pain, but not much else.”

“That’s what I’m getting, along with the feeling that he’s freezing. Cold enough to cry ice cubes. And since I’m sensing more than you are, logic follows that he’s closer to me than he is to you.”

“When he called you, he didn’t say where he was going?”

“No idea. He said he was following up on a lead and didn’t want company.” Alastor paused. “But I feel as if he hasn’t gone far. He’s downtown somewhere. Probably not more than a few blocks away. Hang on. Kai’s ringing me.”

Dagan dragged on socks and boots as he waited for his brother to come back on the line.

“Right, then,” Alastor said a moment later. “Kai was a bloody fount of information. Apparently, Mal had company.” Alastor paused. “A woman. They left carrying a rug.”

“A rug,” Dagan repeated, trying to keep the what the fuck from his tone. “Anyone happen to see what direction they went?”

“East. And one woman claims she saw them turn south down an alley.”

“Not much to go on.”