Sins of the Flesh

He lowered his head. She stayed perfectly still, her lips already feeling puffed and swollen and aching for his kiss. And when he brushed his lips against hers, she let her mouth open, let her tongue slip out to taste him, know him.

Electricity ramped through her, hot and bright.

His weight came full against her, his chest flattening the swell of her breasts, his thighs hard against her own. He traced his fingers along her collarbone, his touch so light she barely felt it. Then he tunneled his fingers through her hair to splay across the base of her skull. His touch was not so gentle now as he tipped her head back, making her open to him. Exactly the way he wanted.

He smiled. Hungry. Knowing.

And then he claimed her, his mouth open, his tongue pushing inside her. The feeling was lush, his kiss hot and wet and deep. Teeth. Tongue. The pleasure swelled like a wave, crashing over her. Pulling a moan from deep inside her.

She dragged the hem of his shirt from his waistband, raked her nails along the hard ridges of his belly. His skin was warm and smooth, and she remembered the taste of him from the club.

Moving her hands to his belt, she undid the buckle, freed the button, grabbed the zipper. It went down with a faint rasp, and then she had her hand on the taut skin at the base of his belly, following the thin line of hair that arrowed down.

The sound he made, low in his throat, animal need and masculine pleasure, set a torch to the kindling of her lust. And then the sound changed to a series of short, high-pitched—

She surged upright, her breath coming in hard gasps, her body shaking, her heart slamming against her ribs. The lingering image of him burned her eyes and then flickered out like a match.

She was alone. Her knife was in her hand. Her watch was beeping.

Time to go.





CHAPTER ELEVEN



O you keepers of the gate, make a way for me, For I am one like you.

—The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 86

MAL JERKED AWAKE, TRYING to hold fast to an image that danced at the edge of his thoughts. He felt as if he was leaving something behind, losing something important.

Then the image was ripped away completely as agony came at him with the power of a sledgehammer. Every inch of his body twitched. He barely held back the scream that tried to claw its way free. He drew a breath through his nose and blew it out through his mouth. Again. A third time. He wrestled the pain under control and took stock of his situation. He was flat on his back. His eyes felt as though they were glued shut. His mouth tasted as if he’d been licking sand.

And he had a raging hard-on.

Right.

For a disoriented second, he thought he was in the ship’s hold, held by chains, the skin of his back raw from the flogging, the fire eating the wooden planks and the ribs of the ship with incredible heat and speed. Drown or burn—

Then he heard the soft burble of water over smooth rock, not the roar of the ocean tearing through the hull.

His eyes felt as if they’d been sewn shut or weighted in place, refusing to obey his will as he tried to open them. Then the smell hit him. Lotus blossoms. And…something else that triggered a major this-is-not-okay recoil in his brain.

It smelled like burning hair. Charred cloth. Burnt…

Him.

He was the source of that smell. Or at least part of it. The lotus blossoms were a whole different deal.

In that second, he knew two things. He’d been char-broiled like an overdone roast, and he wasn’t in the hold of a ship in the year 1742, but rather in the Underworld in Sutekh’s realm.

“The Rolex was melted. I had to slice it out.”

Dagan’s voice.

“Bloody hell.” Alastor’s voice. “The bag’s empty again.”

Dagan’s words made sense. Mal remembered Kuznetsov’s Rolex on his wrist. But he had no idea what bag Alastor was talking about.

“We’ve got a glucose IV drip running,” Dagan explained.

Ah…an IV bag, a sugar hit straight to his cells. Mal definitely felt as though he needed it. He heard the scrape of a shoe on stone, then a suctioning pop like someone pulling off a plastic cap.

His thoughts drifted and floated away, closer to sleep than wake, though he was still peripherally aware of his brothers’ voices. In his relaxed state, he remembered what he’d thought he’d left behind when he first woke up, an image that had seemed both important and far beyond his grasp.

He’d been dreaming about kissing Calliope Kane. And she’d been kissing him back. With tongue. While she shoved her hands down his pants.

Nice. That explained the hard-on.

Two small problems.

Ms. Kane would sooner cut out his tongue than tangle it with hers.

And soul reapers didn’t dream.

He opened his eyes, then slammed them shut as light stabbed clear through to the back of his skull.

An arm circled around his back and his shoulders were lifted. Then a glass was pressed to his lips and Alastor commanded, “Drink.”

He drank.

Sorting through the tangled skein of questions that twisted through his thoughts, he picked out one. How long—