Sins of the Flesh

His dick was hard, his pulse slamming like a jack-hammer, his breath coming too fast. He wanted her in his bed. He wanted her naked.

Her palms slid to his chest. She gave a little push. It took him a second to clear his head enough to let her go.

As she drew back and stared up at him, he saw that she was cool as a mint julep. The rock tumbler of emotional and physical upheaval inside him wasn’t matched in her. She didn’t appear to feel a damned thing.

“What the fuck?” he muttered. He knew he’d turned her world upside down, laying bare the fact that the soul reapers who’d killed her father hadn’t been soul reapers at all. And he was the one feeling confused to his core? How did that work?

Incredulous, he stared at her. She hadn’t felt what he’d felt. The connection. The attraction. The feeling that he’d been hit over the head by a three-hundred-pound sledgehammer.

He’d meant to kiss her as a way to connect, to offer comfort, to touch the part of her that was iced colder than a glacier. In the end, it looked as if he was the only one affected. He was as hot for her as a teenager, and she hadn’t felt a damned thing.

He mastered his emotions and looked deeper, and then he saw the telltale signs. Dilated pupils. Flushed cheeks. Her lips plump and swollen. Her hand shaking just the tiniest bit as she drew the length of her silky, dark hair over her shoulder.

In that second, it hit him: she had set this up on purpose. She wanted him to think she hadn’t felt a thing. It was all about distance with her, all about the mask.

Damn, she was good. But not quite good enough. He’d affected her. Physically. Emotionally.

She knew damned well there was something between them. She just wasn’t ready to admit it yet.

Very gently, he reached out and ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. One dark brow lifted a fraction of an inch, and her lips parted ever so slightly, just enough to tell him he was right.

He had to restrain the urge to slide his thumb into her mouth, into the moist heat, to feel her teeth and her tongue close on him. Damn.

He let his hand fall away.

“Nice try, Calli, but you’re not that good an actress.”

She sucked in a sharp breath and her gaze flashed to his.

“I think it’s time we took this somewhere we can finish it,” he murmured, and lacing his fingers tight with hers, he dragged her into the icy black hole.

The portal swallowed them, the cold absolute and bone-numbingly cruel. There was no ground beneath their feet, no sky overhead, nothing but disorientation and frigid air.

As they came out the other side, Mal tightened his grip, angling his body to take Calliope’s weight, expecting her to stumble, perhaps even puke. He’d come damned close to that himself the first time he’d come through a portal. He’d been with Dagan, who’d laughed his ass off as Mal had turned green.

Aiming to offer her more compassion than his brother had offered him, Mal schooled his features into an expression of sympathy. Calliope pulled from his grasp. But instead of weak and unsteady, her movements were decisive. He studied her, surprised that she showed no ill effects from having come through a frigid tunnel that would send most to their knees.

“You traveled through a portal before?” he asked.

“No.”

Either she was uncommonly adept at masking the effects on her equilibrium, or she had suffered no ill effects.

“How’d you like it?”

She shrugged. “Quick. Efficient. An excellent means of transport.”

“No nausea? No dizziness?”

She raised one hand in a negligent wave and lifted those amazing cat-green eyes to his for a long moment. “Small price for efficiency,” she said at last.

“Right,” he said.

“Right,” she said.

And they each took a step back.

Mal turned his attention to their surroundings. A long driveway, little more than short grass grooved by deep lines where a vehicle had passed, curved through the woods behind them. Turning, he faced the two-story farmhouse that stood against the backdrop of trees like something in a magazine for the perfect country life. The porch was creamy yellow, the wood siding pale gray.

“You’re hidden from the road,” he said.

“That’s the point.” She was back to serene and distant, her voice like water flowing over stones. Beautiful. Soothing. But a faint frown marked her brow.

In front of the house was a patch of lawn and a garden that was groomed and tended, but at the edges, the forest lurked, threatening to reclaim what had been hewn out in the name of civilized living.

“Would you mind telling me how we got here?” she asked.

“Through a portal,” he said slowly, wondering if she’d lost it and how he’d missed the signs.

She shot him a look so cold it made his balls shrivel. “How did we get here?”

“Dagan was here the night Gahiji went after Roxy.”