Sins of the Flesh

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE



Get back! Retreat! Get back, you dangerous one. Do not come against me, do not live by my magic.

—The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 31

THEY DOZED ON THE COUCH, and when Calliope made a soft little sound of complaint and burrowed against his warmth, Mal lifted her and carried her up the stairs to her bed.

She protested. He persisted. And won. Then he lay on his side and watched her sleep and wondered exactly what the hell he was feeling.

He couldn’t explain it. He just knew he couldn’t get her out of his head and that he wanted something with her, something more than just a single night. He had absolutely no intention of letting her go.

All he needed to do was convince her that they were on the same page.

They slept.

Then he woke her with slow, deep strokes, entering her from behind, her round buttocks pressed against him, his hands on her breasts.

They cooked pasta that they ate from a single plate, sitting on the couch, wrapped in a quilt, sipping red wine from a shared glass.

“I’m thinking we should leave,” he said. “I actually only meant to stop here for you to get some things together before we went somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else? Where?”

He raked his hand back through his hair. “Somewhere where you’ll be harder to find. Safer.”

She shot him a veiled look and said, “If the Matriarchs want me, they will find me no matter where I go. There’s only false security in running.”

He couldn’t argue her point. “Can’t run from what’s meant to find you.”

“No.” She sipped the wine, turning the glass to drink from the spot he’d put his mouth to. He wondered if she even realized she was doing that. “Did you find them?” she asked. “The ones who tried to run? The ones who killed the woman you told me about. Elena.”

He almost chose not to answer. Then he thought of the way he’d learned things about her from her dreams, and he realized there’d been no reciprocity. She knew almost nothing about him. If he had any hope in hell of figuring out what this was between them, he’d have to give, at least a little.

It wasn’t a place he was used to being in. Generally, all he gave to a woman was sexual satisfaction. But this was different. Calliope was different.

“Not all of them,” he said. “Some were dead already before I managed to find them.”

Tipping her head, she studied his expression. “You’re no longer angry about that.”

“Angry isn’t a productive place to be,” he said.

“Angry is better than afraid. Cunning is better than angry.”

He gave a short laugh. “Great minds think alike.”

“Tell me about her.” She set the wineglass down, but she didn’t ask anything more, didn’t push. She just sat there watching him. Waiting.

“I was young. I didn’t know yet that I wasn’t human. My life had been a series of near misses, always staying one step ahead of the hangman’s noose. I’d had one hell of a near miss when I met her. I’d been locked in the brig when the ship went down. It was burning from above. Filling with water from below. I barely made it out. Had nightmares for years.”

He figured she knew a thing or two about nightmares herself.

“Then I met Elena. For me, she was serenity. Peace. Constancy and consistency. All the shit I’d lacked in my life to that point. She was lovely and sweet. Uncomplicated.”

Calliope shot him a look and he winced. Maybe not the best word choice, given that he was sharing a couch with the queen of complicated. But he wasn’t going to make excuses, so he explained it the best way he could.

“I loved her with my little boy’s heart, not really understanding anything at all.”

She nodded, clearly understanding what it was he was trying to say. Or maybe just pretending to.

“I went back to the sea, to seek my fortune—” he shot her a grin “—by less than legal means.”

The corners of her mouth quirked up. “That I believe.”

“I had dreams of being a pirate king. Of setting Elena up in a castle with jewels in her hair.” He wove his fingers through Calliope’s hair, the dark strands pouring across his palm like silk. “Nine, maybe ten months later, I got back and she was gone. People in her village gave me a shitload of conflicting stories. No one seemed to really know what happened to her. I searched for ten years.”

“You never found her.”

“Not alive. But in the end, I managed to find her bones. Made a marker for her grave.” He shook his head. “A statue of an angel. She’d been dead the entire time, dragged off by a group of men who raped her and murdered her.”

Calliope linked her fingers with his and held tight.

He kept going, figuring this was the part that mattered most, the part that would really tell her something about him. “I searched for them. In the end, all I got were the cold ashes of weak vengeance. There were seven men. Four of them fucking died before I ever found them.”