Sins of the Soul

“No?”


“Not unless you’re looking for ground meat.” She doubted there was much left of Butcher’s heart. Then a thought struck. “Why the hell did you let me bury him if you were just going to make me dig him up again?”

The reaper’s gaze roved restlessly over her features, to her neck, her breasts, her toes. And back again.

He held her gaze, and for an instant, she was snared in a world of deep blue. There were only his eyes, and the racing of her pulse, and while she told herself it was adrenaline stirred by the fear of being hunted by a reaper, a part of her thought maybe it was something else.

A sharp kick of awareness hit her, and a tingle danced through her. Attraction. To a soul reaper.

She huffed out a breath.

And here she’d thought this night couldn’t get any worse.

“I like watching you move,” he said.

“You—” Her eyes flashed to his. She clenched her jaw tight.

“Dig him up,” he said, tossing the shovel at her feet.

There you go. The night could get worse.

“You’d best pray his darksoul is intact and that there’s enough of his heart left to satisfy my needs, Naphré Kurata.” He waited long enough for her to assimilate the fact that he knew her name. Crap on toast. “Unless you’d like to substitute yours?”





CHAPTER FIVE



ALASTOR WATCHED NAPHRé doff her jacket, fold it neatly in half, shoulder to shoulder, and set it on the ground by the grave. Her brown-black hair gleamed in the moonlight, falling forward against her neck in a neat, blunt line as she moved. The little bumps of her spine caught his attention, and he wanted to trace his fingers from her skull, down along those bumps.

She was beautiful. That was the second thing he’d noticed about her.

The first was her arse. Her high, round, gorgeous arse. He’d noticed it last night at the Playhouse Lounge. He’d stared at it in silent appreciation upon his arrival at the cemetery tonight as she recited her bastardized version of the declarations of purity.

He pushed the flap of his jacket aside and thrust his hand into his pants pocket. He couldn’t remove the temptation, but he could control his reaction to it.

His reaction to her had been out of proportion since the second he’d laid eyes on her. Like a split lip he couldn’t help but touch his tongue to again and again even though he knew he oughtn’t.

Bad analogy. It made him think of touching his tongue to her.

She stared at him, her eyes so dark he couldn’t discern between iris and pupil.

There was a knife at the small of her back, a gun in a holster under her arm, and a second one tucked in her belt. They posed little threat to him, so he didn’t bother to take them away.

“Not interested in my weapons?” she asked.

“You won’t get them free before I can disarm you.” He paused, debated whether or not to finish the thought, then said, “And even if you do, you can’t kill me.” A warning, of sorts.

“Yeah. I figured.”

“Then why ask?”

“You know what they say about assuming things.”

Actually, he didn’t.

She stared at him. Her shirt fit her like a second skin, long-sleeved, high-necked, black with a thin white stripe that followed the contours of her torso and arms. She rolled her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. Her movements made the cloth draw tight across her breasts. Nice, plump, round, not too large. A perfect handful. He could see the outline of her nipples, erect in response to the cold night air. He could almost feel them on his palms.

He fisted his hands in his pockets.

Lifting one hand, she snapped her fingers, and said, “Eyes up here.”

He raised his gaze, then dropped it once more.

Her shirt was torn at her left shoulder, baring a section of skin.

Pretending that it was where he’d been looking all along, he dipped his chin toward the white logo that stood out against the black shirt. Sugoi.

“You’re a runner.”

“Am I?”

He’d bet she was, among other surprising things. He wasn’t getting any sort of supernatural vibe off her. She was reading as strictly human. But the tear in her shirt revealed the lines of a raised scar that suggested otherwise. It wasn’t a haphazard mark, but a specific design: an ankh with wings and horns. And it meant this entire evening had just taken on a whole new layer.