Sins of the Soul

Her eyes widened. Her palm came up to flatten against his chest and he could feel the beat of his own heart.

“Don’t,” she whispered when he was so close that he felt her breath touch his lips. And the tip of her knife pierce his skin at the base of his throat.

Nicely played.

“You’re very adept with that.” He drew back enough that he could see the gleam of her blade in her hand. He hadn’t even noticed her pulling it free of its sheath. Such inattention was utterly unlike him. “But you can’t kill me, pet. Soul reapers don’t die quite that easily.”

“I know. But I can hurt you.” She paused. “You try to take what I don’t offer, and I will hurt you.”

He opened his mouth to point out that she had offered. Maybe not with her words, but with the parting of her lips and the way she’d looked at him. Then he shrugged. Begging wasn’t his style.

“If you’re saying ‘no,’ then no it is, pet. My loss—” he rose, reached up and dug his fingers into the loose earth at the top of the grave, then kicked a toehold in the sheer wall; just before he scrambled up, he turned to look at her over his shoulder “—and yours.”





CHAPTER SIX



IN THE ALLEY ACROSS the street from Tesso’s Bar and Grill, Dagan grabbed Roxy’s arm and hauled her around to face him. He kissed her, hard and fast. The air around them was cool, but her lips were warm and welcoming.

“What was that for?” She looked at him quizzically. “Making up for lost time.”

He kissed her because he wanted to, because he could, because she let him. And because he’d stupidly wasted eleven years that he could have—should have—been kissing her.

Regret wasn’t his thing, but neither was repeating his mistakes.

Dipping his head, he breathed in the scent of her skin. He skimmed his hand along the curve of her waist, pausing at the hilt of her knife where it protruded from a sheath on her belt. “You’re gorgeous when you’re stabbing things, Roxy Tam.”

“So you’ve said before. But I’m not planning on stabbing things tonight.” She cocked her hip, her posture all sass and challenge, but her lips curved in the hint of a smile. “Unless you’re expecting trouble, reaper boy?”

“Depends on your definition of trouble.” He paused. “If it involves you and me, an absence of clothing, and a bit of a tussle over who gets to be on top, then that’d be a yes.”

“Do tell.” She leaned in, slipped her hand under his T-shirt and raked her nails along his belly, down, down, stopping at the waistband of his low slung, soft-as-butter jeans. “Then I’d best get my business here done quickly.”

Yeah. The quicker, the better. The only thing was…she was thinking in the singular, while he was all about plurals, mentally converting her I to a we. She wasn’t going in there without him.

As she headed down the alley toward the street, he hung back a step or two, for the pure joy of watching her walk. Sex and swagger. Fuck, he wanted her naked again right now.

“Business first, play later,” she tossed back over her shoulder.

She made it to the mouth of the alley before she stopped and turned, her bronze-green eyes widening when she saw how close he stood. “No. You are not thinking of going in there with me. You’re supposed to wait here. We agreed.”

“Not exactly. You said you were going in alone. I didn’t say anything. That’s a hell of a lot different than agreement.”

She glared at him. He glared back.

Being in love didn’t change the fact that they still had a shitload of details to work out in terms of how to make things work day to day.

When they were alone and in bed—not to mention in the shower, up against a wall, on the kitchen table or the living room floor—there were no issues. But as soon as they left the cocoon, they had to deal with the fact that he was a soul reaper, son of Sutekh, and she was a Daughter of Aset. That he was hell-bent on finding his brother’s remains and bringing him back to life. That up until five days ago, she’d been a member of the Asetian Guard with the assignment of making certain that the “dead reaper stayed dead,” as she’d so eloquently put it.

Just because she’d mustered out of the Guard didn’t mean she could put everything she’d stood for for ten years behind her.

And he sure as sugar wasn’t going to put his goal of reanimating his brother behind him.

Stalemate.

He glanced over at Tesso’s Bar and Grill. There were two burly guys by the front door, picking and choosing who got to go inside.

“They’ll let me through,” Roxy said, following his gaze. “You, on the other hand—” she arched a brow “—probably not.”

The last time Roxy had been here to see Big Ralph, a Topworld grunt who ran prostitutes for Asmodeus, the Underworld demon of lust, he’d been talking about Xaphan and some guy named Butcher.