Read Online Poisoned Kisses by Stephanie Draven - Free Book Online

thing, and making every conceivable mistake along the way. He was all but naked and she could read it on his skin. He carried inside him a terrible grief, and not just for the mother he’d lost to madness or the father he’d buried today.
    She wished she could take it away, make it hurt less somehow. The cords on Marco’s neck were tight with emotion and Kyra couldn’t stop herself from tracing his chest with her fingers. He watched the path of her touch as if mesmerized, and it encouraged her. Her heartbeat picked up the pace of his. Kyra stroked the scar on his bare shoulder, knowing a bullet fragment was still there in the bone. And yet, that bullet had caused less damage than the things Marco had done, and the things he’d failed to do. He wanted someone—anyone—to understand. And she did. He was only a mortal, so she couldn’t imagine how they were so much alike. But there was no denying it. He was a reflection of her. It made her want him.
    And why not? She could give him pleasure without having feelings for him, she told herself. She’d done it with countless mortal men before. She was a nymph of the underworld; shecould use her skin to soothe his pain. It didn’t have to mean more than that.
    She drew his hand to her and kissed the still-angry scar. Her lips upon the sensitive skin made him twitch. “Don’t,” he finally choked out. But Kyra stepped closer and kissed the scar on his shoulder, too. At first, he was still as a stone, but the heat of his skin and the soft hair of his bare chest against her cheek reminded her he was no statue. “I have an open wound,” he whispered. “I’m not safe to touch.”
    No, he wasn’t safe to touch. And that, in itself, held a powerful allure. “You’re bandaged. It’s not dangerous to touch your skin, is it?”
    “No,” he admitted, sheepish longing in his eyes. “I just…don’t want to hurt you.”
    Mortal men never wanted to hurt nymphs, but they always did. And yet, Kyra couldn’t turn away from him. Not when he needed her. “Your kisses aren’t poisoned, are they?” she asked, lips trailing up to his mouth, achingly soft. She couldn’t remember a time she’d ever kissed a man so softly. But the scent of his clean skin and the taste of salt upon his lips made her sigh. He’d been holding his breath, and now his lips parted as he exhaled into her kiss. She took that breath into her with all its stain and sorrow and kissed him again, giving that breath back to him cleansed with her inner light.
    Then it happened all at once.
    The way he groaned. The way he took her hands, clasping them at the small of her back. The way he crushed her against him, his teeth scraping along the hollow of her throat. It was the grief that drove him, she thought. Mourners often sought solace in physical connection, as if to prove to themselves they were still alive. But she didn’t mind. She knew how to make her body malleable for a man’s pleasure.
    She let him pull her onto the sofa in front of the fire where he laid his body atop hers, pulling her clothes off piece by piece. There was some fumbling with his wallet on the endtable where he’d left it, and he sheathed himself in a condom. Then it was all skin and sweat and sighs.
    The feel of his arousal hard against her sent little shocks along her skin. The sudden forcefulness of his body as he pinned her wrists over her head made her senses spark like the fire in the hearth. Kyra was no shy maiden nymph in the face of a man’s need. No coy Daphne, to flee from Apollo’s lust. This was a threshold that Kyra wanted to cross.
    Her thighs parted and their eyes locked as he sank all the way into her. She’d done this to comfort him and sate his needs—but it stoked a fire inside her, too. She loved his thickness and the way she stretched to accommodate him. She loved the feel of his muscles as his back arched. She arched, too, to meet him.
    He was looking into her as she looked into him; he was inside her just