by Sarah Piper
Dorian closed his eyes to clear his thoughts, reminding himself they weren’t there to rob the home of some unsuspecting family. They were there—in the home of a fucking demon—to find information that would save Sasha’s life.
When he opened his eyes again, Charlotte was back, standing right in front of him.
Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, her copper eyes luminescent in the darkness. They glowed with a feverish intensity that made Dorian’s heart beat hard and fast in his chest.
“You’re dangerous, little prowler,” he whispered. “And so… fucking… beautiful.”
Instinctively his hands found her hips, the heat of her skin seeping through her leggings and his leather gloves. She slid her hands over his shoulders and leaned in close, allowing him this brief embrace.
She always felt so incredible.
Damn. They were so good together in every way.
With her breasts firm against his chest and her lips close to his ear, she whispered, “I’m just getting started, Mr. Redthorne.”
Dorian was so turned on, he couldn’t even think straight. He’d never been able to keep a clear head with regard to Charlotte, but the intensity of their present circumstances only seemed to magnify his need, his cock suddenly throbbing. He pictured her on her knees. Imagined fisting that ponytail with his gloved hand as he slid into her hot, wet mouth…
Fuck.
With a firm grip on her hips, Dorian backed Charlotte against the wall. It was reckless and stupid and they did not have time for this, but he didn’t care. Nothing made sense anymore. All that mattered now was her luscious lips, her warmth, the silky feel of her hair against his cheek as he pressed his mouth to her neck and licked her soft, creamy skin.
“What… what are you doing? Dorian, you… Holy shit, that’s…” Charlotte’s words slid into a soft moan as his teeth grazed her earlobe.
Dorian kissed his way along her jaw, slowly moving to her soft, satiny lips. She parted them easily, and he slid his tongue into her mouth, teasing her with soft strokes, grateful her wounds had healed so quickly. When she let out a sigh of abject pleasure, Dorian grabbed her ass and lifted her up, pushing her hard against the wall as her legs wrapped tight around his hips.
Fucking hell, he wanted to take her. Hard and fast, right there against the wall.
She wanted it just as badly—he could sense it. The scent of her desire, the warmth of her body, the yearning in her eyes… All of it called to him with a deep, carnal invitation he couldn’t refuse.
He kissed her again, drinking in the taste of her. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this was a terrible idea.
He pulled back and met her gaze—dark and dreamy.
“What… What are we doing?” she whispered, slowly blinking away the haze.
It seemed they’d both come to the same inconvenient realization.
No matter how desperately they wanted to tear each other’s clothes off, they couldn’t. Not here. Not now.
Get a grip, Redthorne. For fuck’s sake, your cock’s going to get you both killed.
“I… I’m so sorry, love.” He set her down, forcing himself to take a step back. “Heat of the moment. Won’t happen again.”
“No, it’s… Me too. I shouldn’t have… Let’s just…” She reached up and tightened her ponytail, blowing out a long breath. “Right. Back to work, then.”
Charlotte retrieved a small external hard drive and a cable from her satchel and connected it to the laptop. With a deftness that made FierceConnect’s Silicon Valley-educated developers look like preschoolers trying to jam square pegs into round holes, Charlotte navigated through the file manager, searching through everything from the demon’s vacation photos to his rather extensive porn collection.
“Busty Bollywood Babes aside,” she said, “looks like Estas is marginally smarter than I’d given him credit for. There’s nothing professional on the laptop.”
“So this was a waste of time?”
“Hardly.” Charlotte dug into her bag again, this time procuring a stethoscope.
Dorian laughed. “I’m all for playing doctor, love. But didn’t we just narrowly avoid another clandestine closet interlude? Perhaps we can revisit this game later.”
She looped the device around her neck, eyeing him flirtatiously. “Behave yourself, and we’ll see what your future holds.”
With that, she turned toward the art on the wall—a knockoff Monet in a plastic frame that had been painted to look like wood. She lifted it and set it on the floor, revealing a wall safe.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dorian said. “Estas is a high-ranking Rogozin demon and a multi-million-dollar black-market art dealer, and he’s got a wall safe?”
Charlotte shrugged, adjusting the stethoscope over her ears. “I said he’s marginally smarter than I’d thought—not a genius by any stretch. Besides, how often does a demon living in the woods get robbed?”
“Fair point.” Dorian watched with twisted fascination as she pressed the stethescope’s chest piece to the safe and listened, spinning the combination dial this way and that.
After no more than a minute, a smile lit up her face. “Bingo.”
The safe door swung open.
Dorian’s jaw damn near hit the floor. “Did you really just do that? In sixty seconds, no less?”
“Can’t say dear old Dad never taught me anything useful.”
“No, I suppose you can’t.” Dorian shook his head, feeling as if he were trapped in a very long, disturbing, and slightly erotic dream.
But it was real. All of it. The scent of Charlotte’s unfulfilled desire lingering on the air. The sound of her heartbeat, calm and steady as she focused on the task at hand. The dim glow of the computer screen. The swish of her ponytail as she efficiently rifled through the safe.
“Hello, beautiful,” she finally said, slowly turning toward him. Her eyes danced, her energy buzzing and alive with some new victory. She held a large, mustard-colored interoffice envelope—the kind used for staff memorandums before email had rendered them obsolete.
In large black letters across the top, someone had scrawled two names:
RAVENSWOOD / D’AMICO
Charlotte opened the envelope and tipped its contents into her gloved hand, catching a flash drive, a passport, and a folio of first-class airline tickets.
Thumbing through the passport and tickets, she said, “Passport’s a forgery. It’s Rudy’s picture, but the name says Joel Irwin. The tickets are in Irwin’s name.”
“Where to?”
“São Paolo. One way, connects in Miami. Heading out in… wow.” Charlotte’s brow creased. “The twenty-seventh? That’s just two days after he plans to hit Ravenswood.”
“Is that odd?”
“Very.” She flipped through the stash again, shaking her head. “First of all, Travis is Rudy’s go-to forger, but this isn’t his work—I don’t recognize it at all. So it looks like Rudy’s doing this behind his back, going through Estas instead. And there’s no return ticket. If Rudy’s not coming back, who’s handling the payout?”
“How do you mean?”
“Normally after a big score, the crew stashes the artwork in a storage unit in Jersey or Pennsylvania, then everyone lies low for a few weeks. After that, the boss does an inventory, figures out the initial payout for the crew, and then contracts a guy like Estas to fence it. He’ll either sell it piecemeal, taking a commission on each sale, or he’ll buy the whole lot for a set price and sell it off on his own time. The whole process can take months—sometimes longer.”
“So maybe the Brazil trip is Rudy’s way of lying low,” Dorian suggested.
“No. Something isn’t adding up here. My gut says Rudy’s not planning to pay out at all. He wouldn’t leave that kind of detail to anyone else.”
“You think he’s double-crossing his crew?”
“Looks that way. The thing is—I don’t know who the crew even is this time. When he first brought me in on Ravenswood, he said it w
as a side project between him and Travis, and that our usual guys weren’t involved. He was adamant that I not discuss it with anyone else.”
“But others are involved,” Dorian said. “All that surveillance of my property, the spies at FierceConnect…”
“Exactly. But I have no idea who they are. Rudy’s a demon. For all we know, Rogozin is his crew.”
“The spies who interviewed me were human.”
“Maybe they had watches or something that hid their true nature. Rudy had us fooled, didn’t he?”
Dorian sighed. She was right. They had no way of knowing what they were up against. No idea who—or what—might show up at Ravenswood for the planned heist.
No idea who might be holding Sasha hostage.
Dorian kept that last bit of worry to himself.
“We’ll figure it out, love,” he said instead. “This is just a starting point.”
She grabbed her phone and snapped a few pictures of the tickets and passport, then slid them back into the envelope.
“Let’s check the digital files.” She plugged the flash drive into the laptop, navigating to the directory and clicking through the drive’s folders. “Shit. The drive itself isn’t encrypted, but the folders are—I can’t open them or copy them over, and we can’t just take the drive—Estas will get suspicious if he knows it’s missing.”
“Ha!” Dorian pointed at her and grinned. For the first time since he’d crossed the threshold into this place, he actually had something to offer—something she needed. “I can crack the encryption.”
Charlotte arched a very sexy eyebrow. “So not only are you a video game nerd, you’re a hacker? Since when?”
“Since University. Well, the most recent go-round.”
“I thought college was all about drinking and getting laid.”
“Not for nerds. We’ve got a special track.”
“Well, well, well.” Charlotte’s smile lit up the dim room. “Now I’m the one who’s impressed.”
“Offering me a spot on the crew, are you?”
“At this rate, we’ll be able to start our own.”
“Assuming we don’t get hell-roasted by a demon tonight. Cheers, then.” Dorian got to work. After just a few moments of tech wizardry, he was able to crack the encryption on the folders. “It appears the files themselves have a slightly stronger encryption, so we’ll need to deal with that back at Ravenswood.”
“Good. Let’s just copy everything onto the external drive so we can get the fuck out of here. We’ve already overstayed our welcome.”
He did as she asked, then passed the flash drive back to her to return to the envelope.
“Anything else of interest in the safe?” he asked as she put everything back in order.
“More envelopes like this one—all different names. I’m sure it’s all fascinating stuff, but we don’t have time to go through it.” She closed up the safe and re-hung the painting. “We need to get moving.”
“It’s too bad, really. We didn’t even get a chance to try out the closet.” Dorian knocked on the back wall behind the coats.
The thunk that greeted him in return was hollow and deep.
He knocked again. Same echo.
“That… doesn’t sound like a solid wall,” Charlotte said, slinging the satchel over her shoulder.
“It most certainly does not.” He shoved the coats aside and ran his hands along the wall until he found what he was looking for—a recessed handle hidden in the shadows. He gave it a tug, and a small, chest-high door the same shade as the wall creaked open, revealing a rickety stairwell that led down into utter darkness.
The scent of rot and piss was overpowering, making his eyes water. Charlotte nearly gagged.
“I really should’ve kept my hands to myself,” he grumbled.
Charlotte grabbed her flashlight and shone it on the stairs, illuminating a narrow passageway just wide enough for one person. The walls were made of cement, the stairs black with mold.
The moment the beam of light hit the landing at the bottom, a faint moaning sound emanated up from the chamber, followed by a metallic scraping that sounded like the rattling of a cage.
“Dorian?” Charlotte gasped and glanced up into his eyes. All the color drained from her face.
He knew immediately where her mind had gone.
“I’ll go investigate,” he said. “You stay here and—”
“No. We’re in this together, remember?”
He slid his hand around the back of her neck and held her gaze, a thousand questions poised on his tongue.
What if it’s Sasha?
What if it isn’t?
What if it breaks you?
What if I can’t put you back together again?
But in the end, he said the only words she’d listen to. The only ones that mattered.
“All right, love.” He reached for her hand, squeezing tight. “Together it is.”
And then he took a deep breath, crouched through the low doorway, and led her down into the abyss.
Chapter Eight
Blood and death, brother. Blood and death…
Cole’s words echoed again through Dorian’s memory as he and Charlotte descended into the darkness, the pungent air damn near choking them both.
Charlotte’s heart rate was completely erratic, fear and adrenaline flooding her bloodstream until he hardly recognized her scent.
Please, he thought, recalling Sasha’s bright blue eyes, her smile. Please let this be anything but that beautiful, vibrant girl…
“Dorian.” Charlotte gripped his arm, her body trembling as they reached the lower floor and the situation came into view.
A long work table covered in papers and books and supplies. A high-backed wooden chair. A cabinet of jars and bundled herbs. Two squat, grimy windows near the ceiling, hidden from the outside with brush and debris.
And there, in the back corner of the room, a cage.
Behind the metal bars, he saw the pale shapes in the beam of Charlotte’s flashlight, stark in their utter nakedness. Two bodies huddled closed together, their backs to him, flesh blackened with bruises and burns. Broken ribs protruded from the skin. On the floor beneath the cage, a pool of blood and piss shone wet in the darkness.
“Grays,” he said softly. “Just grays.”
A stifled sob escaped Charlotte’s mouth. Dorian couldn’t tell whether it was one of horror or relief. Maybe both.
The grays could’ve just as easily been her sister—starved and beaten. Tortured.
Dorian pulled her close, and she buried her face against his chest, warm tears soaking his shirt. “It’s all right, love. It’s not her.”
“I thought… Just for a minute, you know?”
“Wherever Sasha is, we must keep the faith that she’s unharmed, and that we’ll find her very soon.” He pulled back and cupped her face. “Can you do that for me? For Sasha?”
Charlotte nodded resolutely, blinking away the last of her tears.
Certain she was all right, Dorian turned and knelt before the cage, his stomach twisting at the sight.
He had no idea how long they’d been there, but they were both emaciated and broken, cowering before the flashlight beam. They didn’t have the strength to break free. Didn’t have the strength to even try.
The first time Dorian had encountered the grays, he and his family were living under House Kendrick’s rule. The vampire king—Evie’s father, George Kendrick—ruled his sirelings with an iron fist. He kept his own cages of brutalized grays—a personal petting zoo whose captives were regularly trotted out to torment the new Redthorne slaves. Sometimes, he’d set them loose in the woods, allowing them to chase Dorian and his brothers while he watched from atop his favorite stallion. Other times, he’d use them as a warning. This is what becomes of the Kendrick sirelings who disobey me.
He’d forced Dorian to torture them. To make them bleed. To make them suffer.
Only then would his brothers receive fresh blood. Only then wou
ld the Redthorne vampires be allowed to survive another day. Another week. Another year.
And through it all, his father watched in silence, never once criticizing the king’s methods. Never subjected to them himself.
To Dorian, the grays had always been monsters.
But now, looking at these poor, broken creatures through the rusty bars of the cage, how could he see them as such?
They weren’t monsters. They were him—what he would become in his purest form, absent the magic of a bonded witch and a steady diet of fresh blood.
With a deep sigh, he rose and grabbed the wooden chair, shattering it against the floor. Picking through the broken pieces, he dug out the sharpest, gripping it in a tight fist.
“Turn around, love,” he said, and Charlotte did as he asked.
Kneeling once more before the cage, he staked one, then the other, swiftly ending their misery. They vanished into a pile of ash, falling on his shoes like the season’s first snow.
“It’s done,” he whispered.
Charlotte joined him at the work table, and together they searched through the pile—pages of handwritten notes and sigils, ingredient lists, spells.
Witchcraft.
Dorian picked up a cracked leather grimoire and thumbed through it. There was a dedication spell engraved on the inside cover; its author had signed her name in blood.
“Jacinda Colburn,” he said, tossing the book onto the table as if it burned his skin. “Duchanes’ bonded witch.”
“The one who made the poison that nearly killed you?” Charlotte asked sharply. “And the resurrection amulets for the grays?”
“It would appear this is her laboratory. One of them, anyway.”
“Why would Jacinda do such a thing?”
He recalled what Duchanes had said the night he’d attacked Dorian and Charlotte in Tribeca.
Witches can be rather clever when sufficiently motivated…
“I’m… not sure she had a choice,” Dorian said. But before he could further speculate on Jacinda’s motives, his cell phone buzzed.
“It’s Cole,” he said, scanning the text.
No deal yet. Apparently Estas is having a party tonight. I’m invited, but you two ain’t.