Then he did the only thing he could think of—he sheathed his sword, dropped to the dirt beside her, and gathered her against his chest. Although he desperately wanted to know what had happened, for once he curbed his tongue and let Lena do what she needed to do. The instant he put his arms around her, she buried her face against his throat and sobbed even harder.
It was a strange feeling.
On one hand, her crying freaked him out. This was Lena. Tough, cold-blooded Lena, who’d cracked his skull with a crystal paperweight. On the other hand, her crying sparked protective instincts he didn’t even know he possessed. At that moment, he’d have willingly faced a thousand guys armed with salty razor blades to keep her from suffering any more pain. And his chest swelled with the knowledge that—however briefly—she needed him.
Stupid, really.
But the red nose and wet lashes were ... cute.
As the sobs subsided, he pulled out his BlackBerry and whipped off a text message to Carlos. Then he kissed the top of Lena’s head and said softly, “Okay, fess up. Who do I have to gut?”
“No one.” She sighed unevenly, her breath sultry on his skin. “He’s already dead.”
He stiffened, glancing around the alleyway again. “You killed the demon?”
“No, I mean—” Another sigh. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
Brian would have pressed her further, but Carlos jogged up the alley from the street, clearly amazed to see Lena unharmed. “What happened?”
Lena wriggled in his embrace, and Brian let her go. But not until he helped her to her feet. Surprisingly, she didn’t balk at the offer. She took his hand and even remained close to him upon standing.
“A demon I’ve never seen before snatched me from the car,” she said. “But he left me here in the alley, didn’t stick around. Another demon was waiting for me, one of the three thralls from the ranch.”
“Be glad the lure demon had better things to do than toy with you.” Carlos’s eyes wandered over her unsinged clothing. “Your shield held up amazingly well.”
“He never attacked me.”
“He just wanted to talk?” Brian asked, skeptical.
“He demanded the coins, and when I couldn’t give them to him, he got angry.”
Carlos frowned. “But he still didn’t try to kill you.”
“No.”
Brian understood Carlos’s frown. He was a little confused himself. Demons weren’t known for their patience or their soft hearts. Even if they were blackmailing her and were relatively confident she’d deliver, wouldn’t they have punished her for temporarily losing sight of the coins? Why would they let her go without a scratch?
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. Of course, there was the whole crying thing. That suggested pain of some sort. “We’ll eat some dinner and then do a locator spell and see if we can pinpoint Tariq’s location.”
When he got Lena alone, he’d dig for a few more details.
Brian tipped the bellboy and closed the door to the suite.
“Now, this is a hotel.”
Shaking her head, Lena skirted around Carlos, who had immediately gravitated toward the high-tech entertainment unit. Scooping a handful of dates from the impressive fruit basket supplied by the hotel management, she wandered through the huge living space and over to the glass doors leading to the tiled terrace. “Amazing. You can see the pyramids from here.”
“Rodriguez?” When Carlos looked up from his intent study of the remote control, Brian pointed to the single door next to the dining room. “You’ve got the bedroom to the right. Lena and I will share the one on the left.”
Midbite, she spun around and glared at him. “Who says we’re sharing?”
“I do.”
“Just because we had s—”
Brian abruptly raised his hand, cutting off her protest. Sharing the details of his sex life with Carlos had no appeal whatsoever. If you could call it that when Brian hadn’t actually gotten any. “I don’t trust you not to run, sorry. Same rules as San Jose apply here.”
Carlos flicked on the TV. As might be expected in an expensive suite, the channel was set to a European news program. An English reporter was standing in front of the old-world frontage of the German Reichstag, jostled by protesters and angry citizens on all sides. In the background, a raging fire was consuming the government building, and scores of people were throwing rocks at a line of armored policemen. The reporter was talking fast, as though he worried how long he’d be able to continue his feed. “Apparently, hundreds of millions of euros have gone missing and there’s no explanation from the German chancellor. Reports suggest she’s been arrested, and that the rest of the cabinet is also under investigation, but as you can see, that news has not satisfied the German public.”
Brian grimaced. Satan wasn’t letting up.
“Turn it off.”
Grabbing their two suitcases, he shouldered open the set of folding doors leading to the larger of the two bedrooms. Inside, arranged in an uninspired but spacious layout, he found a king-sized bed, a pale green chaise longue, and a desk. To the left, through another set of doors, stood a fully equipped marble bathroom. He eyed the multifunction showerhead. With his nose on fire from breathing in fine grains of sand and parched desert air, a shower would be a godsend.
“I call first dibs on the shower,” Lena said, following.
Brian heaved a regretful but understanding sigh. For her, he would wait. Besides, this was his opportunity to grill her about what had happened in the alley. Trapped in the shower stall, she wouldn’t be able to avoid his questions.
“While you’re washing up, I’ll order room service,” he murmured.
She nodded absently, tugging the elastic from her hair. The ponytail disappeared and the full weight of her wavy brown tresses cascaded down her back. She threaded her fingers into her thick hair and massaged her scalp, closing her eyes briefly in sheer pleasure.
A simple, thoughtless act, yet it turned Brian on with the ease of a light switch.
His blood seared through his veins like flaming sambuca.
Damn, he had it bad. Denying himself the first time had added a desperate edge to his need. And while abstinence had become almost second nature to him over the past few years, touching her, tasting her, and watching her face as she came—twice—had awakened his desire in a relentless, unforgiving way.
It had also reinforced the crazy notion that she was his.
Actually, crazy didn’t begin to describe the absurdity of that thought. A man who betrayed the faith of everyone who ever cared about him or counted on him deserved an eternity in hell, not a relationship with a stunner like Lena. If she knew even half of the sins he’d committed, he felt sure she wouldn’t give him the time of day.
She began to unbutton her blouse, and Brian turned away.
Room service, and then a call to San Jose.
No Lena.
When he got off the phone, her shirt and chinos were neatly folded on the bed, and clouds of steam were wafting out of the open bathroom. He rolled the desk chair over to the doorway and sat down with a bottle of Evian. The glass-walled shower stall was coated in mist and he caught only vague suggestions of her shapely body within.
“So,” he said conversationally, his voice louder to compensate for the noise of the running water. “Now that we’re alone and Carlos can’t listen in, we can skip the bullshit. What happened in the alleyway before I found you?”
Under the spray, she stilled.
“I told you. The demon demanded the coins.”
“And that made you cry?” He popped the cap on the bottle and poured ice-cold water down his dry throat. “When everything else that’s happened has barely made you flinch? Come on, Lena. You don’t really expect me to believe that.”
For a moment there was only the sound of water splashing on tiles.
Then, “Do you remember the day you died?”
His gaze dropped. Hell, yeah, he remembered. Every fucked-up
thought, every signpost that flew by, and every screeching degree of the curve he didn’t quite make. His dreams never quite let him forget the horrible grind of his Lamborghini wrapping around a tree, the crunch of bone, and the stinging slice of metal on his skin. The amount of detail he could summon was amazing, considering he’d been completely wasted.
“Yes.”
“I’d conveniently forgotten most of it,” she said. “But the demon played my last few moments back for me. They weren’t pleasant.”
He pressed the cold plastic of the bottle against his forehead. Yeah, that might have been tear-worthy. “Did you die in a Cairo alleyway?”
“Yes.”
“Bastard.”
A hint of a smile warmed her voice as she said, “Could you pass me the shampoo?”
He found the Bvlgari Green Tea toiletries in a ceramic dish on the counter and, not trusting himself to venture any closer, he tossed the shampoo over the wall.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.” He retreated to his chair. “I still can’t figure out why he didn’t try to kill you.”
“Why would he kill me?” A fat blob of suds fell to the tiles at her feet.
“Because you admitted you didn’t know where the coins were. You basically told him you were useless to him. No offense, but if I were him, I’d have taken you off the map right there and then.”
“Obviously,” she said grumpily, “he expects me to find them.”
“But why you? I mean, picking you to rob Duverger made perfect sense. But now that the coins are lost, why is he insisting that you be the one to find them?”
“He blames me for losing them,” she said. “And I know Cairo.”
“Plenty of locals here who know the city better than you,” he pointed out. “He could just enthrall one of them. No, he kept you alive for a reason.”
“Maybe”—her words were slurred a bit by sluicing water—“he needs something else stolen.”
Brian’s heart nearly stopped beating. Something else? Like another relic? “Has he asked you to steal something else?”
“No.” The last of the suds circled the drain and disappeared. She turned the water off.
“Did he mention the Pontius Pilate Linen?” he asked, getting to his feet. Her bare toes turned toward the door. Ah, shit. Leave or don’t leave? It was a human-evolution-versus-caveman-mentality moment. “Or ask you to discover the whereabouts of any other objects?”
“No.” She shoved open the glass door.
Leave.
He rolled the chair back to its spot behind the desk.
Just because the demons hadn’t asked her to steal another artifact didn’t mean that wasn’t what they had in mind. But in order to predict the where and when of another theft, he had to know how the Linen and the coins fit together. And whether there were more dark relics. Which meant he was back at square one, waiting for MacGregor to return.
“Did you perform a spell to locate Tariq?” Lena asked, following him into the bedroom.
“Not yet,” Brian said, turning slowly to face her. “We were waiting on you. The spell is only effective if the person doing it is has intimate knowledge of the person being sought.”
A thick white terry towel covered her torso but left her arms and legs completely bare. Droplets of water fell from the glistening mass of her hair and ran down her limbs, but it was the few that trickled down her slender neck and disappeared into the shadow of her cleavage that drew his attention.
“I’m not keen on performing Romany magic.”
Her words were probably English, but they might as well have been Greek. As she spoke, she tilted her head, twisted her hair into a huge knot, and wrung the excess water out onto the carpet. The movement exposed her neck and throat in an enticing, impossible-to-resist invitation.
Christ. It was crazy, the power this woman had over him. Sometimes, she felt like a drug seeping into him, sending him spiraling. The more he tasted her, the more glimpses of the real Lena she offered him, the more he wanted. Given his pledge to get clean, to free himself of any and all addiction, it was really the worst of all possible relationships for him.
But right now, he didn’t care.
He needed to touch her.
So he did.
He grabbed her arm, shoved her against the suede-covered wall, and kissed the breath out of her. Immediately, a flurry of sensations taunted him: the soft give of her lips beneath his, the plump press of her breasts against his chest, the smell of her shampoo in his nose, and the warm, wet silk of her skin. All of it delightful, none of it satisfying.
He needed more.
His hot skin ached for clothless contact.
But he forced the exhilarating need in his body to recede for a second, to judge Lena’s willingness. She’d just been through an ordeal, one he didn’t wholly under—
Her slender arm slipped around his neck, drawing him closer, tighter.
Brian groaned and deepened the kiss. At the same time, his hand dove under the edge of her towel, seeking more of her satiny flesh, gliding up the grooved arch of her back. Yes. God, yes. His tongue mated with hers, the hot duel further evidence that the desire raging inside him was mutual.
Somehow, her hand found its way under his black T-shirt to his chest, her cool fingers grazing over his steamy skin. The touch was too light, too frustrating, and Brian paused to yank the shirt over his head. He had no idea where it landed—his lips and his thoughts were completely focused on the wild pulse beating at the base of her throat.
The rasp of cotton terry eased the desperate itch of his skin temporarily.
“The door,” she whispered hoarsely.
Fuck. Carlos.
He pressed a fevered kiss to her lips. “Don’t move.”
The trip to the double doors was made in record time. There was no sign of Carlos in the living area, thank God. He closed them with a snap and then spun around to face Lena. Her hands were unraveling the towel, loosening its hold on her. Hair tousled, skin flushed, fingers trembling with desperate eagerness.
Without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
But not because of what he saw on the outside.
Hell, yeah, he liked the outer stuff. He’d have to be crazy not to. But in the days since he’d met her, it was the stupid stuff that had sucked him in. The nervous flutter of the pulse at her throat, often the only fissure in her coldhearted facade. The shadows in her eyes, the ones that reminded him painfully of the darkness in his own past. The way she stood her ground, even when she shouldn’t. The crying in the alleyway that was so unlike her.
Impossibly strong and, at the same time, sweetly vulnerable.
How he could he not love—
Shit, no. Where did that come from? This swell in his chest wasn’t love. It was lust. He was just wicked horny. This was sex, not a relationship. The woman would skewer him in a heartbeat if it meant she could get away. They were just using each other. That was all.
“Did you change your mind?” she asked, a frown forming on her brow.
The problem with that theory was all on his side. The more he learned about Lena, the more he wanted to know. He wanted her to tell him all about those last ugly moments before she died; he wanted to hear all the tales of her childhood and every year since. He wanted to know what made her tick.
Dangerous stuff.
He didn’t do relationships. Not anymore. Relationships came with expectations. They thrived on respect and trust and mutual dependability. History had proven him incapable of delivering on those expectations. Not just with women—with everyone. Which was why he’d vowed to abstain from sex. A vow he was on the verge of breaking.
“No,” he answered. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
Was it fair of him to entangle Lena in his supremely messed-up existence? Hell, no. Was he selfish enough to do it anyway? If Mr. Billy got a vote, the answer would definitely be yes.
He lifted his gaze to her eyes and smiled. “I’m just taking a moment
to admire the view.”
She returned his smile. “I’m not sure you’re seeing it from the best angle.”
Then she let go of the towel.
13
Lena had once believed sex was a tool men used to exert control over women. Her earliest experiences had been about dominance, not pleasure.
Even Azim, who by all standards was a generous and unselfish lover, had believed it was her duty to submit to him when and where he liked. But one hundred years of making her own way—of honing her skills and developing her personal power—had given her a new outlook.
Once she would have let Brian withdraw and walk away, leaving her unsettled and unsatisfied. Not now. Despite a thorough scrubbing in the shower, she hadn’t been able to banish the horrible memories invoked in the alley or wash away the queasy feeling left by her brief sojourn into the past. Yet she could not let the incident cripple her. For Heather’s sake, she had to put it behind her.
Sex could do that. Sex with Brian could do that.
He had an amazing ability to ground her in the here and now. The combination of his raw sensuality and quirky humor was so vivid and engaging, she couldn’t be anywhere but with him. He made her feel fresh and beautiful and ... normal. But it was more than that. No matter how much evidence stacked up against her, he remained adamant that her motives were decent. That she was decent. Right now, she needed that buoyant belief. She needed him.
Her hand nervously sought the gold pendant at her throat. She watched his eyes as the towel hit the floor. The question was, did he need her?
Brian crossed the room with easy steps, scooped her into his arms, and delivered her to the bed. Dropping her onto the white linen comforter, he gave her a wolfish grin and said, “To tell you the truth, the view doesn’t matter. I’m more of a hands-on kinda guy.”
Relief prompted a smile. “That’s convenient, because I want more touching this time.”
“More? Didn’t I find every hidden corner of you last time?”
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