“We should dress. The others will be here soon.”
“Too late.”
Arden twisted sideways to see who had spoken.
They saw the figure stretched out on the couch behind them at the same time. A tall man in a crumpled black suit with a black fedora pulled over his face. His feet, shod in dusty, steel-toed boots, rested at one end of the seven-foot-long couch, and his head—face hidden by the fedora—rested at the other.
Aniketos turned, putting his body between the stranger and Arden.
“Hart.” Aniketos’ voice was low and dangerous, more a growl than anything akin to human speech.
The stranger tipped his hat back. She caught a glimpse of golden skin, tawny hair and eyes—an eye, there was a black patch across the other—as yellow as a citrine. He kicked his feet off the couch and swung into a sitting position.
“Pardon me.” His drawl was a none-too-convincing amalgam of every Western movie she’d ever seen. “I didn’t want to interrupt the uh, special moment you two was having. I would have waited outside, but the front porch is a mite radioactive.”
“Can it, Hart. You could have waited in the dining room.”
The man shook his head and dropped his voice into a precise imitation of Aniketos’ odd, halting accent. “You will recall that I am none too fond of that peculiar glass with which you have adorned your humble abode. This is the only room that does not have a glass door.”
Arden giggled.
“I do not sound like that,” Aniketos griped.
Arden’s giggle turned into a full-fledged laugh. The stranger’s impersonation had been dead on.
“Why don’t you turn around and admire the view from the windows for a few minutes.” The Thief’s voice was barely above a growl.
“Shucks. There ain’t nothin’ purty about a nucular wasteland. But I guess you need time to untie your, uh, date.”
“I can untie myself.” Arden slipped her wrists out of the knotted sash and brushed past Aniketos on her way into the bedroom.
Aniketos followed her, closing the opaque glass double doors behind him. “Get dressed. We have much to discuss.”
He reached into the closet. When he withdrew his hand, it held her stealthsuit. Arden frowned. She had searched the closets and drawers.
“How—” She began to ask the question, but stopped when she saw the edge of his mouth quirk up in that maddening, familiar smile. She already knew what he would answer, and didn’t care to hear it again. “I know. Magic.”
“Actually, there is a touch-sensitive panel in the back wall of the closet. The biometric reader is set with my metrics. It will not open for anyone else.”
“You bastard.”
He tossed her the stealthsuit. She snatched it out of the air and headed to the bathroom to wash up and dress. The bathroom was as luxurious as every other room in Aniketos’ compound. The bath, shower and sinks occupied a large room tiled in black marble. The shower—a complicated affair with multiple jets and steam vents that was big enough to fit five people with no one left shivering for want of hot water—was enclosed in a stall made of the same blue-green glass. There was a ledge running around the top of it containing all manner of soaps, shampoos and bath oils.
She turned on the shower and was about to step beneath the spray when she noticed a flash of movement reflected in the mirror. He was watching her. A shiver ran down her spine.
She stretched, arching her spine, thrusting her breasts and ass out at the same time. She ran her hands over her body as she brought them to her sides.
The door slammed open and her Thief stalked in. “Tease.”
He was aroused again. His hard cock jutted out from his muscled body. His eyes flashed pale fire. His nostrils flared. God and the Devil, she was almost glad she couldn’t kill him. Taking that face, that body, that cock, out of the world would be a crime against humanity.
She smiled.
“Arden?”
She came back to herself, forced her eyes to focus on his face. “You should have stayed outside. I wanted to watch you jerk off.”
He raised a brow.
“What? A woman’s not supposed to like to watch?”
“It is unusual.”
She laughed. “More usual than you think, Thief. How about it?”
He met her eyes for a moment, intense as always. Holding his gaze was like looking into the sun. But she wouldn’t look away, even if her eyes watered, even if she was struck blind. Sex was as much about power as it was about pleasure to Arden, and she would not yield.
Finally, he nodded. He turned and poured out a measure of oil from one of the containers in the shower. He met her eyes again and wrapped his hand around the long shaft of his cock. His movements were slow, torturously so, hiding and revealing his shaft from her gaze. She wondered if he was gaining more pleasure from the sensation or from her frustration.
A thread of desire filtered up through her body like the first swirl of smoke from a nascent wildfire. His come hadn’t dried on her thighs and she wanted him again. The slow curl of heat from her core, the cool kiss of air against her pebbled nipples. It was madness—this hunger, this strange mutual obsession. Every time she fucked him, she thought it would ease her wanting, but it was like throwing gasoline on a fire. At this rate, they would combust in little under a week.
She abandoned the pretence of spectatorship and closed the distance between them. “Fuck me.”
He held her off with one hand against her chest. “Tell me what you want.”
She started to say, “I want your cock inside me,” but she saw the fire in his eyes, the mad intensity of him. She knew what he wanted to hear. When she thought about it, she realized that she wouldn’t even be lying. She took a breath.
“You. I want you.”
That closemouthed smile stretched across his lips, and she wondered what she had given him with that admission. It was no more than the truth, but she felt vulnerable. His expression lit with a fierce satisfaction and he pulled her to him.
His hands were hot and slick with oil. He ran them over every centimeter of her body, rewarding her admission with every pleasure his hands could bestow. Her knees trembled and he held her steady. Turning her around so that she could brace herself against the glass counter, he massaged her back and thighs.
His hands kneaded her buttocks, before slipping between them, slick and hot and seeking. She was no stranger to this act, but he treated her as though she were, gentling her body with his hands until she felt as though her muscles were made of honey.
He pressed his cock into her anus, slow but steady. He kept his hands on her, caressing her neck and breasts and belly. She fingered herself and teased her clit as he eased into her. He pressed himself into her until his balls slapped against her skin and his hips pressed into the soft curve of her ass.
He stilled to let her body accommodate his presence. She heard his breathing behind her, heavy, but slow. She looked up, met his gaze in the mirror. Intense as always, he watched her. She clenched her inner muscles and the edge of his mouth quirked into a smile. He began to move.
His fingers tweaked her nipples as she used her own hands on her clit. A fine tremor built in her body, a pleasure so concentrated it was pain. He had taken her so many times over the past few days, pleasured her with every touch, entered her in every way. He had blurred the lines between their bodies. She felt as though he were in her pores. If she were to cut herself, would it be his blood or hers that flowed from her veins?
He leaned forward, pressing the hard muscles of his chest against her back until his lips were close to her left ear.
“You are mine,” he whispered, voice as seductive as a devil on her shoulder. “Admit it.”
She wanted to deny it, to say that she belonged to no one, but that would be a lie. She had belonged to Darkriver, and now she belonged to him.
He had made her crave him. She welcomed him inside her. Her skin smelled of sandalwood and smoke. She could deny him nothi
ng.
“Yes.” It was easier to say this time, but the admission still clawed at her. “I’m yours.”
He smiled, white teeth against bronze skin, as beautiful as a clean kill, and as inescapable. She closed her eyes against the sight of his triumph. She did not want to think she had been conquered.
“Mine,” he whispered, giving her sensitized nipples a hard pinch.
She came. It was a wracking explosion of sensation that rocked her tired muscles and burned her weary nerves. Her cry of pleasure sounded like a strangled sob and her eyes watered behind her closed lids. When her orgasm ebbed, it left a dull ache in her womb. Her muscles trembled with fatigue.
He thrust into her, hands clenching tight on her hips as his cock swelled and he came. He gave a low growl of satisfaction before he pulled out of her.
For one insane second, she wanted him back. She felt drained, empty without him inside her. How had she become such a weakling?
Silent, she pushed herself past him and stepped into the shower. She wanted to wash the smell of him from her skin, but the soap all smelled of sandalwood. She scrubbed herself quickly, running the soapy washcloth over her face and hair, swiping at her body as though it had done something to anger her.
He entered the shower behind her. His hand moved across her back, washing her with the gentleness she refused to grant herself. She shrugged him off and plunged herself under the steaming water, rinsing the soap and oil from her body. If only the memory of his touch would wash away with it.
Fucking was the simplest thing in the world. How had it become so complicated? She prided herself on feeling lust instead of love, but what was she to make of this constant wanting, this craving that made her wet and ready for him the instant he so much as looked at her? Was this her own twisted version of love? Or the closest a killer could come to the emotion?
But she wasn’t a killer where he was concerned. She couldn’t hurt him and she couldn’t kill him. Arden blinked in surprise. She had come to crave what she could not conquer. How fucked up was that?
Chapter Six
Arden felt more like herself after she donned her stealthsuit. Slick and black, it ate the light, making a silhouette of her body where once there had been soft curves and golden skin. The stealthsuit clung to her like a second skin, bulletproof and hard to hold, an impervious armor to shield her weak and wanting flesh.
She ran a hand through her short hair and marched into the living room, swinging the doubled glass doors shut behind her. The stranger stood at the window, staring out at the desert. He exhaled a stream of smoke. A lit cigarette rested on the table beside him, leaving a trail of ash across the blue-green glass as it burned. He turned and picked up the cigarette without touching the table.
“You’re the assassin?” The stranger regarded her with his one yellow eye. He stood still as a snake watching its prey. “You’re so delicate. You don’t look like you’d make a very good killer.”
“I might surprise you.” Arden arched a brow and walked up to the window to stand beside him. “Who are you?”
“Tiburon Drake.”
“Drake. Why did the Thief call you Hart?”
The yellow-eyed man laughed. “You’re smart to call him Thief. Who can keep up with his names? He was Nikhil when I met him in British India. I was playing guard for the East India Company, and your friend stole a ruby the size of a man’s fist out from under our noses.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t owe you answers. In fact, quite the opposite. Or did you think you could fuck your way out of spilling Darkriver’s secrets?”
Arden lashed out. She kicked Drake in the face on his blind side, grabbed him by the hair and shoved his face against the table beside him before the stars could clear from his eye.
He made a strangled sound. Smoke rose up from where his cheek pressed against the table. It smelled of burning meat. The blue-green glass was cool to the touch for Arden, but it appeared to be burning this man’s flesh from his bones. How interesting.
“Arden,” Aniketos chided from the doorway to the bedroom. “Would you please be so kind as to let our guest up? We are going to need him later.”
Arden let go of the man’s head and jumped back, dodging the punch he threw at her. Half of the newcomer’s face was a charred mass of flesh. The skin had burned away, and Arden could see the pale gleam of his cheekbone and jawbone through what was left of his cheek. But even as she watched, the wound healed. Flesh and skin flowed into the wound like water flowing into a hole.
She rolled her eyes. “Great. Another one.” She turned to Aniketos. “How many of you are there?”
“There is only one of me. I am human, but not mortal. Mr. Hart, over there, is mortal, but not human. However, his kind are very difficult to injure or kill.”
“But the glass burned him.”
Aniketos nodded. “One man’s heaven is another man’s hell.”
“I’ll thank you not to go spilling my secrets, Nikhil.”
Arden looked up at Hart. His face was healed now, but there was a layer of black ash on the table.
“You spilled your own secrets, Drake. Do not blame me if she used them against you. I promised a cooperative assassin for this venture, not a tamed one.”
Drake tilted his head to the side, considering. The motion was quick, unnervingly reptilian. The angle of his head was odd, as though he had more vertebrae in his neck than came standard on humans.
She shivered. Drake caught her gaze and grinned wide. His teeth were too white, and while his front teeth were filed flat, the teeth toward the edges of his smile had distinct points to them. She decided to ignore him the next time he provoked her.
“Good girl.” Drake winked.
Arden curled her hands into fists. She turned to Aniketos. “Why is he here?”
“Mr. Hart will be our backup when we break into Darkriver’s hatchery to retrieve the child.”
“Him? You’d best call in reinforcements. I could wipe the floor with him, and Darkriver has a half-dozen fighters who are better than me.”
Aniketos gave her another closemouthed smile.
A chime sounded. Arden turned to stare at the front door.
“It appears the last of our guests have arrived.” Aniketos walked to the tall, bronze double doors at the far end of the foyer and opened them.
Arden expected to see desert beyond the bronze doors, but instead she glimpsed a marble-tiled elevator lobby with tall windows at either end. The windows framed a postcard view of London’s skyline backed by a wash of winter-gray skies.
A man in a gray wool suit stood outside the door. The man was tall and stocky with pale, pink-tinged skin and ginger-colored hair. He inclined his head and greeted Aniketos.
“Good afternoon, Nikolai.”
Those three words, rendered cold and precise in a perfectly inflected example of Received Pronunciation, told her everything she needed to know about the man. He was English, rich, most likely heir to some hereditary thing or other, and used to being in charge.
“Wright. We are ready to go get your son.” Aniketos clapped his hand against the Englishman’s back in a friendly manner that seemed to set his guest’s teeth on edge.
Arden wasn’t sure whether or not she still wanted to kill Aniketos, but she was pretty sure she liked him. He had a gift for annoying the right people at just the right time.
The Englishman flicked his gaze around the room with a casual sneer of disgust. “Drake.”
The yellow-eyed man nodded.
Wright’s eyes flicked to her and his cold expression grew colder. “So this is the assassin.”
“Arden,” she supplied, not offering her hand.
“It has a name. I didn’t think Darkriver named them.”
She smiled, ignoring his insult, watching the place where his pulse beat against his throat. They both knew, Wright and Arden, that she could kill him between one beat and the next. His disdain was nothing more than bravado, lik
e a man taunting a tiger from beyond the bars of its cage.
“Naming us is one of the very first things our mentors do—right after Darkriver erases our memories of our families and the names our families gave us.”
The Englishman winced. Yes, that hurt. Don’t stand too close to the bars, sir. This tiger has very long claws.
“Children,” Aniketos intervened, herding the entire party to the couches arranged in a “U” shape before the empty hearth. “We have a mission. Arden, it is time to tell us what you know about the Hatcheries.”
Arden settled herself on the couch opposite Aniketos and Wright. Drake had stretched out across the third couch, the one facing the hearth.
“Yes, tell us everything,” Drake drawled, tilting his hat down over his eyes and leaning his head against the headrest. He pulled a cigarette case from an interior pocket of his coat and extracted a single cigarette. He licked one end, then reversed the cigarette and stuck the opposite end into his mouth. He drew in a breath and the cigarette caught fire, sending up a silver curl of smoke.
Arden repressed a shiver. She had fallen into strange company, indeed.
“The last time I was at the Hatcheries, they were located in London. I can draw you a map to the building. The hospital and laboratory facilities were several stories below ground. There were approximately seven hatchlings there, at various stages of the process.”
“Was my son Jacob among them?” Wright addressed her directly for the first time.
Arden shrugged. “I didn’t see a kid who looked like you.”
“He takes after his mother.” Wright turned his pale eyes on Aniketos. “You haven’t shown her a picture?” The Englishman pulled a two-dimensional photo from his jacket pocket and slid it across the surface of the glass table that separated them.
Arden picked it up and felt her world shift. She recognized the boy in the picture. She remembered those dark, almond-shaped eyes, the feel of his tears upon her hand.
Like a Thief in the Night Page 7