The Thief

by J. R. Ward

  Assail had kept the message as a reminder that he had done Marisol right.

  It had been a sad tie to her and their relationship.

  The second message was a hang-up from two weeks ago, a misdial. The third as well.

  The fourth, however, had been left earlier in the current day, some twelve hours before. And it was a female voice with only the hint of an accent.

  "Good afternoon, sir. I am calling from the Benloise Gallery in reference to your purchase dated December twentieth. Our records show that there has been a delay in fulfillment, and we would like the opportunity to discuss this matter at your convenience. If you have already been in contact with us, please disregard this phone call. Thank you."

  Assail frowned and replayed the message. Twice.

  Yes, she did indeed have an accent, and was covering it up very well. Her "r"s and the lilt were not quite right.

  She was South American.

  And to what purchase was she referring?

  No number had been provided on the message, but that was unnecessary. It was in the phone's call log.

  "Assail?"

  At the sound of Marisol's voice, he looked up. She'd come down the stairs and was heading in the direction of the kitchen.

  He put the phone back in the drawer and shut things as far as he could with the charger still plugged in. Then he got to his feet.

  "In here, my love."

  Her footsteps were quick but soft on the turnaround, and as she came up to the open doorway, she hesitated. "Why are you in the dark?"

  "I was just checking my accounts." He indicated the monitor. "I am pleased to report that I can afford to pay for gas and electricity for at least the next year. Maybe the year after."

  "Oh...good." Marisol coughed a little. "Ah, I was worried when I woke up and you were gone."

  As he held his arms out, she came forward. She had put the shirt he had worn to church on and her bare legs were beautiful.

  "You mustn't worry about me." He pulled her in close and kissed her sternum, right over her heart. "I am well indeed."

  "Do you want to come back to bed?"

  "Hmm...yes." His hands traveled down to her hips, and before he knew it, he was under the hem of his shirt, her bare skin warm and smooth.

  "Should we go back upstairs?" she said huskily.

  "I want you here."

  He eased her back against the desk and then urged her to sit upon it, pushing his keyboard and an ashtray out of the way. When his monitor almost went off the far side, he didn't care.

  Willing the door to the office shut, the light from the hall was cut off and darkness took ownership of the room except for that pool of blue light--

  Shit, he thought. The door. He shouldn't have closed it with his mind. However, at least Marisol, in her state of increasing arousal, didn't seem to notice.

  "You're going to have to be quiet," he drawled as he rested both sets of fingertips on her thighs. "You mustn't disturb anyone."

  "How do you know you're not the one who'll be gasping?" she countered.

  "Because this is not going to be about me."

  With that, he jerked out the second drawers on both sides of the desk and spread her legs, putting her feet on the ledges he had made for her. Then he sank down onto his knees.

  She started to pant before he even began stroking up the inside of her thighs.

  "Remember," he said as he brushed his lips on one of her knees. "You wouldn't want to wake anyone up."

  Sweeping his hands toward her core, he did not touch her. Yet. He unfastened the lowest button of his shirt. And then the one on top of that. And then the next...

  He wanted to go all the way, but in the unlikely event someone knocked, or worse--and unheard of--walked in, he needed to spare her modesty.

  The shirttails were terribly accommodating as he parted them and moved them out of the way, the twin swaths content to stay back on either side of her hips.

  And there she was, bare and wide to him.

  "Mmm," he purred as kissed his way from her knee to the edge of what was becoming so very aroused for him.

  Looking up, he smiled. She had braced her hands on the blotter and was leaning her body back, but keeping her head forward so she could watch him.

  Assail extended his tongue and was done with any preamble. He licked up the center of her, flicking the top of her sex. Then he sealed her with a kiss.

  The groan she tried to stifle made him smile, but then he had work to do. Sucking her in, then licking at her, he took his time, enjoying the feel and taste of her, the warmth and the rush--and greedy for even more, he spread her knees farther apart, his hands locking on, squeezing.

  The lapping sounds were loud in the silence of the room--and so was her breathing. And both got their volume turned up as he started flicking at her, his tongue a darting, dancing tease that had her hips jerking back and forth as she rode his face.

  When she came, her palms squeaked on the blotter and she went into an arch that banged the monitor into the wall.

  He gave her no time for recovery, though.

  Such a cruel taskmaster he was.

  THIRTY-ONE

  On the leather couch at the Pit, Vishous came around to the sound of an ESPN 30 for 30, the announcer giving the background on a piece about...Ric Flair, the old-school wrestler.

  V opened his eyes with an effort disproportionate to how much his lids weighed. Fuck. He'd used less energy bench-pressing in the damn gym.

  The foosball table was the first thing he could properly focus on. The wide-screen TV behind it was the second. The third was the two males standing in the kitchen, their bodies close together, their heads leaning in, their conversation at such a soft whisper, he could hear nothing of it.

  Butch and Rhage each had a drink in their hand: The former was rocking a tall glass of something that was brown, but most definitely not of the Coke/Dr Pepper/Pepsi variety. The latter had a mug the size of a bathtub, and V knew without sniffing the air that that was Swiss Miss without the marshmallows, made with milk, not water.

  Still, all of these details about where he was and who and what was around him were not relevant. They were more pass-throughs for his brain, the thin mint, not the entree.

  Pain was more the point of his existence, and as his state of consciousness picked up more and more steam, memories of holding Jane in his arms and losing her again, hit him sure as if a slayer were standing above him and beating him with a lead pipe over and over until his skull did not so much cave in as get pulverized.

  Whatever drug they had given him was wearing off by inches, not yards, and he was frustrated with this--although why exactly, he wasn't sure. Sobriety was just going to mean more suffering.

  Jane, he mouthed. Jane...

  When there was a hot streak down his cheek, he wondered who was dripping candle wax on him--

  A pair of bizarrely pupil-less eyes popped in front of him so unexpectedly, he jerked back, his head bouncing off the leather cushion behind him.

  Lassiter was the last person in the fucking world he wanted to see, the blond-and-black horror with the big mouth exactly what the doctor did not order.

  "Shut up," V mumbled. "Go 'way--"

  The angel put his forefinger up to his lips. Shh. All is well.

  Jane is gone! V wanted to scream. She is fucking gone and I don't give a fuck about you or anybody on this--

  Lassiter reached out and put his hand on V's forearm. Shh. All is well.

  The fuck it is!

  As the male squeezed, V looked to the kitchen and wondered why Butch and Rhage weren't acknowledging their unwelcomed visitor. Then again, the pair of them were as sick of the Lassiter show as he was--

  All at once, the world went on a spin around him, as if he were a funnel and everything was draining into him.

  The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by green grass and milky sky as he lay flat on the Sanctuary's lawn. And for no good reason, he wondered why he was alw
ays landing on the grass now, instead of inside his mother's private quarters. Before, he had always arrived in that courtyard.

  Maybe because she was no longer here? Whatever.

  "Lassiter," he croaked. "What the fuck is your problem."

  Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes and discovered he was in front of the Treasury...and the fallen annoyance--angel, that was--was nowhere to be seen.

  After a moment, he noticed that the door to the vault was open--which was wacked. That thing was always closed.

  V got to his feet and ambled over because he couldn't think of anything else to do in the midst of his agony, and besides, he was nominally curious as to whether his legs would hold his weight. Huh. They did.

  When he got to the doorway, he almost didn't look in, but something told him to shift his eyes--

  There was a figure across the way, its back to him, its head down as if it was looking at something in a case--

  Short blond hair. Lithe body. Female. Very female--

  "Jane," he groaned, thinking it was an apparition that had showed up to torture him.

  Except it turned around on a spin.

  Shock on a familiar, beautiful face made the world spin again.

  "Jane!"

  Even though this had to be the cruelest joke Lassiter had ever played, V went with it, racing across the shallow space and slamming his body into what certainly appeared to be his shellan's.

  "Vishous?" she said, as if she were equally confused.

  He palmed the back of her head, and closed his eyes, and as he kissed her, he prayed that this was not some figment of his imagination, a product of grief meeting the drugs they'd given him.

  "I thought I'd lost you," he said hoarsely.

  As he spoke the words, he realized that was true not just with her getting shot, but with the distance that had grown between them.

  Jane's arms squeezed him hard, as if she knew he needed to feel that. "Never," she returned through her tears. "You'll never lose me..."

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I don't know. I don't care right now--just kiss me again!"

  * * *

  --

  As Jane held on to her mate with desperate strength, she knew she was probably making it hard for Vishous to breathe, but she needed visceral reassurance that she was alive and so was he.

  Oxygen was just going to have to take a backseat for a minute.

  "Oh, God, I thought you were gone," he mumbled, his voice reverberating with emotion. "I can't believe you're here. What happened? Why are you--shit, I...don't have a fucking clue what I'm saying."

  Pulling back, she looked up at him. Then she had to touch his face, running her fingers over the tattoos on his temple, and his cheekbones, and his goatee. His diamond eyes were shining with a love so great, she was humbled and full of regret.

  Why had they ever wasted the time they'd been given? Why had they lost track of each other at all? How could they have let that happen?

  "V," she cut in urgently. "I'm so sorry I got so wrapped up in my work--"

  "What? What are you--no, I'm sorry I was a fucking asshole." When she tried to speak again, he shook his head. "Can I kiss you again? Please, just let me--"

  Without missing a beat, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself to his mouth, her heels lifting from the floor. Their mouths met once more and the sensation of soft on soft rocked her to her core.

  "Please," he groaned. "Please, I need you."

  She knew exactly what he was begging for, and she didn't hesitate. Backing herself up until she felt the wall, she went for the waistband of her scrubs, loosening the bow and letting them fall to the floor. Her boots were a tougher sell on the whole get-off-me thing, but she managed to cross that finish line with the one on the left and kicked it across the Treasury. And that was all she needed to get half her bottoms off.

  V took care of his own pant-problems, nearly ripping his fly open, and then she was back to hanging off of his neck and he was pulling her legs around his hips--

  His penetration was so fast and deep she yelled. And then she didn't know what the hell she did--and she didn't care.

  Vishous was dominating by nature, a force in the world that wasn't to be denied. And he had sex in exactly that way: He pounded her furiously, his body clapping against hers, the structural integrity of the marble wall she'd put her back against the only reason they were still standing.

  And even that was a "maybe" instead of a "definitely": At the rate he was going, he was liable to fuck her right through the stone and out onto the lawn--and she loved it. She loved the near-violence, the knife-edge of pain, the sense that she had walked into the woods and found a snarling beast and laid herself down so it could take her.

  He was the out-of-control that she otherwise didn't let into her life. And she had missed this. She had missed him.

  As she began to climax, the tears rolled down her face. The awareness that she had let this connection go made her panic--because what if she had lost it forever? What if she had ceased to exist in the middle of that road? Or worse...what if she had just kept going as she had been with work being the most important thing in her life and everything else slowly fading away.

  And it was not just her. There were things Vishous had to work on, too. Things he was going to have to change.

  Then again, true love required so much more than the boy-meets-girl stuff--and mutual attraction was the easy part: Life did not sit back politely and not interrupt the conversation between two souls united. It wasn't a properly raised lady of leisure with a soft voice, ordering the staff to bring canapes for the hungry. No, it was more like a cocktail party of guests where some of them you were happy to welcome into your little clutch of two...and others were drunken frat boys who tripped, fell, and vomited on your collective feet.

  Vishous eased up on the pumping. "You're crying. Oh, fuck, I hurt you--"

  "I'm just glad we're together." She sniffled as he wiped her tears with his thumbs. "And all I want is more of this."

  "Me, too." He kissed her. "That's what I want, too."

  The pain in his face, in those diamond eyes, was a window into the depths under all that cold, calculating intelligence, and she knew the vulnerability wasn't something he showed even his Brothers. This was a gift to her, a testament to what he felt for her, the foundation of their relationship that thankfully hadn't crumbled, but only been partially obscured for a short time.

  "I left you," she whispered. "I didn't meant to, but I did."

  "I left you, too." He shook his head. "I'm at fault--"

  "No, you were home a lot of days when I was at the clinic--"

  "When was the last time you came in and I didn't have a drink in my hand?"

  Jane opened her mouth. Shut it.

  "Exactly," he said as he brushed her hair back. "I've been drinking every second I wasn't in the field since my mahmen hit the road. And even before that, with the war cranking up and the shit with Xcor, I was constantly the one volunteering to be on deck. I've been getting eaten alive by work, too. That is not just on you."

  "How do we make sure this doesn't happen again?"

  V rolled his hips, his sex sliding in and out of her and making her moan. "We stay connected. That's how."

  She had to laugh. "I can live with that..."

  As he started moving again, entering and retreating, entering and retreating, she tightened her legs around his backside.

  "I can live for that," she amended as they both began to orgasm.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Vitoria woke up as the car's velocity changed, the steady hum of sixty-eight mph dropping in volume as Streeter decelerated to get off at an exit that read IROQUOIS MOUNTAIN RESERVE. Talk about a change in landscape. Gone was the crowded sprawl of Caldwell; in its place, there was nothing but snow and mountains.

  No lights of inhabitation, no cars or trucks, nothing but miles of frigid wilderness.

  The isolation was unexpectedly intimidat
ing, reminding her of some of the remote places in Colombia that she never wanted to visit. Whether arctic tundra or rain forest, she was not one to venture too far off the beaten path, as it were. If their car broke down out here, for example, who would help them?

  Streeter looked over at her, and his expression was remote. "You're awake."

  "We are here. Why didn't you rouse me?"

  "You're up now," he muttered.

  "What is wrong with you?" If he was not hardy enough to drive them this far on short notice, he was not going to fare well as her primary support. "What."

  "I just got a text from a buddy of mine. He works security for the gallery during after-hour shows."

  What a nice reminder he could read. "You shouldn't be texting and driving."

  "Margot Fortescue was found dead in her house by her boyfriend."

  Vitoria made a show of frowning. "She's that one who thought she was running things. Rather rude awakening I gave her today. What a pity."

  "She used to fuck your brother. Did you know that?"

  "Which one. And watch your language, would you." She unzipped her coat. Her gun was in there. "I am a lady. My ears are delicate."

  "Eduardo. She used to be with him." Streeter glanced across the seats again. "Did you kill her?"

  Arching a brow, Vitoria feigned a recoil. "Me? Dear God, what are you thinking? Of course not. Why would I care whether she was alive or dead?"

  "Margot knew things. That's all. I just wondered whether that shit--er, stuff, came up when you was talkin' to her or something."

  "Not at all. I will admit that she doesn't like me--well, didn't like me. But it appears as if that will no longer be a problem. Not that it was much of one to begin with." Vitoria sat forward as a sign entered the illumination field of the headlights. "We are getting close. Four miles. Do you know which way is south?"

  "It's the direction we came from."

  As they continued on, she stared out at the mountain that was peaking high above the tree line off in the distance. "Tell me, what kinds of things did Margot know?"

  " 'Bout this side of the business. She knew that there were other things being sold by your brothers. But I don't think she knew deets."

  "And how did you find this out about her?"