by Alyssa Day
Oh, damn, it had been far too long since she’d had sex.
Her watch beeped. Glancing down, she saw that she had twelve minutes. Declan had hacked into the security cameras and put them on a circular repeating pattern or something equally complex and brilliant, but he’d warned her a dozen times that she had exactly fifteen minutes and not a second more.
She raised the tranq gun and used her best frosty, lady-of-the-manor voice. “I repeat, who the bloody hell are you?”
“You’re Scottish,” he said, quite unnecessarily.
“Give the man a gold ring. You have ten seconds to tell me who you are and why you’re here before I shoot you.” She raised the gun, hoping the first time she had to shoot a man while looking him in the eyes wouldn’t haunt her dreams for months to come. But needs must and, well, the Siren was waiting, no matter how mouthwateringly delicious this man might be.
“The Scarlet Ninja is a woman. A Scottish woman,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her from head to toe, blistering every inch of skin under her garments, as if the heat in his eyes were a palpable touch.
Of course, the negative here was that he appeared to be a blithering idiot.
“Yes. Ninja. Woman. Scottish. Do you have something against Scotland?”
Her watch beeped. Eleven minutes.
“Ninja,” he repeated, taking a step toward her. “Nin. Ja. Have you ever cracked a history book? Scotland. Ninjas. No.”
Fiona’s watch crackled. Declan checking in, and he was going to go mad if she didn’t respond soon. She raised her wrist and spoke softly. “Bit of a problem. Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”
The luscious bit of man candy had the nerve to flash a devilish grin at her. “You can handle me anytime. I like to play dress-up games, too. You can be the ninja, and I’ll be the pirate.”
“Lovely. A thief and a boorish lout,” she snapped. Declan squawked from her wrist, but she lowered her hand and ignored her overprotective brother for the moment.
Ten minutes.
“Thief, huh. Pot, kettle? I guess we all know why you’re here, but a better question is what kind of magic were you throwing around out there?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, careful not to let her shock show in her eyes.
“Fine. Another question, then.” He took another step toward her, all leashed power and hard-bodied male. She felt like a particularly scrumptious piece of catnip caught in the path of a tiger. “Scarlet Ninja. Today’s answer to Robin Hood. What are you here for? Not that it matters.” He waved an arm at the glass boxes filled with crowns, scepters, swords, and sundry. “Luckily, there’s plenty for both of us.”
It was her turn to blink, but she was out of time for small talk. “You’ll never succeed. But I’m only here for one thing, so feel free to look around.”
He smiled, and she wondered dizzily if the devil himself had a smile as seductive. “I think I’ll stick with you. I’d like to see under that mask. That lovely skin and those blue eyes are making me wonder what the rest of you looks like, not that those scarlet silks are hiding much. A man would give much to get his hands on those curves.”
The blunt words packed a sensual punch, maybe due to the sheer honesty of the admiration on his face and in his tone. She had to clench her thighs together against the heat.
“No time for this,” she said, inexplicably both glad she wore the mask and regretting it. “Step closer and I’ll shoot you.”
He bowed, a study in grace and elegance, and she had the oddest feeling that the courtly gesture came naturally to him, as if he’d done it many times before.
Her watch ticked over again. Nine minutes.
Still keeping one wary eye on him, she turned toward the shatterproof glass case on the far wall, crossing the electronic walkway to view the sword in its solitary state.
“Vanquish stands apart, doesn’t it?” he murmured next to her ear. He was too close; he was suddenly right next to her. She couldn’t contain the startled gasp. Nobody but vampires could move that fast. He clearly wasn’t that, though; her senses could recognize a vampire at twenty paces. But what? She backed away, aiming the tranq gun carefully, although he didn’t seem the least bit afraid of it. He also didn’t seem to be trying to scare her.
Not that he could. She was tough and brave, right?
Mostly?
“Isolated from the rest of the room, and even from the remainder of the sword collection,” he continued, as if unaware of her reaction. “Proud and unbending, like its owner.”
She dismissed his flight of fancy. “A conqueror. A predator.”
He turned to face her, the heat from his body radiating through the inches separating them until she felt herself beginning to lean forward into him. She stumbled back a step and raised the gun, aiming it at his heart.
He didn’t pay the slightest attention to it. Those green eyes lasered into her as he tilted his head. “And you don’t care for predators? You, who yourself live your life in search of prey? Dressed like a ninja?”
“My prey doesn’t breathe.”
“Doesn’t it? The treasures of a society are not the living, breathing representations of its history?”
Not an idiot, then. In spite of those cheekbones and sculpted lips. The pretty boy had a mind.
Click. Eight minutes.
“Bit fancy for a predator, isn’t it? I’d imagine predators use more practical blades.”
His attention snapped back to her, that piercing focus almost palpable. “Funny. I was thinking something similar earlier tonight.”
“Why were you thinking about Vanquish?”
“I plan to steal it.”
A jolt of sheer adrenaline raced through her, chasing chills down her spine, and she whirled around to face him straight on. “No. You can’t. It’s mine.”
Chapter 5
Christophe’s mental warning system for critical danger had stood him in good stead for many long years and saved his ass, not to mention his life, on too many occasions to count. Right now warnings were flashing through his brain on high alert. This woman was clearly dangerous. She was definitely trouble. He should be wary and on his guard.
Instead, he was elated.
She was a little bit of a thing, maybe five and a half feet tall, but she seemed bigger because pure attitude added a few inches. And those ice blue eyes—well, even without the husky, sexy purr of her voice, he would ignore more than a little warning flare for the chance to see her face. The silk of her loose garments couldn’t hide her ripe, curvy body, and a wicked corner of his mind kept picturing what she might look like in his bed, wearing nothing but that scarlet mask.
His cock hardened at the thought of it, and it was almost enough to distract him from what she’d said. Almost. Vanquish was hers? He thought not, lovely ass or no.
“What’s yours?” He schooled his voice to calm, silken menace and allowed power to glow in his eyes and resonate through his words. Grown men—humans, shifters, and vamps alike—had all trembled at the sound of that voice.
She laughed.
“Ooh, scary glowy eyes. Do you try that trick on everyone, or just the odd ninja you meet when you’re planning a heist?” She glanced at her watch and, in spite of the casual amusement in her voice, he could tell her anxiety level was ratcheting up. Whatever she was up to, it looked like she was running out of time.
“You didn’t answer my question.” He stepped closer, taking two quick strides, until he was so close to her that the barrel of her gun pressed into his chest and the scent of her tantalized him.
She didn’t have it in her to shoot him.
He was almost sure.
“Back away, big boy,” she told him, pressing her body weight, such that it was, into the warning until the gun dug into his skin beneath his shirt. “Don’t make me shoot you. It would be messy, and who needs that?”
“What are you trying to steal?” he repeated, ignoring the gun and the banter, because it was pretty obvious exact
ly what she’d meant.
She sighed and stepped back, then lowered her gun and flicked something small and silvery at the base of the glass case. “More than twenty-three thousand gems in this collection, and we’re both after the Siren. Too bad, you really are extremely luscious, but that gem is mine.”
Before he could think of a response, she tucked her gun into a holster on her leather belt and stepped closer to him. Her scent teased him again, swamping his senses with the light fragrance of jasmine underneath a spring rain.
“Perhaps just a taste? As a sort of good-bye?” she murmured, maybe to herself, and then she rose up on her tiptoes and pulled his head down to hers with one hand. With the other, she lifted her mask a little and pressed a soft, gentle caress of a kiss against his lips. Utter shock kept him motionless just long enough for her to drop her mask, step back, and press something hard into his abdomen.
“Lovely. I really do regret this,” she said.
And then she shot him.
“You shot me—” he blurted out, but looking down, it wasn’t the expected bright red of his blood flowing out of his body that he saw, but bright red . . . feathers? A dart. It was a dart.
And feathers. Dancing feathers, and the room spun around them. Magical feathers? Oh. Oh, no. Not magic . . .
Drugs . . .
As he hit the floor, his Atlantean metabolism instantly began to push the drugs out of his system. But instantly wasn’t quick enough, if the way the floor was trying to suck him into it was any clue.
She bent down, and his senses reeled at the sight of her features all gone topsy-turvy, until his drug-hazed mind realized that he was looking at her upside down. Her mask had dropped down a little to show the wry curve of luscious lips. Even after she’d shot him, he still wanted to taste that mouth again.
“I really am sorry, you know. Hopefully since you haven’t actually stolen anything yet, they won’t imprison you for too very long,” she said, with what sounded like sincere regret. “Best of luck to you.”
She said something else, but by then the drug had temporarily—at least, he hoped it was only temporarily—overwhelmed his body’s efforts to push it out, and the gray pushing at the edges of his vision swarmed in to take over his conscious mind. The last thing he saw before the blackness claimed him was the small rectangle of paper, with its tiny scarlet image, that she’d dropped on the ground.
“Ninja,” he managed.
Her unexpected peal of laughter echoed in the swirling dark.
Fiona clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the laughter. Fool. She was out of time and had nearly been out of luck. What was she thinking to kiss that man? He could have grabbed her and ripped her mask off or, worse, held her for the authorities. He was certainly big enough to have overwhelmed her and done hideous things to her with his hard-muscled body.
Lovely, dirty things. Or at least naked things.
She stifled another laugh. Clearly panic and adrenaline had combined to drive her mad. The man was a thief, she reminded herself, acknowledging and then proceeding to ignore the obvious irony.
She could almost hear Hopkins’s voice in her head. Lady Fiona Campbell did not kiss common criminals.
She allowed her gaze to travel the length of his hard, muscled, and quite decidedly male body. Well. She shouldn’t kiss uncommon criminals, either.
Declan’s tinny voice squawked from her wrist, and she tapped the button to silence it. Time was up. She gathered the shadows around herself and stepped into the corner behind the door. The guards would be joining them any moment. Unfortunate, that. She rather hoped the man didn’t face too much trouble, but the stakes were too high to let him interfere with her plans.
This job was too dear. The Siren was on the auction block; that absolutely flawless and enormous square-cut aquamarine centered on Vanquish’s hilt was meant to be hers. The anonymous buyer who’d put the word out had also said those magic words: Money is not an object.
There was no possible way to even cost it out. The sword itself was priceless and the Siren was as well known as Vanquish. According to history, William had always claimed it came from his own many-times-great-grandmother, and she was an actual siren. The kind who sang sailors to their deaths. Apparently old Grandma the Conqueror had kept at least one sailor alive long enough to get a little frisky with him.
Fiona figured she’d start high and negotiate her way down. She wasn’t planning to steal the sword, after all. She wasn’t irretrievably destroying a national treasure. Just defacing it a little. They could put a different jewel in the hilt. A paste one. Fakes were brilliant these days; nobody would even be able to tell without a jeweler’s eye.
Guilt whimpered and tried to raise its ugly little head in her conscience, but she firmly pushed it back down. Vampires didn’t feel guilty, so why should she?
The man on the floor—the man she’d just shot, for Saint George’s sake—stirred and groaned. Guilt didn’t just whimper, this time. It jumped up and down and sang an aria. She’d never shot anyone before. She didn’t want to ever shoot anyone again. She was not her grandfather’s child.
The warning gong clanged as the security door began to rise, and she swung her attention to the glimmer of light that slowly widened between the floor and the bottom of the steel door. Right on schedule. Time to make her way home and decide what to do next. She focused with all of her concentration on shadowing her presence—sight, sound, and scent—from even the shifters and their ultrasensitive noses and ears, then cast one last regretful glance over her shoulder at the ever-so-gallant thief.
It was quite fortunate that her shadows dispersed the sound of her gasp even as it left her mouth, because the floor was empty.
The man was gone.
Christophe made it as far as the roof of the White Tower before he collapsed out of mist form and fell heavily to the stone. The drug had left him weak, barely able to reach for and channel the magic that had helped him escape before the Tower Guard found him lying helpless as a mewling babe on the floor.
Wicked little wench. She was going to be very, very sorry she’d ever shot an Atlantean warrior. He might have to tie her up and take a considerable amount of time teaching her a lesson.
With his lips.
And his cock.
The thought of her warm, willing body underneath his flashed a sizzle of heat through him that got him up and moving. Now was not the time to be caught on the grounds. He’d come back for the Siren; he’d seen enough to know she hadn’t taken it. Not yet.
Now he wanted to find her. Needed to find her. The Scarlet Ninja was suddenly the only mission he cared about. He’d wanted a challenge, hadn’t he? She was definitely that. How had a woman he hadn’t really even seen aroused him more with a brief brush of her lips than any tumble in the sheets had done in decades?
He pulled himself up and, from a crouching position so as not to shout his presence to the world, scanned the grounds for the uniquely bending shadows that had signaled her presence inside the Tower. It took several long seconds, but he found her. She was running, and she was still shadowed. There was nothing magical or preternatural about her running speed, however, and he would easily catch up.
Wouldn’t she be surprised at what she found when she finally stepped outside her magical shadows? He laughed and, channeling the power of Poseidon once again, threw himself off the roof and into the rain. This would have to be his last effort to travel as mist until he’d had rest and food. Exhaustion was pulling at him, amplified by the remnants of the drug still working itself out of his system. The transformation itself should help remove the drug, though, balancing out the drain on his magic as he changed forms yet again.
He focused on the way the curving shadows moved through the grounds and toward the gate, barely perceptible in the drizzling rain. She moved so gracefully, almost dancing between one raindrop and the next. It couldn’t be just the light she was bending with her magic. Shifters had extremely powerful noses, and she’d been within scentin
g range. But clearly they hadn’t caught so much as a whiff—or the sound of her heartbeat, either. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she was a vampire.
He did know better, though. More than two centuries spent fighting vamps had taught him how to recognize a vampire when he confronted one. She had a magic he hadn’t seen before, that was all. Maybe Fae, but even as he thought it denial rose to counter it. Not Fae, please not Fae.
He hated the Fae.
There. She’d veered away from the loose grouping of guards near the gate and circled around, slipping through behind them even as Christophe watched. That easily, and she was gone.
He wondered if it was always that simple for her. Decided it must be. After all, she was the Scarlet Ninja, celebrated throughout the United Kingdom. People in every pub he’d entered during the past few days had happily and drunkenly embellished rumors about this phantom who’d stolen millions of euros’ worth of jewelry and art, but never been caught or so much as seen. People were speculating that he—and wouldn’t they be surprised to see just how much the Scarlet Ninja was not a man—was a descendant of the legendary Robin Hood. He gave an amount worth exactly half of every take to various charities and causes, accompanied only by his calling card: a shiny silver card embossed with the scarlet silhouette of a ninja.
Distraction. If he kept thinking about her, he might forget to realize how much he was hurting. Exhaustion took on the form of physical pain, even for an Atlantean warrior, when he’d been living on pints and very little else, not even sleep, for days, and then overused his magic in pursuit of a phantom. Alaric would be furious. The thought cheered him up enough to keep him going for a little farther, just a bit . . . there.
He’d caught her. The long, dark car pulled smoothly away from London’s hideous traffic and up to the curb just long enough for the back door to be opened ever so briefly, seemingly by whoever sat inside behind those dark-tinted windows. And if Christophe hadn’t been watching very, very closely, he never would have seen the flash of scarlet silk materialize before the door slammed shut and the car pulled back out into traffic. Not a chance the traffic cameras had caught a bit of her, either. Just another anonymous dark car in a city filled with them. Even the license plates were mud-splashed and unreadable.