by Alyssa Day
He was safe. He was in the trunk of the car—the ninja’s car. It was no longer moving, so hopefully they’d arrived at her home base or headquarters. Unless they’d stolen the car and then dumped it, in which case he was screwed. Yet again.
Funny, he hadn’t considered that it might be a stolen car until now that it was too late. He was better than that, when he wasn’t drugged and chasing a silk-covered ninja. He closed his eyes and forced his heartbeat to slow.
Calm. Serene. He was one of Poseidon’s elite, not that little boy. Never again that pathetic boy. Never again helpless.
He was also feeling stronger. The sleep must have allowed his body to metabolize the rest of the drug out of his system and recharge Atlantean magic that had been far too frequently channeled this night.
Stretching out his arms, he carefully felt in the usual places for any type of release mechanism. Ven, the car enthusiast, had told them all about that after Christophe had wanted to put an uncooperative shifter in the trunk of one of Ven’s cars once. Newer cars generally had release levers, Ven had said; a protection for children who might accidentally lock themselves in the trunk.
Accidentally. Lock themselves in the trunk. The words themselves mocked him. Mocked his helplessness, all those years ago. The word “trunk” then meant a heavy wooden thing, not part of a vehicle. Cars had been a thing of the far-distant future back then.
No. Not accidental at all. When they’d locked a terrified little boy in that trunk. Demon-borne, they’d said. Hours and hours in that trunk, but what came later had been even worse.
No. He shook his head and took a deep breath to escape the memories. His trembling fingers found the release lever, and he paused to listen carefully for the sound of anyone in the area who might be surprised to see a man climb out of the trunk of a car. Surprise sometimes equaled guns shooting at his head. Or worse: vampires’ kind of surprise.
He hated surprise.
But there was nothing. Not road noise, either, so the car was inside a garage or parking structure, or else he’d been asleep for long enough for the car to travel far beyond London’s busy streets. He couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t feel like the latter. He didn’t feel rested enough for that.
“Enough delaying, already,” he whispered into the dark, just so he could hear the sound of a voice. Even his own. The technique had helped in the past. Not that he needed any help now. Dark was just dark. A trunk was merely a storage space, not a prison.
There were almost certainly no exorcists in the immediate area.
The thought snapped him out of his memories, and taking a deep breath, he pulled the release lever. The trunk popped open smoothly, with not a hint of squeak, and he immediately sat up and scanned the area, his dagger held at the ready. Ceiling lights set to low provided illumination enough for him to see that the garage—for it was clearly that—was empty, however. He climbed out of the car and whirled around to face the other half of the room, searching its dimly lit corners for any dangers.
Nothing. Tools, workbench, a second car, and two very hot motorcycles filled the clean and tidy space, which smelled of gasoline, oil, and polish and, underneath it all, the faintest hint of jasmine. Of her. Somebody took very good care of this garage, which didn’t feel at all like a hideout for desperate criminals. It felt like a garage attached to somebody’s home.
Her home?
Only one way to find out. He closed the trunk and headed for the door in the back corner. Time to find out who the Scarlet Ninja was when she was at home.
Chapter 8
Fiona held up her hands to stop both Declan’s flow of words and Hopkins’s silent but potent urgings to get on with it and dish, already. Not that Hopkins would ever say or even think “dish.” Exhaustion swamped her, the aftershock of adrenaline and, to be honest if only with herself, sexual attraction, pumping through her body. The dull thud of an impending headache pounded at the edges of her skull and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with a cup of that chocolate she’d run out on earlier.
Instead, she was going to face an interrogation. She scanned the room as if looking for answers in its familiar warm blue and cream furnishings, and then nearly fell into an overstuffed chair as a hideous thought occurred.
“Declan? Did you, um, see anything during those fifteen minutes?” Like your big sis kissing a total stranger, perhaps?
He rolled his lovely chocolate-brown eyes, identical to their father’s. So unfair that he’d won the long, lush eyelash lottery of the two of them. She tried never to go without mascara to compensate for her mother’s English rose genes: blue eyes, pale blond hair and lashes. And how tired was she, to be thinking of eyelashes at a time like this?
“Fee, I’ve told you a thousand times, when I’m looping the cameras on a high-tech system like that, I can’t see you, either. I see what I’ve got them seeing, unless we start fitting you out with a buttonhole camera. I only caught a glimpse of the room where they stopped the loop.” He flashed a guilty glance at Hopkins. “You’d stepped out, and I didn’t want to worry you. But, Fee, you have to understand, it’s the—”
“Stop. Okay. I get it. Please, for the love of Saint George, no more technical discussions of wavelengths or pixels or whatever. My brain can’t take it.” Her gaze automatically went to the priceless oil-on-wood painting of Saint George slaying the dragon, in its place of honor across from her desk. Every time she glanced up from her work, the visual reminder that she, too, could slay dragons, reinforced her mission. Or vampires, as the case may be. The curators in the Louvre might even still believe they had the original, although last she’d checked, the website had listed Raphael’s Saint George and the Dragon as “not on display.”
Not exactly true. It was on display, of course, just not in the museum. It’s not like a self-respecting ninja master thief could hang a reproduction in her home. The painting represented her entire life’s work, after all.
She leaned her head back on the chair and closed her eyes, sighing. So good to be home. So awful to have to share her news.
The scent of rich chocolate wafted under her nose and her eyes snapped open. Hopkins stood next to the chair, still stern and frowning, but holding a cup of freshly poured aromatic heaven out to her.
“Drink it, and then tell us everything, if you please,” he said.
So she did, leaving out the flirting part and the kissing part. But what she did disclose was bad enough, judging by the expression on her butler’s face and the apparent inability of her baby brother to make actual words, since sputtering noises kept coming from his general direction.
“You let a common criminal get close enough to you that he could have harmed you? He could have ripped off your mask? He could have murdered you and left you lying in a pool of your own blood in the middle of the Jewel House?” Hopkins bit off each word as precisely as a cutter following the shape of an octahedral raw diamond crystal.
Bloody damn precisely, in other words.
Fiona sighed, but before she could respond, the air in the room changed and flames chased ice through her in a blaze of sensation that brought her up and out of her chair so fast she knocked the cup of chocolate to the floor. She whipped around to face the door, and it was him.
Her mystery man.
In her office, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed on that amazing chest and a cocky grin on that gorgeous face.
“Hey, I take exception to that remark,” he said. “I’m not at all common.”
Christophe couldn’t believe it. She was freaking gorgeous. Even in faded jeans and an ordinary top, her hair simple and mostly pulled back from her face, she was as beautiful as the priceless art that adorned every wall in the room.
More beautiful. Paintings couldn’t blush, after all, and the faint staining of pink on those porcelain cheeks made him think of strawberry jam, Atlantean blushberry tarts, and other luscious, delectable treats.
“Common or not, you are a trespasser, sir,” said the well-dressed e
lderly man with the very large gun. He was dressed like a butler or an undertaker, and yet he held that gun with the relaxed ease of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Majordomo via MI6, perhaps? Where James Bond types went when they retired?
“Oh, no, I was invited,” Christophe replied. “Ask the ninja.”
She moved suddenly, shaking her silky white-blond hair out of her face in what he was sure was a deliberate distraction, since she now stood exactly in his line of sight to the younger man in the room. Shielding him from the intruder.
Good instincts. He spared a moment to wonder why it made him want to growl. She was protecting another man from him, and he didn’t like it, for some reason that didn’t come from his brain but from a more primal part of himself.
Christophe didn’t like that either, nor the possible implications of his not liking it.
“I am sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir, but let’s just call the authorities and sort this all out, shall we?” Her Scottish accent was still there but blurred, as if she were attempting to hide it from him. She crossed to the desk and picked up her phone.
He smiled again, showing his teeth. “Yes, why don’t we? That should be a fun conversation. Especially the part where I tell them you’re the Scarlet Ninja.”
The boy—he could see now that it was a boy, not a man, which calmed him down for some reason—behind her gasped.
“Fee! He knows? Is this him? The man from the Jewel House?”
She sighed and her shoulders slumped, which did very interesting things to the generous curve of her breasts, and Christophe’s body hardened in sudden, aggressive readiness. Ninjas apparently aroused him, something he’d not known before. He laughed out loud.
The sound of the gun’s hammer cocking back tempered his amusement. The dangerous-looking man still held the gun trained on him.
“Did something strike you as funny, sir? Your impending demise, perhaps?” The dry tone only underscored the promise of death in the man’s eyes. This one was a warrior, too, underneath that fancy suit.
“Are you going to shoot me? It would be the second time tonight, which isn’t my record, but it would serve to piss me off,” Christophe said, letting all emotion drain out of his face until he knew that what they saw was nothing more than a cold, deadly killer. “I’d prefer a more friendly solution.”
He turned to the ninja, who still held the phone in one hand, forgotten. “We’re after the same thing. Why not partner up?”
She dropped the phone and then fumbled it onto the cradle, those huge eyes of hers widening even further. “Are you mad?”
“Nope.” He paused to give the question more serious consideration, given that he’d just followed a ninja home. “Not usually,” he amended.
She narrowed those gorgeous blue eyes at him. “I work alone.”
“Right. I can see that. You, James Bond over there, and the kid. What’s one more partner?”
“I don’t even know who you are,” she said.
“If you’re quite done, may I kill him now?” the old guy asked, still polite, but steel underlay those proper British manners.
The ninja made a sound of frustration that made Christophe wonder what other sounds she might make. Like, for example, when he licked her neck. Or explored those lovely breasts with his hands and mouth. His cock twitched in his pants, and he forcibly yanked his mind away from visions of a very naked ninja.
“Look, I can’t keep calling you the ninja,” Christophe pointed out. “My name is Christophe. And you are?”
“Christophe? Just one name? Like Madonna?” the kid said, grinning. He didn’t seem to have an ounce of self-preservation in his body. Christophe found himself grinning right back at him.
“No, I can’t sing a note. And you are?”
The kid took a step forward, hand extended as if to shake, years of breeding and manners clearly coming to the fore. “Declan Campbell, nice to meet—Oh.” Declan stopped dead and shot a red-faced glance at the ninja. “Crap. Sorry, Fee. Oh. Sorry again!”
The ninja—Fee?—sighed and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Declan. If he’s in our house, it would be easy enough for him to figure out who we are.”
She tilted her head and considered Christophe for a moment, then shrugged. “Fiona Campbell. My brother Declan. And the overprotective one is Hopkins.”
Christophe grinned at Hopkins. “Just the one name? Like Madonna?”
Hopkins never moved a single muscle, just stood there in a shooter’s stance with that damn gun still trained on the space between Christophe’s eyes. “This is a mistake, Lady Fiona,” he bit off. “You have put years and years’ worth of work in jeopardy in a single evening. Congratulations.”
“Lady Fiona?” Christophe watched, fascinated, as a rosy flush swept up her neck and face. “You’re aristocracy and a cat burglar?”
“I assure you, I never, ever steal cats,” she said, a glimmer of humor underneath the frost in her voice.
“No, just dragons.” He flicked a glance at Raphael’s depiction of Saint George, then back at her. “That’s the original, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“You’re not just good,” he said, ignoring Hopkins and his gun and crossing over to the painting to study it more closely. “You’re scary good.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, almost able to taste the delicious possibilities. “Oh, yes. We’re definitely partners.”
“No,” she said flatly. “Not a chance.”
“Are you going to kill me, then? Or have James Bond over there do it? Because I know who you are, and you know I know who you are. So as I see it, we have several different options. One, I’m your partner. Two, you shoot me to keep me from telling the police and the tabloids that you’re the Scarlet Ninja.”
“And?” Her voice could have flash-frozen half of Atlantis.
“And what?”
“You said several options. You named two. What are the others?”
“Oh. I guess I was wrong. Just those two.” He couldn’t seem to stop grinning for some reason. The situation cheered him up. Hugely.
“I’ll be happy to shoot him, Lady Fiona. In fact, I’m quite anxious to do so,” Hopkins said.
“She already shot me,” Christophe offered helpfully.
The ninja glared at him. “That was a tranq gun. And nobody is shooting anyone. That’s . . . that’s my grandfather’s solution, Hopkins. You know I won’t go down that road. Not now, not ever.” The ice in her voice was gone, replaced with a white-hot rage that Christophe instinctively knew would sear anything it touched.
So why did he wonder what it would feel like to burn in those flames?
“I guess we have a partner, then,” Declan said, grinning.
“I’d much rather shoot him, but if you insist.” Hopkins put the gun down but kept it within reach. “So, then, partner. Who are you and what exactly do you want?”
Chapter 9
Fiona suddenly found it hard to breathe as her new partner stared into her eyes, a wicked grin slowly spreading across his face.
“Who do I want? That’s between me and the ninja,” he said, his eyes darkening from a pale spring green to a dark leafy color as his gaze practically burned the clothes from her body. Definitely not human. Human eyes didn’t do that. Unless he had a kind of magic she’d never seen before hiding behind that bad-boy long hair. The waves brushing his collar looked silken soft. If only she could touch them, she could discover—
Suddenly, the meaning of his words caught up to her fevered mind. “No! He said what do you want. What, not who.” She felt the flush rise up into her cheeks and had to grit her teeth against the embarrassment. “Stop that at once, or I’ll take my chances with the police.”
“Hey, you kissed me,” he said, still grinning.
He dropped that long, lean body into one of her chairs, and the floral print of the upholstery didn’t do a thing to diminish his aggressive maleness. He was a predator,
no matter where you put him, and she needed to be very, very cautious, in spite of the part of her that wanted to crawl into his lap and bite his neck.
Hopkins cleared his throat. “You kissed him?”
“I—”
“Wow! Your first kiss in years and it’s a criminal? Sis, you’re going to have to watch out. You’ve got a thing for bad boys. Look at Sean.”
Her face was on fire. Surely the house sprinkler system would activate itself at any moment. Christophe’s avid interest wasn’t helping any, nor was the way he kept checking out her body whenever she moved.
“It was not my first kiss in years, not that it’s any of your business, and I—he—it was a distraction technique!”
“It’s true. She distracted me, and then she shot me,” Christophe offered. Then he leaned forward, and those amazing green eyes narrowed. “Also, who’s Sean?”
“Don’t help me,” she told him. “I don’t have a thing for Sean,” she said to her rotten brother.
“You adopted him!” Declan sputtered. “That’s what I meant. Not that you have a romantic thing for him. That would be gross. You’re so old.”
“I’m not old,” she gritted out.
“Not compared to me,” Christophe said cheerfully, relaxing back into his chair. “So long as you’re not kissing Sean, too.”
Hopkins picked up the gun again. “Now I’m definitely going to shoot him.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Christophe said, but he was either insane or had balls of bloody steel, because there wasn’t a hint of fear on his face.
“No shooting! I won’t have it,” she shouted, smashing her fist down on the desk, which accomplished nothing but hurting her hand. Everyone else in the room ignored her completely. Stupid men.