Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2)

by Diane J. Reed

  He groans, the kind that comes soft and deep from within his chest.

  God, how I love this power! I see the stone blaze bright red as I sweep my tongue over his tip, teasingly, then swallow him whole, feeling his blood pulse at my lips as if I’d somehow gripped his soul. In and out I move, relishing him like candy, until he grabs my arms and pulls me to my feet with such raw power it leaves me rattled.

  No permission—taking me by force—Creek lifts me in his strong arms and carries me to the bed at the back of the wagon. He lays me down gently over the old quilts, soft as baby blankets, where his eyes travel over every inch of my body with more than desire . . .

  With love.

  A guy can’t fake the look that’s in his eyes right now.

  Those glacial blue eyes are melted pools of tenderness, and it blows me away even more than his touch.

  “Creek,” I gasp, in love with every inch of him, but feeling oddly shy right now at the same time, like I might be pressing too hard into his secrets. “You’ve never—I mean, you know—told me . . .”

  He tips his head slightly to one side. “What? That I love you? Baby, you’ve got me heart and soul—”

  I swallow hard.

  “No, you’ve never told me your last name. I mean, the real one.”

  Creek lays down as gently beside me as a panther moving in shadows, his body slinking next to mine, warm and hard. The stone heart around his neck falls between us, hot as a hunk of coal. And for a moment I thought I saw it flash sparks.

  “It’s the same name as yours now, right?” he whispers, running his finger oh-so-softly down my breastbone to my navel, where he pauses before going further toward my sex. To my surprise, he opens my legs and leans his face there and breathes the word “Flynn” into the folds of my skin. Just one lick sets my nerve endings on fire, before he runs his tongue up my to my belly button all the way to my lips. He perches over me with his arms on either side, and I can see his eyes are all wondering and yearning at the same time. “Will you take my name, Robin?”

  I grab his head and pull him down to me, wrapping my legs around his beautiful ass.

  “Yes!” I smile before he devours me in a kiss.

  The stone is hot, pressing between my breasts, but what feels far more profound is his penis, hard and pulsing, against my thigh. “I want you, Creek,” I say breathlessly, squeezing him between my legs with all I’ve got. “Now—”

  “Not yet, Mrs. Flynn,” he whispers, stopping my hand as I try to touch him again. He clutches my hand in his, hard, and draws down to my sex again. “I want you to know what it feels like to be my . . . wife.”

  He breathed that word like the finest poetry before he slid his tongue between my thighs, dabbing up and down the folds at first until settling and undulating softly, to the beat of my own heart. Pulsing and wet, Creek drives his tongue up and down the inner lining of my skin, and I grab his cropped hair in fierce desire. This is crazy—the white hot explosions are overtaking my vision, trickling into every inch of my body like bolts of electricity. I widen my legs and pull his head down to me, groaning in pleasure so great it overtakes me almost like pain. His tongue in turns sweetly dabs at the inner folds and then rolls back and forth over my sex like a freight train. For a moment it’s so powerful I lose my breath, but then I want to scream and nothing comes out. I’m becoming wasted by him. As if to show off more power, Creek inserts his tongue into my vagina and expertly brings it back out to circle the nub of my clitoris in one smooth and artful motion, again and again, until all I can see is blistering white sparks. The pleasure rolls over me, seizing every nerve and muscle, and I can’t help letting out a cry.

  “More!” I demand breathlessly, completely stricken by him as he reaches up his hands and fondles my nipples while his tongue is still buried in my sex, throbbing, licking, taking me for everything I’m worth. I spread my legs as wide as they can go, wanting my body to swallow him whole. And that’s when I beg—

  “Creek, come inside me now!” I insist. In spite of the overwhelming pleasure, I move beneath him and seize his penis in my hands. “I want you inside,” I moan desperately.

  But Creek’s tongue seeks my nipple as his hand keeps the pleasure going between my legs, slipping his fingers up and down and driving me crazy. His finger circles me as he sucks on my breast, bringing a whole new wave of pleasure to my being. “No baby,” he gasps, taking a breath. “I want you to come—full blown—before I enter you because it’s your first time. I don’t want anything to get in the way.”

  I cup my hands around his cheeks and pull his face to mine, kissing him, even as his hand never stops working on the heaven between my thighs.

  “How do you know I’m a virgin?” I whisper, arching my back, up and down, with the pleasure. My eyes are half closed with the insanity of his touch, trembling as he sinks his fingers into my vagina and then circles my clitoris again.

  “Because,” he says, staring at me as if I’m the only girl who ever existed, “it’s written on your soul. You still have hope.” He crushes his lips to mine in a take-all kind of kiss. “And that makes you beautiful. You don’t have a trace of weariness for men in your eyes, Robin. And I’m for damned sure gonna keep it that way.”

  With that, Creek kisses my forehead, my cheek, my lips, moving between my breasts, then one for each nipple for good measure. His hand keeps working at my sex, sending shivers across my whole body as he traces kisses down my waist and to my thighs. I feel his kisses, hot and rapid, head to my sex and lick at me fiercely now. No, more than that—his lips start to swallow me whole until the waves are so intense that I’m screaming, panting, and screaming for more. All at once, I feel taken by a mighty wave so beautiful and powerful, it’s as though I’ve been washed out to sea with sun glinting on crashes of water. The sensation leaves me shaking and gasping, and before I know it, I feel a cool circle working its way up my finger.

  I can hardly see right now, but in the haze of my mad orgasm, I realize Creek has slipped a gold ring onto my finger.

  “How do you like being Mrs. Flynn?” he smiles crookedly, just enough to flash that dagger scar before pressing a warm kiss to my forehead.

  Stunned, I feel completely bathed in Creek’s love, as if he’d spread a warm light all over my body, making every inch of my skin revel in bliss. Lifting my hand, I glance at the gold that’s wrapped around my finger. “C-Creek,” I stutter, where did you get this?”

  He’s beaming at me, eyes sparkling in mischief, and he lifts my chin with his finger and swipes another kiss.

  “Thieves never reveal their secrets,” Creek whispers in reply, but it’s then that I realize the ring looks conspicuously like the gold earring left in the woods by our gondola guide. Except there’s a pretty scroll design etched across it now with the word “Partners” stamped in the center. He winks at me, and I get an inkling that he must’ve conspired with the gypsy jewelry-makers while I was in the wagon today.

  “Hold on for a second,” Creek says as he bounds from our bed. I can hear the coins from the gypsy men’s bread toss rattling in his trouser pockets as he lifts his pants to retrieve something. He’s back beside me again in a moment, where I see him unwrapping a condom with Italian words printed on it.

  “More stolen goods?” I giggle, marveling at his preparedness. But Creek’s face grows stern.

  “Robin,” he whispers, putting on the condom and then tracing the hair gently from my forehead while searching my eyes. “I never want you to go through what my mom and your mom did—having babies before they really knew who they were. It turns women into ghosts. I want you, Robin, full and alive and fiery as hell.”

  With a wicked smirk, I grab at him and thrust him into me before he can utter another word. Wrapping my legs around Creek, I pull him into me stronger, and he gasps as his flesh cuts through the tightness of my skin. Hitching my breath, I realize I’ve lost my virginity to my . . .

  Husband.

  “Oh Robin,” he cries out as his muscles
shift into overdrive, crazy with desire. As he pumps into me, slowly at first, our bodies combining with sweat, muscle, and heat, I feel my own inner flesh ripping apart. It stings more than hurts, like a raw sunburn, and we sway and rock, when Creek’s hand reaches down to my sex again, lovingly rubbing against me until I’m once again on fire. Another wave comes—one that totally shocks me, that I didn’t know I was capable of—and completely makes me forget the sting at my vagina. I cry out, my legs encasing him tighter, swallowing him whole and abandoning myself to all that is Creek.

  And that’s when my vision explodes into a horizon of red.

  At first I think it must be another orgasm. Yet out of the billows of crimson, I see a figure rise up, as if nourished into being by our desire.

  She’s wearing a beautiful red gown, with long curly hair like mine—and a vicious scar across her neck. Her dark brown eyes stare at me penetratingly, but then I see her lean her head back and laugh.

  It’s Martiya—

  “Look at those red sheets,” she smiles at me, pointing.

  For some reason, I can see Creek and I in our act of lovemaking, as if I’ve become a part of her red vapor. We’re beautiful together, our bodies entwined. But below us, the faded crazy quilt is stained with a spot of blood. My blood.

  “Your lover has tasted you,” Martiya says in triumph with folded arms. “Now you are a woman, a Thagarni, like me.”

  She holds up the ruby stone in her hand, where it glistens with an inflamed glow. The star-like cracks at the center pulse menacingly as if the heart is on fire.

  And all at once, I feel my soul get swept into the cracks.

  Chapter 13

  I’m a red column of pure energy now.

  I want to scream for Creek, for Martiya—for anyone to rescue me—but no sound comes from my mouth. I feel like a lost little girl in this swirl of crimson smoke, disoriented, and I can’t help wishing there was someone here to hold me, perhaps even my mother, to keep me from this bizarre weightlessness. With that thought, I see the smoke begin to clear out a little. Forms creep through the haze, and I spy a candle lighting up a small space. Hoping it’s the candle in our wagon, I pull myself slowly toward it, like a gentle breeze, only to realize that there’s another woman there. She looks a lot like Martiya and me—but she’s wearing a black and white nun’s habit. Her lips move slowly, steadily while she rocks back and forth, as though she’s chanting Hail Marys.

  “A-Alessia?” I burst, unable to deny the resemblance between us.

  The woman doesn’t appear to hear me. But her lips halt for a moment as she takes her time to glance over her shoulder, as if she felt my presence with another sense altogether. When she doesn’t apparently see anything, she stares at her candle again and rocks slightly, chanting more. The room is small and seems to be made of stone, with only a wood board and a pillow for a bed, and the moonlight from a small window caresses her nun’s habit. In the distance, I can see beautiful mountains set into relief by the moon’s glow. I recall the letter Creek stole from the de Bargona’s that said Istituto Mentale: Montagne.

  Mental Insitution: Mountains.

  But this doesn’t seem like a typical loony bin. More like a convent in the Alps, not far away from the vineyards that border our camp.

  “Alessia!” I gasp again. “M-Mom, I think I can find you,” I promise, looking again at the mountains and attempting to memorize their shape. “If I follow that landscape—”

  Just then, a bird flutters to her windowsill. In the moonlight, I can tell it’s a blueish falcon, perhaps the same one trained by Zuhna, and it lets out a cry. The woman turns from her chair to listen to it, her body language indicating its presence is not unusual. She picks up a hunk of bread from a plate near her candle and sets it on the windowsill for the falcon to eat. But when the falcon ignores her to look straight at me and utters a hoarse call, the woman swivels and stares in my direction. Her eyes squint, as if she might actually be perceiving my outline in the candlelight.

  Then her eyes grow wide.

  She drops her plate with a crash and screams.

  “Robin—ROBIN!” Creek cries as if summoning me from the grave. “What’s wrong, sweetheart—did I hurt you?”

  He’s gently shaking me to get a response. As my eyes focus on him, I blink several times, delirious.

  When I gaze about the wagon, I realize I’ve returned to my body.

  “She’s not dead!” I burst, hugging Creek with all my might. His warm skin soothes my rattled nerves like a balm. He rocks me slowly in his arms until I stop trembling. We are skin on skin—it makes me feel as if we’re soul to soul—and I allow myself to fully surrender to his tight embrace. When I manage to catch my breath, I let go and glance at the stone around his neck like it’s an instrument of voodoo.

  “This heart,” I say, pointing at it, gasping, “it-it led me to my mother.”

  Creek braces my shoulders with his hands. “Robin,” he says seriously, “what did you see?”

  I can tell Creek’s worried by the flinty look in his eyes. Staring again at the ruby heart, I flinch as if it holds a bizarre movie screen.

  “I-I went inside it,” I begin. “The minute I thought about my mother, it somehow grabbed me and took me in a cloud of red smoke to where she is—with Martiya’s help, I think. If I can trust what I saw, Alessia’s in the mountains north of us, maybe fifteen miles from the vineyards by our camp.”

  “The Dolomiti,” Creek nods, wrapping his arms around me again. “Those are the mountains the gypsies mentioned.”

  He clutches me like I’m his everything—as if he feared he’d lost me for a moment—and I have to admit that I relish melting in his arms. It feels so good to be naked and needing each other, in exactly the same way.

  “But Creek,” I whisper in his ear, “Alessia’s not in an institution like the letter said. At least, not the way we think of one. It’s more like a convent of some kind.”

  “The convent for crazy nuns?”

  Creek pulls away from me and gets off the bed, walking to the front of the wagon and grabbing our clothes. He hands me mine and slips on his pants. “That’s what I heard the gypsy men whispering about while I was shoeing horses,” he says, putting on his shirt as well. “It’s a place where the church sends nuns who have too many—well, let’s just say—visions.”

  Reluctantly, I sigh and slip into my blouse and skirt, following his lead and realizing this might be the end of our honeymoon for the night.

  Creeks walks over and cups my cheek, sensing my disappointment. “We have to be ready to move again by dawn, Robin, through the gypsy byway that no one can see. Do you know where to go? Did your, um, episode reveal that?”

  I shudder.

  Episode—

  God help me, I’m a chick who actually has episodes. Weird visions like the crazy nun of Venice. And for whatever reason—probably because he comes from a spooky trailer park—Creek seems to be completely okay with that.

  Nevertheless, he stands tall and gazes at me, and there’s an odd look on his face that I don’t recognize.

  “You’re a Thagarni now, aren’t you?” he says with a resignation in his voice that’s heartbreaking, as if he knows he has to share my fate with a destiny I don’t completely understand.

  “Yeah, I-I guess I am,” I reply, recalling Martiya’s words. I nod heistantly.

  Without warning, Creek’s large hands ball into fists. His face darkens and he glares into my eyes.

  “But you know what?” he says. “You’re also my wife. And to my mind, that pretty much trumps everything.”

  In that rubber band way he can snap from hard to soft, he gazes down at the stone upon his chest, brooding for a moment, before I see his fists relax a little.

  “Now come on,” he sighs, nodding at the bed. “We’ll sleep in our clothes for a bit longer and head out at the first light of dawn.”

  Chapter 14

  I wake to the smell of smoke.

  And I’m coughing uncontrollab
ly.

  For a second, I pat my hands down my body, wondering if I’ve accidentally entered Martiya’s realm and the ruby heart again in my dreams. But when I look around, I see flames licking at the edges of our wagon.

  “Robin!” Creek cries in a hoarse whisper, hacking. He grabs my hand so hard it hurts. “Follow me—we have to escape. Now!”

  With lightning speed, he tears us from the bed and feels his way through the wagon to find a trap door beneath the table—I should’ve known the gypsies would have a quick getaway hatch like Granny Tinker! Creek lifts it up and we drop outside to the grass below in the darkness. It’s only been a couple of hours since we fell asleep—not even dawn yet—but it’s pretty clear to me that de Bargona’s men have found us.

  Search lights scan through the smoke over our heads, but we slither like snakes along the grass until we reach the woods and bolt for a tree.

  All of a sudden, I hear a huge crash followed by the sound of gunshots and running horses.

  “Shh,” Creek whispers, wrapping his palm around my mouth, knowing I’m scared and it’s hard not to scream. “Climb the tree.”

  Luckily, I have some experience from living with Creek near Bender Lake. I hitch up my skirt and scale several limbs in a flash. Creek passes me swiftly and gives me a yank with arms so strong that my boots are dangling in air. With one big swoop, he nestles my body onto a thick limb beside him, steadying my waist for support.

  “It’s okay, we made it,” he whispers, and it’s then that I recall his words from dashing across rooftops in Venice: Most thugs are stupid—they don’t bother to look up.

  I’m praying that’s true, because as two burly men go from wagon to wagon, tipping them over or setting them on fire, then shooting their guns in air as a fear tactic to make people come out, I’m petrified their search lights will spot the other gypsies as well as us, high in this tree.