by Lenora Bell
He drew his shirt over his head.
The map of his scars. Each one a story. A mission.
She trusted that he had lived his life by a strict code of ethics. As strict as the one she lived hers by. He’d thought he was being noble when he pushed her away.
He hadn’t been idly watching life go by. Collecting stolen antiquities was his cover.
He wasn’t a mercenary, but he’d stolen her heart when she thought she had no heart to give.
His hands found the hem of her chemise beneath the coverlet and lifted it slowly up her body. She lifted her arms to help him remove the garment.
Nothing left between them. Skin to skin. Heart to heart.
She sighed when his lips claimed the peak of her breast. Lovers throughout history had made these secret sounds.
He ran his hands along her waist and over her hips.
He was sculpted from marble, from his biceps to his bum.
And his cock. That part of him was hard as stone yet warm and soft to her touch. She guided him between her thighs. She needed to feel him inside her.
“I want to make you come first,” he said, halting her progress with his hand.
“You already did, remember? The carriage?”
“Again.” He slid down her body, parting her thighs with his hands and burying his tongue between her legs.
She wasn’t going to argue with the sentiment. What he was doing with his tongue felt too exquisite.
She didn’t have to be the perfect seductress.
She didn’t have to be perfect at all.
It was such a relief. So freeing. He admired her strength and wasn’t deterred by her many flaws, her pride and defensiveness, her drive to control every situation.
She never let her maid or her friends care for her; she kept everyone at a distance because she had to be so strong all the time.
But this was almost like being born over again, a chance to experience a different way of being, where allowing someone to do something so nice for her didn’t diminish her independence, it increased it.
This wasn’t about control or surrender. No one had to win.
This was simpler than a game, more elemental. Two lovers entwined in an ageless act of devotion.
She guided his head with her hands, helping him locate the perfect place. A few more strokes of his tongue. Just . . . there.
“Raven,” she cried as her muscles clenched and released and pleasure burst in her mind and pulsed through her body.
She reached for his shoulders and pulled him up her body. She kissed him, tasting herself on his tongue. “I want you inside me now.”
He curled his fist around his cock and parted the folds of her sex with his other hand. She wasn’t going to close her eyes. She wanted to witness this moment.
Record and remember the first time their bodies joined. It gave her a primal thrill, even as it pinched and stretched her body, to watch him bury his cock, inch by inch, inside her.
He moved slowly, pausing often to allow her body to adjust to this invasion. “How does that feel?” he asked.
“It stings a little.”
“I can stop at any time.”
“I don’t want you to stop. I want more of you. I’m not going to break. I’m strong enough.”
He eased more of his cock inside her.
“Sex should always feel good, Indy. If it doesn’t, someone’s doing something wrong. Some women counterfeit their pleasure, focusing solely on pleasing a man. I know you won’t do that. You’d better not. I’ll know if you’re pretending,” he said sternly.
She couldn’t help laughing a little bit. “I swear I won’t pretend.”
“My guide and my aim is your pleasure.” He buried more of his cock inside her. “Your pleasure is the key to my own release.”
“Harder,” she gasped. “I can take it all.”
He grasped her hips, angled her body upward, and thrust his entire cock into her in one smooth stroke.
“Raven,” she moaned. “Yes. All of it.”
He thrust again, harder this time. His chest brushed against her nipples as he moved above her. Angular jaw set in a near-grimace, copper-brown eyes open and filled with awe.
“My Indy,” he said. “Move with me.”
She matched his movements, rising to meet him, opening wider for him.
She stopped watching and surrendered to sensation. She reveled in the sound of his harsh, quick breathing. She loved that he called her his Indy.
His pace increased and she threaded her arms around his neck, drawing him against her breast. They moved together, shaking the bedframe, startling the ghosts in this drafty old castle.
He reached his hand between them and touched her, stroking the inside of her sex with his cock, and the outside with his thumb. The dual sensation built to a nearly unbearable height.
“I think . . .” she said breathily. “I think I’m about to have a very real, very not-fake . . . release.”
“Excellent,” he panted. “Because I won’t be able to hold back much longer.”
A few more delicious strokes and she dissolved into pleasure, digging her fingernails into his back as he rode her to his own shuddering bliss.
She would always remember the way his eyes opened and his gaze held hers, afterward, as they lay entwined.
He was her charming, carefree Daniel, the one with the devilish grin.
And he was Raven, the spy who loved her but hadn’t found a way to tell her yet.
Chapter 23
They must have dozed off. The next thing Raven knew, Indy was shaking him by the shoulders.
“Do you hear that, Raven?” she asked.
“What, what is it? What time is it?” he replied, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings and the light stealing in from behind the curtains.
“I heard a woman scream. There it is again.” This time Raven heard it as well. A high-pitched wailing.
“Let’s investigate,” said Indy, leaping out of bed.
Good lord. Would she always leap out of bed in that sprightly manner at such an ungodly hour? Though when she leapt about quite naked it was a hell of a way to wake up.
She was so beautiful with those long limbs and full breasts and her hair wild about her shoulders.
He stretched and yawned.
“Raven. Wake up. I think Lady Catherine is in trouble. I have this terrible feeling that something is very wrong here.”
Half awake, he fumbled into his clothing. What was wrong was cutting short the first night of peaceful sleep he’d had in ages. He’d slept like a baby, dreamless and deep. Sated and satisfied by the best sex he’d ever had in his life.
He’d always known it would be the best with Indy. She was good at everything she put her mind to.
He needed some coffee.
“The noise is faint but it was almost as if it were emanating from the walls,” she said. She walked the perimeter of the room, leaning her ear to the wall at intervals. She stopped by a large relief of a lion carved into the stone walls. “Here. It’s coming from below.”
The hairline crack around the lion’s head would have been easy to miss unless one was looking for it. He pushed on the lion’s head and a doorway opened in the wall.
“A secret passageway! We have to follow it,” cried Indy.
The high-pitched moaning sounded again. Now the eerie noise was accompanied by a thumping drumbeat.
“Something’s happening below the castle, in the dungeons, perhaps. My dagger is lost. Do you have your pistol?”
“No.” He’d been too concerned about taking Indy to safety to retrieve his pistol. “I do have this, though.” He held up the timepiece.
“A pocket watch?”
“Not just any pocket watch. It contains a powder that I’ve been assured will send even a very large man into a sound slumber for several hours.”
“Well, it’s better than nothing. Hopefully we won’t require weapons. Perhaps it’s only a friendly ghost haunting the cas
tle.”
She grabbed a lamp and disappeared into a narrow stone passageway sloping downward.
Slithering sound of insects scurrying out of their path. The moaning and the drumbeat grew louder as they descended into the bowels of the castle.
The passageway descended more steeply now. They emerged onto a balcony overlooking a dank, cavernous space fitted with rusted iron hoops embedded in the walls. “The old dungeons,” Raven whispered.
“Look,” whispered Indy, her eyes widening.
Standing by a fire pit in the center of the room, Dr. Lowe raised his hands and began to chant what sounded like gibberish to Raven.
Lady Catherine sat in a chair near the fire. A chair that had blue painted legs shaped like lion’s paws.
“It’s the chair from the Louvre,” Indy whispered urgently. “And is that . . . it can’t be. It is! It’s the Rosetta Stone!”
Chapter 24
Indy stared in astonishment. Lady Catherine had stolen the Rosetta Stone?
It made no sense.
“What on earth?” Raven muttered.
“There’s a whole collection of stolen antiquities in that room—I can’t understand it. Why would Lady Catherine be involved in such nefarious goings on? She’s wealthy in her own right.”
They watched, hidden behind the railing, as Dr. Lowe lowered his arms and approached Lady Catherine. He placed his hands upon her midsection and began chanting again.
Lady Catherine moaned, her eyes fluttering back in her head.
Raven’s eyes widened. “Lowe must behind all of this, not Lady Catherine. He’s controlling her somehow, using her fortune and connections to steal antiquities.”
“He’s manipulating her mind. We must rescue her from further harm.”
Raven nodded. “And recover the stone. On my count,” he said. “You take the right stairs and I’ll take the left. We’ll surprise them. I don’t see any guards. Should be a simple matter to overpower—”
He stopped talking because someone had grabbed him by the nape of the neck. Someone even larger than the giant of a man she’d shot last night.
Raven dangled from the giant’s hands, kicking his heels at the air ineffectually.
“Look what I found, Dr. Lowe,” shouted the enormous man. “Intruders.”
Dr. Lowe glanced up. “Bring them to me, Baptiste,” he said, without lifting his hand from Lady Catherine’s abdomen.
Indy attempted to escape but Baptiste set Raven down and clamped one hand around Raven’s neck, and one huge hand around the back of her neck, effectively immobilizing both of them.
Raven’s twisting and kicking hadn’t hurt the hulking beast at all.
Raven glanced down at his pocket watch and gave her a significant look. She remembered what he’d told her about the sleeping powder. It might be their only hope. The man appeared to be impervious to pain.
“Well, Lady India, I see you’ve recovered,” said Lowe. “And Your Grace, how humiliating that my guard can lift you so easily, as if you were a featherweight.”
“Lady Catherine,” Indy cried, reaching for her friend, but Baptiste tightened his grip on her neck and she couldn’t escape.
“She’s in a trance, she won’t be cognizant for hours,” said Lowe.
“What have you done to her?” Indy asked.
“Mesmerism, my dear lady. I control her mind now. I tell her what to do.”
“You’ve been using her wealth and influence to steal antiquities, I see,” said Raven.
“One might see it that way,” said Lowe. “Or one could call it by its rightful name. I am the reincarnation of the god Osiris. And therefore, all of these possessions belong to me.”
The man was obviously a lunatic.
“And now you belong to me, as well,” Lowe said coldly. “What should I do with them, Baptiste?”
Indy caught Raven’s eye to let him know she would provide the distraction he required the giant.
She made her body go limp.
“Fainted dead away, has she?” asked Lowe. “Leave her. Bind the gentleman.”
Baptiste let go of her and she slumped to the floor. Through slitted eyes she watched as Raven calmly held out his wrists. “You may bind me, but Sir Malcolm Penny and several men are on their way to this house as we speak. He’ll have you arrested.”
“What’s that?” asked Lowe, alarm raising his voice. “You’re bluffing.”
Baptiste glanced uncertainly at Raven.
Raven must be bluffing. He’d said that Sir Malcolm had a team of agents in Paris, but how would he know where to find them?
“Bind him, I said,” shouted Lowe.
Indy chose her moment carefully.
Before he had bound Raven’s hands fully, she drove her foot into Baptiste’s knee with all her might. The guard stumbled, loosening his hold on Raven.
Raven pulled the timepiece from his pocket, opened the lid and twisted the glass face.
“Cover your nose and mouth,” he yelled at Indy, as he launched the contents of the watch into the giant’s face.
Indy pulled the collar of her gown over her nose.
Baptiste rubbed his eyes wildly, cursing and stumbling across the floor.
Raven lunged for Lowe, pinning him easily, and Indy ran to Lady Catherine.
She cradled Lady Catherine’s head in her lap, slapping her cheeks lightly. “Wake up, wake up Catherine.”
Catherine’s eyelids fluttered open. “Indy?”
Baptiste crashed to the floor in a heap.
“Hurry,” Indy said. “Her pulse is very weak.”
Raven finished tying Dr. Lowe’s wrists and led him to the Louvre chair. “Your throne awaits,” he said, tying Dr. Lowe’s bindings to the legs of the chair.
“You may laugh all you want, but the vengeance of Osiris shall be wreaked upon you,” declared Lowe in an imperious voice.
“You can tell yourself that, if you like. But I rather think the French police will wreak their vengeance upon you, Osiris,” said Raven.
He lifted Lady Catherine into his arms. “Let’s take her above.”
They followed a wider staircase this time and emerged in the main entrance hall. “She needs fresh air,” said Indy. “She’s barely breathing.”
Raven carried Lady Catherine across the hall and out the front entranceway with Indy following. As they exited the house, Indy saw a carriage in the distance.
“Look,” she said to Raven. “Someone’s coming.”
Raven set Lady Catherine down on the front steps and sat next to her, chafing her hands in his. “Are you feeling better, Lady Catherine?” he asked.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Indy,” she said. “What happened? Where am I?”
Indy kissed her friend’s withered cheek. “You’re safe now. That odious man will never harm you again.”
The carriage arrived in the yard and a groom emerged from the carriage house. A tall man with gray hair alighted from the carriage.
“Sir Malcolm,” said Raven.
“You weren’t lying when you said he was coming?” Indy asked.
“Actually, I was. I’ve no idea how he knew we were here. He’s a very resourceful man. Why don’t I take Lady Catherine to her chamber, and you can escort Sir Malcolm inside.”
Indy nodded and Raven supported Lady Catherine around the shoulders and led her back inside the house where her manservant was waiting with a perplexed expression on his face.
“Sir Malcolm,” Indy said, meeting him halfway to the house.
“Lady India.” He bowed. “We meet again. I had hoped it might be under happier circumstances, though. I know everything. I understand you sustained a blow to your head. How are you feeling?”
“Quite happy, actually.” She grinned. “You must not know everything. I told you I’d return the stone to you within the fortnight.”
Sir Malcolm’s gaze sharpened. “You know where it is?”
“I do indeed. Why don’t you come inside with me? I have something to show you.”
“How remarkable.” Sir Malcolm stood in front of the stone, tracing the lettering with his finger. Raven had left Lady Catherine in her chamber with servants to attend her. He’d found Sir Malcolm and Indy in the dungeons, examining the stone.
Dr. Lowe had been removed to a locked chamber which he shared with the still-groggy Baptiste. Miss Mina’s invention had worked like a charm.
“It’s the real stone,” said Malcolm.
“I know,” replied Indy. “If we hadn’t come here after my injury, we never would have guessed where it was hiding.”
“I was convinced Le Triton had taken it,” Raven said.
They’d found the stone. The search was over in the most unexpected of ways. The only thing missing was the Wish Diamond, but he didn’t care about that. Indy was safe and they’d found the stone, that was all that mattered.
“How did you know where to find us, Sir Malcolm?” asked Indy.
“Sir Charles made a confession to me when you never returned from Le Triton’s gaming house. He told me that he was in league with Miss Delacroix and Le Triton to steal the Wish Diamond. He was to receive a cut of the profits. He only confessed to his part in the matter because he feared that you might have been harmed. I located one of your assailants, who told me a very colorful tale.”
Raven took Indy’s hand. “If you’re ever outnumbered in a fight, Sir Malcolm, you’ll definitely want Lady India by your side.”
“Since you hadn’t returned to London, I figured that you would be here at Lady Catherine’s house. I had no idea the stone would be here as well.”
“Neither did we,” said Indy.
“Such a bad business,” said Raven. “I knew Dr. Lowe was a charlatan, but to dupe an elderly lady in such a heinous way, the man deserves a harsh penalty.”
“He’ll pay his dues,” Sir Malcolm assured them. “His name’s not Dr. Lowe, by the way. But that’s a story for another day.”
“Did you recover the diamond necklace?” Indy asked.
“Unfortunately, no. Disappeared into Le Triton’s fortress, and now he knows we’re on to him.”
“My lady,” said a servant, entering the room. “Lady Catherine is asking for you.”