by Alyssa Day
“Watch your mouth, priest,” Christophe growled. “We never have gone head-to-head, but if you insult Fiona again, you’re going to find out just how strong I’ve become.”
She put a hand on his arm. “It’s fine. He has a point. I mean, you need it for the safety of your whole continent, and I only wanted it for the money.”
“The money you use to provide support for so many charities I can’t even count them all,” he said.
“Yes, I have heard that reported,” Alaric said. Fiona wondered if there was anything the priest didn’t hear about or know. The man was scary.
“I have also heard that the Scarlet Ninja only donates a sum equal to precisely half the value of any stolen item. So what do you do with the rest of the money? I imagine you have a very nice home.” Alaric opened his hand and an image of Campbell Manor appeared in the air.
Christophe shot up out of his chair, but Fiona grabbed his hand before he could go after Alaric. “Stop. Please.”
He slowly sat back down. “You don’t have to answer any of this, if you don’t want to. You’re a guest here—my guest—not a prisoner to be interrogated.”
She leaned up and kissed him. “No, it’s okay. I’d wonder, too, if I were them.” She turned to address Alaric and the rest of the group. “Fifty percent of the value is correct. Of course, from any fence, even my most trusted ones, I’m lucky to get sixty percent of an object’s recorded value. In theft, as in the corporate world, there are unfortunately a great many middlemen.”
“And the rest?” Conlan asked gently. “To support yourself and your family?”
She shook her head. “No. I have never once kept a single penny of any proceeds from one of the Scarlet Ninja’s heists. There are many charities we support that are desperately in need of funding but they can’t accept money if they know it comes from the proceeds of crime. Those, we funnel through my offshore accounts that my computer genius of a brother and my very talented butler assure me are virtually untraceable. Of course, a few others are happy to receive anything the Scarlet Ninja has to offer, and they appreciate the intrigue of it all. They count our donations, given through intermediaries, as anonymous and laugh all the way to the bank.”
“I knew I liked you,” Riley said, smiling across the table at her. The princess glanced over at Alaric. “She’s telling the truth. Her emotions reflect nothing but absolute sincerity.”
Fiona blinked, startled. “But I thought you were human?”
“You, too, are human, but have a secret Gift, don’t you? Mine is emotional empathy, or what the Atlanteans call being aknasha. I can read emotions. My sister can, too.” Riley’s smile held a hint of sadness. “I miss her. She’d like you.”
“My brother would like you, too,” Fiona assured her. “Actually, he’d go stark raving mad with excitement over all this. I’d love to be able to bring him someday. Hopkins, too.”
“Your butler?”
“He has been like a father to me since my own died,” Fiona said. “He’s an amazing man.”
“Keeps threatening to shoot me, though,” Christophe said.
“I like him already,” Alaric said.
“Why the Scarlet Ninja?” Riley asked.
“I don’t exactly know how to explain it. I guess I’ve never said any of this out loud before.” Fiona thought for a little while, took another drink of water, and continued. “I want—no, I need—to help restore to the people of Great Britain a sense of hope. The prosperity we enjoyed before the vampires declared themselves.”
“That’s a lot to take on all by yourself,” Conlan said quietly.
“One person can make a difference,” she said. “Especially if each one of us determines to be that person.”
“Amen,” Riley said. “That’s what I had to believe when I was a social worker, or I would have given up in utter despair.”
“Turns out that the majority of the aristocracy have some vampire branches of the family tree. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. As far as I know, we didn’t, but not for my grandfather’s lack of trying. He was still trying to bribe his contacts to turn him when he was murdered. I have the feeling they didn’t want him around for all eternity.” She shuddered. “He was a horrible man.”
“So when the vampires revealed themselves, you were suddenly back to the bad old days where lords and ladies ate off gold plates and drank from jeweled goblets while the peasants starved and died in the streets?” Alaric’s eyes were shadowed.
She wondered briefly if he’d seen any of those bad old days in person, but she wasn’t about to ask him.
“Yes. That’s exactly it,” she said, holding up the sturdy but plain glass that held her water. The same type of glass that the princes, Riley, and the high priest had at their place settings. The plates were simple stoneware, although she recognized neither the stone nor the glaze.
Riley caught the direction of her gaze. “Our housekeeper does try to insist we use the special dishes sometimes, but we’re not very fancy,” the princess admitted.
“Social worker? So you weren’t always a princess.”
Riley laughed. “Oh, heavens no. Getting used to the palace and servants has been a trial for me and them. You should have heard how the cook scolded me when she caught me doing my own dishes after we had a midnight snack.”
Fiona was fascinated. She’d never had the opportunity to wash a dish in her life. “Did you stop doing the dishes?”
“Yes, but I worked a deal that I can cook our own dinner at least once a week, and I get to throw a big bash once a month and everybody has to come. House staff, guards, everyone.” She grinned at Fiona. “I usually make the warriors clean up.”
“That sounds so lovely,” Fiona said wistfully. “Our staff won’t eat with us. Not from any class issue, I think their lives are just too busy. Sometimes it gets lonely.”
“But not now,” Christophe said, squeezing her hand.
“No. Not recently,” she said, smiling at him.
“Your grandfather worked with vampires? Was he a thief?”
“Yes, although he called it business. His corrupt dealings with vampires in Scotland, long before they ever outed themselves to the rest of the world, got my father killed. A revenge plot, Hopkins finally told me, years later. Grandfather stole money from vampires, can you imagine?”
Christophe raised his eyebrows.
“Right, yes, I see where you’re going, but I have anonymity and some measure of recourse,” Fiona answered his unspoken question. “Now that vampires have proclaimed themselves citizens of the European Union, they have to follow our laws. Back then, they killed with impunity, and they used my father to prove a point to my grandfather.”
She realized her voice was trembling, and she took another sip of water. “They were fools. He didn’t care that my father was dead. He only cared that he lost everything else. They took it all away, and then they killed him, too. They probably would have killed me and Declan, too, but Hopkins took us away and hid us. After they killed Grandfather and had stolen all of his lands and money, they didn’t care about a couple of kids all that much, I guess.”
“Where was your mother?” Christophe’s voice was unbearably gentle.
“She died when Declan was born.” She saw a reflection of her own grief in his eyes and realized that his empathy and sympathy ran far deeper than the surface, since his own past had been visited by the same horrible tragedy. “She left the house in trust for us through Hopkins. She knew enough before she died to realize that Grandfather would find a way to steal it out from underneath us if she didn’t.”
“So you became the Scarlet Ninja, and you’ve spent your lifetime stealing back everything they took from you,” Christophe said, touching her cheek. “But you give it all away. How can you possibly be real?”
She looked deep into his eyes, and everyone else in the room vanished from her awareness. Only he and she remained, captured in a crystalline moment of perfectly shared understanding. “I feel that way
about you,” she whispered. “It’s like you stepped out of my dream of a hero and came to life just for me.”
Someone cleared his throat and the moment was broken. She raised her chin and looked, in turn, into every pair of eyes at the table. “I have made a name for the Scarlet Ninja. A thief, true, but one who preys on the evil and the vile. Well, to be honest, occasionally, I borrow things just for fun and to keep the authorities guessing.”
“The Raphael?” Christophe grinned at her.
“Yes.” She sighed. “It’s on the schedule to be returned next month. I’m really going to miss that painting. Saint George is a kind of hero to me.”
“We have a painting of his dragon around here somewhere,” Alaric said casually. “I think the dragon lived a very long life.”
Fiona opened her mouth, but then closed it again. No. Later. She was not asking about dragons now.
“But the sword, Vanquish? You planned to return that?”
“No, actually. I have some guilt about that, but I did plan to provide a perfect copy, or at least the best I could devise, for the display. It might not even have been noticed for a very long time. But so many people are starving right now, thanks to the worst unemployment rate we’ve ever had. So many are homeless, thanks to the vampires claiming ancient homesteads and tangling property up in the courts. People need help, and the sale of that sword was going to fund a huge number of programs.”
“Including the whales,” Christophe reminded her.
She blushed. “No, that was my personal money, remember? I only use the Scarlet Ninja’s money for humanitarian causes. I have several animal charities that Fiona’s Friends, my personal charity, supports.”
“Fiona is a very successful children’s book author,” Christophe told the rest of them.
Riley smiled. “I know. She’s going to autograph a book for His Royal Drooliness. I’m so excited to have her paint in the gardens here.”
Alaric groaned for some reason, but said nothing.
“Thank you. I’m very honored and hope to have the chance to do that someday. But right now, I need to focus on getting my name cleared. The Scarlet Ninja stands for something. I’ve been a symbol of hope to a lot of hopeless people. I’m not going to let these thieves destroy that by portraying me as a murderer.”
“We’ll help ,” Christophe said.
“If it doesn’t interfere with our retrieval of the Siren. That is our clear priority,” Alaric said.
Christophe slowly shook his head. “My priorities seem to have shifted. I will retrieve the Siren, but I will also help Fiona clear her name. I hope you’ll all help me, but I’m doing this no matter what your decision.”
“We cannot let you have the Siren, Fiona,” Conlan said. “Your English queen only had the gem on loan, whether or not she knew it. The gem has waited more than eleven thousand years to return to us, and so it shall.”
“I understand,” she said hastily. “I wouldn’t do anything that might harm you or Atlantis. Anyway, the diamond Christophe gave me will certainly fund my programs for more than a year.”
“The diamond?” Conlan’s face was twitching, as if he was trying not to laugh. “You gave her a diamond?”
“It was mine to give,” Christophe muttered.
“Oh, my friend. It’s going to be an interesting journey for you.” Conlan lost the battle with himself and started laughing.
“It won’t be easy,” Christophe warned her, ignoring his prince.
“I hate to sound like a walking cliché, but nothing worthwhile ever is,” she replied.
“Then we’re done here,” Conlan said, rising. “Riley and I have a baby to feed. Christophe, why don’t you show our guest some of Atlantis before you have to return?”
“Just what I was thinking,” Christophe said.
“Thank you. All of you,” Fiona told them. “It’s good to feel like I finally have allies.”
“Oh, the more the merrier, certainly,” Alaric said darkly. “Will there be more diapers? I love diapers.”
Riley burst out laughing. “Ignore him. He gets a little moody sometimes.”
As they all filed out of the room, Christophe pulled Fiona to him for a hug. “It’s all going to work out.”
She looked into his lovely green eyes and smiled. “I know. After all, what could defeat a team made up of an Atlantean warrior and a Scottish ninja?”
Chapter 26
Christophe watched Fiona as she wandered through the palace and the grounds, exclaiming over and over in wonder like a child. His facial muscles felt strained from the unfamiliar smiles. Everything held for her the joy of discovery, from the tapestries on the walls to the throne room to the kitchens. Even the taste of her first Atlantean blushberries, which she savored so sensuously that it made his cock harden in his pants.
He could tell by the way her eyes flew open and her cheeks turned pink that she remembered exactly where she’d heard the fruit’s name before.
“Oh! You said—”
“Yes, I said,” he agreed, stalking her around one of the smaller garden fountains. “I’d like to say it again. Would you like to make love in Atlantis?”
“Here?” She looked around, almost as if she were considering it, but then she shook her head. “No, of course not. What if someone came along and saw us?”
“They’d be jealous?”
Her lips curved. “Funny, but no.”
“I was thinking my rooms, Princess.”
“Don’t call me that. There are too many princesses in our lives. Riley and now Maeve. It’s just odd.”
“Neither of them are my princess.” He pulled her in for a long, deep kiss and only released her when they were both breathless. “My rooms?”
“Your rooms.”
They didn’t run, as much as he would have liked to, but walked at a barely more than normal rate of speed up the staircase and through the hallways of the palace, until they came to the warriors’ wing and threw open the door to Christophe’s suite of rooms.
“What do you think?” He figured it wouldn’t be very impressive to her. After all, she lived in a mansion, and he only had a few rooms. But they were pretty nice rooms, after all. He did live in a palace. The view from the balcony was stupendous.
She ran across the room and opened the glass-and-crystal-paned doors. “Oh, Christophe. This is absolutely magnificent.”
He followed more slowly, enjoying the view of her lovely round bottom as she bent over the waist-high barrier and looked down. “The gardens are lovely from here, too. What a wonderful place to live. You are so lucky.”
He fitted his body against hers from behind and put his arms around her. “You live in a mansion, my ninja. You’re pretty lucky yourself.”
“We survived a vampire attack, too,” she reminded him. “We’re both pretty lucky.”
“That’s skill. Not my first vampire attack.” He kissed his way down the side of her neck, enjoying her shivers, and then he slowly reached around in front of her and unfastened her silk trousers.
“Christophe,” she gasped, capturing his hand. “What are you doing? Someone could see.”
“Not unless they can see through walls, and there’s not a single recorded incidence of that in the history of Atlantis.” He pointed to the walls dividing his balcony from its neighbors and then to the solid barrier in front, which covered her completely from toes to just under her waist.
“Nobody can see me do this, for example,” he whispered in her ear as he slid his hand down her silken belly to find the nest of curls between her thighs. “Or this,” as his hand moved even lower, and he traced her clitoris ever so lightly with the tip of his finger.
Her sharply indrawn breath was her only reply, so he nibbled the edge of her ear and whispered a few suggestions as to what he’d like to do to her. She stood perfectly still, except for pushing her hips back until his cock was nestled against the sweetly firm cheeks of her still-covered ass.
“I want to hold your breasts in my hands
.”
“No, someone might see,” she said breathlessly. “We should go inside.”
“We will. But first I want to watch you come in the bright magic of Atlantean sunlight.” With that he slid his fingers farther down, until they touched her liquid heat. He coated his finger in the slick wetness and then rubbed up and along her clit again, causing her to buck against him.
“Christophe, I can’t—we can’t—”
“Oh, yes, we can,” he said, tilting his head to take her mouth. He kissed her long and hard while his fingers continued their play, until she started shaking in his arms.
“Now, please, I want you inside me,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Your wish is my command.” He unfastened his own pants and then pulled hers down as he leaned forward slightly, bending her just the tiniest bit over the rail.
“Now, you said,” he reminded her. He plunged the thick head of his cock into her silken sheath and she bit her lip against crying out. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, inch by blissful inch, he entered her, his body barely moving, until his cock was so deep inside her that he felt like part of her. He stood perfectly still, unmoving, as she clenched around him, and then his fingers resumed their rhythmic stroking on her swollen clit.
“You have to move,” she whispered. “You’re driving me crazy.”
“That’s the idea,” he said, alternating pressure with his fingers. Firm, then gentle. Rapidly, then slowly.
“Oh, no. There’s someone coming.” There was real panic in her voice, so Christophe reminded her that nobody could see her from the waist down, especially from the ground below.
“Hail, Christophe,” the man called up. It was one of the palace gardeners. “You owe me another chance at darts.”
“Soon,” he promised, waving to the man in hopes he’d get the hint and move on. Which he did, thank Poseidon.
Fiona collapsed forward onto her folded arms, which rested on the balcony ledge. “I can’t believe that I—that we—oh.”
“Well, we didn’t yet, but we’re going to, now.” He withdrew a little and then, grasping her hip with the hand not busy driving her to an exquisite madness, he thrust into her, hard. “I told you nobody can see you.”