Under the Rose

by Kathryn Nolan

  “You drive me fucking insane,” he whispered fiercely.

  And then Sam Byrne kissed me.

  27

  Freya

  Sam Byrne—my arch-nemesis, my reluctant partner, my competition—had me weak-kneed within seconds.

  His lips moved over mine with a fine precision. There was no equivocation, only a devouring. My enemy had always been too tempting. Who wouldn’t want to be kissed by a man who looked like Captain America and had a brilliant mind and stared at you like you were the only thing that mattered?

  I nipped his bottom lip, and he tilted my head back farther, our tongues meeting. My hands fisted in his expensive tuxedo jacket, wrinkling it as his fingers destroyed my hair. But, oh, that felt good—his nails scratching along my scalp as I submitted to his skillful worship.

  This assault of lips, this battle for breath, was the natural conclusion to all those sparring sessions on the mat. This is what those fights were actually about—a primal hunger that went deeper than petty bickering. Sam was my equal. Sam was my challenge.

  And I let him know that with another brutal bite.

  He growled against my mouth and lifted me high, dragging me along his hard body. When my legs wrapped around his waist, he gripped my ass and held me there. We were panting into each other’s mouths, tearing at each other’s hair. Sam opened his mouth and cut his teeth at my jawline, savored my neck, every kiss as rough as it was seductive. This wasn’t the poetic intimacy of love letters—this was seven years of pent-up sexual frustration unleashed through a kiss.

  And for all those years I’d spent angrily fantasizing about his cock, the thick, iron-hard reality pressed against my sex fully answered my questions. Sam was big. Big. And Byrne unshackled from his tight, stoic control was a snarling beast whose sinful mouth kissed my hair, my ears, the crook of my neck. I arched as much as I could and felt him bury his face against my exposed cleavage, shuddering. There was too much fabric between the two of us, too many damn sequins.

  I reluctantly separated our mouths—but only to take in gulps of breath. My eyes fluttered open, and his face was transformed. It sent a delicious shiver along my spine, knowing I was responsible for the man in front of me with swollen lips and disheveled hair.

  Sam Byrne was fucking beautiful. I had not a single iota left of willpower to deny it. He was beautiful, always had been, and we’d been restraining ourselves for far too long.

  “So…” I panted, “so you did want to kiss me.”

  He turned, pinned me to the wall and speared his fingers into my hair. Tipped my head with firm direction and kissed my throat. No teeth this time, although each caress ached like a bite. He kept his mouth focused, each kiss a long, deliberate lingering that had me squirming and twisting.

  “Freya,” he whispered. “Let’s stop the bullshit. I told you what I wanted in our hotel room.”

  “Told me or implied?”

  It was more fun to bicker with Sam when his cock was between my legs.

  He dragged his mouth to mine, held my gaze. “If we weren’t in public, surrounded by people, I’d tear this in two.” To prove his point, his fingers slipped beneath my dress and twisted in the fabric of my underwear. “I’d take you against the fucking wall, and you’d love every second of it.”

  I gave him a bruise of a kiss, evoking a soft growl from low in his throat. “I’m pretty sure the two of us could fuck right here with no one the wiser.” I rolled my hips, a full-on tease now, and his body went rigid.

  “Will you ever stop pushing me?”

  “Never,” I gasped.

  Sam hoisted me higher, until my breasts were pressed to his face. He nudged the strap of my dress down my shoulder—nudged until it dropped, exposing my bare right breast. Eyes locked on mine, he flattened his tongue against the nipple, sending a piercing pleasure through my body. He kept our eyes locked, forcing me to watch his slow, languorous, licking, the flicking of his tongue, the edge of his teeth, the devotion, the totality of his worship. When he finally stopped—after what felt like a year of tortuous sensation—he stared at my nipple, wet with his saliva. Stared at it with a possessiveness I’d never seen before. This had gone from two stressed-out, sexually-frustrated partners kissing in a bathroom to an intensely erotic dream. An unreal vision with bright, fractured edges.

  “You forget,” Sam whispered, breath hot on my skin, “that every time you push, I push back.”

  There was a burst of conversation from downstairs loud enough to break through the curtain of rushing water. The sound even broke our bodies apart. And let reality fill the space between us.

  “Sam,” I whispered, chest heaving. “Sam.”

  We were both shaking like leaves in the wind. Beneath our feet were ten book thieves wondering what the hell we were doing up here.

  This was what could blow our cover.

  He let out a rough exhale, pressed his forehead to mine. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry. We’re going to get found the hell out, and it’ll be because I kissed you.”

  “I wanted it,” I said. “We’re both at fault.”

  “This is crazy,” Sam said. “We need to stop.”

  But whether he was aware of it or not, he kept dragging his mouth along my neck again. And I kept arching against his thick cock. Finally emboldened, our hands were relentless in their exploration.

  “I agree,” I sighed, as he bit my earlobe. Tugging it. Soothing it with his tongue.

  “I’m going to let you down now,” he said against my ear. “But don’t think for a second I wouldn’t be doing things differently.”

  I nodded, too turned on for coherent speech. I slid easily down his body, which meant I got to experience the feel of his erection again. With respectful fingers, he straightened the straps of my dress as I attempted to brush away the wrinkles on his tuxedo jacket. He dipped his head, and I un-messed his messed-up hair, smoothing down the strands.

  “I never thought I’d see the day when your hair wasn’t perfectly in place,” I mused.

  “This is the first time it’s ever been out of place.” His gaze was flirtatious, a smile tugging at his lips.

  “Another point for me, I guess,” I said.

  He turned off the water.

  Are you okay? I mouthed.

  Sam nodded. He pressed his palm to my cheek, a river of unspoken sentiments flowing between us. We needed to get back to this case. But the urge to sit and spill my secrets to this man was unbearably tempting.

  Instead, I straightened my glasses—the final piece out of order.

  “I’ll be one more minute,” I whispered.

  He left a sweet kiss on my cheek and slipped back out of the bathroom.

  I immediately dropped onto the toilet, with only the drip-drip-drip of the faucet to distract me from my racing, lust-fueled thoughts. I knew what I needed to do, but I also needed twenty seconds. Twenty seconds to slow my heartbeat. Twenty seconds to catch my breath.

  Beneath my dress, my nipples were hard and aching against the tight material. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if Sam and I weren’t in the middle of an historic building while deep undercover, he would have fucked me on this bathroom sink. Probably would have ripped the whole thing right off the wall with the force of his powerful thrusts. His ass flexing with every motion, my bare legs wrapped around his trim waist, one hand over my mouth to keep our tryst secret.

  Oh, god, I wanted that.

  My forehead dropped to my hands. The sensations were too strong. He had incited an arousal that was too distracting and much too persuasive. But the fantasies kept coming—Sam and I staring at each other in the mirror as he fucked me from behind, dress around my waist. Sam on his knees with his head between my thighs.

  Me on my knees. Staring at Sam with his cock hard and ready for my lips.

  I turned the faucet back on and splashed icy cold water on my face until I shocked myself back into the present moment. I looked drunk. Wild and winded. I forced myself to go through Birdie’s messages. Al
l from “friends” who’d seen me at the convention. Every single one was marked unseen.

  Thank god.

  I fired off general replies to maintain their trust, but then I deleted them all. Either Birdie and Julian had the flu of the century…

  …or there was another, more insidious reason why they weren’t here this weekend.

  They might have been the rising rock stars in the world of book theft. But now it seemed like they were up to their ears in scalding-hot water.

  Are you safe?

  Abe’s text came through again.

  Safe. Just a lot going on, I sent back.

  A beat later: That other firm is still saying they’ll have visual confirmation to Scarlett by midnight. Thoughts?

  That was an hour from now. And every investigative instinct I had was screaming that the letters were here. Sam and I were on the right trail. Had to be. And pitting us against another firm was like setting a match to a trail of gasoline. If we weren’t busy competing with each other, competing with someone else was even better.

  I knew exactly what to write back.

  We’ll have the letters within the hour.

  28

  Sam

  When I walked into the dining room, every single person swiveled around to stare.

  It would have felt threatening if the atmosphere hadn’t turned jovial while I’d been upstairs. More drinks had been served, and a few people had clustered off, laughing in corners and admiring the historical details in the room. Even Ward was joking around with Cora, who waved me over excitedly.

  “We’re about to do the final piece of The Empty House dinner,” Ward said. “I knew you two wouldn’t want to miss it. And Birdie is all right?”

  “We’ve had a lot of calls from customers regarding the shipment that was delayed at the airport,” I said, holding my hands out apologetically. “It’s been a real headache. Birdie was responding to two extremely irate customers.”

  “Such a shame,” Cora said. “I can’t imagine you leave many customers unhappy with all the good that you do.”

  “Our customer’s happiness is always our first priority.”

  “Excuse me one second,” Ward said. He went striding toward Thomas—Cora looked extremely concerned before schooling her features into a demure smile.

  “You didn’t share my letters with Birdie, did you?” she asked. “All that talk about passion and thrill-seeking she was going on about. It made me worried.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Having you as a confidante has been lovely. Although I wished I’d known that you look like, well, this,” she said, running her nail up the side of my jacket.

  I coughed into my fist but stood still. “How did you think I looked?”

  She tipped her head to the sprightly man in his eighties a few feet away. “Like that.”

  “I just look like me.”

  “I’ll say.” Cora sipped her martini with cool elegance. “Thomas wouldn’t even be bothered except that both men won’t stop sending letters to the house. He doesn’t mind what affairs I indulge in, in my own time, but he feels like I’m ‘boasting about.’” Another eye roll. “Of course, this is part of what he sees as his curse.”

  I watched Thomas and Ward from over her shoulder. Ward was telling some story in his booming voice about sheep herding. A ploy to make Thomas feel comfortable? Or did he honestly not suspect it was the Alexanders who’d stolen his valuable first edition?

  “I guess that’ll serve me right for carrying on with two men at the same time. Two men with a flair for the dramatic and a love of the written word,” Cora mused.

  I coughed into my fist again, concealing my surprise. “A lesson for next time, I suppose.”

  She tapped her nail on her glass. “May I ask a personal question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you love that woman you wrote that letter to?”

  “Love?” I repeated because Freya was walking back into the room and I had to remind myself to breathe.

  In the flickering candlelight, in this lavish room, Freya was more beautiful than any antique. She held my gaze for a lasting moment, framed by the doorway, and I knew she was recalling our kiss.

  That kiss. Was kissing Freya what living life uninhibited felt like? If life wasn’t crushing anxiety and exhausting dread and forcing down any inclination toward joy…then did life feel like Freya’s lips? Could life feel like something you wanted to take more of? To savor and indulge?

  For the very first time, I’d acted on hungry impulse. I hadn’t weighed the consequences beforehand, hadn’t suppressed my feelings for duty or honor. In fact, what I’d done in that bathroom was dangerous, reckless and stupid.

  The ends of Freya’s soft lips quirked up.

  It was fucking worth it.

  “It was years ago,” I said to Cora. “I don’t even remember what I wrote.”

  Yes, you do.

  “How very cute,” Cora said.

  “Come now, friends,” Ward suddenly boomed, looking ruddy-faced from liquor. “The hour grows late, and we have one last tradition to perform before tomorrow’s delights. Birdie and Julian, I trust that your masks are probably still stuck in the Phoenix airport?”

  Freya was back by my side. I swore I could feel her body heat.

  “They are,” she said. “If anyone has masks we could borrow, Julian and I would appreciate it.”

  “I’m sure Thomas and Cora can oblige this request,” Ward said.

  “I always bring extras,” Cora promised. “I can’t ever decide. You’re welcome to take your pick.”

  A slight wind had picked up outside, rustling the branches against the window. The room felt darker, quieter—fraught. The fireplace and the candles and everyone’s black-tie dress made the room feel released from time. I eyed the secret door we’d come through warily, wondering if bootleggers were scheduled to arrive.

  “Now, everyone, pick up those pens and the slips of parchment paper,” Ward said. “This is a silly game, a game of competition, to get the blood stirring before tomorrow. The items we’ll be bidding on are not available to the general public. They do not come with the proper paperwork. They come with strings, notoriety, and a grave responsibility. This is your chance. One chance for a piece of rarity you cannot live without.”

  Freya stepped close to me, and our arms brushed together.

  “On this slip of paper, truly decide what it is you crave. And be honest with how much you are willing to spend on it.”

  Ward nodded at us to go—the guests were scribbling frantically as if they’d known for weeks what they wanted.

  “What should it be, Birdie?” I asked quietly.

  Freya took the slip of paper and the pen. She scrawled The Love Letters of George Sand and Alfred de Musset. I nodded my agreement.

  “And how much?” she asked lightly.

  One of the last cases Gregory and I had worked together had been busting an illegal art auction in an old shipping container in Brooklyn. It had held absolutely none of the flair of this Empty House circle—it was merely interested buyers who didn’t give a shit about authentication papers. It was motivated by greed, less by the desire to own a piece of history. The prices, however, had been staggeringly high.

  I took the pen, wrote $1 million underneath.

  “A paltry amount,” Freya mused.

  I winked at her—which I’d never done in my entire life. She flushed.

  Ward flipped his hat around. “In here now.”

  We folded our slips, dropped them inside. The other guests were brazenly staring at me as they dropped their slips in. Thomas wouldn’t meet my eye. Roy dropped multiple pieces of paper, even though the directions had only been for one.

  “Do you want to know what I wrote on mine?” he asked, sidling over to us. He looked bleary-eyed and flushed.

  “Why not?” Freya shrugged.

  “I wrote down where the fuck is Bernard?”


  Freya’s eyes flew to mine. “Bold choice, Roy.”

  “Just because he’s the leader doesn’t mean he controls us,” he said. “That’s what I most desire.” His words dripped with disdain. “If that man has been caught, I think it’s only appropriate to let us know so we don’t all go to fucking prison.”

  Roy’s voice was slightly raised now, and the other guests were definitely listening. Ward was methodically opening each slip of paper, but I caught his lip curl at Roy’s words.

  “How very interesting,” Ward cut in. “You all want the same item.”

  “We all want you to tell us where Bernard is?” Roy asked sarcastically.

  Ward chuckled darkly. “Oh, Roy. Any rancher can tell you there are strong members of a pack of animals. And weak members. Guess what happens to the weak ones?”

  Roy, swaying a little, mumbled into his drink but kept quiet.

  “Now,” Ward said sharply, “as I was saying, every single person in this room is vying for the same item. An item with a lot of attention right now.” He shuffled through the slips of paper and began reading. “$4 million, $875,000, $1 million, $1.5 million, $6 million, $550,000.” Another chuckle. “Your pre-bids are all over the map, ladies and gentlemen.”

  I could see the point of this exercise now—if you were truly serious about bidding on a rare manuscript, would you hear the highest bid and try to out-bid it? Were the highest bids only mind games? Was Ward even reading the correct numbers or lying?

  Which brought up an even more persistent question—who was the new seller and who stood to profit?

  “Six million is preposterous,” a man grumbled from the corner.

  Ward merely grinned. “That’s what everyone said last year. And yet I remember the highest bid for the rarest item standing at ten million.”

  There were murmurs in the room, a few smug glances, some anxious posturing.

  “Remember this is merely information to help you decide how far you’re willing to go tomorrow night. We won’t be the only ones there. Masks will be on. Lips will be sealed. Trust is the priority. Sleep on it, my friends, and come tomorrow prepared to pay for what you want.”