Chosen Thief (2 page)

Her Vampire growled quietly, and I couldn’t stop
what she did next. She came at me too fast, blurring. The sweetest Cupid’s bow lips were on mine, caressing in a not-so-sweet way, sensually wrecking my resolve, my
mind
.

“Isa…” I whispered and pathetically, against my plan, desire outweighed practicality. I gave in for the briefest moment, needing this one last taste of her.

With her lips as soft as silk, I took what she was offering, grabbing
her face and driving my tongue inside her mouth. I turned us, slamming her back against the glass double doors behind me. Our tongues glided against each other’s, feeling and tasting of pleasurable devotion, our groans filling the air in a perfect melody of affection.

“There it is,” she murmured breathlessly as our mouths unmolded. As I bit her delicious jaw, one of her hands swept into my hair
while the other ran under my jacket to my back, holding me flush against her. “I can scent it. Your love for me is so fragrant.” She gripped me tighter, tilting her head further for my mouth. “I love you just as much, Caro.”

I stilled, my teeth on her earlobe as she sighed softly.

Goddammit. It can’t be happening like this.

I jerked away, taking a few steps back, running a hand through my hair
as I tried to catch my breath. I peered anywhere but at the mocha-skinned goddess before me.

Silence reigned as we stood motionless.

I knew she was regrouping just as much as I was.

Which meant my game plan had to be damn perfect. She was anything but stupid.

Slowly lifting away from the door, Isa took one step toward me. But stopped when I backed away. “Look, Caro, I know what you’re hiding
under that black hair.” My gaze snapped to hers, and the corners of her lips tilted. Again, there was that age-old look staring me in the eyes. “I’m a Vampire, honey. When I bit you, I knew you weren’t an earth Elemental gone goth like you tell everyone.” Arched red eyebrows lifted. “But I didn’t even need to taste you to know that.” Her eyes dipped then swung back up. “I’ve seen you naked plenty
of times.”

“Isa,” I stated instantly, holding up my hands. “I would prefer you not—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” she interrupted, her arms crossing. “You have my word, no matter how this plays out between us. I’m a firm believer in secrecy when someone hides what they are as hard as you do. Although, I have to admit, what I tasted was the last thing I thought you were.” Fuck, she was going for reasonable…which
meant I couldn’t. “Now, tell me what the hell this is all about. Are you scared what my mom will say or do? Because I can tell you right now, she won’t care we’re of different factions—”

“Stop, Isa,” I cut her off this time, and held her gaze steadily. “You don’t want me. You may have smelled love and attraction on me, but my love’s twisted.” And I was learning — too late for her — that was a
whole other
truth
in itself. “I wouldn’t want to be with someone who has done what I’ve done. You deserve better than me.”

Gently, her head tilted. “What have you done that you don’t think I would approve of? I know you have a past. No one at the age of twenty wears as many weapons as you do and doesn’t.” A slight shrug of her delicate shoulder. “I’m used to violence. Whatever you’ve done doesn’t
even compare to my family, I can assure you. If anything, you’ll fit right in…if they don’t have a conniption that I’m not the little princess-to-marry-a-prince they always thought I was.”

I didn’t back down. “You shouldn’t love me, Isa. You should move on.” I stared into her patient scrutiny…and took the deep, black plunge. “I cheated on you.”

The very air shifted. It felt frigid as she gazed
back at me, utterly frozen. “When?”

“Multiple times in the past two months.” I kept my breathing steady, even as hers escalated. “I’m sorry, Isa.” I held my hands out like a true bitch, as if it wasn’t my fault. I even tilted my lips in what I thought was a careless fashion. “But like I said, I’m not the woman to bring home to meet mom. Not when I’ve been out fucking someone else.”

There was
no warning as a blurred fist slammed against the side of my face.

Sparkles danced in my vision as I knocked into a table, the sturdy wooden antique and the pristine lamp on top of it falling to crash loudly on the wooden floor. The sound of porcelain shattering echoed before I reacted on years of training, twisting against what could be a bloody fall, and landed in a crouch. I shook the fuzziness
off as I instinctively popped up, taking a few steps back from the furious Vampire. And my God, she was furious, her eyes glowing brightly, her fangs beginning to extend.

“
You fucking bitch!
” she shouted, fists clenched as she leaned forward…and hissed at me. She had never looked more beautiful. “
Who the fuck is she?
”

Calmly, I wiped the side of my face where I could feel blood slowly trickling
down my cheekbone. I was fully playing the part I had chosen. “Not a she, Isa. A he.” I wiped the blood on my pants. “You know I’m bi.” I shrugged a shoulder. “You weren’t giving me everything I needed, so I—”

I grunted, words and breath gone as her knee flew into my stomach, suddenly in front of me again. Jackknifing over with the precisely placed hit, I let her finish me off, shouting as pain
exploded in my lower back when her elbow connected with my kidneys, taking me down to the ground.

“Fuck you,” she hissed. “Goddammit, Caro. Fuck you.” She stepped over me as I sucked air on the ground, her heels clicking loudly on the hardwood. “You think you’re the only one to fuck the other person over here?” I lifted my head, pushing up on my arms as she turned around, walking backward. Her
face was flushed and her eyes still glowing, enraged as she glared at me. “I’ve been lying to you this whole time, bitch,” she sneered at me as she lifted a pair of keys off a hook by the back door. “You don’t even know my last name. I didn’t trust you that much.” She threw open the door to the pitch-black night, the sound of crickets heavy on the air. She growled quietly, her Vampire pissed as
she glanced to the wooden door she had first entered, and shook her head. “And to think I almost did.”

Furious green eyes found mine as I slowly sat up on my knees. “I sure hope the dick was worth it, Caro, because you’ve lost me. Lost what we fucking had.” She shook her head fiercely. “What we could have had for a future together.” She turned to the opened door. Paused. Then she laughed harshly.
“And you’d better get the hell out of here before my mom comes home.”

Fierce exquisiteness strode out the door, slamming it behind her, though I heard the latch click, locking as normal. Not even five seconds later, I heard her Mercedes revving before the brash sound of her car speeding around the side of the intimate house could be detected, gravel picking up, more than likely wrecking its paint
job.

I waited a full minute before I let it hit me. And it came in a tidal wave.

Tears flooded my eyes, burning as I sobbed. Head falling into my hands, my long black hair protected me like a shroud. I had wrecked the one innocent thing in my life, torn it apart on purpose, and it was something I could have prevented entirely if I wasn’t pushing so hard at what truly scared me. It had been a
selfish act on so many levels; I couldn’t help but be utterly ashamed. I had thoughtlessly taken a sparkling gem in my long history of a black, dismal life, and twisted it. I’d ruined its flawless, innocent polish and only realized what I was doing far too late. So I’d had to push her away in the hope she would walk away whole, but in the process, I had possibly fucked up and hurt her beyond repair
with my quick improvisation.

What was even more twisted: knowing what I knew now, I still wouldn’t change my actions.

I never would.

My choices were the abyss of despair, my heart wrenching and twisting, tearing in agony.

I shuddered as I let out my shame.

Let out my unfulfilled want and the new addition to my old heartache.

Unknowing how long I hunched on the floor, head down to the wood,
warm tears seeping through my fingers, I jerked when the crash of fate sounded.

In the form of a loud-as-fuck cell phone ringing.

“Goddammit,” I shouted against the floor.

But there was no stopping this.

There was only what I had chosen to do. I heaved in a calming breath and pressed the long-trained, self-preserving self-denial firmly back into place, a cold reality to live in, but needed
nonetheless. Placing a hand on the floor, I stood slowly on wobbly legs, brushing my damp, sticking hair off my cheeks, then dug out the phone from inside my pocket, answering it. “I got your first message loud and clear. A second round of pleasantries isn’t needed.”

There was a pause over the line, then I heard the rumbly chuckle I had heard earlier that evening when this very cell phone had
started ringing inside my car, planted for me to find. “Why, Caro, you sound as if you’ve been crying.” A pause. “Whatever could be so fucking important,” a wolf’s growl, “that you’re late?”

I glanced at my watch, eyes still burning as tears began to dry on my face, and I muttered a curse. “I’m on my way. Just hold up your end of the deal and I’ll hold up mine.”

He hummed quietly. “Did I pick
the wrong person to kidnap?” A pause. “I do so hate being wrong. I thought this one was your weakness…but since your voice is all croaky and breathless, and I haven’t hurt this one…yet…you’re leading me to bad assumptions.”

“There’s no one else,” I stated more clearly. “Keep him alive and unharmed as you promised and you’ve got me.”

A wolf’s quiet snarl. “I’d better. Otherwise, I’m going to
start gnawing off little bits of him from the toes up.”

My teeth clenched. “How long have we been at this sadistic song and dance?”

His bipolarity was clear as he changed his tune instantly, purring, “A very long time, Caro.”

“I gave you my word, so you know I’ll stand by it.”

There was a long pause. “You’ve taken care of any loose ends? You know I hate those.”

“Loose ends,”
goodbye, Isa
, “done and shot to hell.”

Another pause. “Fuck, I’d love to know who’s gotten you in such a tizzy.”

“Fuck off.” I glanced at my watch. “I’ll be there in less than an hour, and I swear, if he’s hurt…”

“Just get here, Caro, and I won’t have the pleasure of hurting him.” The line went dead.

Snapping my phone shut and stuffing it in my pocket, I decided against exiting through the main hall I
had traveled down earlier since the butler was probably out there somewhere. The back door was no good because I had seen video surveillance of the house outside, and I wasn’t in the mood to trip the damn thing while making my way around to the front of the house where my car was parked. The police weren’t really what I needed right now, so I stepped over the porcelain pieces littering the floor and
headed toward the frosted glass French doors. I had seen another set of these when I had entered the small but lavish home through the front door, and I hoped they connected to the same room. Wiping at my gritty eyes, I opened the door and stepped inside. And jerked as Mage magic zapped me as I crossed the threshold.

I came to an abrupt stop, my eyes flying wide open, quickly assessing the situation.

“Shit.”

I said it again. “Shit.”

The room was just as gorgeous as the other, but cozy with brown leather sofas, a large wooden, planked coffee table between the three sides of a square the individual sofas made. All of it faced the roaring fire in the large ornate fireplace, no other lights lit in the room, and firelight twinkled over the closest surfaces, making the smooth, sand-colored
walls sparkle with the Mage protection that layered them. Mage protection that I had just walked through.

And there was the little bonus that the room wasn’t empty.

Three individuals were in here, all studying me from head to toe, penetrating in their quiet assessment. Two men and one woman. They each had black hair with black knit hats, black close-fitting fatigues, black gloves and boots,
and painted black faces. Isa had said her family had been on a mission, but for some reason I hadn’t quite pictured this as what she meant. These people were as frightening as fuck. Not wanting to turn my back to these three, I twisted to the side as each one stared at me mutely, unmoving. Lifting a paperclip from the writing desk against the wall next to me, I chucked it back into the room I had
just exited. And barely withheld the flinch when I heard it hit the ground loud and clear, the thin frosted glass windowed door no barrier against the conversation Isa and I’d had.

Clearing my throat, I kept my hands loose at my sides as I started to take slow steps toward the exit on the other side of the room. I focused on the person sitting farthest away on the top of the couch, their feet
resting where people normally sit, their elbows on knees, hands clasped together loosely, chin resting there. “You’re Isa’s mother?”

Blue eyes peered at me so intensely I stopped dead in my tracks. “I am.” Her voice was soft, reminding me of Isa’s, even if she was her adopted mother. Eyes that were too knowledgeable were taking me in for the second time. “Tell me, Caro.” She paused, her way of
letting me know she had indeed heard everything, not to mention that at one point I had even had her daughter pressed to the very glass doors I had entered this room through. “My daughter said you’ve known each other for a year?”

“Yes, we’ve known each other for close to a year.” I slowly began moving again when I felt the touch of Mage and Vampire magic, tickling as it probed at my person lightly.
And not from her mother. It was from both the man standing by the fireplace and the other lounging on the couch with his legs falsely lazy on the coffee table.

“And when did you cheat on her?” Her mom’s head cocked, no reprimand in her tone, only curiosity.

Breathing slowly, I took another step toward the exit. “I’ve been unfaithful to her for two months.” Another step toward the door.

Her
mom cracked her neck, leaning up and placing her gloved hands on the couch next to her hips. “Curious.” She tapped her foot a few times on the leather. “What’s your full name, Caro?”