“Oh!” Rapture broke over her, poured into her, roared through her, bright with lightning and wild as the open seas. It flooded her veins with endless pleasure, raining decadent delight over every inch of her body.
As another surge of ecstasy stormed her senses, her Adonis choked on a curse, his cock jerking and pulsing, his body rigid. His eyes went blind, his fingers digging into her buttocks as he came and came and came.
Rory collapsed on his chest, riding out the waves. The aftershocks of her release thundered through her, threatening to sweep her away until she forgot she was supposed to escape.
Her hard lover groaned as his cock gave another spasm, bathing her womb with heat. His heart drummed under her ear, the rise and fall of his broad chest creating a pleasant friction with her nipples.
Her core fluttered weakly, almost as if in reminder. She couldn’t wait much longer.
“Well, that was fun.” His thief had a husky contralto that sent shivers running up and down Damon’s spine and made his cock twitch with impossible renewed interest. “Too bad I can’t stay.” She pushed off him, her wet pussy clasping his semierect shaft in a slick embrace as he slid out of her body. While he struggled to clear the dense fog of pleasure clouding his brain, she pressed a kiss on his neck and purred: “You were marvelous.”
What?
As she stood up, she dragged her jumpsuit to her waist in one efficient, graceful motion. Still half-naked, she ran into the trees, her top flopping around her hips, her dusky skin blending with the shadows.
Jerking his pants up his hips, Damon struggled to his feet to give chase. Not that he thought she’d get far. Try as she might, there was no way she could escape him now. He still had her rappelling gear.
His thief headed for the far corner of the roof, her determination strong in his mind. Then, with a sudden thrill of excitement, she was beyond the roof and rapidly opening the gap between them.
What the hell?
He put on a burst of speed, sprinting after her on shaky legs. He reached the battlement with no thief in sight. Leaning through a crenel, he checked the grounds around the foot of the museum, his heart clenching with surprising dread despite the impossibility. She couldn’t have killed herself—he was certain of that much—since he hadn’t felt any pain from a sudden impact. She was somewhere beyond.
A flash of movement on a high-rise apartment across the street and a few stories down caught his attention. His thief was quickly making her descent via fire escape, calmly pulling her jumpsuit back to rights, her lack of underwear now obvious in the absence of a panty line. Somehow, she’d bridged the wide gap between the two buildings in the short time she was out of his sight. Lowering herself from the last metal rung, she dropped to the pavement, landing as easily as a cat. At the corner, she turned back and looked up, gave him a jaunty wave, then disappeared around the building.
Fuck.
There was no way Damon could get to the street in time to pick up her trail, even with so little to hide it this late at night, and he knew it. The fastest way down would have been to use her rope, but he’d been too efficient in tying it off.
Shaking his head in disbelief at how his thief had given him the slip, he couldn’t deny a glow of admiration at how well she thought on her feet. Or her back, if he wanted to be accurate.
By all means, let’s be accurate.
She’d found a weakness in his defenses and exploited it ruthlessly—and how!
He closed his eyes against a surge of breathless memory. Despite the spike of adrenaline her escape had given him, his body was still humming from his release, wanting nothing more than another bout of sexual acrobatics.
Even though it wasn’t possible.
Not if the mission pushed through.
Which was a damned shame, since he’d have welcomed a few nights of horizontal tango with her.
Turning from the battlement, Damon made his way back to his hotel. This was just a setback. His lovely thief hadn’t escaped him yet. After all, she had to sleep sometime.
CHAPTER FOUR
That was close!
The potent cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins flooding Rory’s veins urged her to run, to flee while she could, but she managed to keep her pace to a brisk walk. Running would only draw unnecessary, undesirable attention—not that gliding between buildings was less attention-grabbing. However, most people had a convenient habit of not looking up, and she’d done her best to fly in the shadows, so she was probably safe . . . or at least safer than remaining in that Fed’s arms.
Now she had to focus on getting away.
Rory had to stifle a pang of regret at fleeing, but she was sure her female relatives wouldn’t blame her for the sentiment. Damn, that Adonis had been so thick and hard. And he’d known how to use his inches. Just thinking of how well he’d wielded them inside her made her shiver. He’d certainly lived up to his claims. Too bad his interest in her was work related.
She ran her hands over her skin suit, making sure everything was in place and trying to ignore the memories the sensation invoked. Now wasn’t the time for that. Later, she could relive the pleasure to her heart’s content. But now she had to keep her mind focused on escape.
Her heart continued to pound from her reckless flight between the buildings. She’d had to Change twice in nearly as many seconds and almost hadn’t completed the first before she’d jumped off the museum’s parapet. She stretched her arms cautiously, her muscles twinging from the unaccustomed exercise. Making like a flying squirrel had been more difficult than she’d expected. It was a good thing she’d already been nearly naked; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to pull it off in the little time she’d had. But she’d managed.
Rory grinned, remembering the way that Adonis had stood on the roof, not even making an effort to chase her. He’d known he didn’t stand a chance at catching up with her. She sent a mental raspberry winging back to the Fed.
Close, but no cigar!
A few short blocks from the museum, the darkened apartment buildings gave way to neon signs that lit up the streets, advertising bars and restaurants, private clubs and personal services. Despite the lateness of the hour, people still lingered on the sidewalks, making their presence heard with alcohol-fueled laughter.
Paying scant attention to the eclectic mix of Spanish-inspired, Art Deco, and modern architecture, Rory wove through the merrymakers, taking an indirect route back to her hotel in belated caution. But if anyone was on her tail, she didn’t spot him. Her gut assured her she was in the clear.
Yet how had that Adonis, Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Hard-Bodied, found her—in an entirely different city she hadn’t planned on visiting? As if he’d known what she was going to do before she’d even decided to do it.
With the euphoria from her escape fading, Rory couldn’t suppress a thrill of dread. As a member of a clan of lamia—female shapeshifters slandered in myth as bloodsucking demons—she knew that reality was sometimes stranger than people wanted to believe.
She shoved her reaction to the back of her mind to consider the corollary: having predicted her movements once, could he do so again?
The latter question was cause for worry. While the Fed hadn’t exactly done his utmost to arrest her, that could always change. And if he could anticipate her movements once, he might be able to again—which would be problematic. As Felix had taken pains to teach her, predictability was a bane in her profession.
Bravado made Rory toss her head. She’d just have to make sure her Adonis didn’t succeed if he tried.
Brooding over his unaccustomed failure—the second in a row and therefore even more difficult to swallow—Damon stared out his hotel window and ran his fingers through his damp hair. The fact that he was alive was testament to his success rate with all the danger inherent in his missions. It galled him that one unarmed woman had managed to foil him.
And to use sex to turn the tables on him!
As an incubus, Damon rarely indulged himself with carnal relations—and only when the need for skin on skin proved overwhelming. Sex was an intimacy he doled out sparingly, usually as one-night stands. It would’ve been nice to think he did so to avoid endangering innocents or because the Company kept him too busy. But he knew better. His uncle Dion had shown him that work and family weren’t necessarily oil and water.
His aversion to relationships was self-protective: it minimized his exposure to the excesses of ragged emotion that people broadcast. The distance he maintained was a necessity; it wasn’t as if he could simply shut off his mental sense, not when he relied on what he picked up to succeed in his missions and for survival. Which was why he preferred his sexual encounters casual . . . and mainly a meeting of minds—in dreamland.
But his libido was still healthy, and his master thief had leveraged that need into a potent distraction. She’d gotten him by the short hairs and taken shameless advantage, manipulating him like a puppet on strings.
Disgusted by the comparison, Damon spun away from the window and threw himself on the bed, to bounce on inadequate softness. He’d been so close, yet she’d still gotten away! She’d kept her head while he’d lost his. Flipping over onto his back, he stared up at the blank ceiling. The score was two-oh in her favor. He supposed it boded well for the mission that she could give him the slip, but he didn’t have to like it. And the longer it took him to acquire her, the less time they’d have to fulfill the objective.
That could spell disaster.
The breakup of the Soviet Union had created a number of potential nuclear states, but Russia had managed to retain most of that capacity for itself. However, the rise of the Mafia had brought to light a certain porousness in Russia’s security—and guns, drugs, and people were being moved through the holes. It was unfortunate that a suitcase nuke had been one of the things that had slipped through.
Heads had probably rolled for that fuckup, but Damon wasn’t concerned with the fate of some hapless Russian muckety-mucks. What worried him was the potential cost in human lives. While a tactical nuclear bomb with a design yield of a few kilotons wouldn’t destroy a major metropolis like New York or Los Angeles—nothing on the scale of Hiroshima—properly placed, it could still kill thousands of people.
Put in those terms, failure was unacceptable.
His cell phone rang in his pocket, the unexpected trill filling him with foreboding. No one was supposed to call him. Not unless there was a change of plans or . . .
Refusing to complete the thought, he answered the phone.
“Status?”
Damon allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief at hearing the Old Man’s voice. Yet this call and the tight rein it represented were out of character for his superior.
“I’ve made contact,” he replied, nudging his concern to the back of his mind where it wouldn’t distract him.
“We don’t have much time.” A rare fatigue hollowed out the Old Man’s voice. He must be putting in incredibly long hours for that hint of weakness to show. “It’s surfaced in Kosovo with Karadzic. Word is, he’ll put it up for bidding within the month.”
Damon closed his eyes as a chill ran down his spine.
Fuck!
Under UN control, Kosovo had become a haven for criminal gangs that used drugs and the sex trade to fund their operations. That made it the perfect place to auction off a stolen nuke, and was probably one reason the nuke had ended up with Alexei Karadzic, a KLA warlord turned gang lord and noted illegal arms merchant.
The Old Man had expected something like this, which was why they’d set out to recruit a master thief as soon as they’d gotten word a tactical nuke had gone missing. But
within the month
meant they had less than four weeks left to recover the bomb. And once sold, the odds of their finding it before it went into play dwindled dramatically.
On the other hand, the auction would likely draw terrorists out of the woodwork like ants to Kool-Aid. He could think of several groups that were probably salivating at the chance to acquire a nuke and had the funding to back their aspirations. “A target-rich environment.”
“Exactly. Whether or not you get our thief, count on going to Kosovo.”
His shoulders tensed at the suggestion of failure. “Give me a few more days to work on her.”
“Three days. Then we’ll have to consider alternatives.” The Old Man hung up with his customary abruptness.
Returning the cell phone to his pocket, Damon swore at his superior’s literal-mindedness. He should have asked for a week. Three days didn’t give him much time to corner his master thief, who’d probably be twice as wary, now that she knew he was after her. To have to convince her to take on the job as well, within that time frame?
He had to think of something. Fast.
Without the need to escape to drive her, Rory’s energy quickly ebbed, sapped by her carnal activities. Her body just wanted to lie down and relive her recent pleasure. She showered off the grass and sweat and other sticky evidence, then fell into bed.
Unsurprisingly, her subconscious started to replay the dream that started the whole fiasco. She thrust away the image of the jade dildo impatiently. She didn’t want it. She wanted him—that dangerous man who’d nearly caught her.
Just like that, his image took form in her dream. The deep-set eyes and slashing brows. The widow’s peak and wavy hair. Hard chest with its fan of dark hair. Muscular arms, narrow hips, strong legs. Exactly as she’d drawn him at the park. Exactly as he should have been earlier. At the thought, they were surrounded by greenery.
She wanted him, precisely like that
—
naked and totally accessible,in a Garden of Eden all their own.
“Me?” Her dream man’s dark eyes widened in disbelief.
Rory ignored the strangeness of his response. It was a dream, and dream logic didn’t necessarily make sense.