Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (26 page)

“Like what?” Kiya asked, but before Gregory could answer, Lenore Faa interrupted them.

“And the girl?” she asked, gesturing toward Kiya. “What is your interest in her?”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “That, madame, is between us.”

Kiya gave him an approving smile that sent waves of heat rippling down his body. Once again, he thought seriously of simply scooping her up in his arms and taking her back to his motel room, but the realization that once he got her in his bed, he wouldn’t want to leave for a long time, days, possibly years, had him scrapping that plan.

“I do appreciate your concern,” Kiya was telling Lenore Faa. “But I assure you—whoa! Peter!”

He gave in to temptation. He just couldn’t stop himself. He scooped her up into his arms and, with a quelling look at his cousin Gregory, carried her over to her tent, where he stooped and deposited her inside.

“I don’t expect to be disturbed,” he said loudly over the top of the tent before entering it.

“OK, you get ten out of ten for playing nice with your grandmother, but that he-man stuff had better be used pretty sparingly from here on out, because I’m not the sort of woman who is a doormat. You can’t make decisions for me about when and where and how we indulge in nooky-time.”

“How is your head?” he asked, deliberately interrupting her lecture.

“I don’t mind a little bit of manliness, like you putting your
arm around me to let your grandmother know you’re not asking, ‘How high?’ when she says, ‘Jump!’ but that doesn’t mean—hmm? Oh. It’s fine now. It only hurts if I smack it on the roof of my car. Speaking of my head, and the amazing things it can do, where’s your friend?”

“What does Sunil have to do with your head?” he couldn’t keep from asking.

“I believed in him. Thus, my id and ego and superego are all clearly balanced.”

“Ah. Sunil is off doing a little job for me. With luck, he won’t be back until morning.” He stooped down and knelt next to where she was sitting on a flimsy-looking air mattress. “I should tell you that I met with Dalton within the last hour.”

“The zombie?” she gasped.

“He’s not a revenant. He’s perfectly fine.” Peter ignored the twinge of doubt regarding the sense of something not being quite right with regard to Dalton. “Which means that someone must have wanted you to think he was dead, and for that purpose either manufactured something that looked like his body or…”

“Or?” she prodded, blinking owlishly in the gloom at him.

He turned on one of her camp lights. “Or someone made an actual body resemble him.”

“The body I saw was definitely real,” she said with a little shudder. “It was squishy. And…ugh. Corpselike. Where did you see Dalton?”

“At the entrance to this camp, as a matter of fact. He had no idea why someone would want to make you think he was dead. Do you?”

Kiya shook her head, and patted the air mattress. “This is much more comfy than kneeling on the ground.”

He looked at the bed. “The sleeping bag smells like a skunk.”

“I know. I think Andrew did it on purpose. I’ve tried all sorts of deodorizers on it, but it still has a bit of a pong, doesn’t it? You get used to it, though. You do know what everyone thinks is going on in here, don’t you?”

“Why do you think I let them know I was here?” he asked, moving over to sit on the end of the air mattress. A faint odor of a long-deceased skunk wafted to his nose. He ignored it, focusing on the lovely scent that Kiya seemed to produce naturally. It reminded him of a lazy day spent sunning on a rock, surrounded by a cool, deep stream. She smelled fresh, and clean, and like the sun-warmed rocks.

“That, my good sir, is an excellent question. I don’t know. I thought we were going to be all stealthy and stuff and sneak around trying to see which of your cousins—which I’m sure must be the obnoxious Andrew—is the guilty party. How you can be related to him and William is beyond me.”

“I assure you that I hold no feelings of fondness, familial or otherwise, toward either of them.”

“Good, because they are both seriously dillwads. Andrew especially.”

Peter stopped imagining Kiya naked on a rock next to a stream. “Dillwads?”

“Yeah. I was going to say asshats, but I didn’t know if you’d be offended by that or not. Are you?”

“Offended? No. Profanities don’t disturb me.”

“No, are you going to make love to me before we scout out the cousins for vial-theftage?”

That certainly had been his plan. In fact, it’s all he had been able to think about ever since he got close to Kiya.
But he was a man who was in control of all his natures, base or otherwise, and he wasn’t about to let a need to glory in the delights that she had to offer sway him from the work he knew had to be done.

“Peter?”

“No. I admit that I had intended to earlier, because it was all I could think of, but now that Lenore Faa and Gregory Faa think that is exactly what we are doing, I don’t feel in the mood. I dislike being expected to act in a certain manner.”

“Then I guess you shouldn’t have carried me off to the tent in the best impression I’ve seen in a long time of a man about to ravish a woman,” she said drily. He thought there was a hint of a smile in her voice, but her expression was one of placidity, and nothing more.

Dammit, he didn’t like her placid. He wanted her all soft and yielding, and with that smoky, misty look to her eyes that told him that he had pleasured her like no one had ever pleasured her before.

“I did that to make a point,” he said nobly, trying very hard not to look at her. If he could just sit there and think of things that weren’t Kiya, he could make it the two or three hours that would be needed for the family to go to sleep. He simply had to focus on not seeing her, and he’d be fine.

“So, you act in a manner that gives a very obvious impression, and then you’re all bent out of shape when people accept that impression?”

Her voice was going to be a problem. There was a lilting tone to it, as if she was secretly laughing at the sheer joy of being alive, that called to him on a fundamental level. He considered asking her to sit there, out of the range of his vision, without saying a word, but knew in
the way of a man who was informed about women that should he do so, she would hit him on the head with something heavy. Or possibly stab him.

The sad fact was that he wanted her weaving a spell of fascination by means of her voice and her delectable body. He wanted to be there with her in the close, slightly skunk-scented confines of her musty tent. She brought him a sense of belonging, as if it wasn’t just him against the world, alone and unloved.

He wanted her right where she was, at his side, tempting him, driving him insane, making him laugh at the way her thoughts leaped around, and, most of all, making him feel as if at long last he had a home.

That home was Kiya.

“Marry me.”

The words surprised them both, but at least he had a warning of the directions of his thoughts. He mulled over what he had said, decided it made sense—Kiya was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life—and adopted an expression of a man who knew what he wanted, and expected others to fall into the plan.

Kiya gawked at him, her mouth once again ajar. “What did you say?”

“Marry me. I said marry me.”

She continued to stare at him for the count of eleven. “Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” she finally got out.

“I am a member of the Watch,” he pointed out. “They do not let those of feeble minds into such positions, so the answer is no, I am not out of my mind, ever-lovin’ or otherwise. Will you marry me?”

She whomped him on the arm with a rolled-up duffel bag. “You can’t ask someone you just met to marry you!”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t know anything about me! I don’t know anything about you! It’s just…you don’t do that, Peter!”

“I don’t see why not. It makes perfect sense to me. You enjoy my company. I enjoy yours. I wish to spend a great deal of time with you, and since my mother raised me to hold women in honorable esteem, the solution to such a situation is a marriage. That would also be appropriate should you become pregnant.”

He didn’t think it was possible, but her eyes widened even more. “You met me, what, three days ago?”

“Two, I believe.”

“And now you’re talking about kids?” She sucked in a huge amount of air. He was surprised the side of the tent didn’t bow inward.

“They aren’t high on my priority list at the moment, no. We have plenty of time, given that our lives can span centuries. Just out of curiosity, how old are you? You appear to be in your late twenties.”

“Thirty-two, actually. But thank you.” She looked pleased for a few seconds before she returned to looking outraged and shocked, and wholly beddable.

“We both have ample time to be together before we begin a family. I merely mentioned the possibility should such a situation arise.”

“But—” She hit him on the arm again. “We don’t know each other!”

“I am happy to answer any questions you have about me.”

“And then there’s the other thing.”

His brow wrinkled. The only thing he could think of at the moment was in his pants and growing more and
more demanding that it have its share of time with Kiya. “What thing? My penis? Do you have an objection to it? I know you said it was beefy, but I believe we fit together rather nicely.”

“No, not your penis,” she said, casting a glance toward his lap.

Instantly, he was fully aroused.

“Wow,” she said, her gaze fixed on his groin. “You really are bulgy. I like that in a man.”

“I don’t share,” he said primly. “And I don’t expect my woman—wife or otherwise—to have cause to look to another man.”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying I wanted to fool around,” she said with a smile that filled him with warmth, and light, and a desperate need to lick every inch of her body. “I was actually referring to…you know…love.”

She said the word almost in apology. He stopped imagining himself doing all those things to her that he so desperately wanted to do, and considered what she said. “Love is not something I have much experience with.”

“You’ve been in love before, haven’t you?” she asked gently.

“I loved my mother,” he answered, meeting her gaze. “You would have liked her. She was a strong woman in her way. She died about eighty years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.” Without hesitating, Kiya was there at his side, pressed against him, one arm around him as she offered him comfort. No one had ever comforted him before. He relished the sensation, and pulled her closer. “I know what it’s like to lose your parents. I wasn’t talking about that kind of love, though. How many girlfriends…no, I can’t ask that. How about this: how many times have you been in love? Really in love? The
deep, all-consuming sort of love where all you do is think about the other person, and want to be with them day and night, and seem kind of empty inside without them sort of love.”

He looked at her, anger driving away all the lovely warm feelings she had brought him. “I have never felt that way about any woman.” Other than Kiya, that is.
Was
he in love with her? He gave a mental headshake and focused on what was at that moment of prime importance. “Just how many times have you been in love with other men?”

She wrinkled her nose as she thought. “I think…yeah, three times. Well, one was when I was sixteen, so that doesn’t really count, because all teenage girls are desperately head-over-heels in love at some point or other. Twice. We’ll go with twice.”

“Who were they?” It was all he could do to keep from growling the words. The idea that Kiya, his Kiya, the delightful, effervescent Kiya who made him feel like he could do anything, had felt the same way about other men filled him with a fury the likes of which he had never known. Fury and jealousy, but the latter was a petty emotion, and thus did not deserve to be acknowledged. “I want their names. And addresses. What state are they living in? Never mind, just their names will do. I will find them.”

Kiya started laughing. “You are so sweet to pretend to be so jealous that you would demand to know about my former boyfriends. I can’t tell you how warm and fuzzy that’s made me feel. Thank you, Peter, for acting like an idiot just to let me know you care.”

Idiot? She thought he was acting like an idiot? He wasn’t, but clearly she didn’t understand his need to have her
acknowledge that
he
was the one she loved, not those others. His mind didn’t even shy away from the word
love
. Just because he had never been in love with a woman didn’t mean that she shouldn’t be madly and wildly in love with him. Starting right that minute.

“I do care,” he said, deciding that now was not the time to press her for details of former lovers. He’d wait until he was in a better position to act upon the information. “I enjoy your company greatly. You interest me. I like the way your mind works. It’s different from other women. Your body gives me immense pleasure, as well.”

She snuggled into him, and patted his leg, careful to avoid the bulging area of his pants. “I like you, too, Peter. A lot. And I like you for your brain, as well, you know. Although, holy hell, man, you have a chest that could make a nun forsake her vows. And the ass of a god. We won’t go into what your nether regions are—”

“Beefy,” he said with complacence.

“—but I will second your opinion about the pleasure to be had from our rompy time. If they had Olympics in sex, you’d definitely be a gold medal winner.”

“Then you will marry me.” It was a statement, not a question, a fact he hoped would escape Kiya.

“I didn’t say that.” She kissed his jaw. “I’m not in any rush, Peter. I agree that we have something going on between us, and I think it might be something that should be permanent, but it’s too soon for me to tell for sure.”

“I can tell. You should trust me to be the judge of whether or not we are ready to progress,” he said loftily, knowing she wasn’t going to stand for it, but unable to keep from teasing her.

“You are so asking for it, buster,” she said, laughing and elbowing him in the side.

A horrible thought occurred to him then. “There’s not another man to whom you are tied?”