Stay the Night (21 page)

He left her there, went to the old owl's nest that served as his cache, and reached inside for the bags of blood he knew would be there. He tore open and emptied the first in four swallows, watching her as he reached for a second, and then a third. Only after draining a fourth did he feel the hunger dwindle and the demon subside. He would have emptied a fifth, but by that time she was propping herself on her elbow and turning her head as if trying to hear what he was doing.

Feeding so quickly, even on the chilly stuff, caused heat and pleasure to spread like fever throughout him. He drank from a bottle of heavy red wine to wash the taste of blood from his mouth before returning to her.

Her slim, cool hands wandered over him.
You feel so hot
.

You burn in my blood, Christyn
.

My name isn't Christyn
.

Robin tugged the blindfold from her eyes.
Why the devil won't you tell me your name?

Her fingers stilled.
I don't have one
.

You are called Chris for some reason
.

My biological mother never named me. She was probably a prostitute or a junkie
. Chris traced the old bow scars criss-crossing his fingers.
No one even knows when she gave birth to me, but it was probably sometime in the winter of 1976. She kept me for a couple of years, but she didn't take very good care of me. Maybe she couldn't afford to, or she didn't care. One summer she left me in a playpen with a sheet of plywood over the top to keep me from climbing out, and never came back
.

Robin brushed the hair back from her eyes.
But they found you and took you away from there
.

The manager of the flophouse where she'd been staying came up two days later to collect the rent. He found me
. Chris drew her hand away.
It isn't important. It's ancient history anyway
.

Rob kissed her forehead.
It matters to me
.

Keep that up and I just might do something really stupid, like fall in love with you
. She pulled him on top of her.
Then think of how much trouble you'd be in
.

Indeed. I'd have to spend a few months in bed, ravishing you
. He hooked his thumbs in the soft satin of her panties and pushed them down to bare her to his fingers. He stroked the soft down of her red curls, the narrow cleft they covered, and tested the silkiness waiting for him.
Are you ready for me, love?

She thrashed under him.
Lord
.

My lord
.

“My lord.”

Robin opened his eyes, squinting against the glare of the interior cabin lights. He lay reclined in the wide seat with Chris on his lap. She had her arms looped around his neck, and he had his hand between her thighs.

Carefully he shifted his hand and pulled her skirt back into place. “What is it?”

“We are preparing to land, my lord.” The attendant nodded toward Chris. “And the lady is beginning to wake.”

Chapter 11

C
hris didn't like waking up in Robin's lap, or being hustled off the jet before she could get her bearings. She'd slept too hard; her head felt like an overstuffed flotation device.

The erotic dream of the night they had spent together came rushing back over her, but it had been different this time. She'd told him things that she had never mentioned that night, like how she had been abandoned by her mother, and how easily she knew she could fall for him.

Her, in love. With a thief.

He and his friends had wrecked a federal investigation and put Ray Hutchins in terrible danger. And if he was the Magician, as he'd claimed, that meant that he was also responsible for what had happened to DeLuca. When this was over it was her job—her sworn duty—to make sure that Robin went to prison for the crimes he had committed.

Chris pressed the heel of her hand to the dull pain throbbing behind her left eye.
I am not falling in love with the international art thief who made Norman commit suicide
.

As they walked through the gate and approached customs, she saw a kiosk selling canned soft drinks. She felt thirsty, but the aftertaste of the ginger ale she'd drunk on the plane still lingered in her mouth, as bitter as if she'd chewed an aspirin.

She skidded to a halt as she realized why. “You bastard. You drugged me.”

“Yes, I did.” Robin smiled and kept hold of her arm, marching her toward the uniformed Italian agent. “You needed the rest. We will talk about it later.”

“We'll talk about it now,” she insisted, trying to stop him and shaken to find she couldn't. “You lied to me. You told me the drink wasn't drugged.”

“I told you it wasn't poisonous.” He lifted the long, oddly shaped case he carried onto the table between them and the customs agent. “The tranquilizer was harmless.”

Chris turned her hand, gripping his as hard as she could. “What did I tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“I don't believe you. It wasn't a tranquilizer; it was Rohypnol or something, wasn't it? Did you question me while I was under?”

“Now, now, love,” he chided, glancing at the frowning customs agent. “I gave you a Valium so that you could sleep through the long flight from America. Which you did. Please stop trying to make this official think otherwise.”

So what she had said about her mother and falling in love had been just a dream. “That's right. I forgot.” She smiled at the agent, and said under her breath, “Don't you
ever
do that to me again.”

“I won't.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek and murmured, “I want you awake for everything else I'm going to do to you.”

“Aside from helping me recover the manuscript, that will be absolutely nothing,” she assured him.

Rob smiled a little as he brushed his knuckles against the place on her cheek where he'd pressed his mouth. “We will see about that.”

Chris expected Robin to produce a pair of phony passports to hand over to the agent, but he did the same thing to him that he had to the patrol officer in Atlanta. She watched closely, determined to know how he performed the bizarre hypnosis. His voice remained steady and friendly, and he didn't spray the agent with any sort of drugged powder or mist. Although he was speaking in Italian, she didn't hear anything that sounded like a threat. Nor did he attempt to pass the agent any bribe money. The agent nodded, smiled, and waved them through.

What Chris did notice was that Robin's smell—that lovely scent of violets and oranges—had intensified as he spoke to the agent. In response, the agent seemed to breathe slowly and deeply while his eyes darkened as if the pupils were dilating.

No matter how pretty it was, no body odor on earth could make a customs agent forget to check for passports.

As they walked through the airport, Chris tried to make sense of what she had just witnessed. If Robin had sprayed himself with a drug, it should have affected everyone who came near him. Chris felt nothing, and she'd woken up in his lap.

I know it doesn't work on me
. It would explain why he had acted the way he had at the club, and some of the strange things he'd said to her. He'd expected her to be affected by it, too—later, at the penthouse, he had even checked her eyes before kissing her and telling her to leave.
Did he tell me to leave because he thought I was hypnotized, or because he knew I wasn't?

The sex had been her idea. That much she knew. She'd certainly gone over the sequence of events from that night often enough. Every time he touched her, some random moment from the hours they'd spent together popped into her head.

She was not going to think about the sex.

Chris stopped as Robin did, in front of a tall brunette dressed in a smart black suit checking the terminals displaying the gate numbers for the departing flights. Long ropes of large matched pearls ran from her neck to her waist, and two more glowed inside the diamond settings in her ears. She had the body of a toned goddess and the face of a dark angel.

“Bellisima.”
Robin helped himself to the brunette's beringed hand and kissed the back of it.

“I speak English,” the brunette said, her surprise changing into pleasure. “You are very handsome,
caro
. Do I know you?”

“In your heart you do,” he said, making the outrageous statement with a perfectly straight face. He glanced at the ticket in her hand. “You are on your way to Milan?”

She nodded. “I am visiting my sister for a week. We go shopping for new shoes.”

Robin put his hand to her cheek. “Then you will not mind if we stay in your home while you are away.”

Chris started to object, but fell silent as the brunette took a set of keys out of her purse and rattled off what sounded like directions in Italian. Chris couldn't help the startled sound she made when the brunette also handed Robin two credit cards and a roll of Italian currency.

“You are so generous. We will take very good care of everything while you are in Milan,” Robin promised, bending slightly to kiss both of her cheeks. “You will remember us only as good friends who looked after your flat for you. Hurry now, or you will miss your flight.”

“That was easy.” Chris watched as the brunette strolled away. “Why didn't you ask if you could borrow her car while you were at it?”

“I did. It's an off-white Mercedes convertible. She said that she left it in long-term parking.” Robin twirled the key ring around one finger before pocketing it and taking her hand again. “Come along, love.”

She was in Rome with a man who stole things as casually as other people used hand towels in a restroom. What he needed or wanted, he took. He added insult to injury by somehow coercing it from people who probably had no idea they were giving him anything.

No wonder he'd become a thief. The world must have seemed like a free toy store to him.

Chris knew why it bothered her. As a foster kid, she'd never had anything but the clothes on her back and whatever her caregivers bothered to feed her. She might have grown up to be a thief herself, if not for the Renshaws. By adopting her they had saved her from the indifference of the system and the inevitable down-spiraling mess it made out of the lives of unwanted kids left to its mercies. What her mother had done to her might have turned her into a junkie or a whore, if not for her mom and dad.

That she had to go along with Robin's crimes in order to save Hutch made Chris feel disgusted—more with herself than him. But what was really getting to her, what was going to make her explode any minute, was the way Robin kept rubbing his thumb against the back of her hand and smiling at her and acting as if they were on their honeymoon.

Or the fact that in a small, wistful corner of her heart, she wished that they were.

Robin found the Mercedes and unlocked the passenger door for her as naturally as if the car belonged to him. He treated her the same way: as if her coming along with him meant she'd go along with whatever he did.

“Do you want the top down? It's a lovely night.” When she didn't get in, he gave her hand a tug. “We only have two days, Christal. Get in.”

“My name isn't Christal. This car doesn't belong to you. Neither do I.” Chris twisted her hand, but he kept hold of her. If he didn't let go of her right now she was going to make a fool out of herself. To remind herself of who he was, she said, “You can't steal or bully out of people whatever you want, Robin. No matter how good you are with your magic, whatever it is, eventually you're going to get caught.”

His dark brows rose. “I don't use magic, and what does this have to do with getting into the car?”

He didn't care. He genuinely didn't care that they were, in effect, stealing this woman's car. “How do you sleep at night?” she demanded.

“I sleep during the day.”

“You know exactly what I mean.” She was sick of this vampire fantasy role he insisted on playing, too. “Doesn't it bother you knowing everything you have you stole from someone else?”

“I have not stolen
everything
,” he told her. “When I bought the Armstrong building, for example, I paid cash for it.”

He'd bought a high-rise building in downtown Atlanta for cash. Of course he had; he was the son of the Magician. He could probably buy
Atlanta
.

“Where did you get the money?” Chris asked. “How many priceless paintings did you have to steal to cover the down payment?”

“None. I invest in the stock exchange. Google did very well for me that year.” He watched a security guard stroll past them. “A gentleman does not discuss his financial empire in public. Now we have to go.”

Chris didn't budge. “What
does
happen to the art you steal? Are you warehousing it? Do you sell it to private collectors?” Maybe if she could convince him to turn himself in and work with the bureau on recovering and returning the artworks he had stolen, it might reduce the time he would have to serve in prison.

Chris backed up a step. “I can't do this. I can't go through with this.”

“Yes, you can.”

She looked at him, suddenly and inexplicably angrier than she ever had been in her life. “I won't.”

“Get in the car, love,” he said through his teeth, “or I shall pick you up and stow you in the boot.”

Chris opened her mouth, closed it when he rattled the keys, and mutely climbed into the car.

Robin drove through Rome the same way he did everything: with style, enthusiasm, and a lot of nerve. On the way to their “borrowed” accommodations, Chris said nothing. She ran through different self-defense scenarios in her head, trying to use her training to settle her internal agitation and cool down the flames of outrage burning into her brain.