ItTakesaThief (6 page)

Tiffany gave a startled yelp, which helped him locate her.
Yes, there by that high-backed chair.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Turn on the lights.”

“I cannot find the switch,” he said, hopping on one foot as
he struggled to pull his pant leg over his shoe. He should have shed his
loafers first.

“What are you doing?” she repeated, her voice suggesting she
was moving toward him. Good, he would not have to grope around in the dark to
find her. Her hand collided with his chin, then moved down his now-naked chest.
“Are you—why aren’t you wearing your shirt?”

She jerked like a scalded cat when he touched her.

“What do you think I am doing?” he said, ignoring her
question, grateful that her baggy jeans allowed him to slide his hand under the
denim and find her clit without impediments. “Aye chingala, Tiffany, our minds
must be on the same frequency. You are not wearing underpants and neither am
I.”

“Stop it. Don’t… You horny son of a bitch,” she half
laughed, half moaned.

“Do you know how I know you are not wearing a bra either?
No? I shall tell you. Your breasts jiggle and your nipples get hard and poke
out.”

“Do not,” she insisted, her voice a breathless rasp.

“Do,” he said, pulling her jeans down and her sweatshirt
over her head. “Just like they are right now.”

He was not done with her. Not yet. “Stay where you are. Just
like you are.” He found the computer screen and turned it on. In the dim light
he could see that her nipples jutted like thick, round pebbles in her puckered
areolas. Her breasts looked swollen.

“Do they hurt?” he whispered, filling his hands with her
lush, firm fullness and then gently kneading them.

“N-not anymore.” A breathless laugh escaping her lips, she
tangled her fingers in his hair. A light pressure urged his head down her neck
to one rigid peak. “They’d feel even better if you sucked—ah yes, like that.”

As he laved and stroked each nub, she began an assault of
her own. She teased his nipples with her nails until they rose as if to
challenge hers in size and sensitivity. His groans flowed over her as she
skimmed one hand down his chest to stroke his swollen cock.

Unable to take more of her tender ministerings, he backed
her onto the table. “Lie down,” he whispered with a firm hand on her shoulder.
She lay there, a feast for his eyes and hands. Her sighs music to dine by.

“I love looking at your cunt. Even when I am not touching
you I can see how much you want me. Smell how much you want me.” He nuzzled her
clit, then slid his tongue into her and lapped her slick folds. “Taste how much
you want me. Tell me, Tiffany. Say the words.”

“Fuck me, Ian. Fuck me with your tongue, your fingers, your
cock. Just fuck me.”

“Dios, yes!” He sucked her throbbing clit and slid his
fingers into her juicy heat. She bucked. He raised her legs over his shoulders,
eased one finger into her tight anus and groaned his pleasure when she climaxed
in waves of liquid heat. Unsteady, he groped for a chair, then pulled her onto
his lap, almost coming when his mouth found those hard, jutting peaks. He
shifted her body, spread her legs until she straddled him and his cock touched
her moist opening.

“God, you are hot!” he groaned, his tongue flicking from one
stiff nipple to the other and back again. “Ride me, Tiffany.”

“You’re crazy.”

“And you are crazy for me.” He held her hips and buried
himself to his balls. “Come on, spread your legs for me.”

“The chair arms are in the way,” she panted, her voice
revealing her frustration.

Finding her calves, he slid them over the arms of the chair.
But she had nowhere to put her knees, to ride as he wanted her to ride. But he
liked this position just as much. Liked the way her cunt muscles milked him
when he drove into her, withdrew and drove deeper. Liked the thought he was in
complete control of her body and what happened next. Yes, he liked that very
much. But more, he wanted her hips grinding against his as she grew more
frenzied than she was now.

Still impaling her, he stood, found the table and laid her
on it once again.

“Oh, God!” she moaned, writhing and locking her legs around
his hips.

“Say it, Tiffany. Say the words and I shall give you what
you want.” He flicked his tongue over her nipples. “Come on. Tell me what you
want.”

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

“Louder, querida. Scream it for me.”

She screamed. Her climax sucked his cock deeper and he
spewed his cum into her spasming core. Groaning, he lay against her, his racing
heartbeat matching hers.

Her voice hoarse, she moaned as her climax rolled through
her again and again and again, each feeling stronger than the last. Until she
felt like her body had shattered into a thousand pieces—each a pussy filled
with Ian’s pulsing cock.

“Merde,” she said, feeling her lips curve into a sated
smile. “I’m depraved. Utterly and completely depraved.”

“No, just utterly and completely well fucked,” Ian said, a
note of triumph in his deep voice.

“Well fucked indeed,” she agreed, then moaned.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing much. I don’t think I can even sit up, let alone
stand.” A laugh followed her confession along with a blush over her entire
body.

“Let me help you.”

“Keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Soria. If you touch me
again, I swear—”

“You will fuck me again?” He sounded exhausted and at the
same time hopeful.

“Oh hell! Why not? If you can, I can. I think.”

When he picked her up, she yelped.

“Unlock the door. Hurry!”

She couldn’t help laughing as he jogged out of the
conference room and down the hall. “Where are you taking me?”

“To Sir James’ office. I have always wanted to fuck a
beautiful woman on a knight’s desk.”

“We’re going straight to hell,” she muttered darkly.

“Possibly. Probably. No doubt. But think of the fun we shall
have getting there.”

* * * * *

Hours later, sitting in the front row of the theater’s dress
circle, TC squeezed Ian’s hand. She’d heard about the spectacular end of the
show’s first scene, but still was unprepared when the crystal chandelier flew
from the stage directly at them in the balcony, then quietly settled into place
high above their heads. The moldy-looking drapes of the gutted Paris Opera
House, whisked away by unseen hands, revealed a proscenium of burnished gold
figures romping in Bacchanalian disregard for propriety. A backdrop of
Corinthian columns rose from the stage floor while an elephant, both realistic
and mechanically comic, rolled to center stage.

TC had never cared much for the music. She thought it
repetitious and dissonant, but she was caught up in the magic of the staging,
in the way set pieces appeared and people disappeared. It was like a circus,
only better. And part of her mind, that part trained at an early age to
calculate angles and weights and stress points, wondered if any of these
wondrous tricks could be adapted for more nefarious purposes.

“Tiffany?” Ian said from what seemed like a great distance.

Realizing the play was over, that the rest of the audience
was giving the cast a standing ovation, TC surged to her feet and shot Ian an
apologetic look.

“How’d he do that? Disappear, I mean, while it looked like
he was still in the chair?”

Ian laughed. “Shall we find out?”

She put her hand in his and eagerly followed him through the
departing crowd. The stage manager seemed as delighted with her as she was with
the sets. He took them through virtually every change in the show, explaining
at length the precise balance required for the battens, which held and weighted
the painted canvas backdrops in place when they were lowered to the stage. How
the teasers hid the stage lights and kept the audience from being distracted.
At last, he gave her permission to wander around the stage while he and Ian
continued to talk.

Smiling to herself, feeling like Dorothy must have felt when
she found herself behind the wizard’s curtain in Oz, TC tried to see everything
at once. Looking up, she could see the bottoms of various scenery curtains and,
high above, the catwalk. Under her feet, the stage floor felt surprisingly
firm. She’d expected it to feel spongy, but supposed it would have to be
especially sturdy to handle all the scenery and people transported from beneath
the floor.

Then all hell broke loose. From overhead, something whizzed
past her head. She ducked, sidestepped and fell. Like Alice through the
rabbit’s hole, she tumbled downward and landed with a thump that knocked the wind
out of her. Just before she blacked out she thought she heard the stage manager
yell, “Bloody hell, who released that star cover?”

* * * * *

Feeling more helpless than he ever had felt in his life, not
knowing what to do with an injured, pigheaded Tiffany, Damian called home.

“Bring her here, m’ijo.”

“There is a problem, Mamacita. Mrs. Foster is—only possibly,
¿comprendes?—a suspect in the theft of padrino’s valuables.” He could not—would
not—reveal the murders. Even if he could, his brother’s murder was still fresh
in his family’s memory—especially his mother’s. He wanted his parents’ honest
opinion of Tiffany. Warning them of her possible involvement in theft should
put his parents on guard, but not to the point of overt suspicion and
accompanying rudeness.

“I see.” He could hear the shrug along with amusement in his
mother’s voice. “Bring her anyway. I shall inform your papa that we are about
to host yet another of your strays.”

Damian heard his father’s bellow, followed by his mother’s
muffled voice saying, “A wounded sparrow, my love.”

His father came on the line, his gentle voice belying the
gruff words. “Should I lock the twins in the tower or exile them to Spain?”

“Neither, Papa. I think the twins will be good for
Tiffany—er—Mrs. Foster. She is a little prickly just now, but—”

“Doesn’t want to come down to Devon, eh?”

“I think she would rather take another beating.”

“Another? Damian, you didn’t—”

“She fell, Papa. An accident.” He hoped.

“You hope.” As always, his father knew Damian very well.

“Yes, Papa, I hope.”

“So, it’s Ian Soria to the rescue. No references to
insurance fraud or to your other employment?”

“No, Papa. Thank you.”

“Drive carefully, son. We’ve had rain and the roads are
treacherous.”

* * * * *

A change in the sound of the Jag’s engine awakened TC. Ian
had insisted on driving down from London. She knew the train would have gotten
them here sooner. But given her battered appearance, she couldn’t blame him for
not wanting to be seen with her in public.

She wouldn’t have accompanied him at all if he hadn’t
threatened to call her husband. That Ian was fucking a supposedly married woman
didn’t seem to bother him at all. And what did that say about his morals? Or
hers?

Ian Soria is not what he seems.

“Almost home,” he said as he drove into Torquay, the timbre
of his voice renewing her longing for a home of her own. “On the left is the
Spanish Barn. That is where the English imprisoned the survivors of the storm
that wrecked the Spanish Armada. To the right…” He shrugged, shooting her an
apologetic smile for the obvious. “The ocean.”

“And bath houses! I thought those went out with
Prohibition.”

“Tradition, Tiffany darling. Like tea, the English are
steeped in tradition.”

“Is it difficult for you? The mixing of your heritages?” He
had told her his father was English, his mother Spanish.

“Not usually. Although I did poorly in English history, I
understand the politics of the times. But I sometimes wonder what might have
happened if Elizabeth had married Philip of Spain. Or if the storm had not destroyed
the Armada. The…duality of my heritage disturbs me then.”

Ian’s sigh of pleasure drew her away from brooding about her
own duality. “Hunter Hall. Built by the first baron during the reign of
Elizabeth I and restored to its present splendor while Victoria was on the
throne.” His voice took on the stentorian tones of an English tour guide.
“Indoor plumbing upgraded by the present baroness. Having a mere fifteen
bedrooms, each boasts its own en suite commode.”

TC laughed and then gasped. “Good Lord, it’s a castle.” Time
had faded the bricks to pale pink and now, set as it was in the middle of lush
green lawns, the castle looked opalescent—as if the sun had come out solely to
give her this first, awesome view of Ian’s home.

Home? How could a person live in such a place and call it by
such a simple name? This palace was older than any building in the United
States and people, Ian’s family, had lived here for more than four hundred
years.

Shading her eyes against the sun, she looked up. “Are those
cupolas on the roof?”

“They look like cupolas, but were used for less pleasant
purposes. They served as archers’ towers like those on the corners of the lower
level. Or, if the knights were away with their lord, a place where the women
would pour boiling oil on their enemies.”

She shivered, but it was a pleasant kind of chill—like
watching a scary movie, knowing she was safe within the walls of her very own
room.

“Sometimes, as a boy, I would climb up to those towers and
lie there listening to the rain pound the slate shingles.”

“How old were you when you and your mother came to live
here?”

“I cannot remember living anywhere else.”

If his answer was evasive, she had no opportunity to
consider it. Ian no sooner brought the car to a stop on the gravel drive than
the single wooden door of the castle flew open and two diminutive tornados
whirled out. One spun toward Ian’s door, the other toward hers before veering
off to follow her companion to Ian. Each squealed like gauchos riding
neck-or-nothing across the pampas.