Relentless (37 page)

Rabiah motioned Isis to a seat at the kitchen table, where a glass of Coke on ice waited for her. “I love you, Rabiah! Thank you.”

Her hostess smiled. “You look much better.”

“Hard to look worse,” Husani told her grimly, ducking when Isis threatened to bop him on the head with her glass. “Are you sure you two don’t need a doctor? I have a friend I can call to come here—”

“I’m okay, but I’m worried about Thorne’s leg. He needs a cane, and since he won’t ask, I will. Do you have anything for him to use temporarily?”

“I have some in the storeroom downstairs. Why don’t I get him a cane while he’s getting cleaned up? I’ll be right back.”

Husani went off to get the cane.

“Your Thorne is very nice-looking, even when he’s scruffy,” Rabiah observed as she slid more bread into the toaster.

“He can be very charming when he isn’t dragging you from place to place with bullets flying.”

Rabiah quirked a brow. “Oh, sexy and dangerous. That’s a deadly combination for a woman’s heart.”

Isis bit into the warm toast, letting the crunchy texture
of it roll about in her mouth. Rabiah was right. No matter which way she tried to frame things, she and Thorne had crossed a line somewhere in those tombs. And she ached to think what her life was going to be like without him in it once they tricked the bad guys and saved the tomb.

The last thing she wanted was to bring any danger to her friends, but the excitement of her father being right buzzed in her veins, making her lightheaded. She couldn’t wait to tell the world. But Thorne said they needed to wait. Timing was everything when it came to outwitting people like Yermalof, Dylan, and Dr. Najid, and they needed to be precise in their planning.

The bathroom door opened, and a few moments later Thorne limped to the table, his face washed and his hair damp, just as Husani returned. He set a carved cane against the back of Thorne’s chair. “Should you have need of it.” His nonchalant way of saying it made it easy for Thorne to nod his thanks.

“Appreciate it.” Thorne picked up his coffee cup and drank as Rabiah set plates of food in front of them, then joined them at the table.

While they ate the Western-style breakfast, they filled their hosts in on what they knew.

“This was a very involved plan, but the theft of antiquities happens here every day,” Husani told Thorne. “For the most part the authorities turn a blind eye.”

“It’s a disgrace,” his wife said, her voice angry. “They are stealing our national sovereignty. There is a new syndicate
to stop such things. I hope they punish these men to the full extent of the law.”

Husani shrugged. “Like our Minister of Water. It is not uncommon for ministry officials to be involved with antiquity theft. It is hard to police such actions, and even harder to prosecute.”

“You don’t mind that a discovery like Cleopatra’s tomb has been raped and pillaged by these men?” Isis asked, her tone hard on behalf of her father. “That Cleo’s wealth is being sold off to the highest bidder and taken out of your country, never to be seen again?”

“I understand your anger, little bird. But such sales and thefts have been happening for thousands of years. It’s almost impossible to stop. Too many people benefit by turning a blind eye.”

Thorne cradled his cup. “What are the penalties when these men
are
apprehended?” His tone was casual, but Isis suspected that it wasn’t an idle question. Besides, she presumed he already knew the answer if he’d been chasing down Yermalof for years.

Her friend shrugged again. “The new law increased prison sentences for smuggling artifacts out of Egypt to fifteen years and a million-pound fine. Double that of ten years ago.”

“Clearly this hasn’t impacted the sales of antiquities,” Thorne pointed out with inflection. If this was the case, what recourse did anyone have against Dylan and the minister? After all this, were they just going to get a slap on the wrist and be let go?

“No, it has not.” Husani cast a worried frown at Thorne. “My father—”

“MI5 has had people with him around the clock since this started. He’s safe. I don’t advise you to open the shop until we know everyone has been rounded up.”

“No problem. I can do paperwork from home. Is there anything I can do for you?” He looked from Thorne to Isis, and back again as his wife cleared the table, then poured Thorne another cup of coffee, and brought another Coke to Isis, who drank it down like a crack addict.

“It’ll take my people some time to round everyone up. We’ll lie low until they do so. I gave them the number here.”

“I’ll come downstairs to fetch you as soon as they call.”

“I GET THE SHOWER
first,” Isis told him unequivocally the moment the door to the downstairs apartment closed behind them. “I must smell like a thousand-year-old mummy.”

With a piratical smile, Thorne turned her around until her back slammed into the door she’d just shut. Without a Mother May I, he started nuzzling her neck with hungry lips. Lacing his fingers with hers, he held them beside her head. “You… smell…” He punctuated his words with biting kisses up her throat. “Sexy. As. Hell.”

Prickly heat swept over her skin, and her breasts instantly tightened with need. Her fingers curled helplessly between his. “You’re a crazy man. Let me go, at
least until I—” His gaze dropped to her mouth and Isis forgot how to form coherent words as her heart hammered unevenly against her ribs. “You promised me clean sheets and a shower, and then—” There’d been something about leather, and baby oil… That thought made her hotter.

Thorne cupped her nape, pulling her so close she felt the hard ridge of his penis through his jeans, right where she needed to feel it, damn him. Sparks of scalding heat traveled from their points of contact to zing through her bloodstream like liquid fire. “I’ll deliver—when I’m more rational. Right now I don’t give a damn about the trappings. I. Just. Want. You.” He kissed her senseless, sucking away her right mind, leaving her panting and lust-crazed.

“Don’t talk.” Still nuzzling her throat, he turned her around and started down the short hallway with her clasped in his arms. “Don’t think,” he told her thickly. “Just feel.”

“I
feel
filthy,” Isis groused, wrapping her arms around his waist as he walked her backward toward the bathroom in what felt like a perfectly choreographed dance.

The all-white tiled bathroom had a blue-and-white-striped plastic shower curtain and a tiny window high on the wall that let in a stream of brilliant white sunshine across the floor.

Thorne laughed. “We’ll fix that.” Reaching over, he turned on the shower, then backed her against the wall and continued kissing her. His rough jaw abraded her skin as he kissed her forehead, then worked his way
across her cheek to her mouth. He tasted of rich, dark coffee and a need too strong to contain.

The bathroom filled with sweet-smelling steam from sandalwood, and he paused kissing her only long enough to add cold water, then tested the temperature on his fingers before returning to crush his mouth down on hers once again.

He skimmed his palm up under several layers of T-shirts to her bare waist. “Your skin is so soft,” he said as his damp fingers slid slowly up her sides. “Softer than the most expensive satin.”

“Hmm.” Isis figured if he was determined to do this, then they should both be naked. Her fingers shook with impatience as she fumbled with the button on his jeans. The ridge of his erection pulsed under her unsteady fingers as she freed him, then she shoved his jeans down as far as she could without being more than an inch from his mouth, which was giving her so much pleasure she vibrated like a tuning fork.

God, she loved kissing him. She loved the smooth texture of his lips, and the way he angled his head to accommodate her. She loved the slick glide of his coffee-flavored tongue mating with hers, and the suck and pull as he played tag inside her mouth. She could kiss him all day and night…

“I want to be naked this time,” she managed to say, panting slightly because she’d forgotten to breathe through her nose. She used both hands to pull his T-shirt up his body, letting her lips follow the path, up the narrow line of dark hair on his lower belly, up to his
rock-hard abs, which vibrated as she kissed a damp trail between his pecs. He helped her pull his shirt over his head.

His skin burned her hands as she ran them over his shoulders. She leaned in to press kisses to the crisp dark hair on his chest, then pressed her mouth there and simply held on as she inhaled deeply. The smell of his skin was like a powerful aphrodisiac. Hot male. Primitive. Primal.

“I assure you”—his voice was tight, his eyes glittering as if he had a high fever—“in less than fifty seconds you’ll be in the shower, wet and bare-arsed naked.” He pulled the T-shirts over her head before she knew it, and was
back nibbling at her bottom lip before she missed him.

“Fifty seconds? You’re losing your touch, Thorne.”

Picking her up, he tugged her jeans down her legs and tipped her gently onto her feet in the bathtub.

Hot water swirled about her feet and ankles, and she made a grab for the tiled wall with one hand and his shoulder with the other. “I’m wet now.” She let go of the wall, because Thorne was all she needed to steady her.

Climbing in with her, he slid his hand between her thighs and gave her a devilish look. “And so you are.” For several breathless minutes she could do nothing but dig her nails into his arms and ride his clever fingers. She came twice in quick succession, and could barely gasp out what she’d been trying to say as she pressed her face to his chest, and hung on limply.

She slid her hands down to squeeze the hard flesh and muscle of his taut ass. “This is the order of things, Connor
Thorne. You’ve mixed them up a bit, so here’s the
new
order of things.”

He cupped her breast, stroking the erect nipple with his thumb as he edged her back under the deliciously hot spray. “Uh-huh.”

Isis took a moment to enjoy—enjoy the sensation of hot water sluicing over her parched skin, enjoy Thorne performing amazing sleight of hand between her legs… “The order of things is as follows: first, soaping and s-scrubbing. Getting shiny
clean
—”

He pressed his mouth to her neck and took a little nip, making her simultaneously wince and become even more turned on. “Hot, down-and-dirty sex,” he murmured at the underside of her jaw.

“Okay.
First
.” Isis ran her palm over his short, wet hair, loving the feel of him, loving to pet him when he made muffled sounds of pleasure low in his throat. “Hot sex where we try very hard not to drown ourselves or each other.
Then
shiny clean.
Then
fall onto that overworked sofa bed and sleep until you’re called to duty. How does that sound?”

His arms tightened around her, bringing them both under the hot spray. Reaching out, he grabbed the soap, using her breast and his hand to work up a lather. “You left out the part between fall onto that overworked sofa bed and sleep.” He ran his soapy hand over her arm, then under her arm, then around her back.

Soap trickled down her breast onto her belly, tickling its slow path down her body and waking any nerve endings
that might still be napping, so her entire body was on red alert. “There
was
nothing between the two.”

He soaped her other arm, glided his fingers over her breasts, then curved his hand around her back and all the soapy, slick way down to her bottom. “Make love slowly on a horizontal surface.”

“What?” she asked, dazed and hyperaware of what was soaped and what was not. The soap suds felt like an extension of his nimble fingers as they slid slowly down her body. “You’re insatiable.”

“You talk too much.” He kissed her while he made sure all her girl parts were sparkly clean. Then, when she was limp and didn’t give a damn what order things happened in, he slid his hand under her knee and guided his hard length into her soapy channel. Isis stifled a scream against his shoulder.

NINETEEN

A
t the sharp rap at the front door, Thorne flung his legs over the mattress, then retrieved a damp towel from the floor to wrap around his waist. Despite the bright sunlight streaming through a chink in the heavy drapes, Isis slept sprawled out on her back with sweet abandon.