Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (32 page)

She was his, the woman with whom he had decided to spend his life, the woman who gave him immense pleasure, and a sense of belonging. If his family thought they could harm her, then they must be taught otherwise.

The choking, sputtering noise brought him back from the mental vacation he took to a place of unlimited fury. William’s face was turning a deep purplish red. He was mildly startled to find that he was holding his father by the throat, the latter’s feet dangling a good ten inches off the ground.

He wasn’t surprised to find Kiya at his side, fending off Andrew so that he could better throttle his father.

“Put Vilem down!” thundered Lenore Faa.

Peter released his father, not, he told himself, because the old lady ordered him to do so, but because he was an officer of the L’au-dela, and thus charged with protecting and defending citizens of the Otherworld and mortal world. Vengeance had no part in his life.

“Not unless you never touch Kiya again,” he growled at the man who lay gasping at his feet. “She is mine.”

“Whoa, now, Carl the Caveman!”

“You harm her at the risk of your life,” he added, ignoring Kiya when she turned an exasperated look on him.

Andrew snarled threats in Besh, the language Travellers used when they wished to exclude outsiders.

“Hey! None of that,” Kiya said, turning back to Andrew. “Didn’t you hear your grandma? She said knock it off. And don’t give me that look, you tiny-premised little twerp. I may not know what you said to Peter, but I can tell it was nasty just by the way you said it.”

Peter couldn’t help himself. Kiya was just so irresistible, so perfect. Despite the anger at his father, despite the worry about the loss of the evidence—and he was fairly certain that by now it had been destroyed—despite the pain of knowing he had failed Dalton, he was unable to keep the laughter inside. It just seemed to bubble out of him as he pulled Kiya into an embrace and soundly kissed her.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

Her startled expression melded into one of pink-cheeked pleasure. She slid a quick glance at Lenore Faa, then asked him, “For what?”

“For making my life infinitely better.”

“Oh, Peter.” She gave his lower lip a little bite. “If you
keep saying things like that, I really will have to marry you.”

“That is my intention. Just as soon as I wrap up this case, I will take you home and make you mindless with pleasure.”

“Oooh,” she said, “that sounds fabulous. Where do you live?”

“Paris.”

Her eyebrows rose. “The one in France?”

“Yes. It is just an apartment, but it consists of the entire top floor of an eighteenth-century house. I think you’ll like it.”

“Paris,” she cooed, giving him a sultry look. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“If you are quite finished?” The whipcrack voice cut through all pleasurable thoughts that Peter was at that moment indulging.

He turned with Kiya to face Lenore Faa. She gestured toward William, who had gotten to his feet, his face still red, and hatred in his eyes. “Where is Gregory?”

“Gone.” William stopped rubbing his neck, obviously forcing his voice into one containing the bare minimum of civility. “He said he was going to confront this one and the woman about their plans to make trouble for us with the Watch. That was more than an hour ago. His car is still here, and he was not seen leaving the camp. We have looked for him, but can’t find him. He does not answer his phone.” William leveled him with a look that would have dropped an elephant. “He
was
seen going to the woman’s tent a little bit ago.”

“Andrew! Search for your cousin.”

“He’s not here—”

“I gave you an order. See to it.” Lenore Faa turned to her
son. “Wake the others. I want this area scoured for Rehor.”

“It will do no good. He’s gone—”

“Do as I say!”

“And if he’s not found?” William asked, gesturing toward Kiya and him. “Will you hold them accountable for what they’ve done to him?”

“I feel obligated to state at this point that we have done nothing illegal, to Gregory or anyone else,” Peter said, his Kiya Zen once again firmly in place.

The old woman was silent for a few seconds, her gaze—oddly—on Kiya. “Yes,” she said finally, the words weighing down on him like heavy iron chains. “If Rehor is not found, before the sun rises, we will hold the kris.”

“And until then?” William asked as she turned and hobbled toward the door. He jerked his head toward Kiya. “What of the mahrime ones?”

“Do as you will.” Peter braced himself for the attack that he was sure William would make, but Lenore Faa’s voice snapped like a whip around them all.

“Understand me, Vilem, I want no harm to come to them. I hold you solely responsible for their welfare.”

William said several obscene things under his breath, but Peter relaxed slightly when he realized that his father’s hands were tied. Not literally, of course. That honor belonged to him.

“I hope you realize that as a member of the Watch, I am trained in any number of ways to escape confinement,” he told William a short time later as the man who had sired him bound his hands tightly behind his back with a roll of duct tape.

“Then I shall see to it that you have ample opportunity of practicing your so-called skills,” William said in a
taunting tone of voice before adding another layer of duct tape to Peter’s wrists, bound behind his back. Already the circulation was being cut off to his hands, the adhesive on the tape pulling painfully on the skin. “And just because I’m tired of hearing your lies…”

William ripped off another hunk of tape and slapped it over Peter’s mouth.

He quickly repeated the process with Kiya’s hands, shoving her down onto the couch, but leaving her mouth unbound.

“If you move out of this caravan,” he told Kiya, gesturing at her with Peter’s own gun, “I’ll shoot you both. Him first.”

He expected his future wife to have something to say about that, and she didn’t let him down. “You really are the lowest thing I can possibly think of,” she told William, her eyes narrow and glittering with fury. “You’re like a donkey-porking, pedophilic, prejudicial, genocidal dictator who has an abnormal interest in dressing up in women’s underwear!”

William spat at her feet, and left the caravan, the door slamming behind him.

“What a horrible man. I can’t believe his sperm was responsible for you. You’re nothing at all like him, and I don’t mean just in personality. Andrew looks more like him than you do. And I’m sorry to say this, Peter, but he’s not very bright.” Skirting the spittle, Kiya moved over to the small kitchen area and spun around, her fingers groping blindly for a knife. “It obviously didn’t occur to him that I could just cut that tape right off you.”

He made an encouraging nodding gesture, hoping she’d take the tape from his mouth first.

“Dammit, where is the…” She turned back to face
the counter, then swore. “Who the hell doesn’t have a knife in their kitchen? Maybe they’re in a drawer. I’ll try opening a few.”

Five minutes later, panting slightly from the effort of rummaging through William’s caravan with her hands bound behind her, she stood before him. “That bastard deliberately took all the knives out of his trailer. Which is just more proof that he set us up.” She looked forlorn. “Hold me!”

He gave her a look.

“Well, do the best you can,” she amended, sitting so she was straddling his legs. She leaned forward the better to rest her head on his shoulder. It was an awkward pose for them both—her knee was in the process of squashing his left testicle—but he did what he could to please her, nuzzling her head in a manner that he hoped was both erotic and yet comforting.

“You know, this could be fun,” she murmured, kissing his neck before gently biting his earlobe.

Even with the pain from the crushed testicle, he was very aware of her scent and warmth and the nearness of her plump breasts, but until she removed the tape from his mouth, he couldn’t tell her that now was not the time to try to distract him with kisses and nibbles, and by the gods, did she just bite his nipple?

His eyes crossed.

“Mmm. You seem to like it, too, judging by Mr. Happy down there. I wonder if I could lock the RV door with my hands behind my back? If so, I could take care of that little problem you have in your pants.”

His eyebrows rose in outrage.

“Sorry. Beefy problem.” She gave his earlobe another nibble. He was about to demand—just how, he wasn’t
quite sure—that she cease teasing him and impale herself on his penis when a soft whooshing noise heralded an arrival.

“Peter-ji! Are you being in here? I have been looking—oh la la la! What is this going on? Popsy! What have you done to Peter-ji?”

Sunil buzzed in an irritated fashion around Kiya’s face. She looked from the ball of light to the door. “How did…? That was closed…. How did you open the door?”

“If I am telling you all my secrets now, then we will have nothing to discuss later,” Sunil answered, zipping over to blink in front of his eyes. “Peter-ji, nod twice if this is some sort of kinky sex sport. Once if you are properly bound by villains.”

Peter rolled his eyes, but nodded. Once.

“Very well then. Popsy, you must be vacating Peter-ji’s lap so that I might free you both.”

Kiya seemed to be having some trouble getting over the fact that Sunil had entered the caravan, for suspicion was evident in her face. “I demand that you tell me how you opened that door when you don’t have hands, let alone a whatchacallit…corporeal body.”

“Peter-ji, please be telling her that we do not have time for this. It was only by the very most amazing luck that I returned to tell you about the magician, and for that reason was seeing through the windows that very nasty man bind you with electrician’s tape.”

“It’s duct tape, actually,” Kiya remarked as she got off his lap. His left testicle breathed a sigh of relief. “And while we’re on the subject of you not having any hands, how do you expect to free us?”

Sunil bobbed in front of his face for a second before
flinging himself to the side, taking the duct tape with him.

“Bloody hell!” The words exploded out of Peter’s mouth as the abused nerve endings signaled their discomfort to his brain.

“Oooh, look, the electrician’s duct tape took some of your whiskers with it,” Sunil said, obviously examining the tape where it now lay on the floor.

“That hurt like sin itself,” Peter said once he had control over the pain. “Be careful with my hands. My fingers have already gone numb.”

“I will indeed be careful. And while I’m being careful, I will be telling you what I found at the house of the magician you sent me to investigate, no?”

“Oh my god! Why didn’t you tell me your hands were hurting?” Kiya gave him an anguished look, moving impotently back and forth in front of him.

“Really?” he asked, wanting simultaneously to laugh at her silly statement, kiss the concern off her face, and yell obscenities over his smarting mouth and upper lip.

“Yes, I will really tell you what I determined with much stealth and no little cunning. The magician did not wish to reveal his secrets, but he could not keep them from me,” Sunil said from behind him. “I have never met anyone who was frightened of me before. Evidently magicians do not like animi. It was a very much interesting experience. All I had to do was threaten to haunt him instead of you, and he talked so much I could barely keep up with his confession.”

Peter was too busy being entertained by Kiya to pay him much attention.

“What do you mean ‘really’…? Oh, I see. All right, despite the fact that you couldn’t tell me, I like your
hands. They’re part of your arms, and you have really nice arms. What is he doing back there? I can’t see behind you. Don’t hurt his fingers, Sunil! Or any other part of him.”

“The magician was admitting most hastily that he had sold several favors without authorization or documentation, including recently one glamour, and over the last year eighteen whipping boys.”

Peter didn’t think it was possible to be warmed any further by Kiya’s concern, but he was. She fretted in front of him while Sunil carefully worked the tape off his wrists, the former lamenting loudly both the fact that she couldn’t help him and that William had tied him up too tight. Could she be any more ideal? Mentally, he shook his head. Even her unrealistic demand that Sunil relinquish his place to her so she could be the one to free him was perfect.

That thought triggered another. No person was perfect, not really. For him to feel that way might be an indicator that he was in love with her.

“But what was very much intriguing was that the magician said the man he had sold the glamour and the whipping boys to was a Traveller. He also hinted dark doings about a member of the Watch. I knew that must be a threat against you, my most favored and excellent friend. Thus it was that the moment I heard that admission, I rushed straight here so that we might arrest the perp. That is the correct word, yes? Perp? I heard it on the television show I watched through the window last night while you and the popsy were being intimate with sexual good loving.”

Peter examined Kiya from the tips of her shoes to the crown of her strawberry blond head. He’d never been in
love with a woman, so he wasn’t quite sure what that emotion felt like. Was this mixture of protectiveness, possession, and red-hot desire that left him burning with the need to be with her the emotion so commonly referred to as love? He didn’t know, and at that moment, he didn’t particularly care. Call it love, lust, or simply meant-to-be, Kiya was his, and he wanted her in his life forever.

“In addition, there was a second Traveller with the one who committed the illegal purchases. The magician would not speak much of him, but I have the feeling that it was he who was behind the other purchases.”

“Stop fussing, woman. It’s annoying,” he said simply to give her something other than his hands on which to focus. “Sunil isn’t hurting me, and despite your insistence that he doesn’t have hands, he’s doing just fine removing the tape.”

“Annoying!”

He smiled to himself at the outraged look on her face as she marched over to him and stepped hard on his toes.