Aris: A Sexy Romance Novel (Thief of Hearts Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Have you ever seen this man before today?”  the agent held up a mugshot of Misha. 

“I’m a paralegal gentlemen.  I don’t make it a habit of hanging out with the criminal underworld. It’s bad for my career.”  Saoirse had been sitting around these offices for hours.

“Don’t get sarcastic, Ms. MacLear.  There’s no reason they had to leave you alive, but they did.  This man is part of a cell known for their terrorist activities around the world.  He’s wanted by countries so diverse they can’t agree on anything other than his death.  Now, I’m going to ask you one more time...”

“No.  I’ve never seen him before today.”  hadn’t she just said that?

“Why did they leave him behind?”

“I don’t know.  I wasn’t there.”

“What were the names of the other ones with him?”

“I don’t know.  One of the men they called Khar.”

“He was the one you said was out in the lobby with you and the others?”  the agent was looking at his notes.

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

“There was one they called Noah.”

“He was the one that was injured?”

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t look.  I just saw blood on his head.”

“What about this Aris?  You said he was the one in charge.”

“He appeared to be giving the orders.”

“And he ran into the trees too?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he go in the trees?”

“Do I look like I know?  In case you missed it, Agent, I was tied up in a helicopter.  I’ve already answered all these questions.  I’m tired.  I’ve been yanked around by terrorists, now my own government is making insinuations with no evidence.  So you either charge me, or let me go home, because I’ve had enough male antics for one day!” her jaw clenched so tight she thought she heard her teeth crack.

The agent stood up, “Sit down.  We’ll let you know when you’re finished here.”

“We are finished here.” she turned around staring down the other agent.

Saoirse walked down the hall of the building exhausted.  Her shoes had been taken as evidence.  Her skirt was torn.  Her blouse was trashed.  Now the Feds were being jerks. 
‘Terrorists’
the agent said.  She was lucky she wasn’t dead.

Chapter 2

“What was Leo supposed to get from those boxes?  That’s why Misha went with us wasn’t it?”  he leaned forward in the Holy One’s face.

The men stood around the Holy One.  Misha was not one of theirs.  He was someone the Holy One had insisted on at the last minute.  At the time, it was assumed he was just part of another team along for the ride on this gig.  In hindsight, everyth
ing was starting to look very different.

“We were asked to do a favor since we were in the bank anyway.”  the Holy One was tolerant of the younger man’s anger, for the moment.

“A favor?  The damned box was booby trapped!  It blew up in Leo’s face!  Did they forget to tell you that part?” 

“There are always casualties in war.  We must accept that some of our faithful will die carrying out a higher good.”

“A higher good?  That wasn’t a higher good!  Since when is doing the dirty work of terrorists a higher good?”

“I will not tolerate your questioning my judgement!  Leo did what he was told to do.  It’s too bad Misha was injured.  It is more regrettable that the item couldn’t be obtained.  They would have paid us all we needed for it.  Still, Leo will be rewarded.”

“Rewarded?  He’s DEAD because terrorists wanted something YOU sent him after!”  the younger man’s anger was at it’s peak.

“Mind your insolence!  Leo’s loss is of no consequence.”

The young man’s temper exploded.  He struck the Holy One, throwing him out of his chair.  His head hit the corner of an end table beside him with a grisly thud.  Blood pooled around his temple as his life ebbed away.  The young man stood over him.  This wasn’t what it was all about.  He’d been following a greedy little man hiding behind the title of righteousness.  Leo died for nothing. 

*****

“You come with me.  I make you happy man.” she smiled sweetly at him.

“Happy man?  You don’t even look old enough to know what a happy man looks like.”  Aris grimaced at her.

“I’m 22.  I know lots about happy men.” she smiled at him again, “Come.  You come with me.  I make you happy.”

He laughed at her.  “22?  You don’t know what makes me happy.”

“You tell me.  You see.  Come with me.  Come.  Come with me.”  The whore took his hand pulling him into a darkened room.  The floor was packed mud with little more than a grass mat in the place.  A baby slept in a basket in the corner.  She slid out of her dress letting it fall to the floor. 

“You tell me what you want.” she clumsily grabbed at his cock through his jeans, “You want me on my knees?”

Aris wondered how many she had to do to get enough to feed herself.  Sex wasn’t what he had in mind.  Lately, his nights were filled with dreams of Saoirse.  He could hear her voice inside his head in the darkness.  Her taste came back to him from a stolen kiss.  He imagined what she looked like under the rest of that skirt.  His body ached in the dark of the night for her creamy thighs to spread wide for him.  His dreams conjured images of her folds, wet with desire, surrounded by copper colored down.  His tongue traced her every curve.  He dreamt of her hips rising to meet his.  His cock thrusting ever deeper inside her.  He could hear her moaning his name as he fondled the soft skin of her breasts.  His mind stripped her bare before him.  She waited for him in his bed wearing nothing but that strand of pearls around her shapely neck.  She was beautiful in his dreams.  Some nights he dreamt about her soft lips closing around his cock.  Other nights she would come to him, pulling his hands down to her clit, while her he filled her tight pussy from behind, until his balls ached from rubbing hard against her.  In the solitude of his dreams, he could feel the softness of her legs on his shoulders.  He heard her groaning from his tongue teasing her with pleasure until her climax exhausted her.  It was all he wanted.  She was half a world away and he didn’t know the first thing about her.  It was crazy.  She was all he wanted.

“Hey, you tell me what you want.” the whore was patting her hand on his chest. 

Aris’s mind snapped out of his day dream, “You’re right.  I’m a happy man.  Here, take care of your baby.”  Aris pushed some coins in her hand leaving the room.

She wasn’t sure what happened, but there was enough money in her hand to take care of her, and her baby, for a couple of months!

Aris walked the dirty streets between the shacks.  There were a ton of problems.  The Holy One was dead.  He had told people that the old man had fallen and they believed him.  The problem now was who would win the power struggle the old man’s death created.  They were trained to be an army.  They were supposed to destroy the evil that filled the world replacing it with good.  So far, evil was winning.  Poor Leo died for nothing.  He had travelled so far, believing in the message he was given, only to die for a greedy, terrorist befriending, bastard.  None of that was righteous or holy.  It was just another evil masquerade.

Nothing was going to change the squalor he saw in front of him, or the one next to it, or the one beyond that one.  There was no end to it!

“Aris.” Noah came down the muddy track.  “This way.  We have to go.”

“What’s happened?”

“Faiya’s dead.”

“When? How?”  Aris couldn’t remember the last time he saw her.

“Yesterday.  She miscarried.  They couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

The procession had already started.  Jerith walked behind the box bearing his wife.  His body moved, but his eyes were empty, transfixed on the box.  Women came to him wailing, leaning on him, but he didn’t seem to know they were there.  Aris stood looking at the scene.  The only one of them that had had any sort of family was alone again.

An idea formed in Aris’s mind as he followed the procession.  It wasn’t what they had been trained to do exactly, but if it produced the miracle they needed, did it matter?  In all his past experiences, in all the lessons the wise men had ever taught, the end never justified the means.  But then again, it was a price he was now willing to pay.

*****

“We have cash enough to get the job done.  If we’re smart about it, we can pull it off.  Noah, what does our contact say?”

“They will come with $25k now, the other half when we produce the item.”

“What if they can’t be trusted?”  Khar didn’t trust anyone these days except the men standing around him. 

“If they can’t be trusted, they don’t get the item.”  Aris raised his eyebrows.

“Besides,”  Noah laid his rifle on the table in front of him, “our contact is more frightened of me than of them.  If something were bad, we’d know it by now.”

“Then let’s get this done.”  Aris picked his weapons up off the table.

The job had gone as they had planned, mostly because they handled everything themselves.  Word was starting to get around about a small group of men who could accomplish things.  Aris looked through the contracts they were offered.  Noah negotiated terms.  They were starting to get busy.

It wasn’t so bad when Aris was busy.  Things were beginning to go the way he wanted them to, but if he didn’t work himself to exhaustion, there was no sleep anyway.  Saoirse MacLear haunted his dreams.  She teased him in the dark of the night making his body ache and his heart heavy.

Chapter 3

“Saoirse, Pierce wants to see you in his office.”  Denise came through the
office door with a grimace on her face.

Saoirse sat at her desk with her back to floor to ceiling panes of glass.  “
Now
what’s he want?  For crying out loud you’d think the man couldn’t pee by himself!”

“Agnes probably holds it for him.  I don’t know.  I think he wants the Woodley case done.” 

“I don’t want the Woodley case!  There’s so many holes in that stupid contract I could just shoot the jerk that agreed to having him sign it!  Ask Agnes what he wants.  If that’s it, then get the case file.  Toss his notes in another folder.  I want you to go through it, see what we can use.”

“Gee thanks!”  Denise rolled her eyes sauntering out of the office.

“If I wanted a dumb ass’s opinion, I’d keep
his
notes.  That’s why I keep you!”

Saoirse looked out of the windows.  Nine years.  It had taken her nine years to work her way out of the paralegal desk into the attorney desk in this office.   Sixty plus hours a week, every week.  She hadn’t had a vacation since she started with the practice.  Her social life was non-existent, short of Denise.  ‘Date’ was something she literally hadn’t done in years.  She worked that hard to get handed crap like the Woodley case?  Ugh!  Was this all there was?  She’d done everything to get this far.  The only problem was this far wasn’t far enough. 

Denise came back into Saoirse’s office.  “Ha!  I’m going out into my office to break a pencil in half.  Whichever one of us gets the longer part of the pencil gets to go into Pierce’s office to stab him with it.”  Denise did that sarcastic smile thing Saoirse knew was just trouble waiting to come off the hook.

She looked sideways at Denise. 

“Okay, I’ll just tell you, then maybe we’ll race to see who makes it to his office first.  There is a new client that Pierce wants to wine and dine tonight at Sheffington’s.  He expects us to attend the
‘soiree’
.”  Denise said the word with her contempt completely unmasked.

“Of course he does.  Your blonde, petite and cute.” Saoirse looked up at Denise as if she should have already considered the obvious.  Men don’t think about a woman’s brains if she has a face or a body.  Denise had all three.  “Maybe we’ll get lucky.  Maybe she’s some loaded old biddy that Pierce gets to rally for her attention.”

“Seers, you really believe that?  It’s at Sheffington’s.” 

“No, but I can dream can’t I?”  She put her head down on her desk.  “Okay, here’s the deal.  Tell Becca at the front desk you have to go to somewhere to look stuff up, I’m going to go to somewhere to take a deposition, then let’s get the hell out of here.”

“It’s only 1:00.”

“So, you think you’re going to do a ‘soiree’ tonight in under four hours?  NO!  Get the hell out of here girlfriend! Go find something fun to do for a couple hours.”

“What are you going to do about your supposed deposition?”  Denise arched an eyebrow.

“Hell, I don’t know.  I’ll find something I can ask someone.  Maybe I’ll go down to the boardwalk to talk to the seagulls.  They’re always good for snitching on each other.”

“If Pierce finds out there’s going to be hell to pay.” 

“Okay, so tell him you’re going to get your hair done for his little shindig.  What’s he going to do, fire me?  I dare him.  If he fires me who’s going to do the Woodley crap?”  Saoirse threw the papers on her desk into the file grabbing her purse. “Come on.”

Pierce was just coming back into the office when he ran into both women at the elevator.  “Where are you going?”

“Lunch!”  Saoirse smiled as she grabbed Denise’s arm getting in the elevator.

“Lunch?  But it’s 1:30.” 

“I have to get a dress for tonight.”  Saoirse blurted out as the elevator doors closed.

“What are you going to wear tonight?”  Denise watched elevator tick down to the bank lobby.

“The frumpiest thing I can find.”

Saoirse was digging for her keys as she came down the hall way.   A box big enough to hide two sheet cakes sat at her door.  Brownies sounded good right about now.  They always did when she was ticked.  The label on the box said
Regine’s
.  Maybe they did really large brownies with extra cream cheese frosting. 

She slid the box inside with her foot as she unlocked the door.  She was slightly disappointed when she realized the box wasn’t heavy enough to be several sheet cakes, nor brownies.  She looked at the addressee again making sure that it was for her pulling the brown string around the box. 

On top of the tissue paper was a pale blue card that read,
‘I owe you a skirt and a pair of heels.’
  What an odd card.  Lifting the tissue paper revealed a beautiful, emerald green, cocktail dress with a pair of strappy Jimmy Choo sandals. 

Saoirse lifted the dress out of the box holding it up.  It was pretty.  Jimmy Choo was her favorite.  These were brand new!  She laid the dress back down in the box.  Who would send these?  MacLear habits kicked in forcing her to dial the number on the box.  The lady on the phone was impeccably polite.  Yes, she remembered the dress.  It had been purchased by a very polite man who paid extra to make sure it was there in time for tonight’s party.  Yes, she was absolutely sure it was for her.  He’d said the name twice.  Yes, she remembered what he looked like.  He was a handsome man, probably in his mid thirties, a little over six feet, with brown wavy hair and wore sunglasses.  Saoirse thanked her hanging up.  Six foot with brown hair.  That could be any one of a million men in the world!