Escorts and Thieves (24 page)

As soon as he took his place in bed again, her arms automatically curled around him, and her body molded into his side. He smiled at the intimate touch she bestowed on him. He could get used to this.

“Open your eyes. I want you to look at something.”

“Too tired.”

“It’s worth it, I promise.”

Reluctantly, Olivia opened her eyes and looked at the object in his hands. She gasped and jerked up to sit.

“The vestal armband!”

Marcus placed it in her hands for her to touch.

The artifact was made of pure gold. Intricate filigree work snaked around the solid band of precious metal. The clasp was unusual in that it was constructed of two symbols: one male, one female. When closed they fit together perfectly, the same way a man’s body fit to a woman’s.

“It’s beautiful,” she uttered, admiration and reverence in her voice.

He understood her awe. He had felt the same when he’d first seen the ancient piece of jewelry.

“Yes, it is.”

He took the armband and opened the clasp. Without a word, he placed it around her bicep and closed it. It fit tightly around her bicep.

“Seeing you with it makes me hard,” he whispered. The idea of fucking her while she wore the artifact, turned him on.

Olivia’s eyes widened in shock. “You have to take it off me, now!” she commanded, her voice sounding panicked.

“Why? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

He didn’t understand why she suddenly tried to open the clasp, an action at which she failed miserably. He had discovered that two hands were needed to open the clasp, thus making it impossible for the bearer to remove it herself.

“Take if off me, please. Don’t you know about the legend surrounding it?”

“Of course I know about the legend.”

“It doesn’t look like you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing this. Legend says the armband creates a bond of love and true happiness between a man and a woman if they make love while the woman wears it. So take it off me, now!” She sounded angry.

“But it’s just a legend. Nothing true about it. Don’t tell me you believe in this humbug!” Marcus grinned. He hadn’t pegged her for the superstitious kind.

“You should never ignore legends. There’s always a grain of truth in them. Please take it off.”

He shook his head. “No. It stays on. I like seeing you with it. In fact, it’s quite a turn-on to see you wearing it. I thought you liked to take risks,” he continued provoking her. “Don’t you get a kick out of it?”

Olivia gave him another pained look.

“Come on, admit it, you like wearing it, don’t you. Olivia?”

Her face seemed to glow. She’d looked gorgeous the night before, she’d looked ravishing an hour earlier, but now she looked like the most beautiful creature in the world.

His cock stiffened further. He had to have her, and he had to have her now.

“Be my Vestal Virgin for tonight,” he whispered and locked eyes with her.

Her gaze softened. The harsh lines around her mouth disappeared, anger seeping out of her body, disappearing into thin air.

“Marcus, I need to feel you inside me.” Her voice had an edge to it, an urgency he hadn’t noticed before.

It was a merging of their bodies when he impaled her on his shaft and claimed her body. Her soft body felt perfect, curves in all the right places. He hadn’t had such a pliable woman in his bed in a long time. In fact, he hadn’t had any woman in his bed in a while. Far too long, he realized now.

He breathed in her scent, soaked up the heat from her body and relished the glow in her eyes that felt like sunshine in a stormy night. With every stroke he reached deeper and came closer, closer to feeling her essence and her energy. There was so much more to this little thief than he could fathom, and if he wasn’t careful she’d steal more than just the armband.

It would warrant more punishment of the same kind he was inflicting right now, stroke by stroke. Plunging deeper and deeper, yet riding her higher and higher at the same time. Who said punishment couldn’t go both ways?

Marcus was willing to take the same punishment he dealt her, endure her nails digging into his ass to pull him closer and her teeth scraping his shoulder to stop herself from crying out at the intense pleasure her body shook with.

His surrender was inevitable, even though he tried to delay it for as long as he could. But the moment Olivia’s interior muscles clenched around his erection and pumped him, his control shattered into a thousand-and-one pieces. She milked him, prolonging his orgasm for longer than he thought was possible, bringing him to unknown heights.

Sated or not—and he’d never had a more earth shattering orgasm than with her—he couldn’t let go. Leaving her body was not an option. He shouldn’t have worried. She didn’t ask to be released. Rather, she kept her arms and legs wrapped around him as if she didn’t want him to leave either.

When he found the energy again to lift his head, he used it to look at her. She was more beautiful than before if that was even possible.

Tenderly, he brushed his lips to hers in a barely-there kiss.

“I hope you weren’t planning on getting any sleep tonight,” he murmured.

Olivia gave him a promising smile. “I do my best work at night.”

8

The minute Marcus awoke, he knew Olivia was gone. And with her his precious vestal armband.

She’d worn him out last night as if she’d wanted to set a record. It was well after three in the morning when he’d collapsed, unable to move another muscle. Within minutes, he’d fallen asleep, his brain completely and utterly devoid of any coherent thought.

He’d let his dick rule and turned into a perfect idiot. What on earth had given him the brilliant idea of letting her wear the armband? Had he completely lost his mind just because of the fabulous sex he’d had with her?

There was a sucker born every minute, and he was one of them. It figured that she would use sex to get what she wanted. And he’d made it easy for her too. Volunteering even. If he was that stupid, he didn’t deserve any better.

He’d wanted to teach her a lesson, and instead, she’d taught him an even bigger one: never trust the woman in your bed!

Marcus swung his legs out of bed and reached for the phone to report the theft to the police, then stopped in mid-motion. He could feel every single cell in his aching body. Aching, yes, but in a good way. The night and everything they’d done flashed in front of his eyes. What a woman! Sensual, adventurous, tender, hot, insatiable, and just plain amazing all in one.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

Just over an hour later, Thomas was at his front door.

“What are the police doing about it?” Thomas asked instead of a more conventional greeting.

Marcus waved him into the kitchen and sat back down to finish his breakfast.

“Tea?”

“Sure. So, what did they say? Is she a known entity?” Thomas took his cup and added milk before he took a sip.

“I haven’t called the police.”

Thomas involuntarily spewed tea from his mouth. “You
what
? Are you crazy? She could be anywhere by now!”

Undeterred by his friend’s outburst, Marcus used his napkin to wipe up. “I’m not going to involve the police. I gave my word.”

“Have you gone bonkers? You gave your word to a thief?”

Thomas looked at him as if he’d gone off the deep end. Marcus hadn’t, at least not yet. He had an axe to grind with her, but he wanted to be the one doing the grinding, not the police.

“You know what she looks like, so you’ll be helping me find her.”

“And how do you propose we do that? We have nothing to go by.”

Marcus shook his head. “Au contraire. She has an art history degree. We’ll start with the colleges in London. With your connections to practically every academic in this town, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out who she is. She’s young, probably under thirty, so we won’t have to go further back than seven or eight years. She said her name is Olivia.”

Thomas exhaled pointedly. “Quid lucrum istic mihi est?”

“Does there always have to be something in it for you?” Marcus answered.

“You know what I’m after.”

Marcus knew all too well. Thomas coveted a particular artifact connected to the ruins of Machu Picchu, which Marcus owned. Thomas had been trying to convince him for months to sell it to him.

“Deal.”

“Let’s get to work then,” Thomas replied.

Thomas called in favors to get them access to alumni records, and they went to work. They split the possible campuses in London between them and jumped into their respective cars.

What Marcus didn’t tell his friend was that while he certainly cared to have his precious artifact returned to him, there was something else he wanted back. The thought that she’d just ditched him after the amazing night they’d spent together didn’t sit well with him. Neither did the desire to have her back in his bed, naked, underneath him.

After a night of sex with her, he should be sated. Instead, he craved more. Unfortunately, no other woman would do. It had to be Olivia.

***

Olivia tried for hours to get the darn armband off her arm. To no avail. She could not open the clasp. And because it fit too tightly around her upper arm, had in fact tightened even more over night, she couldn’t slide it down her arm either.

Frustrated and perspiring, she dropped back onto the couch.

Getting the armband off wasn’t even her biggest problem. Or maybe it was. The armband was to blame. What else? Why else would her mind go back to the night with Marcus? It was the most plausible reason.

When she’d woken in his arms, she’d been tempted to stay, but for once, her brain had won over her tired body. But ever since returning to her flat, she felt a strange emptiness. It was unusual for her. After each heist, she normally was on an adrenaline high, which took days to come down from. Not this time.

Something was wrong, seriously wrong.

Like any self-respecting criminal, she was superstitious. The fact that she couldn’t get the armband off, coupled with the legend which surrounded it, made her feel uneasy. She had a strange feeling of not being complete, as if something was missing, when she knew everything was normal.

She’d gotten away with the artifact that she’d come to steal. And despite the fact that she’d been caught, so far the police weren’t after her. By now, of course, Marcus would have called the police, but chances were that she’d be gone by the time they were on her heels.

After delivering the armband to her buyer, she would be done. Why wait until she was thirty to retire? Now was as good a time as any. She already had enough money to last her a lifetime if she was frugal, and had recently scoped out a new place to live—outside the UK. Everything was ready.

Olivia switched on the TV to see what the local news had to report. There was a possibility they already had a sketch of her face. If she knew what it looked like, she could come up with a disguise, which looked as different from the sketch as possible.

Turning up the volume on the TV, she went to the bookshelf and reached for her textbook on Roman art. She had to refresh her mind about the exact legend tied to the vestal armband. Maybe it would explain how to open the darn clasp.

As she flicked through the pages looking for the correct section, her mind wandered back to Marcus. It had been a while since she’d been with a sexy guy like him. Jeez, who was she kidding? How about never?

Sure, she’d been out with interesting and handsome men and had sex with some of them, but all those men paled in comparison to him. Her skin tingled just thinking of his touch, and her stomach twisted into little knots as she relived his passionate kisses.

She didn’t even dare think of him being inside her, or . . .  There it was: hot flash! Great. Excellent. Stupid.

Get over it!

Marcus was just some bloke she’d had sex with, nothing else. He wasn’t her first one-night stand, and he wouldn’t be her last.

She read and re-read the section about the vestal armband—how it was given to one of the Vestal Virgins at the end of her service of thirty years. She was still a beautiful woman then, even at age forty, and the man who’d given it to her had been in love with her for twenty years.

So that his love would be returned, he used magic on the armband. The spell ensured that the man who placed the armband on the woman would be loved by her, just as he loved her. The legend also claimed that once locked around the woman’s arm, the man who placed it there was the only one who could take it off.

Rats!

It was impossible, of course. Magic didn’t exist, and there had to be a perfectly good explanation why the thing wouldn’t open. Maybe it was broken.

The good thing was she knew somebody who could get any lock open: her cousin Ray. Luckily, he’d been released from prison three weeks ago.

She dialed his mobile phone and heard his gruff voice respond instantly.

“Hey, Oli.”

“Ray, I was wondering whether you’d like to come over for a cup of tea?” It was their personal code for telling the other one something was wrong.

“Sure. Earl Grey or English Breakfast?”

“Earl Grey.” It meant she needed him right away.

“See you.”

She knew he was out on parole, but she needed him, and they had always looked out for each other and saved each others’ hides numerous times. Now was his time to help her out of a jam.

9

Ray brought his entire toolkit and went to work as soon as he saw the predicament Olivia was in.

“Piece of cake,” he claimed.

Half an hour later, the clasp had still not yielded to any of his attempts to open it.

“Don’t worry, Oli, we’ll get it off.” His voice sounded less assured than it had when he’d started the job.

Olivia gave him a hopeful look. If he couldn’t get the armband to open, nobody could. She knew he was the best. And she wanted it off sooner rather than later.

With every hour that went by, more and more thoughts invaded her mind about going back to Marcus, back to his bed. It was ludicrous, of course. She wouldn’t go back to the man she’d stolen a priceless artifact from. What was she, suicidal? Or just plain stupid?