Compelled (Vampires in America #10.5) (10 page)

“Nick?” she said, asking him for this one truth.

His gaze shifted to her reluctantly. “It was a long time ago,” he said quietly. “The world was a different place.”

Cyn examined what she was feeling in that moment. It was stupid to be hurt by this news, on top of everything else she’d learned about him. It was even worse to feel disappointed, as if he’d let her down somehow. He didn’t owe her anything. And the reality was that Raphael had done a lot of terrible things in the past and would do so in the future, too, without a second thought. His world was a violent place, so maybe Nick’s was, too. Magic of whatever kind changed a person; immortality changed him even more. So Nick had created a set of handcuffs designed to torment a prisoner. She’d seen Raphael torture prisoners with incredible cruelty, sometimes in search of information, and sometimes simply to exact revenge on someone who’d crossed him. How was that any different?

She sighed, knowing the answers to her questions weren’t easy, if there were any answers at all. Maybe the worlds of magic and humanity should simply never have crossed paths. And maybe that was even more true of sorcerers and vampires. It seemed Raphael and Nick had had the right of it all along. She glanced around at the ruin of the living room. Those two needed to stay far away from each other, because they sure as hell weren’t getting anything done this way.

Cyn made a decision in that moment. She’d joked about it to Raphael, but the truth was that she didn’t need either one of them mucking things up, adding their personal drama to what was really just a basic breaking and entering. She’d do it herself. Go in, get it done, and get out. Nick could take the damn manacles and go back to Florida. And Raphael could flip him off, then go uptown to meet Rajmund.

And she and Sarah could go fucking shopping.

But first . . .

“All right,” she said calmly, smoothing a hand over her hair, which was still crackling with electrostatic energy. “So how do we do this?”

Nick had been watching her, his hazel gold eyes begging her to understand. But now he shuttered that emotion, his gaze going flat and businesslike. “We need to move on Marshall before he knows we’re coming. He’ll have guards on his estate, and some of the artifacts he owns are quite dangerous in the right hands. He’s not an adept, no magical ability of his own, but he has resources. There’s no guarantee that he doesn’t have someone on staff with enough magical talent to be a problem.”

“Can you sense them, if he does?”

He nodded. “If I can get close enough. A decent adept can shield, but not from me. I’ll know if there’s a magic user on the estate.”

“Okay, so we go in there tomorrow night,” she said.

“He’ll expect that,” Nick protested. “By now, he knows that the previous owner was a vampire, but he won’t know that she’s dead . . . which means, if she wants her property back, she’ll come at night.” He sucked in a breath and glanced at Raphael. “Cyn and I should go in during the day.”

If Cyn hadn’t been holding on to Raphael, the two of them would have started in on each other all over again. His arms were steel bands around her, his eyes flashing silver as he stared at Nick and said with a deceptive calm, “No way in hell.”

Nick opened his mouth to snarl back at Raphael, but Cyn interrupted.

“Enough,” she snapped. “This is getting us nowhere. We’ll all go in together tomorrow night. And we’ll deal with whatever, or whomever, we find,” she added in a loud voice when Nick would have protested. “I’m sure between the three of us, we can handle whatever security enhancements Marshall has waiting. Now, if you two don’t mind, I’m tired and I’m sore—” She ignored the flash of guilt on Raphael’s face. “—and I want to go to bed.”

She eased herself out of Raphael’s grip gently, not wanting to upset him. She wasn’t angry with him, or with Nick either. Despite the violence of his attack, she’d never felt threatened. He’d actually been fairly pinpoint accurate in targeting only Raphael. She was, however, sad. As if by discovering how little she knew about him, she’d actually lost a friend.

But more than anything, she was sick and tired of dealing with their drama. And, besides, she needed some time alone to come up with her own plans for breaking in to Marshall’s vault tomorrow.

CYN WAS ALREADY in bed by the time Raphael finally made it to their suite on the second floor. She knew he’d needed to deal with his vampires, to reassure them that he was all right, and to make sure that they didn’t decide to kill Nick for the crime of threatening their lord. Assuming they
could
kill Nick. She didn’t know what kind of power he had, though she suspected Raphael, at least, could kill Nick if he tried. It was likely that the only thing holding him back earlier had been his concern over her reaction.

“Everything okay out there?” she asked, glancing up from her iPad as if she’d been doing nothing more than reading a book . . . rather than hacking into the Dobbs Ferry city building office to get blueprints of Isaac Marshall’s estate. It had been shockingly easy. The local government really needed to beef up its Internet security.

Raphael studied her briefly, his black eyes trying to see into her brain to figure out what she was thinking.

Ha! Fat chance of that.

“The sorcerer went back to his hotel for now,” he said finally. “We’ll meet here tomorrow night and discuss our plans on the way to Marshall’s estate.”

“You think that’s enough time to plan?” she asked, as if it mattered. By the time they met tomorrow night, the deed would be done . . . by her.

“It will have to be. There’s only so much time I can waste on reclaiming something I don’t care about.”

Cyn swallowed the conciliatory words that sprang to mind. There was no point trying to persuade the two of them to get along. “What about your vampires?” she asked. “Do they get to party when this is all over with? I mean, as long as we’re in New York?”

Raphael smiled as he walked over to the huge walk-in closet, stopping to pull his sweater off before answering her question. “I’ve already sent some of my guard into the city to feed. Rajmund has given us carte blanche at any of his clubs.”

Cyn had trouble remembering what she wanted to say. A half-naked Raphael was a sight to behold, his chest and shoulders padded with muscle, his abdomen and belly ripped and tight. She licked her lips as he disappeared into the closet, freeing up some of her brain cells. “Did Juro go?” she asked finally, mostly because Juro was living with her best friend Lucia and she wanted to know if he was being a good boyfriend.

Raphael reappeared, fully naked, damn him. He gave her a knowing look before answering her question. “Juro is downstairs. He only feeds from Lucia these days, as you well know.”

She shrugged, pretending innocence. “I thought maybe since he’s here, and Luci’s way back there . . .”

“And if
I
was here, and
you
were
way back there
?”

Her gaze narrowed. “I’d stake you in your sleep.”

He laughed, then crossed to the bed, leaning over to kiss her as he pulled the covers back and climbed in next to her. “I want no one but you, my Cyn.”

He pulled her down under the covers, tossing her iPad to one side, wrapping his arm around her and holding her close. A naked Raphael was a thing of beauty. A naked Raphael holding her close sent a delicious thrill chasing along her nerves, making her pussy warm and wet with excitement. Unfortunately, her pussy would have to wait a few hours. The night was too short, the sun nearly risen. Raphael’s arm was tight around her, but she’d spent enough nights with him by now to recognize the encroaching signs of his daylight sleep. His heart began to slow its steady rhythm, his breathing became deeper, each breath longer and slower, and his muscles gradually took on a languid quality.

The fingers that had been playing with her hair fell suddenly still against her neck, and Raphael tipped his head to kiss her temple. “Don’t do it, my Cyn,” he murmured.

She stiffened guiltily, then forced herself to relax. “What?” she asked, feigning confusion.

He didn’t fall for it, of course. “Whatever it is you’re planning. Don’t do it. Unless you’d like your sweet ass to be bright pink tomorrow night.”

She snorted. “Promises, promises.” That drew a sleepy smile from him. She pushed herself up and placed a soft kiss against his lips. “I love you, fang boy.”

“I love you too, my Cyn. But I know you. We’ll go after the manacles together tomorrow night as planned. Let the damn sorcerer take the risks to reclaim them. And then we’ll go home and get back to our lives.”

“After shopping,” she reminded him, and he smiled again.

“After shopping,” he agreed, his eyes already half-closed.

“Sounds like a plan,” she said sincerely. Although she didn’t tell him that the only part that sounded good was the
getting back to our lives
. And the shopping. Everything else he’d said was bullshit. He couldn’t even say Nick’s name, and yet somehow the three of them were supposed to agree to a plan, act on it successfully, then bid each other a fond farewell . . . all in one night. Yeah, right.

“Cynthia,” Raphael said in his best, half-asleep, tough guy voice. He only used her full name when he was trying to project a stern, you-will-obey-me attitude. It never worked, but she gave him props for trying.

His breath ran out in a long sigh, and his arm loosened, eventually falling from her shoulder. The sun was up.

“Don’t worry, baby,” she said softly. “I know what I’m doing.”

She waited until she knew he was asleep, and then she climbed out of bed and got dressed. Early morning was the best time to sneak onto an estate like Isaac Marshall’s. His guards would be relaxed, tired, and still propping themselves up with large doses of caffeine. And then there were his rather vigorous nighttime sexual habits that she’d uncovered. She was willing to bet—she actually
was
betting—that he slept late most mornings, but especially on the proverbial
morning after
. Based on his credit card usage, there was a very telling pattern in Marshall’s shady social activities. She knew which nights he habitually indulged, and Sunday night,
last
night, was a day he never seemed to miss. She hadn’t shared this with Raphael or Nick. She suspected it was because, in the back of her mind, she’d already known she’d be going in solo.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t prepare, however. Contrary to how Raphael seemed to view her actions, she always did her research. She enjoyed the adrenaline rush of taking on a dangerous task, but the real thrill was making it out the other side successfully. She rolled over and grabbed the iPad that Raphael had tossed aside, then pulled up the blueprints to Marshall’s estate once more. She’d already marked the areas in his estate house that she considered suspicious, meaning they were possible locations for his vault. If he was as secretive as Nick indicated, he wouldn’t show the vault itself on these official blueprints. The places she’d highlighted were rooms that didn’t seem to fit their description. A ballroom with only one entrance marked. A basement kitchen with no plumbing. One of those had to be the vault. Hopefully they weren’t
both
vaults, because it would be bad enough trying to gain access to
one
. There were so many things that could go wrong with her plan, but her nightmare scenario was discovering something like a bank vault, with individual drawers and compartments each secured with a separate key. Anything else, and she was confident she could crack the main door security. And after that . . . well, she hoped Marshall was vain enough to display his collection, letting her shop through the aisles for what she wanted.

She didn’t wear her usual breaking and entering clothes, which would have been black combat pants and boots, with a long-sleeved T-shirt. That outfit made sense, but it would be much harder to explain if she was discovered. Instead, she went with functional but stylish. Skinny black jeans and black, flat-soled leather boots that hit her knees. She wore a black, long-sleeved T-shirt, but this one had a low, V-neck that framed her full breasts and displayed considerable cleavage. Boobage wasn’t her norm when going into a combat situation, but when discovery was a possibility, it was always good to keep the sexy option open.

She’d already downloaded the blueprints onto her cell phone, so she checked the battery charge, then slipped the silenced phone into her pocket. Letting herself out of the secure suite, she made sure it was all locked up behind her, then headed downstairs. Steve Sipes met her at the bottom of the stairs.

“Going out, Cyn?”

She nodded. “Having lunch with a friend. She’s in New Jersey, so I’ll be taking one of the SUVs, if that’s okay?”

“Sure thing. We don’t use them much in the city. Come on, I’ll walk you to the garage.”

She didn’t really need him to accompany her. It wasn’t like there was any security risk inside the townhouse, but she didn’t protest. He was just being a nice guy.

They walked in silence to the back of the townhouse where there was a two-car garage. That garage was one of the main reasons Raphael had selected this property. Off-street parking was at a premium in Manhattan. One of Steve’s men greeted them in the kitchen. Armed to the teeth, he kept his gaze dead serious as he looked to Steve for some kind of signal. It wasn’t unheard of for her to go out during the day, but two things were different about this particular morning. One, of course, was that they’d all heard about the blow-up last night between Raphael and Nick. But the second thing, and the one that had the guard looking to Steve for direction, was that, day or night, she rarely went out alone. Normally, her daytime bodyguard, Robbie Shields, would be right beside her, but Robbie’s wife, Irina, had been seriously injured in a fall the day before they left on this trip. She was a vampire and old enough to heal almost anything, but the healing went a lot faster with her mate, and his blood, by her side. Cyn had told him to stay home, and Raphael had concurred. Irina was one of his longtime staff people.

So, Cyn was alone, a fact which suddenly seemed to hit Steve.

“I’m going to send one of my guys with you,” he said abruptly.

She almost groaned out loud. So close. “That’s okay, Steve. I’m just going there and back. Once I get there, I’ll be behind her security. Her husband’s mega rich, and their estate’s like Fort Knox.”

He eyed her for a long moment, deciding. If anything happened to her, Raphael would have his head, and he knew it. But Cyn knew it, too, and she’d never risk it if she wasn’t confident about the situation she was heading into. No one was going to get hurt. It would be a quick in and out. Marshall wouldn’t even know she’d been there. And if everything that
could
go wrong did, and the op went sideways? Well, Raphael would know where she was, because he always did.