Lure of the Wicked (5 page)

If all had gone well, thirteen hours from now would have seen a small knot of people ferried through those tunnels.

Smuggled like illegal goods. Or slaves.

They might as well have been, as far as the Church was concerned.

Instead, in about ten minutes, eleven people were going to be guided through the nest of hidden corridors that was Timeless’s dirty little secret. If the Church—if
anyone
beyond his carefully cultivated little nest of contacts ever found out about his illegal underground railroad, Timeless would be screwed.

And so would his family.

They all knew the risk. It was worth it.

Except when they lost one. Jesus. Diego had been smuggled out almost six weeks ago, the Church hard on his heels, and Phin had personally promised to deliver his family to him.

Every loss bit deep.

Sighing, Phin turned and strode for the discreet door that would place him in the main quad again. First he had to work with maintenance to fix the sauna, figure out what the hell had gone wrong with it. He needed something, anything to tell his guests.

To tell the Church.

He pushed into the courtyard and paused to let his eyes adjust to the dim atmosphere of the garden illumination. As it always did, the whispered rush of the running water slipped over him like a soothing blanket.

The carefully nurtured park, small as it was, made him smile.

Shadowed by the old-fashioned lamps, towering trees reached for the skylight far above, spreading slowly shedding limbs in every direction. Red, gold, and wilting brown crowned oaks sharing quarters with naked cherry trees, green firs, and leaf-bare maples. A hunkering, twisted weeping willow greedily drank the saturated earth around the cultivated pond.

The courtyard had won awards from the city government. It had sheltered lovers in the shady niches of its twisting paths and provided a small boy ample opportunity to work out excess energy raking its interminably shedding leaves. It was as much home as the buildings around it.

It pissed Phin off to think that a careless slip of technology would put that at risk. He set his jaw, then froze when a shadow moved beneath the hanging willow branches.

Black hair. Long, slender legs.

He hesitated, swallowing a sudden frisson of nerves as Naomi Ishikawa’s slender body skimmed through a patch of light. She crouched at the edge of the artificial pond, dipping her fingers into the clear water. Her jeans faded into the gloom, but he didn’t need light to see the taut muscle of her thighs as she balanced neatly on her heeled boots.

Phin found himself turning, stepping off the landing and along the paving stones winding through the miniature forest. Her head tilted as if she heard him coming. But she didn’t turn around.

“Don’t you have media reports to spin?” Her voice was as cool as the water caressing her fingertips, and Phin raised his gaze to the skylight before he gave in to the sudden surge of terse words clogging his throat.

She’d saved a woman he loved dearly. He owed her more than petulance.

“I’m sorry if you think that I was out of line,” he said instead. The water whispered, babbling softly through the foliage. Through her fingers.

Naomi chuckled. The husky sound jerked his gaze to the line of her back, shoulders bare and pale in the dimness beneath the willow tree. They moved, once. A kind of shrug. “I could almost take that as an apology, Mr. Clarke.”

“Phin.”

She rose with a fluidity that stuck his tongue to the roof of his mouth, turned to face him with nothing of her earlier anger in her features. Her eyes were cool, banked, hard as hell to read. “Is that woman all right, then? I’d assume you wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t.”

“She’s fine. Resting, now. Miss Ishi—”

“Naomi.” Too fast. Her lips quirked as if she knew it; a half-tilted, mind-altering curve. “Just Naomi.”

Tension ratcheted through his body. “Naomi,” he repeated. “Thank you. If you hadn’t been there . . .” He didn’t know how to finish the thought that hovered so close. Wordless fear gathered into a tight ball in his throat, and his voice trailed to silence.

She shook her head. “No gratitude required.” Easing past him on the narrow path, she flicked her wet fingers as easily as if she were flicking his appreciation away. Droplets scattered into the dark.

Without thinking it through, without even realizing he’d meant to, his hand snaked out. Caught her arm before she could ghost past him.

Her body stilled. Her head tilted, blue-violet eyes settling on his hand as if surprised. Thoughtful.

Too damn nonchalant.

He wanted her disturbed. Phin wasn’t sure where it came from, or why. Maybe it was the anger he nursed about Diego’s brother. Maybe it was the pent-up adrenaline of the night.

Maybe it was her.

He didn’t stop to consider the implications or consequences. His fingers tightened. “Naomi.”

“News flash, slick. I’m not one of your paid women,” she said, her husky voice low and even. Her gaze flicked to his. Burned. “You can’t manhandle me, and I don’t suggest you try.”

The barb landed squarely through the fine layers of his control. Irritation should have undercut the sexual haze coloring his brain, but to his surprise, her prickliness resonated like a challenge thrown at his feet. His gaze sharpened.

Hers pushed. Provoked.

Screw it
. “Offhand,” Phin replied softly, “I can think of half a dozen ways to manhandle you.”

He didn’t wait for the dare. Didn’t wait to see if she’d deny the offer he hadn’t spoken aloud. The knowledge of his intent slid into her eyes, curled in behind their shadowed depths an instant before he let go of her arm to slide his fingers along her jaw.

She turned slowly. Degree by breathless degree.

Somewhere, deep in the part of his brain not beating its chest in masculine claim, he decided that he really liked her boots. They added a full four inches of heel that topped her off at exactly his height. It didn’t take any effort to tilt his head, just a fraction, and slide his lips over hers.

Naomi didn’t fight him. He half expected her to take a swing, was ready to duck if she did. He gave her room to do it, his fingers loose at her chin, gentle. Just a touch.

And she stayed.

Shocked still in the shadows, she let him kiss her. Slowly. Deliberately. Rubbing his lips against hers, Phin did nothing to deepen it, to invade her space any more than he already had. But as her mouth parted, as his upper lip caught against the insanely sweet fullness of her lower, a muffled sound caught somewhere in her chest. Hitched her breath.

Wanton. Feminine. Music to his ears.

He wasn’t the only one treading on thin ice.

Her fingers slid over the open collar of his shirt and fisted. Phin angled his head more fully and took her mouth in a new kiss, a wicked, thorough tasting that left nothing to chance. Nothing to imagination. Lips and tongue, he swept into her mouth, into damp, welcoming heat to claim the attraction he knew simmered just under her so-cool facade.

She met him, stroked his tongue with her own on another sound, one that rocked straight to his gut, right to the hard erection she might as well have grabbed, he was so aroused. Her response wrapped around him like a noose, pulled tight until he went nearly blind with wanting.

He didn’t close the distance between their bodies, didn’t dare risk the shock, the sheer torture of what the feel of her curves would do to him. He feasted at her mouth and knew,
knew
this single kiss was going to replay in his dreams for a long damn time.

It would have to do. He didn’t dare take it any further than this.

Naomi Ishikawa was a lot more fragile than she let on. He knew it, the split second she opened her mouth to him. The way her breath caught in her chest and her eyes drifted shut under his practiced, teasing exploration.

When he disengaged his lips from hers, moved his head back far enough that he could look into her slowly opening eyes, it thrilled him down to his toes to see her shock. A hazy wash of arousal.

Phin let go of her face, slid his palms along her bare arms, and reveled as she shuddered under his touch. Curling his fingers around her wrists, he gently tugged her hands away from the wrinkled disarray of his collar.

Her tongue flicked out, slid a slow, wet line over the center divot of her bottom lip. It knocked an answering pulse of heat through his blood.

“Oh . . . kay,” Naomi murmured. Awareness slowly filtered back into her eyes. Returned the shadows, the wariness. It warred with the arousal coloring her cheeks.

Phin’s smile widened. “I just wanted to make it clear,” he said, finally giving in to the temptation that had gnawed at him since the moment he met her. He touched his thumb to her bottom lip.

Felt it firm, move as she murmured, “Make what clear?”

“That I don’t have to pay for my women.”

He expected anger, maybe indignation. Naomi surprised him. Laughter rose like a visible warmth behind her exotic features, and Phin suddenly hoped to be surprised by her again.

Frequently.

“Good night, Phin,” she said, amusement thick in her voice as she stepped deliberately out of reach.

Dismissed again. Phin’s smile was wry as he watched her turn, his eyes on the sleek, denim-clad ass sauntering away. Even at an easy lope, she walked with purpose. With surety.

And, he noticed as she leaped over the three steps that joined the quad floor to the landing, without the refined sort of grace he expected from a finishing school–trained heiress.

Easing out a hard, laughing breath, he curled a finger into the suddenly too-warm fold of his collar and couldn’t help but feel in over his head as he turned resolutely for the pool hall. Near-death malfunctions, drop-dead gorgeous heiresses, and the threat of breaking his own cardinal rules.

Life just couldn’t get any more out of the ordinary.

Until she turned, her key card held jauntily between index and middle fingers. “By the way,” she called out, “you should check your security cameras. Betcha a dollar they’ll reveal what went wrong.”

Phin studied her, one eyebrow arching up slowly. “Are you asking me if we have security cameras, Naomi, or are you hoping we don’t?”

Her head tilted. “That depends. If I were to, say, indulge in some
very
inappropriate behavior with a certain slick operator in some of these halls, would we—” Her grin widened into a slow, sultry line. “That is, would this hypothetical man and I be seen everywhere we tried go?”

Lust shot straight to his groin. So did all the remaining blood in his brain. “Not,” he managed, “everywhere.” Close enough, but he knew a blind spot or two.

Or three or four or—
Jesus God, help me now.

Her eyes flashed, pure sensual violet as the elevator doors slid open behind her. “Just wondering,” she said lightly.

Phin rubbed his face with both hands as the shiny elevator doors closed on her smile.

Chapter Four

F
ailure. God damn it, he didn’t
do
failure.

Joe Carson watched the old woman sleeping in her narrow clinic bed and cursed silently. He’d been so sure of Alexandra Applegate as the perfect bait. She wasn’t just rich, after all, she was special. Important.

Sure, it’d been a risk. A calculated one. She could have died in that sauna—the risk wouldn’t have been worth it if he didn’t make it
real
—but he knew they had the means to make sure she didn’t. All the damned witches had to do was bring out the fountain.

No harm, no foul. The Church got what it wanted.

But overhearing that snot-nosed brat explain about the woman’s ludicrous privacy contract was enough to make him want to kill something. Bare-fucking-handed.

Why hadn’t he known that? Fuck. God take them all, he hated this sacrilegious tomb and its goddamned aberrant clientele.

But he couldn’t do anything about it yet. Patience. It was the stakeout to end all stakeouts. He could do patience.

He had to. He’d had the perfect vantage point, the perfect box seat to watch the opera unfold, but no.

The missionary had to ruin it.

That
should have driven him insane. It should have worried him. Instead he’d barely escaped her sharp eye and quick mind, and even now he smiled from the cramped hole he hid in.

Naomi West would make it fun. Much more fun than he’d thought when he’d first taken on this operation. It wasn’t her fault she’d stuck her foot in it, after all. Like him, she was just doing her job.

But now he had to plan a little more carefully. A little more cautiously. It wasn’t like shooting oily fish in a barrel anymore.

The Church had dealt its hand. Joe wondered if it knew that it was playing itself at the table.

He imagined that his fellow missionary was well and truly pissed at losing him. It’d been damn close. Only the vase he’d thrown at her had given him the time to get away, but she was tough stuff. Mission-suit Teflon.

And if she ever got her hands on him . . . He didn’t laugh, but it was close. Swallowing back a bubble of eagerness, he didn’t so much as shift a muscle. Strain already ripped through his cramping limbs, but he could hold it until the Second Coming if he had to. Tenacity. That’s what made him a damn good missionary.

And based on what he knew about Naomi West, that’s what made her almost as good as he was.

Almost.

Joe let out a silent sigh. Of relief. Of anticipation.

Of appreciation.

Timeless made it so damn easy. He relished Naomi’s unspoken challenge. Finally. A woman worth her weight in bullets.

He tipped his head, studying the round figure of the woman perched in the chair beside the bed. She read a book too battered to see the name of, thick-rimmed glasses on her nose. The golden lamp haloed her brown hair, and anger streaked through him again. Pooled like bile in his skull.

It should have worked. That lock should have held on for a full three minutes longer, a timer set to force the bishop’s favored grandmother into cardiac arrest, at least. Emergency services could never get to Timeless in time to save her life.

The Timeless witches would have had no choice but to reveal their secrets then.

Instead she’d been dragged out. In shock and a little worse for wear, but nothing a good night’s sleep and some herbal gunk couldn’t fix.

Damn it.

Maybe it was the sudden pressure change in the sauna, or something he hadn’t factored. He certainly hadn’t counted on his fellow missionary. Why?

He set his jaw, locking his knees tightly in place at his chest, and bided his time. Like a spider, he thought. A hungry, brilliant, venomous spider.

Surrounded by fat, clumsy, little flies.