Stay the Night (Darkyn #7)

Her indifference had shocked him; her lies had enraged him; but the manner in which her voice quavered over the please struck him like a burning mace to the side of the head.

He looked into her eyes, as wounded by her fear as her deception. "Did it truly mean nothing to you?"

"Maybe it started out that way," she said slowly, "but when I woke up and saw you sleeping next to me, and remembered… I didn't know I would feel like that." Her shoulders rounded, and she stared at the floor. "I didn't even think about you, not really. I got dressed as fast as I could, and I ran."

"You can't regret being with me," he said, shaken. He ran a piece of her hair through his fingers and looked all over her face. "Not how we were together." When she didn't reply, he put his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. "Chris."

"No. No, I don't." She spoke as if she were ashamed of that fact. Then her expression cleared, and she touched his cheek. "You were better than any fantasy I've ever had."

Robin's confusion doubled. "If that is true, why did you run away?"

"Haven't you ever done something amazing and dangerous and exciting," she asked, "that you later wished you'd never done at all? Because you know it could change everything you have, everything you are?"

"So you ran away because you wanted more." Bitter memories made him laugh. "Yes, actually, I have done that myself." Robin urged her closer, folding her against him, and rested his chin against the top of her head. "I believe this is where my severely bruised pride takes a tumble."

"It's not you. It's me. My life. My choices." Chris tilted her head back and kissed his cheek. "I am glad you understand. I'll never forget you, or the night we spent together."

Now she thought he was being understanding. Accepting. Happy to slink off into the night and leave her to her sting operations and undercover work. But at least he had the comfort of knowing that she would never forget having sex with him.

If he left this room without throttling her, Robin thought, it would be a miracle.

"Before you send me on my way," he said carefully, "and go back to living your life as it was, there is something else I want you to remember." He put his hands around her waist, lifted her off her feet, and brought her mouth to his.

Chris tried to push him off for all of five seconds before her hands shifted and wound around his neck and her lips parted for his tongue.

Robin groaned. She might look like a posh barrister, his Chris, but she kissed like a Persian courtesan. As she had last night, she met his hunger by offering her own. Her soft, silky mouth tugged and caressed her tongue stroked and tasted.

His anger had not vanished, and Chris's generous response added resentment to the ire he felt. He knew how to use finesse with a female, but she had brought forth the brute in him, and he took it out on her mouth. She didn't go passive, however. She met his fury with an affectionate indulgence, catching his lip between the edge of her teeth or stroking his face with her fingers, petting him, as if she meant to dare him to do more, take more.

After centuries of embracing softly yielding human females willing to meet his every need, the erotic challenge of kissing this one drove Robin wild. No one had ever made him feel this, and he would not let it end. To hell with the manuscript, the FBI, humanity, the Kyn, and the rest of the bloody world. She would not dismiss him from her life. He would find a way to win her heart.

"Wait." She gasped the word between ferocious kisses. "Fire."

He found he had to literally wrench his mouth from hers in order to hear her over the miserable clanging sound in his brain. "What?"

"Alarm." She tore free of his hands and heaved in a breath, staggering a little as she went around him. "Fire alarm."

Chapter Eight

Chris couldn't get out of the office, not until Robin reached past her and jerked the door open. As soon as he did, she heard men shouting and women screaming beneath the earsplitting screech of the fire alarm. A crackling sound drowned out the hiss of water spraying from the ceiling, but she saw no flames or smoke in the air.

As she came around the corner she had to swerve to avoid a huge cage of jagged glass. Inside, three people huddled on the floor, their clothes covered with what looked like white flour. Their teeth chattered as they held on to each other and called for help. All around the gallery the guests were caught in a dozen other identical cages.

"Hold on. We'll get you out." Chris grabbed the bars, and the cold, slick bars stung her palms. She pulled her hands away and stared at the water on them.

The cages weren't made of glass, but ice.

Robin looked up. "It's the water from the fire sprinkler system," he told her, his mouth tight. "The spray has been frozen."

Chris saw a thick column of ice at the top of each cage attached to the metal heads of the sprinklers in the ceiling. The frozen carpet crunched as she walked around it, and she saw a thick layer of ice crystals covering almost everything else in the gallery.

"How could it freeze inside like this?" Disbelief made her spin back and forth as she looked for a rational explanation. The air felt so cold that breathing in made her teeth ache. "Atlanta doesn't have blizzards. This is crazy. It's April."

Ice shattered as a short, stocky blond man dressed in red leathers broke out of one of the cages and trotted over. Chris recognized him as the same man who had tried to get Rob's attention at the club. As soon as he stopped before them, the smell of spicy hot chocolate stung her cold nose.

"My lord," the blond said in a low, rough British accent, " 'twas done by Kyn."

"By one Kyn," Robin agreed, his accent suddenly much thicker. "This is Guisbourne's work."

"What are you talking about?" Chris's gaze bounced between the men's angry expressions. "Who's Guisbourne?"

The blond ignored her. "I did not see his face. He set off the water system somehow, and used his talent to freeze the streams. Once the mortals and I were trapped, he smashed the case and helped himself to the book."

Chris turned toward the display case containing the manuscript, now an empty, shattered box. The frozen gallery had sent her reeling, but this shut down everything inside her. Five million dollars' worth, gone like that.

On her watch, no less. She wouldn't be bounced out of the bureau. She'd be tarred and feathered and hung from the nearest flagpole.

You win, Magic Man.

"Cyprien banished him at the winter tournament," she heard the blond saying to Robin. "To defy the seigneur's order of exile would be signing his own death warrant."

The bizarre references Robin's friend made finally dented the roaring in Chris's head. She'd just lost a priceless, irreplaceable part of history to the best thief in the world, and he was babbling as if he'd just stepped out of a role-playing game.

"He has nothing left to go to, Will," Robin replied. "His seneschal is dead, his Saracens deserted him, and his jardin was burned out. All he has left is his vengeance."

Chris put her hands against her ears to try to block out his voice. This didn't feel like a drug-induced hallucination should, but what else could it be?

"Why would he do this instead of challenging you directly?" the blond named Will asked.

"He knows I would kill him." Robin walked over to the broken case and touched the empty velvet-covered pedestal inside. "This is more personal than a duel. He could not have her in life, so he would keep from me the only likeness of her that exists." All the emotion left Robin's voice. "Track him. Now."

Chris shook off the paralyzing shock as she remembered her own people. She went back to the storeroom and found Dennis and the other techs trapped in cages of white ice. A thick layer of frozen foam covered all of the monitoring equipment.

"Agent Renshaw." Dennis looked relieved. "Something triggered the chem units we set up over the computers, and dumped foam all over everything. Then things got really weird and it froze. You okay?"

"Things got weird out there, too, but yeah. I think I am." Chris gave him the once-over to assure herself he wasn't wounded. "Have you seen Agent Hutchins?" Maybe Hutch would know what the hell had caused all this.

"As soon as the alarm sounded he ran in here with Agent Alpert, but then the foam started pouring down and freezing." Dennis rubbed the sides of his arms with his hands. "Alpert went out to the gallery, but two guys came in, grabbed Hutch, and dragged him out of here." He poked the frozen foam separating them. "You didn't happen to see a hacksaw anywhere, did you?"

"I'll get some help." All the phones in the storeroom were frozen, so Chris went back out into the gallery, where Robin was breaking loose the ice bars of one cage. Chris tried to do the same to the ice closest to her, but discovered she couldn't budge the thick, frozen column. The people inside the cages were starting to shiver and pale, Chris saw, and she ran back to the office, the only room in the gallery that hadn't been frozen over, to get to the phone.

Robin had smashed out the bars of five cages of ice by the time Will returned.

"Guisbourne's scent disappeared in the street outside," his seneschal told him. "He must have used a car to escape."

"Did you disable the telephone lines?" When Will nodded, Robin felt a little better. "Contact the jardin. We will need a dozen men here while we clean up this mess and attend to the humans. Alert our friends at the police department as well."

Marigold suffused the air. "I regret to say that your men cannot come to your aid, my lord."

Robin faced the contessa, who stood flanked by four armed Kyn warriors. The sly smile on her lips confirmed his suspicions, but he gave her a chance to deny them. "You were a part of this?"

"I intended only to take the manuscript from you," Salva said. "Unfortunately, it seems that Nottingham had a better plan than I."