Chris moved with him, slipping her fingers up to unfasten the buttons on his shirt one by one. She didn't expect to see the thin green lines wrapping around his throat, and ran her finger across an inch of them. They felt hard, almost like calluses. "Someone messed up the tattoo on your neck."
"For which I am eternally grateful." He took in a sharp breath when her fingers trailed down across the bare, smooth skin of his chest. "I see. You've come to continue the torture."
"You're wrong." She guided his hand to the pearl buttons hidden under the lace of her blouse. "I came here for you."
As Rob opened her blouse, Chris pushed his shirt back from his shoulders and drew it down his arms with little trouble. However he worked out, his regimen had left him with layer upon layer of tight, streamlined muscle so tough her fingertips couldn't dent them. The firelight lent a little color to his pale skin, and shadowed a small depression on his chest, just above his left nipple.
She saw no surgical mark to explain the absence of muscle, and idly wondered what sort of injury healed without scarring. As his fingers tugged free the comb holding her hair in place, she tilted her head and kissed the old wound.
Without warning Rob used the hair in his fist to pull her face away from his chest. "I thought you wanted to dance."
Harsh words from a man holding her by the hair and the hip, and sporting an erection that felt like a tire iron wedged between them. He didn't want her kissing his old injury or whatever it was; that much was plain.
She understood. She had her own scars to hide.
"I do." Chris shrugged out of her blouse and took hold of the ends of her scarf around his neck, using it to bring his head down to hers. "But is this"—she punctuated her words with little nips on his jaw, chin, and lower lip—"the only dance you know?"
Rob's mouth curved against hers. "I think not."
She expected him to kiss her, but instead felt his hands shift and heard the hiss of her skirt's zipper. Cool air whispered against the stretch of skin between the bottom hem of her chemise and the narrow hip band of her garter belt. She stepped out of the puddle of her skirt and moved back enough to watch his expression.
She would never be as beautiful as he was, but she knew how she looked almost naked.
"More splendid than I'd imagined." He traced his fingertips across the slippery shell of her satin lingerie, circling with his thumb her nipple, her navel, and the curve of her hip bone. "What else do you hide from me, my lady?"
Too much.
Chris felt an impossibly strong, wholly uncharacteristic impulse to tell him her life story right then and there. Chris, who had never confided anything to anyone outside her immediate family. Her parents were the same; they let people assume she was their biological daughter so that no one would know the truth about her real mother, and how cruelly she had abandoned Chris.
She should have asked, "What do you want to know?" but the words seemed locked in her throat.
"Look at me, love." Rob cradled her face between his hands. "Look." When she did, he stared into her eyes, muttered something under his breath, and covered her mouth with his to give her a brief, hard kiss. "I would trade all my worldly possessions so that I might not have to say this, but you must leave me."
"Leave you." Chris wasn't sure she'd heard him right. "Leave you now?"
"Aye." He turned his back on her, showing her a stretch of muscle that made her mouth water. "I'll have a car brought 'round to take you home."
After a few moments Chris followed him over to where he was dialing a cordless telephone. "Where is your bedroom?"
Rob gestured to the left as he lifted the phone to his ear.
Chris removed the receiver from his hand, switched it off, and placed it back on the charging station. "I'm not going anywhere." She put her hand in his and tugged him toward his bedroom. "Unless you take me."
Gordon Middleton checked through thousands of international air travelers as they streamed through his customs station at Heathrow's terminal two every day. He enjoyed his job as well, in a surly and somewhat grim fashion. Twenty years ago, Pan Am flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, only thirty-eight minutes after it had left Heathrow. The bomb, probably concealed in a bag that had not been properly checked, had taken a mate of Gordon's and 269 other souls on board and on the ground to a fiery death only four days before Christmas. Ever since that bitter night, Gordon had distrusted every passenger who came through his gate.
His suspicious nature had earned him three special citations of merit as well. He'd personally nabbed a pair of drug mules declaring plaster vases that turned out to be molded from pure cocaine; an HVAC mechanic from the U.S. with a case filled with unclaimed specialty compressor parts worth thousands of pounds; and a sweet-looking grandmother toting eight handguns in her knitting bag.
For twenty years, no one and nothing got past Middleton.
Gordon kept his eye on the three Americans as soon as they'd joined his queue. He didn't get many Yanks through his station; most came through terminal three with the rest of the passengers from U.S. flights. These three had probably come in on a private jet; they had the designer clothes and that particular bloody air of privilege about them.
The two men, one tall and dark, the other broad and scarred, kept a little bit of skirt in heaven-blue silk between them. The bint had a phone to her ear and a frown on her small face; likely she thought it made her look less suspicious. Yanks, Gordon knew, were idiots that way. He pegged them for a full inspection.
"Passports, if you please." Gordon carefully examined all three before looking up at the dark one, who seemed to have an air of authority about him. He also smelled of rose perfume, or maybe it came from the little fancy on the phone. "Have you or your friends anything to declare before you enter the United Kingdom, Mr. Cyprien?"
"Nothing at all, mon ami," Cyprien said.
Gordon, who thought Frenchmen were the only thing on earth worse than Yanks, stiffened. "Would you put your cases on the table?" Sensitivity training be damned; he would not say please to a sodding frog.
"Of course." Cyprien smiled. "But may I first tell you something very important?"
The bint's rose perfume made Gordon blink several times before he grinned back. "Anything you like, mate." He bent over and, although he hated being touched by passengers, didn't flinch as Cyprien put one long, cool hand to the side of his neck.
Then Gordon listened, and nodded, and agreed with every word that Michael Cyprien told him.
"We have questioned every member of the Methodist church where John was seen attending services on the morning he disappeared," Valentin Jaus, suzerain of the Chicago jardin, told Dr. Alexandra Keller. "None of them remember your brother leaving the sanctuary."
Alex moved several paces away from her lover, Michael Cyprien, who was speaking in a low murmur to the customs agent who had stopped them. "And you thoroughly searched the property again?"
"Several times. He cannot be hiding there." Valentin's voice softened with sympathy. "I know you are deeply worried about John, my lady, but you should leave this matter to me and my men now."
She had done just that by accompanying Michael to London, where the six other Kyn seigneurs were gathering along with Richard Tremayne, the Darkyn high lord, to hold an important tribunal that Michael referred to as le conseil supérieur. Alex had no reason to feel guilty over abandoning the search for her brother, either. She had spent months walking the streets of Chicago, questioning every hooker, junkie, and homeless wretch she could find. She knew her brother; if he intended to take refuge anywhere, it would be among the lost souls on the street. She'd shown them John's photo over and over, and compelled them with l'attrait to tell her the truth. No one had seen him.
All the evidence pointed to two conclusions: Either her brother either didn't want to be found, or John was dead.
Alex still couldn't accept either answer. "If there's a sighting, or any new leads—"
"Of course I shall contact you at once. You have my word on it, my lady."
"I appreciate it, Val. Give Liling my best." Alex switched off the mobile phone and handed it to Michael's seneschal, Phillipe. "No luck with the last of the church people."
"Do not worry so, Alexandra." Phillipe pocketed the phone and spoke to her with the same gentle sympathy that Valentin had. "If your brother is still in Chicago, Suzerain Jaus will find him."
"Assuming he's still alive."
Ever since John had vanished, Alex had been having nightmares about standing over her brother's body, sprawled in an alley, and watching rats feed on his gaunt corpse. She knew why she was having the bad dreams, too. At the time of his disappearance, John had been suffering serious complications from a strain of malaria Alex had been unable to identify. John disliked doctors and hospitals, and without treatment his chances of surviving the disease were almost nonexistent.
Alex glanced back at the gate leading to Cyprien's private jet, which would remain on standby until they were ready to return to the States. "How long do I have to stay at this thing?"
"As long as the master does." Phillipe took her arm in his in a familiar, comforting manner. "If you go back alone, it will hurt you both. You know how it will be. The last time was very bad."
The reminder made Alex's throat tighten. She had just recovered from some frightening physical and mental aftereffects of being kidnapped and separated from Michael. The bond she shared with him as his sygkenis, or life companion, went much deeper than she had ever suspected. They had a dependency on each other that defied explanation. Being away from Michael had made her vulnerable to other Kyn in ways that still haunted her. If she returned to America by herself, she had no doubt they'd both go through hell again.
"I'm not interested in giving myself Michael withdrawal," she assured Phillipe. "I was just wondering if we could somehow, you know, cut this short."