Absolutely. She nodded. Mark raised his eyes to Robert and circled his index finger, apparently a universally understood gesture among soldiers.
They made their way quietly inside the walls in a little convoy, Harper sandwiched between the two large men, following their lead. Not too fast and not too slow, and of course, silently.
When they reached the intersection, they cracked the wall door open and saw the Grand Gallery bustling with soldiers and medical personnel. Robert and Mark looked at each other, then simply walked out and joined the stream of soldiers flowing down the grand staircase and out.
Nobody paid them any attention, they were part of the stream of people rushing out. There were soldiers flanking the stream, weapons up, forming an armed guard, and soldiers on the floor dismantling the explosives. Robert had explained that they’d found what they thought were all the detonators and at any rate, there was a radio jammer throughout the Louvre calibrated to the frequency of the detonators.
They stepped outside.
Harper stopped when, far in the distance, she saw the black hole where the glorious golden Pyramid had been. Her heart broke, just a little, and she hoped they’d rebuild it as soon as possible. Big spotlights were up in the inner courtyard and the shards of glass glittered in the harsh light.
“We’ll rebuild,” Robert murmured, and Mark nodded.
“Damn right.”
Harper wrenched her attention away from the ruins of the Pyramid and could see at the entrance to the huge square a series of trucks with antennas on top. Bright lights shone on news anchors from all over the world.
A teeming tide of people was held back by the police.
“Come,” Robert said, and they walked away from the courtyard, the ruins, the people. “We must get you out another way.”
They descended into what was once the entrance to the Louvre under the Pyramid, down the still escalator, right into a series of corridors with temporary exhibits, then through a door into a concrete stairwell and down several floors. Then a long dusty corridor, lit only by the two men’s flashlights, to another door. Up two flights, another corridor, then a fire door and…out. Back into the fresh air.
Harper took off the ski mask and gulped the air gratefully. The night smelled of the distant traffic she could hear but not see and the bushes lining a walkway.
Robert gestured and an unmarked vehicle with deeply tinted windows rolled silently up. Robert opened the door and Harper slid in. Mark stood for a moment, one hand on the roof of the vehicle, one hand on the door.
“You’ve got a mole in the police,” Mark reminded Robert.
Robert’s face turned grim. “Yes, we know. We’ll find him or them, have no fear.”
Mark nodded. “I can count on you and your office to keep us out of it.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“Mais certainement,” Robert replied. “And I understand your reasons.”
Mark dipped his head to enter the back seat where she waited for him, but Robert put his hand on Mark’s arm.
“Very few people know what you did here tonight, but I know. You saved the lives of hundreds of people and you saved the Louvre. We discovered enough C-4 to destroy the building a hundred times over. The French people owe you an enormous debt of gratitude.”
Mark shook his head.
“No one knows, and no one will know, but your company will have top-level French business till the end of time, count on it. I have ways to make sure your company’s name is always at the top of the list, and I ensure you I will do just that.”
Mark gave a half smile, shook Robert’s hand and finally joined her in the back seat.
He put his arm around her, pulled her toward him for a chaste kiss on the forehead and met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“The Ritz, s’il vous plaît.”
There was something she had to understand, right now, his warrior princess. Mark watched her in the intermittent light of the tall ornate streetlamps. She’d been through hell. It was a miracle they were alive. He could still see the marks of the gas mask on her delicate skin.
And yet she was more beautiful than ever, classy and smart and alive! They’d come through an ordeal few people would have survived. Harper had never been in battle before and she’d come through like…well, like Daenerys, the Mother of Dragons.
He bent his head toward her, drinking her in. Smelling her, feeling her, this woman who’d become his woman so quickly. And he knew there was no going back. She was the one for him. He’d thought that kind of thing was crap. Lots of attractive women in the world, he’d always thought. He’d bedded his fair share of them, but none had ever gotten under his skin like Harper.
He wanted a long, long time with her. The rest of his life, in fact. But they had to be alive to do that. If they had any shot at spending their lives together, she had to understand one thing, and she had to understand it deep in her bones, in every cell of her body, with both her head and her heart.
Mark gently took Harper’s chin with his thumb and forefinger and turned her head toward him. She’d been looking out the window at the glory of Paris along the Seine. Except for the dark shadow of the Louvre—unlit but still there—the buildings along the river were lit with a golden light, stunning, spectacular.
If not for the looming dark structure now behind them, there’d be no sign of the violence and terror of the past hours.
“Harper,” he said softly, “listen to me. This is very important.”
Her eyes sharpened and he could almost feel her focus. “Yes?”
“We just survived the biggest terror attack since 9/11. And we had a big hand in stopping it. Do you understand?”
She nodded, huge eyes fixed on his face. “Yes, of course.”
“It is—would be—the biggest media story of the year. Maybe the decade. We’d be famous. You’d write a book. It would definitely get made into a movie.”
Mark was relieved to see that the idea didn’t enthuse her. Most people would have started counting the money in their head, eyes going ka-ching! But her eyes remained cool, focused on him. On what he was saying. It felt like she was listening to him through her skin and eyes and bones, not just through her ears.
“You could write your own ticket, your magazine would have advertisers coming out of its ears, you’d be on TV.”
Mark himself would never be on TV. His work was in the shadows and he wanted it to stay that way. But he was different, he knew. Most people would kill to be on TV, become famous.
But…
“But you might not live long enough to enjoy your wealth and fame.”
Her eyes widened.
“You’d be painting a bullseye right on your back.” Mark took her hands in his. They were soft and cold and trembled slightly. He was frightening her but it was also the effects of adrenaline. “That attack was probably years in the planning. Embedding that many officers in the French police force would have taken time and immense effort. It was planned and timed, which meant they rehearsed it over and over. If it had succeeded, it would have been a world-changing event. But they were thwarted and if they discover they were thwarted by two people, they’ll come after us with all they’ve got. It’s the only way they can save face.”
He held her hands more tightly. “Robert went to a lot of trouble to keep us out of it. He’s going to wipe down the inside handle of the door and the butt of the gun you used to whack the lead terrorist.”
She made a distressed sound in the back of her throat, and he bent to kiss her quickly on the lips.
“I’m really glad you did, honey. You saved my life. And now I’m doing my damnedest to save yours. So, do you understand me? No one must ever know we were there and that we did what we did. Ever. Not your mother and father, not your best friend. No one must know. I can’t stress that enough. Are you with me on this?”
He could see the headlines. Shadowy Billionaire Assassinated in Terrorist Ambush. Young Woman Who Helped Stop the Louvre Attac
k Shot Down.
The car came to a stop in front of the Ritz, but Mark kept a tight hold on her hand and made no move to get out.
“Harper? Do you understand? Our lives depend on our silence.”
Her face tightened, pale eyes gleaming in the darkness of the limo.
“Yes,” she said finally. “I understand completely. No one can ever know what we did tonight.”
“No one,” Mark repeated. “No one at all. Not even a hint.” He was being annoying but goddamn, this was important. It was all too easy to see her dead body, shot in the head, the killer with the sniper rifle calmly putting the pieces of the rifle back in its case, feeling nothing and not caring that he’d just put an end to Mark’s world.
Harper freed a hand and stroked his face with her fingertips. A small gesture but it touched something deep inside him.
“Rest easy,” she said softly. “I’d hate a media circus even if it didn’t put us in danger. No one will ever know.”
Nail it down, he thought.
“Not your best friend since grade school, not your sister, not your brother, not your parents or grandparents.”
The fingers tracked down to his chin. She cupped it, in a gesture he was beginning to be familiar with.
“My best friend since grade school is a major gossip, I don’t have siblings, my grandparents are dead, and I wouldn’t dare tell my parents because they’d have heart attacks. They get upset when I fly, let alone take down terrorist attacks. I would never, ever tell them what happened. I wouldn’t dare.”
He searched her eyes and encountered only calm certainty.
“Okay, then.”
The driver had rounded the car and held open the back door. Mark got out and held out his hand for her.
She stepped out like a queen. Her clothes were dirty and dusty but she held herself like royalty. She dusted herself off and straightened her clothes and you’d have to look carefully to see anything out of the ordinary. He, on the other hand, looked like he’d just come in from the wars.
Of course, in a way, he had.
They held hands as they walked across the sumptuous lobby. Mark had the room cardkey in his pocket but decided to veer to the front desk, make contact with the concierge.
“I’d like you to send two steak frites up to my suite in an hour,” he said.
Even the super-polite and well-trained concierge’s eyes rounded at that. “But—but monsieur,” he sputtered. “It’s six o’clock in the morning.”
Then he pursed his lips. It was not his place to criticize clients. And everyone knew that Americans were barbarians.
“I know.” Mark smiled down into Harper’s eyes. “But we’ve been out of town and we’re hungry. I’d like my steak rare. You?”
“Bleu aussi,” she said to the concierge. Mark knew that bleu meant bloody.
“Oui, monsieur.” The concierge tapped on a screen on the desk. “Have you heard the news, M’sieur, madame?”
Mark and Harper stood smiling into each other’s eyes, seemingly lost to the world.
Harper was the first to answer. “Hmmm?” She turned her gaze from Mark with an almost audible wrench. “What news?”
“The hostages have been freed!” The concierge beamed.
Harper looked utterly blank as she stared at the concierge. “Hostages? What hostages?”
Under that cosmopolitan veneer, the concierge was shocked. “The hostage situation at the Louvre, madame. Terrorists attacked the Louvre!”
His outrage was clear.
Harper’s eyes rounded. “The Louvre? The Louvre was attacked?” She covered her mouth in shock. The very picture of consternation.
Clearly, Mark wasn’t needed here. He stood back a little and watched a master at work, falling a little more in love with every second. She lied like a pro. He really admired that.
“Yes.” The concierge’s thin lips pursed again. “Terrorists overran the Louvre, killed many tourists and took a hundred tourists hostage in the room with the Mona Lisa. They slashed the Mona Lisa. They threatened to blow up the Louvre, destroy it.” He stopped, breathing heavily.
“Oh my God,” Harper whispered. “And what happened?”
The concierge straightened. “And then the French police attacked them and freed all the hostages. They are all alive and all the terrorists have been captured.”
Interesting, Mark thought, that the police were getting the credit. Maybe it would be straightened out later. He didn’t care either way. And those in the know would be congratulating Robert.
The concierge narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t heard anything about this? It’s been all over the media.”
“Oh. Well.” Harper leaned against him. Mark didn’t know how she did it, but she brought up a pretty little blush from somewhere. “We’ve been away and…busy.”
She didn’t have to say it, it was implicit. They’d been fucking like bunnies somewhere isolated.
And bam!
The image of the two of them in bed, having sex, filled his brain. Filled his nostrils, filled his lungs, filled his dick with blood.
The entire night at the Louvre was almost forgotten, a dim memory, because right now all he could think about was Harper and getting her into his room and getting into her, as fast as he could.
If he could have pushed a button to send them straight to his bedroom, naked, him already inside her, he would have.
And right there, in the Ritz’s famous elegant lobby, with a snobby concierge in front of him, he was hard as a rock and nowhere to go with it.
And he was about ready to blow, with Harper right there by his side, touching him, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, smiling slightly. For the first time since he was fourteen, he was about ready to come in his pants.
Combat hard-on, surely. But also because he wanted Harper right now with a ferocity that surprised him.
They had to get away. Like, now.
Harper was listening with apparent fascination to the concierge’s account of the attack on the Louvre, making appropriate oh sounds with that delectable mouth of hers. He pulled at her elbow, startling her.
“We have to go. Now.” His voice was hard, as hard as his dick. She could see the state he was in, though luckily the concierge couldn’t see below his waist over the counter.
Mark pulled her toward the elevators. While walking, she half turned and waved at the concierge. Mark didn’t turn around to do the same, not with that tent in his pants.
Luckily, the elevator was waiting for them on the ground floor. Mark ushered Harper in with a hand to her back, then stabbed the button for his floor as if it were his own personal enemy.
They stood stiffly in the elevator, staring straight ahead, watching each other’s reflections in the burnished copper plates of the inside doors.
He had his arm around her waist, and couldn’t let go, not for anything. “Can’t kiss you,” he said, his voice guttural.
She’d picked up on it, on the fact that he was like a bag of C-4, just waiting to detonate.
She shook her head.
“Couldn’t stop.”
She nodded her head.
The fates were kind and delivered them quickly to his floor. He showed enormous self-control because he didn’t pick her up and carry her to his door. The security cameras were no doubt showing a normal couple, walking normally, though if the cameras had infrared capability, he would have shown up as incandescent red, like a star about to go nova.
The corridor, the door, the card key…his vision tunneled, the world reduced to the next barrier on the way to bed.
Finally, they were in the bedroom and then on the bed, because he was about ready to explode.
He ripped off his jacket, pulled off the shirt, undershirt, unzipped his pants, shucked his boots and socks off, pulled pants and briefs down. All the while kissing her wildly. He wanted to hold her head while he kissed but he only had two hands. He should have had six hands—two to hold her head, two to get naked, two to get her nak
ed. Eight hands—two more to hold her hips.
But he only had two. And those two were now getting rid of her clothes, which was a little hard because she was lying on her back and he was on top of her.
He was a good mission planner, known for strategic thinking. But that had gone. At this moment he only knew the straight line between now and when he could enter her.
He pulled her up, got rid of everything up top, shifted to the side of her, and got rid of everything on the bottom and then, ah…there they were. Naked.
He shifted back on top of her and spread her legs with his thighs, poised at her entrance, feeling the warm wetness between her legs.
Mark lifted his head, looking at her light gray eyes and swollen mouth. “No time for foreplay,” he whispered regretfully.
Harper smiled, eyes nearly closed. “No need. Turns out thwarting terrorists is a massive turn-on. Who knew?”
And she wrapped her thighs around his, moving her hips forward, and he slid right into her. She was right—she was massively turned on.
God, so was he.
Holding her head, kissing her endlessly, he gave two hard thrusts and it was over. He exploded inside her, thrusting wildly…sharp, short, hard movements, totally out of his control. In the end, he held himself as deeply inside her as possible while being wrung dry.
It was mindless, exhilarating, white-hot pleasure—and embarrassing once it was over. He let go of her mouth, braced on his forearms, head hanging down between his shoulders, concentrating on his dick inside her. His entire body was drowning in pleasure, like all his skin was coming too.
He stayed inside her for a time out of time, could have been minutes, could have been hours, could have been days. He had no way of knowing, all he could pay attention to was the orgasm that had come screaming out of his dick by way of his head and his toes and everything in between.
He shook, trembled, sweated, hanging over her, panting. Coming and coming.
When he came back into himself, he was drowning in honeyed pleasure while ashamed. His toes were dug into the mattress to push himself as far as possible in her. He had really strong hands and they were clutching the sides of her head. Was he hurting her?
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