Caught in the Act: A Jewel Heist Romance Anthology

by Ainslie Paton

  Cleve’s kisses had never been that good anyway. He’d only been enthusiastic because she was forbidden fruit and he liked her tongue stud. She’d had better. Not that she could remember when or who right now, but it would come to her. Just like her own hair color came to her in an expensive Knightsbridge salon, with a sense of relief.

  She stared at herself in the mirror while the stylists used another one to show her the back of her head. A return to her own chocolate brown, with choppy layers cut into the length. Bye bye blonde and clumsy, hello Arietta Cappella, and a whole new level of hustle. She would’ve liked to have shaved it all the way off, but a shaved head was easier to remember and these were her anonymous days. She snapped a selfie and sent it to Pari with the caption, “Still hungry.”

  Then she checked her new hair into a new hotel with a new name.

  After that she shopped, quite literally until her feet started to ache and she was forced to stop for afternoon tea of scones with jam and cream. No one forced her to be a pig and have a double helping, but seriously, starving. Pari got a picture of the second set of scones and then Aria dumped the burner cell and picked up two more, staggered back to the hotel laden down with bags of wonderful new clothes bought in a size up that Arietta Cappella would eventually enjoy wearing.

  In her room at the Berkeley, she designated one of the two phones as her yakuza hotline and used it to dial Shoma’s personal line.

  “Ittai nani ga shitaidesu ka?” Shoma’s traditional greeting, which translated to something like, “what the hell do you want?”

  “Shoma, I have collected the conductor. The orchestra is ready for your enjoyment.”

  “Oh, it’s you. And what’s this conductor going to cost me?”

  “The price is as we agreed.”

  “And if I wish to negotiate?”

  Aria wasn’t dumb enough to think Shoma would stick to only one round of negotiation. “Of course we can negotiate, but I do have other buyers interested.” Or naive enough to show that scared her.

  “Cut the crap. You pinched that diamond for me and I want it, but I’m not a fool. How do I know you have it?”

  “Hold just one minute.” Aria rummaged in her suitcase and pulled out the shoe, popped the diamond free of its casing and used the phone to snap a selfie, making sure to keep most of her face hidden by her new haircut, and the Sweet Celestia prominent.

  “This could be anything,” said Shoma a few moments later.

  She was right. Aria could just have easily been showing off another fake. “What reason do you have to doubt me?”

  “You are new to this. I only do business with people I trust, and I don’t trust you.”

  The connection went dead. This was bad. Not unexpected, but not what Aria had schemed and dieted for. Fencing a stone as famous as the Sweet Celestia wasn’t a simple matter. She needed to think through her next move carefully. She’d have to offer to meet with Shoma in person, and there were risks associated with walking into yakuza territory. The kind of risks that had led her father to take on an expendable protégé, one who’d managed to make himself permanently indispensable.

  “You’d better have been worth all the trouble,” she said to Celestia, and popped the stone back into the casing in the broken shoe and then stuffed it in the bottom of her suitcase. Not even housekeeping would steal a single broken shoe. She’d ditched the unbroken one, along with Melody’s clothing, back in Geneva.

  Done with scheming for the day but not with eating, she rang room service and ordered a snack, took a nap, showered, dressed, changed her mind about where she’d put Celestia, snipped the labels off a new coat, and went out to show her haircut a good time. She intended to party in the manner in which she rightly deserved, triumphant and horny, not teary-eyed and alone.

  Club Nocturne, with its slick funk beats and transparent furniture, was a very classy meat market and Aria was a choice cut of meat. She had eyes on her that under other circumstances would’ve made her uncomfortable. Under the guise of needing to blow off steam in a very physical way, she welcomed the attention along with a steady flow of cocktails with idiotic names. She had an Applebottom Pimp, a Piece of Arse, a Sally Fudpacker, and was holding a Fainting Goat when she saw him.

  Rugby player physique, a sleeve of tattoos, a high and tight haircut, a brooding expression, a WAG hanging off his arm, who had to be the girlfriend part of that acronym and not the wife part, because Rugby Hunk was eye-fucking Aria across the room.

  She raised her Fainting Goat in salute. He acknowledged by wiping the girlfriend off as if she was a wet towel and made his way to her. He was bigger and meaner looking than everyone else in the room, and there was nothing ambiguous about what he intended to do when he got to her. It wouldn’t extend to more than a few words of conversation, maybe they’d even be inarticulate grunts. The idea made Aria cross her legs as a pleasant hum started in her lower body.

  Rugby was exactly what she needed, a single shot of hot sex, with very little modesty, no unnecessary talking and the maximum amount of thrusting, followed by a glazed look as he drifted away.

  Rugby would make her forget whatever it was that was making her feel low. He’d also hopefully make her come so hard her brain rattled. A pair of big hands, a dick to match, the easy strength to hold her up against a wall—a fitting celebration for the score of the century. And like the best short con, one and done, and no complications.

  “Hi,” he said, eyes going straight to her legs perfectly displayed by her short, flirty skirt and tall boots. From the stool she occupied, he towered over her.

  “Hi yourself.”

  “You up for it or what?”

  She laughed. No messing around if he was saying what she thought he was. “Are you asking if I’m down to fuck?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, how about it?”

  “Are you someone famous?” Because that might be more trouble than it was worth.

  “You a Yank?”

  She put her empty glass down. “I am indeed.”

  “I might be a little bit famous.”

  Already this was too much talking. “Describe a little bit.”

  “I play rugby, yeah. For, like, the country.”

  “I thought you might play some kind of football. I’m more interested in you playing me. Think you can do that?”

  “Posh are you, love.”

  Was that a question? It came out like a statement. Why couldn’t he just grunt and drag her off somewhere?

  “I’m not posh.” A little tipsy, but no one could ever accuse her of being elitist. Punk, goth or emo, but never upper class.

  “S’right if you are, but I’m on, like, a clock here.”

  “A clock?”

  “Things to do, people to see, you know.”

  “Do me and be on your way.” Be on your way, where did that expression come from? England was turning her into a character out of Austen and she’d only been here a day.

  “You mean that?”

  “Hell yes, shut up and fuck me.”

  He grinned. She wondered how many times his nose had been broken and what it would be like to hang on to his thick neck and stop thinking. How long was he going to make her wait to find out? And then his grin fell away, as his eyes shifted to something behind her. “You playing funny buggers with me, love?”

  “Playing what?”

  A chin bob. “I don’t mind if you want him to watch, but I don’t want a circus.”

  One minute Rugby was on the clock, and now he had a watch problem. She was tipsy, not stupid drunk. She sighed. This was over. The more they spoke, the less anonymous she was, and he had mentioned he was famous.

  “He the boyfriend, husband? S’right, just no cameras.”

  “What? Who?” She turned her head as she said it. There had to be fifty people packed arou
nd the bar and a hundred or more in this room, but there was one man staring at her. Two bar stools along, glass half-full of amber fluid in his hand, rocks. Sun-browned skin, untamed dark curls, light eyes, white shirt, dark pants, superior look on his face that morphed into something she couldn’t name when their eyes connected.

  She spun back, her heart rioting in her chest. “I have no idea who that is.” Because it couldn’t be. But he’d been in her thoughts and she’d had four cocktails and was buzzing.

  “You sure about that? Matey seems to know you.”

  He didn’t know her. Not the real her. No one did. She put her hand on Rugby’s chest. “Just us. You have somewhere we can go. Let’s do this.”

  He nodded and took her hand while she spun her stool around and came to stand. He led her through the room, down a corridor and out a fire door into a delivery bay, where he crowded her into a brick wall. This is what she needed; not to think, not to know, just to get her jacket ruined with rough sex against a wall.

  “Still yeah, love?” he said, hands spread over her ribs.

  She went for his belt. “Yeah.”

  “What you got under that skirt?”

  Absolutely nothing to make access difficult. “Find out.”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  He gathered her skirt in his hand, and another voice said, “I don’t think so, sport.”

  Rugby didn’t move, didn’t stop crowding her. “Fuck off, mate.” He put his big warm hand under her skirt and grasped her hip. Yes. She dropped her head to his chest. They’d go away, whoever they were, they’d go away.

  “The lady and I have business to discuss.”

  Rugby ignored that, good man, snaked his hand around to her ass, sank his fingers in and brought their hips together. Her boots gave her height; he’d widened his stance. She needed that zipper down and her hand around him. She needed the oblivion of being pounded into orgasm.

  “You don’t know anything about her. You don’t know where she’s been for the last ten years, how hard she was to trace, what kind of heartbreaker she is. You don’t know how to touch her the way she likes it, how to kiss her so she goes crazy.”

  Rugby was kissing her, all thrusting tongue and sucking lips, and that was car chase good, but he stopped, rested his forehead on hers. “Don’t need your help, mate. Sod off.”

  “You don’t know how to put her back together when she breaks.”

  Rugby’s head turned. “You’re bothering me. Fuck off before I make you.”

  He would, Rugby would make it right. Make it so that the man who sounded like Cleve, looked like him, wasn’t still standing there.

  “No, sport, you don’t want to do that.”

  “She said she doesn’t know you.”

  “She knows me. We go way back.”

  Rugby took her chin in his hands and brought her head up. “That true?”

  She shook her head. “He’s a lying, thieving bastard.”

  “Aria. No matter what she tells you, that’s her real name.”

  Rugby brought his face closer and shifted his hips back. No. “That your name?”

  She was Arietta Cappella. But Aria sounded like a diminutive, which was why she’d picked it from the half dozen IDs at her disposal, wanting to be herself again. Bad idea, bad, bad idea.

  And Cleve really was here.

  She spat out the words, “How did you find me?”

  “You do know him.” Rugby stepped away. “You’re fucken drop dead gorgeous, but I don’t need the agro. Tell me now if you’re scared of him.” He put his hand to her face. “Not such a dickhead I’m gonna leave you with trouble.”

  She stared up into Rugby’s frown. The look in his eyes said he wouldn’t mind a fight. “I’m not scared of him.” She’d run once, but not out of fear, out of hatred. She wouldn’t run again for any reason. “He can’t hurt me.”

  Not anymore.

  Rugby let her go. “Right, I’m orf.” He looked at the bastard Shadow. “You watch yourself, mate.”

  She was sober now, on guard—she could watch herself. “What do you want?”

  Cleve didn’t come any closer and she stayed where she was against the wall.

  “I want to look at you. I didn’t believe it was you, Aria. So goddamn amazing.”

  She didn’t want him to say her real name. She did want to see his ugly face, remember what it felt like when he touched her, when he betrayed her. “What. Do. You. Want?”

  “What’s mine, baby.” He’d dropped his voice to a whisper made of midnight flits across rooftops hand in hand and his warm lips nibbling across the cold skin of her shaved scalp.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’d found her, but he couldn’t possibly know what she’d done, and the Greville’s auction wasn’t for another couple of hours so word wasn’t out yet.

  “You were mine then, black heart and fireball soul. Years I looked for you.” He took a step forward. “You’re still mine.”

  “You’re deluded, high on your own criminal fame.” She hissed at him like a wild animal, preparing to attack. “Get away from me.”

  He laughed and the sound entered her body and rearranged her cells, divided them into red for desire and white for hate. He took a step toward her and the fight began, red against white, desire against hate.

  “You don’t come any closer.”

  He didn’t know how dangerous she was. He didn’t know how much hate you could nurture in a decade. He moved into her space and the white cells surged. “Aria. That’s my girl. Under all that skinny, polished, perfect skin is my shaved-head, tatted hellion. I see you.”

  She pulled back her fist and walloped him. He grunted in surprise as his head rocked to the side and she hit him again, opening a cut on his cheek with her onyx ring. But he didn’t step back, only put his hand to his cheek, shook his head and smiled.

  It wasn’t the blood, or the violence, or the way she shocked him, delighted him. It was the smile. It arrowed into her heart, a beloved thing returned, a fatal dose of radiation, and all that was left was red.

  She grabbed his shirtfront and dragged him forward. Unbalanced, his hands went to the wall behind her. “There she is.”

  On her toes, she shut him up with a hard-lipped kiss that felt the same as a punch, that pushed her adrenaline spike higher and confused her heartbeat. She hated the way he gentled her lips, hated his arms around her, hated the slip of his curls in her fingers, but she kissed him like she had no other purpose for being, no other instinct for survival. She kissed him like she was disease and he was health, and that’s how it always had been between them.

  She forgot to hate him, forgot to miss him, knew only the savagery of an unexpected victory. He was here. He noticed her. He held her tight, setting her body alight in ways she’d misremembered: breath shorting, eyes gluing shut, the slow wind up of a sparking spring in her belly, the need to press and rub and grip and take and take and take his scent and heat and hands and lips, his whole presence pushing her to new degrees of careless, wanton abandon.

  “Do it,” she hissed, when his hands went under her skirt, when his thumb found home in her cleft and her insides curled and tensed.

  “Not here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not like this.”

  “Only like this.” Always like this, urgent and vital and aching. Only with him, no matter how hard she tried to find this fight and win and loss from another man’s hands, only at his was it recognition and conquest, and beautiful for all the devastation.

  He let her have his tongue and teeth, his thumb, then fingers; made her groan and pant and purr, then held her upright when her legs no longer wanted to play.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” he said.

  She focused on his face; the light, honest liar’s eyes, the
smooth deceptive mouth, the responsible con artist’s chin and the sweep of boyish hair that made him unbelievably rotten. Made him the prince of deceit. Made him dare to be in her thoughts and then use that to find her.

  “Thanks for the hand job.”

  In the moment of surprise that followed that insult, she got away from him. Got to the street front and hailed a cab. She needed to be gone and quickly. Not running from him, but from what he’d want. A roundabout route to a new hotel—she’d go back for the Sweet Celestia when he’d given her up. She’d go back to hating him when her body wasn’t so ready to want him again.

  Chapter Six

  Cleve caught the cab door and risked losing his fingers to stop Aria slamming it. He slipped in beside her and gave the cabbie her hotel address. He didn’t risk looking at her because he knew what he’d see and it would break him.

  She was more beautiful, her rebellion gone deep now, not at the surface for the shock value, to make her father notice her, but under her skin, deep in her bones, where it made her truly dangerous.

  She’d not forgiven.

  She hated more than she ever loved.

  They rode in silence; a short distance she would’ve walked if she hadn’t been trying to shake him.

  “How did you find me?” Her voice was baked in old anger and new outrage.

  He’d never lied to her; there was no reason to start now. “I tracked Melody. I know what you’ve done.”

  Outside her hotel, he paid the cabbie, kept his eyes on her. She might bolt. She might simply wait for his guard to be down and murder him.

  Inside the foyer of the hotel she would’ve balked, but he’d laid his trail well. He hailed the night manager like an old friend and waved the room keycard. He’d played a wayward husband, in trouble with his wife over a misdemeanor, desperate to make it up to her. The best bluffs had an element of truth.

  There was almost a scuffle at the elevator. She tried to take him out with a knee to the groin, but he was quick to foil her. Hugged her arms to her sides and stayed pressed against her so she couldn’t try again.