Stolen Nights

by Rea Thomas

  Vikram’s involvement with Lorna had begun more than ten years ago, at the beginning of his career. Back then he had earned his living with petty theft that amounted to nothing. His shot at the big time came when he had overheard that a wealthy businesswoman in Mumbai was looking for a suitable candidate to acquire a painting from Manhattan in New York. Filled with gusto and desperate to fund his sister’s medical expenses for leukemia, Vikram had nominated himself for the job and thus introduced himself to a life of serious thievery, which had given Shruti the best help that private medicine could buy. It had also made him very rich, very fast.

  Lorna had then told him with a red, waxy smile that the successful completion of his “mission”—she liked using action-movie terminology—would be adequate proof he could obtain other pieces for her. Vases, diamonds, paintings, and now, a certain mythical sword.

  Vikram sighed as he stepped into the elevator and rode the car to the thirty-seventh floor where Lorna occupied the entire level. He never enjoyed their meetings and today’s had put him in a particularly bad mood.

  As the car ascended, displaying the stunning vista of the glittering ocean, Vikram thought of Lisabeth in the car and found his mind wandering to imaginings of the luxury hotel he was going to check them into. Rather than wishing she was out of his life, leaving the damn flute behind, Vikram had discovered on the final leg of their journey that he was constantly imagining the many ways he could have her. He had to remind himself that by tomorrow she would be gone, taking his car with her.

  The elevator chimed, bringing an end to his musing and the expanse of Lorna’s empire stretched out before him—as modern and sophisticated as any midtown Manhattan office complex. She had spared no expense to ensure her sales and administration teams were adequately equipped to keep her at the peak of the real estate industry. Even the young receptionist looked particularly glam and modern, dressed in a navy skirt suit. No traditional salwar kameezes for a Reilly employee.

  “Hi, Vikram,” the girl said, getting to her feet. She had always enjoyed flirting with him—undressing him with her eyes in the unmistakable way horny women did. He had briefly considered giving her what she wanted once—after all, she was young, firm, sexy and willing.

  Today, he barely acknowledged her.

  “I need to see Lorna,” he told her in English.

  “You promised me lunch, Vikram Singh,” she replied in Hindi. “I haven’t forgotten.” Promptly, she dialed through to Lorna’s office and lowered her eyes to her desktop computer. Her slim fingers with well-manicured nails that were painted in classy French pink tapped importantly at her keyboard. “Lorna will see you now,” she told him as she replaced the telephone receiver to its cradle.

  “Thank you.”

  Vikram knew the location of her office through the labyrinth of cubicles and required no chaperone to lead him to the lion’s den. No one looked away from their work stations as he strolled through them in hurried strides.

  The blonde head did not look up at him as he stepped inside without knocking. “Sit down, darling,” Lorna said, extending her bronzed hand vaguely toward the two visitors’ chairs facing her long, glass desk. Bulky wooden furniture did not suit the sleek enterprise and everything was shiny chrome and glass.

  Vikram hated it.

  “You look good,” she said, finally looking up at him. Her cool eyes appraised and thoroughly approved. While Lorna’s secretary undressed Vikram with her eyes, Lorna herself stripped him naked and fucked him rigid in a matter of seconds. Her bare sexuality was unabashed and raw. Her tongue darted across her red lips and she grinned at him. Despite approaching middle age, she still possessed enough sex appeal to have hordes of Mumbai’s elite lusting after her.

  “As do you,” Vikram told her politely. Sinking into the black leather and chrome chair, he sat stiff and upright, getting straight to business. “You are sure this piece exists?”

  Lorna twirled a slim Parker pen between her fingers, nodding slowly. “Positive,” she assured him. “Max has two guys looking for it.” Max was one of her many lovers—the most frequent of many, and she liked to listen to him when he talked in Italian, while presuming she did not speak it. Max did not know Lorna’s father was from Naples and that her understanding of the language was flawless.

  “Do you know where it is, exactly?” Vikram had to admire her shrewd cunning. Lorna knew access codes, bank numbers and various dirty secrets. Information she had obtained through her dishonesty was always accurate.

  She set the pen down on the ink blotter. “I know two locations that it can be. One is a villa in Florence and the other is the family home in Tuscany.” Her eyes glittered.

  “You made me believe this was a matter of unquestionable urgency,” Vikram snapped. “You don’t even know where the fucking sword is, Lorna?” He watched her mouth pucker as though she had sucked on a bitter lemon. It was not common for anyone to speak out of turn to a woman as powerful as she, and evidently she didn’t like it. “I was in Chennai on business. I had to travel by car.”

  Lorna shrugged. “We had an agreement that when I need something done, you do it.”

  Vikram was growing tired of the agreements he had forged with demanding white women, but at least his current predicament with Lisabeth Baker left him with a certain sexual satisfaction. Money had once been a fantastic motivator for jumping to Lorna’s commands, but lately he had grown bored of dancing to her tune.

  “This is the last time,” he said with a tone of finality.

  “We’ll see,” Lorna replied, fishing through her paperwork trays for an envelope filled with papers.

  “It’s the last time.” Vikram decided that regardless of anything else, once the flute was with Volkov and Lorna had her sword, he was retiring to his private island. Perhaps the locals there could ignite a fire in his belly in the same way Lisabeth could.

  It would have been easy to slide the envelope across the glass to him, but Lorna got to her feet and rounded the desk, her slim hips sashaying in a technique she had never lost, even years after she had last modeled. She stopped in front of him and extended the documents. Unlike the secretary’s pale pink nails, Lorna’s matched her scarlet red lipstick and were immaculately maintained.

  Vikram accepted the bulging envelope, removing the neatly arranged papers to inspect the glossy photographs at the top of the pile—two impressive Mediterranean-style homes set against clear blue skies and surrounded by tall cypress trees. The family home was a three-story white-washed mansion, surrounded by undulating Tuscan hills, and made Vikram long for his paradise retirement even more.

  “Addresses are written inside,” Lorna told him, leaning back against her desk. Her skirt hitched high enough for him to catch a glimpse of her garter belt. He thought of Lisabeth, but he was still a man—and Lorna’s milky thighs were an attractive sight. Besides, he hadn’t married himself off to Lisabeth. “I always loved that story,” Lorna sighed with happiness, drawing his eyes back to her face.

  “What story?” he asked, sliding the papers back into the envelope.

  “You know—King Arthur and Guinevere. Her secret love for Sir Lancelot. It was exciting and forbidden. I never imagined it would have beginnings in reality though.” She stood upright, mirroring Vikram as he got to his feet and shoved the information into his bag.

  “Most folklore starts somewhere. I don’t believe the sword is magic, but it is my experience that some version or another of almost all mythical items exist or have existed at some point in time.” He turned away from her when he recognized the curiosity in her eyes, and the likelihood she was going to question him on his experiences. “It’ll be a month, at least. Take care, Lorna.”

  Hurrying through the offices, Vikram could think only of checking into a luxurious hotel with plush bedding, a do-not-disturb sign and Lisabeth writhing beneath him. He did not glance at the secretary on his way out.

  Chapter Ten

  “Will you stop fucking pacing, please?” Lisabeth snapped,
looking up from a crumpled copy of The Hindu. The article on page seven detailed the temple theft, and the fact the cops had been chasing their tails for days. Vikram’s endless treading of the hotel carpet was distracting at best, irritating at worst.

  “I’m thinking,” he replied, folding his arms across his broad chest and turning to face the window. Beyond their hotel room in the center of the city, Mumbai stretched outward in a hodgepodge of regal buildings, skyscrapers and slums. The old, the new and the eternally poor. The blue skies were the same hazy grey of all polluted cities. Vikram appeared to see none of it as he stared at a fixed point somewhere on the horizon.

  “And you require your legs to think?” Lisabeth asked, shaking the creases out of her newspaper. “Curious.”

  He had been in another world since returning to the car after his meeting. Lisabeth, having listened to each word exchanged between him and the American woman, understood why. In fact, she too would retreat into a world of planning and strategy when the prospect of a new raid was brought to her attention. Vikram had the far-away look of a general, carefully plotting every future move. His mind would be filled with maps, travel arrangements, disguises and the hundreds of lies he would have to tell to avoid detection or suspicion. If he was anything like Lisabeth, and he was, Vikram would be meticulously ironing out every scenario and potential problem that might arise in the procurement of Lorna’s sword.

  Excalibur. Or at least some real-world representation of Excalibur.

  Lisabeth had felt her heart begin to beat a little bit faster as the details of his job unraveled themselves to her listening ear. She did not know who Max was or what the two houses in Italy looked like. She had been plotting too, however, and Lisabeth had resolved to find out every piece of information about Vikram’s forthcoming trip to Italy before the sun set.

  “Can’t you ever just be companionable, Lisabeth?” he asked, his eyes still affixed to something, or nothing. “Or is it a nonnegotiable part of your personality to be a miserable bitch?”

  She offered what she thought was her most charming smile, even though she did not intend for there to be even a modicum of warmth to her expression. “I’m hardly miserable,” she said, straightening her legs on the bed, the only bed in the luxurious hotel suite that Vikram had reserved without consulting her. As pissed as she had been at his presumptuousness, a king-size bed would serve their purpose better.

  “Yeah, you’re an absolute delight,” he said wryly. “Of all the women I have met in this business, you’re the one most desperately in need of a personality transplant.” His copper eyes deviated toward her for only a microsecond, but long enough that she could see the hint of arousal betraying him.

  “Ouch,” Lisabeth gasped. “And yet I am the one you chose to fuck. Interesting.”

  Vikram turned away from the picture window altogether now, dropping his arms to his sides. “I didn’t choose anything, actually. The fucking part was your idea, remember? Actually, ‘idea’ is the wrong word. Demand? Condition?” His gaze narrowed to a metallic glint, watching her with the kind of intensity that gave Lisabeth an urge to squirm.

  She resisted, lifting her chin in defiance. “The last offering was all you, Vikram.” She leaned back against the opulent maple headboard, recalling his crazed urgency back on the Maharashtra border. The look in his eyes as he had pounded into her body had been wild. She likened him to a hungry jungle panther—even the coloring of his peculiar irises had been similar to those of a wildcat. If he hadn’t opted for a career in grand theft, Vikram could have been cast as a shape-shifting, supernatural creature of Hollywood.

  “Read your paper, Lisabeth. Let me think in peace.” The picturesque scene beyond the glass went under his intense scrutiny once more as Vikram turned his back on her, returning to his planning.

  * * * * *

  He had retreated to the lounge, a separate room off to the right of the bedroom. The door remained slightly ajar and the hurried words of his native tongue told Lisabeth that Vikram was talking on the telephone. She listened for five minutes before unzipping his bag and rummaging through the envelope of information given to him by Lorna the American.

  She saw two photographs, a page of names and addresses—whose, she did not yet know—maps of the area surrounding the two properties, a travel itinerary detailing a one-way trip to Italy in Vikram’s name, a pencil sketch of what the sword was supposed to look like, five passport photographs of a man and four women, presumably the family whom he would be stealing the artifact from and a smaller envelope bulging with currency—Indian rupees and Euros.

  This woman is nothing if not thorough, Lisabeth thought, turning her camera on each relevant piece of information. She brought every page and photograph into focus, careful to make sure all the numbers and letters were visible.

  Lisabeth heard Vikram end the call and a creak of furniture as he got to his feet. With her heart pumping as her old friend adrenaline coursed through her veins, Lisabeth straightened the paperwork and zipped the bag before replacing it against the wall. By the time he pulled open the door, she was reclining on the bed once more, praying her poker face was as effective with someone like Vikram as it was with others.

  “I don’t speak Hindi,” she told him in her most even tone. “You didn’t have to leave the room.” The thudding of her heart was subsiding as the seconds ticked by, but the natural high induced by her deviousness would fuel her for hours.

  “It was Punjabi, actually,” Vikram said, studying her as he crossed the room. He looked as though he were suspicious of her. Lisabeth noticed the slight tremble of her fingers as she reached out for a glass of water on the bedside cabinet.

  She took a sip, shrugging. “Well, evidently I don’t speak Punjabi either.”

  Vikram stood still. “Evidently,” he echoed, sounding almost far away.

  “That’s where you’re from then? Punjab. I knew you were north Indian—you have that look about you.” Stop blabbing, she chided herself.

  Lisabeth had once stolen a four-hundred-year-old broach from a museum in Ireland—a divine silver piece of Celtic intricacy. She had been stopped by two security officers as she filed outside with other tourists to the squeals of the alarm. Her natural ability to lie had been honed to perfection and they had let her past, buying her frantic story that she had lost her son inside the museum and she thought the alarms were indicative of a fire. Lisabeth could only imagine how she had looked that afternoon, but she suspected her eyes depicted the manic fear of a terrified mother.

  Yet, lying to Vikram was proving to be a struggle.

  “Astounding deductive reasoning, Lisabeth,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and removing his shoes. He had stopped looking at her and a sigh of relief had to be squelched. “It would be fair to say a man speaking Punjabi was from Punjab and not, say, Assam.” The sarcasm did not irk her as it normally would have, because Lisabeth was relieved that his penetrative gaze was focused elsewhere.

  “Only a few hours ago you were complaining about my lack of companionable personality, yet you rebuke me when I try to be nice.” Lisabeth pulled her knees toward herself, smoothing her hands over her shins. “I’ll not try again in a hurry.”

  Vikram glanced over his shoulder, watching her through thick, dark lashes. “You being nice is a terrifying concept, as are your attempts. Let’s face it, Lisabeth, you are best suited to conniving, devious acts of self-centeredness.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it in the general direction of the ottoman at the bottom of the bed. “Which I am beyond certain is your motivation for being nice now. I just don’t know why.” He fixed her with a steely glare. “Yet.”

  “I am growing just a little bit tired of your endless battery of my personality. In case it has escaped your notice, Vikram, we are two peas in a very selective pod.” She wasn’t hurt in the slightest—rather, Lisabeth was somewhat proud of her dedication to self-interest. Looking after Number One, and all that malarkey. Her father had been a truly selfish ma
n, and after decades of resentment, Lisabeth quite respected him now.

  When Vikram stood and turned to face her, she felt her saliva glands water at the sight of him. Lisabeth thought he looked as hard as a marble statue in a Roman temple, standing proud and just a little judgmental. She longed to trace her fingertips over the valleys of his abdomen—each muscle impeccably sculpted. His narrow hips and sturdy thighs easily made him the sexiest man she had seen naked—and dressed, in fact. Lisabeth raked her eyes over every nuance of him, twice.

  Later, she would think about the sword in Italy and review the material she had photographed. At this moment, she longed to take him between her thighs and indulge in languid lovemaking that lasted for hours. Lisabeth wanted him to bring her to orgasm through wicked, torturous methods again and again.

  She parted her knees and hoped he would accept her invitation.

  Golden eyes turned to copper and he swallowed, hard. She watched him flex his fingers.

  “The self-centered part of me wishes to participate in nonverbal activities for a while.” She ran her hands over her thighs and her fingers met at the small brass button of her shorts, which she popped with decisiveness, exposing the dainty indent of her bellybutton.

  Vikram lowered his eyes to the spot between her legs where she longed for his tongue, fingers and cock to explore. “I can assure you there will be plenty of verbal communication tonight,” he said in a low, almost threatening tone that made Lisabeth’s clit throb.

  Promise? she thought, slipping her right hand into the waistband of her shorts, down into her panties. She was already aroused, slick wetness soaking her neat curls.

  The trill of Vikram’s BlackBerry made him groan in frustration and she saw that he was toying with the idea of ignoring it. He glanced at the caller ID and blew a hot sigh through his lips before bringing the phone to his ear. When he spoke, Lisabeth did not need to understand the words to know there was definite impatience to his tone.