Lorna Tedder

by Dark Revelations (lit)

  “Signora…”

  Night manager probably wasn’t the correct term for the man behind the desk, but neither was he a monk. Eric had been right—the inn was actually a monastery, at least five or six centuries old, refurbished in some places and in some places not. It wasn’t uncommon to find them throughout Italy, but I’d never stayed in one before. This one had been converted into something more akin to a youth hostel than an inn, with a definite preference for backpacking university students.

  There had been only a few automobiles near the cluster of stone buildings, and I was certain that most of the automobiles belonged to the family who owned the lodgings. The night manager’s father, a more wrinkled version of the younger man, had met us at the entrance and welcomed us, ushering us inside, where the air had been warm and smelled of baked bread and homemade sauces.

  I’d carried a snuggling Benny in my arms, with the child wrapped in his Adriano blanket and its ominous family logo of columns and a star. Eric had hauled in the contents of the trunk, the artifacts wrapped in a tapestry, and I’d found myself noticing his ass as he’d walked ahead of me and wishing for more time with him.

  For hours afterward I’d watched the grayness outside, and no one had come. My mind had wandered across Eric more times than I could count. Maybe because there were so many other things I didn’t want to puzzle through and he was a safe place for me to focus. Much safer than memories of a lover long dead or a daughter I’d left behind for what I’d thought was the right reason. The tempest inside me did not still and the storm outside the walls had not stopped. As long as the rain and winds wailed, no one would come. No one could make it through that. Me included.

  After greeting us in flawless Italian and realizing I wasn’t as adept as Eric, the old man had welcomed us in flawless English. His wife had prepared a sumptuous Italian meal for us of homemade pasta with fresh sauce. She couldn’t speak a word of English but she’d been all smiles and in some ways she reminded me of Simon’s current wife, even though this woman obviously didn’t have the financial means to keep her face and wardrobe as sleek as any Adriano wife’s.

  She’d prepared an entirely different meal—risotto di scampi this time—for the evening meal for her guests as well as for her family. My Italian wasn’t very good, but I knew enough to say basta for “enough” and grazie for “thank you.”

  The innkeeper’s wife had made a special dessert of tiramisu for her grandson, who was a few months older than Benny. The two children had taken to each other immediately, and I could see Benny’s Adriano charm showing through, even at his age, as he quickly persuaded the other boy to share his dessert and pet kittens. The two of them had eventually scampered off to play with the cats.

  Later, I put Benny to bed in my room on a pallet of blankets on the floor. Eric took the small room on the other side of our slightly larger one. The two rooms shared a reasonably modern bath situated between them. It was ideal for the two of us adults to talk in Eric’s space while Benny slept in my room with a kitten wrapped around his neck. We tucked the artifacts under my bed.

  But Eric…

  I’d watched him throughout both meals. He’d been nervous and careful at first, but he’d relaxed as the day had worn on and no one had come. A few times I’d caught him smiling or even looking as if he enjoyed the banter of family around him and good food. I doubted he ever relinquished the mask of stoicism that was required when he was on duty at the palazzo. His Scorpio-rising personality would have suited his bodyguard career quite well.

  Occasionally across the table I’d caught his gaze and held it for a little longer than necessary. How long since I’d touched a man? Especially one who had touched my heart, even the smallest bit? I wasn’t looking for any port in a storm, but Eric suddenly seemed like a safe harbor in the tempest around me. God knew, I needed something solid to hang on to right now.

  He mirrored me in some ways. Not only in the hidden depths of emotion just beneath his surface but in his survival acumen. Earlier in the day, not long after our arrival, Eric had gone back outside in the torrents of rain and hidden the automobile in a darkened archway that led to an interior courtyard.

  Me? I’d waited until no one was looking, then I’d stolen a knife from the kitchen. It wasn’t much, but if Simon and Caleb’s men showed up, we’d need all the help we could get.

  The old man who’d greeted us at the door had actually asked if we carried any weapons. Eric had lied about his gun, and the old man had reluctantly accepted Eric’s insistence that we were unarmed and not dangerous. He had explained that the monastery had for centuries been a place of peace and was still sacred ground. Blood had never been shed on the premises—this place was a sanctuary. He’d pointed to the walls of the reception area, which were decorated with old weapons supposedly confiscated by the monks over centuries. Broadswords. Crossbows. An armload of sabers and foils. A couple of daggers that might have dated back to the Borgia era. With a few exceptions, the typical item on the walls might have sold for one hundred American dollars at any Internet auction house, but none were worth a second glance on the antiquities market. Still, they made for nice decorations and each had a story behind it, some of which the old man told us in excruciating detail.

  Eric had retired to his room with clenched jaws. I knew what he was thinking—that he was turning over possible stories in his mind to tell Josh and Simon and that he was trying to figure out where to hide both the artifacts and us if the men in the gray BMW found us. Old monasteries like this had numerous places to hide things as well as children. As long as it kept storming outside, we still had time. Although the downpour kept us in place, it also kept everyone else out.

  Tomorrow things would be different. Tomorrow I’d have to find a way to leave, to get to safety at Cat’s, to check with my private investigator to make sure Lilah was still safe and clueless on her college campus in the States.

  Ah, Lilah. I can’t even get close enough to see you for myself without putting you in danger.

  “Signora? Signora, please. Go enjoy your husband. Relax. Rest.” He smiled feebly. “I go to bed now. I enjoy my wife. Relax. Rest.”

  I got the point, even before he reached for the room lights and held his finger at the switch as he waited for me to exit the room.

  Alone, I walked the length of a dark corridor lit by dim bulbs where once torches probably showed the way. Outside, the winds howled, but inside the corridor, the stormy sounds were muffled. The only noise was the soft footfalls of my boots on stone floors.

  I could tell by the ringing in my ears that I was getting closer to my room. I stopped outside the wooden door and adjusted the room key in my hand as I glanced up and down the corridor. No one was there. Just me and whatever ghosts of the past had died there without bloodshed.

  Carefully I opened the door. I’d left the light on. Benny had insisted. Funny, our fearless little Adriano wouldn’t sleep in the dark.

  The ringing amplified as I stepped inside. Benny had crawled off his pallet on the floor and into my bed. The kitten still slept under his chin.

  I locked the door behind me and shook my head as I did. The lock was flimsy, old, cheap. Meant for preventing peaceful people from accidentally wandering in unannounced on other peaceful naked people. Not meant for keeping assassins out. These locks wouldn’t hold up to Adriano boots. Maybe there was some way we could sneak out, even in this storm, to someplace even safer. We could take one of the innkeeper’s automobiles, one full of petrol.

  We needed a plan. Or at least, I would have felt a lot better with one.

  The tiles were safely hidden, untouched. Still, my ears rang. My energy seemed heightened, as if every pore of my skin had come to life. I felt my life force rising from between my legs, up through my chest and out the top of my head. What was happening to me?

  I slid the knife out of my sleeve and stabbed it into the board over the door to the bathroom. Then I tottered through the narrow room on tiptoe so my boots wouldn’t clomp on the
floor.

  “Eric?” I whispered, poking my head into his room.

  I saw him just in time to duck. He drew back from the corner of the door. The bodyguard expelled a sigh that fluttered the hair over his eyes.

  “Do not sneak up on me. I could have killed you.”

  “With what?” I smirked. He’d obviously left his gun by his bed. “I could have killed you.” I jerked my head in the direction of the knife wavering from the door-frame. “There. I brought you a present.”

  He frowned. “How romantic.”

  “Not exactly.” My skin felt electric all over. As if I’d been hit with an energy field. Not just Eric’s, either. I found it harder to breathe. “Anyway, no sign of…our employer…or any of his associates. But I doubt any of them could get through the rain.”

  Eric agreed. “If they’re still manipulating the storm, something’s wrong. There’s no way they’d hold it in place for this long if they knew where we were. They’ve used the tactic before to slow down an adversary or hold him in place. If they were trying only to hold us in position, they would have been here hours ago, letting the storm die down as they got closer. I don’t think they know where we are. Myrddin said it was very difficult for them to track us in bad weather, even when they’re the ones creating the bad weather. So they’ll keep the storm swirling over the whole area until they can locate us, but I’ve taken precautions so we won’t be found.”

  “Oh?” I brushed at a raindrop on his sweater. He’d been outside but not far. Anything beyond the door and he would have been soaked through.

  “I paid the innkeeper’s younger son to drive our car about ten kilometers from here and abandon it near a tourist spot where buses run regularly. If there’s a second tracker on the car—and I’m sure now that there is—that’s where they’ll go. They’ll think we’ve headed into the next city. That should throw them off long enough for us to acquire another means of transportation.”

  I cocked my head and continued to brush at imaginary raindrops on his chest. I liked the way the fabric lay against his collarbone. “So how are you planning to kill time until the rain stops?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Sleep. Read. Any way I can.”

  “Any way?” I said softly. He couldn’t miss my meaning. Under his sweater, Eric bulged in all the right places, and I already had the nervousness of our situation thrumming through my body. I would not be able to sleep tonight, no matter how demanding tomorrow might be.

  “Benny’s asleep in the next room,” I hinted.

  “He is.”

  Damn, but something had activated my kundalini. My life force sizzled through my body as if it started with my root chakra—or energy center—and rose through my core to my crown. Was that why my ears rang?

  “The kid sleeps through anything,” I told Eric. “He’ll probably sleep until morning.”

  “Probably.”

  Most men would have had their clothes off by now. Eric seemed a little shy. All that Scorpio rising, I guessed. And I felt rather brazen. The likelihood of escaping the Adrianos, given all they knew about me, made me want to grab whatever passion life might offer before life itself ended. Their knowing how to manipulate Mother Nature did not bode well for me.

  “I think, Eric, that I will…freshen up with a hot bath.” The words came out low and guttural. He couldn’t have missed my intentions, but he said nothing. If anything, he held his breath as if afraid to move. Instead he watched me turn and sashay into the bathroom, closing the door behind me but not all the way.

  I stood in the middle of the tiny bathroom and stared at my reflection in the faded mirror. The florescent bulb over the mirror wavered, pronouncing the hollows under my eyes and making them look a bit deeper than usual. The bad lighting made my skin look sallow, lifeless, with a tint of blue, as if every drop of blood had been drained from me. It’s not a bad look in some Goth clubs, but it’s not the one I was going for tonight.

  I peeled off my dress, first over my shoulders and then shoving it with my hands down over my hips, until it fell in a pool of brown velvet at my bare feet. Without looking down, I stepped out of the dress.

  I thumbed the clasp of my black lace bra, and the forces of the earth claimed the scrap of cloth. And then I was naked.

  I stepped into the claw-footed tub, drew the curtain around me and turned on the shower, which was cold instead of warm. I shivered in the flow and tried to let it wash away the weariness. Tired as I was, I was still wide-awake. There’d be no sleeping tonight. I wanted something.

  I wanted…a moment of passion, of tenderness, of wild sex, of sweet kisses, of just being held and close to another human being, especially one who made my blood pump faster.

  This man, Eric Cabordes, had traits I liked. Integrity, inventiveness, the fire in his eyes. And a tender spot for children. Always before, there’d been some hope of Matthew out there. Some hope that had held me back, that had kept me from giving myself wholly to a man—if I ever could. I’d given my heart long ago to Matthew with the hope that I’d have him back again someday.

  Everything was different now. The nagging intuition had been confirmed for me. There’d be no more Matthew. He was gone. I’d had lovers since, but I’d never let myself care for any of them. Not really. A few had come close to worming their way into my heart, but then I’d simply left town, moved on, never looked back. I couldn’t afford to. After all, Matthew might walk through that door any day, I’d told myself, or I might stumble upon him while away on an assignment. Somehow I’d find him again, I’d promised myself.

  I’d lived for years as free as any woman could ever hope to live and still be in the Adriano’s gilded cage. Traveling all over Europe and at times around the world. Living out of suitcases and airport lockers and crashing at the homes of acquaintances like Cat, who really didn’t know me at all. Always on the move. Never settling down. Seeing everything in the world and being the gypsy I’d always dreamed of being and yet…always in limbo. Never willing to move on with my life and put down roots. The only thing that had held me to the planet was the memory of Lilah and the hope of finding Matthew again. My future, for years, had been entirely focused on my past.

  Because of the past twenty-four hours, I was certain I could never go near Lilah. I’d just get her killed if I did. She thought I was dead, and maybe it wasn’t so farfetched for her to believe I was. Unless I was in the middle of a heist, I rarely felt alive anymore.

  And as for Matthew, he was gone forever. And so at last I was free. Really free.

  I let the chilled water splash against my face. Free. And I’d never felt so lonely in my life.

  How much longer could I elude Simon and Caleb now that they knew my true identity? I sighed and shut off the water. I was as good as dead already. I wasn’t free at all. But for tonight, if tonight was the last night of my world, then I needed something, wanted something, maybe passion, maybe hope. It was too late for anything more than that, anything more than just losing myself in the moment with Eric.

  I dried my skin with a skimpy white towel and peeked through the door to Benny’s room to make sure he was asleep and safe. I locked the door quietly between his room and the bathroom, then walked nervously to the door to Eric’s room and opened it.

  For a second I watched him on the bed, reclining, fully dressed, eyes closed, peaceful. The floor felt cold to my bare feet. Then he sensed me standing there and opened his eyes.

  A very young woman might have played coy and let the towel drop with a well-placed “oops.” Not me. I was grown-up enough to know exactly what I wanted and to let my partner know exactly what I wanted.

  With one hand, I whipped off the towel and snapped it, then tossed it on the floor. I stood there and watched his reaction. He didn’t move. Nothing but his eyes. He broke eye contact and let his gaze drift downward over my body. I didn’t smile but rather cocked my head and waited. No doubt about it, the man definitely knew what I wanted—him.

  “Do you, uh…”
r />   I watched him swallow. I didn’t move either, except to let my hands rake over my hips and drop loosely to my thighs. It was just enough movement to make him swallow again.

  “Do you need some nightclothes? The innkeeper may have something for you.”

  “I don’t need nightclothes,” I whispered.

  I ran one hand through my damp hair, then brought my palm down across my neck, over my breasts and stomach and back down to my hip. A calculated move, yes, but it warranted another swallow from a man who was otherwise calm, cool and collected unless he was screaming at me to drive faster. Let the twentysomethings be uncertain of their bodies and hide behind pillows and candlelight. Not me. I was old enough to know exactly what I liked and how I liked it—and that real men found my confidence sexy.

  Though this one seemed to find it unnerving.

  “It’s been a long time,” I confessed before I realized I’d said it. I didn’t say what had been a long time.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Whether you believe it doesn’t matter.” I slithered down on the bed beside him and slid one palm up the leg of his trousers. Yes, nice and hard. I smiled to myself. “I’ve got a little too much restless energy and not enough ways to tame it.”

  His breathing ratcheted up a notch. “You should cover up. We could have visitors at any moment. You’d be at a disadvantage.” The words caught in his throat. He forced them out, his breaths coming faster as I slid my other hand under his sweater and found the buckle of his belt.

  “True,” I conceded. “Then again, maybe my nudity would disarm them.” I kissed his hard belly just above the belt and continued to work the buckle. “But you’ve made your point. We should hurry. We might not have much time tonight.” And I’ll never have as long as I’d want with this man.

  He shook his head. “The storm…We should stay on alert.”

  “I’m very alert, I promise you.” I cupped my hand over his erection and fidgeted with the unrelenting buckle. “So are you.”

  “Aubrey…Simon’s men…” He was resisting me, fighting me without moving. “This isn’t a good time.”