Surrender...
The world swirled in my head as he turned me, as he pushed me back against the thick post at the end of the bed and kissed his way across my jaw. I wasn’t the kind of woman who surrendered to a man. I didn’t surrender to anyone. And that phrase he’d uttered...luce dei miei occhi. For some reason those words didn’t sound Spanish. They almost sounded...Italian.
What the hell was a computer programmer from Spain, who was here trying to do business with the Entente, doing lapsing into Italian?
He lifted his head and peered down at me. “You look confused, dolcezza.”
I blinked up at him, completely fucking confused because dolcezza was definitely Italian, not Spanish. It meant honey, or doll, or sweetheart—I wasn’t sure which. “I...I don’t surrender. Not to you or any man.”
A wicked grin curled his lips. “To women then?”
“In your dreams.”
His grin widened then faded. “I sense you’ve never experienced the freedom in surrendering your body to someone else. Your mind. Your heart.”
“We’re talking about surrendering hearts now?” My brow lifted. “I barely know you. Why would I surrender my heart to you?”
“Maybe you’re meant to.”
“Maybe you’re full of shit.”
He chuckled.
“Lust at first sight I understand. Love...” I glanced at the collar of his expensive shirt, open to show the fine dark hairs along his muscular chest. “That’s a myth.”
“You don’t believe in love?”
“Sure I do. I just don’t believe in the fairytale happily-ever-after kind of love where the prince rides in on a white horse to save the young maiden and remains faithful to her forever after.”
His eyes narrowed. “You were scorned once.”
“No. Not really. I’m usually the one doing the scorning in a relationship.”
“Your parents set a bad example?”
“No.” My cheeks warmed. How the heck had I gotten on this topic with him? “I mean, they’re still married.”
“Happily?”
“Is anyone really happily married anymore?”
When he quirked one brow in question, I knew I sounded like a pessimist, but I wasn’t. I was a realist. In my world, love was fleeting. Alliances were all that mattered. Those were the things that lasted, whether this businessman from wherever he was really from understood that or not.
I stiffened my spine, but he didn’t let me pull away. “It’s a moot point anyway since I’m not going to surrender a thing to you—body, mind, or heart.”
His eyes sparkled with a wicked gleam. “How sure are you about that?”
“Very.”
“I suppose we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
He lowered his mouth to mine before I saw him move. One second he was staring at me, making butterflies whirl around in my belly, the next his lips were on mine and heat was all I felt.
I sucked in a surprised breath. But instead of deterring him, all my reaction did was give him room to dip into my mouth. And the second he did—the second I felt his warm, wet, sinful tongue sliding over mine—I was lost.
Thoughts fled. Reason disappeared. I opened as he pressed deeper, slid my fingers up into his thick hair and let him taste all of me, as much as he wanted. Then I simply held on as he plundered my mouth and kissed the world right out from under me.
I’d been kissed before. Lots of times. By many men. I was twenty-eight years old, after all. A professional woman who was not a virgin, by any means. But I’d never been kissed like this. Marc didn’t just kiss. He tasted. Explored. Savored. Left me breathless and shaking. And just about the time I was thought he was done, he dipped in for another sinful sample and devoured me all over again.
He took kissing to a whole new level. He made it an art form. As he drew back and lightly brushed my wet lips with his own, he left me panting and ravenous for more.
He left me on the cusp of completely surrendering.
“Hm.” His hot breath ran over my lips, making me shiver. “Madre di Dio. You have absolutely no idea, do you?”
“I-idea?” I mumbled, staring at his lips, wanting—needing—to feel them against mine again. “About what?”
“What you do to me.” His heated gaze skipped over my features. “What you’ve been doing all night. I must know your name.”
My name? My mind spun. I couldn’t give him my real name. I had no idea who he really was. And yet...for some reason, I didn’t want to lie.
“F-Felicity. My name is Felicity.”
“Felicity. Of course.” His lips curled all over again as he repeated my name, and his smile sent a burst of heat straight to my center. “It comes from the Latin felicitus, which means luck and good fortune.”
His fingers slipped from my arm to my hand, and he brought my knuckles to his lips for a lingering kiss that sent electrical arcs all through my body and brought every cell to life. “Something tells me you might just be.”
His lips skimmed my fingers. His eyes held mine in the low light until I was seconds from turning into a puddle at his feet. Then very slowly, he relaxed and stepped away from me. “Perhaps the next time we meet, I can change your mind about surrendering, Miss Felicity.”
He released me and slipped out of the room. Alone—well, with Comb-Over still passed out on the floor—my heart pounded hard and fast, and my skin sizzled as if he were still touching me.
Holy. Fuck.
Forget trouble.
That man was sin and temptation to the nth degree. A devil dressed up as an angel sent to save me from myself. But I had no doubt, if I let him, he’d drag me straight into hell without a single glance back.
Chapter Three
Marco
Tonight had not gone at all the way I’d wanted. Not in any way, shape, or form.
I should have delivered the message from my House.
I should have already fucked the girl and satisfied this roiling lust inside me.
And I should have already looked at the names in that file and either destroyed the damn thing or turned it over to the men I’d secretly aligned myself with back in Italy.
Instead, I was standing on the ridiculously tiny balcony of my hotel suite at the Dorchester in London, overlooking the lights of Hyde Park, sipping eighteen-year-old whisky that was doing shit to cool me down.
Felicity...
I hadn’t expected her to give me her real name. Yet she had. In fact, she’d surrendered it easily, without even realizing what she was doing. That had rocked me. And it had stayed with me longer than that sexy as hell kiss I could still feel tingling in my toes. Even now, over an hour later, it was still swirling in my brain, keeping me from my responsibilities.
Felicity...
I already knew her name, dammit. I knew everything there was to know about her, including the fact she was a medical physician who’d gotten her license only a few months before, that she was currently working at a low-income clinic her father disapproved of, and that she’d had only three lovers in the last five years—all of them disappointments or else she’d have been rocking their worlds last night with those luscious lips instead of mine.
I also knew she’d been spewing bullshit a mile long when she’d said she didn’t believe in love because a woman like her, with the do-gooder attitude she had, still believed in fairytales and happily-ever-afters, regardless of what she claimed. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be busting her ass trying to make the world a better place. She’d be kicked back, enjoying the benefits of her noble name, partying with the selfish and depraved elite in our world.
You don’t have time for love, a voice whispered in the back of my head. Not with any woman, and especially not with this one.
That was true. I didn’t.
I turned away from the view and moved to the desk in the living room of my suite. As I plugged the memory card reader into my laptop, I told myself not to think about the tempting Felicity. I’d gotten what I’d really
come here for. I wouldn’t see her again. When I returned to Italy, I’d tell the leaders of my House that I’d delivered their message. If she continued to cause problems, well, I’d let them deal with her.
I inserted the memory card I’d taken from the bald guy’s coat when Felicity had been pretending to make sure he was still breathing but was really checking his pockets. It had been easy enough to steal the damn thing when she wasn’t looking, then distract her so she didn’t realize what I was really after. I only wished that I hadn’t been so distracted. Or that I could stop thinking about the chick for ten freakin’ seconds.
The dial spun on my laptop while the file loaded. As I tossed back the rest of my drink and set my glass on the desk, my eyes narrowed because it was taking longer than expected. I’d been told by my House the file consisted of nothing more than a list of compromised members—those people in various Houses secretly working against the Entente. I wasn’t supposed to look at it, but I was anxious to see the list for myself—to see if my name was on that list. But a list of names should have already loaded. I glanced at the file size as the card loaded and the little percentage bar gradually increased to the right. Whatever was on that card was huge.
Several minutes later, a single window opened. I clicked the folder button, and only one file was stored on the card.
My fingers passed over the keypad. A video player opened, and my eyes widened when I realized it was a movie of some kind. The screen flashed dark, then slowly an image came into focus. A dark parking garage. Whoever was filming was hidden behind an SUV, holding the camera to see the open area near a cement pillar. I grabbed the arrow and slid it to the right until a face I recognized appeared.
The man was an Intel Officer with Interpol. He was dressed in a long wool coat and hiding his features under a fedora, but I recognized his face. And the other man, approaching from the opposite direction, was none other than Felicity’s father. Charles Merrick. The Head of House Merrick in the UK.
I watched as the two spoke in low voices. The audio wasn’t great, but I got the gist. Charles was turning over information to Interpol on nefarious activities being carried out by the Entente. The Interpol agent thanked him, took the envelope Charles handed him, then turned and disappeared.
The screen went dark. And I sat there stunned, staring at it, until it jerked back on and another image appeared. This one wasn’t a dark parking garage, though. This one was a room with blood red walls, columns, and a circle of men in black robes, their faces shadowed, chanting.
Candles burned on tall pillars around the outside of the circle. In the center was a long flat table. And on the table was a young woman, probably in her early twenties, wearing a short white nightgown and restrained at her wrists and ankles.
My stomach pitched. I couldn’t see many of the faces, and the ones I could make out, I didn’t recognize. But the voices were definitely chanting in Italian, telling me this had taken place under House Salvatici rule. It wasn’t a gathering I recognized though or had attended. And while I knew some of the sick fucks in my world took matters into their own hands and set up their own deviant gatherings, something about what was happening here made my blood turn to ice.
I breathed slowly as I watched the hooded figures move forward and caress the woman’s body. She was gagged and couldn’t speak, but she flinched with every touch. I swallowed back the bile, waiting for the first one to take advantage of her—this was obviously some kind of unsanctioned sex party—but it didn’t happen. Instead, a short, fat figure stepped forward from the group and held up an object that shimmered in the candlelight.
The chanting grew louder, and the man moved closer. And when he was standing at the end of the table, just behind the woman’s head where she couldn’t see him, he lifted the object high in the air, and I realized what it was.
A knife.
My heart jumped into my throat. I jerked forward. The man’s hood dislodged a fraction of an inch, and just before he brought his arms down, I caught sight of his face.
The screen went black. Then the file flipped over to the beginning of the video, the image of the empty parking garage staring back at me.
My pulse raced like wildfire as I processed what I’d just seen. The man with the knife was the fat fuck from tonight. The one Felicity had been alone with. And that gathering had clearly been hosted by House Salvatici—sanctioned or not.
I knew there were some depraved elites in my world. My House routinely hosted debauched parties worse than the one I’d attended tonight at House Merrick as a means to blackmail those they needed to suck into our world. Women were considered property. Men used them like objects and easily discarded them when their usefulness was gone. But I’d never seen a gathering like this. Whoever that revolting Frenchman had been, he’d had tastes that went way darker than mere sexual deviancy. He’d wanted the thrill of committing murder, and someone in my House had set it up so he could.
Options spun in my mind. I didn’t know who the girl had been. I didn’t know what had happened to her. If Charles Merrick had been turning this file over to Interpol though, odds were good she was already dead. But if Interpol already had the video footage of the murder, then why had that sleazy Frenchman been carrying this file tonight at the party?
It hit me like a sucker punch straight to the gut.
The file was already with Interpol. This wasn’t about reporting any kind of crime to the international police. Entente members didn’t even follow international law. They followed Entente law. No, someone at that party had wanted the file to be found. Someone within the Entente wanted to expose the Head of House Merrick as a traitor to the rest of the Houses. And how better to do that than to make sure his own daughter was caught with the evidence?
I opened a new file and quickly copied it to a cloud server I used on the dark net—one that couldn’t be accessed by anyone but me, just in case. Then I opened the file and edited out the actual murder so I could attach only the portion of Charles meeting with the Interpol agent into an email.
I typed a quick message and hit Send. Then I logged off the dark net, wiped my computer of any sign of that video, and sat back and tried to think about what I should do next.
A banging sound echoed from the front door of my suite. I jerked in that direction and held my breath. It was close to midnight. There was no reason for anyone to be barging in on me at this hour.
The incessant pounding sounded again.
I wasn’t sure who could possibly know I already had the file, but I wasn’t taking chances. I yanked the memory card from the computer, dropped it to the ground, and slammed my heel against the plastic casing. The casing cracked and popped open. Once I had the metal circuit board inside, I snapped it into several pieces and moved to the bathroom where I flushed the whole damn thing.
The banging on my door continued. Confident there was no evidence, I headed for my closet, quickly grabbed the Sig .45 from my bag, and flipped the safety off.
I inched my way toward the entryway of my suite, the gun trained on the door, but was careful to stay back, near the corner that led into the living room, just in case I needed to duck for cover.
“Who’s there?” I called.
“Ms. Harrington. Open the door, asshole.”
I drew up short, not just because she’d found me, but because...holy shit...she was here.
My fingers fumbled with the safety, and I tucked the weapon into my waistband at my back. One look through the peephole confirmed it was her, and she was alone. I flipped the lock and tugged the door open.
“How did you—?”
She thrust a pretty little dagger against my throat and held it there as she narrowed her eyes on me. “Move back slowly. And don’t make a sound.”
I lifted my hands and did as she said. Her eyes were on fire as she stepped toward me, careful not to let the blade budge, then closed the door at her back. “You were very smooth, I’ll give you that. I didn’t even realize what you’d done until you were lo
ng gone.”
I inched back into the living room and stopped when my butt hit the back of the couch.
I’d been right. She’d taken off the wig and her hair was definitely auburn. A dark reddish-brown auburn with honey highlights that matched her brows. And her eyes weren’t brown. They were a very pale green. Shockingly pale...and incredibly mesmerizing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said slowly, taking in every inch of her. She was no longer wearing that skimpy black dress but had changed into fitted black pants, knee-high boots, a thin white shirt, and a black leather jacket. I thought she’d been hot before all dressed up like an offering, but I had to admit, this kickass ensemble made me fucking hard as stone.
“Oh yes, you do.” Her eyes darkened. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Where’s the file you stole from me?”
“You mean the file you meant to steal from that fat prick?”
“His prick wasn’t fat at all.”
Oh, she had not slept with that douchebag...
“Tell me where it is.” She pressed the blade against my throat.
“Okay, fine.” I lifted my chin a little higher. “It’s in the bathroom.”
“The bathroom?”
“I was about to flush it when you showed up like a banshee.”
“You bloody idiot.”
She tugged the blade away and rushed toward the bathroom. I caught up with her just before she pushed the door open.
I wrapped one arm around her waist. With the other, I grappled for her hand holding the blade. I jerked her back against me. She gasped and yelped. Closing my fingers around her wrist, I pressed into the tender point beneath the heel of her hand until she cried out and dropped the weapon. She struggled against me, reaching down to dig her fingernails into my arm holding her tight, but I ignored the pain and dragged her to the bed, then tossed her onto her back and climbed over her, holding her wrists still against the mattress on both sides of her head.
“Let me go.”
“You just tried to kill me.”