Free ItTakesaThief by Dee Brice Page B

then
pulled her down beside him. “Besides, they have gone to the cinema. We have the
entire house—thirteen bedrooms anyway—to ourselves.” He waggled his eyebrows,
making her grin. “I could nibble your neck here, in your room—”
    “What film are they seeing and why didn’t you go with them?”
    “ A Thousand-and-One Dalmatians , I think.” He kissed
her cheek.
    “ A Hundred-and-One ,” she corrected. “Aren’t the twins
a little…mature for that sort of movie?”
    “The twin terrors may be, but my parents are not.” He waved
a dismissive hand. “Its appeal has something remotely related to conception.”
    “Why didn’t you go with them?” she repeated.
    “A lack of your presence.” He captured her hand and brought
it to his mouth. He kissed each knuckle, stroked her palm with his tongue and
looked into her eyes. “I could kiss your lips in my room,” he went on,
undeterred by their brief foray into family matters. “In the red room—yes, we
have a red room—I would kiss your neck, your lips, your ears.”
    “Ian.”
    As he suited action to words, she quit trying to pull away.
“In the blue bedroom, I would strip away your robe and suckle your nipples.”
    “Dammit,” she protested, her robe pooling over the belt at
her waist. Her nipples pearled.
    Damian pulled her across his lap, her knees straddling his
hips, her nipples level with his mouth. Through his worn jeans he could feel
her heat along his growing erection. Cupping her breasts, he laved each rigid
peak in turn, but when his hands drifted lower, she hissed with pain.
    “Sorry,” she said, lacing her fingers in his hair and urging
his face to her breasts.
    “I should not have taken advantage of you.” He pulled up her
robe, then eased her from his lap. So much for pillow talk. Odd, despite his
cock’s objections, his mind sighed relief. Or maybe it was the remnants of the man
he had been before his brother’s murder who felt remorse for using her.
    She stood and wandered to the desk. “Who’s this? In this
picture?” she asked, holding it up for his inspection.
    “That? A picture of me taken about ten years ago. Mama
cannot resist peppering the palace with pictures of her progeny.”
    “No,” TC contradicted, “it isn’t you. Oh, it looks like you,
but it doesn’t. I mean, there’s something about that man’s smile, the way he’s
standing. He looks carefree and devil-take-the-hindmost.”
    “Ten years can change a person.”
    “I suppose so, but… Maybe you can explain why you look so
much like your stepfather.”
    “You know what they say about couples who have been together
a long time. They start to look like each other. It may also be true of
children.”
    She flashed a bullshit gesture and opened her mouth to say
the word. When he frowned, she stiffened as if expecting a painful blow. If he
could not seduce her into sharing her secrets, perhaps shock would work.
    “Imagine this if you will, Tiffany,” Damian said,
forestalling the questions building in her eyes. “A dark room—a very large,
dark room in, say, a closed jewelry shop. A security patrolman paces the shop,
his thoughts on getting home to wife and kiddies and dinner. Out of the dark, a
wire rope—very thin, but unbreakable—loops over his head, settles around his
neck and tightens. He raises his hands, resisting the irresistible pull of
death on his neck. He struggles, stumbles, but by now he’s too weak to fight.
He falls to the floor, his life ending even as his elbow shatters the glass
case containing…” His hypnotic voice, along with the monstrous vision it
evoked, trailed into silence until he said in a cold, uncaring tone, “Say,
Isabella’s Belt. What do you think of that scenario?”
    “It’s hideous. Heinous,” she added, no hesitancy or thought
in her response. “Is that what happened at the bank?” Her face blanched.
    Shrugging, he said, “I have no idea, Tiffany. I was merely
conjecturing, playing the endless game