The Art of Stealing Time: A Time Thief Novel

  “You imprison tourists, too?”

  “Only those that pay for it,” Herbert the guard said, leaning in to add, “It costs extra.”

  “Wow,” was all I could think of to say, and say it I did. A few seconds later, that pithy exclamation was joined by “Holy carp!” and “Oh, you poor thing. Is your nose broken?” when the guards summarily dropped Gregory on the floor and closed the door firmly behind them.

  I knelt next to him as he rolled over and sat up. His eye was swelling even as I watched it, and a trickle of blood from a split lip dripped sluggishly down his chin.

  “You look,” I said, pulling out the end of my shirt and using it to dab at the blood, “like a man who’s gone five rounds with a Velociphant.”

  “What on earth do you suppose that is?”

  “Love child of a velociraptor and an elephant? That or some sort of elephant on wheels? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that I’m getting sick and tired of being imprisoned. First it was the Watch, then it was that Holly woman, and now it’s the queen of the Underworld.”

  “We imprisoned you? For what crime?”

  “Nothing that I did. They thought I was my mom, and later released me because they couldn’t prove I was her.”

  “Ah, I recall hearing something about that.”

  “Now you know why I’m so tired of this shtick. Does this hurt?”

  I grabbed his nose and gave it a sharp snap, causing him to jerk back and howl. “Bloody hell! What are you doing? Oh.” He took a stuffy-sounding breath. “I guess it was broken.”

  “You’re welcome.” I stood up and looked around, wondering what we were doing there, and more to the point, how we were to get out. “This really is the nicest dungeon. Those cots have memory foam mattresses. And look, I think that walled-off area is a bathroom.” I went behind a closeted section of the dungeon, noting with approval the clean toilet and sink. “Yup, that’s what it is. No shower, though.”

  Gregory was gingerly feeling his mouth when I emerged from the toilet area, pulling away his fingers to glare at them. “How bad is it?” he asked, and grimaced.

  “Not bad at all. The toilet is clean, and the sink means they must have running water—”

  “No, not how bad is the privy. How bad is my mouth?”

  I tried very hard not to notice how enticing his lips were. The man had just fought off at least ten attackers and had the battle scars to show for it. I would not embarrass myself by staring with blatant lust at his mouth. “Not bad at all,” I said nonchalantly. “It’s very nice and all, especially when you smile, but I wouldn’t give up ice cream for it. Not unless, you know, I had to.”

  He stared at me as if the ice cream in question was coming out of my ears. “What are you talking about?”

  “You asked me if I liked your mouth. I said I do. What’s the big deal?”

  He showed me the tips of his fingers, then bared his lips at me. Just to the right of his upper two front teeth, a dark gap showed. “I meant how bad was the damage? Does the missing tooth make me look dashing and dangerous, like a pirate, or creepy and disturbing, like a crack addict who lives under a bridge?”

  “Dashing,” I reassured him. “Definitely dashing.”

  He eyed me. “You’re lying.”

  “Just a little. You’re not quite a sexy pirate, but also not a bridge-dwelling crack addict. More . . .”

  “A swashbuckler?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “More someone who was in a bar fight and lost a tooth.”

  “Lovely.” He made a face that turned to a frown when I wandered over to bounce on one of the three cots in the cell. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing out the mattress to see if it’s soft or hard memory foam. Seems pretty decent.” I stretched out on it, feeling myself sink into it. “Ahhh. Nice.”

  “What about me?”

  I gestured toward the other two beds. “Take your pick.”

  “You’re not going to tend me anymore? That dab at my lip and the vicious jerk on my nose was the sum total of you nursing the wounded?”

  There was outrage in his voice, righteous outrage. I sat up, unable to hold back a little giggle. “You don’t need tending, do you? I mean, you’re immortal. The bleeding has already stopped on your mouth, the swelling around your eye will go down in probably less than an hour, and I’m willing to bet you that the bones in your nose are already knitting back together.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a little sympathetic care,” he said sulkily.

  That just made me giggle more.

  “I would remind you that I suffered these grievous wounds when a full score of men descended upon me as I attempted to protect you from them!”

  “A full score? Ha! It was a dozen at most.” I didn’t let on that I was impressed he had handled himself so well with all those guards. I suspected he’d just get a fat head if I did. It would be far better to turn his attention. “I didn’t need protecting, anyway. I just objected to being imprisoned a second time in so many days.”

  He maintained an injured silence for about a minute, then rose and stumbled over to one of the comfy cots, saying, “No doubt you were imprisoned for some illegal act your mother performed.”

  I glared at him. “No cracks about my moms, either of them. And for your information, Mr. ‘I’m the Watch and I Know Everything,’ neither my moms, Mrs. Vanilla, nor I did anything deserving of imprisonment. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Mrs. Vanilla?” He lay back on the cot, groaning in relief as he did so.

  I sat up to assess whether or not he really was hurt to the point where he needed healing. Most people of the immortal persuasion had self-healing abilities, some more powerful than others. Perhaps Travellers had a harder time healing up their wounds? “She’s a mortal, one of my mothers’ clients evidently.”

  “Ah, the old woman they kidnapped.”

  I made a face, but he didn’t see it since his eyes were closed. Quietly, I moved over to stand next to him. Blood from the broken nose was giving him two black eyes, although the swelling around the one abused eye had gone back to normal. The split on his lip had also healed, and I assumed the empty socket for the missing tooth had sealed up as well. “You look like a raccoon,” I told him, bending over to brush a bit of dried blood off his chin.

  “Thank you,” he said without opening his eyes. As I stood up, he grabbed my wrist and gently pulled me down so that I was half sitting and half draped across his torso. His eyes opened. My stomach went a bit wobbly at the clear blue depths of them, made especially noticeable by the dark purple and black mask resulting from the broken nose. “Why do you have two mothers?”

  I had to drag my attention off his mouth and chin and the warm, solid chest beneath my breasts. My skin tingled where it was pressed against him. “Because they fell in love. Why do you have a mother and a father?”

  “What makes you think I have a mother and a father?”

  “Most people do.”

  “True. I did, as a matter of fact, but they weren’t together because they were in love. Theirs was an arranged match. They didn’t much like each other, and they parted ways soon after I was born.”

  “How sad for them. And you. I much prefer being raised by two mothers who love each other and me.”

  “I would prefer that as well. Why did your mothers kidnap a mortal woman?”

  “You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Here’s another: would you object if I kissed you?”

  I thought about that for a minute. Although every instinct in me told me to keep him at a distance, both emotionally and physically, I couldn’t help but admit that there was some sort of magnetism between us. I didn’t want to get up off his cot, even though I knew I should. I wanted to touch that golden hair, and stroke my fingers down his jawline, now bearing blond stubble that made my legs feel shaky. But most of all, I wanted to kiss him ever so gently on those tempting lips, not
hard enough to hurt his mouth if it was still tender, but enough to let him know that he’d been kissed.

  “No. You cannot kiss me,” I said firmly.

  His eyes grew grave.

  I leaned down and gently, oh so gently, nipped his lower lip. “I, however, will kiss you.”

  “I’m not normally aroused by bossy women,” he warned as I feathered little kisses along the edges of his mouth. His hands slid down so that they rested warmly on my waist.

  “Who says I’m trying to arouse you?” I asked as I licked the tip of his nose.

  His eyes crossed. “You’re doing a damned good job of it if you’re not. Are you going to stop teasing me and kiss me properly?”

  “Now who’s being bossy?” I didn’t let him reply. I just leaned in and let my lips do what they’d wanted to do ever since the moment I’d seen him on the cliff. His mouth was warm and soft and infinitely pleasing, but when his lips parted in a happy sigh, my pleasure in the kiss went into overdrive. I touched the tip of his tongue with mine, then retreated. It was such an intimate gesture, it shook me for a moment or two, and I felt the need to give him time to adjust himself to the invasion.

  Gregory obviously did not share such thoughts, because before I could tell him that he was an extremely good kisser, his tongue was there in my mouth, being just as bossy as he had claimed I was. I didn’t have long to think about that because not only was his tongue laying siege to my mouth—in a way that made me feel as if my toenails were steaming—but both hands had moved up along my sides until they were cupping the undersides of my breasts. That was pleasant, very pleasant indeed, but when Gregory sent his thumbs into action in the form of soft little sweeps across my nipples, I pretty much stopped thinking and just wallowed in a delicious world made up of Gregory and his magic mouth and hands. And chest. And I had a feeling that the rest of him would be pretty damned fine as well.

  “All righty, ’ere we go with dinner, and a few visitors to—oy!”

  It took a couple of seconds for Al’s voice to penetrate the thick fog of desire that had rolled over me, but Gregory’s stiffening beneath me did a lot to bring me back to my senses.

  I sat up, my mouth feeling strangely bereft, my breasts very much protesting the removal of his hands from their premises.

  “Oh,” I said, staring at the two guards who held trays bearing food. Behind them stood three people, one of whom held a camera. “Um. This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “Yes, it is,” Gregory said, and crossed his ankles as he put his hands behind his head.

  The guards—Herbert and another man—looked at each other.

  “I can’t see!” a voice squeaked from behind them. Al opened the door wider, gesturing for Herbert and his buddy to set down the trays of food. The others behind them spilled into the cell. “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like a man and a woman having sex,” a thin, rat-faced woman said and took a picture of us. “Henry, I’m shocked and appalled by this. It isn’t at all what I thought we’d see in a dungeon.”

  “This is hell, dear,” a short, round man said softly. “I expect that’s the sort of thing they get up to, here.”

  “We are not having sex,” I said a bit desperately.

  “Not yet, anyway,” Gregory added.

  I glared at him. He winked.

  “I still can’t see!”

  “You’re too young to see, kid,” the rat woman said, taking another picture of us. I stopped glaring at Gregory and stood up, trying to think of something to excuse our actions that didn’t sound inane.

  “See what?” A spotty teenage boy pushed his way around the guard. He looked disappointed to find that we weren’t engaged in a full-fledged orgy. “Oh. It’s just some chick and a dude. I thought there would be more skin.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Excuse me, but just who are you people?”

  “This is the After-Hours Tour.” Al smiled cheerfully. “We don’t be normally sendin’ tours down ’ere, what with the payin’ customers enjoying their bit o’ privacy, but since you and Sir Bollocks Puncher over there ain’t payin’, ’is lordship figured folks might want to see actual prisoners in their native environ, so to be speakin’. We weren’t to know that you and ’is nibs would ’ave preferred to be alone.”

  “I believe,” Gregory said as he sat up and swung his feet to the ground, “that of the two, I prefer the name Sir Cover Model.”

  We all ignored him.

  “I thought there would be more torture. Shouldn’t there be torture, Henry? There should be torture. Blood, and hot irons, and torture—that’s the proper sort of thing to have in a dungeon.”

  “This tour has got to be against some sort of rules,” I protested to the guard and tourists alike. “You’re invading our privacy, and we don’t like it.”

  “I’ll pass along your complaints to ’is lordship,” Al said, jerking his head toward the door. His two henchmen shuffled out, but only after giving us wide, amused grins.

  “I will be sure to say something on the comment cards about the lack of blood and tormented people, of that you may be certain!” the woman snorted.

  Her husband smiled a watery smile, and shared it with Gregory and me. “Mariah does love a good torture scene.”

  “Bully for her!” I gave her a look that I normally reserve for people who spit in public.

  She sniffed and took a few desultory shots of the cell. “Not even a proper set of shackles here. What sort of hell is this where there’s no torture and no shackles?”

  “Look, lady—”

  “Nothing but a strumpet and her love toy.”

  I gaped at her for a second, then took a step forward, intending on giving her a piece of my mind, but Gregory was suddenly in front of me, one arm blocking me.

  “Madame,” he said, and his voice was one of commanding dominance. The rude tourist woman shrank before him. “You will kindly refrain from referring to Miss Owens by that word. It is untrue, and upsets her. Furthermore, you will remove yourself, your husband, and that adenoidal teen from our presence.”

  “Well, now, well, now,” Al the guard said while the two others backed away from Gregory. I have to admit, I smirked a little behind his back. I wasn’t normally one for expecting someone else to save me, especially a man, but Gregory seemed to slip into the protector role easily, so who was I to complain? “There’s no need for anyone to be gettin’ angry-like, is there? We’ll just be on our way and leave you two to the kissin’ that you were up to.”

  “We weren’t kissing!” I objected, then swore to myself. “We might have been, but that was all we were doing. Gregory was wounded, if you recall. I was merely seeing if he had healed up properly. I was . . . tending him.”

  The last couple of words fell from my lips with a pretense made limp with disbelief. Even I couldn’t say it with any conviction.

  “Have a very . . . fulfilling . . . evening tending ’im.” Al’s parting shot was delivered with a knowing smile. He closed the door, leaving us standing in the middle of the room.

  The food wafted a heavenly smell toward us. Gregory moved over to examine the meal, making approving noises at a bucket of ice containing a bottle of champagne. “Ah. Very good year. How pleasant. And now, my dear—”

  “Don’t say it,” I warned, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t you dare say it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered, then sat back down on his cot. “Even if I did, I’m too weak to actually speak. Feed me?”

  “You big ham. You need a sharp smack to the head.”

  “No, what I need is some of that tending you spoke of.” He patted the cot. “I’m in considerable pain. Don’t you want to come back over here and give me the benefit of your healing powers?”

  “No.” I went to my cot, grabbed my pillow, and hugged it to myself to keep from doing as he asked. Damn the man for his tempting mouth and eyes and oh, dear goddess, the sight of him splayed out on that cot all hard and masculine
and bulgy with muscles and did I mention hard? He looked very aroused indeed if the largest bulge of all was anything to go by.

  I reminded myself that those bulges were attached to a man who was by definition if not my mortal enemy then not someone I should be having illicit thoughts about, let alone indulging in related touches with.

  He was with the Watch. They were dangerous, even here in Anwyn where they had no jurisdiction. If I fell victim to the lure of his sensual ways, he’d be able to play me like a violin, and before I knew it, my mothers would be out of Anwyn and into the custody of the Watch.

  I hardened my heart, mentally girded my loins, and told my libido to take a cold shower.

  “No?” he asked, giving me a come-hither look to end all come-hither looks.

  I almost went thither.

  “It’s out of the question. I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”

  “It’s about four in the afternoon.”

  “Very tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night. You eat the food and drink the champagne, and if you so much as come within two feet of me, I’ll scream bloody murder.” I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around me like a cocoon, rolling over on the cot so that my face was to the wall. I prayed that the buzz of excitement that had filled me at our recent activity would die down enough so that I could at least rest.

  Sleep, I knew, was out of the question. Not while Gregory was near. Not while everything in me wanted to ignore common sense.

  I sighed. It was going to be a long, long night.

  SEVEN

  The night was long. Hellishly long. That was a better description, Gregory decided somewhere around two in the morning. Not only did he have a sleepless night in which to consider his sins, mostly focused on the fact that he had charged into Anwyn without official permission, but he didn’t even have the deliciously ripe form of Gwen to distract him.

  “Blast it all,” he said into the close, dark night.