Regency Rogues Omnibus (70 page)

What passed next, to Kit, was a dance in French pantomime and American as she tried to converse with the lady and make known her wishes to see her brother. In the end, her savior was the arrival of the lady’s English speaking, twelve-year-old son. The son informed her that his name was Pier and his mother’s name was Mademoiselle Lillian. They lived on the bottom floor of the building and oversaw the tenants for the owners.

The next piece of information Pier imparted was quite disturbing. He said Monsieur Clayton lived there no more. Luckily, Kit rallied, and asked more probing questions. At first, Pier and Mademoiselle Lillian were hesitant to say anything until she showed Pier a letter from her brother. Fortunately, he could read English as well as speak it, and quickly understood that she was Clayton’s sister. This changed the dynamic considerably. Mademoiselle Lillian now saw her as a way to recover unpaid rents she adamantly felt were due to her.

Upon hearing all of this, Kit nearly had the hope that Clay had run out on them. Her mind quickly skipped to hopeful possibilities such as he’d fallen on hard times. However, that hope was dashed when Mademoiselle Lillian informed her, through Pier, that she was almost ready to sell Clay’s personal belongings to recover part of the money owed.

Kit hastily assured them that she would pay the rent owed and that she wanted all of Clay’s personal property. Once this was clear, Mademoiselle Lillian became more relaxed and conversational again. Soon, Pier, with key in hand, was taking Kit to Clay’s apartment.

“When was the last time you saw, Clayton, Pier?” Kit asked as they climbed the narrow stairs. They passed two flights and two other doors that Kit assumed were other apartments.

“It was on zee day before Bastille Day. I remember well. Monsieur Clayton would wave on his way to zee café in the morning, or he would stop and throw the ball to me. I like those days. Then, he was no more, and I think he would say
adieu
.”

Yes, he would,
Kit thought, with a twinge. Clay was always good to children. Dread silently built inside her at the thought of how long Clay had been gone, that and the fact all his personal property was still there.

Hours later, Kit emerged from a hired carriage outside the Commissionaire de Police building in Paris. All her fears were confirmed and running rampant, really. Clay
was
actually missing, and for no outward or discernible reason.
Foul play
, screamed inside Kit’s head as she straightened the folds of her mocha-colored walking dress. She’d taken the time to return to her hotel to change her clothes after searching Clay’s apartment for clues. She’d dressed in an elegant outfit with accessories. They were clothes that by their very quality and presence spoke of money. Deep pockets, her father would say. Show them you mean business by your appearance and demeanor alone.

She did mean business, Kit thought firmly, as she adjusted her deep chocolate-colored hat with a mink-edge, set off with a black veil scripted with flowers. She meant to file a report with the Paris police that her brother was missing and she meant for them to listen to her and to take her seriously. Or at least think that she had money enough to cause a monumental fuss, Kit thought, which was halfway true. She came from money, but whether she had any money any more was up in the air. Nonetheless, she knew somewhat how to carry off the ruse of a moneyed person. After years of watching her father, she would use it like he would and bite back any hesitations she felt at trying to do so. The world was very much a man’s world and not easy for a female to get her voice heard.

But she’d been brave enough to leave Nick behind, hadn’t she? Oh yes! Only she wished she could not hear the echo of Nick’s voice in the back of her mind telling her over and over how incompetent she was. The true mystery was, why did she care what he thought?

Kit started to climb the fifty or so steps to the entrance of the Commissionaire de Police building. Perhaps, it was because she had started to care for Nick, in the beginning, but now she would not let Nick’s falseness win. She’d been a shadow in her father’s life, because she was a girl. Yet even then, she’d tried to outdo, to show her worth. She would now too, she thought. Nothing had ever felt more important to her or urgent in her life. Clay had always treated her as significant, nearly an equal. Maybe it was the adversity that Clay had to endure by being what people thought was different. A lover of men, what their father thought was perverted.

Kit nodded her head to the uniformed man who opened the doors to people entering. Then, she swept inside, hoping that she looked like she was an important presence. She’d searched Clay’s entire apartment and the more that she’d looked through his things, the more urgent the knowledge came to her that this was not a man gone off on some unexplained wandering, but a man suddenly ripped out of an active and thriving life.

While she found little to explain to her what could have happened to him, she did find things that told how abruptly he’d disappeared, leaving important matters undone in his business. There were written missives from any number of sources asking where their shipments were, what the time schedules were, and demanding Clay contact them immediately. Many of these had been unopened, collected in a pile of waiting mail that Mademoiselle Lillian had taken delivery of when she could not reach Clay. Kit had opened each one, feeling more desperate with each one that she read. Clay would not do this. He would never do this!

In Clay’s apartment, Kit had found only one good avenue to pursue, and that was the name of a man that had written Clay a love letter. She’d found it tucked in the bedside table and it looked as if it had been read many times. By Clay, she assumed. It surprised her to find that it sounded like any other love letter one might read between a man and a woman. But this was man to man with deep heartfelt feelings, and while Kit had felt like a voyeur, she’d also felt the tug of her heart. This man, Marco Remior, cared for her brother.

So, she would rouse the police to the best of her ability, and after that she would find Marco Remior and begin her own search. No matter what it took! Or what she had to do. She would find Clay, because she loved him deeply.

Thus fortified and inwardly emboldened, Kit fairly marched with authority to the reception counter inside the Commissionaire de Police of Paris.

Chapter Five

Lady Chloe Ravenscar stood in perfect stillness with her naked body freshly oiled from her neck to her toes by her husband’s roughly scarred hands. “Raven,” she passionately called him, but his real name was Lord Harrison Ravenscar.

Her oil-slick flesh gleamed, illuminated by the numerous candles lit about the bedchamber. It cast her skin to ivory with the lightest yellow tint, while touching shadows here and there over her feminine curves. Glistening darker shadows beneath her heavy full breasts, barely traced shadows over the slightly rounded protrusion of her soft belly. Never to be flat again, after bearing two children, nor her breasts as uplifted or compact.

She had given Raven a daughter, and she realized in the depths of her soul, by Buddha’s great wisdom, that with the gift of a child, she had soothed some of the wounds in Raven’s heart. Her first child, Sebastian, was not Raven’s. Yet, Raven treated him as his own. But there was a special bond between Niella, their one-year-old daughter and Raven, not because Niella was his blood, but because she was his daughter. The peace inside Raven had started after they had committed their love to each other as man and woman. Then, it had grown these several years and enlarged greatly with the arrival of their daughter.

Raven had brooded less and smiled more, even laughing with his children. He had become more open with his family and friends. The peace inside him had flourished with warmth, to be strong and true.

Until tonight.

This week a demon lurked. It thrashed its ugly head, and Chloe thought she knew why the demon had returned. It was because Raven thought they would expect him to kill again, to return to being an assassin. The moment last week when Chloe had heard Joelle telling the tale of her, Saxon, and The Order of the Satyr, Chloe had felt it too. The demon’s talons had scraped her soul and frightened her. Raven would not survive again. He could not go back to what he was, just as she could not go back to what she was. She was Raven’s woman now, which between them meant much more than simply being his wife.

Raven looked at the gleaming sculptured shapes and curves of his woman standing nude before him, while he slowly circled her. The animal within him was rising again. It was dark and lewd, filled with unnatural cravings. It aroused him to try to hold it at bay, even as he assuaged its unreasonable cravings. Chloe knew it lusted for her. He could see her reaction in the circle of her nipples, puckered a dusky rose, with her nipple tips jutting outward in deeper red. Below, the lips of her cunt took on a light rouge color. The slit clearly seen and vulnerable, glistening wet. Her ass, his personal treasure, was round with the feminine globes shivering lightly.

She feared the animal. She desired the animal. She loved his barely edged control of it. She sensed the heightened danger this time, even as she submitted to him. She would forever be the only thing that could save him.

His wife exuded the warm aroma of cinnamon and husky arousal as he stopped, fully clothed in an open edged shirt and dark britches before her. He held a roughly braided rope coiled in his left hand, one end hanging freely. Chloe’s almond eyes traveled along its length to the frayed end. He lifted the frayed end of the rope up to her lips, brushing their full bowed-shape lightly as her brandy eyes deepened to dark whiskey.

“Kiss it,” he whispered, with his rasping voice barely sounding in low insidious drawn out vibrations.

The allure of Chloe’s lips plumped as they kissed the roughened hemp. The movement swayed the lustrous and straight length of her black hair around her bare waist, as she suddenly exclaimed, “I beg to go with you! Don’t leave me!”

Harrison felt shock stiffen through his lean muscular frame, even as he rasped, “No!”

Harrison knew Chloe did not plead for him to take her into the submission and ecstasy of the moment. Their bond was not just of the body, but of the mind and soul. She would not tempt the fates to beg anything from him that he did not already give her, unless the demand inside her was forcefully out of control. But his devious and lecherous mind twisted this with the perverted logic that what he was about to do to her had just been proven, was needed.

He was completely confident that in a short amount of time he would have Chloe mindlessly aroused beneath his command of her. It was clear that she needed his direction. He would provide it, and she craved their unique kind of passion as much as he did. It was what bound them and made them one together.

Harrison moved then, walking to Chloe’s side, then behind her. He let out more length of the frayed end of the rope, while lowering his hand, until the end dangled against Chloe’s oily buttocks. He snaked the end along the plush crease of her ass, watching her ivory flesh shiver alive with the sensation.

“Please,” she whispered.

Damn it
, his mind cursed. “Put your wrists behind your back, Rosebud.” Just saying his pet name for Chloe stroked his cock. Her hesitation showed her reluctance.

But her wrists still moved behind her back. “Raven, I need to talk to you,” she tried.

“
No,
” he uttered with his hoarse voice, and he meant more than saying no to talking. His woman knew that. He roped her wrists once, but he held the hemp closed by his grip alone, without a knot. He pulled the rope, lifting her wrists behind her, arching her back and thrusting her naked breasts outward. She gasped a sound of excitement as he stepped to her side, lifting his free hand with the rope held coiled up to her throat. He grasped the slender column knowing the rope would be rough against her silky flesh, while the looped ends would sway and abrade the bare flesh of her breasts. He arched her neck back, bending her until his lips hovered with harsh breathing over her open and slightly panting mouth.

“No!” he expelled, right before he took her mouth.

Chloe moaned as the demand of Raven’s tongue submerged into her mouth. He was not gentle, but jarring, using his hand clamped over her throat to arch her back further as her wrists twisted to be free of the rope. It was an instinctual need to brace herself or defend against the consuming carnal invasion of her mouth. Raven’s tongue lashed against her tongue as his lips twisted and sucked, bruising her tenderness. The roughness, the slight pain, and the torrid heat excited her with fear. Her mind tried to fall away into the intense moment of harsh ecstasy, but she fought its usual course. Nothing had withstood it before. Raven’s command of her had always made her mindless in complete surrender.

But this time her love for him was stronger! When Raven pulled his lips away from the ravishment of her mouth, she would have fallen into a panting puddle on the floor, but for his hand clasping her throat. Still, she had the strength of love to say, “Please, Raven! I beg you. Do not leave me! Take me with you. I will die without you!”

“Die?” Raven asked, with a harsh rasp. “I will
make
you die and come back to life.”

Chloe felt the effort Raven used not to shake her as he used the pressure of his hands to pull her toward their bed. She was angering the demon and not certain if Raven could keep his demons from harming her in more than pleasure-pain.