The Paris Caper (3 page)

“To remember the
occasion,” he murmured with a wink, then grabbed her thighs, lifted her to his
waist and plunged into her.

She cried out, clutching
him around the neck, clinging to him as he thrust deeper and deeper.
Exquise
.
She was all he needed and more. So much more. She was perfect, young, hot and
tight with inner muscles that gripped him like a vise.

He gritted his teeth and
marshaled his self-control, wanting it to last as long as possible. Again and
again and again he drove into her, until he was a living agony of need to
release, until she started uttering the sweet noises of a woman close to
completion. He held on for three more hard thrusts, then she swallowed a
scream, her fingernails digging into his back. With a roar he let himself
plummet over the edge. It lasted forever, the almost unbearable pleasure of
releasing his seed deep inside her.

After the final
shuddering spasm he felt purged, renewed, exhausted. Happy.

Hell, he was in love.

He took her face between
his hands and kissed her, both of them shaking and on the verge of collapse.
Her legs slid down his hips but she clung to him and managed to stay on her
feet.

“That was absolutely
incredible,” he said between sucked-down breaths. “You are—”

The loud chirp of his
cell phone startled him out of his intended litany of compliments.

“
De merde
,” he
softly swore, and reached into his inside pocket for it. He looked down at his
newest lover apologetically. “Sorry. I have to answer. It’s probably
headquarters.”

She nodded. He could tell
she was trying to look nonchalant as he disengaged from her and flipped open
the phone, but for a brief second she looked distinctly nervous.

“
Commissaire
Lacroix,” he answered, and her eyes flared even bigger. He gave her a wry smile
and lifted a shoulder as he tried to make out through the static who was on the
other end of the line.

“
Jean-Marc,
tu es là
?”

“I’m here,” he told his
second-in-command,
Lieutenant
Pierre Rousselot, whose voice was breaking
up. “What’s up,
mec
?”

“Where the hell are you,
buried in some basement somewhere?”

“
Club LeCoeur
,” he
said a little louder, casting about for a wastebasket. “They must have thick
walls.”

“
Club LeCoeur
?
Then you know about the robbery,
oui
?”

He straightened,
immediately alert. “What robbery?”

“Your Ghost. He’s struck
again.”

A sharp spike of angry
frustration swamped over Jean-Marc. God
damn
it. God
fucking
damn
it. It was like the bastard
knew
exactly when he’d stopped watching.

He paced away from the
woman, who’d begun to rearrange her clothing. “The princess?” he asked, cutting
to the chase.

“Just as you predicted,”
Pierre said. “Say, I thought you were doing surveillance on the Dutch mob?”

“I took a break.”

There was a meaningful
pause on the other end. “Ah,
pardon
. Well, you’d better finish quick. In
three minutes the place will be crawling with gendarmes, the OCBC, and the
Dutch secret service. Apparently the victim has made quite a stink.”

Jean-Marc swiped a hand
over his sweaty forehead.
Dieu
. He had to get hold of himself. Any
second now his boss, CD Belfort, would be calling, demanding to know if he’d
caught the thief—even though Belfort and Saville had denied Jean-Marc’s request
for an official police team to follow the princess’s every move. They hadn’t
believed the chances of
le Revenant
showing up were high enough to
warrant that kind of expense. So Jean-Marc had done it on his own time.

And now he’d fucked up.

He glanced at his lover,
who was looking around at the boxes on the shelves, pretending not to listen to
his conversation. And just like that his anger evaporated.

Damn. She had been
so
worth fucking up for.

“When will you be here?”
he asked Pierre.

“I’m parking now.”

“Meet you at the entrance
in two,” he said, and hung up.

He turned to the woman
and opened his arms. “Come here,
mon ange
.” His green-eyed angel.

She hesitated, looking
uneasy. “You’re a
commissaire
?”

He nodded.
“
Commissaire de Police Judiciare
.
CPJ Lacroix. But don’t let that
worry you. It has nothing to do with us.
Viens ici
.”

She came haltingly, but
she came, stepping into his embrace. As he took her in his arms, she let out a
nervous giggle. “I can’t believe I let a detective superintendent of the
National Police fuck me in a storage closet.”

He smiled and kissed her.
“Next time I’ll do it in a more romantic place, I promise.”

Her surprised gaze held
his for a moment before it slid to the buttons of his shirt. “Do you have to go
now?”

“I’m afraid so. There’s
been a robbery. Here, at the club.”

“
Here
?”

“It’s all right. I can
vouch for your whereabouts, so you won’t have to hang around for questioning.”
He tipped up her chin and gave her another kiss, then softly asked, “Before we
go, I want to know your name.”

Her lips parted for a
second before she answered, “Ciara.”

“I’m Jean-Marc,” he said.
He wanted to kiss her again, and keep kissing her all night. But their time had
run out.
For now
. Pulling a business card from his wallet, he wrote on
the reverse and handed it to her. “My cell phone number’s on the back. I want
you to call me.”

She stared down at it.
“Really?”

“Tonight. I should be
finished here in a couple of hours.”

Disbelief flitted through
her eyes as she looked back up at him. “I, um—”

“I want to see you
again.” He took her face in his hands. “There’s something between us, Ciara, I
can feel it. Let’s explore this thing, whatever it is.”

Her tongue peeked out
then disappeared. “I— I’d like that.”

“
Bon
. Good.”
Relief washed through him. For some reason he’d had the crazy notion she would
turn him down.

He placed her hand on the
crook of his arm and led her out of their private sanctuary, up the stairs and
back into the chaos of the main club. As Pierre had warned, police were
everywhere, taking down names and addresses of the impatient club-goers and
wait-staff who had all been herded into a group in one corner to await their
turn for questioning. To the side of the hubbub stood the snooty princess and
her entourage cursing at the two uniformed cops preventing them from going
anywhere until they’d spoken to a detective. Until Saville arrived, that meant
Jean-Marc.

He figured they could
wait a bit longer.

Flashing his
carte du
requisition
at the guards, he guided Ciara to the front entrance, where
they met Pierre, who took one long, appraising look at her, and said, “
Oo-la-la,
mec. Très sympathique
.”

“Shut up, Pierre,” he
said good-naturedly. Even
le Revenant
slipping through his fingers
tonight wasn’t going to spoil his mood. No way would Pierre’s infernal,
inevitable teasing.

“CD Belfort is on his
way. We better get to work,” his lieutenant said, giving Ciara a shrug. “The
boss.”

“Walk me out?” she asked
Jean-Marc with a shy smile.

“I’ll put her in a taxi
and be right back,” he told Pierre, and they walked out into the warm, black
Parisian night.

An explosion of camera
flashes went off from the clutch of paparazzi at the entrance, catching them
both by surprise.

“
Merde
,” he
muttered, shielding her eyes with his jacket lapel. “I’d forgotten about those
vultures.” Jean-Marc hated reporters. Especially the unscrupulous
barrel-scrapers who worked for the sensationalist tabloids.

A few reporters
recognized him and shouted questions. He growled, “No comment,” at them,
pushing through the throng to the curb. Wisely, they moved back. An empty cab
sat across the street, and Jean-Marc led Ciara over to it.

“I’ll be fine,” she said,
giving him a hug. “You better get back.”

“This guy’s timing really
stinks,” he muttered.

“Who?”

“The thief, this bastard
le
Revenant
. When I catch him, I swear I’ll make him pay dearly.”

She seemed to go pale for
a moment, but it must have been a quirk of the light because she hugged him
again, then dug around in his jacket pocket with an impish smile. She pulled
out her torn panties. “I better take these so you don’t get in trouble.”

“Ah,
non
.” He
snagged them from her and tucked them back into his pocket. “These are mine
now. I’m going to put them under my pillow so I can dream of you whenever
you’re not sharing my bed.” He bent to take her mouth one last time. “Which I
surely hope will not be the case tonight.”

“You are a very naughty
man,
Commissaire
Lacroix,” she whispered.

“Count on it,” he
assured. “You’ll call me? In a couple of hours?”

She kissed him back and
hummed out a sigh. “Mmmm.”

“Say it,” he demanded
softly. “Swear to me.”

“I’ll call,” she said. “I
promise.” Then she got into the taxi, watching him the whole time it pulled
away. Just before she was lost in the flow of traffic, she blew him a kiss. The
last thing he saw of her was her smile.

But it was a smile so
bleak it suddenly struck him square in the gut.

She had lied.

She had no intention of
ever seeing him again.

Ciara felt sick to her
stomach as she lost sight of Jean-Marc standing at the curb with his hands in
his trouser pockets staring after her. She turned forward and told the taxi
driver a corner where he could drop her, close to her apartment on rue du le
Chat qui Piche.

Oh. My. God.

She’d just had sex with a
CPJ, one of the very men who’d publicly sworn to hunt her down, send her to
jail, and throw away the key.

Not that he knew it was
her
they were after. Thank God, everyone still thought
le Revenant
was a
man. But
she
knew. As soon as she’d felt those handcuffs at the small of
his back she should have taken off like the Roadrunner at the scent of coyote.

But no. She’d gone ahead
and had
sex
with the man. And what’s more she’d loved every hot steamy
second of it. Even worse, she wanted to do it again. So much so, for a second
she’d fooled herself into thinking she could actually make that phone call
she’d sworn to him to make.

How had she let this
happen?

She covered her face with
her hands. And groaned. They smelled of him; musky, erotic, virile. She yanked
them away, crossed her arms and stuck her hands under her armpits. But there
was no escaping. His scent clung to her everywhere: her hands, her face, her
breasts...between her legs. It was like he’d marked her.
His
.

There was also no
escaping the hard lumps of the diamond bracelet poking into her arm from the
hidden pocket in her dress.
They
marked her as his, too.
His quarry
.

“Jesus, girl, what were
you thinking?” she whispered. Hadn’t Etienne’s death taught her anything?

Why hadn’t she worn a
disguise
?

At least she hadn’t told
him her last name.

She’d have to lie low
now. In France, anyway. Her next few jobs she’d do outside the country.
Expenses would be a bit higher, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about
running into her new lover,
le Commissaire
.

She squeezed her eyes
shut and drew her tongue over her parched lips. And tasted him. Deep inside she
felt a sharp tug of desire. Her stomach sank even further. If she ever did meet
up with him again it would be her downfall for sure. Which would spell ruin not
only for her, but to the Orphans as well.

She couldn’t let that
happen. Jail was simply not an option.

The taxi pulled up at the
entrance to the walking street rue de la Huchette. At the heart of the Latin
Quarter, the street was filled with restaurants, shops, students and tourists,
but she liked living here. It was cheap, and she blended in well. As soon as
she got out, she was assaulted by Davie and Ricardo, two of her Orphans. They’d
been waiting for her for some time, judging by the worried relief in their
faces as they ran up and grabbed her arms.

“Ciara!
Grazie a Dio
!”
Ricardo said rapidly in Italian, a sure sign he was über-upset. Ricardo was
seventeen, tall, lanky and the second runaway she’d adopted. Innately cheerful
of disposition, a perpetual smile had graced his face ever since five years ago
when she’d spirited him away from a distant relative using him for unpaid labor
in his Paris construction firm.

But Ricardo was frowning
now.

A knot of fear tightened in
her already jumpy stomach. “What’s happened?”

Davie tugged at her arm.
“It’s Sofie. You have to come with us.”

“Sofie?”

The youngest of the
Orphans, and the most fragile both emotionally and physically, Sofie Hassan had
run away from home at thirteen, from a horror Ciara couldn’t even contemplate.
She had survived working the Pigalle doing whatever she must, until Ciara had
found her one day and persuaded her to join them. But her experiences on the
streets, and previously with her father, had left her meek and damaged. She was
just coming out of it now, two years later.

“Oh, God, is she hurt?”
Ciara asked.

“Yes!” Ricardo said, at
the same time Davie said, “No. Well, not too badly.”

Ever the pragmatist,
sixteen-year old Davie’s conservative aristocratic upbringing had clashed
violently with his early discovery that he was gay, but had left him with a
level head in a crisis. Ciara leaned on him far more than the others. Far more
than she really should.