Smoke and Mirrors by Marie Treanor Read Free Book Online Page A

treasure is?”
    He smiled. “We don’t have to. We can convince him to move it.” He glanced at the book in Anna’s hands. She was playing with it rather than looking at it. Which was probably for the best. The maze of his plans was hard enough for him to keep track of. He knew from experience that others went mad trying to remember what thread led where and how.
    “Or at least,” he added, “that’s one plan.”
    Anna held the book up in front of her face, the title toward him.
    Dreaming of Darkness by Nell Black.
    He should have known Anna would have seen it already.
    “Is this the other?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he admitted. “It could be.” One way or another, they were all getting out. It was time.
    ****
    Nell gazed up at the low, rough wooden ceiling. Her heart beat like a rabbit’s, not with fear but with sexual excitement. She could smell burning wood, feel the warmth from the fire on the far side of the cabin. She lay on an old featherbed that dipped in the middle, and knew with a series of intense, very physical thrills that her moment of bliss was at hand. Hours of bliss, if she was lucky.
    A tall, powerful, naked man lay between her legs, making exquisite love to her. His blond head was buried between her breasts as he kissed and caressed them with long, lean fingers. Her nails dug into his back in sweet anticipation, and the tattoo on his shoulder blade rippled under her fingers: a blazing sun, dripping flaming balls of fire down his back. He lifted his head, groaning with pleasure as he pushed into her, slow, sensual, and sexy as sin itself.
    “Rodion,” she whispered. “Rodion.”
    She couldn’t bear it, and yet she reached for it, panting. He arched his back, thrusting harder, and the red and orange tattoos stretched tight across his chest. So much more picturesque than the simple flames licking up his forearms—those were his first tattoos, courtesy of a school friend. But the elaborate phoenix rose up from the fire on his chest with professional artistry. The flames stretched up and over his left shoulder. She could almost imagine it was those fires burning her up in this intoxicating ecstasy.
    She fell into orgasm with gradually building wonder as he continued his slow, sensual strokes, pushing her higher and higher and keeping her there.
    Desire clouded his eyes, parted his full lips as they began to smile. And still he pushed into her, measured and even, although his whole body trembled and he shouted out with the force of his own climax. “Yelena!”
    ****
    Nell woke, her heart thundering. No one called her Yelena, not since her mother had died…
    Oh Jesus fucking Christ, did I just dream that? I really don’t need this…
    She dragged her hand through her hair, trying to ignore the hot tingling between her legs.
    Okay. Think rationally. She’d just spent a rather intense few hours in Rodion’s peculiarly beguiling company. He was good-looking. He was undeniably sexy. And she hadn’t been laid in so long her subconscious had to pick someone to fantasise about. Pity it was a criminal. Huge pity it was this criminal, but hell, it was only a dream. Like everyone else, she lived with those all the time. No big deal.
    Suitably calmed, she glanced at her watch. Ten past four. Outside, the rain pattered on the window, comfortingly normal. She pushed back the quilt and got up.
    Twenty minutes later, she crept down the stairs, listening intensely to the silence. But it was an old house and a large one: the fact that she couldn’t hear anyone didn’t mean there was no one there. The other rooms on her floor had been empty guest rooms, giving nothing away of the people who appeared to be living here. But the floor below was where they hung out—Rodion and his sister, Ilya Petrovich and Boris Ivanovich.
    To her surprise, all the bedroom doors on this floor were ajar. Pressing her head to the varnished wood frame of the first, she knocked extremely quietly on the door and peered in. It was