His heart stopped at the thought before it resumed. The muscles in his face grew taut, which made his demonic side protest with a sharp sting. He didn’t have the right to ask that question. Besides, her acidic barbs over the last year had illustrated how much she despised him.
“That night wasn’t the first time Julian disobeyed orders. He was impulsive.” He ground out the words.
“But I accused you … blamed you, and I …” She swiped at her cheek.
Dulcis Jesu
, she was crying. Phaedra never cried. She hadn’t even cried at Julian’s
Rogalis
. He was certain his arms were going to show bruises from the way his fingers were digging deep into his skin as he fought back the urge to go to her. A second later, she inhaled a deep breath. “I was wrong to blame you that night, and I’m sorry.”
In the next instant, she was racing toward the door. Stunned by her apology, he stood there frozen. Phaedra hated being wrong, and she hated apologizing even more. Saying she was sorry to him had to have cost her dearly. The fact that she was leaving suddenly pierced his consciousness. He sprang forward and intercepted her just as she reached the door.
The minute his hand grasped her arm, she whipped around in a defensive posture, her palm slamming into his chest. Her unexpected reaction caught him off guard, but he quickly blocked her next blow. In an experienced move, his foot kicked forward to hook around the back of her legs and knocked her off her feet. The moment she started to fall backward, he followed her and tugged her into his chest. Holding her close, he twisted his body and envisioned hitting a soft mattress. When they hit the floor beneath the invisible padding, she was on top of him.
His first thought was the memory of the last time she’d been this close to him. Then there had been nothing between them, just hot skin. Fire streaked through his blood until he could feel the beginnings of an erection.
Merda
, he should have let her fall. She was skilled in hand-to-hand fighting and she would have easily recovered. The soft sound of her ragged breathing grazed his senses until his heartbeat matched the pace of her frantic breaths.
It surprised him she didn’t scramble away from him. Instead, she stayed exactly where she was. A pleasurable weight on his body. The scent of her was an aphrodisiac to his senses. She smelled like a warm summer breeze with just a hint of apple, tart and fresh. His gaze met hers, and there was a flash of awareness in the liquid warmth of her eyes that created a primal response throughout his entire body.
The soft pink of her lush mouth tugged at him, and without meaning to, he envisioned kissing her. A sigh of need whispered out of her, and he stiffened as she lowered her head to tentatively brush her mouth over his. The caress breached a wall inside him, and his hand cupped the back of her neck to pull her closer.
She came willingly, and in the next instant desire engulfed him in a blaze of heat that only she could quench. Her lips parted against his, giving him free rein to explore the inner sweetness of her mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted anything this wonderful. Sweet and hot, her tongue swirled around his in a silent demand for more.
Seconds later, her lips were setting his body on fire as she trailed her mouth down his throat. Her teeth nipped lightly at his skin, pulling a growl of pleasure from him. De
us
, he wanted her worse than the last time he’d made love to her. Everything came rushing back at him as his hand caressed every inch of her he could reach.
He’d not forgotten how good it was between them, but he didn’t remember it being this intense. There wasn’t a thing about her that didn’t make him crave more. The scent of her filled his nostrils as he remembered how good she’d felt when he’d slid into her velvet heat. She gasped, and he realized she’d felt him stroking her inner core with his thoughts.
She immediately lifted her head to stare down at him. Passion lit those gorgeous brown eyes of hers as she rubbed her hips across his stone-hard erection in an erotically suggestive move. It dragged a tortured groan from him, and she rubbed against him again, making his cock ache for her. He drew in a sharp hiss of air and rolled her over onto her back.
With desire raging in his blood, he lowered his head to kiss her hard. His blood thickened and roared in his veins as she met his demanding caress with equal fervor.
Christus
, he needed to find a way to regain control of the situation. His senses immediately shut down the thought as the scent, taste, and feel of her pulled him back into a place he didn’t want to leave. Her mouth left his and lightly trailed across his marred flesh. He stiffened at the touch. There was a tenderness in the caress that tightened a vise around his heart.
“Lysander, please.” Her whisper was almost like a prayer and it slammed into him with a force that sucked the air out of his lungs.
Fuck.
He was out of his mind. He’d been right on the edge of making her his again. With a growl of fierce anger, he quickly rolled away from her. In a single fluid move, he was on his feet. Surprise widened her eyes before a haunted look swept across her face. It was the same expression she’d worn when he’d sent her away at the hospital.
Unable to bear looking at the pain in her face, he whirled away from her. One hand running through his short hair, his brain churned frantically to come up with some logical explanation for kissing her. He’d been trying for the past year to make her believe he didn’t care about her, and now he’d come close to making love to her.
How in Jupiter’s name was he going to make her believe things hadn’t changed without her hating him? That was the point, wasn’t it? No, he didn’t want to hurt her again. And he was certain he was about to do just that when he turned around to face her. D
amn.
An impassive expression on her face, she had risen to her feet and stood ramrod straight, staring at a point over his shoulder. Except for the wild pulse fluttering in her neck, anyone else would have thought her well composed. He knew better. But her response to him seconds ago still surprised him. Over the past year, he’d worked hard to make her despise him. He’d thought he’d succeeded, but now he wasn’t sure, and the knowledge scared the hell out of him.
“I ask
Indulgentia, il mio signore
. I have no excuse for hitting you.”
“
Christus,
” he muttered. She sounded like she expected him to sentence her to the
Castigatio
for striking a Le
gatus
. With a sharp gesture, he dismissed her statement. “Forget it. I have.”
She flinched, and he immediately regretted his sharp tone. He’d made it sound like he’d already forgotten what it had been like touching her again. Nothing coherent formed in his mind to say, and he just stared at her in silence. The tension between them was an invisible thread stretched taut, and the minute it snapped, it was going to hit him like a baseball bat.
“About just now—”
“Forget it. I have.” She coldly threw his words back at him.
Her bitterness was a sharp-edged blade gutting him with delicate precision. It went right to his middle then slid upward to his heart and cut it out of him.
Merda
, he deserved her wrath. He’d managed to hurt her again. If this was what it was going to be like working with her every day, he was in trouble.
Maybe he needed to pair her off with Pasquale. No. The only person he trusted to keep her safe was himself. The question to answer was whether to tell her now or later that they were going to be partners for the duration of the mission. He glanced at her impassive features. Somehow, he didn’t think she was going to react well to the news.
Later. He’d tell her later.
“May I go?”
The sudden husky note in her voice wound his muscles up tight.
Christus
, was she on the verge of tears again? He couldn’t let her go like this. There had to be some type of explanation he could give for his behavior. The only thing he could think of was the one thing he wasn’t about to say. He ignored the temptation to deny her request. Instead, he gave her a sharp nod of permission and watched in silence as she darted out the door. He was going to have Atia’s head for this. The Prim
a Consul
was playing games with not only his life, but Phaedra’s as well.
Chapter 6
ATIA Vorenus entered the main door of the Santa Maria sopra Minerva and paused just inside the doorway. The church rested on the site of one of the ancients’ temples-Minerva, goddess of wisdom. The irony of her presence here was not lost on her. She’d given her bodyguard the slip some time ago, and if Ignacio knew where she was, the man would have a heart attack. Even as recent as twenty years ago, her presence in this church would have placed her life in jeopardy. She was still at risk if she really thought about it. The capture of the Order’s Prim
a Consul
would mean a promotion for any Praetorian. Something Ignacio was going to drone on about when he finally caught up with her.
The Santa Maria sopra Minerva was all the more alarming simply because of what it had been so long ago. Masquerading as holy men, the Praetorians had used this particular place as a breeding ground for their ethnic cleansing of the Sicari. The
bastardi
had abused the Carpenter’s teachings for centuries, convincing others that it was a divine task to root out evil. An evil they’d labeled Sicari. This very church had produced some of the more zealous of inquisitors during the Middle Ages, all of them Praetorian. Even the great Galileo had not escaped their wrath, as his trial had taken place here.
She tensed as she saw a clergyman enter the nave and move to the front of the altar. Immediately, she closed her thoughts off, but not before the man turned to study the place of worship. She inhaled a sharp breath of trepidation. Capture meant her death. She was too old to be used as breeding stock, but the Praetorians would try to cull every piece of knowledge they could from her before they killed her.
Despite her aversion to showing the Carpenter disrespect with the pretense of penitent worship, she stopped at the ornate fount a short distance into the nave to avoid drawing any attention to herself. Better to pretend than be found out and possibly lose her life. Dipping her fingers into the water, she genuflected in the direction of the altar with an unspoken apology. Somehow, she didn’t think the Carpenter would mind.
The pretense done, she quickly skirted the back row of pews to follow the aisle along the north wall. She moved with the speed and silence she’d learned in early childhood. From the moment they could walk, the Sicari learned how to move with great stealth and quickness. It wasn’t just because of what they did—it was how they’d survived over the centuries.
Even though she was in her mid-fifties, she was still in excellent shape, which played to her favor when it came to avoiding detection or capture in a Praetorian stronghold. Marcus had always enjoyed hiding right beneath their enemy’s noses. It was a game to him. A deadly one. Particularly in this place.
But she had little say in the matter. As Marcus was the reigning Sicari Lord, she had to
obey him. At least he hadn’t commanded they meet at the site of Nero’s Circus. It would have meant braving entrance to what was hallowed ground to so many of the Church’s faithful. It would have been much more dangerous. The Praetorians were great in number at the house of the man who’d denied the Carpenter. As she hurried down the north aisle, she saw a small tour group admiring the architecture of the flying buttress on the opposite side of the church. In one of the front pews, an old woman and a child knelt on the prayer benches. Mindful of the potential threat at the altar, she quietly darted to the left and past the beautiful Rise
n Christ
started by Michelangelo centuries ago.
Past the statue and the choir area behind the altar, she found the spiral staircase leading down into the crypts. Whenever she met Marcus in one of these places, t
his
part of the journey was her least favorite. All the rotting death behind the walls abhorred her. The fiery cleanliness of a Sicari burial ritual was far preferable to putting a body into the ground to feed the worms.
At the end of the crypt’s corridor, she paused. Nothing other than her own breathing filled the silence in the dim passage. Reassured that no one had followed her, she slid her fingers along the top edge of the stone ridge that bordered the crypt she faced. Just as Marcus’s message had told her, she found the slight bump in the stone directly above the intersected P and X of the Chi-Rho symbol.
The moment she pressed the stone trigger above the Church’s ancient symbol for the Carpenter, the crypt’s roughly hewn facade rolled to one side with a quiet rumble. She quickly slipped through the narrow opening and tugged on the iron lever inside. The grit beneath her fingers was a reflection of how long it had been since someone had used this secret Sicari hiding place. Still, the stone slid softly back into place behind her as if time had not aged it at all.
All this intrigue and danger. Why Marcus didn’t pick an open venue where the danger would be far less puzzled her. She wondered if he did it as a form of punishment for past transgressions. His or hers, she couldn’t be sure. Blind, she reached to the left, her fingers fumbling to find the candle and tinderbox on the shelf. Less than a minute later, Atia used the lit candle to illuminate her way down a short corridor to a stone stairwell. She peered below and saw the faint glow of light.
Damn, he was already here. Her hand on the cold wall to steady her, she hurried down the steps. She’d hoped to be here when he arrived. She grimaced. Marcus always seemed to be one step ahead of her. It was irritating. She’d almost reached her destination when the sound of a deep male laugh echoed out into the stairwell. Just as he always had, he could easily tell what she was thinking. Disgusted with her inability to shield her thoughts from him better, she entered the small shrine and waited silently just inside the doorway.