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  He popped the button of his jeans and pulled down the zipper, releasing it at last. It sprang up out of his pants, thick and hard and burning hot with eagerness.

  He plunged it inside of her.

  God in heaven, the heat and wetness of that tight little cunt. Luca generally prided himself on his control, but he had never been in more danger of cumming immediately than he was in that moment, not even in the eager years of his teenager-hood.

  If Lex’s body was tight on the outside, it was nothing compared to the grip inside of her. All her fitness and surprising strength seemed concentrated in that one, most perfect part of her body. He had never felt so connected to someone just by being inside of them. He felt like his cock was reaching all the way to the core of her, the real, hungry, uninhibited center of her that was nothing like the cool, emotionless shell that she liked to portray.

  He had been so shocked by the initial sensation that he almost forgot to keep thrusting. Now, he pulled in and out of her, marveling at how she squeezed around him, how the sensation of their connection was so much stronger and more intense than anything he had imagined.

  There was no satiety in fucking her. The more he did it, the more he wanted. His hunger only grew and grew.

  He could tell it was the same for her. No matter how hard he went at her from behind, she only wanted more. She begged for it.

  He turned her around and lifted her up onto the little table. He plunged into her again, with her legs wrapped round his waist. He loved how much smaller than him she was, how he could move and manipulate her so easily.

  Yet she wasn’t fragile in the slightest. She clung to him, she climbed him like a tree. She kissed him wildly, biting at his lips, forcing her tongue into his mouth just as aggressively as he did to her.

  Her hair had come loose, and it was like the mane of a lioness, dark and wild and just as intoxicating in its scent as the rest of her. Her pale skin was flushed all down her chest. He was sweating, more than could be explained by the heat in the small train compartment.

  He picked her up and bounced her up and down on his cock, in time to the rocking motion of the train. She wrapped her legs and arms tight around him and started to cum again, her whole body shaking.

  He could feel her pussy tightening in rhythmic squeezes around his shaft. Now there was no way he could resist the intensity of it. He erupted inside of her, an orgasm that boiled out of him like lava, that consumed his whole body in the hot, molten pleasure of it.

  The strength went out of him in an instant. He released Lex and they both sat down on the floor, panting and resting their backs up against the base of the seats.

  “That was…unexpected,” Lex said, fanning her face with her hand and laughing a little.

  Luca couldn’t talk at all. He could still barely breathe.

  He only knew that he had just had the most intense sexual encounter of his life, and he desperately hoped it would happen again.

  16

  Byron Black

  Venice

  Black opened the backpack he’d taken from Gallo. As he suspected, it was full of items belonging to Lex. First, a handful of false passports, in a variety of aliases. Second, an empty money clip (Black assumed Gallo had pocketed the cash). Third, a cellphone. Fourth, a book.

  He tried to access the cellphone, but it was password protected. He put it in his pocket, thinking he’d have Johnson take a crack at it once he was back in Stockholm.

  Next, he turned his attentions on the book. It was an old paperback, the spine cracked and worn, the pages barely held on by the ancient adhesive. He opened it up. The tea-stained title page read: “Le Petite Prince”.

  Black’s heart beat a little faster in his chest.

  He had often thought that Lex must have lived in France as a child. French was her strongest language—besides English, the one she spoke most like a native. Also, she looked somewhat French herself. There was something in her face, in the wide eyes and arched brows, that reminded him of certain famous French beauties like Anouk Aimee.

  He had tried to search military records for American families stationed in that area, perhaps with NATO, but without a last name, his searches had come up cold.

  Now he wondered if he ought to look at international schools, instead. Whether her father had actually been military, or some other profession that required him to hop around foreign countries, he thought it very likely that Lex would have been enrolled in such a school with other children of foreign diplomats and lawyers and businessmen.

  With Johnson’s help, he’d become much more computer savvy over the last two years than he’d once been. Countless late nights searching databases, bypassing firewalls, and using the FBI servers whenever possible had allowed him to access information that he had no real right to obtain.

  If Lex really was thirty-two, like she’d told him, then she would have been in elementary school from about ‘92-‘98, and middle school around ‘98-’00.

  He thought that was when she must have lived in France, because of the child’s book, and because she had mentioned, just briefly, how she’d hated attending high school in the rural Midwest.

  He didn’t think she’d been lying about that. He didn’t think that she had made things up in general. When Lex hadn’t wanted to talk about something, she’d just avoided the topic, or evaded a question with a joke, or a question of her own. Talking with her had always felt a little like a fencing match: playful, aggressive, and almost impossible to slip past her defense.

  So he began a long and painstaking search through the databases of international schools in France. He was using the first name “Alex,” hoping against hope that she had given him her actual first name.

  There were plenty of Alexes, mostly boys. But none of the grinning, gap-toothed girls looked anything like a youthful Lex.

  Then he had another thought. Was it possible that Lex had family in France? If so, had she attended a local school?

  He began to search the ecole primaires, from his estimated dates. There were thousands, of course, exponentially more than the number of international schools.

  After about four hours of tedious, mind-numbing scrolling, when his eyes were so blurry with exhaustion that he could barely see anymore, Black finally found what he was looking for. A small, black-and-white photo of a pretty little girl with dark bangs, a solemn face, and large blue eyes.

  Underneath the photo he read:

  Alex Moore

  Ecole Georges Lapierre

  Lyon France, 1995.

  She had only attended for the one year.

  “I knew it,” Black whispered.

  Just then, his cellphone vibrated in his pocket for about the twentieth time that night. He pulled it out and saw “Kellan Johnson” on the screen.

  “What is it?” Black said.

  “Where the hell are you, for a start?” Johnson said. “Gorman is freaking out. The oversight committee is breathing down our necks, and you were supposed to be the main point of contact with the Piketen.”

  “I went to Venice,” Black said, shortly.

  “Venice? Why—” Johnson broke off, realizing the answer for himself. “Gorman’s gonna flip his shit if he knows you’re not even in Sweden,” he muttered into the phone.

  “Just tell him I’m running down a different lead,” Black said.

  “On the cash heist, right? I don’t want to collaborate if you’re off on some rogue adventure.”

  “You’re not collaborating,” Black said, avoiding the question, “you’re just stalling.”

  Johnson sighed. Black didn’t bother to ask why he was up so late—he knew that Johnson was an even worse insomniac than Black himself.

  “Did you see I put that tracker live?” Black said. Johnson had snitched it for him, from the stash of goodies that weren’t strictly cleared for operation yet.

  “That’s why I’m calling, actually,” Johnson said. “Your tracker’s on the move.”

  Black exhaled slowly. It was exac
tly what he’d hoped. Lex was going home, he just knew it.

  “Where’s it going?” he asked.

  “Looks like it’s on a train, headed into France.”

  “Which city?”

  “Don’t know yet. Those lines branch off in a hundred directions.”

  “Keep me posted,” Black said. “I want to know where it stops.”

  He was already pulling on his boots and coat.

  He wasn’t the least bit tired anymore. He was going to drive all night. He’d keep in touch with Johnson as he followed the tracker. But for now, he was headed toward Lyon.

  17

  Alex Moore

  Lyon

  I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted to excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Lex told Luca that they needed to go to her place in Valence, but the truth was, she had more than one safehouse in France. And she was soon realizing, as they dug down into the details of their plan, that the equipment they actually needed was in her other house in Lyon.

  The problem was, Lex had never planned to take anybody there. Her house in Lyon was her actual home. The one place she returned to, time after time. The place she had always intended to keep secret from anyone except her own self.

  It was the only place in the world to which she was actually attached.

  She kept dozens of apartments in six different countries, but they were all as cold and impersonal as hotels. They were just caches for her fake passports, liquid money, and the tools of her trade.

  The house in Lyon was the only one that had anything of her real identity and personality. So the idea of someone else seeing it terrified her. She couldn’t risk losing it.

  She had never considered bringing someone there before. But now, inexplicably, she wanted to bring Luca.

  Why exactly?

  Why had this connection developed between them?

  Was it because he was the only other thief she’d known on a personal level? The only person who was anything like herself?

  Or was it something specific to Luca himself?

  There was something about him that inspired trust, as ludicrous as that might sound. Thieves were, by nature, the most quixotic and conniving sort of people, hardly known for their reliability or integrity.

  However, as Lex knew, even criminals have their own sense of morality. In some ways, their ethics were more rigid than average. A normal person follows the rules of society, but they might not actually believe in those rules. A criminal chooses for themselves what they think is right or wrong.

  Lex thought that Luca had shown her who is was, deep down, when he stopped the Roma from torturing or killing her. And he showed her again when he came to police station in Venice, to help break her out (not that she had needed it). She knew he hadn’t actually come there purely to enlist her help in this job. He could have asked anyone to be his “second man”.

  His level of loyalty, after having known her such a short time, was admirable to her. Mostly because she wasn’t sure that she shared that characteristic herself.

  She respected his skill in his work as well, though she liked to tease him about it.

  Besides that, she found him charming. And more than a little attractive.

  If she were one to blush, she’d be blushing now, remembering what they’d been doing to each other only a few hours earlier.

  He had surprised her with his aggressiveness, and the sexual chemistry between them. He certainly wasn’t a gentleman when it came to ripping her clothes off. But then, she’d never wanted to be fucked by a gentleman.

  Impulsively, she made her decision.

  When they got to Chambery Challes-les-Eaux, she changed their tickets so they could carry on to Lyon instead.

  “Why the change in plan?” Luca asked.

  “I’ve got better gear at the other place,” Lex said shortly.

  Luca just shrugged, following her onto the other train.

  They didn’t have a private car for this leg, so they weren’t able to talk shop any further. Luca took the opportunity to nap against the window for an hour or so, looking rather comical all bunched up in his seat, since he was far too large to fit into it in any kind of normal way.

  Lex kept her eyes open.

  She felt a palpable sense of excitement the closer she drew to home. It had been a long time since she’d been back.

  She had thought she would return with the cross, to put it in the spot she’d planned. But it was good to be back either way, even empty-handed.

  Lyon sat in the crux of the Rhône and Saône rivers. Once their train stopped, Luca and Lex hopped off and caught a cab to the little peninsula south of the city center. Lex’s house sat on the hill called La Croix-Rousse, “the hill that works.” It was covered in tiny, old silk workshops, including the one that Lex owned.

  Her great-grandmother had passed it down to her. It was the only one of Lex’s homes that could link her to her past, to her real identity.

  Lex had known her great-grandmother as a small child. She’d come to France every summer to stay at this place. She’d learned her grand-mere’s trade, restoring historic fabrics by using the old techniques, the ones that had been passed down since the 1500s.

  Since then, Lex had altered the house to suit her current trade instead.

  From the exterior, it looked like every other dusty old stone building in the area. On the main floor, too, it might have been an actual workshop, still containing the wooden looms, the large windows to let in the natural light, and the white plaster walls and ceiling with their exposed dark beams.

  The upper levels were where she had done her renovations. The top floor was riddled with hidden rooms, concealed escape routes, stockpiles beneath the floorboards, and the most important thing of all: a modern bathroom with a proper shower.

  That was where she headed now, to get fully clean for the first time in a long time.

  Luca followed her through the workshop, lugging their bags.

  “This was your grandmother’s place?” Luca asked, looking around at all the ancient equipment, some covered over with canvas drop cloths, other pieces coated nearly as thickly with dust and spiderwebs. The old machines looked skeletal and looming, even in the bright daylight coming through the windows.

  “Great-grandmother,” Lex corrected him.

  “And she left it to you?”

  “She didn’t have much choice. Everything comes down to you when you’re the last person left out of a very small family.”

  “You don’t have much security,” Luca observed.

  “You and I know better than anyone how useless that stuff is. If someone’s determined to get in, they will. The best security is for nobody to know it’s here at all.”

  “But you’re showing me,” Luca said.

  “Yeah,” Lex said, trying to sound as if it didn’t mean anything.

  She could tell he wanted to ask her why, why she trusted him enough to bring him here. But he refrained. She was glad, because she really didn’t know the answer herself.

  Once they reached the upper floor living quarters, Luca dumped the bags in the sitting room.

  “You have any food here?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” Lex said. “I haven’t been back in months. We can take a shower though.”

  “We?” Luca said, grinning.

  “I mean, if you’re not too tired from the train…” Lex said, grinning back at him over her shoulder.

  She was already pulling her shirt over her head as she walked towards the bathroom.

  Luca kicked off his shoes and hastily followed her.

  The shower was the biggest luxury of the place, large and open, with two separate shower heads and six jets coming out of the walls at all heights.

  Lex turned them all on, letting the room fill with steam.

  She had laid the expensive marble tile herself, not trusting anyone else to come in the place. It had
taken her a month, since she was no plumber or tiler, but she’d gotten it right in the end.

  She stripped off her clothes, her skin flushed and gleaming in the thick steam. Luca stripped naked as well.

  She had to admire his body. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. His broad shoulders and square chest tapered down to an extraordinarily tight stomach, where the muscle cut sharply in at the Adonis belt. He had some of the smoothest brown skin she’d ever seen, and an aesthetic balance that reminded her of a bodybuilder, though not as bulky. Fittingly for an Italian, the beauty of his physique reminded her of a Renaissance sculpture.

  He stood naked before her, completely unembarrassed. And why would he be? His body might be the most perfect example of male beauty that she’d ever seen. The cock already stiffening between his legs was nothing to sneer at either. Thick, straight, and as smooth and flawless in form as the rest of him.

  “You should try working out sometime,” Lex said, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “I’m going to get a workout right now,” Luca growled, scooping her up in his arms.

  He kissed her again, just as ferociously as he had on the train.

  She was pleased to see that his hunger for her hadn’t diminished in the slightest. If anything, he was much wilder now that they were in a less confined space without any conductors to knock on their door.

  He picked her up and kissed her hard, with his arms wrapped tight around her and her legs around his waist.

  He really was incredibly strong. It was rare for Lex to feel physically intimidated, despite her petite size, but she was highly conscious that even though gripped her so hard, it was only a fraction of his actual power.

  The smell and the taste of him was becoming so addictive to her. Even though he hadn’t showered yet, his skin smelled so goddamned good, just the natural scent of it.

  She believed in biology more than in concepts like “soulmates,” but however you wanted to classify it, she couldn’t help but feel that she and Luca had been designed for each other, at least on a physical level. Every cell in her body was crying out to get closer to him, to breathe him in and taste him and feel him deep inside of her.