Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Stone of Thieves

  by

  Diane J. Reed

  Bandits Ranch Books, LLC

  www.banditsranch.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Diane J. Reed

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Bandits Ranch Books, LLC.

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated to all those who wander and fall in love with life.

  Book Description

  The Stone of Thieves…for centuries its magnetic draw has twisted the hearts of ambitious men and women with the promise of power, passion, and intrigue until it fell into the hands of unlikely thieves Robin and her boyfriend Creek. But can they steal their destiny away from the curse that pursues this magnificent ruby heart? As the stone begins to spread its sorcery, Robin races to find her long-lost mother in Italy in the hopes of discovering the truth about her unique gypsy heritage and the ruby heart that is rumored to steal souls. Yet when the desire for this stone by powerful members of her family threatens their very lives, Creek decides to take matters into his own hands to protect Robin, his greatest treasure of all.

  Stone of Thieves is a sensual, stand-alone new adult novel and the sequel to Robin in the Hood in the Robbin’ Hearts Series. Due to mature themes, readership is advised for ages 17+.

  To read the sequel to Stone of Thieves and other books in the Robbin’ Hearts Series by Diane J. Reed, go to: http://www.amazon.com/Diane-J-Reed/e/B0071FXGOE/

  Chapter 1

  I wake to the smell of blood.

  Metallic, like maybe copper or iron, mixed with something fleshy and raw.

  And eternal—

  It calls to me.

  Pulls me in the way a thief is drawn to an open drawer of jewels. Certain as the sparkle on a diamond or the heady aroma of a priceless perfume.

  I remain still, my eyes closed, just taking in the scent.

  Somewhere between dream and reality, this intoxicating smell invites me, as if wanting to carry me away in the flow of its deep red river. For a second, I feel myself go under, and I wonder if I’ve fallen into that crimson infinity . . .

  But when I shake my head and glance up, I spy my boyfriend Creek in the airplane seat next to me with relief. He’s sleeping, his cheeks soft and slack as a child, gold hair skimming his shoulders, his skin rich with that impossibly sun-kissed glow. Yet his stern jaw and fierce cheekbones make him look like a protective angel. Beautiful, sculpted right from a Renaissance master’s dream.

  But Creek’s no angel—

  And there’s blood dripping down his arm.

  Blood from a knife carved into his flesh by my own hand. Right before we got on the plane.

  Partners.

  That’s the word he had me slice into his skin, more permanent than any tattoo. And a hell of a lot more enduring than the name of that blue-inked bitch he scratched out, now a long-forgotten scar.

  You see, I stole his heart.

  And he stole mine, too.

  We’re thieves. That’s what we do.

  ATMs, bank vaults, carefully-stashed lockboxes—these were our repertoire, until I discovered I’d inherited a fortune from my father’s secret Swiss bank account that he’d registered in my name.

  My real name.

  Not Robin McArthur, like I’d thought all my life, but Rubina de Bargona. The bastard child of my white trash father’s liaison with a pasta sauce heiress from Venice, Italy.

  And that’s exactly where we’re headed right now.

  Venice—the city of masks. An enigma within an enigma, floating precariously upon the blue-green waters of the Adriatic Sea.

  Why?

  Because Creek says I need to find my mother. My real mother, in order to find myself and steal back my history. She may be a nun, a drunk, or she may even be dead. But whatever I find, Creek says it will return a little piece of my soul back to me.

  And he should know all about shattered pieces of soul, because his own mother was murdered in the backwoods trailer park outside of Cincinnati where we met. Where we tried to provide for our hard luck neighbors the only way we knew how: by stealing.

  Now, there’s no more need for taking what’s forbidden—except for the truth of who I really am. And something tells me it won’t come easy. Because the de Bargona family was so ashamed of my existence that they farmed me out for an adoption before returning to their ancestral home in Venice for good.

  But my daddy stole me back.

  After all, we come from a long line of thieves.

  In the middle of the night, he broke into my adoptive family’s house, grabbed me from my crib, and then changed our names and started a whole new life built on lies. Lies that both kept us together and tore us apart—until he couldn’t hide the past from me anymore.

  I glance at Creek again, at the blood that seeps through his black t-shirt and trickles down his forearm, where it fans out in rivulets as though his arm were sculpted from cracked pieces. A warm light from the window settles across his hard cheekbones, illuminating his stunning features. It still blows me away how much Creek loves me. How he took me under his wing—an angry chick on the lam—and taught me how to care about the people at the trailer park as much as I value my own life. His love stripped away everything I thought I knew, left me bare and gasping, and brought me back to the truth of my own soul—the only thing that Creek says ever really matters.

  Grabbing some napkins wedged into the crease of my seat, I somehow manage to mop up the streams of blood dripping down his arm without stirring him from sleep. Impulsively, I can’t help curling a finger along a thick strand of his messy hair that rests on his shoulder, relishing its feral wave that I’ve now streaked with a hint of red. I want to care for him, the way Creek often risked his life to care for me, as tenderly as a treasured child. But what to do with Delta napkins that look like they’ve witnessed a crime scene? I scan the nearby passengers, hoping no one noticed, and zip open my backpack to tuck them in. There, in the small outer pocket, is the faded news article of my mother from the Cincinnati Enquirer that my dad kept all these years. My heart wriggles into my throat. Despite my blood-stained fingers, I pull out the photo before the napkins can taint her image.

  And it’s like looking into a mirror.

  Okay, so Alessia de Bargona is in a prim, white ball gown that makes her appear every inch the European debutante—a teenager who’d been biding her time at finishing school before her parents got the chance to arrange a politically advantageous wedding. But her hair is a long mass of dark curls, like mine, and her doe eyes are murky pools with that same bott
omless wondering in them—as if she, too, was always searching for who she really is.

  I’m so curious about her real personality, as opposed to this scared looking, candy-wrapped girl who bore me at only sixteen. How did she escape the Pinnacle Boarding School to have secret rendezvous’ with my father, a mere stock boy at her dad’s international pasta sauce plant? When she was away from the demands of society, did she laugh easily? Did she let her hair tumble to her shoulders and run barefoot through meadows by my dad’s trailer park, smiling and picking daisies? She must have met Granny Tinker and all the other folks at Turtle Shores who loved her so. Trembling a little, I pull out the priceless ruby heart that Alessia had slipped into my dad’s hand the day her father forced her to walk up to him and declare that she never loved him, and they were returning back to Venice.

  My dad didn’t believe her then.

  And he cherished this jewel as his one true and shining hope that their love would last forever, and we’d someday find her again.

  Has that someday finally come?

  I gaze at my red-stained fingers, holding Alessia’s picture in one hand and the ruby heart in the other.

  And I swear to God, the ruby feels like it’s getting warmer and heavier in my palm, pulsing even. Maybe it’s my imagination. But as I stare closer at the cracks and fissures at its center, wondering how such a flawed ruby could possibly be considered “priceless,” or whether it’s just another one of my dad’s lies, I have an overwhelming urge to lift my fingers to my lips. And to lick off Creek’s blood.

  But that’s crazy.

  Even so, I can’t help feeling a magnetic connection, as if Creek’s blood is like some kind of conduit to his very soul. The ruby in my hand seems to throb at the thought, and I slip the photo of my mother back into my backpack and cradle the gem in both hands. From somewhere deep inside the stone, I thought I heard a strange, lilting whisper.

  Taste it.

  I want to shake my head, throw down this spooky gem on the armrest between me and Creek and run to the restroom to quickly wash my hands.

  But I can’t—

  All I can do is focus on the crimson facets of light that sparkle inside this ruby, mesmerized. And then I hear that whisper again.

  Your soul is marked.

  The pulses of the ruby fall into synch with my own heartbeat.

  Taste your destiny, Rubina—

  Without realizing it, I’ve brought my fingers to my lips.

  For Christ’s sake, I haven’t had sex with Creek yet! We’re just two teens who’ve only known each other for a few months, and spent most of that time operating incognito on the lam. He’s never even had the chance to tell me his real last name.

  But none of that can stop the overwhelming urge I have right now to sample Creek’s blood. To swirl it around on my tongue and relish the taste the same way some women brag about abandoning themselves to orgasms. The pull of the life force that courses through his veins reels me in. Hesitantly, despite all rational thought, I take a lick—

  And that’s when I hear a woman’s laughter echo in waves.

  Followed by a scream.

  And everything turns red.

  She slaps him.

  Hard—

  The man in a black cape and mask takes a step back, teetering to recapture his balance from the force of her blow.

  In a shaft of moonlight in a forest glen, I see him brace himself for a moment and struggle to stand a little taller. He rips off his mask to reveal a deeply handsome face, framed by dark wayward hair and caramel skin. His lips slip into a wry smile.

  “Think you can get rid of me so easily?” he taunts the elegant woman in what I believe to be Italian, but for some reason I can understand him in English.

  The woman is breathtakingly beautiful in her crimson, Renaissance-style ball gown with a matching feathery mask, her face framed by wild, black curls. On her delicate feet are curious, red embroidered shoes set atop tall, wooden platforms.

  “Tonight,” the man vows, “you’re no rich man’s whore. You are mine.”

  Boldly, he steps forward and sinks his face into her pale, uplifted bosom.

  The woman throws her dark hair back and clutches at him, her fingers raking through his curls as though clawing her way to his heart. They sway, as if in a dance, and the man in the black cape rips open the front laces of her dress, freeing her breasts to open air. Her nipples are erect, as if she’d been anticipating the caress of his tongue for hours.

  “Mia tesora,” he breathes. His words hang in the air in small clouds of condensation. I can see the wet lines that shine in the moonlight as his tongue travels down her cleavage and circles her nipples.

  It’s cold outside—for some reason I sense the temperature but have no form, as though I’m made of vapor, like a ghost. Yet I can see everything in front of me in this secluded glen in the dead of winter, dotted with a lacy scattering of snow on the ground. Even so, I feel a hot blush rush up my being at watching the passion between these two lovers—the kind of sensual feast I’ve never tasted myself, yet I long for so desperately with Creek. The man knows this woman must be freezing, so he gallantly takes off his cape, revealing a gypsy shirt and trousers, and wraps it around her to cushion her fall. In one graceful arc, he lowers her to the forest floor before he tears open more laces and exposes the white skin of her belly and thighs. I watch his hand trace along her legs, gently massaging her skin as he fills her body with kisses.

  When he starts swirling his tongue toward her sex, I’m far from shocked. Instead, beneath the delicate flickering of stars, I’m utterly transfixed by this sight, as though I’ve accidently stumbled upon something so forbidden and beautiful, it’s—it’s sacred.

  Oh, what I would give if this were Creek and me right now . . .

  Their passion is fierce and rises in thin wisps of steam from their bodies that curl in the frosty air. They’re naked now, two starlit lovers at the height of their youth, and I can’t help admiring her perfectly round breasts and the slim line of her waist that fits against his hard, sinewy chest as if they were two clasped hands. When he begins to pump into her, it’s as though the earth itself trembles along with her waves of pleasure. I should be embarrassed, a former boarding school girl who’s stumbled upon this mysterious dream like a voyeur. But the electricity of their desire sweeps me up in its power like a torrent of lightning-charged wind, almost as though it’s happening to me. As the woman cries out in climax, her ecstasy filling the forest with a wild, raw sound, I see the man tear away her red feathered mask and toss it aside as though such an act were deflowering her far more than the prospect of burying his hot seed into her body.

  The woman lifts her chin to him in defiance, and with a forceful sway of her hip, she expertly makes him come. As he does, and his groan rumbles across the ground, she tilts her head back and laughs.

  “You couldn’t stay away from me if you tried,” she smiles.

  It’s then that I realize, with a start, that the woman looks exactly like me.

  A searing light flashes across the glen, filling it with a white hot glow that burns my vision.

  “Is this what you saw when you read my palm, my dear? Betrayal?”

  The words cut across the forest as a man in a dark robe and a ghostly white mask sets down his lantern and holds up his hand. He traces his finger down a line on his palm.

  “All those years ago, when you told me my fortune—did you plan your betrayal even then? Was that you I heard crying out in the forest for your dear children? Or was that the sound of something . . . else? Let’s not keep them waiting at home any longer, shall we?”

  The man strides over and stabs the woman’s lover clean through the heart with a sword he’d hidden inside his robe. As her lover slumps to the ground, she shrieks and the sound echoes across the woods. The man holds his sword up to the moonlight. He points the sharp edge, dripping with blood, under the woman’s chin and commands her to get up.

  Still naked, her white skin gl
eaming under his lantern’s glow, the woman quickly grabs something from her gown pocket and rises to her feet. She glares at him, unafraid with her perfect form in full display under the moonlight. Although tears stream down her cheeks, every curve of her breasts and hips seem to taunt him with their spellbinding power, and her eyes narrow in rage.

  “Taste it!” The man shouts, shoving the point of his bloody sword to her lips. “Taste his death.”

  The woman laughs and sweeps her tongue across the tip with relish, then holds up a ruby heart that glistens in the moonlight.

  “There’s your mistake,” she counters, ripping off his mask to reveal the old man’s face. “Blood on blood lives forever, you fool. When a Gypsy Queen tastes her true love’s blood, her powers only grow. Now you’ll never be rid of me.”

  “Oh? I wouldn’t be so certain—”

  With that, the man grabs the ruby stone from her grip and slices his sword across her throat. Her body instantly drops to the ground, but a mist begins to gather over the blood on her neck, as if her soul has become a vapor and is seeping out of her body. It rises in the air in a swirl and heads for the stone in his hand.

  Pulling me along with it!

  Despite my own willpower, I feel her spirit tangle fiercely with mine in the night air, circling me like a hot funnel. Her determination is strong—much stronger than I can imagine—and it takes every ounce of my being to withstand against her as she aims for the cracks at the center of that ruby heart.

  “Come with me, sweet gypsy!” she cries, somewhere between the fissures of time and space where only spirits seem to dwell. “Together, we can destroy him.”

  “No!” I protest, warring against her. I try to condense myself into icy crystals—anything to separate my energy from the force of her hot, steaming vitality. “I don’t want to be absorbed by you!”

  “Then what do you want?” she hisses in an accusatory tone, as though I’ve transgressed against her with some time-honored violation I know nothing about.