Page 50 of Saint of the Shadows

Vincent inched off the bed. He picked up a computer pad and called up a gossip magazine. He presented Marisol with a blurry picture of himself under a headline:

SOCIALITE SNOGS DIVA

American heir Vincent Varian seen in Notting Hill club locking lips with Della D days after attending gala with model. True love or new notch?

“I play a part to hide the other side of me. If that’s not enough, I’ll stage a photo. It seems that I’m in London now.” Vincent raised his eyebrows and sighed. He had sacrificed his reputation to hide his alter ego. “It is amazing what people will believe with Photoshop and some hired actors. Money has afforded the Varians’ privacy.”

Marisol shifted onto her back and swiped through various articles on the screen. A lightbulb went off about her earlier conversation with Whit DeWinter in the powder room at the Varian Estate. “Your date at the ball said you seemed like two different people. She was right.” She sat up. “Everything that made little sense about you wasn’t you at all.”

“Right.” He lowered his lips to hers.

She could give and deny just as easily. Before their lips brushed, she said, “When they kidnapped you, that wasn’t staged with actors. The men even said a Patron Saint attacked them. You said—”

“A half-truth. I saved myself.” Vincent tucked her hair behind her ear.

“They didn’t say Vincent Varian beat them up.”

“That’s because I keep an aerosol hallucinogen on me. It looks like pepper spray and disorients a person enough to create images in his head. To them, a Patron Saint did ‘beat them up.’” His baritone voice at her ear vibrated down to her core. “Not that they picked the wrong venture capitalist to mess with.”

Marisol nudged him away with her shoulder. “Is that what you did to Izzy? He said the darkness came alive and attacked him.”

“Not exactly. I called him through a voice box and mimicked someone I had heard once when I surveilled their calls. It scared him enough to come out himself.” He mauled her with pecking kisses on her neck.

Marisol pushed his face away, her hand splayed over his face like a starfish. “Who could scare Izzy enough for him to go do a pawn’s job?”

Her fingers muffled his answer, “I don’t know. Something in the voice, I suppose.” As she removed her hand, he kissed the tips of her fingers. Between kisses he added, “But I did light his drug supply on fire and smoke-bombed the getaway car. Siccing the police on him was the bow on the package.”

Marisol yanked her arm away. “You also broke his nose.” That the angelic beauty she faced could inflict such violence tempted her like honeyed words, searing into her a desire only he could fulfill. The sheets rustled as she rubbed her thighs together.

His gaze fixated on her lips. “Sometimes you have to apply pressure.”

She remembered Tobias chucking a shard of burned Varian packaging on his desk. She turned away from Vincent. “They’re using your company name to get drugs in this city.”

“Yes. I’ve been working with Quinlan to figure out how.”

“How long have you worked with the police?”

“I work with Quinlan, not the police. For a few years now.”

“You called the police dispatch through that device in your suit.”

“I know how to manipulate the police to achieve certain outcomes.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and nibbled at her shoulder.

She faced him. “Like tying up bad guys outside a precinct?”

“One way.” He growled, revealing his alter ego hidden underneath.

His explanation reminded her of the night she first met him. “Not too long ago, I pulled a knife blade out of you. Your body should look like ahuman pincushion. Instead, you look airbrushed. How?”

“Are you sure you can handle my secrets?”

“You haven’t chased me away yet. And if that secret is an increased healing factor? Spill it and get me out of this cast.”

He slid both hands down the calf of her good leg. “I like you helplessly unable to move from my clutches.” He grazed the sole of her foot, tickling her.

After a few tortured wriggles, she ghosted her fingertips down his chest to his abs and teased the waistband of his pants. “Aren’t you curious about what I can do to you when I have two good legs?”

Vincent held her hand against the flat plane of his stomach and leaned toward her mouth. “Hm.”

---