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He was questioning his own sanity at this point, but then he needed to think about his mother for only a second, and he knew he’d make the same crazy choices all over again. He was not only saving his mother, but he was helping Marc right a wrong that he’d struggled with for years.
But even as he clung to that rationale, he was sure that all his efforts to prove he wasn’t a waste of skin for a human being flowed right down the drain when he’d been pushed into a corner.
A good person would have told Marc no when he came up with his scheme to help. He would have handed Marc over to another bodyguard and figured out a different plan to take care of his problem on his own.
But he didn’t, and now they were kneeling behind a low wall, heading into a situation that was almost completely unknown. Angelo had been given just enough time to make a quick pass of the estate and dig up a ten-year-old reference to the estate’s security system. They had no idea if the old bastard had upgraded his security system or had more personal security than he’d seen in the one day of watching.
A cold wind stirred and pushed through the black sweater and cargo pants he was wearing. Marc was pressed close behind him, causing the gun settled against his lower back to dig in. It was the first time he’d been armed since he’d met Marc. They’d all agreed that it would have been strange for Marc’s boyfriend to carry a weapon. He hated to admit that it felt good to have the gun on him again—like he was back in control when it was still clear that he wasn’t.
Angelo took the lead while they waited. The small, slender man moved soundlessly, as if he were more shadow than human, disappearing from sight within an instant.
The night before, when they were wrapped around each other in bed, Marc explained a very basic layout of the expansive building that ranged between two and three stories in sections. There were vast gardens and a modest in-ground pool. But the problem was the layout of the interior of the house. Marc could only remember that the library which housed the hidden painting was on the second floor. He couldn’t recall an exact route to the library. The party had been more than five years ago, and Marc apparently had attended a large number of private parties of art collectors. Lavish homes in foreign countries blurred together.
Royce stared up at the massive building. There were a couple of dim lights on around the front door and another faint glow at the back at what Marc had described to be the pool area. The majority of the windows were dark, but there were a few other soft glows that looked as if there might be a couple of lights on deeper in the house. The owner was well into his sixties, so Royce was inclined to believe that he was in his bed already.
But it wasn’t a nearly seventy-year-old man that had Royce worried. They didn’t know who else was in the house. Did the old bastard have an extensive staff living with him? Angelo had spotted only a butler, but were there more? Or worse…an extensive security team?
“Royce,” Marc whispered. He pressed closer, crowding against Royce so that he barely had to lift his voice. “This might be a bad time, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m having fun.”
Dropping his head forward, he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed back a curse. “When we get home, I’m tying you to the bed, so I don’t have to worry about you getting into danger.”
Silence followed his growled statement, and then a hand slid along the outside of his thigh. “Promise?”
Royce barely swallowed back a groan. Now was not the time for this, but he was definitely fucking Marc’s brains out the second they were safe again. Just the idea of Marc’s wrists tied above his head, long body stretched against dark sheets, his sheets, had filled him with a desperate need. There were a lot of things that he wanted to do to Marc, to do with him, but to get to that, they had to crawl out of this mess.
A quick flash of light caught Royce’s eye, snapping him from his thoughts of Marc desperately begging for release. Angelo was signaling that he’d gotten the security system down. Marc pulled his hand away and Royce instantly missed his touch. Later…
Pulling on black ski masks and black gloves, they climbed up the small wall and quickly crossed the lawn to the side of the building where Angelo was waiting for them. The thief had knelt down in front of a pair of patio doors, working on the simple lock. The mansion looked to have been built sometime during the early nineteenth century, but Royce was no historian, and he knew he could be off by a century or two. What he could see in the relative darkness was a mix of old and small touches of modern, but the modern looked to be at least twenty to thirty years old. All things that could be quickly circumvented or overcome with minimal fuss.
