Page 4 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

Percy sighed. Need he explain again? “This is a particularly vicious ghost, and I don’t want to take any chances. Ideally, we’llexorcise the picture before we burn it to make sure there are no nasty surprises.”

“Okay, but then what difference will a few bumps and scrapes make?”

“Do you want to piss her off?”

“I imagine an exorcism will piss her off.”

“Joe, please.” Percy sighed dramatically. “Can we just stick to the plan? It’s all this going off piste during a heist that sinks everything.”

“Fine.” Joe also sighed. Less dramatically. “I’ll be deadly careful with the precious painting before we set it on fire.”

“That’s all I ask, handsome.” Percy leaned across and kissed Joe gently, just on the sharpest point of his impressive jawline. Joe closed his eyes and leaned into it, letting the tingle of Percy’s kiss slip over him. Percy passed a hand around his neck and pulled him a little closer, taking the kiss a step up his jaw.

“Percy…” muttered Joe in half-hearted warning.

“It might go better,” Percy mumbled, moving the next kiss to Joe’s soft, full lips, “if I wasn’t preoccupied,” Percy slid a hand down over Joe’s large, ever-firming cock, “with thinking about fucking you.”

Joe slapped his hand away. “That’s all you ever think about.”

“Hmmm. True,” reflected Percy, watching his handsome fiancé make for the door. His back, his ass, his strong thighs, all clad in the fanciful leather of a fictional vampire slayer.

The real crime would be to let that costume go to waste…

What a long evening it would be, especially if Joe was going to be so strict about things.

But then Joe turned and his whip slapped against his right thigh. “Well, Dracula?”

On the other hand, Percy considered, as he laced his mask over his heavily made-up eyes, maybe if he played his cards right, Joe would be stricter still.

“Anything you say, Van Helsing.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE DUBOIS CHÂTEAU

Invitations and fake identifications were shown at the wide open, heavily surveilled, wrought-iron gates, and their hire-for-the-night black Mercedes drove through. It crunched to a stop, they stepped out, and as it drove on, Joe’s shoulders and heart wilted. “You can’t be serious.”

“I told you it wouldn’t be easy,” Percy replied, stepping up the ancient stone stairs onto a long, grey, gothic bridge.

“You also told me it would be a moat,” Joe whispered, catching up fast. “This is a lake, not a moat.”

“Hence the boat,” said Percy, raising a fake smile at a zombie who passed by with a slutty Freddie Krueger. Grimacing disdainfully, he followed slowly in their wake, saying quietly, “This is why we do a sweep first. Pictures and blueprints can’t compare. Those documents are several years old and Dubois is just the sort of tasteless bastard to do an interior redesign—put in a home cinema and a shark tank where a three-hundred-year-old dining hall should have been. We carefully, discreetly, trace our intended path around the palace to make sure it’s all as it should be, then if it is, we do it again for real.”

Bolstered a little by his confidence, Joe’s hand slipped beneath the folds of Percy’s cloak and grasped his reassuring fingers. “Thanks for bringing me in on this.”

His sweetly spoken words pulled Percy’s attention almost entirely from the job at hand. “Are you having fun yet?”

Giving his slightly shy smile that Percy adored, “I think I am, actually.”

With a flick of his wrist, Percy took Joe by surprise, twirling him into a cold, dark corner, wedged between the palace and the bridge’s stonework, enshrouded by Percy’s cape. Hot, heady perfume, Percy’s warm lips on his own, the grind of Percy’s thigh between his.

“You said, ‘discreet’,” Joe laughed, not at all inclined to leave the shelter Percy had created, wondering somewhere in the back of his mind how so very few weeks had turned him from virgin priest into sex-obsessed, high-class criminal.

Then Percy whispered, “I love you,” and Joe knew exactly how it had happened.

Percy kissed him one more time, softly, tenderly, then released him from the delightful prison. Joe stepped unsteadily towards the light of the gigantic doors, slipping his fingers out of Percy’s grasp seconds before they stepped through.

Wealth assaulted him like a Ming dynasty vase smashing his face to pieces. Shocking wealth that Percy was accustomed to, that set Joe on edge every time.

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