Stealing Away Read online

  Copyright 2018 Harley Fox

  Edited by Jersey Devil Editing

  Cover Designed by Silver Heart Publishing

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is intended for adult audiences only. All sexually active characters depicted are at least 18 years of age. All sexual activity is between consenting, non-blood related adults. All characters and activities appearing in this work are fictitious. This book does not endorse or encourage illegal or immoral activities. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Content warnings: This book contains swearing, sex, theft, and murder.

  Stealing Away

  by Harley Fox

  I should stay away. I should, I should, I should.

  PERSEPHONE

  When I first met Marc, I knew there was something about him. Hot, strong, and able to form a coherent sentence? Of course there had to be a catch.

  I only had to get kidnapped to find out what it was.

  He's a thief. He's a convict. He lied and betrayed me and robbed the very place I call home.

  So why do I want him so much?

  MARC

  When you're an escaped convict, you don't settle down. Always running, always on the move. Taking Persephone was the worst mistake I made—and the best decision of my life.

  She's different from the others. She has brains. She fights back. She isn't afraid to take what she wants and spit in your face when you tell her no.

  I just hope she'll forgive me for what I have to do.

  Stealing Away is a full-length, standalone, bad boy romance novel. It contains swearing, violence, hot sex, no cheating, and a HEA ending.

  ~ ~ ~

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  Persephone

  “And now, if you follow me this way, we’re going to leave the Elizabethan era and come into Chinese history.”

  I’m at the head of a group of kids—grade school, maybe grade seven or eight—as they follow me through the museum. Our footsteps squeak and echo throughout the large hallways, the kids’ heads all turning this way and that, making them look like a group of flamingos moving en masse. Their teacher, Mrs. Wallace, is at the back, helping to shepherd them and make sure none run away. She looks stressed, but I know she’d look a lot more stressed if I weren’t available to help.

  When you’re a PhD graduate doing archaeological research, you have to learn to roll with the punches. Oh, hundreds of newspaper articles need to be digitized? Better get to work. Oh, someone needs to travel two hundred miles to meet with the curator of another museum? Hope you gassed up! But sometimes the jobs aren’t all that bad. They can be interesting, or even fun. For instance, getting pulled away from filing archival entries to help tour a group of rambunctious school kids when one of the teachers unexpectedly calls in sick.

  I stop at a glass case and they almost pile into one another, eventually sorting themselves out. They crowd around, a few of them paying attention to me, but most elbowing their friends, making inside jokes, giggling into their shoulders.

  “Pay attention, class,” Mrs. Wallace says from the back. I keep the smile on my face while I wait for them to quiet down. Mrs. Wallace gives me a strained smile and I keep my composure. It just takes time. The kids all shh one another until eventually they’re quiet enough to see what I’m standing beside.

  “Now, I’ve been doing research here for two months. But this,” I tell them, “is my favorite artifact in this whole museum.”

  Necks crane, and a palpable hush falls over them.

  “This is what we’ve been calling the Forbidden Necklace. It’s made entirely out of jade, and was only just discovered. Before this, we thought we’d found everything out from the Ming dynasty. Or, at least, everything that we thought we needed to understand what happened. But this necklace might tell us something new. If our hunches are correct, this was a gift of love from Li Zicheng, the rebel leader who overthrew the Ming dynasty, to Empress Xiaojie Lie, the wife of Zhu Youjian, who was the emperor at the time of the collapse. And if that’s the case, then it really adds a twist to the downfall of the Ming dynasty.”

  “What are you even talking about?” pipes up a boy at the head of a particularly noisy group of kids. “This is boring.”

  His friends snicker to themselves as Mrs. Wallace snaps at them to pay attention. Some of the other kids start giggling, chattering among themselves.

  What do you learn about doing tedious errands when you should be doing research? An ingrained sense of patience. And what do you learn when you graduate top of your class to land yourself one of the most coveted spots in the country? Not to tolerate bullshit.

  I stare the boy in the eye, the smile painted on my face. He’s congratulating himself to his friends, but soon he catches my gaze and stops, seeming uncertain. His friends quiet down. They all quiet down. At the edge of my vision I see Mrs. Wallace raise an impressed eyebrow.

  “What I’m talking about,” I say directly to him, “is romance. Forbidden love. The type of love that can take an empire that had thrived for almost three hundred years and bring it to its knees.”

  A girl with red hair raises her hand, and she takes my focus.

  “Yes?”

  “You mean like Marc Antony and Cleopatra?”

  Now it’s my turn to be impressed.

  “That’s exactly right,” I say. “Exactly like those two. What’s your name?”

  “Elizabeth Townsend. Like Queen Elizabeth of England.”

  “Great,” I nod. Then, to the boy, “You could learn something from Elizabeth here.”

  The boy’s face grows red and his friends all chide him. I turn on my heel.

  “Now, if you follow me over here, we can see some of the currency they used …”

  The tour lasts another hour and takes us all the way back to the foyer, at which point Mrs. Wallace calls it quits.

  “All right everyone, we’re going to head to the cafeteria and have lunch now! And then after that we’ll see a demonstration on how they do carbon dating!”

  The kids all start to disperse, either huddling together in their little cliques or flocking to the cafeteria, just off of the foyer. Mrs. Wallace turns to me.

  “Thanks again,” she says. “Honestly, these kids can be a bit of a handful sometimes.”

  “It’s no problem,” I say. “It’s nice having a break from my day-to-day.”

  “So, you’re a PhD student?”

  “Graduate,” I correct her. “I just recently got this research job. It’s nice here. I mean, how could it not be? And at some point I’m thinking of flying over to Greece or Rome, seeing if I can snag a job there. Really get into the thick of things.”

  “Wow, Rome. How romantic.” She gives me a wry smile. “Would you and your boyfriend go there together?”

  “Ah, nope. No boyfriend,” I tell her. “My work keeps me busy enough.”

  She nods. “Well, I can imagine you’ll have no trouble getting dates. You’re definitely pretty enough.”

  You have no idea. “Thank you. That’s very sweet.”

  “When you’ve been married as long as I have,” she sighs, “you lose touch with what the dating world is like.”

  I lean in. “Trust me, you chose the right path.”

  Another wry smile. Mrs. Wallace looks about to say something else, but she’s interrupted by a student.

  “Mrs. Wallace!” a chubby girl shouts. “I can’t get my backpack open!”

  “Ah,” the teacher sighs. “Duty calls.
It was very nice meeting you, Persephone.”

  “You too.” We shake hands. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  She walks off to help the girl, who is almost sniveling already, and I feel my own stomach rumble.

  Hmm, lunch isn’t a bad idea.

  I’ve got a lot of filing work to do still, so I decide to multitask. I leave the foyer and navigate the multitude of hallways, moving swiftly around the people, couples, families all at the museum, brushing up on their history, immersing themselves in culture.

  I love it here. Or rather, I love the work I do here. Or, more precisely, I love the work I could be doing here. The work that’s available for me to do. I’ve loved history ever since I was a little girl. When my mom was sick I would sit on her bed and read to her from my school history books. When I finished those I got other books out of the library and read to her from those. Even if she were sleeping, or spaced out from the drugs she was on, I would keep reading anyway. I got lost in those worlds. Imagining all the different cultures, different experiences. It took me to another world, but not a world of fantasy, with dragons or space aliens or anything like that. These were real-world fantasies. They actually happened.

  So I got straight As in all my history classes, and got into a great college with a focus on archaeology. My mom was dead by that time, so then I was just reading for myself. Then my master’s, then my PhD. My thesis was on something so esoteric I actually ended up teaching the thesis committee while I was defending it. And now here I am, getting paid to do research on a topic I love in a place that I adore.

  So why does it feel like my life is still somehow empty?

  “Hey Perse.” I’ve reached the employee lounge and I look up to see the bespectacled Henry smiling at me, his curly brown hair clinging to his scalp. He’s one of the other graduates—there are five of us in total. Although I’ve tried expressing my disinterest, that hasn’t swayed him from trying to hit on me any chance he gets.

  “Hi Henry.” I walk over to one of the fridges where my lunch is stashed away. When I turn to open it I feel Henry’s eyes on me—my tits, my ass, all the essential parts, as he’d say—quickly jumping back to my face when I straighten up and close the fridge door.

  “How’d it go with those kids?” he makes a face. “Ugh, I’d hate to be stuck with a job like that.”

  “I thought it was pretty great,” I tell him honestly.

  “Oh, yeah.” He quickly changes gears. “Shaping the minds of the future. For real.”

  I nod, then turn to leave the lounge. As I expected, I hear his sneakers scuff the tiled floor to follow me.

  “Where are you going?” he asks. “Want some company?”

  “I’m going to do the filing work Dr. Coolidge gave me. She wants it done by the end of the week, so I gotta step to it.”

  “Oh yeah, she’s the worst,” he says as we stride through the hallways to the archival room. “Always giving those shit assignments to do. It’s like, hey Dr. Coolidge, why don’t you cool it?”

  I smile at his little joke, and he beams in response. We walk into the archival room, where my stack of index cards, submission forms, and notebook are still where I left them, my pen slid in between the pages to mark my place. Dr. Coolidge is there, talking to Kiara. Henry raises a hand in greeting and Kiara gives him a small wave back. But when I lift my hand in greeting, Kiara’s smile slides off her face and she turns back to Dr. Coolidge.

  I try not to let the hurt show on my face as I sit down at the table. Henry sits next to me as I open up one of my Tupperware containers and take out a carrot stick.

  “So you actually had fun touring those school kids around?” Henry asks me. I nod as I spread out some of the archival cards.

  “Yeah. Some of them were really interested in what I had to say. This one girl, for instance … she really knew her stuff.”

  “Man, I wish I had the patience for something like that. To be honest I’ve been a bit bored around here lately. Not much to do.”

  I look at him. “Not much to do? What are you talking about, Henry? There’s so much we can be doing—”

  “Doukas!”

  Dr. Coolidge’s sharp voice shouts my last name, making me stop what I was saying. She marches over to the table. Behind her I see Kiara leave the room, a smirk on her face.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Doukas?”

  “Um,” I start, but Dr. Coolidge goes on.

  “Eating food around museum property! What do you think would happen if you spilled something, huh? Do you think we have the budget for that kind of mistake?”

  I can see people at other tables sipping cups of coffee, but I don’t point them out.

  “It’s just a carrot stick, Dr. Coolidge. It’s not going to spill. Besides,” I cut in before she can retort to that, “I have so much to do, I don’t have time for a proper lunch. Henry just told me he has hardly any work to do. Why don’t you delegate some of my tasks out to him?”

  “What Henry does is of no relevance to you, Doukas,” Dr. Coolidge spits. Why she insists on calling only me by my last name is beyond me. “Remember, I gave you this job. I can just as easily take it away.”

  I’m chewing my tongue, holding back what I want to say to her, and instead I drop the half-eaten carrot stick back in the Tupperware container.

  “There,” I say. “Better?”

  Her eyes narrow. She straightens up. “You’d better watch it,” she says, and she turns on her heel and marches out of the archival room, several pairs of eyes following her, casting sympathetic looks my way.

  “Je-sus,” Henry mutters. “Why do you think she picks on you like that?”

  “I don’t know, Henry,” I mutter. I’m so hungry from walking around all morning. My throat feels tight from being yelled at. “She hasn’t liked me since the day I got here.”

  “Maybe she feels threatened by you. Hey, so Perse,” he says, changing the subject, “a bunch of us are going out for drinks later. Do you wanna come?”

  Suddenly my mind freezes. I stiffen, trying not to let it show.

  “Oh,” I say, but Henry cuts me off.

  “You know, I know you’ve said that you don’t really like drinking, but … I heard from Abigail that you used to go out a lot when you were getting your degree. You used to party a lot too.”

  I swallow. The carrot sticks stare up at me, taunting me. Try stomaching us now, they say.

  “I’m not like that anymore,” I say to him. Stop pushing this, I try to will him in my mind.

  “You know, you can’t let your past history bother you so much,” he tells me, having no idea what he’s saying. “I heard about what happened. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you’re the kind of girl who likes to party, then why let a bunch of rumors ruin that for you?”

  “Look, can we just drop it?” I snap, pivoting my head to face him. He starts, looking scared.

  “Whoa, yeah, all right,” he says. “Jeez, I was just saying, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Okay?”

  I reach to my notebook and flip to where my pen is and see something scrawled on the top margin of the page, something not in my handwriting at all:

  How many things can you fit in a Perse? Depends on how much she’s had to drink!

  I stare at the scratchy writing, my heart stopped as I read it. Henry stops talking, reading it over my shoulder.

  “Oh, Perse …” he says. He slides his hand onto my forearm. “Hey, it’s all right …”

  I suddenly shut the notebook and stand up from the table, breaking his grip from me.

  “I have to go,” I say. Henry stands up too.

  “Wait, Perse. Persephone!”

  But he doesn’t follow me, thank God. I leave my notebook and work and lunch and Henry and walk out of the archival room, trying to breathe deeply, trying to control this tightness in my chest. Around the corner, down a hallway, around another corner to the women’s bathroom. I walk into the white-tiled, brightly-lit space and go into a vacant s
tall where I lock the door, spin around, and sit down on the toilet seat.

  Covering my face with my hands, I start to cry.

  I’m trying to keep silent, but it’s hard. Why is my social life ruined? Why did this have to happen to me?

  It didn’t have to happen to me. But that’s what happens in this fucked-up, double-standard world we live in. If a guy goes out to a bar and gets drunk and scores, he’s considered a stud. But if a girl does it, she’s considered a slut. Why can’t people just leave well enough alone? Why can’t they mind their own business and let me live the way I want to? In older cultures, millennia ago, sex was a celebrated thing. The Romans, for instance, were renowned for their religious celebrations featuring sex.

  But now? Now you make out with someone in a bar and you’re thought of as easy. You go home with a guy and you’re called a slut. And if you do anything beyond that? Well…

  I pull in shuddering breath, wiping at my eyes, trying not to smudge my makeup. Reaching over, I grab a handful of toilet paper and dab at my eyelids, blowing my nose. I take in deep breaths, let them out. In, out. Calm.

  At least I have my work. At least I have my passions. If I can’t trust other people to let me live the way I want to, without constant fear of judgment, then I can trust history to do that. All these books and artifacts and names and places and dates. They don’t judge me. Henry said not to let my history bother me. But sometimes, history is the only place where I feel truly myself.

  Marc

  The back of the van doesn’t have any windows, so all I have to show us where we are is the windshield and the ones at the front.

  Edward drives through the streets, taking us to our destination. Rebekka is beside me, reading her book. Julian is up in the passenger seat, reading directions to Edward off of his phone. I watch the buildings, street lights, people, and sidewalks go by.

  “You know,” I say to Rebekka, “after a while, it doesn’t matter which city you’re in. They all start to look the same.”