Chapter 3

The alarm blared throughout the tower bringing everyone to alert. Most of the team clamored from their rooms to gather before the comm screen and find out what they were up against this time. Raven, however, set her book in her lap and sat in her room for a moment before doing the same. She had to collect herself, calm herself down, before joining the others. Her emotions were getting out of hand lately. Her excitement fought with her guilt and it took long moments before she was able to reconcile the two.

Robin turned as she finally entered the room and the others were already preparing to head out.

"Red X," he said as he approached her, Cyborg at his side. "Call came in from the museum downtown. We don't have much time. Are you okay with taking two of us?"

She nodded and reached out to touch both of them on the shoulder, engulfing them both in her soul self. She could only take the two that far of a distance, even taking two halfway across town taxed her more than she liked. The others would fly but they all needed to get to the museum as fast as they could to catch Red X and Robin and Cyborg needed Raven to get them there. Beast Boy and Starfire would be there shortly after.

A nervous concern flowed through Raven's bond with Robin as her soul self dissipated and left them in the foyer of the museum, the alarm screaming around them. Raven closed her eyes and sent out tendrils of her power and silenced the alarm.

"I hate those things," she sighed as she opened her eyes and found that same concern still pulsing through their bond as Robin's eyes met hers.

"I'm fine, Robin," she assured, trying to send reassuring feelings through the bond while keeping to herself the ones that were making her stomach flip. As well as the guilt that she felt about putting them in danger again just for a chance to . . .

"He's taken us all out the last few times we've run across him," he said, reaching for her shoulder and interrupting her train of thought. "He's been acting weird lately, especially around you, and I think that he's trying to mess with your emotions. Keep your guard up. He's been unusually active and I can't help but feel like he's up to something . . . bigger. I want you to stay safe."

The feelings through the bond were shifting but Robin squeezed her shoulder and cut off the tie before she could figure out what he was feeling. She simply nodded and they turned to Cyborg who was analyzing the security grid.

"Third floor," he said, readying his sonic cannon.

Beast Boy and Starfire flew in the entrance behind them and Robin looked at all of them before nodding.

"Titans, go!"

The glass cases on the third floor were still intact but the precious royal jewels – from some ancient civilization whose name they hadn't taken the time to read from the report – were missing from their stands. They fanned out to find Red X. The other set of jewels from the rival civilization were on the other side of the room. Their museum contact said that the jewels were worth infinitely more all together. It was the best lead they had for where he was going next. Red X was never one to leave a job half done if it meant a better payday for the extra effort. At least that they knew about him and felt they could count on.

The elevators disabled themselves once the alarm went off and they had Beast Boy manning the staircase going down and Starfire the one leading up. He was here somewhere on this floor – they could see the other set of jewels safely in their case across the room – they just had to find him. They kept quiet in case Red X used the teleportation capabilities of his belt. Robin said he knew the sound of the belt activating. Their footsteps echoed strangely in the silence. The silence didn't last long.

"Oh, come on!" they heard Beast Boy shout from below, followed by several different beast noises straining one after the other. Robin turned back to the staircase fearing that Red X was now on the second floor, calling for Raven and Cyborg to stay and keep an eye on the case.

A blur practically flew from above down the staircase followed closely by Starfire, shooting starbolts from her hands. Robin was practically bowled over by the two but quickly regained his footing and pursued Red X as he approached Cyborg, Raven, and the second case of jewels.

They could hear his chuckle as he dodged their attacks. He threw an X at Cyborg, causing him to roll away from Raven and right into the path of one of Robin's exploding disks. He was blown some distance away as Red X continued approaching the jewel case. He tossed an X that split in two with a wire connecting them at Raven. It wrapped around her ankles mid stride and caused her to tumble to the ground.

"Need you to stay put, Little Bird," he whispered as he passed, a starbolt exploding beside him. He changed his course away from Raven and the case and toward a room to the side, slightly down the hall to the next wing, that held priceless originals of scrolls from the civilizations on display. Raven struggled to free herself as the others regrouped and followed Red X.

They were only in the room for moments before Red X bolted out of the room backward, throwing bladed X's into the room and breaking display cases causing new alarms to start screaming and bars to descend from the top of the doorway. Red X stepped up to the door and placed two disks on the floor, activating them to position a glowing red wall of light directly in front of the bars and a crackling wall of electricity directly through the bars themselves.

Starfire and Cyborg both cried out in their individual attempts to break the bars, Cyborg sparking as he shorted out and falling to the ground. The electricity arcing over the bars like lightning even repelled Starfire's starbolts. Robin realized that they had played right into Red X's trap. He had been prepared for this exact scenario . . . which Robin realized was strange. The first jewel case was unbroken and there was no need for Red X to have set off the alarm before reaching the second set of jewels. And he had come up with a perfect trap for them once they got here. Something else was going on and now Raven was forced to fight him alone. Again.

Raven could hear Robin swear as she finally managed to free herself from the X wrapped around her ankles. She could hear Beast Boy grumbling about why it always had to be a sticky X with him from somewhere downstairs and a glance was all it took to know that it would be some time before the rest of her team would be able to extricate themselves from their tidy trap. She threw the X away from her in disgust and could hear footsteps approaching. She rose to her feet, turning to face him.

He stopped several paces from her, not even looking at her but admiring a map of the two civilizations mounted on the wall. He traced the details with his finger, as if admiring the intricacy.

"Gonna steal the map, too, Carmen Sandiego?" she asked wryly.

"A connoisseur of history and the arts can't admire a historic piece anymore?" he asked.

"So you're a connoisseur now? Funny, I thought you were just a thief."

"I'm not just anything, dear Raven. I would have thought you'd come to know that by now."

She stared at him for a moment, both to try to read him and to calm her emotions.

"I take it saving me for last wasn't a coincidence," she quipped quietly, crossing her arms over her chest in an almost childish gesture of putting a barrier between them. Trading quips wasn't going to calm the war in her. It always led to trouble between them and a change in tactics was due. "What did you do to him? Cyborg?" She gestured toward the room her friends were trapped in with her head.

Red X threw a bladed X at her without warning, causing her to throw herself out of the way, away from the jewels and the map and farther into the large display room. He followed her, now out of line of sight of the doorway of the Titans' trap. He could hear Robin calling out for her now that he couldn't see her.

"Don't worry Sunshine. Metal man will take a while to reboot but he'll be fine. Enough shock to get him to take a little nap is all. Hurting them wouldn't exactly make you happy with me now would it?"

Raven planted her feet and glowered at him, her emotions already fighting over what to say next.

"Can we just get this over with?" she managed to spit out. "Witty banter meets shady innuendos, we fight, you weasel your way out and escape, Robin freaks out and attempts to track you, and I pretend to listen to Robin lecture me for letting you get away before I get to go back to my room with a book and a cup of tea. Or can we just skip it? You want to hand over those jewels you stole and disappear? Save me the trouble?"

He pushed the button on his belt and disappeared.

She stood in shock for moment before she felt her arms pinned to her sides from behind and his breath in her ear indicating that he had lifted his mask to reveal the lower half of his face.

"You forgot the part where our lips unavoidably meet and we can't keep our hands off each other," he whispered in her ear, his tongue darting out to graze her earlobe. "The part of these heists I look forward to the most these days."

"I take it that's a no to just skipping it," she breathed, taken aback for a moment, wishing her emotions would stop the all out civil war that was going on in her head.

"Is that what you really want, Little Bird?" he murmured, setting her nerves on edge as his breath caressed her skin with every word. His thumbs rubbed against her arms in small circles, her skin erupting in gooseflesh. "Have our encounters really meant so little to you? Because I haven't been able to think about anything else since that first night. And those dirty and delectable thoughts only get harder to ignore after every encounter, little one."

He held her against him with one arm as his other hand removed the bag of jewels from his belt and jingled them before dropping them at her feet, spilling the priceless artifacts on the floor.

"I'm running out of jobs to pull to get near you. I even had to run this ruse of a theft to get you in the same room with me. Had to create this one myself with no actual buyer. Really, Little Bird? Jewels? That is so beneath me. I don't care about them and I think you know that. It's not the jewels I was after or I would have already had both sets." He paused before letting out a low laugh. "And the map, for that matter."

He stepped up to her and she could feel his strong chest at her back. She could hear him take a long smell of her hair.

"But I've had a new prize for quite some time now, remember? Something far better."

Her eyes fluttered shut subconsciously as he kissed her behind the ear and laid a trail of slow, intimate kisses down the side of her neck until he reached the junction of her neck and shoulder. He held her against him with both arms once more, his grip vice-like as if he feared letting her slip away.

Raven shook herself from her momentary submission to her feelings and jerked her arms, trying to break out of his grasp, but he knew it was half-hearted. She was physically stronger than the effort she was currently putting forth. She was fully capable of breaking free from his grasp but he believed part of her was enjoying what he was doing and didn't want to break free.

And he wasn't wrong. Raven's emotions were still warring, an almost literal line drawn in the sand between the two factions of her emotions, but Lust was angry and wanted her chance to be heard. The last few encounters with Red X had emboldened her and tonight was no different. Lust took the lead from the other emotions – including Loyalty who was outraged at the treatment of her team – with Joy and Courage at her side, and coaxed Raven to give in and succumb to the pleasure of the encounter.

Raven ever so slightly tipped her head to the side in response, exposing more of her neck to Red X and he hummed in approval.

Raven snapped back to reality when she hear Robin screaming her name again from his current prison. He was calling for her to respond, to make sure she was okay. She was about to shout back when she felt Red X's grip tighten on her arms and heard him growl above her shoulder. There was something primal and possessive about it and she found it excited her.

Which annoyed her.

She felt a strange sensation and the world constricted and spun around her. It took her a few moments after her vision returned to normal to realize that she was no longer in the museum, but rather on its roof. He had used his belt to transport them both there.

"I thought maybe seclusion away from your friends was best, no?" He asked, releasing his hold on her arms and turning her to face him, a coy smirk tweaking up a corner of his mouth. He lay his hands on her hips and pulled her against him. "Maybe it will take them a while to find us this time. And maybe you won't have the chance to break something priceless again when I do this."

He pressed his lips against hers in a fleeting, slow, tease of a kiss that only encouraged the butterflies in her stomach to flutter all the more. He pressed his forehead against hers and took another deep breath as if trying to take in the very essence of her scent.

"What do you want?" she asked, pulling her face away from his, her eyes pleading. Her emotions were wreaking havoc in Nevermore more than ever and she couldn't sort anything out. He always did this to her and she hated being so out of control. She was so tired.

"I should think that was obvious," he murmured against her lips, his barely touching hers but causing her breath to quicken nonetheless. He could feel the swell of her chest rise and fall with each breath as it was pressed up against his and it did nothing to quell his desire.

It took everything in her to take a step back, even though more than one emotion in Nevermore was on Lust's side calling for her not to move away. "I'm serious," she whispered. He took a step forward to be pressed up against her again, his hands running up and down her arms and it felt so right that she couldn't bring herself to take another step away, finding herself leaning into him even though she hadn't intended to do it.

"I mean, there's banter between adversaries," she continued shakily, "there's cocky mockery between opponents and empty flirting and then there's . . . then there's this." She stood on her toes to press her lips fiercely to his and he sighed as she did, gripping her arms tightly and holding her to him. Part of him had been fearing that she was trying to rationalize staying away from him, and being away from her was the last thing that he wanted.

This was their third encounter since their first kiss and, he was right, it always ended like this, with their bodies pressed against each other and their lips locked together in passion. They were drawn to each other like magnets and couldn't resist the pull to one another, only parting when the rest of her team inevitably came barging toward them.

Raven had told Robin of the first kiss, mostly out of shock and confusion from the whole incident, but she had kept the more confusing elements of her last two encounters with Red X to herself. Robin had been strangely perturbed after the first time Red X had kissed her and although part of her had been beside herself with hope at his concern over her, another part of her hadn't wanted to disturb him like that again when it happened the next time. Or the next.

She wasn't quite sure when it had happened but she had come to the realization that she had loved Robin for some time now. She had never acted on it, never even revealed her feelings to anyone, and he had never shown any indication he felt the same. But he had gotten so angry when Red X had kissed her the first time and part of her couldn't help hoping that it meant some kind of reciprocal feeling for her.

But he had buried that anger once he had gotten her back to the tower and made sure that she was okay after the whole incident. And ever since then things had been as they always were, except his renewed fervor in his search for Red X. Raven assumed his anger that night had been because the man that had managed to best him and steal the Red X suit from him was now toying with his team and nothing more than that. Though, she admitted, she could never be truly sure of Robin's feelings. He was good at keeping those cards close to his chest and she refused to use their bond to violate his privacy and find out for herself. She wouldn't let herself go that far. She would never forgive him if he did it to her.

Besides, she wasn't even sure how she felt about this whole mess herself – either about Robin or Red X – besides knowing that her stomach turned to knots whenever the Titan alarm went off, part of her hoping that it would be Red X causing it and part of her dreading it. She wasn't sure what name to put to what she had with the thief, but she felt more alive with him than she could ever remember feeling with anyone else and that was not something to be ignored for her.

The second time they met, when they fought in that medical research facility, hadn't been any less confusing or powerful for her emotions than the first encounter. Robin had questioned her about the damage – damage her emotions had caused while Red X's lips were on her – which she blamed on her unfocused emotions as she regained consciousness, and he had taken off after his nemesis. Raven's heart had stung a bit at his sudden switch in attention from her well being to his adversary, but too many of her emotions were reeling from their second encounter with the thief for her to dwell on the pain for long.

The next time they met, an attempt to steal some kind of experimental device from a tech company just outside of town, she had fought him hard, determined to succeed where she had so far failed. She fought him as if he were any other criminal but nothing that she did – no low blows, no scathing words that she spat, no attack – deterred him from trying to get close to her. Finally she had managed to subdue him, physically sitting on top of him as his head reeled from the last blow she had given to it. She had been determined to catch him and turn him in this time, hoping that it would help her sort through her confusion with him safely behind bars.

But even as she reached for her communicator to call in his capture he had shifted her hips while she was atop him, putting her off balance. He pulled himself up from his position lying on the ground beneath her, pulled up his mask to the bridge of his nose, and had found her lips with his. She dropped the communicator as soon as his lips met hers and she had been lost to the moment with him.

Just as she was lost now on the roof of the museum.

His hands slid down to cup her ass as he pulled her body up against his. She moaned into his mouth as she pulled him more tightly against her as if desperate to stay as tightly connected with him as possible. And he responded with the same ardor and want. They spent a seemingly impossible amount of time in each others arms clinging to each other for dear life, their lips practically bruising against each other. She could hear the twisting sound of metal screeching from whatever her powers had grabbed hold of on the roof, but she couldn't bring herself to care. He removed her cloak as their hands roamed over each other's bodies in heated exploration, neither able to pull the other close enough to satisfy their desire for one another.

He moved his hand to the back of her thigh and slid it down to her knee, lifting her leg up over his hip. His hand crept back up her thigh oh so slowly in an agonizing tease. He traced fire on her flesh and she found her need for him growing in the pit of her stomach, her arousal spooling up inside her. His fingers brushed against the core of her and she cried out at the same time as her powers ripped something from the rooftop and flung it into the night.

He hummed, partly in amusement and partly from his growing arousal as his fingers continued to burn through her as they moved. He had wondered at what would happen if they went further and now, hearing the delicious noises that she could make as he stroked a feather light touch over the most sensitive parts of her, he wasn't sure he would be able to stop, even if the Titans did escape to assist her.

She was out of breath and feverish to the touch, coming down from a euphoric high, when the sound of the approaching Titans could be heard heading to the roof. She pulled back from Red X even though every fiber of her her being wanted more of what he could give.

"You have to go," she whispered, her voice hoarse and husky. "You have to go before they find you."

He stared at her for what felt like long minutes before he nodded.

"Don't get this wrong," he murmured darkly. "I'm coming back for you, Little Bird. This is not the end."

It came out as a low guttural grumble and it sounded like a threat. But before she could determine if it was a threat or a promise he descended on her for one more intense, searing kiss before he pulled away with what seemed to take great effort. He used his belt and was gone.

The Titans found her alone on the roof almost half an hour after they had been trapped. They were more concerned about what had happened to her than they were about Red X and his whereabouts, she had looked that ragged. But the debris on the roof clearly indicated an all out fight to them and her exhaustion made sense. She couldn't help but wonder what they would think if they knew the real reason for the debris on the roof.

Robin was insistent that he take her home so she could calm herself and tell them what happened but she brushed him off, shaking. She simply told them that she had to meditate, grabbed her cloak, and used her soul self to teleport home.