Dark Heat: The Dark Kings Stories (17 page)

But Rhys didn’t stop on the second floor. He continued up to the third. Once more the stairs switchbacked, but now Elena’s eyes were glued to the weapons hung on the walls.

Weapons of every century, from every continent.

Guy knew the house was absent of everyone but Con, thanks to them alerting him there was someone in the mountain. When they reached the guest room, Guy found Constantine standing against a far window, his back to them. Guy walked to the headboard near where Rhys carried Elena, not yet ready to be away from her.

Elena let out a sigh when she was on the bed. Then she looked down at her muddy, dirt-encrusted clothes and scooted to the edge of the bed before standing.

“You need to lie down,” Rhys said.

“Not on that comforter. There’s no way I’m getting it any dirtier,” she argued as she glanced at the cream colored comforter.

Con turned to them with a smile. “It’s just a piece of fabric that can be replaced.” He bent and, with a yank, removed the comforter from the bed.

Guy found it curious that Elena leaned back against him as she stared at Con. “Maybe it’s just a piece of fabric, but it isn’t mine to ruin.”

“I’m Constantine,” he said. “As I heard Rhys say, you’re injured. Let us get you looked at, a change of clothes, and some food, shall we?”

She nodded woodenly before she cleared her throat twice. “I’m Elena Griffin.”

“Welcome to Dreagan, Miss Griffin. We’ll give you a few moments to yourself, and then I’ve some questions.”

Con walked past Guy, leaving Elena staring after him. Banan and Rhys soon followed. After a long look at Elena, Guy, too, trailed them.

He closed the door and sighed. He didn’t like how anxious he was about how she was going to get her boot off, or if her foot would swell because of it.

He didn’t want to worry about her getting out of her clothes, but then he pictured what she might look like nude. Slim, but rounded and soft in all the right places.

“Are you going to stand there all day, waiting for her to call for you?” Banan asked sardonically.

Guy jerked his head around to find all three staring at him. He wasn’t sure he liked the way Con’s gaze narrowed on him, or how Rhys smiled as if he knew exactly what Guy was thinking.

So, he focused on Banan. “Why be such a bastard?”

“Someone has to be. And it’s my turn this month.”

Guy rolled his eyes and shouldered his way through them.

*   *   *

For long minutes, Elena simply stared at the closed door. There had been something decidedly ominous about Constantine’s parting words.

The only thing that kept her from trying to escape out the third-floor window was Guy’s look before he left. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he might have been trying to tell her to be strong without saying the words.

In any case, she was too tired to think past getting out of her grimy clothes. Except when she did finally make it into the adjoining bathroom and sat on the toilet to unlace her boots, she couldn’t hold back the yelp of pain.

With the boot off and the laces no longer keeping everything tight, her ankle swelled before her eyes. She was glad she was sitting because the room began to spin. It was only by holding on to the sink that she managed to get both her shirts off. Her pants were another matter entirely.

But she wanted out of the soiled clothes.

With her foot and knee hurting ten times more than before, she slowly made her way back into the bedroom, since a shower was now out of the question. If she couldn’t stand on her own, then trying to take a shower would be foolish.

She did manage to open a drawer and find a pair of sweatpants. They were so huge, she had to roll down the waist several times as well as roll up the legs so she didn’t walk on them.

The long-sleeve flannel button-down was most likely saved for cooler weather, but it looked too comfortable to pass up. Only once she was dressed did she hobble painfully back to the bed.

Where she readily climbed under the covers.

Elena had no idea how long she was left alone before she opened her eyes to find Guy at the foot of the bed, watching her. With Con beside him, and Rhys and Banan on either side of the bed.

“Why do I feel like I need to call a lawyer?” she asked, and turned her head to hide her yawn.

Con smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “There’s no need for a lawyer, Miss Griffin.”

“Really? By the way you’re looking at me, I’d say otherwise. You aren’t happy we were in the mountain.”

“Nay.” Con said it with finality, and a hardness that brought her fully awake.

Elena sat up, wincing when the movement caused her left leg to move. “And Sloan? Have you called the authorities to retrieve her body?”

“The authorities have been called,” Banan said. “I showed them where Sloan fell.”

Elena frowned. “How long did I sleep?”

“Four hours,” Guy answered.

She rubbed her hands over her face as her mind struggled to process everything. “Why didn’t the police talk to me? Didn’t they want to hear my story?”

“They believed us,” was all Constantine said.

Elena shook her head. “No. For all I know, you could have told them I pushed her.”

“Maybe you did.”

She blinked, her anger spiking in an instant. “How dare you thi—”

“How dare I?” Con spoke over her. “You trespassed on private property. I want to know what you were doing in the caves.”

“Caving,” she said, her exasperation growing. “It was Sloan’s idea to come here. She kept saying she’d heard it was a great spot to cave.”

Rhys’s usual friendly face grew livid as he leaned close. “Who told her that? Who has been here?”

“What did they see?” Banan demanded.

Elena pushed at Rhys’s chest. He hadn’t been expecting it, so she was able to shove him back far enough that she threw off the covers and jumped out of the bed.

Unfortunately, she forgot about her leg until the moment of impact. She cried out, reaching for her ankle as she crumpled to the floor.

“Enough!” Guy bellowed. “At least until we get her injuries looked at.”

She pushed her face into the rug, wishing with all her might that she had stood up to Sloan the night before when told they were going caving.

Guy’s hands gently touched her, but she shoved him away. Tears that filled her eyes threatened to fall. She glared at him. “Don’t touch me.”

“You might show them some kindness,” Con said. “They were the ones, after all, who got you out of the mountain. If no’ for them, you’d be dead.”

“Bloody hell. Her ankle,” Banan murmured.

Guy, who had been in the process of standing, was suddenly beside her again. This time when she tried to move his hands, he ignored her and lifted her in his arms.

He was so gentle that more tears gathered.

“You should’ve told me,” he said.

She turned her face away and gripped the pillow as the four of them unrolled the leg of her pants and pushed it up over her left knee.

“Can you move your knee and ankle?” Rhys asked.

In answer, Elena squeezed her eyes shut and managed to move both enough to show she could.

“I think her knee is fine. It’s the ankle I’m concerned with,” she heard Con say.

For several excruciating minutes, they felt all along her ankle to see if anything was broken. She was relieved to hear that nothing was.

“The foot needs to be elevated,” Banan said.

It was Guy who tenderly lifted her leg and put pillows beneath her foot. A glass of water was given to her, along with two pills she recognized as aspirin.

She was ready to dull some of the pain and didn’t hesitate to take them. The room got quiet. Elena looked at the men staring at her as if they expected her to faint or something.

It was on the tip of her tongue to let out a scream just to shock them, but the pain and events of the day came rushing back at her again.

“A woman is dead, and all you can think about is that we were trespassing,” she said, her eyes losing their focus.

The faces of the four men began to blur. She closed her eyes and found it impossible to open them again. She’d never been so tired in her life.

“We’re sorry about your friend. But it’s our lives that are at stake.”

Elena tried to open her eyes to be sure if that was Guy who had spoken, but before she could, sleep took her.

CHAPTER
FIVE

“We’ll have to keep things to a minimum. No more midnight flights. No more training. At least until she’s gone.”

Elena wasn’t sure at first if the voice was from a dream or real. It sounded muffled, but it had to be a dream to talk of midnight flights.

A mental picture of a man flying through the air flashed into her mind, and she knew it was a dream.

“Tristan willna be happy. He’s begun to like having the freedom to release his dragon when he wants.”

She was positive it was a dream then. Why would the men be talking of dragons? Everyone knew they weren’t real.

“We can no’ keep her here indefinitely.”

Guy. That was Guy’s voice. It was deep, smooth, and near, as if he was just in the next room. But what was she doing in bed?

The fog of sleep began to dissipate as she struggled to consciousness. When she opened her eyes, it was to find herself on her side. The events from before came back to her quickly.

Elena rolled onto her back, but found herself alone. She sat up to see the door pulled shut. Yet there was no denying the voices had come from outside.

Suddenly, the door opened and Guy poked his head inside the room, his amazing pale brown eyes locked on her face.

Her lips tingled as her gaze lowered to his mouth and she remembered the all-too-quick kiss she had dared to give him. It had been so unlike her, but she didn’t regret it.

Recalling the feel of his wide lips against hers made her heart beat double. And her body yearn for more.

A kiss. One simple kiss.

In movies and books maybe, but to happen to her? It didn’t seem real. Yet the very presence of the man before her, his eyes darkening with unmistakable desire the longer they stared at each other, said otherwise.

The passion was palpable, the desire undeniable.

The need … tangible.

“Elena?” someone said.

She blinked and Guy looked away, the spell that had taken them now broken. Elena watched as the door opened wider as first Guy, then Con, Rhys, and Banan walked in the room.

Con stood with his hands braced on the footboard while Banan leaned against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. Rhys stoked the fire, his head down.

Guy sank onto the foot of the bed, the heat of his gaze making her blood burn. She was all too conscious of how close he was, of how easy it would be to lean forward and kiss him again.

She gripped the blanket and forced her gaze away from Guy’s handsome face.

“How do you feel?” Con asked.

She licked her lips and sat up, keenly aware of her hardened nipples scraping against the flannel of the shirt. Longing went through her, longing for Guy’s hands on her body.

Elena swallowed and pulled the shirt away from her while adjusting her foot atop the pillows. “Better. Did you give me something?”

“Just aspirin,” Banan said.

Guy raked a hand through his shoulder-length honey brown locks, disheveling it. “You were exhausted after the events. Your body shut down to rest.”

It made sense, so she nodded. “I think the swelling has gone down on my ankle.”

“It appears so,” Con said. “I didna mean to frighten you during our last talk, Elena, but you doona understand how important it is that what we have here remains private.”

“Nothing stays private in this world,” she argued. “Everyone has cameras on their phones, and video cameras at every street corner and store. Privacy is a thing of the past.”

“No’ for us,” Rhys said, and set aside the poker as he faced her. “It’s because of the legacy of Dreagan that there are certain … concessions made for us.”

“Such as?” she asked.

Banan pushed off the door, his arms dropping to his side. “No planes or helicopters of any kind are allowed to fly over our land. All sixty thousand acres of it.”

“Why?” It was all she could think to ask. People normally had a no-fly zone when they were hiding something. So what was Dreagan hiding?

Con looked as if he was searching for the right words before he said, “We need privacy. We open portions of the distillery and the gift shop for visitors with the one road in and one road out. It was made that way for a reason.”

“And the sheep and cattle? I know you sell them. Who picks them up?” she asked.

Guy leaned his elbows on his knees. “We take them to sell.”

“You make it appear as if you’re hiding something.”

Rhys cracked his knuckles one finger at a time. “Privacy doesna equal hiding. None of us wish to be in the spotlight, and so we ask for one simple request: that all that we are, and where we are, stay private.”

“But it’s an illusion. Everyone knows where you live. Everyone knows the mansion is behind the distillery.”

Banan chuckled. “Have you seen pictures of our home before?”

Elena thought about that a moment. “No, but then again, I haven’t exactly had the need to do a search. There are few things in this world that aren’t on the Internet in some shape or form. And you have to know the government knows all about you.”

“Hmm,” Con said as he straightened. “An illusion, aye?”

“If there is one thing about people is that the more you try to keep from them, the more they’re going to want to know about you. They’ll do whatever it takes to find whatever you’re keeping secret.”

“Is that what you and Sloan were doing?” Rhys asked.

Her head turned to him as she frowned. “What?”

“You said yourself, people will do anything to find secrets,” Banan replied. “What were you and Sloan doing in our mountain?”

She opened her mouth to speak, when Con talked over her.

“The road Sloan had to take was hidden, Elena. It was hidden and closed off. How did she know about it?”

Elena had the awful feeling she was being interrogated without being in a small windowless, stuffy room with one bright lightbulb shining at her face.