Dark Heat: The Dark Kings Stories (18 page)

She took a deep breath to try to calm her racing heart. “I didn’t lie to you. I told you all that I knew.”

“No’ all,” Con said. “Start at the beginning. I want to know what you’re doing in Britain.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Guy watching her, his face devoid of expression. He hadn’t spoken much, and she wondered why.

The others were quick to point out what she’d done wrong, but no one was defending her.

“I’ve worked for PureGems in Atlanta for eight years. I started as a file clerk while I went to college, and then worked my way up the company. It was my dream to work at the London branch and then move on to somewhere else in the world.”

“Why?” Banan asked.

She shrugged. “I want to see the world, to experience the different cultures. What better way than to work in those cities and work with what I love—gems?”

“Go on,” Con urged.

“I got offered the London position last month. I just moved here two weeks ago. Sloan was my boss. I was new to the office, new to London. When she told me we were going caving, I couldn’t exactly tell my boss no.”

“When did you know where you were caving?” Guy asked.

It was the first thing he’d said since she woke. She looked at him, desperately wanting him to believe her. “Not until we were at the cave. Sloan kept telling me it was a secret, a place she’d been wanting to explore for some time.”

“Who told her of it?” Rhys asked.

Elena shrugged. “I didn’t ask, and Sloan didn’t volunteer the information.”

“Did she say what she was looking for?”

Elena fought to roll her eyes as she glared at Con. “As I told you, no. She told me we’d only be gone two hours max, but when two hours came and we hadn’t turned around, I knew it had been a lie.”

Banan moved beside Con and asked, “How so?”

Elena struggled to find the right words as she remembered how Sloan hadn’t broken stride, but kept moving. “She knew I was a beginner, that I had never explored a cave before, yet she moved quickly through it. Almost as if…” Elena trailed off and looked away from Con.

“As if what?” Con demanded.

Elena wasn’t sure if she should say. The men already thought the worst of her, if she spoke her thoughts, they would assume she knew more.

“Elena, please,” Guy said. “Finish your sentence. We need to know.”

She closed her eyes, silent praying that Sloan forgave her if she was wrong. Elena opened her eyes and kept her gaze on her hands folded in her lap.

“It seemed as quick as Sloan was moving that she knew where she was going. We rarely rested, and there was no time for me to see anything of the cave we were to explore. Until we came upon the opening. Only then did Sloan let us rest. And she was adamant about going into the hole.”

When silence greeted her, she slowly lifted her eyes to find all four men staring at her with expressions ranging from of disbelief to acceptance.

Without so much as a thank-you, Con turned and walked out of the room. Rhys and Banan immediately followed, but Guy stayed behind.

Elena turned to him and said, “I’m telling the truth. I’ve nothing to hide. Why won’t any of you believe me?”

“I do.”

Those two simple words helped her to relax a bit. “I want to go home.”

Guy looked away from her then, but in his pale brown gaze she’d seen a flash of regret. “That’s no’ going to be possible until Con is satisfied that he has his answers.”

“He can’t hold me here.”

“Aye, he can,” he said matter-of-factly, as if Con could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

“No. I’m an American.”

“In Scotland,” Guy said, his gaze once more returning to her face. “If he wanted, he could press charges for trespassing. For the moment he’s no’, but doona give him a reason to.”

She put her hand to her forehead and looked at the ceiling. “This is a nightmare.”

“Just continue to tell him the truth,” Guy urged.

Elena lowered her hand and licked her lips. “How long will he keep me here?”

“I doona know.”

“What are you hiding in this place?” she whispered. “What are you so afraid of everyone discovering?”

Guy released a long breath and raked a hand through his hair. “We didna become a powerful company for nothing.”

“This is more than just the company.” It was a guess, but when a flash of intensity filled his eyes, she knew she’d hit the nail on the head.

“Be careful what you say, Elena.”

“Why? Will they hurt me?” When Guy looked away, unease snaked down her spine. “Why didn’t you just leave me in the mountain, then?”

His brown eyes, ringed in onyx, swung to her as he rested a hand on the bed and leaned toward her. “You think we’re capable of leaving a person to die in the mountain?”

“I don’t know you,” she whispered, hating how her body craved the hard muscular length of him against her when she was fighting so hard to steel herself from him.

“You trusted me to get you down the cliff. You trusted me to get you out of the cave.”

“I had no choice.”

One side of his lip lifted in a smile. “Liar.”

“I’m not a threat to you.”

“Oh, but you are.” His words, barely whispered, sent her heart beating double time when his gaze lowered to her lips. “You’re definitely a threat, Elena Griffin.”

He gently ran the pads of his fingers along her injured ankle sending chills racing along her skin. With barely a touch, he had her tied in knots. Imagine what it would be like if they kissed, really kissed, not just a brief meeting of the lips.

Guy rose and walked to the door, saying, “I’ll have food sent up. You slept through the night, so I’m sure you’re famished.”

Elena didn’t get a chance to respond as he was quickly out the door. She looked around her prison. At least it was cozy and warm.

And her visitor handsome, strong, and so very tempting.

Still the thought of being kept against her will left her feeling sick. If-no,
when
!—she left Dreagan, she knew in her soul she’d never see him again.

And she wasn’t quite ready to let Guy disappear, not when she yearned for another kiss.

CHAPTER
SIX

Guy walked away from Elena, each step like a punch in his gut. He’d wanted to take her in his arms and tell the others to bugger off as they fired their questions at her. He’d wanted to cover her body with his, to feel her softness and her heat.

But more than that, he wanted to taste her lips again.

She’d been afraid, but she had stood her ground. Yet when her eyes had touched his, he knew she sought someone to be on her side.

Guy did believe her, but like the others, he knew there was something more going on with her and Sloan’s appearance on Dreagan land. He prayed it didn’t involve Elena. He liked her around the house, knowing she was close by if he wanted to see her.

No one needed to know that he stayed in her room as she’d slept through the night. It had taken everything he had not to climb in bed with her and pull her into his arms for another kiss.

When she’d opened her eyes and looked at him with such passion, with such need, all the blood had rushed to his cock. How he’d stayed in his chair, he didn’t know.

He could’ve kissed her then. He could have taken her in his arms and pulled her soft body against his, and she wouldn’t have refused him. He’d seen it in her beautiful sage green eyes.

Her long, wavy dark blond hair had been mussed from sleep, her eyes drowsy, and her lips slightly parted. She had looked as if she’d just been thoroughly loved.

Guy fisted his hands and walked down the corridor to Con’s office, where he knew the others waited. He rounded the corner and stopped, preferring to lean against the doorway than take a seat inside the office.

“She likes you,” Con said when he spotted Guy.

“I’m the only one no’ ramming questions down her throat.”

Banan snorted. “Nay, you just rammed your tongue down her.”

Con’s blond brows rose. “You kissed her.”

“Nay,” Guy said as casually as he could. “She was scared witless when we found her, and we had to take her down the cliff to return.”

“With her injury, she couldna do it herself,” Rhys said.

Guy nodded. “So, I took her down on my back. She said she’d haunt me if she died, but if I got her safely down, she’d kiss me.”

“And she did,” Banan said with a smirk. “Doona deny you didna liked it, Guy.”

Guy shifted his gaze to Banan. Ever since Hal and Cassie were bonded, Banan had gotten even crankier. Hal was the first of them to have found his mate since the dragons left earth.

It had been a rarity when the dragons were still here, but once they had left and the spell was put on the Kings, they all knew they would forever be alone.

They had accepted it. Or had they? Hal hadn’t fought against the love he felt for Cassie. He had fought
for
Cassie.

Guy hadn’t really understood what Hal went through before, but he was beginning to. It wasn’t like Guy to skirt his duties as a Dragon King, yet every time he thought of Elena, the first thought that came to his mind was to protect her.

Against his own. Never before had he felt that. It unsettled him, just as Elena did. Her mere presence in the mansion drove him to distraction.

“Who doesna like the kiss of a pretty girl?” Guy replied when he realized the others were waiting on him to answer.

Banan lost all trace of anger and peered closely at Guy. “You feel something for her, do you no’? Is what happened to Hal happening to you?”

“Nay,” Guy said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly, by the way Con narrowed his eyes at him. “It’s been five months since the Silvers moved. Five months since the spell preventing Hal from feeling for a human ceased. That’s five months as proof that our dragon magic used for the spell still holds. None of us have been drawn to humans since Hal.”

Con tapped his fingers on the desk. “Five months is a blink to us. I’ve worried since Hal fell in love that our dragon magic had cracked somehow. That worry hasna left.”

Guy watched his leader, the King of the Kings. Their history as Dragon Kings was long and bloody. The dragons they once commanded were gone, and because of a human betrayal, they had used their magic to never feel anything deeply for humans again.

Too much was at stake for Guy to lie to his friends. They might have won against one of their own and saved mankind that fateful day several millennia ago, and though Ulrik had been stripped of his ability to talk to his Silvers or to shift, he was still out there.

The silver dragons caged in their mountain had moved five months ago, something that had never happened since they were forced to sleep. Not since the Dragon Kings had sent the other dragons away and took up post guarding the Silvers.

Guy locked his gaze with Con’s. No, he couldn’t lie to his friends, his brethren, or himself, but especially not his King.

“I want her,” Guy admitted. “I willna lie about it.”

Con’s lips flattened. “How badly do you want her? Is it because you have no’ had a woman in a while? Or is it more?”

“It hasna been that long since I took a woman,” Guy answered.

Rhys sighed loudly. “Maybe you should stay away from Elena.”

“Nay!” Guy shouted.

He backed away at his outburst, more stunned than the others. What was wrong with him? He had no reason to snap at Rhys for a suggestion Guy himself probably would have made.

“Fuck me,” Banan mumbled.

Con slowly rose to his feet. “I admit, Guy. I’m worried. I prayed it was only Hal our magic had ceased to affect, but I’m beginning to think it was more than just him. He was the first to fall for a human. You may be the second.”

“And if it’s all of us?” Rhys asked.

Banan’s mouth twisted with concern. “Then we’d better stay at Dreagan.”

“We used our magic because we didna ever want to be betrayed again,” Guy said. “We made that decision thousands of years ago, but nothing has changed. We still hide what we are from the world, now more than ever. We’re no closer to returning the dragons here now than we were the day they were sent away.”

“I know,” Con said wearily.

Could Guy chance being the one who fell for a human who betrayed them? It was only a matter of time. He knew the longer Elena remained, the more he’d be drawn to her.

He’d touched her, felt her body against his. And kissed her. It would be a miracle if he could stay away, and it had been a very long time since he’d seen a miracle.

“The longer you keep Elena, the worse things could get,” Guy told Con, as much as it pained him to do it. “You’re keeping the rest of the Kings in the mountain. She’ll hear something eventually. How are you going to explain the roars?”

Or the dragons flying in the sky,
Guy thought to himself. It had been weeks since he released his dragon and took flight, and just thinking about it made him want to feel the wind around him.

“You’re right,” Con agreed. “We had to trust Cassie because Hal had fallen in love with her before we realized what had happened. If we had known before, we might have prevented all of it. Cassie proved herself, but I’m no’ in any hurry to go through that again. Let’s see what Sloan was looking at in the cave and then get Elena home.”

Guy left Con’s office, knowing they had made the right decision, but the thought of her being taken away from Dreagan—from him—left him cold.

He stopped on the stairs, his breathing labored as he fought against going to Elena.

“The more you fight it, the worse it’ll be,” Rhys said.

Banan snorted. “Hal didna fight it, and he fell in love. Do you really want that emotion?”

“Nay,” Guy said. He didn’t want to fall in love, didn’t want to be bound to a mate.

But he wanted Elena, needed her with a hunger that took his breath away. It shook him, this unwavering longing for her.

“I promised I’d bring her food.”

Rhys slapped him on the back and continued down the stairs. “I hope you know what you’re doing, my friend.”

Guy hoped he did as well. He’d thought Hal a fool until he saw the love shared between him and Cassie. Guy was under no illusions. There was nothing like that between him and Elena.