“’Bout time you showed up,” said the tawny-haired man. He jerked his chin toward the Native American. “I sent to South America for Tiago and some of the cavalry. You all right?”
“I’m fine,” said Dragos. Two of the men held the doors open. Dragos ignored the open elevator doors and took the stairs. She had no choice but to trot along by his side. The others followed. “Conference in ten minutes. Is the room ready?”
What room? Her room? Pia looked at him sidelong as they hit the landing for the penthouse floor.
“All set,” said the tawny man just behind her. Most of the rest had broken away from them to go to the conference room.
They swept down a large hallway, turned and went down another. The halls had luxurious marbled floors. Original works of art hung placed on recession-lit walls. She craned her neck. Wait—was that a painting by Chagall?
Dragos stopped in front of a blond wood door. He pushed it open and walked her inside. The tawny male and two others stayed in the hall by the door.
Pia looked around. She got a blurred impression of a room that was larger than a small house. Her filthy sneakers sank into plush white carpet. A freestanding fireplace and sunken living area with pale leather couches and armchairs was at one end. A black wrought-iron framed bed the size of a boat was at the other end, piled with pillows and quilts. An immense plasma flat-screen hung on one wall, and a wet bar was tucked into an alcove. Another wall was nothing but floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows with French doors. Open doors led off to walk-in closets and a bathroom.
He turned her around to face him and tilted up her chin. She looked up at him, round-eyed and wary. “I know how tired you are,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want you to stay here, take a hot bath and rest. Everything you should need is here, clothes, drinks, and I’m going to have a hot meal sent up for you. All right?”
In some ways this present landscape was more alien than the Other land had been. The tangled mess inside of her got even more snarled. She was half afraid of him again, but at the same time she didn’t want him to leave. She bit her lips, clenched her fists to keep from reaching out to him or appearing too high-maintenance. She gave him a jerky nod.
He put a hand at the back of her neck, a heavy, warm weight, his face tightening. He said, as if she had argued, “I’ve been talking with Rune as we approached the city. We’ve been gone a week. I’ve got to brief them on what happened.”
“There must be a million things you’ve got to do,” she said. She pulled out of his hold, crossed her arms around her middle and stepped away from him. “I can’t imagine.”
He stood with his hand suspended in midair, frowning at her. She caught a glimpse of the hallway where the tawny male who must be Rune stood, along with two other great hulking males. All three were staring at Dragos as if they didn’t recognize him.
He turned on his heel and strode out. He said, “Bayne, Con, stay here. Get her anything she wants.”
“Right,” said one of the men. He exchanged a glance with the other man. “Anything she wants.”
Dragos disappeared with Rune, leaving her alone in the great gorgeous barn of a room with two men at the door.
Armed guards. Guess she had one question answered. She was a prisoner.
One of them took hold of the door handle and nodded to her, his weather-beaten face expressionless. “We’ll knock when your meal comes,” he told her. “Do you need anything right now?”
“No, thank you,” she said from a dry throat. “I’m fine.”
Her guard shut the door and left her alone.
She turned in a circle, taking everything in. The empty room was draped in shadows that deepened with the onset of dusk. The strange penthouse luxury seemed colder and hollower without the vitality of Dragos’s presence. She rubbed her arms and shivered.
She slipped off her disgusting sneakers and put them on the tiled floor just inside a bathroom that was bigger than the whole of her apartment. Then she padded over to the alcove that hid the wet bar.
Though small, it was stocked with a wide assortment of liquor, all top of the line, of course. She paused, distracted by the collection. She had always wanted to try a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue. There was a coffee machine on the counter and a sink. Underneath the counter was a half-sized refrigerator. She checked the contents. Bottles of Evian water and Perrier, beer and lager, various juices, white wine and champagne.
She took out two bottles of water. She gulped down the Evian. Then with her thirst somewhat assuaged, she opened the Perrier and drank that more slowly.
The fireplace was a real one, not gas. It was immaculate and laid with a neat stack of wood, ready to start. A box of long matches sat by a TV remote on the coffee table in front of two of the couches. She gave in to temptation and lit the fire. The yellow flicker of the flames helped to dispel some of the room’s chill emptiness.
Next she crept into a walk-in closet and dressing room. One side was filled with male clothes. The other side was filled with her clothes.
From her apartment.
She pushed through the hangers and opened up the dresser drawers. Her underwear, socks, T-shirts and shorts, all immaculate, all pressed and folded.
She held up a small neat bundle that was a pair of white panties. Some stranger had washed her underwear—and ironed it?
The same was true for the clothes on the hangers. Her shoes were no longer in a pile but polished and stored in order. Her small cedar jewelry chest was on one of the dressers. She opened it and grew teary at the sight of her mother’s antique necklace. She stroked the necklace, then shut the chest with care and leaned against the dresser.
This was both creepy and . . . thoughtful. Finding familiar things was comforting at the same time as it scared her half to death.
When had he given the order to collect her things? Had it been at the beach house when he called Rune? He had said he had told Rune to get a vegetarian cook. When had he decided to move her things into his room?
She grabbed a T-shirt, sports bra and panties and a pair of flannel boxer shorts. She went into the bathroom. She could spend a week having a vacation just in the bathroom alone. There was a bathtub the size of a small pool with steps and bench seats, and there were unopened bottles of Chanelscented bubble bath. Her toiletries and makeup were laid out on the marble counter by the sink. New bottles of the shampoo and conditioner brand she liked were in the shower stall.
Someone had apparently thought of everything, every last freaking thing, except for asking her opinion about any of it. What a gilded cage.
Even though Dragos had urged her to take a hot bath, she felt too vulnerable and unsettled to relax. Just as she had at the beach house, she locked the bathroom door before she stripped.
The shower was several feet in size with a bench seat and multiple heads. After she figured out how to turn it on, she stood under the multiple streams of water with her eyes closed until the warmth soaked away all the strength in her legs. She sat on the bench as she lathered and conditioned her hair and scrubbed at her body until it felt like she had taken a layer of skin off. After rinsing, she wrapped her hair in a towel and dried and dressed. Rational or not she felt better as soon as she had clean clothes on.
When she walked out of the bathroom, she found that a serving cart/portable dining table and a chair had been set near the windows. There was a heavy white linen tablecloth and simple but elegant tableware and dishes with silver covers. A small bottle of white wine chilled in an ice bucket. Consumed with hunger, she uncovered all the dishes.
She found a delicate lemon asparagus risotto sprinkled with slivered almonds, a salad with mixed greens, sliced pears and dried cranberries, fresh baked bread with individual packets of soy margarine and blueberry crumble for dessert. She fell on the food and devoured every last delicious bite.
After getting clean, comfortable and filling her stomach, she had no room for alarm or offense. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open. She managed to brush her teeth
before she crawled between the sheets of the massive bed. As prisons went, this one would be mighty hard to beat. She yawned, gave up trying to think and fell asleep.
On the next floor down, Dragos strode into the conference room, followed by Rune. Located a short, convenient distance down the hall from his offices, it was a large executive boardroom, with black leather seats, an expansive polished oak table and state-of-the-art teleconferencing equipment.
All his sentinels were present with the exception of the two gryphons Bayne and Constantine, who stood guard at Pia’s door. Rune took a seat by the fourth gryphon, Graydon, and tilted his chair back. Tiago leaned against the far wall, a dark brooding presence. Aryal sprawled and tapped her fingers on the table. She never quite managed a motionless state unless she was hunting prey. The gargoyle Grym angled his chair so he could watch Aryal.
Tricks, the faerie known as Thistle Periwinkle, Cuelebre’s head of PR, sat with her arms and legs crossed at the other end of the table. Her lavender cloud of hair, sporting a four-hundred-dollar haircut, was disheveled. She jiggled one tiny foot and chain-smoked.
Dragos, like Tiago, didn’t take a seat. Instead he went to lean back against the oak counter at the head of the room. He kicked one foot over the other and folded his arms, tucked his chin in and brooded at the floor.
He didn’t like how he felt. He didn’t like it one fucking bit. He felt jittery and restless at leaving Pia alone. The feeling increased with every step he took away from her and with every minute that trickled by. She had looked very lost and alone standing in the middle of that big empty room.
He didn’t like how she had looked at him either, like he was an unpredictable puzzle she couldn’t decipher. Or a bomb that might go off in her face. She had looked at him with uncertainty, distrust. With something very close to fear again.
She had pulled away from him.
It was unacceptable. But before he could go and take care of whatever was brewing in her head, he had to do this first.
He lifted his gaze and looked around the occupants in the room. They were all watching him and waiting.
“Hey, Tricks,” he said to the chain-smoking faerie. “Your uncle Urien says hi.”
Tricks started swearing, her urchinlike features contorted. She stabbed a half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray. “What did the bastard do this time?”
Rune said, “Everybody knows what happened up to the point when you called from South Carolina. We’ve been dealing with the Elven fallout. They’ve invoked a trade and business embargo with anything to do with Cuelebre Enterprises, along with all other known Wyr businesses. They also swore they escorted you and the woman to the Elven border. They’re insisting on knowing what happened to her.”
“You mean, aside from housing the criminal in a penthouse suite and hiring a private chef for her? Yeah, we’re talking cruel and unusual punishment,” Aryal whispered to Grym, but Dragos’s sharp hearing caught it anyway. He chose to ignore it for now.
“They did escort us to the border. That’s true as far as it goes,” he said. He told them the rest, omitting what happened in private between him and Pia, and glossing over anything to do with her secrets. Pia was his mystery. No one else’s. He intended to solve her all by himself.
The mood in the room turned ugly as he described the confrontation on the Other land plain.
When he finished, Tiago stirred. In his thunderbird form, he was as big as any of the gryphons. “So, it’s war. About damn time,” he said. Dark satisfaction gleamed from obsidian eyes.
Dragos nodded. “It’s war. We don’t stop now until Urien is dead.” He looked at Tricks. “That means you get to be the Dark Fae Queen at last.”
“Oh God no,” the faerie groaned. “I fucking hate the Dark Fae Court.”
“Well, suck it up, Tricks. You’ve run from this long enough. And this time Urien’s pushed me too far.”
Over two hundred years ago, humankind time, Urien had taken the Dark Fae crown in a bloody coup. Urien had slaughtered his brother, the King, the King’s wife and anyone else who had any direct claim to the throne, except he managed to miss one small person, their eldest daughter, Tricks.
At just seventeen years old, Tricks had been considered little more than a baby at the time when she had managed to escape. She had run straight to Dragos, the one entity she felt sure could stand up to her uncle without any fear, and had asked for sanctuary. She had been with him ever since.
“It’s been a fun game of Fuck You, hasn’t it? We managed to keep it going for quite a while, but you know it had to end sometime,” he said to her. She gave him a miserable nod.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “Tiago, send some of the troops you brought back with you to scour that Goblin stronghold. They know what to do to anyone stupid enough to still be there.”
Tiago smiled. “You got it.”
“Aryal,” he continued, “investigate the Elven connection. I want to know who might have leaked information to Urien.” The harpy gave him a nod. He turned his attention to the gargoyle. “Grym, I want you to work with Tricks to plot the layout of the Dark Fae palace and grounds for possible plans of attack. I’ve got a few ideas, but I also want to know what you come up with. Tricks, I know you’re going to get really busy, but I would appreciate it if you managed to hire a replacement for yourself before you go, or at least come up with a short list of suggestions. We’re going to need a new PR person.”
“Of course I will,” Tricks said. “It’s the least of what I owe you.”
“It’s never gonna be the same,” Graydon said in a mournful voice. “Watching her cute little face when she came on television and knowing how Urien must have gnashed his teeth every time he saw her.” Everyone laughed. Even Tricks managed to smile.
Rune and Graydon were looking at him. He told them, “Until further notice, you two, and Bayne and Con, are on special detail. Get lieutenants to step in with your regular duties. You four are going to guard Pia whenever I’m not with her. Two on, two off, twenty-four/seven. She is never to be left on her own. Understood?”
Rune’s chair came down on all four legs. The handsome male looked very alert. Graydon’s expression was the picture of incredulity. It was more or less echoed around the room. Tricks’s eyebrows rose and her lips pursed.
“You’re putting four of your most powerful warriors on babysitting detail for a thief?” said Aryal. “At a time like this?”
Dragos looked at her from under lowered brows. Grym put a hand on her arm. The gargoyle said to him, “Unless there’ll be anything else, we’ll get right to work, my lord. I think we all have got a lot to do.”
He considered the harpy for a few more moments, the dragon roused and moving deep in his thoughts. Aryal dropped her gaze and bowed her head in a submissive posture.
“Go,” he said.
The others scattered. Rune and Graydon followed him as he went back upstairs. He stalked down the hall, still brooding, while they shadowed him on either side. He came to Pia’s door where Bayne and Constantine lounged against the wall, talking. The two men straightened at their approach.
“Fill them in,” he told Rune, who nodded. The dragon still roused, he regarded them all. The gryphons watched him with attentive, quiet faces. He said, “Let me make this perfectly clear. Just so there’s no mistake. We’ve worked well together for almost a thousand years. You have all come to mean a lot to me. I treasure your service and I prize your loyalty above all others.” He looked at Rune. “I count you as my best friend.”
They all stood taller as he talked. He pointed at the door. “Thief or not, she is mine and I’m keeping her. If a single hair on that young woman’s head is harmed, you four bastards better be slaughtered and in pieces when I find you.”
Rune’s steady gaze met his. “You needn’t worry, my lord,” the gryphon said. “We’ll guard her with our lives. I swear it.”
Tired as she was and in spite of the comfort of the bed, Pia tossed and turned
, unable to settle into a deep sleep. She dreamed of being chased. The scenes kept changing. First she was crawling through the secret ways of a huge house, trying to find someplace to hide. Next she was weaving in and out of a crowded, unfamiliar city street while someone menacing followed behind her. She could never quite see her pursuer’s face, but he terrified the hell out of her.
Then someone lifted the bedcovers. A large, damp, naked male slid into the bed beside her. She startled, coming awake with a violent jerk.
“Shh, it’s me,” Dragos whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’okay,” she murmured. “Didn’t like that dream anyway.”
There was a reason why it wasn’t such a good idea for him to be in her bed. Or was she in his? She wasn’t awake enough to grasp any of it. She was just awake enough to feel a rush of pleasure and relief.
His arms came around her. She made a noise and burrowed into his side. His warmth and energy enveloped her. She put her cheek to his shoulder, against the damp, clean-smelling skin that covered hard, bulky muscle like silk, and rested a hand on his chest.
“Did you like your supper?” he asked.
“Lovely.”
“Good.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Take the spell off.”
“Sleepy,” she complained.
He stroked her hair. “Please?”
She muttered, fumbled to get hold of the dampening spell and released it.
His wide chest moved in a deep sigh. “That’s better.”
“Shh,” she scolded. She turned on her side. He wrapped his body around her. Her check rested on one bulging biceps while he curled his other arm around her torso. He pinned her legs with one heavy thigh. She cast a sleep-blurred glance down at their entwined bodies. The pale glow of her form was caged in possessive, dark bronze male. It was a jealous, suffocating hold. She should want to break free of it. She sighed. Something deep inside settled into place and she closed her eyes, content.
This time when she fell asleep there were no more dreams.
Along, restful time later something brought her out of deep unconsciousness. She drifted for a while in a twilight state. A large hand played down the front of her torso. Gentle fingers trailed from her flat stomach up her rib cage to circle first one breast and then the other.
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