Smoldering Hunger (17 page)

“As for why I care about him, he helped us. At the risk of himself, he gave me the information I asked for.”

“Because he wants you to trust him. Can you no’ see that?” he beseeched.

There was a good chance Rhys was right.

Then there was the hope that someone loved her.

“I see it,” she admitted in a low voice, unable to meet Rhys’s gaze.

He grasped her arms and waited until she looked at him to say, “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him askance, unsure of why he was apologizing. “Why?”

“Because I didna know the depth of the pain you experienced when …
he
 … turned away from you.”

Rhi didn’t want to listen to this. She tried to pull away. Yet Rhys held fast.

“I understand now. Lily has given me a love I didna think possible. Even if I feel only a drop of what you experienced, I get it. I want you to find that kind of love again.”

She looked anywhere but at Rhys. No way was she going to see the pity in his gaze. “A love of the ages, Rhys. Remember that? It’s gone now. I can find happiness elsewhere.”

“Aye. Just no’ with Balladyn.”

Anger spiked in her. She couldn’t have her Dragon King lover. Now, she was being told she couldn’t have Balladyn either. When could she have love? When could she be happy?

“I doona know when you’ll be happy again,” Rhys said in a soothing voice. “Calm down, Rhi. We’re just talking.”

“I am calm!”

“Rhi,” he said as he caught her gaze. “There’s no need to get angry.”

She glared at him. “If you think I’m angry now, wait until I start glowing.”

“You are.”

“What?” she barked.

Rhys glanced down at her. “Glowing.”

She looked at herself and saw the white light emanating all around her. A glimpse at the room showed everything was shaking.

There was a commotion at the door. Rhi looked over to find Phelan, Henry, and Kellan gawking at her. She closed her eyes and slowly pulled her anger back into a little ball within her.

“Out!” Rhys yelled over his shoulder. Then he enveloped her in a tight hug. “It’s all right. I didna mean to make you mad. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

She clung to him, tears threatening. What was wrong with her that an innocent remark could set her off in such a way? She was a danger to everyone.

“You’re going to love again. I know it, Rhi,” he said while stroking her hair. “You’ve been through too much no’ to find someone.”

“I don’t want to be alone anymore, Rhys. It’s…”

“Awful,” he finished for her. “I know.”

Rhi squeezed her eyes closed, but the tears still spilled down her cheeks.

“Stay here a wee bit longer,” Rhys suggested. “Con is gone to Edinburgh, so he willna bother you.”

Yes. A few more days might be just the thing.

But … there was Balladyn.

Rhi pulled out of Rhys’s arms and wiped at her tears. “He’s calling for me. I need to see what he wants.”

“Balladyn.”

It wasn’t a question. “I’ll be back soon.”

“You’ve been asleep for over three weeks. You’ve missed a lot.”

“And I need to catch up.” She put a bright smile in place and winked. “Don’t worry, stud. I’ll be back soon.”

Rhys blew out a breath once she left. “You can come in,” he called to the others.

The door to the room opened and Henry, Phelan, and Kellan walked in.

“She’s going to see Balladyn?” Henry said with an angry glint in his hazel eyes.

Rhys exchanged a glance with Kellan.

It was Kellan who said, “He gave us the information for Thorn to find Lexi. She owes him.”

“You heard her,” Phelan said. “She’ll be back.”

With a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, Henry turned on his heel and strode away.

“Shit,” Phelan said. “He’s got it bad for her.”

Kellan crossed his arms over his chest, looking at the door where Henry had disappeared. “Aye. We need to turn Henry’s attention onto someone else.”

“Who? The only females here are mated to us,” Rhys said.

Kellan twisted his lips. “We’ll have to think of something fast.”

“Speaking of fast,” Phelan said. “What set Rhi off?”

Rhys glanced at the floor. “Me. I told her Balladyn wasn’t for her.”

“We heard her yelling,” Kellan said.

Phelan nodded. “It broke my heart to hear her asking when she would get to love.”

“Aye.” Rhys felt Kellan’s gaze on him. Both were thinking the same thing. That it was time to beat the shit out of a certain Dragon King until they discovered the truth of why he’d ended things with Rhi.

“Oh, I doona think so,” Phelan said, looking between the two of them.

Kellan frowned. “What?”

“I see the way you’re looking at Rhys. You want to go find Rhi’s lover and hit him a few times. That’s no’ going to happen unless I’m with you,” Phelan stated.

Rhys slapped him on the back. “It’s no’ a secret that will be held for eternity. And trust me, when you find out, you’re going to wish you didna know.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY

Rhi arrived at the desert and looked around for Balladyn. She was disappointed when he was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t bothered to track him, because she assumed this was where he would be. She didn’t know how, but the desert had become the location where they always met.

It felt good to have the sun on her skin again. After weeks asleep, she craved the warmth of the sun and the way it made her skin prickle.

She didn’t know how long she stood there before she felt the presence. It wasn’t her watcher. He’d been there seconds after she teleported in. No, this was someone else.

Rhi turned around, ready to call up her sword if need be when her gaze landed on Balladyn. He was looking at her as if she couldn’t be real.

“I saw you fall,” he said. “I saw the magic hit you, and you didn’t get up. I tried to get to you. You didn’t rise after the blast, and I feared you were…”

“Dead? Not me,” she said with a flip of her hair.

In the next moment, he was before her, one hand on her back and the other cradling her head as he kissed her deeply, fervently.

She felt his arousal against her stomach just as she felt his passion in their kiss. Rhi wrapped her arms around him and returned his kiss with a heavy dose of her own desire.

He took her head between his hands and ended the kiss to stare into her face. She looked into his red eyes and saw the concern he didn’t try to hide.

“You could’ve died,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes as he put his forehead against hers. This was a side of Balladyn she had never seen before, and it touched her greatly.

“Where have you been?”

She rubbed her hands along his arms. “Asleep.”

“Did the Dark magic wound you that bad?”

“No.” She didn’t even think of lying to him. “Con healed me, but the darkness was my escape.”

Balladyn straightened. “From me.”

She tenderly touched his face. “From everything. Usaeil, the Dark, Ulrik, the darkness growing inside me, and yes, the feelings you’re stirring within me. I needed a break from it all.”

“I see.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” she asked him with a grin. “If I wanted away from you, would I’ve come?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Nay.”

“Then ease your mind about that. I don’t know what I want yet, so don’t think this is me saying yes.”

His smile grew, making his eyes crinkle in the corners. “You will. One day soon, you will.”

Was it her imagination, or had the red of his eyes dimmed a little? Rhi only had that glance before he was kissing her again.

*   *   *

Sophie woke to the sound of her phone vibrating on the coffee table. She hurriedly reached for it to read the text from Claire.

She smiled and quickly typed a text letting Claire know that everything was all right. Sophie then sighed and dropped her head back on the couch.

Her thoughts were on Darius, not Ulrik. But then again, she was always thinking about Darius. The sex was amazing, but was it enough? Did it matter that he could give her a couple of orgasms?

A couple? Girl, it was a dozen!

A dozen or not, it didn’t matter.

Sophie laughed at herself. Of course it signified. To have a man be able to touch her and bring her to the edge of release in a matter of seconds was a skill rarely found.

“As rare as the Arc of the Covenant,” Sophie mumbled to herself.

It wasn’t just the sex. She wished it was so she could schedule something every few weeks. Waking up that morning to find Darius still in bed had done something to her, changed her.

She rose to pour herself some wine. Noon had come and gone, and she couldn’t watch another minute on the telly. With Ulrik’s men out there, she wasn’t keen on leaving her flat either. She also had no idea when Darius would be back.

He said he’d return. She hoped he would, but she was preparing herself for the fact that he wouldn’t.

“It’s better to expect the worst,” she said as she sipped her wine.

She’d let Darius into her life—and her heart. Now Sophie feared it had been a mistake. What if he hurt her? What if he didn’t return?

Sophie lifted her chin. She’d been through worse. She would get through whatever happened with Darius.

All the while she prayed that he came back to her. She liked the new outlook on life that he’d given her. Did he even know what he’d done for her? She didn’t think so.

She was going insane thinking of what Darius might be doing and if he would come back to her. That’s when Sophie found a deck of cards and played solitaire.

She was on her third game and shuffling when she remembered she had downloaded an app on her phone. She set the cards aside and curled up on the couch with her mobile to begin playing.

It took only a few games before she got bored. Sophie moved onto Bubble Witch 2, and played that until she ran out of lives. It was addictive, but she wasn’t going to pay good money to buy more lives that would magically appear in ten minutes or so.

She began looking through all the apps on her phone that she never paid attention to and discovered that she had downloaded an e-book reader, and that there was a book there.

Sophie decided to give it a try since it was a romance, and she was suddenly interested in such things. Before she knew it, she was sucked into the book. What made her stop reading was when she put herself in the heroine’s place and put Darius in the hero’s.

She tossed the book down, staring at it as if it was the Devil incarnate.

“Never again,” she whispered.

Wasn’t that what she’d told herself? Why didn’t it work to remind her not to fall for another man?

Sophie stood and walked around her flat. With nothing else to do, she began to clean. First she dusted. Then she vacuumed before she wiped down all of her cabinets and scrubbed her sink.

When that was done, she made her way into the bathroom and scoured the shower, tub, sink, and toilet. When she finished mopping the bathroom and kitchen, she wiped the back of her hand over her brow and sighed.

The flat might have needed a good scrubbing, but it reminded her how much she hated to clean. It was easy to ignore when she was rarely in her flat, but having to spend the day looking at everything had gotten to be too much.

That wasn’t entirely true. It was thinking about Darius and being bored that prompted her to clean. So the moral was not to be bored.

With that solved, Sophie put away all the cleaning supplies and put away the dry cleaning she’d picked up a few days earlier that was still hanging on the back of her closet door.

She finished putting the last piece away when there was a knock on her door. Sophie stared at it a moment before she walked from her room and hesitantly made her way to it.

She wanted it to be Darius so desperately that her stomach knotted.

“Sophie.”

Her knees almost buckled when she heard Darius’s voice. She rushed to the door and quickly unlocked it.

The door opened and he yanked her against him. Sophie savored his arms around her. He’d returned, just as he’d said he would. Now she knew for certain he was trustworthy.

When he stepped back, she saw his agitation by the way his jaw clenched and his body was tense. “What is it?”

“I spoke with Ulrik.”

“And?” she asked as he walked inside and she closed the door behind him.

Darius turned to her and shrugged. “I didna get much from him.”

That was his way of telling her that he wasn’t going to divulge what he learned. Sophie tried not to be upset. He’d tell her if it involved her. Wouldn’t he?

This was why she didn’t get close to people. Because she always second-guessed them. She never believed they could be honest with her, and most times, she was spot-on.

Darius seemed to be the exception to the rule.

“You cleaned,” Darius said as he looked around.

It was her turn to shrug. “I was bored.”

The lines of strain vanished as he smiled at her. “You need a hobby, doc.”

She had a hobby—him. Every time she made love to him, she softened. Almost as if the sturdy walls around her heart were waning. She already trusted him more than she did anyone else.

It never occurred to her that she might trust or think about loving another man again. And yet here she was. The fact she was even thinking of the word
love
was enough to alert her that things were going deeper and faster than she wanted.

“Is the building still being watched?” she asked.

Darius nodded. “It is.”

“I don’t like being cooped up in here, but I don’t like being followed either.”

“Then let’s go out.”

She gaped at him, a smile on her lips. “Are you serious?”

“Ulrik knows I’m with you. I’ll still come and go without his men seeing me, but only because I doona want him to know when I’m here and when I’m no’.”

“I do need to check on some of my home-based patients.”

“Then get dressed, doc,” he said.

In less than twenty minutes, she was showered, changed, and standing by the door with her medical bag.

“Do you want me to walk with you?” Darius asked.

She touched his face. “Yes, but I also want to prove to Ulrik that he doesn’t scare me.”