could sail through the clouds on his back. A real, live dragon sat in her living room.
'What else can you do?' she asked, her voice raspy.
He merely lifted a brow, a wouldn't-you-like-to-know glint in his eyes.
'Well?' she demanded.
'When you are prepared for the answer, perhaps I'll tell you. Until then… ' He shrugged.
'Fine,' she huffed. 'If you won't tell me about your abilities, at least tell me why you destroyed my brother's journal. I wanted to give it back to him.'
'There can be no record of Atlantis.' As he spoke, the blue of his eyes swirled and churned with a life of its own, like the very mist he guarded. 'I decided to either destroy the book or destroy you. Perhaps I made the wrong choice.'
She preferred the other Darius, the honey-eyed Darius. The man who made her blood sing and her deepest fantasies cry for him. The man who twisted her into knots.
'You will obtain the vests now,' he told her, crossing his arms over his chest.
Her nose crinkled. 'What vests?'
'The ones you promised to buy for me in the cave. The ones that protect against guns.'
That's right. She had promised him. With a sigh, Grace loped down the hall and into her room. After she booted up the computer-with Darius standing over her the entire time, his hands on either side of her armrests, his chest pressing into her back-she found a site that specialized in guns and other equipment.
'I like this thing,' he said. 'This computer.'
With him so near, she had trouble concentrating. 'The vests are two-hundred-and-fifty dollars each,' she said, squirming in her seat. Maybe she should turn on the air conditioner. Her skin suddenly felt too tight for her body. 'Do you still want to buy one?'
'One? No. I wish to purchase twenty. For now.'
'Twenty! Where will you get the money? I doubt you brought any with you.'
'I will allow you to pay for them.'
Of course he would. 'You want extra large, I take it?' Doing this was probably going to place her on the FBI's most-watched list. But Darius wanted the vests, and what Darius wanted, she would acquire for him. They were helping each other, after all.
She placed the order and had to use both of her credit cards. She also requested overnight shipping for double the mailing expense. 'They'll arrive in the morning.'
'I want to visit the Argonauts,' Darius said. 'Afterward, we will purchase bullets and you will show me how to use them.'
Such a dictator, she thought, and wondered, foolishly, if he'd be that demanding in bed. She stole a glance at the hard angles of his profile. Oh, yes. He'd be demanding and the knowledge made her shiver. With a gulp, she flipped off her computer and swiveled in her chair, dislodging his hands. 'Do you think they know more than they told me?'
'Perhaps. Perhaps not.'
Which told her nothing. 'If we leave now, we can be there within the hour.'
'Not quite yet.' He leaned down, replacing his palms on the arms of her chair. Her knees bumped his thighs as his gaze traveled all over her. Burning her. Devouring her in a way that should have been illegal. He saw past her clothes, she suspected breathlessly, and saw the hard pebbles of her nipples. 'First,' he said, 'you will bathe. Quickly,' he added.
Blazing red heat stained her cheeks. 'Are you saying I-' her mortification was so great she almost couldn't finish her sentence '-stink?'
'You have dirt smudges here.' He ran his fingertip over the side of her mouth. 'And here.' That finger moved to her chin, and his nostrils flared. 'While you are beautiful to me as you are, I thought you might wish to wash.'
He thought she was beautiful? As she was? Grace nearly melted into her seat. Most men found her a little too plump, a little too red and freckly.
She struggled to form defenses against him, and reminded herself that she wasn't ready to handle such a dangerous man. 'I won't take long.' Her legs trembling, she pushed up and raced to the bathroom. She slammed the door shut.
Just in case he entertained any notion of slipping inside, of stripping out of his clothes and getting into the tub with her, of letting the warm, wet water deluge their intertwined, naked bodies, she twisted the lock. She pressed her back against the cool wood, her breathing shallow.
Damn if she didn't pray Darius would burn the lock away.
CHAPTER 13
Alex Carlyle was hot and cold at the same time.
A single guard shoved him inside his newest prison. A single fucking guard because he was too weak to be any real threat. The drugs his captors were pumping through his system were hell on his body. They kept him compliant, groggy and dependent. Kept him uninterested in escape.
Kept him stupid.
Or maybe his weakness stemmed from low blood supply. Vampires were allowed to suck from his neck anytime they wanted, as long as they didn't kill him. He almost wished they'd finish the job.
For months he'd done nothing but breathe and live Atlantis. He had acquired the proof he'd wanted of its existence, but he no longer gave a damn.
He shivered. The room was cold. So cold frost formed every time he breathed. Why, then, did his skin burn? He sank to the hard floor. Another tremor scratched down his spine like long, sharp fingernails.
A woman was shoved into the cell. The only exit slid shut behind her.
Alex closed his eyes, too tired to care. Within moments, small, delicate hands grasped his shoulders and gently shook him. His eyelids flickered open, and he found himself staring up into Teira's beautiful, ethereal face.
'You need me?' she said.
He'd lost his glasses, but he didn't need them to see that her pale brown eyes were alight with concern. She had the longest lashes he'd ever seen, as light as her waist-length hair. She claimed she was a prisoner, just like he was. The two of them had been 'escorted' so many places he didn't know where he was anymore.
This newest cell was stripped bare, as if someone had recently scraped everything off the walls. 'I'm fine,' he lied. 'Where are we this time?'
'My home.'
Her home. He inwardly sighed. That told him nothing. She'd never mentioned where she lived, and he hadn't asked because he didn't know yet if he believed a word out of the woman's gorgeous mouth.
He didn't know whom he could trust anymore.
Lately he'd been swindled and double-crossed by everyone he encountered. Every member of his team had betrayed him, willingly giving away his location and his purpose for a few hundred dollars. The guide he'd hired to see him safely through the Amazon had been a paid mercenary. Now he had to contend with Teira.
She was beautiful, exquisitely and guilelessly so, but beauty often hid a mountain of lies. And she was too concerned for him, too eager to learn about him. Perhaps she'd been sent to seduce the location of the medallion from him, he thought irritably. Why else lock her in a cell with him? He laughed humorlessly. Why else but to fuck the answer out of him.
Well, the joke was on her. Teira wasn't his type. He preferred women who wore too much makeup, and tight clothes over their even tighter, surgically enhanced bodies. He preferred women who screwed hard and left the same night without a qualm-if they didn't speak to him in the meantime, even better.
Women who looked like Teira terrified him. Instead of makeup and tight clothes, they wore an air of innocence, a marry-me-and-give-me-babies kind of wholesomeness that unnerved him.
He'd spent too many years caring for his sick father, too afraid to leave the house in case he was needed. He
