Ember (Rulers of the Sky Book 2)

by Paula Quinn

  He stood to his full height and handed the doctor back her pen. Carina didn’t flinch.

  “Aww,” Doctor Richards stepped closer to Garion and reached up to pet Carina on his shoulder. “I’ll miss you, sweet girl. I hope you come by from time to time to say hello.”

  Carina hissed and took a swipe at her. Helena smiled. She liked Carina.

  “Well,” Helena said, stepping forward and offering the doctor a cool smile. “Thank you.” She didn’t know what this little flare of possessiveness over him was. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t even her friend. But the doctor didn’t know that. Neither had the barista, who sure as hell was flirting with him—The barista. Garion hadn’t told her his name because he thought she was flirting with him. Had his refusal been for Helena’s consideration?

  She thought men like this didn’t exist anymore.

  She smiled when he opened the carrier and his cat hurried down his arm and into it.

  His cell rang. Helena moved a little closer to hear who called.

  “Hey Red,” he said, answering.

  Red? Helena’s attention piqued.

  “No, I’m sorry, buddy, I can’t make it today.” He told his friend about Carina and then apologized again, this time for not being in contact with him for two months.

  Helena remembered him telling her he didn’t live here. Was Seventy-second a side apartment?

  “Sure. Come over for lunch and we’ll catch up. Okay, sounds good.” He hung up and returned his phone to his pocket.

  “Any relation to Simion the Red?” she asked Garion, preceding him out of the exam room.

  “Very distantly, if at all,” he answered behind her. “An uncle or cousin maybe.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Jeremy?”

  She shook her head, stopping in the hall to turn to him. “Simion the Red. How come I’ve never heard of him? If the Elders knew—”

  “They knew,” he assured her. “They wanted him dead. He was Drakkon and he was staying Drakkon. The Amber, used on Simion twice, was useless. When he was killed, they were relieved and let his death go unanswered.”

  “How did he die?” She needed more facts to research him properly.

  “The question you should be asking, Helena,” he said in a low voice that worked its way through her flesh and then her bones, “is how did a Drakkon return to the sky when it was not me who transformed him?”

  “Why in the world do you think it was my father?” she asked as they moved toward the exit.

  “Because it was Patrick’s plan from the beginning. He believed Marcus had found my egg and, after your father transformed him, he sent Simion to kidnap Marcus’ life mate and hold her for ransom in exchange for me.”

  So there were some who have actually seen the Drakkon, she thought, stepping into the cold. Of course, his parents would corroborate his story. He could probably get a thousand people to agree with him.

  If he was telling her the truth, there was only one thing that could kill Drakkon besides golden arrows. And since The Bane had never been told of the Red, it wasn’t a weapon that had killed him. “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And my father?”

  He shook his head. “Him, I didn’t kill.”

  Was he telling her the truth?

  What now? Helena thought, when they came to the curb. He wasn’t going to leave Carina to go out to dinner. She cursed her traitorous, blasphemous heart but she didn’t want her time with him to end. There was so much more she needed to know. Had her father betrayed his ideals and returned a Drakkon to the sky? If Garion had turned the Red, the Elders would have used it as more proof to damn him. But they’d denied the Red’s return. Either they were lying or Garion was. Was Garion real? Did he truly believe that the cost of altering others was too high for the human race or was he telling her what she wanted to hear? Did the Drakkon agree with The Bane? She didn’t know where to go with it. She’d never prepared herself for this kind of confrontation. Would it change the outcome?

  Damn it. “Well,” she said, looking into the street. “I’m going to catch a cab. I hope—”

  “Oh.” His expression went a little dark for the first time since he’d learned his cat was well.

  She raised her brows at him. Oh? Did he have other plans that didn’t include her departure?

  “I didn’t think about you going home.”

  She narrowed her eyes and quirked her mouth at him. “So you thought I’d stay with you…for what? Forever?”

  He smiled and she liked that her sassy mouth amused him. “That’s not an entirely unpleasant thought.”

  She had the insane urge to giggle. What the hell was wrong with her? He was Drakkon. Forever was probably like forever. Was he being charming, sincere, playful? Why did his words feed her madness like timber to a dying flame?

  “You’re taking Carina home, aren’t you,” she said for lack of anything better. “Besides, why would you want me to know where you live?”

  “I could blindfold you,” he offered with a dimpled grin that tore at her logic. “It wouldn’t be a problem getting you into the building,” he went on. “My concierge maintains the strictest confidentiality.”

  “I bet.” Was he really inviting her to his apartment? Was Ellie there?

  “Do you have plans?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

  She shook her head. Jacob would kill her—if Garion didn’t. Where had her senses run off to? Garion was Drakkon. Drakkon couldn’t be trusted.

  But Garion, the man, had shown her so much of who he was already. He loved. She’d never considered that he could because she’d only seen him reflected in the light of his destruction. Now, she was seeing him in another light, awash in rays of vulnerability and modesty—despite easily being the sexiest, most beautiful man alive. There was something exhilaratingly guileless and open about him, and just as deeply mysterious.

  Taking her silence as consent, he hailed a cab. “Sandwiches and beer sound good for lunch?”

  She tilted her head and offered him a smile of feigned astonishment. “Two shared meals in the same day? Is that normal?”

  A taxi pulled up and Garion held open the door. His steady, thoughtful gaze on her tore at her strength to defy her commitment to resist him. “You don’t strike me as someone who gives a damn about normal.”

  He was right. She didn’t give a damn and slipped inside. She helped him set down Carina’s carrier between them before he climbed into the car.

  “Seventy-second and West End,” he told the cabbie.

  Was she really going with him to his apartment? She should be going to have her head examined. She wasn’t afraid of him. If things turned bad, she could take care of herself. Her fight training had begun at an early age and she continued as she matured, mastering thirteen different disciplines in self-defense. She’d known what could possibly be coming, thanks to the Gold. The Bane would be called back to duty and Helena had wanted to be physically ready. If she had to fight off Garion, and possibly his friend, she could.

  The sunlight outside the window cast a golden hue over the classic beauty of his profile. “You mentioned on the phone that you don’t normally live here?”

  He turned to look at her. “Did I?”

  She wasn’t going to let him deny it now. “Yes, that’s why you don’t have a vet for your beloved cat. Remember?”

  His dimples flashed. “Yes, right.”

  “You apologized to your friend on the phone for not seeing him for two months. Where were you?”

  “I was home,” he answered in a quiet voice and turned to look out the window.

  “You have more than one home,” she said, watching his long, broad fingers resting close to the opening of Carina’s carrier.

  “No. I only have one home.”

  She lifted her gaze, wishing for a moment that she were so loved by a man…like him.

  “It’s not in England or New York, is it?”

  “No, it’s
not.”

  That was it. That was all he was going to tell her. Damn it! “When are you returning home?” She shifted in the backseat because she wasn’t sure why she’d asked. To give The Bane time to catch him? Or for other, purely personal reasons?

  “Soon, I imagine.”

  She fastened her gaze to the beguiling sensuality of his mouth. “You’re not going to tell me where you’re going, are you?”

  The tawny glint in his eyes when they met hers wreaked havoc on her breath. “What would be the good in that?”

  Right. He was right. He’d be a fool to tell anyone from The Bane where he kept his true lair. She agreed and she hated herself for it. Why was she sympathizing with him? What was next? Would she let him go to return to his hiding place, possibly never seeing him again?

  The taxi pulled up to his building, per Garion’s instruction.

  “You could blindfold me,” she offered with a playful smile while he paid the fare.

  His eyes grew soft on her for a moment. The chuckle in his voice only added to his sensual baritone when he spoke. “That’s very tempting.” He took hold of Carina’s carrier and left the cab. On the other side, Helena let herself out.

  “But what,” he asked her over the roof of the car, “would be in it for you if you didn’t know where you were?”

  “That’s assuming I want to know so that I can alert The Bane,” she replied and met him at the curb.

  He charmed her with a curious tilt of his lips and golden warmth in his eyes. “Why else would you want me to take you?”

  Why, indeed, Helena thought while he greeted the doorman, who monitored the elevators from a small console. She’d fallen into an easy trap. How was she supposed to answer without exposing at least one truth?

  “I’m expecting Jeremy Redmond,” Garion told the doorman. “Let me know when he arrives before you let him up, please.” He returned his attention to her and smiled while he led her into the lobby. “You were saying?”

  She was saved from answering by an impeccably dressed man making his way toward them. “Welcome back, Mr. Gold. How is Carina?”

  “She’s well, Charles,” Garion said and unzipped the carrier. He smiled at her downy head popping up to look around.

  The concierge cooed something to the cat in French and Garion waited patiently for him to look up.

  “Charles, this is Miss Helena White. She’ll be spending the day, and Jeremy Redmond will be arriving also.”

  “Yes, Mr. Gold.” The concierge straightened the shoulders of his freshly pressed suit and tugged on the crisp white cuffs of his shirt and nodded at her. “Miss White.”

  “Nice to meet you, Charles,” she held out her hand.

  Looking as if none had ever offered him their hand before, he peered down his nose at it. Then he looked at her and, smiling, accepted her gesture. His smile remained when he returned his attention to Garion. “Shall I have something brought up, Sir?”

  Garion turned to Helena first. “Is there something you’d like? Wine? Coffee? You seem to like coffee.”

  She returned his smile and shook her head.

  “Just some draft then,” he continued to Charles.

  “You don’t have any coffee in your apartment?” Helena asked Garion on the way to the elevator.

  “It’s not my drink of choice. Neither is draft,” he confessed as a little bell rang and the elevator door rolled open.

  “It’s true then,” she said, “alcohol is poisonous to anyone with pure, or near pure Drakkon blood.”

  He nodded and gave her a short laugh. “So I stubbornly learned at the age of seventeen, when I ended up on Red’s sofa, literally dying.”

  She cringed, thinking about never being able to have a glass of wine again.

  “So,” he said, stepping inside the elevator with her when it arrived, “you were about to tell me why you’d be willing to let me blindfold you if I agree to take you home.”

  Helena sighed inwardly. Not this again. She hoped he’d forgotten what they had been talking about before Charles interrupted them. She still had no more plausible reason than the truth…or part of it, so she used it. “I don’t want you to disappear again. Not yet. Not until agreements are made between you and The Bane and you are left alone. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  His steady, searching stare unsettled her. “Yes, that’s what I want.”

  Had he moved closer or had she? His nearness was both daunting and magnetic. “But you didn’t answer my question. Why do you want to come home with me? How do you know I’d bring you back once you were there?”

  “I don’t want to come home with you,” she breathed, not knowing why the words made her insides go warm, her limbs, soft. “You make me sound like your next pet.”

  He stared into her eyes then dipped his gaze to her lips. She had the sense that if she took another step forward he would haul her into his arms. She wasn’t sure anymore what she could do to stop him—or if she wanted to. How could she betray who she was? How could she like him, find him so attractive? Sympathize with him? “There’s only one way this could work. Convince me that you’ll keep your word and never transform any Drakkon. If you can, I will go before the Council on your behalf.”

  “Only one way what could work?”

  “What?” she asked as the elevator door rolled away. Was that all he’d heard? She glanced out and then turned to stare at the expanse of space and bright golden light. “Oh sh—”

  Chapter Seven

  She had been so busy trying not to kiss him that she hadn’t realized they’d come to the top.

  “The penthouse?” she asked, stepping away, out of the elevator and onto the diamond-patterned wood floors. “Nice.” If this was where he stayed when he visited, then he had more money than she suspected.

  She remained in the foyer and looked around while he released Carina from her carrier. A spacious grand room was set out before her three steps down, decorated in bronze, wood, and windows. Two-thirds of the room was made of frameless glass panels letting in light from the sun. Below a large skylight that revealed the vast sky, overstuffed sofas and chairs were upholstered in deep shades of crimson and gold. Sunlight spilled in from every angle, illuminating the rich colors and detail in the custom bookshelves and cabinetry lining an entire wall. A free-floating, four-sided bronze and glass fireplace added to the ambience of warmth.

  It reminded Helena of a cozy nest at the top of a tree.

  She whistled. “This is yours?”

  “Yes.” He removed his hat and coat and took hers then set the bundle onto the nearest chair. “Let me show you around.”

  With his palm pressed to the small of her back, he led her to the edge of the grand room. “This is the sitting room,” he said, perched on the top step at the edge of the light.

  “Is that what you’re calling it?” She tossed him a sardonic half-smile. “It’s a bit more than that. It’s huge.”

  “Well,” he said, looking around. “It’s where I sit.”

  Her smile on him softened as he turned left to lead her down a long hallway. She liked how he was both uncomplicated and complex. She probably shouldn’t like it. But she did. She also liked how his sweater clung to the muscles in his arms and stretched across his shoulders. From her vantage point, she noted also that his jeans fit quite well around his derrière and long legs. “Nice paintings,” she said admiring, the art on the hallway walls rather than him.

  He thanked her and pointed off to the right. “The kitchen is this way. I’ll start lunch. Feel free to look around. Those doors are bedrooms, master and guest. There’s a breakfast nook at the end of the hall and a terrace at the next right. It leads back to the sitting room and then back here.”

  That was okay. She didn’t want to stand on a terrace eleven stories up in the dead of winter. Besides, she wasn’t here to learn more about his penthouse. “I’ll stay and help you.”

  He smiled and they both followed Carina into the kitchen that was no less grand than t
he rest of the place.

  Helena ran her hand over one of the sleek white Corian walls, three being white and the fourth, a beautiful slate gray to match the hanging steel lights above the cooking area. Refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher were all stainless steel and dark gray, slab stone countertops added to its crisp, clean aesthetic.

  She could live here.

  “I meant to ask you,” he said, pulling her attention back and still smiling, wreaking havoc on her thoughts, “when is your next concert?”

  How did he know she played in the Philharmonic? She hadn’t told him. She was certain of it. “We just finished the season.” She watched Carina leap to a stool and then spring atop the rectangular island. “So not for another twelve weeks.” She looked at him while she moved about. “You’ve done some research on me then?”

  “Ellie told me what you did for a living,” he confessed easily.

  She was about to ask him what else his sister told him when the wall fell away from her fingers, drawing back her attention. She turned and stared out a 10 foot tall window overlooking Riverside and the sun-glinted Hudson beyond. The only thing standing between her and the concrete eleven stories down was a panel of glass.

  She didn’t like heights. She moved to take a step back but a feeling of longing pulled her back. She looked up at the sky and then down at her feet. Hendrick had often warned her and Jacob that the urge to fly would be stronger in them because, unlike most of their half-siblings, Helena and her brother were born without generations of mixed blood.

  He had been wrong. She didn’t want to fly. She didn’t even like thinking about it.

  She turned away from the window and stepped into Garion looking down at her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in a quiet tone, strands of wheaten gold hair falling around his face. “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “I’m afraid of falling,” she laughed and stepped around him. His nearness tempted her to cast everything aside and throw herself into his arms.

  “The windows are tempered safety glass. Very hard to break,” he reassured, turning to follow her with his gaze.

  “But not impossible,” she pointed out and went to Carina.