Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(27)

The room fell deathly quiet, and the ensuing silence permeated the atmosphere like dew on the morning grass settling after a light summer’s rain. It coated everything around them, within them—between them—with a light, ominous mist. Jordan wasn’t sure if her heart had stopped beating or if the silence was all-pervasive, but she felt that familiar tightening, that pit in her stomach, the same one she had felt on Friday. Only this time, she knew without question that the sense of foreboding truly portended a major life change: the beginning of a journey, the end of an era.

What was going to happen on Sunday when the sun came up?

What was going to happen tonight?

She glanced around the apartment and cringed: This was her home.

She blinked back tears and tried to think like a lawyer: Where was Alonzo’s body? What had Zane done with it? And how was that supposed to work out, going forward, if he allowed her to come back through the…portal? After all, Jordan Anderson was a prosecuting attorney, and she had told a lot of people about the ex-con’s threats. Murder was not exactly an appropriate—or legal—response.

And Macy!

Macy was having surgery on Monday, and Jordan had to be there.

She had to!

What was this man—this creature—saying?

Her thoughts were like scattered, chaotic tumbleweeds tossing in the wind, and her head felt muddled and cloudy for reasons that had nothing to do with the dragon’s power. She was simply and utterly overwhelmed.

Folding her knees beneath her and staring blankly into space, she thought she heard her own voice, as if from a distance, as she posed the single most pertinent question: “Where will you take me?”

Zane rose from his seat, and her pulse began to race. She didn’t want him near her. His presence was just too daunting, too powerful, too intimidating. “Come here,” he said as he knelt before her, crowding her on the couch.

She wanted to withdraw from life itself, to cringe and recoil, but she didn’t move a muscle. She didn’t say a thing.

“Shh,” he murmured softly, as if crooning to an injured mind. “It’s okay, dragyra of mine. It’s okay.”

No, she thought vehemently. Nothing is okay.

He raised his hand and fingered her hair—as if he had the right—cradled the back of her head in his palm, and gently drew her forward, until her forehead rested against his chest and she could hear his beating heart. And then he wrapped those massive, lethal arms around her and held her like a child.

And that’s when Jordan fell apart.

Sobbing in his arms.

She was entirely helpless to say…or do…anything else.

“To your waterfall, dragyra,” he whispered into her hair. “I am going to take you home.”





Chapter Eleven

Doctor Kyle Parker glanced at his expensive designer watch, turned up his lip, and frowned. What the hell was he doing at the office at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and on a rare weekend off, especially when he could be at the country club making important connections with other influential surgeons and enjoying eighteen holes of golf?

He stared at the thin manila file lying on his desk, and simply shook his head.

Macy Wilson.

Twenty-seven years old.

In otherwise good health, with the exception of a benign growth attached to her abdominal wall. She was scheduled for routine laparoscopic surgery on Monday, the thirteenth, to have the growth removed—nothing particularly ground-breaking, interesting, or even challenging there—the surgery was expected to be mundane.

His sex stirred in his pants, and he bit down on his lower lip.

And just what the heck was that all about?

Last week at his private practice, he had met with Macy briefly in order to go over the ensuing operation; to examine her one last time; and to have his staff provide her with all the necessary pre-op instructions. As far as he knew, nothing about the average woman had stood out, not the color of her eyes or the texture of her hair, not the curve of her ass or the shape of her breasts. So why had he woken up in the middle of his sleep, late last night, with a raging hard-on tenting his satin sheets?

Why had it taken three rounds of…self-relief…to make that same raging hard-on recede?

And why couldn’t he get the brown-haired, brown-eyed, seemingly average woman out of his mind…all day?

He opened her chart, scrutinized her records, and studied her medical history: Maybe there was something there, something about her, something that appealed to his medical mind…something he wasn’t seeing. His erection jerked in his pants, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Nope.

There was nothing scientific about this sudden obsession with Macy Wilson.

It was purely salacious in nature.

He sat back in his chair and sighed.

Well, hell, this was a fine twist of fate.

Kyle Parker knew himself well, and he knew that when he latched on to a new prurient interest, he was a lot like a dog with a bone—he wasn’t going to let it go until he chewed it down to the marrow and spit out the gristle: He would have to approach Monday’s surgery in a completely different manner, with a completely different style. He would have to give Miss Wilson a whole lot of personal attention, couched in an adoring bedside manner, without coming across as a lecher.

One way or another, he would have to get Macy into the sack.