Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(40)
He would revel in Ghost’s suffering…at least for the rest of the night.
Zane turned back around to regard the wicked dragon on his throne, and just as he suspected, his hideous mouth was turned up in a smile.
Chapter Sixteen
Jordan was standing outside on the terrace, wearing jeans and a taupe, sleeveless blouse, gazing at the waterfall when Zane returned later that night. The dragon moon hung low in the bottomless, dark sky, the air was cool and crisp, and her beautiful auburn hair reflected in the moonlight like a mirror of the crystalline stars.
Zane inhaled sharply as he strolled further onto the deck. “Evening,” he said, trying to pitch his voice in a deliberately gentle cadence to avoid startling her.
It didn’t work.
She spun around, placed her hand on her heart, and gasped. And gods be merciful, but in that moment, she was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. He told his beast to heel—this wasn’t an invitation to pounce. “Sorry.” He spoke softly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Jordan shivered involuntarily. “You didn’t.” She lied. And then she wrung her hands together in a nervous gesture, paced backward until she bumped into the terrace railing, and leaned back against the iron banister, trying to appear at ease.
Zane stopped about five paces away; no need to crowd the woman. “So, how was it? Your time in the lair? Are you feeling any better about being here?” Now that was a loaded question, and he was probably opening a can of worms—but hell, they only had seven days left, and she had to enter that temple of her own volition. They didn’t have a second to waste. They didn’t have time to play games.
Jordan stared at the planks on the deck nearest to her bare feet, ostensibly to avoid making eye contact. “It was fine,” she said, surprising him with the brevity of her answer.
He nodded. “I see. Did you have a chance to explore the lair, spend any more time with my brothers?”
She swallowed convulsively—once again, betraying her nerves. When her eyes finally met his, she couldn’t hold the contact; they darted to the left and the right. “Um, yeah,” she murmured. “I mean, you already gave me a cursory tour, so I didn’t feel the need to check anything else out. But Levi was kind enough to take me to the library—I grabbed a couple books.”
Her demeanor was almost edgy, Zane thought.
Cagey.
Sure, she was uncomfortable and afraid—who wouldn’t be?—but she almost seemed to be hiding something. He quickly dismissed the thought. After all, what could she be hiding? Her cell phone wouldn’t work inside Dragons Domain—they had little use for cellular towers and Wi-Fi when they could communicate telepathically, even across a distance—and the signals wouldn’t cross the portal anyway, unless they were enhanced by a jewel, in this case, by a special sapphire sphere. Something he wasn’t going to tell Jordan…just yet.
Better to turn his attention to something that could move the conversation forward. “So, you tried out the library? What did you think? What kind of books did you grab?”
Damn, that sounded like an interrogation.
Oh well, at least it was a start.
“Oh,” she said, smiling weakly, “well, you know me.” She shut her eyes, shook her head, and took an obvious, slow breath. Raising her chin, she amended the statement: “Well, you don’t know me, not at all; but if you did, you would know that when I’m…when I’m unsure about something…I always choose analysis first. I gather information.”
Zane cocked his eyebrows. “And?”
“And…I thought the library was very nice, very well appointed, and obviously stocked to the gills. And I grabbed three books.”
He studied her hazel eyes, wishing he understood that guarded undercurrent, wishing she could relax just a bit. “So, you didn’t grab a novel or a cookbook, I take it?” He forced a congenial smile, and she pressed her back harder against the rail.
“No,” she said quickly, and then she actually turned around, rested her forearms on the railing, and pretended to view the falls. In other words, she gave him her back. “I grabbed an atlas of your territories, a volume about the customs of the Dragyr, and another journal—the genealogy of the Sapphire Lair.”
Zane strained to hear her clearly.
It wasn’t like he didn’t possess supernatural hearing, but with the waterfall flowing, the fact that she was mumbling, and his proximity being ten feet away, he had to concentrate on each of her words. Screw this, he said to himself, closing the distance between them and sidling up behind her.
She instantly stiffened, but that didn’t deter him.
He placed his right hand on the curve of her exposed shoulder and brushed lightly against her back with his chest. Yes, she would feel crowded, maybe even pressured, but she would also sense his warmth…his presence…his nearness. The fact that she wasn’t in this alone. “Tell me about the atlas,” he breathed in her ear, giving her something neutral, safe, and linear to concentrate on.
She shivered, but she didn’t brush his hand away. Rather, she tilted her head slightly to the side to make her words more audible. “Um, I…I thought it was interesting…the territories, the way the domain is laid out.”
“Mm. Hm.”
She squirmed. “I was surprised to see the different regions, um, the mountains in the west, the desert in the east, the flatlands in the south, and what looks almost like a massive body of water, an ocean, in the north…the way the lairs are positioned, like numbers on a clock, more or less surrounding the temple in the center. The domain is bigger than I thought.”