Page 7
CHAPTER FIVE
Zoey was lost in the riotous tumbling of her thoughts as she drove them toward St. Ives. It was January, and the middle of the day, so there were very few tourists and little other traffic on the smaller roads they were traveling on.
The man sitting so uncomfortably beside her, even with the seat pushed all the way back and the back tilted as far as it would go, had now admitted he was Hunter Drake. A man she knew normally lived in the Scottish Highlands, as did his brothers, Lachlan and Ranulf.
The fact that Hunter was now here , in Cornwall, was surreal.
The fact that he had stated that Ben hadn’t fallen down the mountain but had been dropped onto it from a helicopter was deeply alarming.
Did the fact that Hunter had come to Cornwall, that he had come specifically to Tregarthen House where Edgar Wallis made his home and also owned and flew his own helicopter, mean that Hunter thought the other man might somehow have been involved in Ben’s death?
But what possible reason could Edgar, a man who made no secret of the fact he held most other human beings in contempt, possibly have had to kill one of the students Zoey shared a house with in London? And why would he have waited until Ben had returned to his home in Scotland to do so?
None of what Zoey had learned about the situation so far made any sense.
And yet she also found she couldn’t quite bring herself to disbelieve the possibility of Edgar somehow being involved in these strange events.
He was a cold man who had always shut himself away in his study, or he occasionally disappeared for several days or weeks at a time. She had assumed that during those times, he was indulging in the historical research which seemed to have taken up most of his adult life.
Quite what that research was, Zoey had no idea, nor had she ever bothered to ask or show an interest. Edgar had always treated her like a child, even when she became an adult, and he hadn’t ever encouraged her to ask him questions about anything, let alone the subject of his obsession.
“Could you turn off at the road ahead, please?” Hunter suddenly bit out between gritted teeth as he indicated the small B-road to the left a short distance in front of the Mini.
Zoey knew that particular sideroad grew narrower and narrower until it was only wide enough for a single small vehicle to maneuver down. The road disappeared completely when it opened out onto one of the many small beaches situated around the rugged Cornish coastline.
A small and secluded beach where there would be no other human beings to see or hear if Zoey called out for help.
Was she going to need to call for help?
Hunter was a stranger, a huge and dominating one, and his presence in Cornwall was also suspect after the things he had told her. Even so, Zoey didn’t sense any imminent threat from him toward her, physically or otherwise.
She felt more in danger of succumbing to the insidious seduction of his musky scent.
It was unlike anything she had ever breathed in before. A heady combination of wind and rain, pine needles carpeting a forest floor, all underlined with the smell of the burning of dry leaves in autumn.
Zoey could also still sense that something more roiling, being a turbulence, beneath Hunter’s outer shell of calm. But whatever that something was, it didn’t feel in the least threatening. The opposite, in fact.
For some reason, Hunter Drake’s presence made her feel safer than she ever had before.
Nor had Zoey ever felt so aware of a man as she now did, sitting beside Hunter in the small confines of the Mini.
It wasn’t just that he was so present and physically took up at least two-thirds of the space inside her car. He also exuded a brooding sensuality that Zoey was aware of to the very depths of her core.
Along with that heady musk that had now invaded her senses, causing her breasts to swell and her nipples to harden and between her thighs to become plump and wet.
A visceral reaction that was previously unknown to her.
She had dated in the past, and enjoyed the company of the men she went on those dates with, but she’d never had such a physical reaction to any of them.
It was as if?—
She gave Hunter a sharp glance after she heard him give a low and pained groan. “Are you feeling okay?”
“No.” A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “I need to get out of the confines of this car and breathe in the outside air,” he growled as one of his hands reached out to take a tight grip of the dashboard. It immediately gave a protesting groan at this rough treatment.
Enough so that Zoey feared Hunter’s hand might leave a permanent dent in the plastic molding. “Are you feeling car sick?”
“I can’t breathe!” he gasped.
“Wind down the window,” she advised quickly as she hurriedly turned the car down the lane on the left as he had requested.
Hunter did as she suggested, letting in the frigidly cold air from outside before breathing it deeply into his lungs. “It’s helping, but I really need to get out of this car,” he grated seconds later.
Zoey glanced at him, noting how rigid his body was with tension, his fingers still tightly gripping the dashboard. “To get away from the car or me?”
“Both.”
Zoey immediately bristled. “That isn’t very nice after I’ve offered to drive you into town.”
He gave a shake of his head. “I— It isn’t— Your scent is driving my— me insane!”
She frowned. “I’m not wearing any perfume.”
“I said scent, not perfume.”
Zoey’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as she drove the Mini slowly down the narrow lane.
“Are you saying I have some sort of smell you find offensive?” She might be guilty of being completely aware of his seductive musk, but that didn’t mean she welcomed him saying something similar in regard to her.
“Not offensive,” he quickly assured. “Just— Everyone has their own scent,” he explained. “I find yours, Lily of the Valley, to be— I am so fucking this up,” he muttered as if to himself when Zoey continued to frown.
She snorted. “Only because your attempts to explain yourself sound bloody insulting.”
“Damn it, I’m just going to go for it,” he bit out from between clenched teeth. “Dragons.”
Zoey gave him a quick and startled glance before turning her attention back to looking out the front window at the winding and narrow lane ahead. The hedge was starting to encroach on both sides now, narrowing the lane even further.
“Going a little off track, aren’t we?” she observed lightly, having decided it was probably safer to humor Hunter’s totally unrelated comment.
“You mentioned vampires earlier,” he reminded.
She huffed. “So, you just thought, completely out of the blue, that you would bring up the subject of dragons?”
He gave a humorless grin. “Something like that.”
Zoey was becoming more and more convinced that she had made a mistake in offering to drive Hunter into town. In being alone with him at all. Her physical reaction to him aside, there was obviously something seriously not normal about this man.
He had also blatantly lied earlier, she reminded herself, so that he could gain access to her uncle’s house. After which, he had proceeded to tell her that Ben had been murdered, as well as implying her guardian had somehow been involved in the younger man’s death.
Yet, Zoey had still voluntarily left Tregarthen House with him.
And now, completely unrelated, he had started talking about dragons.
So maybe that meant there was something seriously wrong with her rather than with Hunter?
Whichever of those things it was, Zoey was now alone in a car with Hunter Drake. On her way to a beach no one knew they were going to, where there were no houses, and which she was sure was going to be totally deserted at this time of year.
Hunter knew he was handling this situation badly, but being confined in such a small space with the woman he was now sure was his true mate, breathing in the heady perfume of Lily of the Valley, was driving his dragon’s senses into overload.
So much so that his dragon was now so near the surface, it was in danger of bursting free and terrifying his mate before Hunter had even had a chance to explain its existence.
“Thank God,” he groaned as they emerged from the narrow lane onto a small parking area beside an even smaller beach.
Hunter barely waited for Zoey to stop the car before throwing the door open and climbing out into the fresh sea air. He gratefully breathed it deeply into his starved lungs.
He could still smell Zoey’s alluring scent, but it was now diluted enough by the salty sea air for him to regain the control he so badly needed to be able to talk to her without shifting completely into his dragon and shocking the hell out of her.
He could see the wariness in her expression as she slowly got out of the parked car to wrap that long, dark coat around herself before joining him on the edge of the sand. Her long red hair whipped about her face and shoulders as the two of them stood side by side, staring at the churning sea.
“Why did you agree to the two of us talking outside your uncle’s house earlier, and then minutes later suggest we leave altogether?
” Hunter finally prompted once he was sure his dragon was under control enough that he could talk without growling like a wild beast. Although, standing next to Zoey, aware of who she was to him, was testing his control to the limit.
Zoey grimaced. “What you were saying seemed a little…incendiary, and I’ve never been sure Edgar doesn’t have some sort of audio system in or around the house, even though I’ve never found any evidence of it.”
Hunter’s brows rose. “But you believe Wallis has a way of listening in on other people’s conversations within and outside the house you grew up in?”
She cringed. “It’s just a feeling I always had as a child.
Probably because he seemed to know things I hadn’t actually told him.
Oh, I know children think most parents or guardians have that ability, as well as being able to see out the back of their head,” she added wryly.
“But Edgar really does seem to know things. Besides,” she continued briskly, “I believe my initial caution was justified considering the moment we were outside, you proceeded to tell me you think Ben was murdered.”
“Because he was.”
“Will you stop saying that!” She shivered inside her coat.
“Even if it’s true?”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I can.”
“How?” she demanded to know.
“Because, as I said, my brother Lachlan found him before the rest of the search party,” Hunter told her calmly. “He said the only way Ben could have ended up where he did, as broken as he was, was if he had dropped from above the mountain rather than fallen down it.”
Zoey shuddered. “That sounds awful.”
“It was,” he confirmed grimly.
“It’s also a little unbelievable,” she added apologetically.
He snorted. “I’ve been told that so is the existence of dragons, but…”
She snorted. “Dragons again?”
“Yes.”
“What about them?” she prompted sharply.
Hunter’s jaw tightened. “Wallis’s search for the evidence that dragons once existed is the reason Ben McGregor had to die.”
Zoey turned to look at him, her expression incredulous. “What?”
“You said you’ve lived with the man since you were eight years old, so you must be aware of your uncle’s…research?” Hunter reasoned.
“Of course I’m aware of it. But I’ve never known what that research was about.”
“Dragons.”
“For the love of… Will you please stop saying that?” she snapped her frustration with the subject.
Amusement gleamed in his eyes. “Not saying it doesn’t make it any less true.”
Zoey’s nostrils flared. “So, what you’re saying is that the research Edgar has done all these years has been in an attempt to find evidence that dragons once existed?”
“Yes.”
She gave a scoffing snort. “I don’t believe it. He’s far too levelheaded to believe in mythical creatures like dragons, let alone spend his life looking for evidence of their existence.”
“Is he?”
“Of course he is.” She gave a derisive shake of her head. “There’s also the point that they don’t, nor did they ever, exist,” she added dryly before giving him a concerned look. “You don’t believe in them too, do you? Because dragons are up there on the mythology scale with unicorns and Bigfoot.”
“Are they?”
“Yes!”
Hunter didn’t give himself time to consider whether or not what he did next was a good idea. Instead, he allowed his dragon the freedom to just be .
The result, if he said so himself, was spectacular!