Dark Fire

Once in the thick shelter of the trees, the panther's muscled form contorted and reshaped, shimmering in the blue darkness to become the solid frame of a man. Tempest watched, leaning for support against a tree trunk, wondering if she had somehow found Alice's rabbit hole in the middle of a California state forest.

Darius noted her unnatural pallor, the shock in her enormous eyes. Her soft mouth trembled, and she was twisting her fingers together in agitation, her knuckles white. He knew that if he approached her, she would run. "You know you are not afraid of me, Tempest." His voice was a whisper in the night, a part of the night.

Tempest looked around her. The color of night was deep blue, almost black, but mystical and beautiful. The trees rose as shadows toward the gem-scattered sky. Little tails of mist drifted slowly, lazily, knee-high along the forest floor. "Why do you seem as if you are such a part of all this?" she asked. "As if you belong to the night, but something beautiful, not dark and ugly? Why is that, Darius?" she asked again softly.

"I do belong to the night. I am not of the same race as you. I am not human yet not beast or vampire."

"But you can become a leopard?" The incredible feat was nearly impossible to believe, even though she had witnessed it with her own eyes.

"I can become the mouse scampering across the field, the eagle soaring high in the sky. I can be the mist, the fog, lightning and thunder, a part of the atmosphere itself. But I am always Darius - the one who has vowed to protect you."

Tempest shook her head. "This isn't possible, Darius. Are you sure I didn't fall and hit my head or something? Maybe we both ate a weird mushroom, and we're on some psychedelic trip together. This isn't possible."

"I can assure you, I have done this all my life. And I have existed nearly a thousand years."

She held up a hand to stop him. "One weird thing at a time. I'm hearing this stuff, but my brain is refusing to process it."

"Do you know I would not harm you, Tempest? Do you know that much?" he asked insistently, his black gaze drifting over her face like fog.

In her deepest soul, beyond the human workings of her brain, Tempest knew it was the only certainty she had. Darius would not hurt her. She nodded slowly and saw relief light his eyes for a moment. Then he sobered again.

"I did not mean to expose you to the others' appetites. In truth, it did not occur to me that any would use you for such a thing when you were under our protection. I inadvertently subjected you to a terrible moment, but in truth, you were not in any danger. In Barack's defense, he likely thought he could manipulate your memories, as is generally easy to do with human prey, but he would not have harmed or killed you, simply fed, as, smelling my scent on you, he assumed I had. Please accept my apology."

His voice wrapped itself around her and found its way into her heart.

She sighed softly and tried not to think too much about the word prey.

"You know what, Darius? None of it matters. I don't have to understand, because I can't do this. You can see that now, can't you? I have no way to deal with this. It's better if I just get out now."

His black eyes never once blinked, never left her face. She found her heart beating faster, threatened in some elemental way she didn't understand. "It isn't as if I would ever say anything to anyone. They'd lock me up if I did. You know you don't have to worry."

His black eyes were merciless, boring into her deeper and deeper until they penetrated her soul. She found it difficult to breathe. "Darius, you know I'm right. You have to know. We aren't two different races trying to find some common ground. We're two different species."

"I need you."

He said the words so quietly that she barely heard them. He made the statement starkly, utterly without embellishment. There was no mental push, no other form of persuasion. Still, the way he said it was like an arrow piercing her heart. She had no defense against those three words. No way to combat the truth of them. The truth she heard in his voice.

She stared at him for a long moment; then, without warning, she picked up and flung a handful of leaves at him. "You don't play fair, Darius. You really don't. You have those eyes and that voice, and now you go and say something like that."

A slow smile softened the hard edge of his mouth. "I knew you liked my eyes." He sounded immensely satisfied. He didn't appear to move, but all at once he was towering over her, his body close enough to share its warmth. His hand found her throat, and his palm lay still so that her pulse beat into its center.

"I didn't say I liked your eyes," she corrected. "I think they should be declared illegal. They're sinful." She lifted her chin belligerently at him, trying to hold her ground against something she didn't even understand.

"I meant my apology, honey. I will never place you in such a position again. I will make certain the others are aware you are under my personal protection at all times." Darius bent his dark head toward hers, drawn to the seduction of her velvet lips.

Tempest's breath caught in her throat, and she shrank back against the tree trunk and held up her palms to push against the hard wall of his chest. "I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't do this. It's safer, Darius, really, for both of us to just not touch."

His smile climbed to his eyes, spreading heat through her body. "Safer? Is that what you think? It is always far safer to do what I wish."

He hadn't moved, not a single inch, despite the pressure she was putting on his chest. Tempest sighed softly. "You would say that. Personally, Darius, I'm at the point where I might run screaming into the forest, or doubt my own sanity and have myself committed. Don't push me any harder right now."

"Do you think you could stand on your own without the tree trunk supporting you?" Amusement tinged his voice.

Tempest patted the tree trunk, reluctant to find out. She was quite proud of the showing she'd made so far. No fainting. No hysterics. None of the things a sane woman would do. But she didn't want to fall on her face. Her long lashes swept down for a moment. Darius easily read the faint self-mocking humor mixed with concern on her transparent face, the sudden determination just before she shifted, ducking beneath his arm to stand on her own. He liked that, her sense of humor, her ability to laugh at herself in the most extreme situations.

She grinned at him. "Well, it worked."

He held out his hand. "Come on, honey. We can just walk and talk."

She regarded him suspiciously. "Just walk and talk. That isn't code for some other weird activity, is it?"

Darius actually laughed. His fingers tangled with hers, captured her hand, and brought it against the heat of his body. "Where do you come up with your nonsense?"

Her emerald eyes sparkled at him. "I can get worse. Much worse."

"You are trying to scare me away."

She laughed in spite of herself. "I think you do a better job at scaring people than I do. You win hands down. No contest."

His arm slid around her waist to lift her smoothly over a fallen log. He didn't miss a stride, and she couldn't stop herself from comparing him to the jungle cat she now knew he could become. He moved in the same silence, with the same grace. "What does it feel like to change like that?"

"Into a leopard?" Darius wondered at her question. He hadn't thought of what it felt like in hundreds of years. The mystery. The beauty. How wondrous it was to shape-shift. Her question brought up the total exhilaration, the awe he'd felt as a child experimenting until he perfected the art, until he could shift in midair, on the run, even when using preternatural speed. "It is an incredible feeling of power and beauty to experience the essence of the animal, its speed and energy and stealth, all miraculously in my own body."

Tempest moved with his rhythm, ambling nowhere in particular. He was so perfectly proportioned, his body its own miracle, strength and power in every muscle, every cell, and he carried it with a casual ease of which he didn't even seem to be aware. "It's fascinating when I communicate with an animal," she admitted. "I would love to be able to actually see things through their eyes, smell and hear things as they do. Can you do that? Or are you still really you?"

"I am both. I can use their senses, their abilities, yet I can also reason, as long as nothing triggers an overwhelming instinct."

"Like a survival instinct."

Darius glanced down at the top of her head. The moonlight was spilling through the trees, touching the red-gold of her hair to turn it to flame. She was so beautiful, he had no choice but to run a caressing hand over the silken strands. "That is what you are to me. A survival instinct. You feel it, too."

Her long lashes lifted enough for him to catch a glimpse of vivid green before she looked away. "I don't know what I feel." She pulled her hand away and sent him a quick look of censure. "We aren't going there, remember? You stay a foot away from me, and you don't do any one of those things I mentioned to you before."

His husky answering laughter sent flames dancing in her blood. She glared at him. "Laughing is out, too."

He caught her small waist and lifted her easily to the top of an enormous downed log, so that the two of them stood close, his hands resting lightly on her hips as she looked down. Ferns grew abundantly on the forest floor, shades of green carpeting the area in a curious aqua in the blue of the night.

The scenery was so beautiful that she couldn't find her voice, not even to reprimand Darius for forgetting to measure the inches between them. She tried not to be aware of his hands on her, touching her as if she belonged to him. He leaned his dark head so close that her breath caught in her throat. Her neck throbbed in anticipation, and the flames began to crackle and sizzle, threatening to consume her. She felt the heat of his breath exactly over her telltale pulse.

"Listen to the night. It is speaking to us," he said softly.

For a moment she could hear only the beating of her own heart. It pounded in her ears, drowning out every other sound. He carefully turned her around and drew her back against the shelter of his body. "Be still. Be calm. It is there in your mind, Tempest. Find the stillness first. It is there that you begin to learn." His voice whispered over her skin like black velvet. Mesmerizing and perfect. Sheer magic.

Darius was casting a spell, weaving it tightly around her, not simply with the hypnotic power of his voice, or the hard strength of his body but with the night itself. She had never noticed that the darkness had such vivid colors of its own. The moon was shining through the canopy of trees, bathing the world in a soft, iridescent silver. The leaves glistened like gems as the breeze blew gently through them.

The low sigh of the wind was the first sound she could identify clearly after that of her own heart. Darius's arms tightened around her, locking her against his much larger frame. Tempest had an aversion to tight spaces, and she always avoided being too close to men, especially when she was alone and they were strong. However, instead of making her feel threatened, Darius made her feel safe and protected.

"Really listen to it, Tempest, with your heart and mind as well as your ears. The wind is singing softly, whispering tales. There, very close to us - do you hear it? The wind has carried to us the sound of fox kits."

She tilted her chin, straining to catch a single note of what he could hear. Fox kits. Could he really know that? As if reading her mind, Darius placed his lips against her ear. "There are three of them. They must be very young; they're barely moving around."

Tempest felt his lips move in her hair, as if he had accidentally, not by design, brushed against the strands. Self-preservation finally took over, and she attempted to step away from him. But her foot hovered over empty space. She had forgotten she was atop a log. Only Darius's arms kept her from a fall.

He laughed softly, that infuriating, male, mocking amusement. "I was right. You need me. You need a keeper."

"I wouldn't if you weren't driving me insane all the time," she accused him, but she was clutching at him all the same.

"Allow me to merge my mind more fully with yours. I can teach you to listen, to hear the true sounds of the night. My world, Tempest." He glanced down at the slender fingers curled around the thickness of his arm. She was so fragile, so delicate, a small but hugely courageous woman. She was bom for him. His heart and mind, his very soul recognized hers. Every cell in his body reached for her, needing, hungry, with an intensity that would never be assuaged.

Darius could feel her slight body trembling against the hardness of his. A fierce, protective instinct rose in him, swamping him with the sheer force of it. He wanted to carry her off to his lair, keep her safe from the everyday dangers of the world around them, keep her close and protected at all times. But he realized that, no matter how strong his feelings, she was mortal, and she had grown up in a different world, one he could never go back and change for her. It had shaped her character as surely as the ages and dangers he had faced had shaped his. He could not move her too fast. The demands of his body and soul had to take second place to her fears, groundless though they might be.

"If you merge your mind fully with mine, will you be able to read my every thought?" she asked anxiously.

He ruffled her hair, affection in the caress. "You mean as I already do?"

Her emerald eyes flashed at him. "You can't read every thought I have," she said decisively.

There was a short, telling silence. She tilted her head back to look at him. "Can you?" This time her voice definitely wobbled.

Darius wanted to kiss that worried look right off her face. "Of course I can."

Her teeth tugged at her lower lip. "You couldn't before. I don't think you can, Darius."

"You merge with me every time you communicate mentally with me. It may have taken me a few times to figure out your differences from others, but once I did, it allowed me to slip in and out of your mind at will." His fingers curled lovingly around the nape of her neck. "If you like, I could share some of your memories with you. The little alley you favored behind a Chinese restaurant. You were fond of its unusual cobblestones."

This time Tempest made a lunge to break free, but Darius caught her firmly, imprisoning her within the circle of his arms. "Not so fast, honey. You were the one implying I was telling you falsehoods."

She stood stiffly. "Nobody says falsehoods anymore. Your age is showing."

He laughed again, amazed that after centuries of loneliness and utter lack of emotion, he could find himself laughing so readily. There was joy in the night itself, joy in the world, in the very act of living. "That was not nice, Tempest," he scolded her, but his voice was so gentle, it turned her heart over.

"No merging, Darius. I think we should do something semi-normal. Say, just talking. Talking is good. Not anything strange, just the usual. Tell me about your childhood. What were your parents like?"

"My father was a very powerful man. He was often referred to as the Dark One. He was a great healer among our people. I understand that my elder brother has since taken his place among our kind. My mother was gentle and loving. I remember her smile. She had a spectacular smile." The words conjured up the memory for him, the rush of warmth.

"She must have been wonderful."

"Yes. I was only six when she was killed."

Her fingers tightened on his arm in sympathy. "I'm so sorry, Darius. I didn't mean to bring up a sad memory."

"No memory of my mother could be bad, Tempest. When I was six, the Ottoman Turks overran the village near our home and murdered nearly everyone. I was able to get out" - he gestured in the general direction of the campsite - "with a few others. My sister, Desari, along with Syndil, Barack, Dayan, and one other. After that, we were cut off from the rest of our people."

"At six years of age? Darius, what did you do? How did you survive?"

"I learned to hunt from the animals around me. I learned to feed the others. It was a time of great hardship. I made so many mistakes, yet every day was a new, exciting experience."

"How did you get separated from your parents, your people?"

"There was a war. Human villages were being wiped out - people our families considered friends. Our adults decided to stand with the humans. But the soldiers attacked after the sun had risen, when Carpathians are at their most vulnerable, when they need to go to ground. And there were so many soldiers, vicious and cruel, determined to wipe out the entire region, to rid themselves of all of us, as they considered us vermin, vampires. Unfortunately, adults of our species have no power, no strength, when the sun is high, so it was a slaughter, a useless waste of lives. So many died that day, humans and Carpathians alike, women and children. Many of our race were subjected to ritual 'vampire' killings - beheaded and staked through the heart, my parents among them."

Darius's voice was soft, melancholy, distant, as if part of him was centuries away from her. In his arms, Tempest turned to reach up and touch his mouth with her fingertips. "I'm so sorry, Darius. How terrible for you." Tears were glistening on her long lashes, making her eyes luminous. Sorrow for him, for his lost parents, for the boy he had been, throbbed in her heart.

Darius touched a teardrop, catching it on the end of his finger. "Do not weep for me, Tempest. I never want to bring tears to your heart. Your life has been a hard one, too. At least before I lost emotion and color, mine was filled with the love of my old family, and then of my new family for hundreds of years. The boat I and the others escaped our war-torn homeland in took us across the ocean before going down in a violent storm. We were on our own, I the oldest, but we made it to the shores of Africa, and we had great adventures in those years and since - before the darkness gathered in me and spread across my soul."

She watched him bring his finger to his mouth to taste her shimmering teardrop, his black eyes sensual, his perfect lips alarmingly enticing. She swallowed convulsively, afraid she might fling herself into his arms just to taste his mouth again and be forever lost in the burning intensity of his eyes. "What darkness, Darius? What are you talking about?"

"I have felt nothing these last long centuries. After a certain point, evidently a Carpathian male loses his emotions and is in danger of turning vampire. Because I had others depending on me, I fought off the beast within me. But for eons now I have seen no colors, felt no joy, no need for a woman, no laughter, and no love. I have not even felt guilt over necessary killing. Only my hunger was in me. Strong and terrible and always upon me. The beast in me grew until he was always fighting for freedom, raging for release. Then, into that darkness, you came, bringing me color and light and life." Darius said it softly, honestly, meaning every word. His hand came up to capture her mass of red-gold hair, to crush it to his face so that he might inhale the fragrance of her. "I have more need of you than does any other in this world. My body claims yours as its own. My heart recognizes yours. My soul cries out for yours, and my mind seeks the touch of your mind. You are the only woman who can tame the beast and hold me to this earth, to the path of goodness and light. The only one who can keep me from destroying mortals and immortals alike."

Tempest bit at her lower lip again. The things he said to her were almost more than she could comprehend. They made her nervous, even as he made her more aware of herself as a desirable woman than anyone ever had. "Let's not get carried away, Darius. I've agreed to travel with the band for a while, but saving the world is a little beyond my specialties. I wield a mean wrench and all, but relationships totally elude me."

She could be flippant with her answers, but her heart had melted at his every word. His Old-World elegance and charm somehow seemed to provide a balance to the danger clinging to him like a second skin. Sexual magnetism was also second nature to Darius, and Tempest didn't try to delude herself into thinking she was immune.

"It will be in the best interests of all concerned that you remain free from any other relationships," he said softly.

Her emerald eyes flashed a brilliant green before she turned away from him again, too tempted by his perfect mouth to stare at it for long. "Let's walk, Darius. I think it's safer than standing here on a log over looking a cliff. Much safer."

His arm curved around her waist, and he bent forward, his warm breath caressing the nape of her neck. "Run if you must, baby, but there is nowhere to go except back to me."

She firmly removed the thick band of his arm from around her waist, proud of her decisiveness. If his body continued to be in contact with hers, they were both going to go up in flames. The only sane thing to do was to put an ocean or a glacier between them. Maybe the entire polar ice cap.

His infuriating laughter followed her as she jumped off the log and began stalking away. "Reading your mind is becoming very interesting, honey. We could always settle down in an igloo."

"Not a chance. You'd melt the darn thing. Then where would we be? I told you, none of that mesmerizing-eyes thing. And maybe you should try wearing a mask." His sexy laughter had to go, also. Definitely had to go. It was wreaking havoc with her bloodstream. Making it hot, molten, so thick and heavy that she was going to throw herself at him and beg for relief if he didn't stop. Then he'd be sorry. Yeah.

She turned around and glared at him. "Okay. Do the lizard thing."

He studied her face. "The lizard thing?" he echoed. Then an unholy smile touched his sensuous mouth. "Lick your skin? With pleasure. Just tell me where." Deliberately he bent close to the pulse in her throat, his eyes all at once burning, the laughter fading.

Tempest shoved him, hard. If the velvet rasp of his tongue touched her skin, she would be lost. "Get away from me." She took two running steps in growing alarm. "I mean it, Darius. Or we'll have to get a chaperone."

"You said you wanted the lizard thing." His hand shackled her wrist, chaining her to his side.

"I meant scales. You need scales. If you were a little crawly thing, I wouldn't feel I was risking my honor walking in the woods with you." She was laughing in spite of herself.

"If I shape-shifted into a lizard, you would run screaming back to camp." Darius knew that Julian and Desari had already departed in the touring bus with the cats. Dayan, Syndil and Barack were at that very moment cramming themselves into the fast little car Barack loved so much. He could hear Barack pleading with Syndil to talk to him, trying to convince her that he wasn't really a rat.

Darius took advantage of Tempest's momentary pause to gain possession of her hand. His fingers laced firmly through hers and drew her beneath the protection of his shoulder. "If I changed, I would want to show off and do a Komodo dragon for you."

Tempest allowed several heartbeats to go by while her imagination digested that one. "Don't we have to go somewhere tonight? I thought you had a tight schedule to keep. Let's leave Komodo dragons out of the picture. You're scary enough in human form."

They were drifting back toward camp, walking through the layer of fog that was thickening along the forest floor. It was eerie and beautiful, making the woods a magical, mystical place. Tempest liked the feeling of strength in Darius's hand, the heat of his body warming hers, the easy, fluid way he moved with the suggestion of tightly leashed power. Most of all she loved the way his eyes burned possessively over her, the way his chiseled, perfect mouth tempted her.

Darius stopped so abruptly, she ran into him. He had turned to face her, his features dark and sensual in the moonlight spilling through the canopy of trees. He looked what he was, a lord of power, a sorcerer without compare. Tempest could only stare up at his masculine beauty, lost in the hunger in his eyes.

She couldn't breathe when he was so close to her. His eyes darkened until they were merciless with hunger, with raw need. His hands slid down her arms to rest on her hips, to urge her body even closer to his. The midnight blue of the air mixed with the silvery sheen of the moon and came together with the white bank of fog, surrounding them, cutting them off from the rest of the world.

Darius bent his head slowly to hers, drawn by some power other than his own, beyond even his comprehension. All that mattered at that moment was that he feel her satin-soft mouth beneath his. That he taste the wild honey of her. That he take control and end their mutual misery. He had to do this. It was as necessary to both of them as breathing.

His lips were firm yet velvet soft, moving over hers, gently coaxing her response. He felt her shift beneath his hands, glide right inside him, wrap herself tightly around his heart. His teeth tugged gently, insistently, until Tempest had to comply with his unspoken demand and open her mouth to him. The ground beneath his feet whirled alarmingly, but his mouth was fastened to hers, transporting him through time and space to somewhere he had never been.

Without conscious thought, without meaning to do so, Darius found her mind with his and merged them together, sharing his erotic fantasies, his joy in her existence. Sharing the way his body came to life and raged for her, needed her. Hungered for her.

Pure feeling. He was soaring high without wings, free-falling through space, and all the time the flames were leaping higher. He was lost in her, would always be lost in her. Her skin was so soft, her hair like silk. She was the miracle of life itself.

It was all there, sweeping Tempest along in the vortex of his passion, catching her desire and magnifying it until she didn't know where she left off and he began. Until they were one being consumed with fiery hunger. There was no room for self-preservation, no room for modesty; her need was every bit as great as his own.

His arms tightened possessively, sweeping her into the shelter of his hard masculine frame. Deep within his body, his blood thickened to molten lava, a firestorm sweeping through his entire system until he knew he was going up in flames.

We have to stop.

The words brushed like butterfly wings in his mind, breathless, erotic, filled with the same hunger and need threatening to consume them both, threatening his very control. Yet there was something else. Something new. Because their minds were merged, he recognized it for what it was; fear as elemental as time itself.

Darius pulled himself back to reality, away from the urgent demands his body was making and back toward a semblance of sanity.

Tempest was on fire, no longer herself but a part of Darius. They were one single and complete entity. She clung to him, the only safe anchor in a wild storm of magic. Darius lifted his head so that his mouth hovered inches from hers. They stared at one another, drowning in each other's eyes, awed that they could produce such a conflagration with only a kiss.

Tempest retreated, a subtle feminine withdrawal from him, trying to find herself and cool the terrible heat searing her body. She touched her mouth with her fingertips, unable to believe that she had helped to generate such flames.

"Do not say it, honey. I know exactly what you are going to say." That infuriating male amusement tinged his husky voice.

Tempest shook her head. "I don't think I can talk. Honestly, Darius, you're lethal. We just can't do this. It's too dangerous. I expected lightning to start arcing between us."

He shoved a hand through his dark mane of hair. "I swear I was hit by a bolt. White-hot and jagged, tore right through me."

Her smile was tentative but there all the same. "So we agree. No more of that."

Darius wrapped an arm around her body and found she was trembling. "I think plenty of that is the answer, Tempest. We have to learn to control it. The more practice we have, the better we will be."

"Better?" Tempest pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes enormous. "We don't dare get any better at it, Darius, or we could set the world on fire. I don't know about you, but I don't feel so great right now." Her body was heavy and aching for relief, sensitive to the slightest touch. Each time Darius brushed against her, darts of fire raced through her. She needed him, needed his body. "If we had any sense, we'd put half the world between us."

Darius brought her knuckles to the warmth of his mouth and was intrigued by two small scars on them. His tongue examined the faded white marks, a slow, velvet rasp of heat. Tempest closed her eyes against the smoldering desire in his eyes, against his blatant sensuality. This time she knew the instant conflagration wasn't caused only by her. She didn't do things like this, didn't seek instant intimacy. Ever. Who would have thought such a small touch, one look, could reduce her to liquid heat and an ache that would never stop again?

"Darius, you have to stop." She was half laughing but very near tears. "I have no idea what to do. I mean, you're a vampire."

He shook his head. "Not vampire, honey. God help us all, never that. I explained to you that the vampire has chosen eternal darkness, has chosen to lose his soul. You are my soul, my strength, the light to my dark. I am Carpathian, even though I was not raised with our people and my ways are somewhat different. I do not know the Prince of our people, the one who has undertaken to keep our species from extinction. I did not even know he existed or that my elder brother still lived until a few weeks ago."

Tempest began to laugh. "Isn't there anything normal we can converse about? Say, the weather? Unusual weather we're having." If he continued to talk to her about things her brain refused to comprehend, she was afraid she would lose her mind. Everything was happening far too fast.

His grin was teasing. "Would you like me to create a storm? We could make love in the rain."

"We can find the others and pretend there's safety in numbers," Tempest suggested firmly, ignoring the way her body went into meltdown at his outrageous suggestion. "I can see which of us is the practical one, and it isn't you." She tugged at his hand, leading him back toward the camp.

He followed her for a few minutes in puzzled silence. Finally, curious, he cleared his throat. "Tempest? Where exactly is it that we are going? Not that I mind - I will follow wherever it is you wish us to go - but to my recollection, this trail winds around a rocky ravine. It is unsafe."

She could feel the color rising beneath her skin and creeping up her neck. When she attempted to untangle her fingers from his, he clung to her like glue. She felt like kicking him in the shins. It was bad enough that he set her body on fire, but now she was completely flustered, while he looked the same as ever-calm, implacable, completely invincible.

"Just where is the camp, then?" she demanded through clenched teeth.

For a moment Darius stared at her. Then he blinked, wiping out the mocking amusement she was certain she had seen swirling in the depths of his eyes. He regarded her with a perfectly sober expression that made her want to really kick his shins. It took a goodly measure of self-control to keep from doing it.

"Don't lecture me. I normally have some sense of direction," she protested. "You must have put a spell over me or something. Just lead the way. And wipe that expression off your face while you're doing it."

He walked in silence, his body unconsciously protective toward hers. "What kind of spell did I put over you?" he asked gently, his voice that pure, mesmerizing, hypnotic cadence she couldn't seem to resist.

"How should I know?" she asked petulantly. "For all I know, you studied with Merlin." She regarded him with suspicion. "You didn't, did you?"

"Actually, honey, he was my apprentice," he said.

She put both hands over her ears, her fingers still entwined with his. "I don't want to hear this. Even if you're kidding, I don't want to hear this."

They reached the clearing, and Tempest stopped to stare at the empty grove. Only the truck remained. Not so much as a stray paper wrapper indicated that anyone had ever been there. She was destined to be alone with Darius whether she wanted it or not. "This isn't a conspiracy, is it?"

Darius laughed softly as he opened the door to the truck. "My family probably thinks I have lost my mind, but they would never conspire against you."

"But they would conspire for you," Tempest said with sudden insight. She tilted her head at him. "What would they do if this Prince of your people didn't like something you did?"

Darius shrugged casually with his natural arrogance. "I would not want my family to do other than stay out of my business. I have long taken care of myself and my own concerns. I answer to no one. I never have, and I would be unable to do so at this late date." His hands spanned her waist, and he lifted her effortlessly, depositing her on the seat of the truck. "Fasten your seat belt, honey. I would not want you to leap out at the first sign of trouble."

She was muttering under her breath as he slid behind the wheel. In the close confines of the truck, he seemed more powerful than ever. The width of his shoulders, the strong columns of his thighs, the heat of his body. Tempest swallowed the groan caught in her throat. His masculine scent beckoned to something wild and untamed in her. Her fingernails tapped out a nervous rhythm on the dashboard. "You know, Darius, maybe I should just take a bus."

He heard the shadow of desperation in her voice and chose to ignore it. After starting the engine, he reached over to touch her soft skin just once, his fingertip running down her cheek.

The feathery touch sent her heart racing. She knew he heard, knew he was aware of her blood rushing through her veins, was aware of her body ready for and needful of his. With a little sigh she sank down into the seat and laid her head back, closing her eyes.