Smoldering Hunger_Part 1 Read online

  “I didna ask about Dreagan. I know the bloody whisky is going to be fine. I asked how you were, you stubborn bugger.”

  “How the fuck do you think I am?”

  Darius smiled when he heard the anger in Con’s voice. Constantine was known for being as cold as ice in any situation. Few had seen him angry and lived to speak of it. “I almost feel sorry for the Dark for what we’re going to do to them.”

  “They need to be wiped from this realm.”

  “All Fae need to go. Even Rhi. They’ve caused nothing but problems.” Darius expected Con to agree regarding the Light Fae who had helped them in many situations, but the silence stretched on.

  “Rhi has too many friends among the Kings.”

  “And you want Usaeil as an ally.”

  “The Light Fae queen has nothing to do with this,” Con said tightly.

  His tone made Darius frown. Was that a tinge of irritation in Con’s tone? Over the Fae queen? Interesting. There were rumors among the Kings that Con was disappearing a lot of late. Many suspected he and Usaeil were now lovers.

  That wasn’t going to end well in any scenario.

  Darius changed the subject. “How is the tracking going on the Dark?”

  “No’ as well as before. Henry is making it his mission to track the Fae.”

  Henry. The only human who wasn’t a mate of the Kings. He’d been allowed to know their secret and enter their private domain. Henry was no mere human, however. He was one of the best spies Britain had to offer.

  “Are the nasty buggers back in Ireland like they’re supposed to be?”

  “Most. There’s still some stragglers. Too many for my comfort.”

  “If they’re in Edinburgh, I’ll find them.”

  Con’s sigh was loud enough to make it through the mental link. “We have to find Ulrik, Darius, and make him answer for this video. I’ll no’ have any of you take to your caves to hide from the mortals again. We survived it once. I’ll no’ ask it a second time.”

  “We understand what’s at stake. Ulrik knows we’re looking for him. We’ve been searching for weeks. Perhaps it’s time we ask Broc.”

  “Nay,” Con said with finality. “The Warriors and Druids already brought attention to themselves during the battle with the Dark in Edinburgh. This is our fight. We can find Ulrik ourselves.”

  “He’ll no’ stray far from Scotland, I’ll wager.”

  “Just be on the lookout. And remember, Darius, he can no’ be trusted.”

  Con severed the link before the last syllable was uttered. Darius looked over the lights of the city and thought of Con’s words.

  Ever since Darius woke and ventured from his cave a few months earlier, he’d known his time would be spent in battle. Con visited every King who slept and updated them on the world. Darius was well aware of Ulrik’s growing threats before he walked from his mountain.

  Now he, like the other Kings, was hunting one of their own. Ulrik was a menace to all the Dragon Kings. Ulrik might’ve brought Lily back from the dead for Rhys, but soon after he attempted to kill Darcy.

  Ulrik’s actions were chaotic and seemingly indiscriminate. Every time they thought they knew what he would do, Ulrik changed his motives. He surprised them with his decisions at every turn.

  It was a brilliant tactic to keep them guessing and on edge, not knowing what he would do next. No doubt it was driving Con mad with fury.

  Darius grudgingly acknowledged Ulrik’s cleverness. Then again, it was no surprise. Ulrik was one of the strongest of the Dragon Kings. He could’ve been King of Kings, and probably would’ve been had Con not wanted the position.

  The two of them had been close brothers. They were inseparable. Until Con took over as King of Kings. Ulrik never challenged him, even though it was Ulrik’s right to do so. Instead, Ulrik stood behind Con as their leader.

  Would things be different if Ulrik had challenged Con and won? Ulrik might’ve still been betrayed by his female human lover, but he wouldn’t have exiled himself. No doubt he’d still have started the war with the humans, but Ulrik would have wiped the realm of them.

  There’s one thing for certain, if Ulrik was King of Kings, none of the Dragon Kings’ problems would be there now. They wouldn’t be hiding from the humans. Nor would they be in a war with the Fae. The Fae wouldn’t be on the realm if it weren’t for the mortals.

  Perhaps Ulrik had been right all along. It was better to end the humans’ existence from the beginning.

  But that’s not what happened. Con was ruler, and Con had put an end to Ulrik’s war with the mortals. In order to keep the peace, their dragons were sent away and every Dragon King had hidden in their mountain on Dreagan for several centuries until the humans forgot about them.

  The Kings hid once. They wouldn’t hide again. It was already too much for them to curb when they could fly. Before the disaster with the video, they were only able to take to the skies at night or in a thunderstorm, and they remained on Dreagan when they did.

  Now, they were all effectively grounded since every mortal eye in the world was looking for a glimpse of a dragon.

  Part of Darius wanted to show the humans exactly who had been living beside them for thousands of years. He wanted all the Kings to take to the skies and demonstrate their power once and for all.

  The realm had been theirs from the beginning. They willingly shared it with the mortals, but now the Kings were shells of the great dragons they once were.

  And it saddened Darius to see how they had fallen so.

  He took a deep breath and pushed to his feet. He lowered his gaze to the streets around Edinburgh Castle. A frown puckered his brow when he thought he spotted a white-haired Fae on the street below, but in the next instant, he was nothing.

  Darius stared at the spot for a long time. The Fae could veil themselves. However, none but the most powerful of them could remain hidden for more than a few seconds.

  He scanned the streets and surrounding buildings, but saw nothing. Was he so desperate to kill that he was beginning to see Dark where there were none?

  And a white-haired Fae? There was no such thing as far as he knew. The Light Fae had hair as black as the night and eyes as silver as moonlight reflecting off a loch.

  The Dark Fae had silver streaked throughout their black locks. The more silver, the more evil they’d done. And their eyes were red as blood.

  It was true a Fae could cast glamour that allowed them to change their appearance, but why would one intentionally bring attention on themselves like the white-haired one?

  Darius rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He was tense, his thoughts troubled, and the need to take to the skies and soar along the currents was strong.

  How he longed to shift and spread his wings, to roar long and loud into the night and announce to one and all that he was there. How he yearned to feel the flap of his wings as he flew and felt the sun and moon upon his scales, to dip and dive, to turn and glide.

  He rubbed his chest, wondering at the ache that had settled there. His gaze lifted to the moon half-hidden by the thick clouds. There was a hunger inside him, but it wasn’t just to be in dragon form.

  It was for a red-haired beauty who enchanted him with her fiery kisses and willing body.

  Before he knew it, he was walking away from the castle. Darius was so lost in thought that he almost didn’t see Ulrik before he turned the corner.

  Darius quickly altered his steps and followed Ulrik. The exiled Dragon King walked alone. His steps were slow and unhurried as he looked around the city as if seeing what damage the Dark had done.

  Ulrik wore thick-soled black boots that made nary a sound, dark denim, and a dark red sweater. His black hair was pulled back in a queue at the base of his neck.

  A cold gust of wind howled through the street causing the mortals to hunker within their coats. Ulrik lifted his face to the gust.

  Darius almost opened the mental link and called to Con, but he hesitated. It would be better to know
where Ulrik was going and if he met with anyone first. If Darius notified Con, the King of Kings would want Ulrik taken immediately.

  It was well known that Ulrik was working with the Dark Fae. If the Kings could know their plans before it happened, then they would no longer be on the defensive. The Kings could be one step ahead of the bastards and win the war before it spilled over into the human world any more than it already had.

  Darius smiled and his thoughts faded when Ulrik finally stopped walking and Darius found himself standing in front of the Royal Victoria Hospital.

  Chapter Three

  Sophie’s back ached as she leaned against the nurses’ counter and finished writing notes in the file of her latest patient. Her temples throbbed with a headache that wouldn’t diminish, but at least her stomach had stopped growling.

  She closed the file and handed it to the waiting nurse before grabbing the next chart. She quickly scanned it, noting the many fractures and broken bones the woman had received over the last five years.

  “Another one, aye?” asked Claire as she walked past.

  Sophie leaned an elbow against the counter and rested her forehead into her hand. “Yes.”

  “Do the arses really believe we don’t know they’re hitting the women?” Claire asked with a snort. “All you have to do is look at where the injuries have taken place.”

  Sophie hated these cases. She glanced up at her friend Claire, one of the best nurses at the hospital. “She’s been admitted because he’s injured her windpipe.”

  “You can’t save them all, Soph,” Claire said in her soft, kind Scots voice.

  Unfortunately, Sophie learned that very early on when she was still in medical school in London and her roommate was beaten to death by her boyfriend.

  She took a deep breath and straightened, chart in hand. “I know.”

  “There’s a cute D.I. outside her room though.” Claire shot her a wink. “It’s been too long since your last date. It’s time to go have some fun, doc.”

  Sophie smiled and laughed because it was expected. And strangely enough there was a funny feeling in her stomach, almost like she knew something was coming.

  Seven years was a long time to be alone.

  She paused. Had it really been that long? She tallied the months, shocked to realize so much time had passed. Her career had flourished during that time.

  In truth, that was the only way she survived at first. She immersed herself in work, letting it consume every hour of her day—awake or sleeping. If she couldn’t rectify her own life, she could save others. She’d done it so well and for so long that it became second nature, a habit she hadn’t even comprehended she had.

  The thing was, nothing changed. She worked late-night shifts at the hospital, saw to those patients who couldn’t get to her, and was always ready to work if someone else wanted time off.

  It was all going smoothly, just as she planned. No bumps, no waves, nothing to mess with her calm, uneventful life.

  Then Darius arrived.

  From the first moment she saw him, she felt as if her blinders had been removed. He’d calmly handed her the address to tend to a friend of Darcy’s, and in the next breath, told her he wasn’t a good man.

  That should’ve sent her straight home without a second thought of him. Instead, she’d taken the address. Not because she never turned away someone in need—because she didn’t—but because he asked her for help.

  Why couldn’t she stop thinking of Darius? Why couldn’t she get him out of her head? It shouldn’t matter that his touch made her ache or that he brought her such pleasure. He hadn’t come to see her since that night. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours.

  And today. She glanced at her watch. That made it three hundred forty-eight hours, seventeen minutes, and ten seconds.

  Oh shit. What was happening to her?

  “Sophie?”

  She blinked and looked down to find Claire watching her with a worried look in her brown eyes. Sophie shot her a smile, but Claire cocked her blond head to the side and put a hand on her hip, telling Sophie she wasn’t buying the act for a second.

  “Just lost in thought,” Sophie said with a shrug.

  Claire raised her brows as she regarded Sophie. “By that look, I’d say it was a man.”

  A man? Darius was so much more. His presence seemed to make the earth still, waiting for his order. He commanded without a word, dominated with a look from his dark brown gaze.

  Man? No man she’d ever met could be so strong and imposing.

  And sexy.

  Her mouth went dry thinking of the hard line of his jaw and his lips that were soft and insistent. His eyes could cut coldly, but they could also blaze with a fire so hot that it could melt the sun.

  She knew what desire looked like reflected in his chocolate-colored depths. His eyes softened, turned downright sensual as he held her gaze, challenging her to try and look away.

  All the while his gorgeous body with rippling muscles brought her higher and higher, giving her ecstasy the likes of which she’d never known.

  And never known she could have.

  If she hadn’t been sore the next morning when she woke, she might have thought it all a dream.

  “I don’t know who he is, but you need to see him again,” Claire said, breaking into Sophie’s thoughts again. Her smile was wide, a knowing look in her eyes.

  Sophie swallowed and smoothed a hand over her hair to make sure the thick length was still in place. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Uh-huh,” Claire said with a wink. “Two weeks ago you walked in here with a flush to your skin and a smile on your lips. You wore the look of a woman who had been rode well. Ever since, you occasionally get that look in your eyes. I’m telling you as your friend, Soph, go see him again. Because if I could find a man who could make me look like that after sex, I’d chain him to my bed.”

  This time Sophie’s laugh wasn’t forced. She knew all too well Claire’s issues with men. She was a petite, pretty woman who had a bright smile and infectious laugh, and yet every guy she was interested in preferred someone else. Worse, it was all the wrong sorts of men who were attracted to Claire.

  If Sophie thought her years without a date was a long time, Claire wasn’t behind her by far. It was why the two of them had become such good friends.

  Sophie leaned down and whispered in Claire’s ear, “The sex was out of this world, but he’s also out of the picture.”

  She walked away, leaving Claire with her mouth gaping and questions in her eyes. Sophie inwardly laughed, because it was a rare thing when she got to shock Claire. Normally, it was Claire who astonished her on a daily basis.

  Sophie turned the corner and found a man leaning against the wall staring at her. He was drop-dead gorgeous in his dark red sweater and jeans.

  He wore a small smile about his wide lips as his golden eyes stared at her. His long black hair was pulled back, showing off the hard planes of his face.

  It unnerved her how he watched her, as if she were something to be studied under a microscope. Sophie pulled her gaze away from him, and stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted Darius.

  Her heart thumped in her chest and her stomach fell to her feet. She couldn’t decide if she was excited to see him or surprised. Especially after just thinking of him.

  The strands of his long, dark blond hair were windblown. Just disheveled enough to make him even sexier. His hair, in addition to the five o’clock shadow of a beard, made her blood race and her hands itch to touch him, to run her hands up his chest and over his thick shoulders once more.

  He watched her with his deep brown eyes without a hint of any emotion. While she was reeling from seeing him after so long and her body instantly beginning to throb with need, he felt … nothing.

  Sophie knew what kind of disaster lay with Darius. She’d sworn to never go down that path again. As tempting as he was—and good Lord was he tempting—she fortified the walls around her
heart.

  She walked into her patient’s room without a backward look to Darius. If only it was as easy to erase him from her thoughts as it was to look away.

  Yet, she couldn’t. In the middle of examining a young boy’s broken arm some time later, her hands shook as she thought about how Darius’s warm breath had fanned her skin right before he’d kissed the spot on her neck where it met her shoulder.

  Less than an hour later, her thoughts suddenly turned away from the chart she was reading to remembering how Darius’s large hands had held her so gently and firmly as he rocked his hips into her with such force that she felt his balls slap against her legs.

  Her eyes glazed over so that she had to read the chart four times before the words soaked in.

  When Claire dragged her to get something to eat, Sophie thought about Darius’s lips. How he kissed as if it were his last kiss, as if his very life depended upon it. From slow and sensual, to fast and fierce, he kissed her every way imaginable in a short amount of time.

  And she remembered every one of them.

  It had been so long since she’d last been kissed that he was seared upon her brain—every sound, every touch, every smell. It was as much a part of the memory as his kiss.

  Sophie had forgotten how good a kiss could be. She hadn’t recalled how a kiss could sweep her off her feet. Or how it could make her body sizzle and yearn to be touched. She forgot the desire, the heart-pounding hunger to quench the growing need a kiss could stimulate.

  Why couldn’t Darius be a bad kisser? It would’ve been so much easier had he been as bad as …

  Sophie halted her thoughts right then. She almost said his name. Quickly, she changed her thoughts. If she were comparing the two of them, then things had progressed to a point that was worrisome.

  Mind-blowing sex or not, Darius needed to be erased from her life from that moment on.

  She didn’t know why he’d shown up at the hospital after two weeks, but she wasn’t going to find out. Whatever mad thoughts prompted her to throw caution to the wind and let him take her in the shadows were gone.

  Sophie was in control of herself once more. The serene, rational Sophie who never had fun or did anything reckless or wild.