She tugged her shirt over her head. “Me, vulnerable? Did you see me kicking that demon’s ass?” Oh, no. What if he was just using that as an excuse? “No, don’t explain. It was obviously just Dragon lust. You made it clear that I was too young and not your type.” She hoped he would negate that and look at her the way he had when he’d said she was beautiful.
He kept his expression carefully masked, his voice even when he said, “You are too young. Definitely not my type.”
“So you agree that this”—she gestured to indicate the electricity between them—“is only because of our horny Dragons?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing to do with Ruby wanting Cyn. Or…Cyn wanting Ruby?”
“Nothing at all. Once we’re done with this, and we’re apart from each other, you’ll forget all about me.”
Which meant the opposite was true as well. He would forget about her. All righty then. Get that through your head, Ruby. He doesn’t want you. Even as he was doing everything in his power to keep her safe. “Why did you swear to become my protector? That’s some serious business if it means laying your life down for someone.”
The heat in his expression was gone, but his Dragon was flexing its talons and looking at her as though it would eat her. And not in the bad kind of way. Her own Dragon responded, aching to reach out to him.
Stop it.
“You were an orphan like me.”
“You’re an orphan?”
“You needed a Dragon to guide you, teach you. Since my organization made you an orphan, I accepted the duty to be that Dragon.” He obviously didn’t want to go into his own past, gliding right over it.
She remembered his expression when he’d told her about the massacre. “Your parents died during the Mundanes’ ambush, didn’t they?”
He hesitated before answering. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I was sleeping on my parents’ bedroom floor after having a bad dream. I woke to gunshots, and by the time I got up, the Mundanes were already running down the hall. My mother took her last breath as I gripped her hand. My father could only blink as blood poured from his head. The Mundanes ducked into each of our rooms, splattering the beds with gunshots, and then moved on to the next house. My brother was dead. I would have been, too, if I’d been in my own bed.”
He had kept emotion from his voice, but she saw it in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing better than anyone that no words could ever soothe the past.
He walked to the cabinet to turn off the music. “Get a shower. We’re going to see another friend of mine. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Chapter 14
Purcell lit a cigar and settled at the desk in the lab to study the latest solar event alert from the Space Weather Prediction Center. The experts had been warning about the solar maximum for months now, the peak of storm activity that occurred every twelve years. Two smaller eruptions had already passed the Earth with little effect, but the one that had just erupted was supposed to be a three or four out of five on the NOAA Space Weather scale. It would affect the Earth’s magnetic field in two days when the coronal mass ejection hit.
That’s what he was counting on.
But he had learned in the more than three hundred years of his life not to count on anything. Not on the company of his first two wives, whose lives had been cut short. Not on the fidelity of his third and final wife. He had lost two of his offspring during the earlier, violent years of Miami. By the time his remaining son was born—if he was, indeed, his biological son—Purcell had stopped caring about much. Darren had been simpering and desperate to please, going into physics just to make his father happy. As in everything else in his life, Darren was only average in his efforts.
Darren wasn’t naturally inclined to the sciences, but he’d tried. His biggest achievement was introducing Purcell to his brilliant friend. Justin had an amazing idea about creating portable Deus Vis so Crescents could leave the Field for extended periods of time. He only needed funding, a facility in which to work, and privacy. Purcell offered him all for a cut of the tremendous profits they would reap. Perhaps Miami would be less crowded and less dangerous if Crescents could leave. Gone were the days when they numbered in the hundreds, when the different classes remained separate rather than interbreeding and muddying the purity of their bloodlines.
Justin’s goals centered on offering freedom rather than gaining notoriety or profit. Purcell suspected Darren garnered a sense of importance from being associated with the project.
When Justin’s last version disturbed the Deus Vis, he took a step back to re-evaluate his process. Fallon had felt the disturbance on the godly plane and saw it as a way to gain their freedom. That he and the other two gods in the notorious Tryah needed Purcell was an even bigger rush of power. Suddenly Purcell was infused with a higher purpose. Not only helping gods but also finding a more permanent way to clear out many of the Crescents. He had used financial incentives, including a yacht, to push Justin to continue. Brom’s vision of mass death proved that they were on the right track, but it frightened Justin into destroying all of his research and prototypes.