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“Diana, please listen to me,” he held my face in his hand, and those honey eyes held my gaze, forcing me to pay attention. “You need to stay in their house. It’s the safest place for you to be right now. Learn everything you can, as fast as you can. Desmond will train you in everything you need to know. Meet me here everyday and check in, promise me?”
“Only if you tell me everything you know, and stop keeping secrets from me.” I was putting my foot down. He needed to spill the tea, now.
“I can’t do that right now. Eventually, I’ll tell you everything, but right now you just need to trust me.”
Diana, can you hear me, where are you?Fuck! Desmond had awful timing.
I couldn’t go back yet. I needed answers and I had no clue when I would be alone to see Zaz again.
“Please, what’s looming around the corner? Please tell me so I can prepare. How do you know all of this anyway?”Please.I sounded so desperate. A tear ran down my face. He swiped it away with his thumb, keeping my face in his hand.
“I can’t tell you yet.”
“Who are you, and how do you know the guys?” I needed to know something.
“I told you, think of me as your guardian angel. I’m the guy who looks out for you. I know the guys because we used to be acquainted. Most immortals at least know of each other… I knew them well.” He looked away from me. There was definitely something deeper there. That wasn’t the whole story.
DIANA! Where are you?Desmond yelled through the mindlink.
“Desmond is mindlinking me. I don’t have a ton of time. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
He slanted his lips over mine, kissing me with a slow, smoldering heat as if I wasn’t running out of time. His tongue traced the seam of my mouth, and I opened for him, letting him take what he needed from me. I was kidding myself if I denied needing it too. As cryptic as Zaz acted, I was still attracted to him.
He broke the kiss. “Just because I can’t tell you the answers, doesn’t mean you can’t figure them out. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s most likely…” He trailed off, looking at me expectantly.
“A duck?” I said, confused.
“Exactly. Think about that, and try to check in with me everyday. Go Diana, they already know you’re gone. Say you were in the woods outside of the wards. There’s a weak spot near the car garage that you could have escaped through.”
My head was swimming with questions. How did he know there was a weak spot there, or that there were woods outside beyond the grounds?
Diana, are you safe, can you hear me?!Desmond again. I would be royally screwed when I got back. If Desmond was looking for me, that meant the others were too.
Taking deep breaths to help me focus, I closed my eyes.
I want to go back to my suite in the mansion, in the present day. I want to go back to my suite in the mansion, in the present day. I want to go back to my suite in the mansion, in the present day.
I kept repeating it in my mind. The firm lap I sat on was replaced by something much softer. I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on my bed in my suite. I barely got a chance to breathe before four concerned men faded into my room.
“Where were you?” Desmond and Bash said at the same time. Their shared tone of concern did not bode well for me. I felt like a teenager who was about to get grounded. No phone, no keys, no seeing the outside world.Wait, I was already grounded.
Ares pounced on me, flattening me against the bed while he kissed my cheek and cried, “Little Goddess, what happened? Where were you? WHY DID YOU LEAVE?!”
“You’re crushing me! Get off me, right now.” I didn’t sound too convincing though. I loved the way his heavy body felt against mine and needed to take a few seconds to gather my thoughts so I could tell a convincing lie. “What’s he doing here?” I gestured to Malcolm, who was standing away from everyone toward the closet.
“I helped look for you,” he said slowly, his voice tentative and unsure.
“Birdie, answer me. Where were you?” Bash walked over to me, leaning into my neck as he inhaled a deep sniff. “You smell familiar, like a pine tree. Ares get off of her.” Ares got off me, but insisted on me sitting in his lap and squeezing me half to death.
“I was in the woods near the garage. It seemed reasonably safe, so I took a walk to clear my head. It’s beautiful back there.” I made sure to hold eye contact with him. “I leaned against a tree to rest, maybe it was a pine tree?”
“That’s at the edge of the grounds. How did you get past the wards?” Bash grabbed my face and kissed me. “Youtastelike pine.”
“I got some sap on my hands and needed some spit to get it off. That shit is sticky.” My secret was about to get blown wide open. I needed to use my biggest, baddest attitude to turn the tide. “Whyare you interrogating me like I did something wrong? I almost died last night, and I needed to clear my head and process that.”
“Because you did,” Desmond said. He wasn’t as mad as Bash was, but his deep, irritated voice signaled that he was less than happy with me. “Part of our deal was that you wouldn’t leave the grounds unless you wanted to suffer penalties.”
“Oh I won’t be, because I didn’t realize that I had left the grounds. It’s not my fault your wards have a weak spot. I don’t live here, this isn’t my home. How am I supposed to know where the grounds begin and end? For fuck’s sake, you don’t even have a FENCE!!!” I worked myself up to the point where I was shouting like a lunatic. I didn’t care that I was lying; they were acting unreasonable.
