Now he needed to feel her, taste her. To remember what it was to have her as his. To know the curve of her cheek, the touch of her hand, the smell of her skin.
He ended the kiss the moment he sensed she was about to pull back. But he didn’t release her. Instead, he continued to hold her head between his hands.
“I know you may hate me, and you’ve every right. But look around, Kins. This is home to us. Dragons and their mates. If you want to hurt me, then hurt me. Doona take the others down as well.”
Her hands came up and grasped his wrists. Then she tugged his hands away firmly and forcibly. “I thought you believed me.”
“I do.” Ryder straightened, his gut twisting with all the doubt and worry. “I staked my word on it just now.”
“Not from what you just said.”
“We’ve been betrayed before. If you’ve come to get your revenge, all I ask is that you leave the others out.”
She rolled her eyes and swiveled her chair back to the computers. “You’re a real piece of work. Telling me in one breath that you’ve got my back and believe me, and in the very next spouting drivel about revenge.” She gave a loud, angry snort. “Oh, I wanted to get back at you, but I’m past that.”
“All right.”
“No!” she shouted and turned her head to glare at him. “It’s not all right.”
Ryder felt something tighten around his chest, making it difficult to breathe. What had he said wrong? Why was she reacting so? All he wanted her to know was that if she was working with those at Kyvor to leave the others out of it.
He gave a shake of his head, unable to find the logic to connect what he’d done to her emotional outburst.
“Either you believe me or not.” Her eyes shot flames of annoyance and hurt.
“I believe you.”
“Right,” she stated sarcastically. “And don’t kiss me again.” She faced the computer, and this time she turned on her music, blaring it loudly.
His smile began slowly. So that’s what had gotten her so riled. The kiss.
She hadn’t just responded willingly, she’d wanted it as much as he. That must irritate her when she was trying so hard to pretend as if she had no feelings toward him anymore.
Now he knew differently.
Now Ryder was going after her with all he had. The fine line between love and hate had just been crossed with their kiss. It might not have been the words and caresses he’d been dreaming about giving her, but it was a kiss.
He tasted the hunger, the passion. The eagerness.
Ryder resumed his seat, where the smile quickly evaporated as he stared at the screen. Whatever wee bit of elation he’d felt vanished as he looked at the pictures of them together.
He easily piggybacked on Kinsey’s hack into Kyvor and went to the e-mail string about Kinsey. He pulled every picture they had of them onto a secure server.
Every moment of his time with Kinsey hadn’t just been recorded, it had been shared with a group. It took Ryder longer than he wanted trying to determine who the group receiving the e-mails were, but whoever set it up had gone to great pains to bounce the signal all over the world, creating an e-mail address within an e-mail address within an e-mail address.
It was taking him forever to break through one of the addresses, and every step that brought him closer to discovering the truth left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell Con that Ulrik might have someone working with him?”
Ryder paused in his typing at the sound of Kinsey’s voice. “Because it’s a theory.”
“Theories are what break open cases sometimes.”
“I’ve a million speculations about Ulrik. We doona have the time to chase all of them. He’s already ahead of us.”
“Then it’s time for you to gain an advantage,” she insisted. “There’s no way Ulrik can be running things on his own.”
Ryder ran a hand down his face. “It’s no’ so simple, Kins. We can no’ trust anyone.”
“Especially not humans.”
“I didna say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I understand,” she said, her voice laced with ire.
He sighed. “So many want to expose us.”
“And why do you care?” she asked as she threw up her hands. She spun the chair to face him. “You’re a bloody Dragon King. You can’t be killed by anything other than another Dragon King. Why not show the world who you really are?”
“We did that once. It didna work verra well, if you remember from my story.”
She looked down at her hands, picking at her thumbnail. “You’ve magic and powers. You can shift. You can fly and breathe fire. Why do you hide from us?”
“Because the alternative is to go to war with your race, and a second war means that one of us will be annihilated.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Henry called upon every ounce of his training in order to keep his cool, but nothing worked. He wanted to yell and hit something. Hard.
He stared at a face he knew, but his sister was no longer the same person. MI5 and Ulrik had done their job to perfection. The girl he remembered who always had a dirty joke to tell and who was known for her infectious laughter was gone.