Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (18 page)

“Try to stay out of trouble and when I get back, a
s
suming you’ve been a good little
girl; I
will bring you
di
n
ner, and if you're
lucky, I might even let you feed you
r
self.”

She sneered at him. “Oh you’re so gracious
,
kind sir,” she said in her most sarcastic rendition of
Scarlet
O’Hara. “You’re generosity knows no bounds.”

Pursing his lips and n
arrowing his eyes in his best I-am-not-
amused look, he flashed from the room
,
not caring what she thought.
It served
her right for being such a pain in the ass. He chuckled at the thought that she was probably shitting her pants right now. Then he sobered, realizing who would be responsible for cleaning up the
mess.

Damn. He really needed to think before he acted.

He appeared in front of
Behr,
who was sitting in the same spot against the wall where he had last seen him, looking as if he had never
moved.

“You called?” he asked, meeting Behr’s gaze.

“Yes, sir,” Behr said
,
coming to a stand. “I just got a visit from our little hellion.” Erias looked at him expec
t
antly. “Need I mention that she was not happy?”

“She’s never happy,” Erias said dryly. “What else is new?”

“What’s new is that she just gave me a new assig
n
ment.” He paused for effect. “Watching over you. Making sure you don’t get out of line with the female.”

Erias cursed under his breath
,
feeling like he wanted to put his fist through a wall. “What did you tell her?”

Behr choked on a laugh. “What was I supposed to tell her? Gee, no thanks
,
Sephy, I think I’ll pass on this one? Yeah right. Of course I told her I would.” He stepped back and put his hands up in surrender when Erias turned a lethal glare on him. “You know I won’t say anything, man. It’s just a job. I have to cover my ass too
,
you know. Not
h
ing personal.”

“Yeah, I know,” he grumbled. Pacing back and forth through the corridor, Erias raked his fingers through his hair. “This is so not good.”

“Hey.
” Behr came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “At least it’s me checking in on you and not the devil herself. Nobody said I had to deal in accuracies.”

Erias huffed. “Yeah, and we all know what a stic
k
ler for specifics the boss is.
It seems
she’s still
learning.”

“And it’s a good thing we’re not.” The men shared a smile. “So, where’s the lady in question?”

Erias gave him a sidelong look. “She’s a little tied up at the moment.”

Behr punched him in the shoulder. “You dog! Damn
,
man, you are so going to hell.”

“Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Besides, look who’s talking.” Sobering, Erias studied the wall behind them
where
several hundred years
ago
all Hell had broken loose. Literally. “I can’t let her come back here, but I’m running out of options.”

Behr gave him a funny look. “Whatever it is, you’ll figure it out.”

“I’m glad you have so much faith in me.
‘
Cause I sure as hell don’t.” Sighing, Erias flashed back to his room at the B & B and into utter chaos.

Chapter 14

Holding a plate with what appeared to be a steak with mashed potatoes and gravy and a tall glass of pop, though it was hard to tell from her inverted position, Che
y
enne took in Erias’s deadpanned look.

Caught in the act, she knew what this must look like and,
well...Yeah,
it was exactly what it looked
like.

Braced against the headboard
,
which was now res
t
ing against the floor, her ass was raised high in the air
,
aimed directly at him.

“Hey,” she said coyly from under her right bicep.

Erias took in the destruction of his room. How in the
world…Never
mind, he didn’t want to know.
Setting the plate of steak and potatoes on what was left of the card table; he took time out to survey the
room.

The bed was…no longer a bed. The mattress was halfway to the floor resting on top of a pile of porcelain that used to be a table lamp. The linens were torn to shreds and heaped in a pile on the carpet.

The artwork–and he used that term loosely
– was dangling precariously by a single nail still stuck in the pla
s
ter. And there was a round hole
punched
through the center of it like she had driven her heel through it.

He looked around the room appreciatively. “I like what you’ve done to the place. It
really
has that warm, homey feel to it
,
doesn’t it?”

Cheyenne wanted to
run. She
really did. His calm demeanor wasn’t at all comforting. She
,
more than anyone
,
knew how overbearing he was. And he sure as hell wasn’t above manhandling
her.

Though she had to give him credit, he hadn’t hit her…yet.

As it was, she was pretty much stuck here. The m
i
nute he had....well, done whatever it was that he
did; she
had fought viciously with her restraints, determined to get free
,
even if she died trying. She didn’t know what kind of freak he was, but she wasn’t about to stick around and find
out.

Flipping the mobile part of her body off the
bed,
she had kicked the mattress to the side and gone to work on the
wing nuts
holding the headboard to the frame. It had taken forever and once she had it
free; she
quickly found that
it
had been the easiest part of
all.

Next came getting out of the room with the damn thing still attached.

Made of solid iron
,
she nearly wrenched her back out trying to pull the headboard high enough off the floor to clear the frame. In the
process,
she had taken out the lamp and knocked into the painting on the wall, puncturing it with the bulbous finial on the ends of the
headboard.

As if that wasn’t enough, she had fallen quite a few times
,
and not all of them ended in the position she was in now. No, it had been much more painful the time she had lost her balance and
,
in the process of trying to recover he
r
self, had stumbled backward, tripped over the chair and landed on top of the chintzy table that promptly shattered under
her
weight.

She couldn’t even recount how many tries it had taken to get where she was now. Shifting to relieve the pressure on her back at having stood so long in this hunched over position, she looked up at Erias and couldn’t believe what she what came out of her
own
mouth.

“I think I got a splinter in my ass when I broke your table.”

For more than nine hundred years no one, not rea
l
ly, had ever made him laugh the way he was right now. Never touched that
spot,
deep down. What he felt right now was indescribable. Actually, it wasn’t. He was happy. For the first time in forever, he was truly
happy.

What was it about this woman that made him so
a
n
gry,
and yet he couldn’t stay mad at
her?
How did she make him feel like he wanted to choke her one second and kiss her the next? It was insanity
,
plain and simple
, and
yet…he
would take this craziness over his solitary life any
day.

Reaching over, he helped her raise the
headboard,
so she could stand upright. “I see you managed to keep
yourself busy while I was gone.” He smiled, brushing her fiery
hair from her eyes. “Have fun?”

She stared up at him, not sure what to say. Should she say anything? Was this a trick?

Usually when a prisoner tried to escape and got caught
,
the punishment was brutal. And after the throw downs they had had so far, she had to believe he would do something. Chop her foot off so she couldn’t run. String her up and whip her. Maybe cut out her
tongue,
so she couldn’t
scream.

At
least,
that was what happened in the
movies.

She did have a terrible time watching her
mouth,
though, but
that was how she’d always been. Most days her thoughts just spewed out of her mouth before she could even think about what she was saying. It was a trait she had gotten from her mother. And it had always gotten her into
trouble.

In this
case,
she decided to err on the side of self–preservation and keep her mouth shut before she put her foot in it and got her ass beat down…or turned into a crispy critter
again.

Speaking of, when she thought about her having been fried
,
she knew, in the pit of her stomach, that wha
t
ever he was, he had caused that. It wasn’t some gadget that he had rigged up to keep her from leaving. He had done something to her.

Searching his eyes, she looked for some clue as to what he was.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Erias asked when she narrowed her eyes on him and began studying him like he was some sort of lab
rat,
and she was deciding where
best
to make the
incision,
so she could dig into his brain to see what made him
tick.

“What are you?” she asked suspiciously.

Dropping his hold on her, Erias crossed the room and began picking up the mess. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m just a man.”

“The hell
—”
Cheyenne stumbled against the heavy weight of the frame. Catching her balance, she played it cool
despite
the overwhelming embarrassment and shook her head to clear the hair that had fallen into her eyes. “The hell you are. You disappeared. Poof. Gone. Since when does “just a man” ever do anything like that?”

Looking up at the ceiling in exasperation, Erias glanced briefly at her expectant face. “Would you believe me if I said I was a magician?”

“Are you?”

“No.” Damn him and his unfailing honesty. Why couldn’t he lie? Tossing the mattress back on the frame, he whipped the sheet off the floor and started smoothing it over the bed.

“Then what?”

Not wanting to answer her, but finding it impossible to lie, Erias tried to change the subject. “Aren’t you hu
n
gry?” he asked, motioning to the plate of food behind her.

“No,” she said, mocking his response to her.

“I get the feeling that you are a hard woman to di
s
suade.”

“I’m like a dog with a
bone, or
so I’ve been told.” Cheyenne wanted to slap herself. Had she really just li
k
ened herself to a dog? Jesus. “Come on, who am I going to tell?” When he looked like he still wasn’t going to tell her, she used the same voice that had melted the best of men at her feet. “Please
,
Erias?” she crooned. “You can trust me.”

Damn that woman was good. Batting her eyelashes through the
wrought-iron 
bars, she had a devilish gleam in her eyes. The kind that said you could trust
her…. About
as far as you could throw her.
However,
knowing that he wasn’t the average
guy,
and she was a mere female, o
ne that he had currently under his lock and
key; he
couldn’t really see that harm in telling
her.

Besides, he was tired of always keeping himself hidden away. Tired of all the lies needed just to survive. It was why he never lied when he had a choice. It was hard to keep them all straight and
,
quite frankly, he felt like a lie himself.