Page 11 of Hunter

Their deaths occurred twelve years ago, if Zoey had been eight at the time. The fact his mate was only aged twenty in human years was a little difficult to comprehend, but Belle was the same age as Zoey, and she was the perfect mate for Lachlan. Maybe both women, because of their pasts and present circumstances, were old souls, and so those souls melded with those of a twelve-hundred-year-old dragon.

Not that their respective ages would matter, because once the two of them were mated, Zoey’s lifespan would be linked to his own. She would also, and Belle had been thrilled by this, be able to shift into a dragon and fly at his side.

Once the two of them were mated.

Hunter bared his teeth in a smile. “Then, Zoey, it will be my pleasure and my greatest honor to accompany you anywhere you wish to go,” he finished his earlier sentence.

Her brows rose. “Anywhere?”

His gaze continued to meet hers. “Anywhere,” he confirmed huskily.

CHAPTER FIVE

Zoey was lostin the riotous tumbling of her thoughts as she drove them toward St. Ives. It was January, and the middle of the day, so there were very few tourists and little other traffic on the smaller roads they were traveling on.

The man sitting so uncomfortably beside her, even with the seat pushed all the way back and the back tilted as far as it would go, had now admitted he was Hunter Drake. A man she knew normally lived in the Scottish Highlands, as did his brothers, Lachlan and Ranulf.

The fact that Hunter was nowhere, in Cornwall, was surreal.

The fact that he had stated that Ben hadn’t fallen down the mountain but had beendroppedonto it from a helicopter was deeply alarming.

Did the fact that Hunter had come to Cornwall, that he had come specifically to Tregarthen House where Edgar Wallis made his home and also owned and flew his own helicopter, mean that Hunter thought the other man might somehow have been involved in Ben’s death?

But what possible reason could Edgar, a man who made no secret of the fact he held most other human beings in contempt, possibly have had to kill one of the students Zoey shared a house with in London? And why would he have waited until Ben had returned to his home in Scotland to do so?

None of what Zoey had learned about the situation so far made any sense.

And yet she also found she couldn’t quite bring herself to disbelieve the possibility of Edgar somehow being involved in these strange events.

He was a cold man who had always shut himself away in his study, or he occasionally disappeared for several days or weeks at a time. She had assumed that during those times, he was indulging in the historical research which seemed to have taken up most of his adult life.

Quite what that research was, Zoey had no idea, nor had she ever bothered to ask or show an interest. Edgar had always treated her like a child, even when she became an adult, and he hadn’t ever encouraged her to ask him questions about anything, let alone the subject of his obsession.

“Could you turn off at the road ahead, please?” Hunter suddenly bit out between gritted teeth as he indicated the small B-road to the left a short distance in front of the Mini.

Zoey knew that particular sideroad grew narrower and narrower until it was only wide enough for a single small vehicle to maneuver down. The road disappeared completely when it opened out onto one of the many small beaches situated around the rugged Cornish coastline.

A small and secluded beach where there would be no other human beings to see or hear if Zoey called out for help.

Was she going to need to call for help?

Hunter was a stranger, a huge and dominating one, and his presence in Cornwall was also suspect after the things he had told her. Even so, Zoey didn’t sense any imminent threat from him toward her, physically or otherwise.

She felt more in danger of succumbing to the insidious seduction of his musky scent.

It was unlike anything she had ever breathed in before. A heady combination of wind and rain, pine needles carpeting a forest floor, all underlined with the smell of the burning of dry leaves in autumn.

Zoey could also still sense thatsomething moreroiling, being a turbulence, beneath Hunter’s outer shell of calm. But whatever that something was, it didn’t feel in the least threatening. The opposite, in fact.

For some reason, Hunter Drake’s presence made her feel safer than she ever had before.

Nor had Zoey ever felt so aware of a man as she now did, sitting beside Hunter in the small confines of the Mini.

It wasn’t just that he was sopresentand physically took up at least two-thirds of the space inside her car. He also exuded a brooding sensuality that Zoey was aware of to the very depths of her core.

Along with that heady musk that had now invaded her senses, causing her breasts to swell and her nipples to harden and between her thighs to become plump and wet.

A visceral reaction that was previously unknown to her.

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