Without removing focus from his work, Jonas kicked out a chair for Elias.
Elias shook his head and started to pace. “I’ll stand.”
“Are you sure, buddy?” Tucker drawled, twisting the glass on the table. “You’ve had a pretty strenuous evening.”
Goddamn vampires and their inconveniently heightened hearing. “Not another word about it,” Elias warned, hitting Tucker with a death glare. “Especially to her.”
Jonas finally set down his papers. “Ginny tells me Roksana is your mate.”
“Yeah. We’re all in shock,” Tucker deadpanned. “How is she handling it?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not talking to you about it,” Elias snapped. But his concern was layered on top of more concerns and he could no longer keep them to himself. So a second later, he broke his own rule. “She was different tonight.”
She looked at me like she’d forgotten to hate me.
She…let me in. Let me deep.
If Elias was being honest, he was still shaken from the permission she’d granted with her body. For a woman like Roksana, trust was a rarely bestowed gift, especially where he was concerned. Whatever had inspired the change in Roksana, he was damned grateful for it, but the turmoil inside of her was still apparent—and his mate being anything but happy left him bashing up against the rocks.
Jonas picked up a gold letter opener, holding it up so it caught the firelight. He struck Elias as being conflicted about something, but he knew Jonas wouldn’t share until he was good and ready. Such was the prerogative of a king.
“We spoke before you boarded the flight in Moscow, to make sure Roksana would be protected if she went straight to Coney Island. Yet she came here instead.”
“Roksana makes her own rules. I just try to keep up.” Elias finally dropped into the offered chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Did Tucker already fill you in on the poker game in Moscow?”
“Three, potentially four murders and a burned down mansion?” Jonas pinned the paperwork with the tip of the letter opener. “Trust me, I heard about it long before you arrived. If the Russian High Order didn’t have an aversion to fae, there might have been consequences.”
“Hand to God, it was craziest fucking night of my life,” Tucker said, slapping a palm over his heart. “And I’ve been to WrestleMania three times.” He raised an eyebrow at Elias. “You tell Jonas you’ve got fire powers yet? Fire powers, bro. You’re like a goddamn X-Man.”
Jonas inclined his head. “Jesus. A lot happened in Russia.”
“The fae gave us this concoction—”
“Let’s not talk about that,” Elias cut in.
“No, I think I’d really like to hear this,” Jonas said, settling back in his wingback chair. “What kind of concoction?”
Tucker elevated the tone of his voice several octaves and put on a French accent. “Once drunk, the concoction determines what you desire most in life and amplifies it to make you compete harder.” His voice went back to normal. “Basically, we were there to entertain this crazy French fairy chick and her weird boyfriend. And then a bunch of people got shot or burned alive.”
“Good thing none of it happened on my turf.” Jonas’s expression was incredulous. “You drank this mixture, Elias? I can see Tucker tossing back just about anything—no offense—”
“None taken,” Tucker said, good-naturedly.
“But you?”
Elias drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “The concoction presented an unknown and I don’t take chances with her. I wanted to make sure Roksana didn’t drink any, so I downed both.” A moving image of Roksana straining and moaning beneath him on the floor of the mansion had him gripping the wooden arm of the chair. “It had an effect.”
Understanding dawned in Jonas’s eyes. “Because she is what you desire most.”
“You know that’s always been the case,” Elias rasped, unable to meet the king’s gaze. “The concoction stripped my ability to hide my…devotion, so now she knows it, too. Perhaps that knowledge makes it harder for her to hate me.”
Tucker chuckled, but his brow was wrinkled. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“She needs her vengeance against me. If she loses me as her target…”
“She’ll start searching for the correct one,” Jonas concluded, his face inscrutable. “I don’t understand. Why is that a bad thing?”
Finding out what led to the massacre in Vegas could get her killed. Inessa had vowed to lop her head off in Red Square if Elias spilled the secret and that venomous promise still rang in his ears. The mere thought of Roksana taking a final breath boiled his gut in acid. He couldn’t even voice that fear out loud. Nothing would endanger her. Nothing.
Not as long as he walked the earth.
There was more to his silence where Inessa was concerned, too. Years ago he’d made the vow to himself that he wouldn’t take away the final thing Roksana loved. Her mother. Exposing Inessa would do that, right enough. He would protect his mate from her evil mother, but he wouldn’t be the one who trashed the one who’d given her hope. Purpose.