Gift of Fire

the damn crystals.
    Preston Yarwood was the last person to walk into the salon. Jonas watched his face as he took in the sight of his lover stretched out unconscious.
    “
Elyssa!
What the hell happened?” Yarwood hurried forward, looking genuinely stricken. “Is she all right? What’s wrong, dammit!”
    “She must have fallen,” Crump said as he and Verity wrapped Elyssa in the blankets. “The rain has probably made the ground treacherous around the top of the cliffs. She’s alive, but unconscious.”
    “But she was fine when I left her,” Yarwood said helplessly. He stopped talking as everyone glanced up at him.
    Doug Warwick looked at Yarwood for a long moment before he said briskly, “As soon as you’ve got her warmed up, Oliver, I’ll take her into town. There’s a small hospital on the other island.”
    Oliver nodded, his attention on his patient. “She probably has a concussion, but I don’t see any indication of other injury. I don’t think she was in the water very long. I’ll go with you in the boat.”
    “Thanks,” Doug said. He looked at Verity. “And thank you too, Verity. If you hadn’t found her when you did…”
    “That water’s mighty cold,” Maggie Frampton observed grimly. She had appeared a few minutes earlier and was standing stiffly in the doorway. “Person could die of exposure. Hypothermia, they call it.”
    We know, Maggie,” Slade Spencer said, cutting her off. His contribution to handling the crisis was to pop another pill into his mouth.
    Jonas saw Oliver, Doug, and a well-wrapped Elyssa off on the launch a half-hour later.
    “Oliver and I will be back in the morning with the launch,” Doug said as Jonas tossed him the lines.
    “Right. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
    Doug was silent for a moment as he stood in the bobbing launch. “Elyssa and Yarwood have been arguing a lot lately,” he finally said. “Yarwood was furious about something this morning. This afternoon he came back from that walk alone.”
    Jonas looked at him, feeling a wave of masculine empathy. He’d be looking for someone to punish too, if anything had happened to Verity. “I wouldn’t read too much into it, Doug,” he counseled softly. “Chances are she really did just slip and fall.”
    Doug’s mouth twisted wryly. “I know. Guess I was out of line. Elyssa’s a pain in the ass, but she is my sister.”
    Jonas decided privately that he’d go along with that analysis. Elyssa was indeed a pain in the ass. But he owed her. After all, if she hadn’t pulled that seduction scene in Hazelhurst’s torture chamber this morning, he would have missed one of the great erotic encounters of all time.
    It wasn’t just the manacles and Verity’s technique with a velvet whip he was going to recall for the rest of his life. It was the hungry, passionate, possessive way she had made it clear that he belonged to her and her alone.
    Yeah, Jonas decided. He owed Little Miss Pain in the Ass Sunshine. He stood on the floating dock until the launch was out of sight.
    But as he headed back toward the ugly villa, his thoughts were on Preston Yarwood. Caitlin Evanger had said the lab report on Yarwood declared him dangerous in some vague way.
    Jonas thought about his own recent experiences with jealousy. It was a powerful force. Furthermore, he knew, from the brief occasions in the psychic corridor when he’d picked up on the rage of a wronged man, that a violent reaction was not uncommon in a jealous male. He’d held rapiers that cuckolded men had once used to avenge their honor. He’d felt the shattering fury that could lead a man to commit murder.
    It was possible that Yarwood had known such fury this morning.
    Jonas shook off the thoughts as he walked back into the main hall. Verity was coming downstairs. She had dried her hair and changed her clothes.
    “Did they get off okay?” she asked anxiously.
    “They’re gone.” Jonas looked up at her and came to a decision. “Put on a coat, Verity,” he said softly. “I want to go for a walk.”
    She frowned. “Now?”
    He nodded. “Now. It’s stopped raining.”
    Verity hesitated. He thought she might ask a few more questions but she didn’t. She hurried back upstairs and came down with another parka.
    “Where are we going?” she asked as he helped her into the jacket.
    “Out to the cliff where Elyssa fell.”
    Verity looked up at him questioningly as they went outside. “You suspect something, don’t you?”
    “I just want to see if