Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Read online

He scowled at her. “My woman?”

  She jerked her head towards the door behind her. “The one that was just here.”

  His golden eyes shifted to it. “My mother.”

  He had to be joking.

  “Leave.” His expression changed abruptly, darkening around twenty degrees, and he pushed the drink back at her again. “Last warning.”

  Eva wished he would look at her with the same consuming fire that had been in his eyes when he had stared at the woman. There was only ice in them, as thick and impenetrable as a glacier.

  As much as she was beginning to want to leave, she couldn’t. Not until she had done what she had come here to do.

  “The people visited me.”

  His face lost some of the darkness at least, gaining a glimmer of curiosity. It lasted all of a second before the veil descended again. He picked up the shot glass and glared through the clear liquid at her.

  “So it’s poisoned then.”

  Eva glared right back at him. “Poison isn’t my style.”

  He laughed, a mirthless and dark sound. Fine. She had drugged him and at the time she had been convinced it had been poison in the darts and in the syringe.

  “It’s their style. I do what the client wants.” She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to defend herself with him.

  Did she want him to approve of her? Would he think less of her if she was the sort of assassin that employed poison as a tool rather than choosing a more intimate method of dispatching their marks?

  She remembered how confident he had been with only a blade, that all the times she had seen him fight he had only ever used a knife. Never a gun.

  Never a drug.

  He sniffed the shot glass, looked as if he might drink it, and then held it away from his lips again.

  “It’s just booze. I thought you needed it. You looked as though you were breaking up.”

  He slammed the glass down with a sharp bang. “She’s my mother!”

  A few patrons looked her way and she smiled at them all, hoping they would go back to dancing and drinking, leaving them alone again.

  Was he serious?

  “Leave,” he bit out and shoved the shot glass towards her, spilling more of the contents. “Final warning.”

  He was fond of issuing those, but he didn’t seem inclined to act on them. At least not with her.

  Eva might have obeyed him this time, but when he had shouted at her he had revealed something about him that she had never noticed before, and she felt pretty damn sure she should have given the fact that tongue had been in her mouth, rasping over her flesh, just a few hours ago.

  There was a stud in it.

  A plain metal ball right in the centre of the tip.

  How the hell had she missed that during their little make-out session?

  Her pulse pounded in response and she wrestled with the sudden flush of desire that rushed through her, somehow managing to get a lid on it and remain in control.

  There was something terribly sexy about it, something wicked and alluring that tugged at her and made her want to crawl onto the table and kiss him, but at the same time it rang warning bells in her head.

  Was he a player?

  It was the sort of thing such a man would have. Plus, he had looked very close to the woman who had just left, yet he hadn’t turned Eva down last night when she had been all over him. She wasn’t buying his line that the woman was his mother.

  His golden eyes burned into her.

  Maybe it was his step mother?

  “She’s really your mother?” She had to ask, because it was beginning to get weird. First Jin talking about Benares being her brother, even though the bitch clearly had a thing for him. Now Valen was speaking about a woman he had looked more like a lover to than a son being his mother.

  He sighed, and she had never had a man sigh at her in a way that clearly screamed he wanted to reach over the table and choke her with his bare hands.

  “She’s my mother,” he gritted out and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “She doesn’t come to see me often, only when she can leave home. Dad misses her too much so she never stays away long, not like the old days when she would spend the whole of summer in Greece.”

  His eyes snapped to her, so fierce and sharp that she tensed.

  “Why the fuck am I telling you this anyway?”

  She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t going to do anything to make him stop. She had followed this man for months, and never uncovered any personal information about him. Now he was telling her about his family. Although, she still found it hard to believe that the woman who had just been sitting with him was his mother. Even if she was his step mother, she still looked too young to have been spending summers in Greece away from his father. Valen had made it sound as if he was talking about a time decades ago, and the woman had looked around the same age as him, barely into her thirties. No way that woman could have been married to his father back then.

  “Unwind. Have a drink.” Because she was beginning to need one of her own.

  She lifted the shot glass to her lips and awareness of his eyes on her, tracking her every move, had her slowing down, savouring the way he followed her hand and the way his gaze drilled into her mouth. His golden eyes darkened, something shimmering in them, heat that had been there the night he had fought her in front of the Pantheon and had shone in them again last night when he had been fighting to resist her.

  God, he had fought it.

  She had given into the haze of lust so easily, but he had tried to be a gentleman.

  It hit her hard and she knocked the drink back, needing it now more than ever.

  He muttered something she thought might have been ‘temptress’ and looked away from her.

  Eva pushed his drink back towards him. He frowned down at it.

  “You drink it.” He tried to push it back but she kept hold of the glass, refusing to let him do it.

  His fingers slipped on the glass and touched hers and she gasped as lightning arced up her arm, heating her bones and setting her body on fire.

  He snatched his hand back.

  Had he felt that?

  “I don’t drink.” If he had felt it, he masked it well, hiding it better than she had.

  She had felt sparks for a man before, back in her youth, or at least she had thought she had. What she had experienced with that man, it was nothing compared with how Valen could light her up with nothing more than a brief brush of his fingers across hers.

  It was nothing compared with how he could set her on fire with just a look.

  His golden eyes met hers, igniting an inferno in her veins as they held hers, steady and unwavering, dark with desire that called to her own, giving it a stronger hold over her.

  “Drink it,” she murmured, not quite with the world as she lost herself in his eyes.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “If you drink it, I’ll tell you all about my clients. Everything I know.” It had been the plan all along to tell him everything she knew, but suddenly it felt like a desperate move on her part, born not of a desire to unleash him on Benares so she would be free and more of a desire to make Valen stay.

  To make him talk to her.

  That wasn’t like her at all.

  What the hell was wrong with her? What was it about him that had her going against every instinct she had as an assassin?

  “If you drink it, I’ll tell you what they told me.”

  His eyes darted between hers and the glass, turning hard and cold one second and filled with conflict the next, as if she was asking him to do something terrible.

  “I can’t.” There was more emphasis on it this time. “There will be repercussions if I do.”

  Repercussions?

  It was only a drink.

  “Your loss.” Eva took the glass.

  He grabbed her hand, sending another thousand volts screaming up her arm. His fingers were warm against her, that heat oddly comforting, rousing a fiercer need to make him stay. H
e held her firm and she lifted her eyes from his hand to his face.

  He stared into her eyes with such force, such intensity, that it shook her, and his voice was a low whisper, laced with something akin to fear or possibly even remorse.

  “If I drink this… I don’t know what will happen.”

  Eva smiled. “I’ll give you information… that’s what will happen. Live dangerously.”

  He grinned and her heart stuttered.

  “Always do.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “If I drink this… I don’t know what will happen.” Honest words, ones that would chill a lesser man to his bones, especially if they knew what he did—that the unknown reaction to the drink his little angel offered could be anything from a mild buzz to the complete annihilation of Rome.

  That little angel smiled like the devil she really was, always leading him into temptation. “I’ll give you information… that’s what will happen. Live dangerously.”

  He grinned.

  “Always do.”

  And wasn’t that the crux of his problem?

  Sense waged war with a deeply rooted need that he had never been able to kill, no matter how fiercely he had tried.

  A need to please his brothers and redeem himself.

  A need that drove him to do stupid things that would probably only end with them hating him even more than they already did.

  If that was possible.

  He was about to find out.

  Valen closed his eyes and necked the drink.

  It went down hot, burning his throat, and he could feel it spreading tendrils through his body, fiery fingers that worked their way outwards from his heart until they gripped every inch of him. A tremble started in the pit of his stomach, vibrations that rumbled through his bones and he gripped the table in front of him with both hands, desperate to anchor himself.

  Light exploded in its wake, blasting through him and filling all of him, blinding him to the darkness that rose up behind it, a shadow of doom.

  He sank short claws into the wooden table top and growled through his gritted teeth as hunger poured through him, a ferocious need that pounded in his blood and mastered him, rending holes in his strength until it leached from him and he swore he could see it pouring from his flesh like blood.

  Valen tried to scoop it up, desperately pressed his hands to his chest and stomach, fighting the hold of the hunger. Black shadows flowed from between his fingers, swirled and disappeared into the light, and nothing he did stopped them from leaving him.

  The light around him faded and he stilled as he faced the shadow that loomed before him, a flickering silhouette of destruction and damnation.

  Horns rose from its head like a crown and talons tipped the fingers of the hand it extended to him, mirroring his own movement as he reached for it. Crimson eyes glowed from the black abyss of its face, edged with gold, blazing in the darkness as it called him to surrender to it.

  Give up the fight.

  Give in.

  Valen pressed his palm against the shadow’s outstretched one.

  And surrendered to it.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eva reached for Valen as he shook before her, gripping the edge of the table with such force that it rattled between them. What was wrong with him?

  His eyes snapped open before she could touch him and she gasped as they glowed in the low light, liquid pools of fire, golden and shifting like an inferno.

  A dark shadow crossed his face and his wide pupils narrowed into pinpricks.

  Tiny sparks skittered over his bare arms.

  The shot glasses on the table smashed.

  Eva gasped.

  “What are you?” Her voice shook as violently as the rest of her as she shrank back into the seat, mind racing and heart pounding, both sending her spinning as she tried to grasp what she had just seen.

  A memory hit her.

  How she had travelled from the square on Tiber Island to Valen’s apartment.

  In the blink of an eye.

  His glowing golden eyes narrowed on her. “The stuff of dreams and nightmares.”

  He locked his hand around her wrist before she could take that in and hauled her out of her seat. She stumbled along behind him, struggling to catch up and comprehend what was happening. He dragged her into the middle of the busy dance floor and whipped her into his arms.

  Lightning rushed through her again as his hard body met hers and his hands claimed her waist, one sliding low to cup her backside.

  She trembled in his arms, thoughts pulling her in a thousand directions, all of them screaming at her to get away from him.

  Those thoughts fled as he began to move, starting a slow, sensual dance that worked his body against hers, filling her head with wicked images of them. She tried to hold it together, to retain some sense so she could figure out what was happening, but it became impossible when he went to war on her, lowering his head and kissing her neck. A hot shiver danced down her throat to her breasts as his tongue stroked a line up her neck and she felt the cool, hard bead of his tongue stud pressing into her flesh.

  She had to stop this. She wasn’t sure what was happening, didn’t understand why her mind was screaming this was a bad thing, that she had made a dreadful mistake by convincing him to drink that shot of vodka, but she had never ignored her instincts before and she wouldn’t start now.

  No matter how tempted she was to surrender to him.

  Eva tried to push him back but his right hand clamped down on her backside and hauled her back against him, and his left hand wrapped around her throat. He pressed his thumb against her jaw and tilted her head back, devoured her throat with hot wet kisses that worked to undo the strength she had found, making it bleed out of her and replacing it with an aching need to give in to him. She wanted to give in.

  She wanted that passion they had shared last night, that madness.

  He groaned against her skin and worked his hands into her leather jacket as he danced with her, a slow grind that was at odds with the pounding fast beat of the music. His body rolled against hers, all hard muscle and strength, power that had her knees weakening and body straining for more. She lost the fight against the desire he stirred in her when he skimmed his hands across her stomach and they met her guns.

  And he moaned low in his throat.

  Shuddered in her arms.

  As if finding her armed had thrilled him.

  God.

  Eva swallowed hard, closed her eyes, and desperately tried to muster the will to resist, the strength to break away from him and do what was right—getting him back to the booth and talking to him.

  His mouth seized hers.

  Hot. Hard. Demanding.

  Intoxicating.

  Eva melted into his arms as he wrapped them around her, pinning her to his chest and bending her backwards.

  Bending her to his will.

  She moaned into his mouth as his tongue brushed hers, unable to hold it back. He groaned in response, as if he had heard the quiet sound of supplication over the thumping music and it pleased him. He kissed her harder, mastering her as he had the night before, and she was powerless in his arms.

  He shuddered when she stroked his lower lip with her tongue and his mouth froze against hers, a sense that he was waiting for something filling her. She smiled as it hit her and licked his lower lip again, and then sucked it into her mouth, pressed her teeth into it and tugged hard on it, surrendering to the same wicked need that had rolled through her the last time she had been in his arms.

  Valen growled and claimed her mouth again, plundering it with his tongue, the stud clacking against her teeth. She wanted to feel that stud on her flesh again, imagined the places he could use it and trembled against him as a new hot wave of desire flashed through her. He moaned and kissed along her jaw, nipping it hard in places, sending sharp bolts of pain down her neck to mingle with the pleasure building within her.

  He wrapped his lips around her neck and sucked, ripping a husky groan from
her throat as she clutched his head. A few people stopped to look at her but she shot them all glares and they went back to dancing. Sense reared its head again, whispered that she had to stop this now, before it went any further.

  It seemed Valen didn’t possess the same niggling voice.

  His palm met her crotch and she shuddered as he rubbed her through her jeans, teasing her and winding her tighter, until she was fit to burst or scream. His mouth worked magic on her throat, his left hand seizing the nape of her neck and sending shivers tripping down her back and chest. Her nipples tightened, aching for his attention even though she was aware of their location, of the people surrounding them. Valen’s right hand grabbed her backside and he wedged his right thigh between hers, and she bit back a moan as it pressed against her core, rubbing it with each sway of their bodies, sending her spiralling closer to the edge.

  She needed him to kiss her again.

  Eva tunnelled her fingers into the longer lengths of his golden hair and yanked his head back.

  The look on his face stopped her dead.

  Golden eyes held hers, a glimmer of affection shining in them, directed at her this time.

  She loosened her hold on his hair and fell into those eyes, her awareness of the world around them fading as he looked down at her, hiding nothing from her now. She lowered her hand to his face, wanting to touch it as the woman had, to show him that she wasn’t afraid of him either.

  Someone touched her shoulder.

  His eyes turned jet black and snapped up to lock on the person behind her.

  She gasped as he disappeared.

  A muffled grunt, and feminine shriek, and a low growl had her whipping around on her heel in time to see Valen send a brunet man to his backside in the middle of the packed dance floor. Her eyes shot wide. The woman who had screamed ran. The man stared in disbelief at Valen, blood streaming from his nose.

  As for Valen.

  He let out another inhuman growl, his shoulders shifting with each hard breath he drew.

  They were shaking.

  Eva eased a step closer to him, drawn towards him by an urge to comfort him that she didn’t quite understand. Was it because she wanted him to know that she had no interest in the man he had punched, or because of something else?