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

  Eva nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  Her heart melted a little when he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  That same heart went bat shit crazy when he disappeared, leaving wisps of black smoke behind.

  She looked around her apartment, desperate to convince herself that he had just moved faster than her pleasure-hazy brain could comprehend.

  She was alone.

  Even his clothes were gone.

  Eva flopped down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.

  She was no longer convinced that she was seeing things.

  She was now convinced she had gone mad.

  She must have.

  She had seen Valen do things that were impossible, including the fact that electricity had definitely sparked from his fingers when he had asked her for a moment, and she had witnessed his brother stop time while the others erased people’s memories.

  And now she had just offered to betray her client, a man who was as dangerous as they came and liable to kill her if he so much as suspected she was lying to him and was now playing double-agent for Valen.

  Eva corrected herself.

  She hadn’t gone mad.

  She had lost her fucking mind.

  CHAPTER 14

  Valen was not sitting in a dark corner of the heaving nightclub, nursing a drink and constantly staring at his phone. He was not counting the seconds, waiting impatiently until the moment he could see Eva again.

  He wasn’t.

  He tapped the screen, causing it to wake up and illuminate the square steel table and his almost empty drink.

  The digital clock shifted to one minute past eight.

  Eva was late.

  He drummed his fingers on the table, trying to keep his temper under control as a thousand thoughts assaulted him, tearing him in as many directions and stirring emotions he struggled to control. White-purple arcs leaped between his fingers and he grimaced as they forked downwards, striking the table, sending tiny jolts of pain snapping through his bones as they connected.

  Who the fuck put steel tables in a nightclub anyway?

  It was the one thing he hated about Heavenly Body.

  Other than the insane number of possible conductors for his power dotted around the edge of the basement room, it was perfect, a dark busy space where he could be alone with his thoughts and where daemons never bothered him.

  Hellspawn frequented it, the daemons’ more noble cousins keeping the wretches at bay. While daemons loved to bother him and his brothers, because they were guardians of the gates to a place they desperately wanted to go, a barrier between them and the glory of being the first daemon to enter the Underworld in centuries, they hated Hellspawn and kept their distance from them.

  They feared them.

  Valen huffed and flicked the stirrer in his drink back and forth as he propped his chin up on his upturned palm.

  They should fear him more than the Hellspawn. He was the one liable to butcher them for just breathing the same damn air as him.

  His gaze slid to the phone, catching it just before the screen went dark again.

  Two minutes past eight.

  Where was she?

  A cold feeling settled in his stomach and began to grow, tugging at his feelings, prodding them and pushing them to places he didn’t want them to go. She would be here. She was just running late.

  He glanced at the door, catching glimpses of it through the packed dance floor.

  She was.

  One emotion popped free, the one he hated most of all.

  Fear.

  Another emotion latched onto it and pulled free with it, one that he always succumbed to easily despite his best efforts to let it all roll off his back and not be affected by its poisonous whispers.

  Doubt.

  What if it had all been an act?

  She might have been saying everything he wanted to hear, giving him bullshit information so she could get rid of him and make her escape, or worse, so she could do exactly as her client had wanted.

  Seduce him.

  Had he played right into her hands?

  If he had, then she was a better actress than he had given her credit for, because he hadn’t suspected a thing. He glared at the glass in front of him. He hadn’t suspected anything because it had been his idea. Seeing her afraid of the one she had called Benares had sparked a deep protective instinct inside Valen, and that instinct had told him to go along with whatever her client had planned for her to do so she could look as if she was still working for them.

  He had practically seduced himself for her.

  He growled and flicked the stirrer so hard that the glass toppled. It cracked when it hit the steel table top and rolled towards the edge. He huffed, picked it up and set it down so fiercely it broke in two.

  Gods, he was an idiot.

  Her outburst had convinced him that she gave a fuck about him, that she might feel something for him. Clearly, he had been wrong.

  He should have known better.

  No one could love him.

  He checked his phone again. Five minutes late.

  Fear that he had been duped morphed into fear something had happened to her and his heart began to pound in a sickening rhythm against his chest.

  What if she was only late because Benares had done something to her?

  He cursed beneath his breath. He should have demanded that he went with her, he shouldn’t have let her convince him to stay away. He should have kept pressing his point until she had crumbled, giving in to him.

  At the very least, he should have made her tell him where the bastard’s villa was so he could go there now and check on her.

  For all he knew, she could be trapped there, held by Benares.

  She could be hurt.

  He swallowed hard.

  Dead.

  His heart gave a hard beat and he pushed onto his feet, a desperate need to find her flooding him.

  He didn’t care if she had played him, if it had all been an act to her, because it was real to him and he couldn’t bear sitting here doing nothing, not knowing whether she was hurt and afraid, in mortal danger.

  Movement out of the right corner of his eye sent his eyebrows dipping low.

  A blonde slinked through the crowd as it parted for her, her red lips curved in a bright, sultry smile as she flicked glances at all the men who panted after her. Her long hair shimmered beneath the colourful lights, swaying against her backside, almost reaching the hem of her impossibly short black dress. Thigh-high leather boots encased long toned legs, four-inch spiked heels making her taller than most of the males around her.

  Valen stared at her, couldn’t take his eyes off her or remember what he had been doing before she had walked into his life. Something pressing. Something he needed to remember. It gnawed at him but he struggled to pin it down, and the longer he looked at the female, the less important it felt.

  The bartender served her a drink, placing her before all the others who had been waiting at the packed bar for longer. No one seemed to mind. They were all too busy staring at her.

  She said something, pushed away from the bar and moved through the club, blue eyes appraising every male, earning her their attention even if they were already with a female.

  She turned to tease a few of them, giving her back to Valen. He arched an eyebrow at her tiny dress and the fact the damn thing didn’t even cover the whole of her backside. Twin curves dipped below the hem of it. If she bent over, she would flash everything at the world.

  That was no way for a female to dress.

  A flash of another woman crossed his eyes, the creamy swells of her modest cleavage on show, and heat and hunger surged through him.

  He looked down at his phone on the table.

  He had been doing something.

  The blonde moved closer, facing him again, her pouty lips pursed as she fixed her sultry gaze on him.

  He had been doing something, hadn’t he?

  He frowned at his p
hone and shook his head as it grew hazy and he couldn’t remember, and then it felt inconsequential again because the female stopped right beside him.

  She gently placed her drink down on his table and her right hand against his chest.

  Heat swept through him from the point where she touched and he frowned down at her hand where it rested against his black t-shirt.

  This wasn’t right.

  This hand with its black painted nails and gaudy gold rings wasn’t the one he wanted on him.

  He growled and knocked her hand away, and she gasped, her blue eyes going wide as she staggered back a step and clutched her arm to her ample breasts.

  Those blue eyes weren’t the ones he wanted to lose himself in for eternity.

  He went to reach for his phone and she placed her hand on the bare skin of his arm, sending a hot wave through him that fogged his mind and pushed thoughts of leaving out of it.

  Why had he wanted to leave anyway?

  Everything he wanted was right here.

  She leaned towards him, tiptoed to bring her lips to his ear, and whispered, “Hello, Handsome.”

  A shiver ran through him and the haziness building in his head thickened, swamping all of his thoughts. She slid her hand up his arm, groaned low in her throat as she traced his taut muscles, and teased the sleeve of his t-shirt.

  “You have the body of a god,” she murmured and licked his earlobe, sending another hot cascade of tingles through him.

  “Because I am one,” he muttered in response, some part of him aware that he shouldn’t have said that.

  That he was meant to be doing something else.

  He was meant to be somewhere else.

  Her grip on his arm tightened and the heavy feeling in his limbs increased, pushing those thoughts away again. The only thing that mattered was being here.

  With her.

  She feathered her lips along the right side of his jaw and he closed his eyes, swayed as heat ran through him from the points where her lips pressed and fingers touched. This was where he wanted to be.

  “I need a little taste of you,” she murmured against his skin.

  He didn’t resist her as she pressed her lips to his.

  He opened for her, lost himself in kissing her. She tasted… wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it and the thought only lasted a moment before it dissipated, as if someone had pushed it out of his head.

  She moaned and slid her arm around his neck, dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him down for more.

  Wrong.

  Her touch was too light, too gentle.

  Where was the roughness he needed? Where was the wickedness he loved?

  She nipped at his lip and for a moment it felt right, but then she kissed him again, and the taste of her flooded his senses, stronger this time. Wrong. Something was wrong. But he couldn’t stop kissing her, because this was where he wanted to be.

  She pulled away and breathed against his lips, her voice a throaty murmur of pleasure and approval, “You have a tongue stud.”

  A male voice echoed in his head. His own. Not for the reason you’re thinking.

  A female one joined it, her Italian accent teasing his ears, heating that cold space behind his chest. You know that’s what they’re for though, right?

  It’s for me. Not for you.

  You sure? Because it’s about to be for me.

  Cold filled his chest again and he grabbed the woman’s shoulders and shoved her back, glared at her as she tried to get close to him again.

  “Leave me alone.” Because he had to be somewhere. Wherever the owner of that seductive little voice had gone.

  Her blue eyes went wide but the shock in them was short-lived, gone in the space of a heartbeat, and she shoved him into the chair behind him and straddled him. He snarled at her and tried to push her off him, but her mouth descended on his and the haziness rolled back in. He went slack beneath her, lost in the heat of her kiss again, the gnawing feeling in his chest drifting into the distance as the fog built inside him.

  “You taste better than I thought you would,” the blonde murmured against his lips and licked at them. “I could feast on you for years.”

  She shook in his arms, moaned as she kissed him again. The haze grew stronger, his body weaker.

  Feast on him?

  He sat beneath her, those words echoing in his mind, swimming around it in the strange haze.

  A different gnawing started inside him.

  He growled as it broke through the damned fog in his head.

  “Fucking daemon,” he snarled against her lips, fisted her blonde hair and yanked her mouth away from him.

  She hissed and writhed on his lap, panic filling her blue eyes. He grabbed one of her arms to contain her but she lashed out with the other, scoring her nails across his neck. He growled and gripped her tighter, tearing a satisfied grunt of pain from her treacherous lips as he pulled her head back so hard he thought her neck might actually snap.

  She leaned back with it, stopping that from happening, and shoved at him, a wild thing in his arms. A few people stopped to stare. He shot them all black looks that warned them away, and they proved how little backbone they had by leaving and not coming to her aid. Pathetic mortals.

  The Hellspawn merely tossed disinterested looks his way, ones that revealed they had realised a daemon walked amongst them and they weren’t going to stand in the way of him killing her.

  White-purple blazes of lightning crackled around his hands and she flinched as each tiny bolt leaped to her skin. He sucked down a hard breath and clawed back control, because no matter how fiercely he wanted to blow her apart with his power, he couldn’t. His brothers believed he flouted the rules, that he constantly ignored them and did as he pleased without thinking about the consequences.

  They were wrong.

  Eva’s words rang in his head, a broken replay of her throwing in his face the fact he had let his brothers come to a wrong conclusion about him and had done nothing to make them see the truth.

  She was right. He had let them believe the worst of him, and he shouldn’t have, because he hadn’t flouted the rules, he hadn’t acted without considering the consequences.

  He had done it to further their cause, to aid their mission, and they should have been fucking grateful for it.

  They should be fucking grateful he wasn’t pumping fifty thousand volts into the bitch writhing on his lap too, exposing himself to the watching mortals and inciting the wrath of Zeus and their father.

  Gods, he wanted to do that, wanted it so badly he hurt, wanted to throw a massive fuck you at his uncle and watch the mortals quake in fear as they recognised him for the powerful being he was, revered him as they should, bowed and scraped at his feet as their ancestors had, but he was better than that.

  Or at least he wanted to be.

  So as much as it sickened him, the bitch got to live and the mortals got to carry on oblivious to the fact they were in the presence of a god.

  He released her arm, grabbed the broken glass from the table and had it pressed against her throat before she could even move.

  She froze, terror lighting her eyes as she tried to look down at the glass where it hovered close to her artery.

  Daemons died just as easily as mortals.

  “Hurt me, and you’ll never see Eva again,” she said and he was the one who froze this time.

  His blood ran cold.

  “Where is she?”

  The woman smiled wickedly.

  “With my darling brother, and right about now, she’s probably falling into his arms and under his spell.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Coming to the mansion alone hadn’t been a wise idea.

  Eva stood opposite Benares in the sumptuous living room, a place she had never been before and one she never wanted to set foot in again. There was only one exit, and that was the door beyond the couch where he sat. Clever bastard. By being already seated on the gaudy antique sofa when she had arrived, he had skilf
ully forced her into having to move to the furthest point from the door in order to see him.

  He had manoeuvred her into a position where she was at a disadvantage.

  Benares gestured to the couch opposite the monstrosity he lounged on, wearing only his shoes and black slacks, his bare torso on full display.

  The second sofa was equally as hideous, with dull gold fabric stretched over the solid seat and back, and bright gold on the wooden decorative edges and the claw-footed legs.

  Eva shook her head. Again. His handsome face darkened at her refusal.

  He sighed dramatically and preened his blond locks. The action caused his biceps to tense beneath his sun-kissed skin and the muscles of his torso tightened with them, shifting in a symphony that drew her gaze down to them.

  A trickle of heat ran through her.

  She forced her eyes back up to his stunning green ones.

  The smile that teased his blush full lips grated on her nerves for some reason.

  She frowned, wiping that smile away.

  “Signor Benares, I have done what you wanted. My contract is fulfilled?” She hadn’t meant that to come out as a question, spoken with a waver in her voice that he heard judging by the way his smile returned.

  He liked that he made her nervous.

  It hadn’t been the case before she had come into contact with Valen. Damn him. He made her weak. She had allowed herself to feel something for him, and now it was working against her. In him, she had found a reason to live, and that had allowed a fear of dying to creep into her heart.

  Now she couldn’t look at Benares without feeling as if she was looking Death in the face.

  Benares casually crossed his legs at his ankles where they rested on the also rather hideous gold and glass coffee table between the couch he sat on and the one she stood beside. He stretched, every muscle on his honed powerful body shifting in response, luring her gaze back down to it.

  Another tremor of heat rippled through her.

  Eva shook it away but it was harder this time.

  She rubbed her forehead as it ached.

  He placed both of his hands behind his head and frowned at her, concern in his green eyes. “Are you unwell, my angel?”