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

  What the fuck?

  No.

  No way she was going to try and drug him from a distance when he had lured her to this square in order to finally come face to face with her and find out what she wanted.

  No way in the fucking Underworld was he about to let that happen.

  His golden eyes snapped to the little assassin where she lingered in the shadows of a small side street to the right of the Pantheon. He caught a flash of something metal and threw himself forwards into a roll across the cobblestones as his senses blared a warning. Another dart zipped past him and he growled through clenched teeth as he came onto his feet into a dead run at her.

  He sensed her alarm, heard the spike in her heartbeat as she hastily reloaded the dart gun.

  She fired again and he dodged each bolt with ease, ducking beneath the first and side-stepping to evade the second, closing in on her the whole time. The gun shook in her hands as she was forced to reload again.

  His right hand went to the curved black blade sheathed against his hip and he did the one thing sure to piss his brothers off if they heard about it.

  He stepped.

  Darkness embraced him, cool and comforting, and then the lingering warmth of spring in Rome met him again as he emerged from the teleport.

  Right in front of his little assassin.

  Her gasp was sweet music to his ears as he introduced her throat to his blade and she froze in place.

  A second later, she recovered, raising her gun and aiming it at his stomach.

  Valen clucked his tongue, grabbed the gun with his left hand and twisted it out of her grip, earning another delicious gasp from her. He curled his lip at the weapon and tossed it away from him, not bothering to look where it landed as it clattered across the dark grey cobblestones.

  His little assassin had the whole of his attention.

  Luminous blue eyes like tropical waters stared up into his, wide and beguiling, surrounded by dark make-up that accentuated their striking colour and framed by long black lashes.

  Crimson full lips parted to reveal straight white teeth and the tempting hint of a soft pink tongue.

  Short dark hair caressed her neck and swept across her forehead, streaked with blue that matched her eyes.

  Fuck, she was beautiful.

  He swallowed his pounding heart and tried to remember what the hell he was meant to be doing. His eyes dropped from her pouty red lips to the blade he had poised against her throat. That was right.

  He was meant to be getting answers, not getting a hard-on.

  He had let her have her fun with her gun. Now he was going to have his own brand of fun.

  “My turn.” He pressed the blade harder against her throat.

  She snarled and kicked him in the shin, her knee-high boot connecting hard with it. He was behind her before she could catch him with a second strike and he snagged her right wrist and took her arm with him, twisting it behind her back. She whimpered as he pressed it against her leather jacket and he barely suppressed the hot shiver that rushed through him on hearing the sound leave her lips.

  Sweet gods.

  Everything about her was sexy.

  Sinful.

  His wicked little assassin.

  As addictive and seductive as his power, everything he had dreamed she would be and feared she wouldn’t.

  Valen released her wrist and stepped closer to her, so their bodies touched, and his breathing quickened at the same time as hers. He swallowed hard, desperate to wet his throat, and lowered his eyes to the smooth curve of her throat and the sharp edge of his black knife. So provocative. So tempting.

  An ache started deep in his belly, a hunger that was always there, lurking and waiting, born of darkness.

  He moved the blade closer to her throat, eliciting another delicious whimper that cranked up that hunger, made it fiercer, gave it substance and strength. He could easily kill her. Part of him wanted to do it. He traced a finger down her neck, shuddered in time with her as his lightning crackled between them, energy that lit him up and pulled him deeper into his power’s seductive embrace.

  She trembled in his arms, her head tipping up so the back of it brushed his chest. Such a petite little thing. He wanted to drop the blade and fist his hand in that silken black-and-blue hair of hers, wanted to hold her head back while he introduced her to all the ways his power could pain her.

  Or pleasure her.

  He barely bit back the groan that rumbled up his throat at that thought, but he didn’t manage to steady his thundering heart and quiet the trembling in his limbs.

  His golden eyes slid to her face. To her lips.

  Kill her.

  Or kiss her?

  She tensed and he clucked his tongue again, chastising her for thinking about making a move to break free of him. She had brought this upon herself. She should have stayed away, but she hadn’t. She had walked back into his life, and she had tried to drug him.

  He looked down to his left, to the gun that lay on the cobblestones a short distance away, and the hunger coursing through his blood transformed from a need to kiss her.

  To a need to kill her.

  Electricity arced from his fingertips and she gasped and jolted backwards, pressing harder against his body. He growled into her ear and traced his hand over her arm, feeling the leather of her short black jacket, heating it with his power as it tried to insulate her from it. The way she trembled and shook in his arms said it wasn’t doing a good enough job.

  “If you answer me honestly, I won’t kill you.” A lie, but she didn’t need to know that.

  He skimmed his hand over her stomach, smiled as he felt the unmistakable outline of more weapons beneath her leather jacket. He lifted his hand and she tensed as he found the tag of the zipper by her throat and started to pull it down.

  Another whimper escaped her.

  This one sounded distinctly unlike fear.

  He had bedded enough females to be able to distinguish the sounds of fear from pleasure, and the noise his little assassin had just made sat firmly in the latter’s range.

  Valen slowed, easing the zipper down, his eyes falling to the smooth pale mounds of her cleavage as he exposed it to the cooling night air. The dark halter-top she wore cut low, revealing far too much skin. He frowned, wanted to growl at the thought of her parading around like this, on show for every wretched male out there.

  Fool.

  He shoved that stupid need out of his head and focused back on his task, rougher now as he tore at the zipper and opened her jacket. He took her other gun from the holster beneath her right arm and tossed it across the square. A knife followed it.

  She wriggled as he patted her down, his blade still hovering close to her throat. When he reached her thighs, she stilled and the scent of desire on her was unmistakable. It called to his own need, ratcheting it up higher, and he slowly rose behind her, his eyes locking on her lips again.

  Kiss her.

  Or kill her?

  She wanted him.

  He snorted at that, the sensible part of his brain still functioning despite the lack of blood flowing to it.

  She had probably been getting off with someone in that dark corner of the nightclub.

  “Answer me honestly,” he husked into her ear and she trembled.

  Such a beautiful reaction.

  She nodded.

  “You don’t want to die?” He wasn’t sure why he had to ask that, but he needed it out there. He needed to know it.

  A shake.

  It was careful, restrained. She swallowed, her throat working slowly against his blade.

  She didn’t want to die.

  Kill her.

  Or kiss her?

  He spun her to face him. Her wide eyes leaped to his and he saw himself reflected in them.

  Saw black eyes staring back at him.

  Evil. Darkness incarnate. Just like his fucking father.

  Only this darkness emerged for one reason and one reason only. It was born of the hu
nger to hurt and the terrible need to unleash his power.

  He would.

  But not on her.

  She didn’t want to die.

  He smoothed his left hand over her cheek and stared down into her beguiling eyes, losing himself in their tranquil blue depths. The hunger to kill her battled the need to kiss her, to know how soft those rosy lips were and how she would taste. He lowered his eyes to her mouth, lost himself there too.

  As he entertained the thought of kissing her, and imagined the myriad of ways she would respond, the hold his power had over him waned and the urge to kill faded with it. He breathed out slowly, wondering if she was aware just how close she had come to seeing the blessed isles tonight, sent there by his hand and his blade.

  “Who sent you to kill me?” he whispered, eyes still fixed on her cherry red lips, and a new ache started.

  A need to hear her voice, to complete the picture of his little assassin.

  “I got a call,” she said, her voice unsteady at first, but then it gained strength. Confidence. Sexy, alluring, confidence. “I don’t know anything about them.”

  There was bite in her words, delivered wonderfully by her thick Italian accent. A local then. She sounded Roman, right down to the way she could curse at him without saying the words.

  He shifted his hand against her face and her blue eyes slipped closed for a heartbeat before they snapped open again. The way her pupils dilated almost fooled him into believing she felt something when he touched her.

  Something other than disgust.

  Fool. Fucking idiot.

  She was an assassin. It was all an act. A lie as much as her words had been. She was trying to play him to make sure he didn’t kill her, all so she could kill him.

  He pressed the knife harder against her throat, so it nicked her golden skin and she gasped, a friendly reminder that he was the one with the blade and the one who decided her fate. No amount of her acting would change that. She could fuck him and he would still be the one in control.

  “Give them a message.” He leaned down towards her, so she had to tip her head back to keep her eyes on his and was aware of just who had the power in this relationship.

  She nodded.

  “If they want to kill me, send someone more competent.”

  He stepped to the roof of the Pantheon and crouched in the darkness, wrapped in shadows as he sheathed his blade and watched her.

  She turned in circles in the square below, her eyes darting around.

  Who was she?

  He flexed the fingers of his left hand. The feel of her was branded on them. Impossible to forget. Soft skin. Warm. Pulse ticking steadily. Trembling.

  The sight of her was branded on his black soul.

  Calm blue eyes. Crimson lips. Wild black and blue hair. A body made for sin.

  And the way her eyes had flashed in that moment before he had teleported.

  Anger.

  Sweet gods, he bet she had a temper to match his own.

  He was counting on it.

  His words had insulted her and she had looked ready to fight him, despite the fact he had a blade and she had been unarmed.

  His gaze tracked her as she gathered her things, including the spent darts, clearing away all the evidence. A strange hot sensation went through him and his head snapped around to his right, eyes leaping south over his shoulder towards the gate to the Underworld. Bastards could wait.

  He looked back down into the square and frowned, the heat within him giving way to cold.

  His little assassin was leaving.

  He rose onto his feet and lifted his left hand to his face, breathed in the lingering scent of her on his skin, and smiled as he watched her go. The second she was out of sight, he teleported to the Rome gate, heading in the opposite direction to her.

  He didn’t need to worry.

  And he didn’t need the bastard Moirai to tell him he would see her again.

  He had made sure of that himself.

  He had set fire to her temper, had issued her a challenge, and she would take him up on it.

  She would come at him with guns blazing.

  Valen grinned as he appeared at the gate.

  Bring it on.

  CHAPTER 2

  Stronzo.

  Eva idly rubbed her right thumb across the front of her throat as she sat at the grotty bar of Heavenly Body, head pounding from the music and eyes constantly scanning everyone who moved around the dimly-lit basement nightclub. She hadn’t seen him in two nights.

  Her body tingled with the memory of the way his hand had roamed over her, skilfully plucking her weapons from her, somehow making it seem sensual and seductive, when she should have found it alarming. Disturbing. Threatening.

  She muttered another ripe curse, aimed it at him with all the venom she could manage.

  Two nights, and she couldn’t get him out of her mind.

  Sure, it was her job to think about him, to get every scrap of information she could on him. Or at least, that had been her job. What was meant to have been a simple intel gathering mission had somehow turned into something else a week ago when her client had called her again out of the blue and told her she wasn’t done.

  He wanted her to drug him.

  That unsettled her now as much as it had then, playing on her mind as badly as the man who was her target.

  Why had her client changed the mission parameters?

  It didn’t bother her on a professional level. It wasn’t the first time she had been hired to kill someone after all. Years as a hired weapon had taught her to keep herself emotionally detached from her marks and what she was doing.

  So why didn’t she feel emotionally detached this time?

  She had done everything by the book, hadn’t strayed from the rules she set out for herself, yet something about her mark had stirred dangerous feelings in her.

  Her eyes slipped shut as an image of him that night played out in her mind, a broken replay of him gracefully dodging every bolt from her dart gun, and suddenly appearing before her, towering over her with a slight tilt to his lips that had spoken of amusement rather than fear or fury.

  He had been toying with her.

  It grated on her last nerve, fraying it more than it already had been, rousing the same potent burst of anger she had felt when he had dared to insult her by insinuating she wasn’t a good enough assassin to take his arse down.

  “Stronzo,” she muttered as she looked down at her shot glass, watching the colourful lights that rotated above her dancing across it and her hands, and reflecting off the wet rings left behind on the black counter by the other patrons of the club when they took their drinks with them to their corners of the busy room.

  She lifted it to her lips and downed the vodka in one.

  The bartender smiled at her as he stopped in front of her, snagging her attention. His dark eyes twinkled with his amusement, and an image of the man flashed over him, a vision of the way he had smiled at her.

  Who the fuck was he?

  She had done her best to gather information on him, had asked around at every place she had seen him over the two months she had been tailing him in Rome, and had even continued trying to find out more about him in the three her client had pulled her off the job. Nothing she had heard had even hinted at him being skilled in fighting, and the way he had moved, and the blade he had stuck against her damned throat, pointed towards him being in her line of work.

  Another assassin.

  Was it possible?

  Did her client know what he was?

  Eva saw another flash of the way he had moved like lightning across the square, sat by the fountain admiring the Pantheon one second and right in front of her the next. Her heart pounded as it had that night, galloping in her chest, flooding her veins with adrenaline as her fight or flight instincts kicked in.

  She should have known he was dangerous.

  He had the look of a killer, so why not the skills to go with it?

  She grunted i
n frustration and clawed her fingers through her short hair, pulling the blue-streaked black strands away from her face.

  The bartender slid her another shot and said something she ignored. He had been hitting on her the past few nights, a new addition to the usual crew who served at Heavenly Body, and while he was handsome, and ripped judging by the way his standard-issue white shirt hugged his powerful body, she just wasn’t interested in him.

  Her mark flashed across her mind again, standing in the open square with his hands jammed into the pockets of his black combat trousers in a way that pulled them tight across muscular thighs and drew his coat back to reveal a black t-shirt that sat like a second skin over a torso packed with honed muscles.

  She shivered as she remembered how that body had felt pressed against her back as his blade sat poised against her throat.

  Hard.

  Hot.

  Eva screwed her eyes shut and downed the shot of vodka, hoping to kill whatever part of her brain had become fixated on him since that night.

  He was dangerous.

  The darkness that had been in his eyes when she had faced him. She had never seen anything like it. It was as if his golden eyes had turned black as night. It must have been a trick of the light, because they had been gold again when he had lifted his face enough for the streetlamps to shine down on it.

  Another hot shiver wracked her, heating her blood with a memory of his hand against her face this time.

  That heat turned to the flames of anger as his lips moved, spewing an insult that stoked the fire inside her and had her itching for a rematch even when she wasn’t sure she would win.

  But she was damned if she was going to allow a man to degrade her like that, making out she was useless, incompetent.

  Not worth their time.

  Eva slammed the empty glass down on the tacky bar top with enough force to make the man next to her jump out of his skin. She ignored his comments as she pushed away from the bar and slid off her stool, and clawed her way through the heavy Saturday night crowd, heading for the exit.

  He wasn’t coming.

  Now he was wasting her time.

  She pushed her way up the steps and shoved the metal door at the top open. Cool swept over her and she breathed deep of the crisp night air, using it to soothe her anger and wash it away.