Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 27

  She blinked to clear her blurry vision and breathed hard, all of her strength leaving her as her feet cooled and the weird lightness drifted away.

  Valen loomed over her, no trace of black in his golden eyes as they searched hers. There was only fear and concern, worry that flooded her with warmth.

  “What happened?” he murmured and slowly righted her.

  She didn’t fight him as he checked her over, one hand remaining against her waist to keep her upright.

  “I don’t know… I can’t explain it.” She squeezed her eyes shut and prickles blazed down her spine and over her arms. What was wrong with her?

  “Try,” he snapped, a little harsh, and then softly muttered in a more apologetic tone, “please.”

  She had frightened him. It had frightened her too.

  “I felt… this is going to sound crazy… but I felt… connected…” She pushed the words out when he looked up at her, the warmth and worry leaving his face, morphing back into something dark. “To you.”

  Valen growled, shot to his feet and stamped them against the terracotta tiles. “No meddling.”

  Her eyes widened. Had he gone mad?

  She looked down and her eyes went even wider as she spotted the blue cornflower he was crushing beneath his boots.

  Where had that come from?

  She was sure it hadn’t been there when she had crossed the room to him. She would have noticed it.

  Eva squatted and caught his boot, stopping him, and he froze, his gaze landing on her and heating her.

  She plucked the broken flower from the tiles and gasped as the damage to it reversed before her eyes.

  Valen snatched it from her, stormed across the room to the set of windows to the left of the fireplace, opened it and threw the flower out. He slammed the window closed again, turned to face her and halted.

  “Don’t look at me like that. She was meddling.”

  “Like what? Bewildered? Because that’s all I’m feeling.” She looked down at where the flower had been and touched the floor. It was cold now. She was sure it had been warm. “What the fuck just happened?”

  “Meddling,” he muttered, as if that was an explanation.

  He strode over to her, long legs making short work of the distance, and stopped right in front of her. He looked pissed. She wasn’t sure why, and she didn’t feel she had done anything wrong so he couldn’t be mad with her. He was mad with whoever had apparently meddled.

  He huffed and held his hand out to her. “Resist her next time.”

  Eva wasn’t sure she wanted to resist whoever had linked her to Valen, because she had been trying to give her answers to the questions burning inside her. She had been trying to reveal the parts of Valen he wanted to keep hidden from her for some reason, parts she knew she needed to understand.

  “I don’t even know who I’m meant to be resisting.” She placed her hand into his and let him help her onto her feet.

  He sighed again and turned his cheek to her. “Mother.”

  So his mother, Persephone if she had her goddesses right, had tried to reach out to her to give her insight into Valen. His mother wanted her to know the things he wouldn’t tell her.

  Did that mean she approved of her?

  Eva wasn’t sure how to take that. A goddess approved of her. A goddess wanted her to make this thing with her son work.

  She smiled as it dawned on her. Persephone wanted Valen to be happy, and she thought Eva could do that for him.

  She had half a mind to say thank you to Persephone out loud so she would know to ignore Valen’s efforts to stop her and would keep trying to help her unravel her son’s defences and see the part of him he was still guarding fiercely, unwilling to show it to her.

  “I think I like her,” Eva said and he growled at her this time. She refused to do as he demanded, wouldn’t say that she would try to resist Persephone if she reached out to her again.

  If his mother wanted to meddle in their relationship, Eva wasn’t going to stop her.

  It went against her Italian blood, because mothers were meant to be her nemeses, the ones who stood between her and claiming all of their sons’ love, but she was dealing with Greeks now, not fellow Italians. Different rules applied.

  It seemed Greek mothers wanted to help the women who tried to claim their sons’ hearts.

  Or at least Greek goddesses did.

  It still felt crazy thinking that, but she was slowly coming to terms with this world she had stepped into the night she had taken Benares’s job.

  She shifted her gaze to Valen.

  He scowled at her. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  Her eyebrows rose. It was the second time he had said that, but she still wasn’t sure what was wrong with the way she was looking at him. “Like what?”

  “I told you… I can’t be what you expect of me.” He ploughed the fingers of his left hand through his hair and pulled it back, tugging at his scalp, and frustration mounted in his eyes, making them flash gold at her. What had started this war in him? He ground his teeth, looked as if he would turn away from her and shut her out again, and then barked, “You look at me like I’m going to save you somehow… like I’m your only fucking hope… and I don’t want that responsibility. I just can’t do it. I failed the last time someone trusted me to protect her.”

  Eva’s heart ached, the sight of him as his strength visibly left him and the pain came rushing back into his eyes pulling her to him, filling her with a need to comfort him.

  He was wrong. He was hurting and he was trying to pin it all on her in order to cope with it, because he honestly believed he would fail in protecting her too.

  He was afraid.

  He sank into the wingback black leather armchair and hung his head forwards, his elbows resting on his knees and his blond hair falling to obscure his face.

  He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to protect her as he had promised, that Benares would hurt her because of it, possibly even kill her.

  Where had the brash, confident and almost cocky male who had vowed to keep her safe gone? The man who had offered to destroy Benares for her?

  She slowly padded across the tiled floor towards him, her heart answering that question.

  There was something inside him, a dark and terrible monster, born of his past, and it had awakened on the hill, had risen up to devour his strength and feed on his fears.

  She wasn’t sure she could vanquish such a monster, because she couldn’t defeat the ones that lurked inside her, created by her past too, but she was going to try, because she hated seeing him like this.

  She wouldn’t let him push her away.

  “I never asked you to be a hero, Valen.” She kneeled between his feet, lifted her hands and cupped both of his cheeks. He tried to look away from her but she held him firm, keeping his golden eyes on hers. “I don’t expect that of you.”

  He stared into her eyes for long seconds, and then leaned back, sinking into the chair and leaving her sitting between his knees. His eyes remained on hers, and she cursed how good he looked as he sat there staring down the length of his body at her, the honed muscles of his torso visible beneath his tight black t-shirt and the heat building in his eyes calling to her. She managed to keep her eyes fixed on his, not allowing him to distract her with his delicious body or that wicked promise in his eyes, because she felt close to getting answers.

  “I don’t need you to protect me.” She didn’t really believe that, but if it eased his mind and weakened the hold his fears had on him, she would say it a thousand times until he believed it.

  “Good,” he said, a sharp edge to his tone that cut through the air like a blade.

  He didn’t mean that.

  She could see it in his eyes.

  “Who was she?” She searched those eyes, wanting to find the answer in them, because she knew he wouldn’t tell her.

  Had it been a lover?

  It had clearly been someone dear to him, and failing her had wounded him d
eeply, carving a scar in his heart that had never healed.

  It had left him with the feeling he wasn’t qualified to protect anyone, that he would fail if he tried again.

  Yet, he still wanted to protect her.

  He wanted to try.

  For her.

  Calindria.

  That delicate name echoed in her mind in Keras’s voice.

  In this very room, when Keras had confronted Valen after the incident at the bar and Valen hadn’t defended himself, that was the name Keras had thrown at Valen.

  That was the straw that had broken him and he had left without a word.

  Ares and Marek had been shocked to hear Keras throw it at Valen with so much venom.

  “Who was Calindria?” she whispered.

  Valen tensed.

  Looked away from her.

  She shook inside as she waited, needing to know whether she had been his lover, afraid to know the answer now because suddenly it felt as if she would never compare to the woman Valen had lost and still grieved.

  Still loved.

  He closed his eyes, his chest heaved as he sighed, and his lips moved, almost soundlessly.

  Almost.

  She barely caught the two words.

  “Our sister.”

  When he opened his eyes, they were locked on her, intense and focused, sending a shiver down her spine and spreading heat along her limbs.

  “Let it go now.”

  She nodded, because she didn’t want to drag up any more bad memories for him and cause him more hurt.

  He had failed to protect his sister, and he blamed himself for it.

  Did his brothers blame him too?

  His father?

  It would explain the animosity he felt towards them, their strained relationship, but then there was also another way to explain all of that.

  Valen blamed himself for their sister’s death, and it had led him to believe that everyone else blamed him too.

  Eva rose onto her knees between his, wrapped her arms around his waist and ignored the shock that rippled across his face as he looked down at her. She pushed up on her toes and kissed him, so he would know that he wasn’t alone, that not everyone in this world was against him.

  Someone believed in him.

  He wouldn’t fail her.

  She knew that in her heart.

  He tensed, lips freezing against hers, and then kissed her on a low growl. His arms snaked around her and he hauled her up onto his lap, making her sit on his left thigh. She lost herself in the kiss again, wanted to wriggle on his thigh as heat built inside her with each wicked stroke of his tongue that made her feel the stud in it.

  He stopped again.

  Another growl.

  Eva tried to pull back to ask him what was wrong, but he dragged her against him and kissed her harder, and she forgot all about it.

  Until his lips paused a third time.

  “What’s wrong?” she murmured against them.

  “Fucking gate,” he snarled.

  Hardly an explanation.

  “Ignore it.” He claimed her lips again, and she tried to do as he had said, but it was impossible when he kept tensing beneath her as if someone was prodding him in the ribs.

  “Seriously.” She pulled back and he let her this time.

  He scowled at her, but she had the feeling his anger was aimed at the gate and not her for stopping kissing him.

  “Explain.” She wanted to pepper his cheeks with kisses, but he looked as if that might be nothing more than torture, and she had the sinking feeling he was about to say something she wasn’t going to like.

  “I have to go out,” he muttered, voice a dark growl of disappointment and fury. “Stupid gate is calling me. I have to go open it.”

  He kissed her again, so hard and demanding that she sank into him and came close to begging him to ignore it, just as he had said.

  The gates were important though. She had gathered that much from what he had told her.

  “If you don’t go… and daemons opened it… would that be enough for something terrible to happen to this world and the Underworld?” She brushed her lips across his with each word and he groaned, tried to kiss her again but she stopped him.

  His scowl was definitely for her this time.

  He snorted. “No.”

  “Explain.” She was getting tired of this. “Just tell me what happens if you don’t go.”

  “A very annoyed Hellspawn who wants to travel either to the Underworld or from it tells my father what a failure I am. Nothing he doesn’t already know.” He smiled at her blank expression. “Hellspawn are what I like to think of as acceptable daemons. Dad hates all daemons, but over the centuries he’s given the green light to some of the purer breeds that weren’t involved in the uprising and allows them to come and go between the Underworld and this one. Of course, other species of Hellspawn have slipped the other way, falling out of favour and finding themselves banished.”

  “So Hellspawn are like good daemons?” The more he told her, the more questions she had.

  He grimaced. “If you want to think of them like that. Sure. They didn’t try to destroy the palace and everyone in it to seize the Underworld, so they get a pass.”

  But the other daemons didn’t. They weren’t allowed in the Underworld now. By the sounds of things, it hadn’t stopped them from wanting to go there.

  One day, she was going to make Valen sit down and tell her everything from start to finish, and she wasn’t going to let him move until he had answered all of her questions.

  Today was not that day though.

  “So this gate thing is calling to you because someone wants it open?” she said and he nodded. “No one else can open it?”

  He answered that one with a shake of his head.

  It seemed to her that things were always more complicated than Valen made them out to be.

  He did more than just protect the gate in Rome from daemons. He was responsible for allowing people to pass through it too. A gatekeeper. Without him there, whoever was waiting to use it wouldn’t get through.

  “So you have to go?” She hated the way her voice wavered as she asked that, betraying her nerves as they began to creep back in.

  Having Valen around her every waking and sleeping minute had comforted her so much that now she was afraid to be without him. Damn him. Damn her for being so weak too, but she was dealing with forces far more powerful than she was, and she was beginning to believe that Valen was right and guns wouldn’t prove useful against a monster like Benares.

  She glanced at the window, into the darkness.

  What if Jin was still watching them? What if she reported to Benares that Valen had left her alone?

  What if Benares came for her?

  Valen’s palm came to rest against her left cheek and he slowly eased her head around towards him.

  His eyes locked with hers, a silent promise in them, one that contradicted his earlier outburst and the demands he had issued, telling her not to rely on him to protect her.

  “You’ll be safe here.” He swept the pad of his thumb across her cheek, his eyes falling there to track it, a hint of fascination filling them and smoothing their hard edges. “I have wards around this building, and this apartment. If anyone tries to break through them, I’ll know. I’ll come back… I’ll keep you safe.”

  She nodded, trying to take comfort from that but her mind had latched on to the part where he had made it sound possible for someone to get through these wards.

  She didn’t let him see the fear that still lingered inside her. He would refuse to leave if he did and it was time she stood on her own two feet again and moved on with her life. It was time she stopped being so weak, so afraid. She was strong.

  He slid his hand around the back of her head, pulled her down to him and kissed her hard, his roughness screaming of desperation that rang through her too, a fierce need to take all she could from this moment and never let it go.

  He broke away, growle
d something and then forced a smile. “Be right back.”

  He disappeared.

  She dropped to the seat of the armchair and wafted her hand in front of her face, dissipating the black swirling ribbons he had left behind him.

  He would be right back.

  She had no reason to fear.

  She would be safe here.

  Benares needed her alive. She kept telling herself that, slowly coming to believe it, as she moved around the apartment, stealing a can of lemonade from the refrigerator in the kitchen beyond the living room and peeking behind all the pale wooden doors of the cupboards.

  Valen apparently liked pasta with a vengeance.

  She was fairly sure she had spotted it in every cupboard. He had a variety of sauces too, together with a shelf stocked with every imaginable herb and spice, and stacks of passata bottles.

  Did he like to cook?

  She poked her nose back into his tall silver refrigerator. There were some vegetables in the bottom drawer. Her stomach growled. Maybe she could knock herself up some food while she waited for him.

  She looked at the door of the apartment.

  He would be back soon.

  She could make them some dinner to surprise him when he returned.

  Eva busied herself with finding all the pots and pans she needed, and rifling through the cupboards and refrigerator for ingredients. She filled a large pan with water and put it on the hob, and set about dicing onions and vegetables for the sauce as the water came to a boil.

  She lost track of time as she focused on her work.

  The sound of her phone ringing rose above the quiet classical music that still filled the apartment.

  She set down her knife, wiped her hands on a towel, and left the kitchen. She hummed to herself in time with her ringtone as she crossed the living room to the bedroom where she had left it on the side table. A quick glance at the display had her frowning.

  A former client.

  At least it wasn’t Benares phoning her for a report.

  She turned away, not interested in anything he might have to say. She wasn’t looking for work. Not now, and not for a while to come. She needed a break.

  A long one.

  Maybe somewhere warm and sunny.