Mouth clamped in a tight line, he shut it all out and jogged downstairs. Male laughter drifted to him.
The other warriors usually stopped for a bite before heading out. In the passing months, he rarely joined them. He preferred his own grim company, safer that way, and no need for small talk.
As Nik neared the ground floor, the tantalizing floral scent with that hint of woodsmoke curled around him, and he stumbled to a halt. Just a whiff of her and his entire being tautened, hauling him to the edge again.
Unable to stop himself, he scanned upstairs for her…then down. Dammit.
She should be in bed, not traipsing around the castle in her weakened state.
Irritation surging, Nik strode down the long hallway toward the sound of voices.
He walked into the massive open-plan kitchen, rich with the smell of something savory. A central isle separated the dining area, where a massive oak table reigned. Light chatter continued. Hedori looked up and nodded.
Týr grinned. “You finally decided to join us?” he asked, his chair tipping on its back legs, his arm thrown around Kira’s chair. She cast him a bright smile.
Shadow sat next to Darci and Blaéz. The Celt arched an eyebrow.
Hell, he should leave, she’d be fine. The females would see to her, but he couldn’t make himself move. She’d done something with her hair, pulled it into a pile on her head, revealing the fragility of her wan face, and he ground down on his teeth not to say anything.
Leave now.
Nik ignored the voice of reason. He crossed to the counter, poured an espresso from the coffee machine into a mug just to strangle the urge to scoop up Shadow and take her back upstairs. He picked up his cup and, like a runaway train on a fast track to disaster, he walked over to the empty chair next to Shadow and sat down.
Aware her stare drilled holes into him, he sipped the bitter brew, the liquid burning a layer off his throat, then he glanced at her. Two spots of pink brightened her face.
Godsdammit. It gutted him, knowing she was in pain and trying to be brave and strong in front of the others.
“You should be in bed,” he said quietly, ignoring the chatter and tinkling cutlery around him. “Someone would have brought your meal upstairs.”
She carefully set her cutlery on her plate. “I’m capable of walking and taking care of myself.”
How was it the moment she opened her mouth, she pissed him off?
Nik put his mug down, leaned his elbows on the table, his stare fixed on hers. “You are not well enough,” he said, tone still low. “That demon didn’t just claw you, he gouged you. Don’t tell me you’re capable of moving about without falling on your face.”
Those striking eyes flared with anger. Her lips pressed in a tight line, she shot up, the chair dragging on the floor. The chatter died out as she rushed from the kitchen.
“Jeez, Greek,” Týr muttered, “Easy. She’s been through hell.”
Nik cut the warrior a flat stare as he shoved to his feet and strode out after Shadow. He found her making her way down the corridor, a hand on the wall as if needing the assistance. His heart pumped hard in concern. “Shadow—”
“Leave me alone.” She stepped into the open elevator.
He flashed, slipping inside just as the door rolled shut. “Look—”
“I don’t want to talk to you. Y-you embarrassed me in front of everyone.” She blinked at the ascending numbers, a glint of tears in her eyes. Hell.
“I don’t want you falling and causing more harm to yourself—”
“So I can get out of your life faster, you mean?” Her tense features hardened. “Don’t worry, I plan to. I didn’t ask to come here.”
He slapped his palm on the Stop button, his own ire ramping up at her hardass attitude. He spun her around, and she pressed back into the corner, away from him. “Where the hell was I supposed to leave you?” he demanded, keeping his hand on the button and caging her. “Out on the street?”
“Maybe you should have—”
“Godsdammit.” Nik exhaled roughly, spiked with frustration…then she bit her lower lip.
And that unstoppable need and desire for her surged. Unable to stop himself, he gently stroked his thumb across her mouth, preventing her biting.
Eyes wide, her breath escaped in a rush, then she ducked under his arm and moved to the other side of the elevator.
Fuck. Nik lowered his head, a hand still braced on the control panel. He should have just left instead of going after her. But he didn’t because she was his—
No, dammit! Not his, his responsibility. He thumped the button, and the elevator rose upwards once more.
Nik leaned against the metal wall, watching her with a hooded stare.
She kept her focus fixed on the door.
The moment it rolled opened, she almost ran, as if escaping evil.
She wouldn’t be wrong.
Exhaling roughly, he scrubbed his jaw. Yeah, better he got his ass back on the street and forget this futile attraction to a woman who seemed to hate him.
His serpent tatt stirred. Fix it. Makesss her likesss usss again.
For once, Nik had no comeback.
Chapter 10
Nik prowled through the dank underground tunnel, heavy with musty air in the early hours of the morning, passing the area where the demon fight happened two nights ago. Frustration still torqued him, and the malevolent riot within ramped up, tearing at his mind.
The latter he’d lived with for millennia and endured, but the former gouged out chunks of his frozen heart.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Shadow with what he’d said. Didn’t the difficult female understand she would only do more damages to herself walking about while unwell? And, of course, he’d handled the situation with the subtlety of a battering goat.
Worse, the night’s hunting was a dead end. He’d picked up no clues about Eddi’s death or the abductions, and the homeless knew nothing, either.
Dagan materialized near him. “Nothing on the south side. All’s quiet,” he said, those keen citrine eyes skimming him. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Nik headed deeper into the tunnel, then slowed down near an open area with massive pillars. Behind one graffitied column, he found Shadow’s backpack. As he straightened, bag in hand, snarling voices reached him.
Nik flashed, tracking his quarry. In the mouth of a tunnel, two demons had a human trapped against a wall. The reed-thin scourge punched a human—Russ, the homeless man who’d shaken his crotch at Shadow—in the belly. “Where’s the female with the dark hair from The Refuge—”
Nik grabbed the fucker by the throat and hauled him away. The other demon leaped back. Nik flung a hand, nailing him with several ice spears, then slammed his captive against the wall. “What female?”
“Fuck off—”
Nik punched him in the face. The demon yowled, blood gushing from his broken nose. He sneered and head-butted Nik in the jaw, nearly causing his teeth to lodge in his brain.
“I’m not afraid of death, you fallen dicks—” the skatá spat, bloodied saliva splattering Nik’s face.
“Great! Let’s send you back gift wrapped,” Nik taunted, raging bubbling beneath his skin. The cacophony in his head mounting.
With a snarl, the demon dived foreword, his dagger appearing in his hand. He lashed out, catching Nik on the forearm. Blood seeped. “I will kill you.”
“Been there, done that. Try again—” Nik shot forward as the skatá’s dagger flashed again and kicked him in the ribs. Bone cracked, the satisfying sound reverberating in the tunnels. The demon roared, his bravado shattering, and he crumpled to the ground. Nik summoned his obsidian dagger, dropped down, and plunged it, ripping the scum’s belly apart, then he rammed the blade in the heart before slitting blight’s carotid. The screech rending the air became a gurgle.
He shot to his feet. Dagan had the other quivering demon trapped with his telekinesis. Chest heaving, his mind close to splintering, with his palm, Nik jammed the ice shards f
urther into the remaining demon’s gut. “Talk.”
“I was just t-told to bring the female,” he choked out, dark eyes shifting between red and brown, fear and pain reeking off him.
“Who?”
“H-he’ll kill me!”
Nik twisted one shard.
He cried out. “Tol-Tolvi!”
Obsidian in hand, Nik thrust the dagger into the demon’s heart then slit his throat. He stared dispassionately at the decomposing body, but he had enough of his mind left to step aside, evading the swooshing dark souls of both demons before they dove into the ground and vanished.
“It’s early morning.” Dagan’s voice came from afar. “Let’s head back to the castle.”
Adrenaline still kicking, Nik clenched and unclenched his fingers, breathing erratically. He pivoted and found Dagan standing at the tunnel entrance and watching him.
“Where’s the human?”
“I let him go. A junkie. Knows nothing. You okay?”
“I won’t be okay until I find that fucker Tolvi and crucify him.” Nik snatched up Shadow’s fallen backpack and strode for the maintenance hole to the surface.
“Believe me, I understand,” Dagan said, following him. “But you’re not yourself. The Arc hears about this, you’ll be off rotation—”
“Because I ripped the hellscum apart? I should have done more, would have gotten a confession—” He grasped the ladder’s corroded rung.
“Dammit, Nik.” Dagan flung an arm across the rung, obstructing his ascent, yellow eyes flaring. “It’s not just me, the others are aware—”
“What? That I’m slipping? Going crazy?” A cold laugh. “Only now you figure this out about me? Why do you think we deviants were stashed in the mountains of Romania? You should thank the fates you cut yourself free from this eternal hell.”
“It’s only because I found my mate,” Dagan said quietly. “And you will—”
“Those assholes don’t care about the pain they caused others,” he bit out, unable to get this huge fucking compression around his chest to ease. Every instinct he possessed insisted it was Shadow the demons were after, probably the same ones who marked her and killed Eddi.
Rage consuming him, he dematerialized and shot out of the slight gap in the manhole cover, heading back to the castle.
Nik reformed at the castle portico and willed the door open. He stumbled into the dimly lit foyer and dragged his feet to the sweeping staircase and up each stair, the souls’ screams splintering his skull, claws gouging the backs of his eyeballs, driving him to the brink of his sanity.
He lurched into the bedroom, and his knees gave way. He fell on the carpet near the bed and just lay there, longing for a moment of peace. Of quiet. Or death. The latter something he’d always wished for, but now…
Her soothing scent of wildflowers wrapped around him like an empty hug, trapping him.
Hell. Even away from her, she haunted him.
Groaning, he flung his arm over his eyes.
“Nik?” A hand gently touched his shoulder, and he went motionless.
A dream?
He didn’t care. He gave in to this overwhelming need to hold her, to take her chaos that blanketed his own madness. He dragged her kneeling form into his arms, settling her spine against his front, spooning her.
Fingers stroked his forearm, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Not a dream then. He was in her room…shit.
Dangerous. Leave.
But he couldn’t make himself move. He needed this—just for a moment.
Nik grunted and pressed his face into her silky hair…she came to him during his darkest torment.
“Oh, god, Nik.” A gasp escaped her, and she lifted blood-smeared fingers. “You’re bleeding!”
“I’m fine.” He swiped her hand on his shirt, then held her closer, submerging himself in her warmth—a warmth that seeped into him, soothing the eons old cold within. But holding her this way ignited a whole other problem. With her tempting bottom snug against his groin, his cock hardened uncomfortably, trapped behind the zipper of his leathers.
For fuck’s sake.
As if sensing his mood, she glanced back at him again, a faint tinge of pink stealing into her pale cheeks, but she didn’t pull away from the hard-on he sported. The reds in her eyes more noticeable in the gloom. An agonizing reminder she possessed a part of a genus responsible for his agony and torture, that left him trapped with those malevolent souls for millennia, and an aching emptiness that nothing could ever fill.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Like he could ever reveal the truth of his fucked-up life.
But she drew him like a beckoning flame. A dark, tortured groan of need escaped him. He threaded his fingers through her hair and crushed his mouth to hers, licking, nipping, and tasting her lips. With a soft moan, she turned in his arms, and he deepened the kiss. She pressed into him, sucking on his tongue, tugging on his piercing, a dragging sensation that punched him straight in his groin. Helpless to resist, Nik let himself sink into the feelings she drew from him, where nothing mattered. Just her, and this intense connection between them.
He ran his palms down her warm body to her hips, past the t-shirt twisted around her waist. He splayed his fingers on her warm, panty-covered bottom, holding her to him, desire burning his blood like a flame. A whimper escaped her. Theós. He drank in her scent, her taste, hungered for more—
The agitated souls thrashed harder, sensing freedom at his whirling emotions, looking for a chink in his armor.
Fuck—no, not now.
He couldn’t—he didn’t dare risk her.
Gently, Nik removed her arms from his neck, regret cleaving him in two. He didn’t want to start something they could never finish. Scraping every fragment of willpower he possessed, he bolted his mind’s shields, shutting out his longing for her.
He should leave, walk out. Instead, he shifted her, spooning her once more. Ignoring his aching dick, he buried his face in her nape again, unable to move.
Just holding her seemed to give him a little bit of his sanity back, and he drank in the sensation like a desert experiencing its first rains.
Shadow pressed her fingers to her swollen mouth, still reeling that Nik had kissed her. After their earlier fight in the elevator, she’d been dead sure he wouldn’t bother coming back to check on her, let alone sleep on the carpet in her room or kiss her with so much hunger.
And she’d finally given in to her attraction to him.
However, he didn’t want more. It wasn’t as if she was asking for a commitment. Any other guy would have already had her flat on her back, except for Nik. He drew her closer, wrapping his arm around her as if this was all the connection he needed.
She swallowed her disappointment, gently pressing a hand to her wounded chest, trying to shut off her own need for him. Just as well, because it would be wading into disaster if she let this attraction…this yearning for him take over.
“Sleep,” he murmured. The faint heat of his chest seeped into her back, finally spreading a soothing warmth and lulling her toward slumber. Her eyelids shut, knowing she’d be safe in the sanctuary of his arms—and her eyes snapped open again.
God. She couldn’t, not when she was a danger to him.
Wide awake again, Shadow stared blankly at the dresser opposite, recalling the demon she’d fed off in the garage. He’d thrashed on the ground while she stood there paralyzed, watching in horror as his body crumpled, eyes gone cloudy in death before he vanished.
With her nodes never truly satisfied from her stolen feeding, they could take over while she was asleep. They might drain even an immortal of his soul’s energy, causing irreparable harm and likely death—
Christ. There would be no returning from that.
A pang of regret swamped her, and she sat up. His arm fell away from her. Even with the room cast in darkness, his intense stare held her like a physical touch. Not knowing what to say, her gaze dipped to h
is hard, intractable jaw. “The floor’s er, uncomfortable.”
The lie hung heavy between them in the silence, when they both knew she slept on worse in the underground.
Her heart ached. Whatever he’d gone through tonight while keeping this world safe for humans had clearly been traumatic, and she couldn’t even offer him the small comfort of an embrace, too afraid of her darker self.
Nik rolled onto his back and flung an arm over his eyes.
Shadow pushed to her feet and stumbled back to the bed. She climbed in and huddled under the covers, her chest compressing at her reality.
She would never be normal, could never have a relationship with anyone. No man would want an energy leech who would always require other males—demons—for the rest of her life. Least of all Nik.
With his sexy, tough body, striking, brooding looks, and otherworldly charisma, he could have anyone he wanted, like the gorgeous women who lived here. They hadn’t said anything, but she sensed they all weren’t exactly human, either, even her friend.
The door opened then shut with a soft click. Her head shot out from under the duvet. She twisted and glanced at the floor. Empty. A pang pierced her.
Her gaze rushed back to the shut door. On the floor, near the jamb, sat her missing backpack.
Nik entered the massive basement gym in the castle, the place empty at this hour in the morning. He cut through the heavy artillery, his cock a hard ache, his mind rioting, whether from the souls’ relentless screams in his skull or his own despair, he had no fucking clue anymore. All he felt and thought of was Shadow, and remembering her lush mouth on his didn’t ease his obstinately throbbing cock.
The scariest shit yet—he hadn’t known he was in her room until she touched him.
He stopped at the punching bag suspended from the ceiling. Even unaware, everything in him tuned into her like a homing device, tossing his rational mind out the window—rational mind? Hell, Dag was right to worry. He was a fucking ignited canon.
He hammered his fists into the bag.
But more painful was the thought burrowing into him like a virus. Despite their attraction, she didn’t want to be with him. Her running off after he’d kissed her proved this. Teeth gritted, he pounded out his frustration on the sandbag with his bare knuckles, again and again.
Shattered Dawn (Fallen Guardians Book 5) Page 12
