Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2)

by Felicity Heaton

  In a strange bedroom.

  Her gaze leaped around, charting everything from the tiled floor, to the pale yellow walls and the wooden wardrobes that filled the space opposite her at the foot of the enormous bed, to the two huge windows to her left that allowed light to flood into the room and revealed a stunning view over Rome’s rooftops. Her head throbbed in response to the sudden movements and the information overload, and she clutched it and buried it between her knees.

  She closed her eyes.

  What the hell had happened?

  Her mark flashed across her dark eyes, a distorted replay of him fighting two men.

  She snapped her head up and stared down at her palm, at the shallow healing cuts on it.

  Fuck.

  It all came flooding back.

  He had shattered the syringe in her hand, and then he had shattered her.

  The satisfied hum in her body made sudden, dreadful sense.

  The result of what she could only describe as mind-blowing sex.

  Eva groaned and slumped back against the hard wooden headboard. What had she done?

  She raised her hand in front of her, sighed as she stared at the lacerations and slowly pieced together everything that had happened, from the moment she had tried to take her mark down to the moment he had taken her.

  She groaned again and wished she could blame it all on him or the drug, but she dimly recalled he had tried to resist her and the drug had only worked to loosen the hold she had on the desire she already felt for him.

  It was tempting to bury her head in her knees again, so she shoved the covers away and leaped into action instead, intent on salvaging some of her dignity. She was damned if he was going to find her in his room when he came back.

  Her feet hit the cold tiles and her knees gave out, turning to jelly beneath her. She clutched the mattress to stop herself from hitting the floor and pulled herself back up onto it. Damn. She needed a moment. The humming in her body grew stronger, sending a pulse through her, a hot wave of pleasure that rolled through her like an aftershock.

  Stronzo.

  She had avoided physical contact since becoming an assassin, but she could remember sleeping with men and none of them had ever left her this way.

  She cursed him, and then added a few more on top when she remembered that she had given him her name. Another first since stepping into her current line of work. She always kept everyone in the dark about her as much as possible.

  Even her clients only knew her by her alias—the angel.

  Now her enemy knew her name.

  This wasn’t going to end well.

  She looked at the door, intending to listen for him and see if she was alone. Instead, she caught a wicked flashback of being pinned against the wall beside it, his hard body driving into her as he gave her everything she had wanted.

  She had ached for him so badly last night, had needed him to the point where she had honestly felt as if she would die if the desire that had been blazing inside her hadn’t been sated.

  By him.

  Eva bit her lip as another aftershock rolled through her.

  Stronzo.

  She was better than this. Stronger than this. She pushed onto her feet again and refused to let her legs give out beneath her as she hurried across the room to the wardrobes. Relief blasted through her as she yanked the wooden doors open and found them full of clothes. She grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of combat trousers, both in black, and pulled them on. They were too big, dwarfing her despite her mark’s athletic frame.

  Eva held her trousers up as she padded quickly across the tiled floor to the door. She eased it open, peered both ways along the wood-panelled corridor. It was quiet. Either he was sleeping it off somewhere, was sitting in wait, or he was out. She prayed it was the latter and looked off to her right. The bathroom.

  A flash of him undressing her in there leaped across her eyes.

  She raced along the corridor, silent in her bare feet, and breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted her holster and leather jacket on the white marble floor in the bathroom, together with her boots. She quickly tugged her boots on, grimacing as she discovered they were damp and cold, and then slung her holster across her shoulders.

  God, the weight of her weapons felt good.

  She shrugged into her leather and turned to leave, paused as she saw the black bathrobe on the back of the door.

  She pulled the belt free of its loops and used it to hold her trousers up, tying it tightly around her waist.

  She paused again at the door and looked back at the claw-footed tub that was still full of water.

  A flash of him watching her while she had been in that tub, of his handsome face awash with concern, crashed over her and she couldn’t breathe as she struggled against the invisible tide, fighting the questions and the desire they stirred—a need to remain and see him again.

  She wanted to know why he had taken care of her.

  Eva shook her head, causing her short black hair to sway across her neck. No, she didn’t.

  What she wanted was to get away before he returned.

  To sleep with a man was a mistake.

  To sleep with her mark was beyond unacceptable.

  She had to leave now, while she had the chance.

  She had complicated things enough.

  She was meant to be killing him, not giving him a joy ride.

  Eva crept along the hall, keeping as quiet as she could in case he was hiding ahead of her, waiting for her to emerge. She reached into her jacket and drew her gun, and the weight of it in her right hand helped steady her nerves as they rose with each step closer she came to the end of the corridor.

  Those nerves settled as she reached the open wood-walled room. She quickly scanned it, not bothering to take in any of the details, focused on ensuring that her mark wasn’t home. Good.

  She turned right, towards a door that had a peephole. It had to be the exit.

  Eva hurried towards it, picking up speed now, and holstered her gun. The last thing she needed was someone in the apartment building seeing her with a weapon and calling the police.

  She stopped short of grabbing the handle as something shimmered across the wooden door.

  A trick of the light flooding the room from the windows behind her?

  She turned to look at them.

  Her mark stood right behind her.

  She moved in an instant, launching into action on instinct, her right fist flying at his face.

  He easily caught her hand.

  Golden eyes shifted to it, his handsome face cold and devoid of emotion as he studied her hand. He released it and she snatched it back, considered going for one of her weapons and then thought the better of it when she caught the challenge in his striking eyes, the dare to do it.

  “Leaving without a goodbye kiss?” he husked and her damned knees weakened again, her heart pounding a hard rhythm as her eyes betrayed her and fell to his lips.

  Lips that had mastered hers, that had seared her flesh and set her on fire.

  “Stronzo,” she bit out and reached for her weapon, no longer caring about the odds being against her.

  He was on her in a flash, his hand grasping her wrist and shoving it against her chest, pinning it there so she couldn’t draw her weapon from its holster. Those lips she had been fantasising about curled, flashing canines that seemed unusually long.

  He pushed her backwards, pinned her to the door, and she struggled against him, refusing to let him dominate her. He made a low growling noise in his throat when she managed to get her fingers around the grip of her gun and pressed her wrist harder against her chest, so hard it was difficult to breathe.

  Those golden eyes issued a demand.

  It took her a moment to remember he had asked her a question.

  “Kiss?” She gave him a confused look and darkness flashed in his eyes, almost stopped her in her tracks but she pushed on, playing it cool and praying she was going to somehow get away with her life. She was do
ne with this mission, and this man. It was too dangerous. She was going to run. Benares might find her, but he might not, and that was a chance she was willing to take. “What are you talking about? Why would I kiss you?”

  Maybe she had put a little too much venom into that word, because his expression darkened, a storm brewing in his eyes that set her nerves alight and had her pressing back against the door. Fear. She had felt it plenty of times in her life, enough that she should have been able to control it as she did with most of her emotions, but it was too powerful, shoving at that control, filling her with a need to escape and run, and she wasn’t sure that it stemmed from her current position.

  She wasn’t sure this fear had anything to do with her mark at all.

  His face softened, lips curling into a slight smile as he lowered his eyes to her mouth and released her arm. She tensed as he raised his hand, bracing herself for a blow. His palm touched her cheek and she flinched even though it was a light caress not a hard strike, unable to stop the reaction her body had decided upon before he had even made contact.

  He frowned.

  “Because of last night.” He smiled again, smoothed his palm across her cheek and down to her jaw.

  His touch was feather-soft, but she was aware of his strength, knew he could snap her neck in a heartbeat if she said or did the wrong thing. She trembled as he caressed her, stirring heat in her veins and pulling memories of last night to the front of her mind again. Desire rushed through her on a wave of electric tingles, tinged with panic she couldn’t quite shake.

  Her gaze slipped to his lips and then shifted to the scar on the left side of his face. It started low on his jaw and ran down his neck to his collarbone, the skin ragged and distorted, as if someone had burned his flesh away.

  It both frightened and fascinated her.

  Everything about him screamed danger, but she felt no pressing need to move and escape him.

  She didn’t fear him. Not after last night.

  What she feared now were the sparks that leaped between them, intense and seductive, and the air of power and danger that he emanated, uncontrolled and wild, undeniably alluring.

  He growled and closed his hand around her throat, shoved her back against the door by it, but there wasn’t any strength in his grip. He wasn’t trying to hurt her. She lifted her eyes to his, caught the brief flare of pain in their incredible golden depths before he extinguished it. He had startled her to stop her from staring at the scar, because he hadn’t liked it.

  If he didn’t want people to see it, why did he wear the long lengths of his blond hair down over the right side of his face and not the left? It would have covered the scar on his jaw and part of his neck.

  The pressure on her throat lessened as he eased back.

  “You don’t remember last night?” he said, his voice as soft as his expression now, almost docile and affectionate.

  “I tried to kill you last night,” she countered and pushed his arm, moving his hand away from her. He eased back another step. A bonus she hadn’t expected. “I don’t know how I ended up here, but I’m leaving.”

  Blond eyebrows dropped low over golden eyes that brightened and locked on her, fixed so intently that she shivered under their scrutiny.

  “You don’t remember making love?”

  Making love? If what had happened between them had been making love, then she wanted to see what raw, hungry sex with him was like.

  “The drug must have affected you too, because I don’t recall fucking you.”

  His hand closed over her cheek again. “You don’t remember?”

  His thumb grazed her lower lip and her breath left her on a sigh that she couldn’t hold back as she stared up into his dazzling golden eyes and slowly shook her head.

  Somehow, she stopped herself from melting against him and found the strength to keep up her charade. “I want to kill you. Why would I fuck you? I would never fuck a mark. I would never sleep with you.”

  Those dangerous eyes darkened again and his demeanour changed in a blink of them. He caught her jaw and tilted her head back, his eyes scouring hers. His were cold now, empty of the storm that had been building in them a moment before.

  He grabbed her arm and yanked her away from the door, and had it open and her out of it a second later. She hit the wall of the corridor hard, grunted as the impact sent fiery sparks rushing through the bones of her right arm and across her upper back.

  “Never… ever… come after me again. The next time I see you, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  Eva looked across at him.

  He slammed the door in her face.

  Stronzo.

  But she had the feeling that word should be directed at her this time. She wasn’t sure why.

  She sagged against the wall and waited for the pain to pass. The one radiating from her arm faded, but the one in her chest lingered as his ultimatum rang in her ears.

  She had already made up her mind that she would never see him again, so why did that ultimatum cut her like a blade?

  Eva clutched her right arm, looked back at the door and lingered for a moment before forcing herself to walk away.

  She was going to walk away from all of this. Disappear.

  She was going to get out of Rome, drive to her small villa in the north, and get her head straight. She needed space to get some perspective, and not only about him.

  Every instinct she possessed screamed she had been set up.

  The drug she had been given hadn’t been poison. It had been some sort of aphrodisiac, which meant Benares had wanted her to end up sleeping with her mark.

  Why?

  The cold gnawing in the pit of her stomach said she knew the answer to that question.

  Benares was using her to get to the man. Her mark was an assassin like her, a master of his emotions, and a loner as far as she could tell from the months she had been tailing him and learning all about him. Benares had already known those things about her mark, she was sure of it now, and he had chosen her because they were alike.

  It had been his first step in bringing them together, a common ground they shared that would make it easier for his plan to come to fruition.

  That plan was turning her into her mark’s weakness.

  She could see that now and was damned if she was going to allow it to happen.

  Benares had chosen the wrong woman for the job. She wasn’t a whore. She was an assassin.

  She reached the bottom floor of the apartment building and stepped out into the street. A quick scan of her surroundings placed her far from the last place she recalled—the island in the Tiber river. She couldn’t remember how she had come to be in his apartment. Everything between the square and his bathroom was a blur that refused to come into focus.

  Eva rubbed her aching head, soothing her temples with her fingertips.

  She really needed to get her head on straight.

  That need only grew when she caught herself looking back up the height of the cream-rendered building to the floor where his apartment was, harbouring a ridiculous hope that he would be leaning out of his window, framed by the green shutters and watching her.

  Damn him.

  Damn Benares too for messing with her head and throwing her life into turmoil.

  Eva turned her back on the elegant old building and charted a course towards a main road, hoping she would find a taxi there. She was a long way from her own apartment, across the other side of the city in an area that had money stamped all over it. Her mark had to be good at his job to earn enough money to live in such a fancy area.

  She ignored the whispered urge to look back the way she had come.

  She was never going to see him again. That was final. She valued her life.

  The main road was quiet, still in the early morning, and she strolled along it, desperately trying to shut out her thoughts about her mark and what they had shared. He had been so different with her. Intense. Passionate. Full of emotion.

  He had been a
complete contradiction to the man she had tailed, blowing all of her research apart in one wild, explosive moment together.

  She managed to hail a taxi, regaining awareness of the world for as long as it took to give the driver directions to her apartment and then losing herself in her thoughts. She mulled over everything, trying to piece her mark together but failing dismally.

  Maybe it had been the drug. It had affected them both.

  She came out of her thoughts again as the taxi rattled over cobblestones and pulled up outside her apartment building in a small square. She handed the driver his money, stepped out of the cab and walked up the gentle slope towards the entrance to the pale grey rendered building. She punched in the code to unlock the smaller rectangular door set into the large arched wooden double doors. It clicked and she pushed it open and stepped over the threshold, into the cold shadowy broad tunnel that joined the square to the courtyard of the building.

  It was quiet.

  Eva ran through her normal checks, halting in the shadows to scour every inch of the courtyard from her yellow Ferrari, black Maserati and white Fiat 500 in the centre of it, to the covered walkway that ran around the four sides where the ground floor of the four-storey building had been set back to provide shelter.

  She shifted left and right to see past the arches and columns that supported the upper three floors of the building, making sure no one was hiding behind them. Satisfied she was alone on the ground floor, she scanned the dark windows of the upper floors. No sign of movement there and none of the alarms hidden around the courtyard had been triggered. She flipped a silver panel on the right hand wall of the tunnel down, punched in another code to turn off the motion sensors, and then flicked the panel closed again.

  Normally, she would turn on the lights in the courtyard when returning home, but not today. Today she wanted to get in and out unseen, so she stuck to the shadows in the covered walkway, heading to the opposite side of the building.

  She would pack a bag and get away from Rome, away from the madness of Benares and her mark.

  Maybe she could even use some of her contacts to help her.

  Plenty of them owed her a favour, and she was sure some of them could hold their own against Benares.