She yanked the door open and slammed it behind her, and broke into a dead sprint before any of them could think to stop her.
She took the steps quickly, heart wrenching up into her throat when she missed one and almost fell. She grabbed the banister and managed to stop herself, and sank to her backside on the steps as it dawned on her.
She wasn’t sure where to start looking for Valen.
She couldn’t go to the bar as it had been closed off by the police, and the club he normally frequented wouldn’t be open. She thought about the hill where she had seen him a few times while she had been tailing him to gather information on him. Would he be there?
She didn’t want to think too hard about the things she had seen, because she felt as if she was going mad whenever she tried to make sense of them, but if someone could theoretically teleport, would there be a limit to the distance they could cover?
Could he have teleported to the hill?
Her stomach turned and she rubbed it, trying to get it to settle, and vowed not to think about teleporting people and bizarre powers any more today.
Even if he could magically zip from one place to another, she couldn’t.
If she was going to get to the hill, then first she needed to get home.
It was a starting point, and she badly needed one right now, needed a direction so she felt as if she was doing something, moving forwards rather than standing still.
Moving closer to him again.
She pushed onto her feet and made it to the foyer of the building, and then out into the street. Rain poured down, saturating her in seconds. The weather had been atrocious since they had brought Valen home over a day ago. Her stomach turned again, the memory of how she had gotten there making her want to vomit. She pushed it out of her mind and told herself she had imagined it.
One of them hadn’t grabbed her and teleported with her.
She flagged a taxi and slid into the back seat.
A whole damn day she had sat in that living room with his brothers watching her. The woman, Megan, had been kind, taking care of her and making sure she ate something. The men had just glared at her and discussed Valen.
Eva sighed and rested her head against the window of the cab, watching the streets fly past.
They had been so different.
There had been concern in their voices, even in Keras’s. Where had those feelings of warmth gone when Valen had woken up and come into the room?
They had given her the impression they cared about their brother, and then they had shown her just how wrong she had been about them.
They were just like every other family.
Just like the one she had left behind.
Full of betrayal and false feelings.
The sensation that had been growing inside her from the moment she had started on her mission and first set eyes on Valen came into focus, revealing itself to her at last.
Kinship.
The feeling that he had a similar soul to hers, a similar story behind his journey into the darkness.
That they were one and the same.
The urge to find him grew stronger, pressing at her, and she quickly exited the taxi as it pulled up outside her apartment building and hurried across the cobblestones of the square to it, intent on finding him and letting him know that no matter what he thought, he wasn’t alone.
Eva punched in the code on the silver box beside the arched entrance, waited for the buzz and pushed the small gate set into the huge arched wooden doors open. She stepped over the threshold and went to close it behind her.
Blinked.
Valen stood in the middle of the square, rain rolling down his bare chest, a distant empty look in his golden eyes.
“You promised me information.” Those words had a hollow ring to them too, as if he wasn’t quite with her.
Was it because of the things his brothers had said to him?
Who was Calindria and what had happened to her?
The hurt she spied hidden beyond the emptiness in his eyes told her not to ask, because that spot was still sore from Keras’s attack on it.
“Did you track me here?” She leaned out of the entrance and looked around the square.
No sign of his brothers.
“I wouldn’t leave you alone with them.” Because he didn’t trust them with her. It was all there in his eyes for her to read.
He had come flying out of his bedroom to attack Marek, and she wanted to ask why, replayed what his brother had said just before he had appeared and found no reason for him to have reacted to it. Marek had merely sounded impressed that she was savvy enough to know having Valen around when she gave them all the information she had was a wise thing to do, a way of stopping them from disposing of her when she was no longer useful to them.
Or was it because Marek had sounded impressed with her that Valen had launched that attack?
His eyes narrowed on her from across the small square, heating her in the way she feared they always would when he looked at her like that, as if she belonged to him.
“You followed me,” she whispered, a little breathless.
Because he had wanted to protect her. He had wanted to protect what he viewed as his.
“It wasn’t difficult. Far too easy in fact. You owe me information.” He walked up the slight incline towards her, his bare feet silent on the dark cobblestones, and stopped close to her, towering over her in a way that forced her to tip her head back to keep her eyes locked on his. His golden eyes darkened, heating her outwards from her chest, and she secretly sucked in a breath to steady herself. He lowered his head, until his mouth hovered barely an inch from hers, and whispered, “I want it now.”
Eva swallowed hard.
He wanted it.
She felt like an idiot when he moved back a step and it hit her what it was.
Information. That was all he wanted from her. Nothing else.
His eyes were cold again, the heat that had been in them erased, as if it had never existed.
Was any of this real, or was she dreaming it all? It felt more like a nightmare, one that was twisting her in knots and getting stranger by the second.
She never should have taken the job.
She looked up at Valen, into golden eyes that shone in the low light, a fierce possessive fire lighting them up again as he gazed down at her.
But then she never would have met him.
Eva lifted her hand without thinking and lightly feathered her fingers over the left side of his face.
He scowled and knocked her hand away, and distanced himself, the darkness back in his eyes, the heat destroyed by her carelessness this time.
She should have known he wouldn’t allow her to touch that part of him, not as he had the other woman—his mother.
He looked off to his right.
Panic lanced her.
“Wait.”
His golden eyes slid towards her and his eyebrow rose. She had surprised him with that outburst and command.
She had surprised herself too.
It wasn’t like her to act this way, to let her emotions control her like this. She had spent years honing her skills as an assassin, including the ability to keep her heart shielded and feelings in check, distancing herself from the world so she could do her job.
Valen had undone all of that in a matter of days.
In a single moment.
The very second she had come into contact with him that night in front of the Pantheon.
He looked as though he might leave anyway, as if he felt as uncomfortable as she did, out of sorts and traversing unknown waters. Dangerous waters. She wasn’t sure how to process what was happening either, but she wasn’t going to run away from it.
She wasn’t that sort of woman.
She also wasn’t the sort of woman who made a deal and then backed out of it.
“I owe you information.” It was a reasonable excuse for wanting him to stay. She frowned as a group of women eyed him as they walked past and
began talking amongst themselves, whispering things that she couldn’t hear but could guess at. It wasn’t difficult. He was standing bare-chested in the middle of the square, every inch of his delicious honed torso on view. It was bound to draw attention from female eyes, and stir desire in some of them. A dark urge to grab his arm and yank him into her apartment building, away from the eyes of other women, rushed through her and she barely tamped down that desire. “Come inside.”
It was better than grabbing him, but he reacted much the same, both eyebrows snapping up and his golden eyes going wide as he looked from her to the building and back again. His pupils dilated, but the desire that shone in them lasted barely a second before he had it under control and crushed out of existence.
“Fine,” he snapped and sauntered towards her, a sensual, almost predatory gait to his step. Her body heated, skin flushing beneath her clothes, and her mind raced forwards, conjuring images of him gathering her into his arms and kissing her as he had back in his apartment. He stopped right in front of her, looked down into her eyes, and the coldness in them hurled her out of her fantasies and back to cruel reality. “I thought you wanted to let me in.”
She did, and not only into her apartment. A foolish endeavour. They were assassins, born to lead a lonely life, and getting involved with him would only make it more difficult on her. Remembering the nights she passed in his arms before he inevitably left her, the stolen moments they had shared, wouldn’t bring her comfort when she was alone again.
They would only torment her.
Eva stepped aside and let him past, and closed the door behind him, shutting out the women with their prying eyes.
She turned around and found herself face to face with Valen.
In the low light, his eyes seemed to glow as he looked down at her, a softness to them that hadn’t been there a moment ago and was gone when he blinked.
“It’s probably best we do this in my apartment.” She wasn’t sure it was the greatest idea, not when his eyes widened slightly, and not when they followed that by narrowing on her in suspicion.
God, she couldn’t make sense of him. He sent her in circles, had her spinning so quickly she wasn’t sure what was up and what was down. One second he was looking at her as if he might die if she stopped kissing him, if she distanced herself, and the next he was looking at her as if she might be the one to kill him and he felt nothing when he was around her.
She pushed her unruly emotions back down, brought up her guards to form a wall around her heart, and crossed the courtyard, heading for the door into the building.
Valen tailed her, threatening to undo all her hard work to control her feelings and slip into a more business-like gear when he raked his eyes over her and she felt it, that hot zing that went through her whenever he looked at her. It followed the path of his gaze, forming small lightning strikes over her curves.
Eva had half a mind to turn on him and tell him to stop.
She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t.
She was an assassin.
She wasn’t just another woman for him to bed and leave either. She never had been able to play that way. Ever since she had first awoken as a woman, had her first kiss with a boy at the village near where she had grown up, she had been deadly serious about relationships, falling deep and hard for the object of her affection.
Even when she had known it would only end with her heart being broken.
This time, she felt that more keenly than ever, but Valen wouldn’t only break her heart. He would tear it from her chest and take it with him when he left.
She unlocked the door and moved swiftly up the floors, a desire to get this over with and let him leave brewing inside her as her thoughts led her down dark paths.
She didn’t bother to check if he was following her, and didn’t slow, practically running up the stairs to the top floor. She opened the door to her apartment and stepped inside the large open plan space. One of the first things she had done on moving in had been removing the walls, creating no place where an enemy could lay in wait for her.
She kept the door to the bathroom open at all times, giving her a clear view into the space beyond her bedroom on the left side of the expansive room. A low wall separated her bedroom area from the living area in the centre of her apartment, and to her right a long island formed the barrier between it and the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen, set into the right wall, was another door. That one she kept closed because there wasn’t enough room in the shallow closet for anyone to hide there. It housed her arsenal of weapons.
She crossed the room, the wooden floorboards creaking under her slight weight.
When Valen started to follow her, the noise grew louder and then suddenly stopped. A few squeaks of wood rubbing followed it and she looked back at him from the kitchen island to find him testing the floor with his bare right foot, pressing down and lifting it again, a frown on his face.
He lifted his golden eyes to meet hers. “You might want to get the floor fixed.”
She smiled and shook her head, causing her short hair to tickle the nape of her neck, sensitising her skin and making her want to shiver in a good way. Or maybe that was Valen’s presence and the way he was staring at her, setting her body alight and making her hyper-aware of him where he stood in her apartment, his defined chest exposed to her and stirring wicked hungers, needs that were impossible to deny when she was around him, no matter how hard she tried to control herself.
She struggled to tamp down that reaction to him and kept walking to the end of the wooden kitchen island.
“It’s intentional. I picked up the idea in Japan. They call them nightingale floors. It was so they could hear any intruders who tried to enter the castles and deal with them before they could attack.” She picked up the t-shirt off the pile of clothes stacked on the black granite worktop of the island, turned and tossed it across the room to him, hoping he would put it on and cover the glorious distraction that was his chest. He caught it, frowned at it and then at her. “It’s yours.”
He opened it up and held it out between his hands, his eyebrows rising. “You stealing my clothes now?”
She shrugged. “Mine were wet.”
His eyes met hers over the top of his black t-shirt, sending a hot shiver tumbling down her spine and sending her awareness of him shooting into the stratosphere. They were dark, desire pooling in them, stirring it in her.
Was he thinking about that night?
Her breathing shortened as memories popped into her mind, replays of how he had taken care of her, and how she had repaid him.
He snapped his gaze back down to the t-shirt and put it on, covering all that wicked, alluring flesh just as she had needed him to. He muttered something and when he looked back at her, that desire was gone again.
Erased.
Was it because she had denied remembering what had happened that night?
She opened her mouth to ask him, but remembered how his brothers had treated him and the way he had acted, and other words came out instead.
“Why didn’t you tell your brothers the truth?”
His golden eyes turned glacial. “I didn’t come up here for this shit.”
“You should have told them… but you just let them say all that crap about you… why?”
He turned his back on her. “It’s none of your damned business. If you’re just going to start on me, then I’m leaving.”
Did he always run away from confrontations? No. She knew the answer in her heart, and with it came a realisation that hit her so hard she had to lean on the worktop for support.
He thought she was like them.
The things they had said to him had reeked of disappointment, and now she was saying things that were giving him the impression she felt the same way—that he had disappointed her.
“I just figured you would at least kick their arses like they deserved.” She hoped he would look at her again, because she wanted to say something to him and he needed to see in her eyes that s
he wasn’t lying.
He remained with his back to her.
If he wanted to do this the hard way, then she could do that, because he deserved to know the truth about his brothers.
“They’re arseholes.” She walked towards him, the floorboards gently creaking beneath her with each step. “Complete stronzi.”
He tensed as she came up behind him, his back going rigid as her hand ghosted over it, ridiculous fear stopping her from touching him when she wanted to because she knew it would give him comfort. Hopefully her words would give him what she was too afraid to offer with a touch. She moved around him and he looked at her, a flicker of hurt in his eyes that remained when he blinked, and warmth suffused her, spreading outwards from her chest.
He wasn’t hiding his feelings from her.
“They’re arseholes… but they were worried about you.”
The light that had been in his eyes disappeared, the warmth leaving with it, and coldness swept in as they brightened.
Not the reaction she had expected.
She had thought he would be pleased to hear that, but it hadn’t gone down well at all.
He huffed and backed off a step, and she could almost see the barriers coming up, shutting her out again. “You don’t know a fucking thing about my brothers. They don’t give a fuck about me. Deep inside, they’re probably pissed I’m not being punished or I didn’t end up getting myself killed.”
That was a harsh thing to say, and her heart went out to him when he looked away from her, staring off to his left towards the windows, and she realised he believed it. Every word.
He thought his brothers hated him.
“Just give me the information.”
She frowned at his noble profile, cold stealing through her as he folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, completely shutting her out.
Very well.
Eva rubbed the sore spot between her breasts, trying to soothe the ache building there. Her stomach felt heavy again, weighed down by guilt as she pieced together everything she knew about him and built that clearer picture.
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 15
