Could she?
“Megan…” she started and froze when she looked across at the woman and spotted Valen standing behind her, a dark shadow against Megan’s crimson jumper and blue jeans.
Eva’s cheeks heated to a thousand degrees again, heart pounding a staccato rhythm as she stared at him and the question she had been about to ask right in front of him rang around her head.
Do you think Valen likes me romantically?
He frowned at her and then looked himself over as if he thought she saw something wrong with him and that was the reason she had frozen solid.
God, what was wrong with her?
What was it about Valen that had her so backwards about being forwards?
She liked him.
That was the problem.
She had never been shy around men before because they had never made her feel the way Valen did. They had never made her feel.
Could he like her the way she liked him?
He blinked, seemed to snap himself out of whatever thoughts were running around his head, and glared at Megan. She rolled her eyes and walked away, leaving them alone.
Could he?
Sure, he seemed to enjoy her company, looked at her with heat in his eyes and wanted her, but was it more than that?
She couldn’t ask him outright. If she did, there was a chance he would crush her, and she was tired of being weak. There had to be a way for her to tell whether those feelings she caught glimpses of in his eyes at times were real.
He held his hand up.
Her gaze leaped to it.
Lemonade.
“You… uh…” He averted his gaze, staring at the running sink tap. “I saw it on TV once.”
He shoved the can of lemonade towards her, a hint of rose climbing onto his cheeks.
“You had a shock.”
When she didn’t take it, he looked positively mortified.
“Shit. I got it wrong… I thought a sugary drink was good in this situation.”
God, he was adorable.
He went to take his hand back.
Eva placed hers over the can, stopping him in his tracks. The blush on his cheeks grew darker as he stared at their hands.
The second she took the can, he snatched his hand back and rubbed the nape of his neck, and then jammed both of his hands into the pockets of his black combat trousers.
“Thank you,” she said.
He blushed harder and turned his back on her. “No big deal.”
But it was.
With a single action, he had revealed himself to her, letting her see past the barriers and catch more than just a glimpse of his feelings.
He cared about her.
She cracked the can open and his head whipped around, eyes darting to her hands.
“You’re going to drink it?”
Eva laughed, the sound out of place in the midst of her tumultuous feelings, making her feel she really had lost her mind. “What did you expect me to do with it?”
He shrugged, rolling those toned shoulders beneath his black t-shirt, pushing all of her fears even further away as he drew all of her focus to him.
She sipped the drink and managed a smile for him. “You did get it right. Sugar for shock.”
Her voice lost all the warmth she had tried to put into it and she stared down at her can of lemonade, the reason for him giving it to her sweeping back in to overwhelm her.
“He wouldn’t have,” Valen whispered and stepped into the room. He hesitated and then placed his hands on her upper arms, and she looked up at him, right into his eyes, seeing the belief in them. “Incubi feed on pleasure. If he knocked you out…”
He ground his teeth and she could see he was finding this as difficult to talk about as she was.
She nodded, letting him know he didn’t need to finish. She knew what he was saying.
Benares wouldn’t have received any nourishment from violating her, and feeding had been his objective, although part of her still feared that the other reason he’d had for wanting her might have driven him to do things while she had been unconscious.
Jealousy.
He wanted to take her from Valen.
She sipped the drink again and felt better as some of her strength began to return.
Valen placed his palm against her left cheek and brushed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, his golden gaze locked on it, darkening by degrees as he stared at the cut that darted over it.
“I’m going to kill the bastard,” he murmured, and his irises brightened, the softer emotions melting away under the heat of his rage.
It touched her that he wanted to protect her, but it fuelled the feeling that had been lurking in the pit of her stomach, gnawing at her for days.
Damn guilt.
“Valen,” Ares called from the other room.
Valen went to turn away from her.
Eva caught his left wrist.
“I’ve been an arse,” she blurted and he frowned over his shoulder at her.
She tried to look him in the eye but hers refused to lift above his shoulders, so she stared at his throat as he turned back to face her.
His head lowered, bringing his square chin and the wicked curve of his lower lip into view, and she knew he was looking at her hand where it held his arm.
Waiting for her to explain.
“I’ve been an arse,” she said again, thinking this time she would be able to get the rest of the words jammed in her throat out into the open.
No.
They remained lodged there, and the longer he stared at her hand, the more fiercely they resisted her. She swallowed and squeezed her eyes shut. She was stronger than this. She had already told him in a way, so she wasn’t sure why admitting it was so difficult. He needed to hear her say it, and she needed it out there to alleviate the guilt eating away at her.
She opened her eyes, forced them to meet his, and shoved the words out. “Our first time together blew my mind.”
He stared at her, too sober for her liking, completely unreadable.
Her stupid heart started pounding again.
He had to say something.
A glimmer of something warm lit his eyes and then he grinned. “It blew your mind so hard you forgot it, huh?”
She barely heard his words, was too entranced by the sight of him smiling at her. Really smiling. There was nothing forced about it, nothing false. She had made him smile.
She had the feeling that smiling like this was rare for him and she should cherish it.
“Don’t sweat it,” he said.
She thought he would pull away and go to his brothers, but he pulled her into his arms instead and captured her mouth in a fierce kiss, demanding and delicious, one that melted her. She leaned into it, sought more of it, unwilling to let him give this to her and then steal it away before she was ready. He moaned and angled his head, and kissed her deeper, claiming all of her. The stud in his tongue stroked over hers and she shivered in his arms as a thrill chased through her, memories of how good it had felt against her flesh igniting her desire.
Valen pulled back and pressed his forehead and nose against hers, his panted breaths matching hers as he held her.
“Next time, I’ll try to blow your mind so hard you forget your name.”
Heat flashed over her skin at just the thought. “I like the sound of that.”
He jerked back, surprise widening his eyes before they narrowed on her, blazing with heat and a dark hunger, a need that she knew he saw reflected in her eyes.
“Valen!” someone barked and he flinched, turned cold eyes towards the corridor and glared in the direction of the living room.
The haze of the kiss gave way to the cold that had filled her when she had figured out Benares’s plan, and she tightened her grip on Valen’s arm, holding him in place and stopping him from going to his brothers.
She had to tell him. He wouldn’t like it, would be upset with her for saying it, because he was like her in so many respects and did
n’t want her to view him as weak.
She didn’t.
He was strong.
But he was vulnerable, and it was his family that had made him that way.
So before she allowed him to go into the other room and face that family, she needed to make sure he was aware of Benares’s plan. She needed to protect him in the only way she could.
She had to tell him her theory.
Whether he wanted to hear it or not.
CHAPTER 19
“I don’t think Benares is on to me… I don’t think he sent those monsters to kill me. He did it because he knew you would rush in to protect me… because he wants you deeper under my spell.” Eva glanced away from him, sighed, and then lifted her eyes back to meet his. “Benares plans to turn you to his side. I’m supposed to bring you to him in three days. He’s using me as a way to lure you over.”
The rage burning in Valen’s veins, the black need to find Benares and rip him into tiny pieces, stood up to the ice that assaulted him as Eva’s words sank in, but it wasn’t long before the cold was winning, vanquishing the fire.
Making him numb.
He stared down into her beautiful blue eyes, saw the truth shimmering in them as they revealed her fear and her worry, and how much she hated having to tell him this because she knew it would hurt him.
Her grip on his arm tightened. Her hand shook against him. He glanced down at it, not feeling anything as he silently fought the mocking voice ringing in his mind, laughing at him.
Benares had targeted him for one reason.
The bastard thought he was the weak link.
Feeling began to seep back in, emotions born of the darker side of his blood.
Benares dared to insult him?
He ground his teeth and growled through them, filled with a need to deny that he was vulnerable, to show Eva that he was anything but weak.
He was strong.
She hesitated, the concern in her eyes growing as she stood before him in the bathroom, clearly unsure what to say.
An urge to head out into the night, find Benares and destroy him replaced the one to make her see that he was strong. It whispered seductive words in his ears, bid him to listen to it and surrender. He planted his boots to the floor and refused.
If he went after Benares now, the bastard might think that Eva had told him about his plan and might send someone after her. The thought of her being at Jin’s mercy, or that of those fell beasts Benares had called forth from some dark corner of this world, left him cold to his marrow.
But he had to do something.
He needed to show that he was strong.
He was.
Eva slipped out of focus as he sank into his thoughts, easily consumed by them and the emotions running riot inside him.
He had always viewed himself as strong, one of the strongest in the group.
Realising that he might have been wrong about something that felt like such a fundamental part of himself was crushing to say the very least.
He couldn’t accept it.
Even when he knew it was true.
He even had to admire the bastard for coming up with this plan.
He and his brothers were strongest when they were a united force, an army of gods.
The worst of it was, it wasn’t the enemy who had placed them into this position, on the brink of being turned against each other. Not really.
It had been him.
Gods, he was a massive dick.
The enemy were only attempting to accelerate what he had already started.
He had been slowly driving a wedge between him and his brothers, gradually pushing them away and separating himself from them, since Calindria had died.
Since Zeus had taken away his favour.
He pressed his fingers to the scar on the left side of his face. They shook, but nothing he did steadied them, not when the ground was tilting and bucking beneath his feet, about to give out.
“Valen.” Eva’s soft voice reached his ears and he blinked himself back to her, stared down at her where she stood in front of him, closer to him than before.
He caught the apology in her tropical blue eyes before she dropped them to his chest.
Valen reached out to touch her.
She beat him to it, lifting her hand a second before she raised her eyes back to his, and placing it over his.
Against his scar.
“I know,” she whispered, so much feeling behind those two simple words, feeling that seemed to reach into his chest and squeeze his heart. She cast her gaze down again, sighed and bravely met his eyes once more. “I know the path you’re taking. I’ve pushed away everyone I ever cared about… family included. Part of me did it because I was angry with some of them, because I thought I hated them, and part of me did it to protect the others. I was so angry… with my father for how he treated and betrayed my mother, and my brother for following in his footsteps and siding with him… I was even angry with my mother for being so weak. That anger led me to a dark place, Valen, a place where I turned against the world… where I became little more than a weapon for hire.”
She did look away from him now, her gaze locking on the tiled floor, and that heart she had squeezed went out to her, but it warmed at the same time as awareness of what she was trying to do steadily filled him.
She was trying to make him feel better by revealing that they weren’t so different, that she knew his pain and the darkness he faced, and that was why she needed to stop him from making the same mistake she had.
Her confession was more than all that though. There was a deeper meaning behind it, and that was what touched him.
She had told him without words that she understood him.
That she had seen this side of him and she wasn’t going to walk away.
It hadn’t changed how she felt.
Whatever the fuck that was.
He wasn’t going to probe into it right now, when she was afraid to look at him, because she had revealed her vulnerable side in order to make him feel better about his own. She would bolt. Neither of them liked being vulnerable, both of them reacted badly to it, liable to lash out to protect themselves.
He wouldn’t press her.
For once, he was going to do the opposite to what he wanted without protest or being forced.
He shifted his hand, moving it out from beneath hers, and pressed it to the back of her one, bringing her palm into contact with his face. He held it there, absorbing her warmth as he studied her and what the hell they were doing, searching for an answer.
He could only draw one conclusion, and it rocked him to his soul.
His mother had been right.
There was a woman who had been made just for him.
That woman’s name was Eva.
“I might vomit.” Daimon’s deep voice cut into the moment like a knife, slicing it in two, and Valen shifted his gaze to his left, to his brother, and glared at the bastard, leaving him in no doubt of the pain he was about to suffer for interrupting them.
“Your stomach must be weaker than mine.” Eva lowered her hand from Valen’s face, a snap to her tone.
Daimon scowled at her, his pale blue eyes shimmering dangerously.
Valen chalked it up as a victory for her and ran his eyes over her curves as she walked away from him, a sway to her hips that exuded confidence and that warrior air he found so damn appealing about her.
“Be my guest.” He gestured towards the toilet, would have shoved his brother in its direction if this had been the Underworld, where Daimon’s power wasn’t liable to give him frostbite as a reward for touching him.
Daimon growled, his white eyebrows dipping low above his glittering pale eyes, but Valen wasn’t listening. He followed Eva in a daze, transfixed by the difference in her, how she had gone from warm and tender, to cold and hard in a heartbeat, not allowing Daimon to see that softer side of her.
Mine.
That side of her was for his eyes only, belonged to him and him alon
e.
She stopped in the living room, sank into his black leather couch at the end nearest her duffle bag where it rested on the terracotta tiled floor, and kicked her feet up on the wooden coffee table. They were bare, their soles dirty, and he barely stopped himself from going into his bedroom and finding her a pair of socks to keep her feet warm.
When had he gone from warrior to woman?
He wasn’t going to turn into Ares, castrated by his love for Megan, reduced to following her around like a puppy, looking at her as if she was the light in his life, his sole reason for living, and he would do anything for her, whatever she commanded.
Even get her socks.
Eva looked up at him and he realised he had been staring down at her, stood beside the couch like a dolt and probably looking as goofy and moon-eyed as Ares.
Gods, it was too late for him.
She had already castrated him.
Her lips curved into a faint smile.
Warmth bloomed in his chest.
He scowled at her and that faint smile became a full blown one.
“Message received.” She winked at him. Teasing him now?
Just how well could she read him, how in tune were they?
“What have you discovered?” Keras said from his spot in Valen’s favourite black wingback armchair near the fireplace, his softly-spiked short black hair, long coat, shirt and trousers making him blend into it.
Keras absently twisted the silver band on his left thumb around it. His brother played with that ring so much Valen was surprised he hadn’t worn it down to nothing over the past few centuries. He would have if it had been made of any other material, but it had been forged from the metal of the gods on Mount Olympus.
A gift designed to last an eternity.
Like the feelings behind it?
Valen had never grown balls big enough to ask that question, or dare to see what Keras would do if it went missing, even though he was beyond curious. Level a city probably. Possibly the entire planet. That ring probably meant more to his older brother than anything else, family included.
Keras’s green eyes turned wary as they shifted from him to Eva.
His big brother had no reason to fear her. She was as mortal as they came, near powerless against them, and for once she wasn’t armed.
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 22
