Concern flared in Keras’s eyes, gone so fast Valen thought he had imagined it at first.
Keras looked as if he wanted to say something but was struggling with it, which meant one thing. Valen hadn’t imagined that concern, and Keras wanted to apologise.
His big brother had always been awkward about such things. Valen wasn’t much better at it. He blamed their father. Hades wasn’t good with apologies either. Persephone did all the apologising for him.
Valen shrugged, shooting for casual, an attempt to let his brother know it was no big deal and he didn’t have to apologise for chewing him out when he had done nothing wrong. Correction. He had done something wrong. He had let Keras say those things without defending himself. They were both at fault, so he couldn’t hold Keras to blame.
Not entirely anyway.
“We’re up against a pair of siblings. Brother and sister. An incubus and a succubus. They seem old for daemons. Strong, but not really a threat.” Valen propped his right hip against the side of the leather couch, sticking close to Eva.
She looked calm on the outside, but something about her warned she was far from it, that she was nervous about being around his brothers again and had been happier when they had been alone.
Gods, he wanted to be alone with her again.
At least Keras had only brought Daimon and Ares with him. It made sense. Marek needed to guard the Seville gates, and Calistos could cover the Paris and London ones in Keras’s absence. It was daylight in Hong Kong, where Daimon’s gate was, and heading towards evening in New York, the city Ares protected.
Daemons didn’t move around during the day, not unless they had a burning desire for a suntan.
The sort of tan that turned their skin crispy.
The only other brother who could leave their gate unattended right now was Esher, and Valen hadn’t expected him to come.
Megan had been one mortal too many for Esher, with Eva in the mix too now he was bound to start keeping his distance as much as he could.
Valen couldn’t blame him.
Ares rested his backside against the sill of the window opposite him and Eva and crossed his legs at his ankles, his heavy-soled black leather boots clunking against the tiles as he set his right foot down.
Megan moved to his side and he slung his arm around her and pulled her into the shelter of his embrace, tucking her against his black t-shirt. She pressed her hand to his black-jeans-clad thigh and smiled up at him, her dark chocolate eyes a contrast to Ares’s, warm where his were cold and wary.
Ares glanced down at her, managed a smile and lifted his hand to tuck a strand of her shoulder-length chestnut hair back into place.
She was a contrast to his brother in other ways too. Her blue jeans, black-and-white sneakers and ruby jumper seemed so bright against Ares’s standard black attire.
Ares finally dragged his attention away from his female and pinned it on Valen. “Are they working alone?”
“No,” Eva whispered and everyone looked at her. She sat her ground, not flinching as all eyes came to rest on her. “Benares didn’t seem to want to—”
She cut herself off and glanced up at Valen.
It was then he knew just how in tune they were with each other.
She knew that his brothers knowing about Benares’s plans for him wouldn’t sit well with him because it would reveal he had been singled out as the weak one of the herd, one who could be manipulated and turned against his family, and he didn’t want his brothers to see him that way too.
But they needed to know.
He nodded.
She lingered, studying him, her blue eyes pulling him deep into them, as if she wanted to be absolutely sure that he was fine with her announcing to his brothers that Benares viewed him as a weak link.
He frowned at her.
Her lips curved into a little smile. “Message received.”
He folded his arms across his chest as she turned to his three brothers and Megan and listened as she told them everything. Not quite everything. Thankfully she omitted some of the more wicked details.
Still, he hated standing beside her listening to her tell his brothers that daemons thought they could turn him to their side and use him against them.
Daimon’s face darkened as he shoved a black-leather-gloved hand through his spiked white hair and looked at her.
Valen slid his gaze towards him and narrowed it on his brother in a silent warning not to judge Eva. It hadn’t been her plan. She hadn’t been the one to decide to seduce him. Gods, the drug had taken it out of their hands, unleashing the desire that had already existed in both of them.
He shifted as his trousers tightened, easing behind the couch so his brothers didn’t get an eyeful of exactly what Eva did to him.
Daimon arched an eyebrow at him and then went back to listening to Eva as he idly toyed with the neck of the dark navy roll-neck jumper he wore beneath his black coat. He shuddered and huddled down into it, and Valen felt sorry for the bastard. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for Daimon, feeling blasts of frigid cold from time to time as his power acted up.
At least Ares’s power was fire, so he only had to put up with the occasional hot flush.
Ares seemed more interested in coddling Megan than listening to him, that fascination still shining in his gold-flecked brown eyes, warming them as he gently touched her face. Valen also couldn’t imagine how that felt. Ares and Daimon had been starved of physical contact from the moment they had been sent to the mortal realm, the manifestation of their powers stealing it away from them. Now Ares could touch a female, and Valen couldn’t blame him for taking every opportunity.
Fuck, Valen wanted to take every opportunity to touch Eva and he hadn’t even been without physical contact for the last couple of centuries.
Keras stared over Eva’s head at him, and Valen stared right back, not letting his oldest brother fluster him. He never had been one to back down from a challenge. If Keras wanted a staring contest, then he had one, and he would lose.
When Eva fell silent at last, Ares scrubbed a hand over his tawny overlong hair, Daimon loosed a standard dramatic sigh, and Keras continued to stare.
The concern in his brother’s emerald gaze put Valen more on edge than facing a legion of daemons with a few gods thrown into the mix.
“I’ll deal with the daemon siblings.” Valen kept his tone firm enough that it should have eased his brother’s concern and the worry steadily building in Ares and Daimon’s eyes too. He pushed his long blond hair from his eyes as casually as he could manage and shrugged, trying to let their concern roll off him. “Don’t worry. They aren’t that powerful. The succubus tried to seduce me and her kiss was hardly anything to write home about.”
Eva tensed, nothing more than a small tightening of her shoulders but he noticed it.
A feeling arrowed through him, one he found he hated.
A cold chasm suddenly opened between them and it felt as if she was withdrawing from him, distancing herself without moving from her spot on his sofa.
He had said something wrong.
It didn’t take a genius to figure it out, or any of the oh-so-helpful pointed looks from his three brothers.
He inwardly grimaced.
Maybe casually mentioning how Jin had stuck her tongue down his throat hadn’t been his smoothest move. In fact, in the annals of moves, it was somewhere down the bottom, hovering between killing a favourite pet and flirting with a family member.
“Ah, we uh… yeah,” Ares said and disappeared with Megan, leaving a swirl of black smoke behind him.
Bastard.
He looked to Daimon but he was already gone.
Keras wouldn’t ditch him. Big brothers took care of their kid ones in situations like this, didn’t they?
Valen threw a pleading look in his direction, a first for him, and hoped that the novelty of him asking for assistance for once would gain him some favour and make Keras stay and help smooth things out with Eva.
&nbs
p; Keras pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head.
And disappeared.
Sons of bitches.
Still, there was one good thing to come of him putting his foot in his mouth with Eva. If he ever wanted his brothers out of his apartment, he knew just what to do to get rid of them.
“Eva.” He looked down at the back of her head, willing her to look at him.
When she remained staring straight ahead, diligently keeping her eyes off him, ignoring him, he sighed and moved around the black leather couch.
Valen squatted in front of her but she still refused to look at him.
His earlier words came back to haunt him.
He was a massive dick.
Under normal circumstances, that was a good thing. Females liked big dicks. Right? He wanted to smile at that but feared Eva would punch it from his face and not understand if she saw it.
Females might like large appendages and the pleasure they could give them, but they did not like men acting like those appendages.
Or acting as if those appendages controlled them.
He sighed again.
She still refused to acknowledge him.
“Eva,” he whispered and toyed with his words, trying to get them perfect.
This was new to him, uncharted territory. He had never cared about a female enough to give a damn about what she thought, or whether he had hurt her, or any of that shit.
It was a steep learning curve.
It didn’t help that he’d had the sinking feeling all night since finding her at her apartment that he wasn’t the only one who had been kissed by a daemon in the last twenty-four hours.
The need to ask her if Benares had kissed her, or if she had kissed that bastard daemon back, burned in him but he tamped it down and stamped it out of existence, because he might be new to handling females in this way, but he wasn’t that big of a fucking idiot.
She had a right to be pissed at him, and he had a right to be pissed at her too, but one of them had to be the one to take the first step to move past it.
“I didn’t want her to kiss me,” he said to her knees, hating the way she had placed her hands between her thighs because it made her look small, hurt, and he felt responsible. “I made her stop. Actually, I tried to kill her but then she said if I did… I would never see you again.”
Her hands tensed, palms pressing harder against each other.
“She said Benares—” He cut himself off when she tensed further, her entire body going rigid, and cursed himself for bringing up Benares when she was still struggling with what had happened to her.
“He kissed me,” she whispered, so distant that he wanted to catch hold of her shoulders and shake her out of whatever dark thoughts were pulling her away from him. “He turned into some sort of monster when I hit him… and then he…”
She closed her eyes and lowered her head, and gods, he needed to butcher the bastard.
When the time came, he was going to take immense pleasure from slowly killing Benares.
“He didn’t,” Valen murmured softly with conviction, not wanting to startle her. All he wanted to do was comfort her and make her believe him.
He wanted to make her forget what had happened.
He wanted to make her smile again.
She opened her eyes and they locked with his, her internal struggle reflected in them. So much hurt. So much fear. She wasn’t sure what to feel, what to think, and he hated it and how it clearly tore at her, made her flip between overly bright and darkly melancholic.
There had to be a way to ease her mind and settle her heart, and give her some peace so she could find her balance again.
Whenever he was troubled, he went to his hill and found comfort in being alone with his thoughts there.
He wasn’t sure Eva would find being alone comforting though. Giving her more time to think might only make her worse, giving her fears a stronger hold over her.
Being alone wouldn’t help her.
But would being alone with him?
He almost laughed at that. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever found his presence comforting.
It was worth a shot though.
Not here though. It had to be somewhere removed from her job if it was going to stop her from thinking about her wretched client and what he had done. Somewhere quiet.
Where they wouldn’t be interrupted.
Where he could comfort her in the only way he knew worked.
By letting down his defences.
She liked it when he was unguarded with her, and that feeling went both ways. He took pleasure from her letting him see glimpses of the heart she kept locked away from everyone, hidden behind a wall of steel as thick as the one that shielded his.
He smiled as it came to him.
There was only one place where he could take her, one place that felt right, if a little nerve-wracking.
A place he had never taken anyone before.
People had interrupted him when he was there, his family included, but none of them had been invited.
She would be the first.
He stood and held his hand out to her, and she looked at it and then up into his eyes.
“Go somewhere with me?”
She looked down at his hand and for an agonising moment he thought she would swat it away and refuse him.
A thrill chased through him, leaping up his finger bones and sizzling through his skin when she placed her hand into his.
He pulled her up into his arms, savoured the feel of her nestled against him, and closed his eyes.
Focused on their destination.
And stepped.
CHAPTER 20
On the list of things Eva hadn’t expected when the darkness parted, number one was her stomach not rebelling and the world around her settling in only a few seconds.
Number two was where Valen had taken her.
He eased back, but kept his arms around her, revealing their location.
The hill.
She had followed him here once and at the time she had realised this was more than just a place where he came to enjoy the stunning view of Rome.
It was his sanctuary.
Back then, she had decided not to follow him here again and she had told herself she had done so because she wouldn’t learn anything new about him by tracking him to the same location more than once.
A lie.
In reality, she hadn’t wanted to intrude.
This space had seemed almost sacred, a place where he had been different to the brash, outgoing man she had followed around Rome and studied in its various nightclubs and bars.
He had been quiet, introspective, lost deep in thought and completely unguarded. Vulnerable.
“I’ve been here before,” she whispered, afraid of how he might react to that but needing to put it out there because she didn’t want to keep anything hidden from him anymore.
Valen released her, rubbed the back of his head and turned his profile to her, his golden eyes fixing on the distant rooftops of Rome.
“I know.”
Those words were quietly spoken, but they offered a comforting balm to her unsteady heart.
“You’re not exactly subtle.” He slid her a sideways glance that teased her and heated her at the same time.
He was trying to cheer her up.
She realised that now.
He had brought her to this sacred place to share it with her, to give her a reason to feel closer to him and further away from her fears. He wanted her to find the same peace in this place as he did.
Eva looked out over the city. “I’m subtle. I think you cheat.”
She could almost feel him frowning as he said, “Cheat?”
She nodded, wrapped her arms around herself to keep the chill off and wished she had brought her jacket. Spring was still struggling to arrive, and the morning air was crisp. It was hardly t-shirt weather.
“I think you have super senses or something,” she muttered and Rome turned hazy in her vis
ion as she thought about that, and everything else.
“And if I do?” he said and she wasn’t surprised to hear it.
She shrugged and looked across at him, smiled when she found him looking at her rather than the city. “It’s cheating.”
He jammed his hands in his trouser pockets and huffed. “Not as if I can switch it off.”
His golden eyes roamed back to the city. A breeze chased up the hill, ruffling his blond hair, making it dance around the other side of his face, and a flicker of surprise did go through her now.
He had stood to her right, revealing the scarred side of his face to her.
A side he usually tried to keep away from her.
Did he know he had done it, or was it a subconscious decision?
A sign that whether he knew it or not, he was growing comfortable around her.
Silence fell between them, but the chirping of birds heralding the dawn kept it from feeling tense or uncomfortable. It felt natural. A pause in their conversation.
Eva glanced at him again. His gaze slid to her but he didn’t move to face her. The corner of his lips quirked.
She turned towards him and he ran his eyes over her. They went round when he reached her feet.
“Shit.” He kicked his boots off and she frowned.
What the hell was he doing?
It became clear when he crouched in front of her, lifted her foot and she almost fell on her backside. She leaned over, pressed her hands against his shoulders to steady herself, and watched as he put his boots on her bare feet. She had forgotten she had no shoes on.
Eva stared down at his army boots on her feet. Warm. She lifted her head and smiled down into his golden eyes.
“Thank you… but your feet will get cold…”
He rolled his shoulders. “Not really a big deal. I won’t get sick and it takes a lot for me to feel the cold.”
“You never get sick?”
He shook his head and the longer strands of his golden hair brushed his right cheek. “Call it a perk of being a god.”
Eva’s mouth flapped open.
Her eyebrows shot high on her forehead.
“God?”
He looked wonderfully awkward as he rose to his full height and floundered, struggling for words.
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 23
