A violent growl filled the silence, beginning in the belly of the jet, and grew in volume to a deadly roar. Brilliant blinding light drove the darkness back, orange and white flares stinging his eyes.
Tor reacted on instinct to the split-second warning, turning away from the coming blast.
Eve stood immobile, her eyes widening in horror as the eruption tore the Cessna apart, the inferno illuminating her face and warming her pale skin.
Tor lunged for her as the heat of the blast rolled over him and pulled her into his arms, pinning her close to his body and taking the brunt of the explosion on his back. Shards of metal sliced into his skin and flames licked at him, only his damp sweatshirt stopping them from burning him. He lifted Eve in his arms and bolted into the dark hangar, not slowing until he was close to the other end, shrouded in the shadows.
He set her down behind a stack of crates to conceal her, dropped their bags, and began checking her over, working methodically from her head downwards. His back stung, every laceration burning, but he ignored his own pain, shutting it out as he focused on Eve.
“What happened?” she whispered, her eyes glazed as she stared ahead into the darkness behind him. “What happened?”
She asked that question ten times over before he had even reached her wrists in his visual check of her.
A shudder went through her and she shook her head. She trembled beneath his fingers, her bare skin clammy and freezing to the touch. Shock, and it was hitting her hard.
“We could’ve been killed… we could’ve been killed… and I never would have had my revenge.”
Tor’s head snapped up and he stared into her wide dark eyes as she looked beyond him. Suddenly, the emotions he felt in her and that showed in her eyes made sense and he knew why they felt familiar.
He understood how powerful a need for vengeance could be. He knew how it could drive a person to great lengths, make them do things they would have found objectionable in the past, and make them live with something that would have normally torn them apart.
Eve wanted to bathe her hands in cold blood and annihilate someone. Who?
Tor took hold of her shoulders and shook her, trying to get her to shift her focus to him and come out of her trance.
“Who do you want revenge on, Eve? Could they have done this?” It had to have something to do with her. None of his enemies knew that he was here. The attack at the club had to be about her too. Someone wanted her dead. The same someone she wanted dead. “Could they have done this, Eve?”
She jerked her head up, her eyes shooting to meet his, and stared blankly at him for long seconds, shaking beneath his grasp.
She swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Yes, they could have?” He needed to be sure.
She nodded. “I think… they sent the vampires who attacked me at One too. They want me dead.” A mirthless bark of laughter escaped her soft lips. “Feeling’s mutual. Got to make them pay.”
She began rocking and he held her tighter, tried to keep her focus on him so she didn’t slip back into shock. He looked past her, to the burning wreckage of the plane. Someone really wanted her dead.
Tor cursed.
“Why do you want them to pay?” he whispered and smoothed her tangled hair from her face, accidentally smudging soot across her cheek. “Tell me, Eve.”
Her eyes met his again and a flicker of red ringed her irises. “He betrayed me.”
Cold stole through Tor’s veins in response to the anguish in her eyes and the hurt in her voice. He clenched his teeth and suppressed his desire to growl.
He knew a little about betrayal.
Tor slung their two bags over his shoulder and lifted her back into his arms, settling one around her back and one under her knees. She sank against him, her head on his shoulder. The feel of her weakly clutching his black sweatshirt, tugging it into her fist, only served to darken his mood.
He hoofed it out of the back entrance of the hangar, pausing only long enough to scan his surroundings and ensure no one was watching them. Rain lashed down on him, soaking him in an instant, and Eve began chanting things about betrayal, revenge and the explosion, muddled things that warned she was slipping away from him again.
He held her closer to him, trying to shield her from the worst of the weather as he sprinted across the quiet airport, heading back towards the city. He slowed when he reached the perimeter fence and Eve trembled against him.
Tor looked down at her and something in the region of his heart melted a little at the sight of her soaked to the skin and clutching at him, muttering incoherent things to herself.
He needed to keep her focused and he only knew one way to do that, and it went against his nature.
He needed to talk to her and let her know that he was here, with her, and knew intimately what she was going through.
Tor swept his gaze over his surroundings, got his bearings, and began walking towards an area of Paris he had stayed in before and knew to be safe.
He drew in a deep breath, his lungs burning at the sudden invasion of oxygen after so long without him using them. He had long ago given up the pretence of breathing, but he needed air now, so he could do something else he hadn’t done in a very long time.
He exhaled hard to give himself the strength to go against his nature and do what was necessary to keep the beautiful woman in his arms with him.
“I know a little about betrayal.” The words came out quiet, a soft admission that part of him hoped she didn’t hear.
No luck there.
She lifted her head, that dark gaze landing on his face and not moving from it. It burned into him, making him intensely aware of her and every spot where she pressed against him and where his hands clutched her. He wasn’t sure when he had begun holding her so tightly, so close to him, his fingers pressing into her ribs near to her breast and into her soft supple thigh.
He cleared his throat, derailed his dangerous train of thought, and focused on their destination.
“I was betrayed by a fellow vampire once. He left me to die at the hands of a hunter.” Tor almost smiled when Eve tensed in his arms, a glimmer of fear going through her. “I almost lost my arm and came close to losing my head.”
“What happened to him?” she whispered.
“The hunter?” He frowned down at her and she shook her head, the edge to her eyes saying she knew what had happened to the man who had been foolish enough to try to kill him. She wanted to know what he had done to the one who had betrayed him. “I hunted him down, and I did what he failed to do to me. I took his life. I killed him with my bare hands. Justice was served.”
“Justice.” She drew the word out and her expression softened, her dark eyes brightening, as if she liked the sound of that.
He liked it too. He liked the thought of dishing out justice to the man who had betrayed her trust and the vampire who had done this to her, shaking her world, turning her into something she despised, even though it wasn’t his place.
The thought was sweet though and too tempting to ignore. Things that had bothered him about her fell into place like puzzle pieces and spelled out the reason behind many of the emotions he had felt in her and her behaviour.
She had agreed to come with him because she had seen him kill, had seen what kind of man he was, and had viewed him as an opportunity to seek out the vengeance she needed.
Under normal circumstances, he would have disappointed her and told her that his mission came first, but as he stared down at her, he began running through everything that had happened tonight and everything he knew about her, and normal went out of the window.
He couldn’t take her back to Oslo when she had vampires on her trail. A small voice, a tiny sliver of his heart that wasn’t dead to the world and all feeling, whispered that his concern about the safety of his bloodline wasn’t the real reason he was going to do something he had never done in three centuries of life as a hunter—bend the rules.
Tor told himself he wasn’t bending the
rules. He was simply taking a different meaning from his mission parameters. He had been charged with her safety and Lincoln had warned she might need protecting from herself.
If he could help her mete out her own brand of justice, it might help her come to terms with what she was now and might help her say goodbye to what she had been in her human life.
He might be able to convince her that life as a vampire was worth living, that her new life could be something good and there was reason for her to go on.
The ferocity with which he wanted that astounded him.
Something about the determined yet delicate woman in his arms had him going against everything, every rule and every instinct.
Her dark eyes locked with his, focused and sharp, making his heart kick in his chest.
He looked away and ignored the strange feeling and reaction, shutting it down. She was beautiful, but she was a mission. Nothing more. She could never be more and he was a fool if he thought she could be. He wasn’t going to delude himself. This reaction was purely physical, a need born of a solitary life, and one he refused to act on with her. He would deal with it later. Right now, his mission was top priority.
She wanted revenge and he was just a tool she would use to achieve it. He would be that for her and nothing more. The moment she was safe from her betrayer, he was handing her over to her family and that would be that. She would become their Chosen Daughter. He would move on to the next mission and bed the first woman he came across.
“What happens now?” she whispered softly, her voice curling around him, stroking his ears and threatening to undo the work he had done to harden his heart.
Tor refused to look at her.
His eyes betrayed him and fell back to her face, taking in the luscious curves of her lips and the soft sweeping line of her jaw. He dragged his gaze away and locked it on the distance, determined not to let her bewitch him anymore.
She was a mission.
He had a feeling this was going to be the hardest mission in his long life.
It was going to push him to his limit and might just be the death of him.
“Tor?” she said in a low, cautious voice, and he pretended not to notice the way the cold abyss in his chest warmed whenever she spoke his name, unsettling him and tipping him off balance. “What happens now?”
Tor narrowed his eyes on the distance and set his jaw, dark thoughts of what was to come swirling through his mind and destroying all of his soft feelings as it painted a delicious picture, a tempting and satisfying portrayal of death.
“You get your revenge.”
CHAPTER 3
The hotel room smelled musty. Or that might be her. Her clothes were soaked and sticking to her skin. Tor reappeared from the bathroom and handed her a white towel robe. Eve thanked him with a smile that fell away when he turned his back on her and the scent of his blood grew stronger, thicker in the air, a tangy coppery smell that called to her.
“You’re injured.” She took a step towards him without thinking and he swung back to face her.
“It’s nothing. Just a little shrapnel.” He reached over behind him and tugged his ruined black sweatshirt off over his head. A brief tantalising flash of toned stomach muscles caught her breath in her throat before his black t-shirt fell back down to cover them. He tossed the sweatshirt and nodded towards her. “Change into that. It will make you feel better.”
Eve looked down at the robe she clutched, shame spreading through her. At times like this, she was almost glad she was a vampire and couldn’t blush. It wasn’t the thought of changing in front of Tor that would have had her cheeks heating. It was how pathetic she had been back at the airport.
She had lost it.
It was all coming back to her now in startling colour and detail. She had fallen apart while Tor had been the picture of calm and efficiency, his reactions incredible as he had swept her up against his hard, powerful body and sheltered her from the blast. If he hadn’t been there, she would have been toast.
Then, he had carried her like some knight in shining armour into the safety of the darkness and had tended to her, and all the while she had mumbled stupid stuff like a damsel in distress. She groaned internally at the way she had presented herself. When piled on top of how she had been when Tor had swept into the club and quickly dispatched her attackers for her, it made her want to bury her head in the robe and never come out again.
No doubt Tor thought she was one of those women who needed constant protection, a man on hand to do her battles for her and keep her safe.
She had kept herself safe for twenty-five years without the help of a man.
Death had torn apart the woman she had been, stripping away her strength, throwing her into turmoil. She had become the sort of weak and pathetic woman that had annoyed her when she had been a hunter.
Eve resisted sagging onto the bed and burrowing into the white robe.
She really had to man up.
Tor had offered her the shot at revenge she wanted and she was going to take it.
She was going to pull herself together and show him that she was a hunter born and bred, just as he was.
Eve turned her back on him, set the towel down on the double bed in front of her, and stripped off her jacket. When she pulled her t-shirt up, revealing her back, Tor uttered something in his foreign tongue. She shivered as his gaze ran down her spine, heating her skin, and frowned as his eyes left her. A chivalrous man? She hadn’t figured him for that type.
His boots shuffled on the taupe carpet and she continued to remove her wet things. She kicked her own boots off, struggled to get her jeans down her legs, and even pulled off her socks. She left her underwear on. A flimsy piece of protection she couldn’t quite bring herself to shed, not even when she was certain that he had turned his back to give her some privacy.
Eve donned the white robe, tied the belt around her waist and moved to face Tor.
He had turned his back. He stood facing the bathroom and her gaze immediately catalogued all the cuts in his black t-shirt. She walked forwards, her bare feet silent on the carpet, and reached towards a short gash on his right arm.
Tor tensed the moment her fingers made contact, his muscles flexing in response to her touch. She bravely ventured onwards, running her fingers down the line of the cut, one on either side of the angry wound.
“How many have metal in them?” she said and scanned his back for the worst. It was hard to tell with his t-shirt concealing them. “You’re going to have to let me take a look.”
He didn’t argue or hesitate. He grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it off, dropping it on the floor at their feet.
Eve sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of his muscular back, and not because of all the places where pieces of the jet had struck him. There were so many scars.
She absently raised a hand and ghosted it over the thick ragged scar on his right shoulder. It cut down from the delicious dip in his muscles beside his deltoid, as wide as two of her fingers together, and tapered to a point just beneath his shoulder blade, close to his armpit.
“The hunter did this?” She didn’t need to ask to know, but it felt too intimate standing like this with him, touching him in silence.
He nodded.
Eve moved a step back and assessed the new wounds, shutting out all the scars that littered his back, even the thick circular ones that sickened her. Someone had made him acquainted with holy wood and more than once. She counted at least five points where he had been stabbed with stakes and burned by them.
She shut them out, not wanting to wonder whether the same hunter who had attempted to take his arm and his life had done this grim work on him.
“You’re going to bleed when I pull these fragments out.” Eve touched one and expected him to hiss as she felt the metal buried in his flesh beneath his skin.
He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t even tense.
“You do not need to. My body will reject them.” He stepped away from her and pinned her with hi
s cold blue eyes, no flicker of emotion in them.
“In days maybe… why live with them for days?” She searched his pale eyes but they didn’t answer her and neither did he.
Tor turned away from her and she wasn’t having any of it. She grabbed his wrist and he paused and looked down at her hand on him. His pale blond eyebrows drew down, narrowing his eyes. She wasn’t going to release him so his veiled threat was pointless.
“Why?” She wouldn’t ask him again. He had to have a reason. No hunter, no matter how hardened they were to pain, lived with something they could easily fix with another’s assistance. It was madness. The metal had every chance of burrowing deeper before his body began to heal, pushing it out. The process would be painful and drawn out over days.
Tor lifted his icy gaze to meet hers. “It’s not your place.”
He tugged his arm free of her grip and walked into the bathroom. If he thought they were done on the subject, he was sorely mistaken.
Eve followed him into the white tiled room, avoiding the huge mirror hanging above the vanity unit in front of her. She turned to her left, towards Tor, and her eyes widened as he shoved his black jeans down, shamelessly revealing his bare backside.
Eve swiftly spun on her heel, giving him her back.
She searched for something to say and her eyes fell on the small, rather atrocious, bathroom supplies offered by the hotel. Nothing more than some shampoo and shower gel. No vanity pack. She went back into the bedroom, unzipped her bag, and pulled out her small shiny red satin bag that contained her scant pieces of make-up and other beauty items. She took out her tweezers, dumped her stuff on the bed and went back to the bathroom door.
Tor growled something dark and grunted.
Eve steeled herself, preparing for the sight of him, and then stepped inside. She frowned at him. He stood with one hand braced on the vanity and the other reaching under that arm, fingers digging in a wound on his back. Blood smeared around the wound and rolled down his fingers, dripping on the floor, leaving a stark crimson splatter on the white tiles.
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 103
