He moved, the soft click of his heels alerting her that he was drawing closer. Her panic went into overdrive again and she scrambled backwards to place some distance between them, hit nothing where the rear of the couch should have been, and landed hard on a cold floor with her legs sticking up in the air.
She stared in surprise at her tights-clad feet and the dark ceiling beyond them, needing a moment to take in what had just happened.
The man appeared above her, his head canting and his golden eyes narrowing as he looked down at her. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Nina quickly shook her head and clutched at the hem of her black skirt, keeping it covering her thighs. She had already made a fool of herself. She didn’t need to go adding flashing her knickers at this man to that. Besides, she still wasn’t sure who he was, how she knew him, or where she was. A flash of panties might be seen as an invitation, and as handsome as this man was, she wasn’t about to invite him between her legs, no matter how long it had been since she had slept with a guy.
She rolled onto her side and scrambled back onto her feet, practically leaping onto them to evade the hand he offered. He stared at his outstretched hand as she smoothed her skirt down, his left eyebrow quirking in a manner that looked a heck of a lot like irritation to her.
When he moved, she expected him to advance towards her.
He retreated instead, backing towards an unlit black marble fireplace against an equally black wall behind him and lowering his hand to his side at the same time.
Nina looked around her as something dawned on her.
Everything in the damned room was black.
Where the hell was she? Some sort of goth retreat?
“There is no need to panic. I do not mean you any harm. You were left in the courtyard of this house and were brought in to keep you safe.”
Nina’s gaze whipped back to the handsome man.
And hell, he was handsome. The sort of man that could have a horde of women swooning with little more than a smile, their knees buckling beneath them. She wasn’t immune to his beauty. She wasn’t sure any woman would be able to say that she was. If they did, they would be a liar.
He oozed wicked sensuality as he stared across the room at her, his golden eyes fixed with hawk-like intensity on hers and his soft lips tilted at the corners into a hint of a smile.
Nina shook her head to rid it of the dangerous thoughts piling up in it and focused on what the man had said.
“Keep me safe?” She frowned at that, another ripple of panic running through her as she tried to guess the answer to that question and feared what he would say.
He toyed with the left cuff of his black shirt and then smoothed the fine sleeve of his black suit jacket over it, carefully adjusting it until it was perfect.
Just like him.
Nina shoved that little voice out of her head, determined to focus on the matter at hand and not the man at hand. She was in a strange place, in a stranger’s house, and he was saying that she was in danger.
“You are safe now,” he said with silken persuasiveness that had her dumbly nodding in agreement even when she didn’t honestly feel safe. “The man who brought you here is gone.”
“A man?” Nina’s eyes widened as she tried to remember what had happened to her but her mind remained blank, refusing to supply anything beyond leaving work for the evening.
He nodded and smiled, and it hit her hard in the chest, knocking the wind from her and sending her head spinning.
Her panic returned full force. “I want to go home.”
The man’s smile held. “I am afraid that is not possible yet, but arrangements will be made for your return. If you tell me where you live, I will pass on the information and they will see to it.”
They? Pass on the information? Was he the master of this house or a servant?
“London… I live in London. Anywhere in London will do.” She figured it couldn’t hurt to tell him the city she was from, but she wasn’t about to hand out her address to him. She still wasn’t sure whether there was another man who had taken her, or whether it was an elaborate lie to throw her off his scent.
What if this man had been the one to take her?
She twisted her hand in her white blouse, tugging at the material, struggling to breathe as a weight pressed down on her chest and she fought the wave of panic that threatened to sweep her away. She had to focus.
Her gaze fell to his hands as he toyed with his cuff again, neatening it, and her eyebrows pinched together. He had black nails. Why did he have black nails? Everything about him screamed businessman or butler, but he had black painted nails. She stared at them, unable to drag her eyes away. They were a bit too polished and impeccable. Were they false nails?
Acrylic?
They distracted her and she lost herself in pondering what they were made from and why he had black nails. It was only when the sensation of his piercing gaze on her faded and he moved his hands behind his back that she snapped back to the room. What was wrong with her today?
She was normally quite focused, but she felt foggy, her mind all over the place and easily lured into concentrating on the smallest things when the bigger picture was demanding her attention. She was starting to get the impression that it wasn’t purely panic altering her behaviour, and that only panicked her further.
“You should breathe.” Those three softly spoken words had her lifting her gaze back to the man’s sober face. The moment their eyes locked, her fear subsided again and the weight on her chest began to dissipate.
Nina breathed slowly but steadily, drawing each breath deep into her lungs.
“Can you recall what happened to you?” he said.
She lowered her eyes to her bare feet, her dark stockings not quite black enough to make them blend into the cool stone floor, and frowned as she searched for an answer to his question.
“I remember leaving work.” Nina looked down at her blouse, at the gash in the soft white material, and wondered for what felt like the hundredth time what had happened between leaving work and waking in this strange room.
Her head ached, throbbing deeply as she struggled to capture the barest sliver of a memory, just one moment that might help her understand what had happened to her. When the ache became a stabbing pain that felt as if someone was pushing a hot needle through her brain, she pressed her hand to her forehead, screwed her eyes shut and grimaced.
A flash of a shadowy figure blasted across her mind.
A man.
Nina raised her chin and opened her eyes, staring across the room at the black-haired man. “You were right. There was a man… but I can’t remember what he looked like.”
She tried but her head hurt so much that her stomach turned, sickness brewing there as the pain intensified. What had the man done to her? Was it drugs? Was that why her brain was so fuzzy?
“Do you know of any reason why someone might want to harm you?” The man took a step towards her and fear clashed with panic again, welling up to stir the sickness in her belly and bring bile up her throat.
She backed off a few steps, shaking her head in denial even though her heart and head screamed that there might be. It was entirely possible that someone was out to hurt her, and that meant that everything the man said had happened, had happened.
Someone had grabbed her, drugged her, and this man or someone from this house had saved her.
Nina’s back hit a wall and she gasped. The man’s eyes narrowed on her and she looked away, afraid he would see the truth in her eyes. She didn’t want him to get into trouble because of her, at least not any more than he already had.
Had he been the one to save her?
Her throat closed again as she thought about that, sure he must have fought the man off in order to help her. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her palms against the wall behind her, her fingertips clawing at the smooth surface as she tried to anchor herself in the swirling storm of her emotions.
“I want to leave.” She man
aged to get the words out but they were quiet, lacking the force and conviction she had wanted to convey in them.
Because part of her didn’t want to leave. Part of her feared what was waiting for her out there. If he had sent someone to take her once, he could send someone again. She had known him too long to believe he would just let her go. She should have been on her guard after rejecting him. She should have expected him to pursue her with the same aggressive intent as he had the time she had fallen in love with him.
Before he had crushed her.
The man’s gaze bore into her, commanding her to open her eyes and look at him, to find the strength to say those words with more conviction so he would let her leave.
She had to protect him.
He didn’t know what he had become involved in by helping her and she didn’t want him to pay for his kindness.
Not as she had paid for hers so many times and in so many ways.
“I want to leave,” Nina bit out the words, putting force into them this time.
It had zero effect on the man.
“I am not sure whether the one who brought you here is gone and it is dangerous for you to be out there right now. Once we are certain that it is safe for you, you will be returned to London.” He sighed, the soft sound conveying a wealth of irritation. “It might help if you would tell me why someone wished to kidnap you.”
Nina froze. Would. Not could. He was on to her. Somehow, he was aware that she knew why the man had grabbed her and what he had intended to do with her. The little voice said to tell him, but she bit down on her tongue to stop the words from leaving her lips. The less he knew, the better. She was keeping him safe by keeping things secret from him.
“I don’t know why someone would want to do such a thing to me. I’m just an office clerk. I’m not important in any way and I don’t have any enemies.” Nina tipped her chin up and looked across the room at him.
His expression darkened, his irises turning a full shade richer, more amber than gold, as his lips flattened and his features hardened. He didn’t believe her. Her heart beat a little quicker as she held his gaze, her hands shaking where they gripped the wall beside her hips.
“What happened?” she whispered, a trickle of fear running through her veins as he stared at her, suddenly looking like the sort of man that it wasn’t wise to lie to or cross in any fashion.
Gone was the handsome and charming man who could win any woman with nothing more than a brief smile. In his place was one who looked more demon than angel. A devil made flesh and blood. A man who spoke to her on a visceral level, calling to her primal instincts.
A warrior who was the embodiment of masculinity.
One who answered her question with nothing more than a narrowing of his striking eyes.
“You made the man leave… you didn’t just find me,” she whispered breathlessly, suddenly aware that she was alone with him. The gap between them seemed to shrink and the air in the room felt too thin. Her head turned, her heart labouring as she fought the onslaught of sensation and emotion. “You drove him away so you could bring me to safety.”
He dipped his head, a slow and steady movement that didn’t seem adequate to acknowledge the magnitude of what he had done. Most of the men she knew would have beaten their chests while grinning at her, their male pride on show for all to see.
He would have acted in such a way.
But not this man.
This man was different.
He barely acknowledged what he had done, even though it was worthy of praise and gratitude.
“Thank you,” she said and he turned away from her, fixing his gaze on a door far to the left of the room.
“I will find you something to wear and will see to it that you are given some water and something to eat. Perhaps it will make you feel better.” He strode across the room and was gone before she could respond.
Air rushed back into her lungs and into the room.
It seemed larger without him in it and she couldn’t stop herself from wandering around the luxurious yet gothic and grim room as her panic and fear began to subside. Her fingers danced over polished black wooden side tables, the soft velvet of the chaise longue and the couch that stood facing it across an ebony coffee table. She caressed the cool marble of the black fireplace, lingering a moment to press her hot cheeks to it and savouring the cold before the stone warmed.
Her eyes drifted back to the black door the man had exited through. He hadn’t been the one she recalled, that one had long hair, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved. She had to keep her distance from him, no matter how fiercely she felt drawn to him.
She jumped as the door opened again and the man entered, carrying a silver tray on one upturned palm. The ease he did it with stirred her suspicion that he was a butler, a servant in this house, together with his practiced smile and the way he spoke to her.
“Did you ask someone to take me home?” Nina eyed him as he set the tray down on the coffee table and poured her a tall glass of icy water from a pitcher. “Can you get me out of here and take me home?”
He paused and looked up at her through long black lashes. “I cannot do that. I cannot leave this place.”
A brief flicker of something suspiciously like sorrow crossed his handsome face before he forced a smile, set the glass jug down and straightened. He smoothed his jacket down over his trousers in a manner that only strengthened her belief that he was a servant. It had to be the reason he couldn’t help her leave, and couldn’t leave himself.
“How long have you been here?” Nina eyed the water, her parched throat and aching head screaming at her to gulp it down. It might be poisoned. Laced with a drug that would knock her out again.
The man sighed, poured a second glass of water, and lifted it to his lips. He took a mouthful from it and nodded towards the other glass, a clear gesture for her to do the same now that he had shown her that it wasn’t poisoned. Nina shook her head.
The water might not contain the drug. It might lace the glass.
He offered his glass to her with a smile, one that held a little more warmth this time, humour that seemed sad to her somehow. “I would not trust me either.”
Nina took the glass from him, her fingers brushing his as she wrapped them around the icy tumbler. Heat shot up her arm and she almost dropped the glass when he snatched his hand away. Had he felt it too?
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as he paced away from her. She stared at the tumbler, at the spot on the other side where his lips had pressed, leaving an imprint on the polished glass. Her stomach heated. Flipped. She crushed the ridiculous urge to turn the glass around and press her lips there too and drank a mouthful from it instead. The cool water was bliss as it ran over her tongue and down her throat, instantly soothing her. Heaven.
“How long have I been here?” His rich voice swirled around her as she took another few sips and she felt his eyes on her again, burning her with their intensity and stirring the heat in her veins.
Nina slowly lifted her gaze back to his face and paused with the glass at her lips, the ripple of heat in her veins becoming a flood of wildfire as she found him staring at her mouth. The dark abysses of his pupils devoured the gold of his irises before he pulled his eyes away from her lips and raised them to lock with hers.
“I have been here a very long time.”
She stared at him as those words sank in. He didn’t look much older than she was, maybe just a couple of years closer to forty. Had he been working here his entire life?
Had he grown up in this grim place?
It would explain the edge he had about him at times, the dark and cold side of him that made her nervous.
That made her feel he had secrets locked deep in his heart.
Secrets as painful as the ones in hers.
CHAPTER 3
Lucifer stood in his study in front of the middle of the three towering windows, his gaze fixed on the distant plateau. White light broke the darkness there, a
sign that angels were travelling between his realm and the mortal one.
A world he hadn’t set foot in for millennia.
His golden gaze slid off to his left and downwards, towards the room where he had left the mortal female.
Her world.
He clasped his hands behind his back and studied the black stone floor. His black suit jacket stretched tight across his chest as he breathed slowly but steadily, his mind churning over everything he had learned about the woman in his custody.
He still didn’t know why Mihail had brought her to him, and he couldn’t help thinking that it was a trap. It was possible that the woman had been given instructions, orders that were buried so deep in her mind that she wouldn’t remember receiving them. Some angels possessed the power to manipulate weaker creatures in such a manner, and everything she had told him yesterday had made it clear that Mihail or another angel had tampered with her memories.
If she had been given orders, then he had to wait for the right event to trigger them before he could discover why Mihail had sent her.
Lucifer narrowed his gaze on the floor, his focus on the woman.
He didn’t think she was anything other than mortal, but it was entirely possible he was wrong about that. Some species could masquerade as mortals. Shifters in particular. It had been a very long time since he had encountered one from that species, long enough that he might not recognise them.
She could be a witch too.
But she didn’t feel powerful to him. Her strength was barely a drop in the ocean of his.
Was she using a spell to mask her power and muddle his ability to detect lies on her?
He shook his head at that.
She hadn’t lied to him when he had asked whether she could remember what had happened to her, but she had lied when she had told him that she couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would want to harm her or have her kidnapped. If she possessed the ability to conceal her lies, she would have hidden that one from him.
There had been a haunted edge to her bright peridot eyes as she had uttered that lie and a spike in her heart rate that had warned him that she had walked the same path as he had millennia ago—a path of pain and suffering.
Her Sinful Angel (Her Angel: Eternal Warriors paranormal romance series Book 5) Page 2
