Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2)

by Felicity Heaton

  “Name,” he uttered and she frowned at him as if he had gone mad. Or had at least forgotten English. If she expected him to string a sentence together when he was screwing his brain out, she had another thing coming. “Your name.”

  She threw her head back as he plunged into her. “Evaaa… god.”

  He frowned now, thrust harder as she tensed around him, her breasts bouncing with each meeting of their bodies as they strained together, reaching for release that promised to be mind-blowing.

  “Eva?” he rasped, strangled and hoarse as she clenched him, showing him just how tight she could go and almost making him choke.

  “Uh huh.” She nodded and then her fine black eyebrows shot up as he angled his hips and drove deeper. “Oh ho… oh… oh!”

  More like it.

  Valen buried his face in the curve of her throat, breathed in her subtle scent of roses, sin and sex, taking her all in.

  Eva.

  “I could drown in you.” He kissed her neck and she tilted her head, let him at it as she clung to him. He held her tighter, pinning her breasts against his chest. “I could die right now and wouldn’t care.”

  Her hands came down on his back, but she didn’t claw and scratch him. She stroked him, almost tenderly.

  And then she bit his shoulder.

  “I’ll die along with you.” She licked the place she had bitten, as if she wanted to soothe him, but her words had sent him shooting too far out of his head for him to feel any pain.

  She would?

  He growled, a possessive and hungry snarl that vibrated through every inch of him, born of his entire being—body, heart and soul.

  He drove deep into her and she cried into his ear, going taut for a heartbeat before she trembled in his arms and around his cock, body quivering and milking him. He grunted and moved faster, deeper, hungry to find his own release as she found hers. It came upon him in a swift, blinding flash, almost sending him to his knees as he spilled inside her. She moaned with each hard throb of his cock, the sounds of her pleasure music to his ears as he stood frozen against her, immobilised by the force of his release.

  Eva stroked his shoulder, peppering it with soft kisses between quiet whimpers as her body continued to spasm. He rested his head on her shoulder, pressed his forehead against her neck and held her up by her backside, breathing hard as he tried to settle his pounding pulse.

  A sinking, cold feeling filled his chest, pushing out all the heat and light.

  A sensation that he would never be the same again, that being with Eva had been his greatest mistake yet, because it had altered something fundamental in him, something he had been guarding closely his entire life.

  His heart.

  It beat hard as he held her, feeling her trembling in his arms, her body quivering around his and little pants of air escaping her as she struggled to come down from the high of her climax.

  Something awakened inside him. Something fierce.

  Dangerously possessive.

  Whatever her plans had been, he was changing them now.

  No more fighting.

  Just this… this craziness and passion.

  That was all there was going to be between them now.

  Sparks.

  They skittered over his skin, burrowed deep into his flesh and seemed to bring him to life, rousing the dark side of his blood, the part of him that had come from his father and cried out to brand her with his name, to make sure that she was his.

  He pulled free of her and carried her to the bed as she rested her cheek on his shoulder. He pressed his right knee into the mattress and laid her down on it, and placed his hands on either side of her ribs as he drew back with the intention of kissing her and starting round two.

  She was out cold.

  He canted his head and studied her, absorbing her beauty as she lay beneath him. It wasn’t her naked body that held his attention though, or the sensual way her dragon tattoo curled around her curves and the jewel in her navel sparkled in the moonlight.

  It was her rosy kiss-swollen lips and the way her long black lashes rested against her flushed cheeks.

  She looked content.

  Satisfied.

  And he had been the one to do that.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had made someone happy.

  Valen lifted his right hand and brushed his knuckles across her cheek, feeling her warmth and her softness, mesmerised by all of her.

  She truly was beautiful.

  That beauty was only made more devastating by what he knew about her. She was a fighter. A warrior. Gods, it shouldn’t be a turn on but it was. It made him burn hotter for her. She knew what it was like to walk in his world, to face insurmountable odds and be the victor, to battle hard to live to see another day.

  His hand shook and he shoved it back against the bed, ashamed of how weak she made him, how uncertain and pathetic.

  Would she be alright now?

  The haze that had come over him, the urge to lose himself in her, had faded the moment he had climaxed. Was it the same for her?

  He hoped so.

  He went to press his hand to her forehead to check her temperature.

  His phone rang.

  “Fuckers,” he muttered, knowing exactly who it would be on the other end of the line.

  Only his brothers had his number. They would choose now to bother him, when he wanted to be alone with her.

  Just a little while longer.

  He glanced at the clock on the wooden bedside table to his left.

  Cursed when he saw it was well past the time he was meant to have shown up at the mansion in Tokyo for their meeting. He was lucky they had only called him and hadn’t popped into his apartment to get an eyeful of him and Eva.

  Eva.

  Not the name of an angel.

  Unless it was short for something.

  Had to be the case. His mother’s visions were never wrong when she consulted nature. The name of an angel and the skill of a devil.

  He smiled and stroked Eva’s cheek. There was more devil than angel in her.

  He dipped his head, pressed a soft kiss to her lips, and then pushed away from her.

  “Won’t be long,” he whispered as he covered her.

  He fastened his jeans, grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it on, and focused on the old mansion in Tokyo.

  Darkness swirled around him, comforting him as he steeled himself. His brothers were going to be pissed, but then that was nothing new. They were always upset with him about something.

  He appeared in the middle of the main living space of the old Japanese building and silence descended.

  “What’s up?” He shot for casual and hit irritating judging by the looks Keras, Ares and Daimon gave him.

  Just the three of them.

  He glanced around, expecting to find his idiotic fellow-blond youngest brother somewhere in the circle of comfortable armchairs and couches, blowing the shit out of something in a video game. It seemed Cal was either late or had left already, and Valen bet his left bollock it was the latter.

  Marek, the brunet smarty-pants of the group was missing too, together with their somewhat deranged older brother Esher.

  Now that was unusual.

  Valen might have understood Esher’s lack of appearance if Megan had been with Ares, because the sight of them mooning over each other sickened Valen too, but it wasn’t like Esher to be absent from anything, especially when it was taking place in his home. Esher was insanely protective of the mansion, and Valen could understand why. Even he found this place calming and beautiful now. It hadn’t been the case when he and all of his brothers had lived here, but now they had their own spaces, and he was normally here when everyone but Esher was absent, it had a certain appeal to it.

  He glanced to his left, to where someone had slid back the wooden-framed white screens to reveal the courtyard in the middle of the three sides of the single storey mansion, and the garden beyond. So much nature. He wished it would soothe hi
m now, but his hackles had gone up the second he had realised he had been left alone with the three biggest dicks in his family and there wasn’t enough calming nature in the fucking world to bring them back down, not when he could sense a confrontation coming.

  “He out at the gate?” Valen peered over his shoulder and leaned left a little so he could see into the kitchen at the opposite end of the long room to the TV area, just in case the only other brother who had ever fought in his corner was in there.

  Nope.

  He was shit out of luck.

  Keras calmly closed the book he held on his knees, set it down on the low wooden coffee table in the middle of the couches, and rose onto his feet. His eldest brother’s green eyes hardened like diamonds, reminding him of their father.

  They both had that regal, too-handsome bone structure and pitch-black hair.

  Valen had tried to adjust that bone structure and rearrange that hair a few times in his life. Unfortunately, Keras was irritatingly good at fighting and healed just as quickly as the rest of them.

  Ares stood behind Keras and folded his muscular arms across his broad chest, causing his black t-shirt to pull tight across them, accentuating his build. Boy needed to shop for a bigger size, but Valen didn’t expect him to get that. He always had been more brawn than brains. Keras’s little guard dog.

  The fiery edge to Ares’s dark eyes said not to test him.

  Daimon sighed dramatically and shoved black-leather-clad fingers through his softly spiked white hair, his pale blue eyes shifting between him and Keras. If he wanted to make a point, he was going to have to be blunter than that.

  “Yeah, I’m late, I get it. Yeah, we’re going to fight, again. No need for the theatrics, Brother.” Valen stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “I was busy.”

  “So the same excuse as always?” Keras took a step forwards.

  Not a hard one. Just a light step. But it was enough to convey the same amount of anger and irritation that a hard one complete with a stamp of the foot would have. His brother had that sort of talent.

  “It’s the truth. My little friend is back.” Boy, was she back.

  He almost grinned, but schooled his features so his brothers couldn’t see his amusement, because they would probably mistake it for something else and tear him a new one.

  “What have you learned, Valen?” Ares actually had the balls to emerge from behind Keras, coming to stand beside him. It seemed his second eldest brother was getting bolshie since falling in love. It had only taken him close to a thousand years to grow a pair.

  Valen mulled over what to tell them. Keras’s green eyes demanded everything, and said he wouldn’t be satisfied with an answer short of that, and Valen did want to get back to Eva as soon as possible.

  So for once, he didn’t bother to lead his brothers on a dance designed to piss them off.

  “She’s an assassin. I think daemons hired her. She’s tried drugging me twice now.” And succeeded once. Okay, so he wasn’t going to tell them everything. He paced a little towards the open doors to the garden, feeling everyone’s eyes boring into him as he searched for a sense of peace in all the flowing water, stone lanterns and green moss. He glanced back at his brothers where they had remained in the far end of the enormous rectangular room. “She’s human.”

  Shock rippled across their faces. Very satisfying.

  “You killed her?” Keras said and Valen got another pleasing round of horrified looks when he shook his head.

  He shrugged and turned his back on the garden, pacing back across the pale-golden tatami mats that covered the floor. It was only then he realised he was still wearing his boots.

  In his haste to get to the meeting and back again as quickly as possible, he had teleported straight into the mansion rather than to the porch outside.

  He looked at the wooden door opposite him, suddenly glad Esher wasn’t around because his brother would have lost it. Esher was a sucker for rules, traditions, that sort of shit. Not removing his shoes outside and placing them on the rack probably would have earned him a going over, and Esher was the one brother he hated fighting.

  While he was usually immune to his own power, something about Esher’s ability to manipulate water turned his lightning against him, conducting it in a way that fed it back into him. Sure, normally it was only mild pain.

  Sometimes a little burn or two.

  Sometimes it was worse than that though.

  Sometimes he ended up having to grow shit back.

  He flexed the fingers of his left hand and shook away the image of them charred, flesh blistered and peeling in some places, and completely melted away in others, leaving only blackened bones behind. Bile rose up his throat and he swallowed it hard. It had taken him over a week to heal that injury. A week of Esher’s guilty looks and his other brothers’ merciless teasing about having a damn skeletal hand.

  Valen closed his eyes and focused on the present. Eva danced across his dark vision, the bright blue streaks in her hair shining as vibrantly as her dazzling eyes.

  “I have her captive, and I will question her.” He snuck a glance at his phone. He had already been gone over twenty minutes. He wasn’t sure when she would wake, and he didn’t want her to wake alone.

  “Bring her in, Valen.” Daimon this time, and wasn’t it just like him to want to play by the rules to please their self-appointed boss?

  Valen shook his head again. “No. My captive, my rules.”

  “I can just go and get her myself.” Those words might have been the biggest mistake Keras had ever made.

  Valen snarled at him and lightning raced down his arms, crackled across his fingers and arced between them and the tatami mat floor of the building, snapping as they struck it and leaving black scorch marks behind.

  “Dare,” he barked and glared at his brothers. “She is my business. Not yours.”

  Keras calmly took another step forwards. “Our business. If she works for the ones who targeted Ares, she is a direct link to the threat to our gates… our world, Valen.”

  He knew that, and he knew the right thing to do, but neither of those things stopped him from raising his hands and taking aim at his brother.

  Eva was his.

  Keras took another step, his green eyes darkening, shadows building in them that warned he was close to getting a reaction out of his older brother for the first time in a long time and he wouldn’t like it when it happened.

  “Bring her in now, Valen!”

  “Go to Hell. It’s my business.” Valen threw his hand forwards, but managed to stop himself from unleashing his power as he pointed to Ares. “You let him deal with his shit alone, and that means I get to deal with this alone. You come near Rome… I don’t think I need to say what will happen.”

  He stepped before any of his brothers could respond, but rather than returning to his apartment, he landed on a grassy hilltop overlooking Rome and slumped onto his backside on the dewy grass.

  He was pushing his luck.

  Keras might give him a day to cool down, but his brother would come knocking, and Valen couldn’t blame him. He was right after all. Eva was a direct link to those who had targeted Ares, those who wanted to destroy the gates they protected.

  Rome flashed between the current world and the one to come, what he and his brothers had termed the otherworld.

  The yellow pinpricks of light that illuminated the beautiful mix of buildings and ancient archaeological sites became fire that spewed from the broken ground, and fault lines intersected the city, some as deep and wide as ravines, threatening to swallow it all. The Colosseum had shattered in half at the edge of one yawning abyss, the remaining stones ravaged by lava and crawling with black specks. Beasts. Things not of this world nor his one, born in the fires of destruction wrought by the daemons.

  Screams tore apart the waning night whenever the otherworld flashed over the current one, and he closed his eyes against the sight of his city burning, but couldn’t shut out the terrified wails of the
mortals as they were hunted and killed.

  Fucking Moirai.

  They had foreseen this event, and Hades had sent him and his brothers to protect the gates spread around the world, to guard the Underworld and everyone in it from such a terrible fate, and at the same time protect the mortals.

  To keep them loyal to their mission, the Moirai had ‘gifted’ him and his brothers with the ability to see the future of their city should they fail.

  It was more of a curse.

  All of them felt it. They all hated seeing the city they protected falling into ruin, seeing their failure whenever they gazed upon it. It pissed Valen off, because it made him feel he had already failed, that there was no way of stopping what the Moirai had seen from passing, and he knew his brothers felt the same. It didn’t drive them to work harder, because none of them could work harder.

  They had busted their balls for two centuries, never straying from their duty, waiting for their unknown enemy to emerge.

  It seemed that time was now.

  He opened his eyes and looked down at his city, watched as the sky lightened in the distance, signalling the start of a new day.

  He had never felt that so keenly as he did now, with Eva waiting for him to return.

  He needed to go back to his apartment.

  Not so he could question her about her clients. Not yet.

  Right now, he just needed to see her again.

  He needed to hold her in his arms.

  CHAPTER 5

  Eva stretched and yawned, a strange warmth curling through the entire length of her body, a sensation she wasn’t sure she had ever felt before and couldn’t quite describe. Contentment? She had never been content, and couldn’t think of a reason why she would feel that way now.

  In fact, she couldn’t recall much beyond heading out on a mission to make another attempt at delivering the drug to her mark.

  She slowly opened her eyes. Everything around her was hazy, a blur of brown, yellow and bright white. She blinked rapidly, but her vision was slow to come into focus.

  When it did, she gasped and launched backwards, hit something hard and scrambled for the covers when she realised she was naked.