“Hey.” She shoved at his chest. “Wh-what are you’re doing?”
“Be still.”
At his rough tone, she stiffened and pressed her back into the door. Her striking eyes, a deep brown with spiky bouts of pure yellow edged with green glowered in annoyance.
Sunflowers. That’s what they reminded him of.
“I’m grateful you brought Daniel home. But notthatgrateful. You’re sadly mistaken if you think I’m going to let you…” Her gaze settled on his lips. “Kiss me.”
“You would if I were of a mind to.”
Her seductive mouth dropped open. Her irises turned fully citron, irritation flaring across her gorgeous face.
Emotions charging through him like a livewire, Blaéz forced himself to step back, despite wanting to taste her so badly. He struggled to find an off switch. Struggled not to touch her. If he did, he doubted he’d stop at just a kiss.
And you can’t be trusted,the sly voices in his head whispered.
Yeah, got it. She’s human—an innocent, and he was a fucked-up deviant.
He had to get the hell out of here. He drank in one last look before he took off down the street. At a shady building some distance from her home, he dematerialized. Back on the familiar grounds of the Lower East Side, he took form in an alley, his groin heavy and aching with impossible need. Blaéz ran agitated fingers through his clipped hair.
His gaze lit on the busy entrance to Club Anarchy. He needed a drink—needed to think. Bypassing the crowd there and the demon bouncers, he made his way inside the nightspot.
Heavy metal music crashed around him. Sweat, liquor, and perfume wafted in the air. Strobe lights in multihued patterns buzzed around him like pesky flies. Nothing registered in his hazy thoughts as he headed for the VIP section upstairs, not even the humans who parted, giving him way.
As he ordered his preferred whiskey from the waitress there, the sensation of absolute nothingness, of emptiness returned. He looked up into the mirror behind the bar. And the same expression he’d seen for eons stared back at him. Cold. Emotionless. Colorless eyes. The eyes of a killer. Once, in another life, they’d been as blue as the Pacific, until the day it had all gotten shot to hell and he’d been thrown in Tartarus for several brutal centuries.
His thoughts went on automatic lock-down.
A female in skyscraper heels tottered over to his side. Her vacuous gaze skimmed over him. “Lookin’ for a good time, handsome?”
But it wasn’t the whore’s heavily made-up, spaced out grays he saw, buthers, those extraordinary hazel ones now imprinted on his mind. Drink forgotten, he headed downstairs and through the dimly lit passageway toward the exit.
He had to see her again. Why only with her did his heart react as if it had been attached to a defibrillator? Why only with her did he feel?
He was a soulless bastard. Emotions weren’t his deal.
Chapter 2
Darci droppedher cell on the kitchen counter after she’d made her call to her brother and rubbed the goose bumps from her arm.
The memory of the man’s touch, his low seductive voice, made the tiny hairs on her nape rise. She should have been scared witless when he’d trapped her against the door, but instead, awareness stirred deep within her. Almost like she should know him.
Ugh, she must have lost her ever-loving mind. Know him? She’d never seen him in her life. Because one thing’s for sure, he was the kind of man one never forgot. He was too tall, too handsome, tooeverythingin a dark, deadly sort of way.
The squeaky sounds of sneakers on the wooden stairs pulled her out of her confused thoughts.
His head lowered, Daniel cleared the last stair and parked himself on the arm of the couch, fingering an old rip in the knee of his jeans. He’d showered and changed into clean clothes, but he looked pale beneath the dark bruises around his eye and on his cheek.
Guilt for calling his father clawed at Darci, but terror filled her heart at what could have happened. Christ, he was only sixteen. It didn’t matter if he was tall as a house; he was still a child.
This was all her fault. The few times he’d shown up at her door from his late night partying, she’d let him be. With her being far younger than his father, it made Daniel see her more as a friend than his aunt. Worse, she now realized, by not telling Declan about Daniel’s break in curfew, he’d landed himself in trouble. If anything ever happened to him, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. She looped a stray curl of hair behind her ear and realized, much to her dismay, the man hadn’t answered her question about what had happened. She had to be the worse aunt ever for not questioning him again. Well, she could still get it from the horse’s mouth. But said horse continued to avoid her gaze.
“What happened, Daniel?”
He plucked a thread from the rip. “Dunno.”
Her mouth tightened. “Fine, don’t tell me. But you’d better rethink your line of “dunno” fast because your father’s not going to be happy.”
