Where Dark Collides: Part 1 (Shades of Dark) (6 page)

I couldn’t decide whom to be more irritated with. Roman for being here, Kial for his rudeness, or myself for seriously still managing to be surprised at the random crap this day kept spitting out.

Beth, clearly not suffering from any of my indecisions, inserted herself between us with a high-wattage smile.

“Please forgive my friends. This one—” She aimed her smile at Kial “—is a moron. And as for Raine...” She spun her heels in a slow circle on the spot, giving me about two seconds of face-time. Her eyes popped at me, her chin jutted, her neck preened. “We narrowly missed a head-on collision on the way back from town and she’s still unnerved.”

That’s what her mouth said.

Her rooster impersonation was more verbal:
Oh my gods he is so gorgeous where did you find this sexy beast if you screw this up just because you’re tongue-tied I will haunt you to the grave now get on it woman.

I played dumb with a blank stare. I wasn’t tongue-tied. Not in the way Beth assumed, anyway.

Her wattage smile wiped away the rooster before she spun on toward Roman and initiated an introduction for herself while I silently freaked out.

Best-case scenario, Roman La Mar had returned to claim answers he had no right to. Worst-case, he’d brought threats to expose us sky-wide in some extortion scheme. His clothes had that billion-dollar look about them and someone had to pay for it, right? Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly fair, but the theme remained solid. Whatever had brought him here; I wasn’t going to like it. No matter how good he looked.

“C’mon,” Beth said to Kial, gesturing for him to follow her out. “We have that…
thing
to do.”

My cheeks heated. Could she be any more obvious? I’d zoned out on most of the introductory small talk, and now I wondered what I’d missed. Knowing Beth, she wouldn’t have hesitated to push a poor, unsuspecting Adonis on her socially and romantically deprived friend.

Poor, unsuspecting…?
Adonis?
Okay, it was official. I’d finally flipped off the deep end.

Kial, bless his hardened heart, didn’t budge. His eyes barricaded in distrust and dislike, he glared at our visitor. “No,” he told Beth firmly, “we don’t.”

“Kial!” she snapped.

“What?” His wrenched his scowl Beth’s way.

She took one look at the stubborn determination hunkering down in his expression and swiped the back of her hand over her forehead.

“I don’t…” Her voice wavered. Her legs gave in a fraction, her body swaying. “I‘m not feeling all that well. I think I should lie down a while.”

Kial wasn’t that gullible, not even close, but there wasn’t much else he could do when Beth literally fell into his arms with a whimper of distress. Well, I guess he could have kept his thumbs hooked into his belt and let her fall flat on her face, but he wasn’t that kind of guy either.

Limp Beth tucked into his side, he led her out.

Just before she disappeared around the corner, she threw me an exaggerated wink over her shoulder. “Invite him to Club Zero on Friday,” she mouthed soundlessly.

She may as well have shouted it from the rafters, since Roman was looking directly at Beth and her big mouth.

I was beyond irritation, beyond embarrassment, beyond caring about anything other than how to make Roman go away. His presence filled the room, every dormant threat he’d brought with him crammed into the corners.

His eyes came to me. “Is your friend alright?”

“Delayed shock from our near-miss accident,” I said, shamelessly hijacking Beth’s performance.

I’d have to deal with Roman La Mar eventually, but not today. And if I was the ostrich, shoving my head in the sand, leaving my butt sticking up, exposed and vulnerable, so be it. I was one giant nerve ending shivering on a stalk, a breath away from breaking free of its protective casing. I had a strong suspicion that Roman might just be that breath.

I took a step toward him, my hand politely showing him the way. Out. “This really isn’t the best time, I’m afraid.”

To my utter amazement, he took the hint with grace, backing out into the adjoining dining room.

I relaxed a little, just a tiny inch, as I walked him back to the entrance hall.

“I wanted to thank you.” He slanted a look at me, his smile seemingly sincere. “Last night, you saved my life.”

That smile creased into his eyes, wrapped around all those harsh angles of his face. The effect hit behind my knees, butter soft. I inhaled sharply, grabbing back that inch and stiffening my shoulders. I didn’t trust that smile. Worse, I didn’t like it. I’m not sure why, I couldn’t explain it, but I’d rather have his threats than his gratitude. Maybe it was just my ego. I did not like to be proved wrong.

“I patched you up a little,” I corrected. “No one needed saving last night and I’m not Florence Nightingale. If your injury had been potentially fatal, you’d have been rushed to the closest hospital.”

“I appreciate the patching up.” His hand went to his shoulder, no longer bulked from any bandages. “But before that, you flung yourself on top of me, pushed me out of harm’s way.”

“That’s not the way I remember it,” I said, firmly crushing the prospect of him feeling indebted to me in the slightest.

That would be wrong on so many levels. I was the reason he’d been put into danger in the first place. And what was that old proverb? If you save someone’s life, you own it? Or do they own you? Either option horrified me. I knew it wasn’t fact, not to be taken literally, but there was some underlying truth in that ancient proverb. When you saved someone’s life, a connection formed, a bond. And since what I needed most was Roman gone from my sphere of crazy that seemed to fascinate him, gone far and good and forever, I had to rid him of this crazy notion.

“I didn’t save you,” I said. “I was diving under the line of fire and you just happened to be in the way.”

“If you insist,” he said, chuckling; a deep, husky timbre that rolled down my spine with the cadence of a bass cello.

He didn’t believe me. He wasn’t going to be gone anytime soon. Well, he might leave right now, since he hadn’t objected to me showing him to the door, but I did have some working instincts when it came to people and situations and this one was going to be sticky in both senses of the word.

It was the tenor of his chuckle as he basically told me to my face that he didn’t believe me for a second, but I somehow ended up feeling charmed about it instead of riled.

I realised that wasn’t a lot to go on, certainly not enough to map out our near future, but I felt it in my gut, in my bones.

Roman La Mar and I were far from done.

We’d reached the end of the hallway and he turned to me, a casual, innocent move, except it put his back flush against the door and barred me from sending him on his way. His gaze met mine, lingered, softening with every heartbeat.

Warmth washed over my skin. It felt every bit as sensually blissful as his husky chuckle rolling down my spine.

I was intensely aware of how darkly beautiful this man was. Of how his scent, slightly spicy, all male, stroked my pulse. Of how everything about Roman La Mar whispered reminders of how long my self-imposed celibacy had dragged on. I’d noticed last night, and I was definitely noticing right now.

I’d give my left arm to have him not be here, for him not to have walked down my end of a deserted lane last night and smack bang into the thick of my life, but my right arm wanted to wrap around him and cling, to hold him tight for just a little while. I know, I had some serious hormone issues going on, but I wasn’t a lost cause.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said.

I swallowed a sigh of pure longing. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“Tomorrow?”

“That’s not going to work either, I’m afraid.” I fell back a step, out of his space, out of temptation. I wasn’t even sure what was happening here, but it didn’t matter.

There’d never be a good time. We would never work, and not just because there was a distinct possibility he might still get me locked on the wrong side of a slab iron door of some or other secret government laboratory.

“Name the day, then,” he pressed, jade stone stealing some of the softness from his gaze. “I’m flexible.”

“I’m sorry.” My lips twisted into a regretful moue. “I’m not available.”

“I don’t want to claim ownership, Raine,” he murmured. “It’s just dinner.”

Really? My brow shot up. I wasn’t an idiot and I hadn’t made any wildly inappropriate assumptions. When a guy asks a girl he barely knows out to dinner, it’s never just dinner.

He inclined his head, his eyes boring into me as he contemplated my raised brow.

“On an unremarkable evening, a beautiful woman saved my life in an extraordinary sequence of events.” He spoke slowly, softly, the intensity of his gaze never lessening. “One does not simply walk away from that, Raine, not without something to mark the occasion. So, if not
just
dinner, then let’s call it closure.”

It took me a moment to recalibrate, a long moment, but then I smiled, nodding. This, I could deal with. This, I didn’t have to regret into the long, empty nights to come. This, I’d expected all along.

“Monday?” I suggested sweetly to the dark undertone of thinly veiled threats and not so subtle blackmail. “I think I could do Monday.”

He inclined his head, regarding me with a thoughtful expression, although I doubted he was thinking about what had changed my mind. He knew damn well.

“Monday, then,” he said at last, tagging on the details that ended with, “I look forward to it, Raine,” in a voice that left me in no doubt that he truly meant it.

ROMAN LA MAR DIDN’T WANT a date. His visit had nothing to do with gratitude. He didn’t feel indebted. What he wanted was to get me alone, without distractions, and grill me hard. I should probably have been mortified, pissed, but all I had was a vague sense of relief. Oh, and two days to refine my story into a version that would satisfy the man. He was a dog with a bone, but his bone was rubber and I’d stretch it until even he eventually gave up and buried the whole damn thing.

I watched as he reversed out of the driveway. The silver Mercedes rode low on the road, a broad and sturdy sports model that purred understated elegance. I tried to not draw the comparison between car and owner, but there it was, saturating my mind as I waited until Roman was out of sight before closing the front door.

Lost in thought, my feet dragged across the hallway and down the short passage.

There was no point lying to myself. Roman tugged strings that had been left slack for years, jerking parts of me awake like a puppet master.

I hadn’t intentionally sworn off all men, but Angeon men were hard to come by, especially pure ones. I got it, I really did. Three years ago, I’d been on that same track, dating my very normal, entirely human, high school sweetheart, anxious about him leaving for St. Andrews while I prepared to start at London College.

My parents had done their utmost to instil me with their Angeon reverence, the importance of propagating the few remaining pure lines, but even they had started to realise they couldn’t fight the math. According to The Third Council, there were exactly thirty-seven pure Angeon males of suitable age, spread around the globe—my parents had kept informed of things like that. According to me, there were exactly two I’d actually met and knew, and as much as I liked the Bodine twins,
that
wasn’t happening.

If I could go back in time, for just one minute, I’d wrap my arms around my mom and beg forgiveness for all those years of defiance.

She’d tried to tell me, warn me, but when did teenagers ever listen?

Pure Angeon blood meant pure Angeon power, strength, survival.

Pure Angeon blood meant I could strike back at the bastards who’d slaughtered my family, that I could at least make a stab at balancing good and evil in this world, that I was one of the few people left on this planet who could protect and defend against Demoran might.

Pure Angeon blood that I was now determined to pass down to my children one day, because who knew when they, too, might need to draw on it?

Kial’s voice reached me as I passed the kitchen. He was in there, phone pressed to his ear, pacing a circle around the table as he argued with whoever was on the other end.

I walked on without interrupting. My house was open-plan, the dining and living areas separated by the back of a three seater, tanned hide sofa.

“Beth?” I called, not seeing her at first, and then I did, sprawled half-on and half-off the three seater, spilling onto the floor. Literally. Her life blood drained from one arm dangling limply, congealing into a ruby pool on the hardwood floor. “Kial!”

I rushed around the end of the sofa, stripping my T-shirt over my head, falling onto my knees in the puddle of blood.

Her eyes were closed, her face pale, too pale, too serene.
The peaceful sleep of the dead.

The muscle of my heart tore, straining, aching, labouring through each breath.

“Beth,” I croaked as I bound my T-shirt around her lower arm with frantic jerks, binding what was left of her blood to her body. “Beth!”