Page 69 of Visions of Darkness

The only things soft about him were his full, red lips, which stood out in stark contrast against his pale, pale skin.

He wore jeans and a worn leather jacket, his body long, hewn in a vicious strength that promised a different sort of wickedness than I’d ever known.

His brow was drawn, slanted with ferocity and tugging between his eyes as he made another right, carefully maneuvering us into an orchestrated maze as he wound deeper into the city.

I couldn’t look away.

Here, I could see the brutalities that had marked us in Faydor.

A long scar cut through the right side of his face, starting up near his temple and extending down to his jaw. Another was puckered at the right side of his neck, hidden beneath the swirl of ink that rose out of his collar and climbed his neck.

Another was carved in at the side of his head, the hair no longer able to grow in that spot.

He looked as if he’d gone to battle a thousand times, a Viking warrior who’d run headlong into danger and had somehow made it out on the other side.

I knew firsthand that he had.

My gaze traced, moving to the only other exposed skin, his big hands that crushed the steering wheel in a viselike grip, also covered in tattoos, swirls and innuendos of the horrible atrocities we’d faced.

My stomach tilted. I could only imagine the rest that were hidden underneath.

“Are you hurt?” His gravel-cut voice curled through the silence, making me jerk, and a tiny sound escaped.

I blinked through the disquiet. “No. I don’t think so.”

He stole a glance in my direction. Those palest gray eyes slid over me, what should be black pupils a murky gray. He seemed to be taking stock as his attention raked over my dripping hair and soaked pajamas.

“I don’t know if I can feel anything, if I’m being honest.”

Or maybe I felt too much. Every sense alive but distorted by shock.

Another shiver rolled through my body.

“You’re cold.” He tried to turn up the heater, which still only blew cold air.

“I’ll be fine.”

He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth, his stare long, before he ripped his attention away and took a sudden sharp left.

He cut across the road and veered into a parking lot behind an apartment building, then whipped into a spot and shut off the engine.

He’d turned and had my face in his hands before I could process the movement. My frozen skin felt singed by the heat blazing from his palms. His pale eyes were wild, raving with hate. “Did he hurt you? Did that motherfucker get to you?”

My tongue stroked out over my dried, trembling lips, and I could barely speak around the thickness in my throat. “No ... He tried. But I fought him off. Right before you came.”

“God, I want to go back. End him.”

“You can’t,” I choked out.

He blinked, his hands burning my face, the pad of his thumb brushing under the hollow of my eye. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

Pax warred, his body a reel of uncertainty and indecision, before he jerked away and tossed open his door. “We have to go.”

He was already around to my side of the car by the time I’d gotten unbuckled, and he ripped open the door and extended his hand.

My head spun, trying to keep up with the change in his demeanor. To catch up to this. To the threat that lurked all around.

Without saying anything, he began to guide me through the shadows, keeping low as we slunk between the cars.

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