Page 43 of Hunted By Darkness

Turning, Silas leaned down and pressed his mouth against mine. It wasn’t the sweet kiss I expected. It was demanding and brutal, almost as if he wanted to devour me whole. A growl rumbled before he lifted me in his arms and locked me against his chest.

I wrapped my legs around him and returned the kiss, ignoring the nagging sensation at the back of my head that something about all of this felt…off. Different. Unfamiliar. Wrong.

His hands roamed my butt and thighs, our tongues chasing back and forth. Throwing my head back, I sucked in air and tried to remember why I was out here.

The voices whispered and urged me to listen. I might not understand the words they were saying, but I sensed their urgency. When I tried to escape his hold, Silas gripped me harder and kissed me again.

“Don’t think you can distract me, asshole,” I complained, biting his lower lip. “Where’s Bear Claw?”

Thousands of whispers escalated in an instant. An ominous feeling of unease swept over me. Something had shifted. The wind howled and seemed to respond to the change. My purple hair swept into my eyes, obstructing my sight for a second before I caught glimpses of my mercenary through the breaks.

I brushed it back, pulse agitated by the deadly quiet man in front of me. “Silas?”

“You’re not going to like my answer, love,” Silas’s golden eyes flashed, lifting to meet mine. The gold in his irises quickly became silver, then bled to a violent red, and I inhaled a sharp breath. “You won’t like it at all.”

19

Nika

Fear slammed into me, and I threw my head back, smacking someone hard enough to get a grunt. It only took me a second to realize I wasn’t outside anymore. I wasn’t at the edge of a cliff looking for Salvator. I was in bed assaulting the most infamous assassin in the magical world.

“Easy there, love,” I heard Silas murmur in a pain-laced voice. “What’s got you choosing violence so early in the morning?”

I turned my head and caught sight of a familiar pair of golden eyes, no longer the ominous red they had been in my dream. Silas had taken a hit to the nose, made evident by the crack and hiss when he fixed it.

“Shit. Did I break it?” I sat up and wiped away the blood leaving one of his nostrils. With an assessing eye and careful touch, I checked the state of his nose, and then the rest of his face for any other injury I might’ve inadvertently caused. “I’m so sorry, Silas.”

Laughing a little to himself, the groggy mercenary reached for something next to the bed. He popped the cork and drank the vial’s contents. A minor healing potion. Shit, I’d broken it. I’d assaulted the man I loved in his sleep. So much for keeping our night from melting into violence.

“No need to apologize, love. You can’t help that you’ve got a formidable skull. My nose never stood a chance.” He checked the time, and it turned up nearly five in the morning. Lev would be awake soon. “Another dream, was it?” he asked, his voice muffled as he wiped away the remaining blood.

I brushed back my hair and dropped an apologetic kiss on his healing nose. A cute smile spread across his handsome face, then he puckered for another. Giggling at the goofy-grinned man-child, I bent down and kissed him again. His hand sunk into my hair, tongue sliding across my closed lips in demand, but I pulled away before he could get ahead of himself.

The sleepy-eyed brute rumbled a happy growl, bending an arm behind his head to look at me as if I hadn’t denied him a damn thing. “Is this one of those dreams I should be worried about, love? You’re being quite…affectionate.”

I smacked his chest, pursing my lips in annoyance. “I’m affectionate.”

His eyebrow raised and his grin broadened. “You and I talking about the same person, little rebel?”

“Oh, shut up.”

I grumbled a bit under my breath, unable to refute his claim. But in my defense, it was hard to initiate affection when thisoversized idiot was always kissing or touching me, and in the most public places possible.

I didn’t want to encourage his antics.

“I think it was just a dream,” I finally answered. “Though, it’d make me feel less like an asshole if it’d been a vision. Then at least your assault wasn’t for nothing.”

I hadn’t heard the voices after waking this time. I didn’t think it was a vision. Maybe a deeply-rooted fear manifesting as a dream? I tried not to jump to conclusions with every weird dream. I’d had plenty since my father attacked the Council. Plenty since I discovered I was a mystical fucking monster with the power to steal someone’s soul. And while it didn’t feel like a normal dream, it didn’t give me the feeling of a vision, either.

I didn’t have a good answer to give him.

Sitting up with a devilish gleam in his eyes, Silas hummed in that conniving way of his. “Oh, I don’t know about that, princess. I’m sure you can find a way to make it up to me.” He licked his lips and reached for me. “I have a few ideas.”

“Bet you do.” I smacked his hand away and shuffled closer to the edge of the bed.

I ignored how incredible he looked with the sun peeking through a slit in the curtains, casting his tattooed body in partial glow. I refused to acknowledge how enticing he was in only a pair of boxers with the blanket no longer covering him. The shape of his morning erection caught my eye, but I glanced away.

The undeterred mercenary chuckled in a devastatingly sleep-rough husk when I did. “Is that a blush I see?”

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