Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [41]
“I lied.” He crouched beside her, waved his hand in front of her face, and unlocked the memories he’d buried in her brain.
She gasped, her eyes going wide as she scrambled backward. “What did you do? Oh, my God, what… who are those men in my house?” She grabbed her head, the memories hitting hard, a flood of data that would lock up even the most advanced computer.
“They were human warriors.” He moved toward her, slowly, herding her in a pink, fluffy cloud toward the corner. “Demon slayers. I suspect they were tracking the hellhound you treated.” He practically spat that last part, unable to believe anyone would help one of those nasty-ass things.
“That’s what they kept saying. Hellhound.” She peered at her bare feet, her sandy brows pulling into a frown. “Wait. The man who came out of thin air in my office. He took Hal, and later, I saw him in the dream.” Her hand went to her chest. “He’s the one who gave me this mark.”
“His name was Sestiel. He was a fallen angel.”
“F-fallen angel?” She swallowed, licked her lips, and naturally, his gaze was drawn to her mouth. She might be soft, but when it came to females, sometimes soft was desirable. “Why did he want a… hellhound?” She stumbled over the word, licked her lips again. He wished she’d stop doing that. “Um, Hal.”
“He took the hound because proximity to them can mask a fallen angel’s whereabouts.” They were also an effective weapon against the Horsemen, but she didn’t need to know that. “I think he was hoping he could tame it and get it to bond with him. He must not have known that it had already bonded to you.”
“Bonded?”
Cold, stale hatred fisted Ares’s heart. “Hellhounds are vile, evil creatures. They live to slaughter and maim, and they feel no remorse. So whatever you did to him, saved his life or something… it made him grateful.” The very idea made Ares ill. He’d rather eat ghastbat guano for the rest of his life than be bonded to a grateful hellhound. “You’ve been dreaming about him, except they aren’t dreams. Hellhounds can communicate through the bond using astral projection. You go to him while you’re sleeping, but it can be dangerous, because in that dream world, angels and demons can capture you, keep you with them until your physical body dies.”
Cara backed up a little more. Her eyes had gone unfocused, her brain swamped with information beyond the scope of anything she could possibly understand. “And you—you grabbed me from my house. You kidnapped me.”
“I saved your life,” he pointed out. “The Guardians were going to torture and kill you.”
She buried her face in her hands, and then her head snapped up, her cheeks mottled with red. “You kissed me!”
His gaze dropped once more to her mouth, those lush lips he’d sampled. She’d tasted of mint and hellhound then, and he wondered about her flavor now. “It wasn’t a kiss, human, so don’t get excited.”
She sputtered in outrage. “I don’t know what putting your lips on someone else’s mouth means for your people—whatever they are—but humans call that a kiss.”
“Congratulations, then. You made out with a hellhound.” He raked his gaze over her body, which, though hidden under oversized pajamas, was curvy. He’d never forget the unintentional strip show she’d put on before getting into the shower. “I would avoid that in the future. Hellhounds fuck what they kill. Usually while they’re killing it. No telling what they’ll do to someone they actually like.”
Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “You’re disgusting.”
He snorted. “I’m not the one who sucked face with a hellhound.”
A tremor rocked her, and for a brief—very brief—moment, he experienced the tiniest bit of remorse for taunting her, and he considered armoring up to counter it. Then she shot him a glare of utter revulsion, and so much for the rare pang of conscience. “Where are we?” When he didn’t reply within the two seconds she apparently allotted for an answer, she huffed. “Well?”
Impressive, how