Warrior Avenged Read online

  Yep.

  It had to be the gin.

  “I never saw those men before. And I didn’t bring them. In the event it escaped your notice, I was trying to get away from them, not control them.”

  Grey ignored her plea and continued pressing her. “This is the fourth night in a row you’ve been hanging around here. What do you want?”

  She almost glanced at Kane, but caught herself just in time, instead keeping her gaze trained firmly on Grey. “I thought this was a public place.”

  Kane took over the questioning and leaned in toward her so that she had to turn her head fully to look at him. “Fuck the innocent routine, Ilsa. You’ve got a problem with me and you already burned me once. You looking to do it again?”

  That firm jaw was hard to resist, but it was the haunted, hollow look in his eyes—not to mention the deep grooves under them—that nearly stole her breath.

  Completely.

  Where was the unbearably strong man who’d made love to her until she’d nearly forgotten herself? Forgotten her mission? Forgotten her past?

  The strength was still there, but so was pain.

  Could Emmett possibly be right about Kane? Not that she hadn’t believed him, exactly. But the incredibly virile man she’d spent those three glorious days with hadn’t acted like anything weakened him, despite Emmett’s claims to the contrary.

  And now?

  Now he looked like he was struggling against something that was slowly eating away at his formidable power. His body was still strong—she felt its strength in the long length of him pressed to her side—but it was the eyes. Those dark onyx orbs were filled with pain.

  She felt an answering pain in the recesses of her soul. It ate away at the cold shell she’d built around herself so very long ago.

  And for the first time since she’d taken up the mantle of Nemesis, she felt something. Something besides the raw, pulsing need for vengeance.

  For three hundred years, Kane Montague had hated the weakness that lived under his skin. The poison that, by his own admission, made him less of a Warrior.

  Who’d have known—could even Themis have imagined? —that the tattoos she branded them with to aid them in their tasks could be manipulated? That the tattoos could be altered?

  With dark magic and mindless obsession.

  And he’d let it happen. He’d let his guard down over an excruciatingly beautiful woman and had loved her to distraction. And in return, he made a mistake he’d pay for with the rest of his days.

  Oh yes, he’d had years to reflect on his mistakes. Years to castigate himself for what an incredible, arrogant fool he’d been.

  Those years in Italy had been like a dream. Working in secret, as security protection, for the lingering lines of the Medici family. The time had served him well, allowing him to hone his skills as an assassin, while ensuring the Warriors were tapped into the highest sources of power.

  It had taken only one sorcerer with the darkest of powers to bring it all crashing to a halt.

  Ruined love. Ruined lives.

  Kane forced his attention back to the woman who called herself Ilsa. Was he destined to repeat his mistakes over and over again just as the poison rose to power under his skin, year after year?

  “Answer me.” The fury in his voice surprised even him. Kane knew the woman had gotten to him, but his ability to stay calm, cool and in control had completely evaporated at seeing her again. Add to it the evidence she might be looking for him and any sense of reason had flown away on furious wings.

  Her pert nose turned up in a snit. “I won’t talk to you like this.”

  If he hadn’t been so angry, Kane thought he might have actually laughed at her. “Why not?”

  “You’ve seen me naked. You owe me some level of respect.”

  Respect? Seriously? “You fucked me and drugged me senseless. How respectful was that?”

  She sniffed and turned her attention toward running her finger over a small freckle on her kneecap. Kane remembered that freckle. And the one that matched it on the back of her knee. And how he’d run his tongue over that sensitive spot, causing her to . . .

  “Grey. Quinn. Out.”

  With a surprising lack of argument, the two of them left Grey’s office.

  Despite the additional room now available on the couch, Kane didn’t move. Neither did Ilsa. She just continued to torture him with those endlessly long legs hanging out of that oh-so-short skirt. Heat rose up between them and it took everything inside of him not to reach out and touch her.

  To demand she explain herself and make clear what had happened six months ago. Explain why she’d left and why she’d drugged him. Hell, why she’d targeted him in the first place.

  The poison in his veins chose that moment to rear its head, slamming a wave of fire through his stomach muscles. Kane nearly doubled over—the only thing keeping him straight was his own stubborn refusal to allow Ilsa to see him in pain.

  “Why—” Kane felt the words forming before pressing down on them with tensile strength.

  He would not ask.

  And he never begged.

  Another wave of pain washed through his abdomen, like a physical taunt from the poison in counterpoint to Kane’s thoughts.

  To his unwillingness to beg.

  Focus, Montague. Focus. “Who set me up? Who are you working for and why did they tell you to burn me?”

  “No one. And I didn’t burn you.”

  “You drugged me.”

  “Right. I drugged you; I didn’t burn you. I had no fire with me. Why do you keep saying that?”

  Kane searched her face for some sense that she was playing him, the absurdity of her comment almost laughable if he didn’t know better. Her sky blue eyes met his, surprisingly bereft of guile.

  Of course, when he’d last known her those eyes were the darkest of browns, so perhaps searching for answers in their depths was a pointless exercise. Just another lie, only physical instead of verbal.

  Besides, was it really possible she had no idea what he was talking about? “Burn” was common enough language in the spy community. Hell, they even made TV shows about it now.

  “Burn me as in fuck me over for some hidden reason I’m still trying to figure out.”

  The confused look didn’t quite vanish, evidenced by a small telltale crinkle between her eyebrows. That ugly blond wig hung in a bob around her chin and it took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to rip it off to expose the luscious waves of chestnut brown underneath. Clenching his fist to keep from touching her, he continued to press her in her silence.

  “Cut the bullshit. St. Giles wouldn’t have ordered you to do something like that to me, so who put you up to this? One day we’re following a couple of suspect scientists, the next we’re having some seriously kick-ass monkey sex and a few days after that I’m waking up with the hangover of the millennium. Who put you up to it?”

  “Monkey sex?”

  Kane saw the confusion stamped on her face as that delightful little crinkle paid a return visit. More common language she doesn’t understand? “You know. All-over-each-other sex.”

  “Um,” she sniffed again and reached for the gin she was having trouble swallowing back. “I thought of it a bit differently.”

  “Oh, wait. You thought we made love?” The words blistered his lips as he spoke them, the joke of what they’d shared for three glorious days still haunting him in vivid detail.

  He saw the grimace and the hurt look come into those diamond-bright eyes midsip of the gin. And watched as she promptly choked on the liquor as the words “made love” registered.

  Instinctively, Kane reached over to swat her across the back. Even that, the mere caress of her slender frame through her tight-fitting sweater, sent shock waves of heat running through him.

  What the hell was it about her? He’d enjoyed women throughout the long, long years of his life, taking the pleasure they offered and giving it back to each and every one of them. So what was it a
bout her—what was it about this woman—that was so unforgettable?

  He’d slept with women more beautiful, although it was her face that haunted him. It was her voice that wouldn’t let him go. And it was the recollection of their lost, seductive, blissful hours together he couldn’t erase from memory no matter how hard he tried.

  Why couldn’t he let this go?

  Another one of those delicate little sniffs. “Even I know we didn’t make love.”

  Before he could reply to that, she shifted gears on him. “What was that man outside? You killed him as casually as if he were a bug.”

  “That’s basically what he was.”

  “He disintegrated the moment you removed his head.”

  “Yes.” The yes was out before he could stop it, her matter-of-fact questions lulling him into a false sense of security. For fuck’s sake, she was a human. He had no business even letting her see him kill the Destroyer, let alone confirming that the guy actually disintegrated.

  Time to do some damage control.

  “Human bodies don’t do that.”

  No, human bodies didn’t do that. But soulless minions of the goddess of war did. The Destroyers were one of Enyo’s nastier weapons in her ongoing battle with the Warriors. Full to the brim with an odd sort of electric energy, they looked human, but their bodies were actually just husks—an inhuman shell, really.

  So why wasn’t she more upset about what she witnessed?

  Reining in his casual answers, he attempted to fix the damage he’d already allowed to happen. As one of his duties was to keep Destroyers and any other evidence of Enyo out of the minds of humans, he leveraged one of Themis’s handier gifts. The ability to cloud—and often erase if the memory was fresh enough—human minds.

  Pushing as much mental energy at her as he could muster through the pulsing pain of the poison, Kane worked to change the course of the conversation. “He was just regular old street scum and he needed to be dealt with. Surely you, of all people, know there are people who need to be removed.”

  “But he wasn’t a person.”

  Pushing harder, he added, “Of course he was.”

  Those blue irises stared back at him, but to his frustration, they didn’t appear to haze with cloudy memories in any way. Which was odd, because her next words contradicted that assumption. “Thank you for coming to my rescue from that horrible man.”

  “You’re welcome. Now. Do you want to tell me what you were doing out there?”

  “No.”

  “Were you looking for me?”

  “No.”

  Silence descended between them once again as Kane took in her words. It wasn’t possible she simply happened across Equinox, and certainly not its back entrance. Nor was it possible she’d simply happened upon the Warriors’ home on the Upper West Side based on the intel Grey shared earlier. How would she even know to look for him there?

  He made London his home and that was the only place they’d ever seen each other. Unless her deception ran far deeper than he’d suspected.

  Although he lived in Britain, he was a member of the North American Warriors. He’d joined their group a few centuries ago when they’d lost their own Scorpio. And yet Ilsa had been at both places.

  There was no way she’d have made any other connection to both spots if it weren’t for him.

  Was it possible she’d acted on the wishes of someone else? All this time, he’d assumed her orders came from MI6. But . . .

  The loud chime of a clock caught Kane’s attention. The sleek, chrome timepiece on Grey’s credenza rang the hour and he realized just how late he was. He had a meet tonight.

  Well, he’d just have to skip it. The assholes had waited this long, they’d keep a few more days. Scientists selling uranium were a problem, but their sales activity had already been mitigated with a few well-placed e-mail interceptions by Quinn.

  It would keep.

  Even though he made it a rule never to miss a meet. Shoddy performance could make the suspect lose confidence in their relationship. It was a policy he applied to his commitments to his Warrior brothers as well and the only time he’d violated his rule had been because of Ilsa. He’d nearly left their Leo, Brody, and his new wife, Ava, at the mercies of an ill-timed Destroyer attack.

  Fuck.

  How was it this woman had managed to screw with his ability to do his job more in the last six months than anything he’d ever come across? Hell, he’d managed to side-step Napoleon easier than this one single woman.

  Summoning up the harshest expression he could, Kane turned the full force of his badass persona on her. And as his gaze took in the lush sweep of her lashes and the heavy thread of the pulse at her throat, he promptly remembered her naked instead. Annoyed at the sudden memory, his voice was even more clipped than he’d originally intended. “Come now, you don’t expect me to believe that, do you? I think you’re really here to finish the job.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And I should believe you because?” He let the question hang there, as visions of those gorgeous calves resting on his shoulders filled his thoughts.

  Instead of a ready retort, those sexy blue eyes simply stared back at him in quiet mutiny.

  Well, what should he have expected?

  A loud banging noise outside the closed door of Grey’s office caught their attention. The Destroyer attack still fresh in his mind, Kane took off for the hallway outside the office at a run. Slamming open the door, he caught sight of a band of pixies running single file from the women’s room back toward the bar.

  Grey raced after them down the hallway, Quinn on his heels. Although the main floor of Equinox hosted New York’s most well-heeled and connected residents, the basement level hosted any number of supernatural creatures who made the city their home or simply a stopping-off point.

  Quinn returned quickly enough, a disgusted look painted across his face. “Fucking pixies. That dust is flammable if they’re not careful with it.” Grey followed on the bull’s heels, shooting the last pixie in their bathroom conga line a dirty glare that she answered with a flirty little wave and a jaunty smile as she passed.

  Grey shook his head, then glanced meaningfully toward his office door. “You getting anywhere with her?”

  “No. Although she had an incredibly odd reaction to the Destroyers.”

  Quinn cocked his head, already pushing toward the office. “Odd? Odd how?”

  A sinking feeling twisted Kane’s insides, the horrible pull a formidable rival to the poison already in residence. “She didn’t seem all that surprised by their lack of humanity.”

  Rushing past Quinn, Kane hit the doorway first.

  And saw nothing but an empty office.

  Chapter Three

  Molecules reforming, Ilsa completed the port into London’s Hyde Park. The moon was low in the sky, and she could sense, rather than actually see, that the night was heading toward dawn. The May air lay heavy on her skin as she stopped to catch her breath.

  Damn Kane Montague. Her heart thundered in wild, galloping bursts and she could still feel the imprint of where his body had pressed against hers.

  Why had she thought peeking in on him was a good idea?

  Where had the edge gone? Her razor-sharp attitude and focused dedication?

  It evaporated right along with your virginity, her conscience taunted. Mind-blowing orgasms have a way of doing that to a girl, that miserable voice of reason added for good measure.

  Blowing out a heavy breath, Ilsa struggled to regain her equilibrium and focus. Eyes closed, she cleared her mind and sought to erase the lingering effects of the port.

  Gods, but she hated it. No matter how many times she did it, she’d yet to get comfortable with the whole concept of teleportation. Something about pushing every molecule of her being into the ether and reforming it somewhere entirely different just hadn’t ever sat well with her. Alas, complaining was as useless as whining about any other aspect of her life.

  It was high time she
started remembering that again.

  Heaving one final sigh, she prepared herself to meet with the nuclear physicists. The two men had cooked up this scheme—strategic theft and then black market sale of uranium—while still in college and their comeuppance was a long time in coming.

  Opening her senses, Ilsa allowed her aura to search for theirs. Her gifts had been honed over millennia and she had the ability to track those wayward souls whose time had run out with the delicate precision of a tuning fork. Pushing her attention toward a deserted area of the Serpentine where they’d agreed to meet, she sought out the assholes who currently sat on top of Hades’s list of incoming arrivals.

  There.

  She had a lock on one of them. And with it, her senses filled with the writhing, evil toxin his soul emitted into the universe. Opening her senses wider, she searched for the second man, his choices in inexorable lockstep with the other. Searching . . . searching . . .

  Nothing yet.

  Ilsa knew she couldn’t wait any longer and moved closer. She’d barely made it on time as it was, her unexpected meeting with Kane nearly scattering her plans to the winds. Although, if the swirling pool of menace and greed that surrounded her target was any indication, a few minutes likely wouldn’t change things. The lure of money she’d dangled to get them here ensured they’d be forgiving of her lack of punctuality.

  She adjusted her skirt and smoothed it over her backside, adding a bit of sex to her movements to sweeten their dispositions even further.

  As her hands ran over the sides of her thighs, her thoughts immediately reverted back to New York. And the large, virile man who had dominated her every thought for the past six months.

  Kane Montague and his onyx fuck-me eyes and his long, lean body and the wicked heat of him had pulled at something deep inside of her.

  Damn him.

  Refocusing, Ilsa moved deeper into the park, the lure of the immoral pulling her toward her destination. “You shall avenge what is right and just,” she whispered to herself. “Your wrath shall slay the wicked.”