He gave her a harsh, menacing glare. "I want to go home."
"Yeah, well, I would have taken you home had Otto answered his phone last night."
"I gave Guido time off for bad behavior," Valerius said under his breath. Then his face went suddenly pale.
Tabitha sensed dread, followed sharply by a pain so deep that it actually made her wince.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I need to go home immediately."
"Well, unless you have some special relationship to Apollo that I need to know about, that's about as likely as me winning the lottery, which would be highly likely if Ash would ever share those damn numbers with me. Vicious cur that he is. He won't share squat."
She felt a wave of hopeless despair consume Valerius. Instinctively, she walked over to him and gently touched his arm. "It's okay, really. I'll take you back as soon as the sun goes down."
Valerius looked down at her hand on his biceps. No woman had laid a bare hand to him like that in centuries. It wasn't sexual. It was soothing. The hand of someone who offered him comfort.
He lifted his gaze to hers. She had searingly blue eyes.
They were sharp and intelligent. Most of all, they were kind, and kindness wasn't something Valerius was used to.
Most people took one look at him and instantly had a strong disliking for him. As a human, he'd attributed it to his regal status and his family's well-earned reputation for brutality.
As a Dark-Hunter, it had stemmed from the fact that he was a Roman and since Rome and Greece had spent centuries warring against each other until Rome had finally brought Greece to her knees, it was only to be expected that the Greeks would hate him. Unfortunately, the Greeks and Amazons were a vocal group who had quickly turned all the other Dark-Hunters and Squires against their Roman-born brethren.
Over the centuries, Valerius had convinced himself that he didn't need any brothers-in-arms and had even started getting a morbid kind of enjoyment from reminding them of his regal Roman status.
From the first year of his rebirth, he'd learned to strike out at them before they struck him.
He'd finally embraced the rigid formality and sense of propriety that his father had beaten into him as a child.
But that formality fled before the kindness of this woman's soothing touch.
Tabitha swallowed as something passed between them. His dark, intense stare went through her and for the first time it wasn't condemning or judgmental. It was almost tender, and tenderness was not something she expected from a man of Valerius's reputation.
He laid his fingers against the scar on her cheek. She didn't see the sneer on his face that most men got when they saw it. Instead, he gently traced its line. "What happened?" he asked.
"Car wreck" almost came out. She'd told that lie for so long that it was practically automatic now. Honestly, it was a lot easier to say the lie than it was to live the truth.
She knew just how hideous her face was. Her family had no idea how many times she had overheard them make comments about her scar. How many times Kyrian had told Amanda that he would gladly pay for her to have plastic surgery.
But Tabitha had been terrified of hospitals ever since her aunt had died of a simple tonsillectomy gone bad. She would never elect to have something done just because she wasn't pretty anymore. If the rest of the world couldn't deal with her, it was their problem, not hers.
"A Daimon," she said quietly. "He said he wanted to give me a special memento so that I would always remember him."
A tic started in his jaw at her words and she sensed his anger on her behalf.
"I'll give him credit," she said past the lump in her throat. "He was right. I think of him every time I look in the mirror."
Valerius dropped his hand down to the scar on her neck where one of the Daimons had actually gotten a bite on her. If not for Kyrian coming to her rescue, she would most likely have died that night.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Those were words she was certain never crossed this man's lips. "It's okay. We all have scars. I'm just lucky that most of mine are on the outside."
Valerius was stunned by her wisdom. He'd never expected such depth of thought from a woman like her. She gave a light squeeze to his hand before she removed it from her neck and stepped back.
"Are you hungry?"