Page 19 of The Guardian (Dark-Hunter 20)
Something twitched at the side of his mouth that might have become a smile had he allowed it. "No, it won't hurt you."
Still a little skeptical, she carefully pulled it over to her. But he was right. It wasn't hungry anymore and she was able to type in safety.
She looked up, and saw another new lumpy bruise on his temple that wasn't visible until you got close to him. Her stomach clenched. Knowing he would never talk to her about it, she focused on what they were doing. "Okay, what do you want to know?"
He took a step away from her. "I need to learn more about the key to Olympus."
Okay. She had no idea why and had never heard the term before. But then there were a lot of things she didn't know about her native culture. Solin had raised her in other parts of Europe. For reasons he wouldn't name, he kept her away from her heritage. While he'd schooled her on the gods and her Were-Hunter branch, he'd always been insistent that she never try to contact them.
And since she hadn't interacted with others of her kind after her family had died ...
She was pretty ignorant of anything other than the major facts.
"Did you Google it?" she asked him.
He frowned. "Google?"
"Yeah, Google. You know, the search engine."
He sniffed and jerked his head as if he'd had a pain shoot through his nose. Then he placed the heel of his hand over his left eye and held it there. "What's a search engine?"
"Are you okay?" Even though he didn't complain, she had a sneaking suspicion that he was really hurting right now.
"It'll go away in a minute." He lowered his hand and blinked his eye open.
Lydia gasped as she saw that the entire white of his eye was now completely red. Blood red. "Oh my God. Does that hurt?"
Seth had no answer to her question. Every part of him currently hurt. Especially his inflamed cock that kept begging him to take her regardless of her protests.
But he wasn't that much of an animal. Having been raped on several occasions, he wasn't about to do that to anyone else. For that matter, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd had sex that hadn't raped either his body or his soul.
As she'd noted earlier, after age thirteen, he'd never known a touch that wasn't angry or bruising.
Not until her ...
She reached up to touch him.
For an instant, he was frozen by the desperate need he had to feel her skin on his.
Don't. All it will do is remind you of things you can never have.
She belonged to Solin. Not him.
He quickly moved away.
But she didn't take the hint. Instead, she pursued him across the room.
What the hell? Every time he moved, she was there, trying to touch his injured eye. He didn't even want to know how stupid he must look while he dodged her.
"Stop!" he finally snarled.
She pulled back as if he'd slapped her and that made him feel like a total ass. "I just wanted to help you."
"Help me do what?" Die of unsated lust? That was his biggest threat in the room at present.
She shook her head. "Your eye is completely red. It's like it's filled with blood."
That explained the haze over his vision, but the pain he felt was from his eye socket where Noir had punched the shit out of him after Seth had given in to the incessant need to question Noir's parentage. "I must have broken a blood vessel. It happens."
Lydia felt sick about the nonchalant way he spoke of something so horrible. Broken blood vessels didn't just happen. Anymore than his bruises had just appeared on his face. She took a step toward him.
He took one back.
Fine. He wasn't going to allow her near him again. And to think, she'd actually been afraid of him forcing himself on her. Yeah ...
"You still haven't told me what a search engine is." He licked, then sucked at his busted lip right before he ran his hand across it.
How could something so ferocious look so vulnerable and uncertain? These small glimpses of the real him were actually sweet. And even worse, they were charming her a lot more than she was charming him.
"You really don't know what it is? I mean, I realize you live in..." she glanced around the dreary room. "Or rather under a rock, but you do have a computer."
"I haven't had it long and I didn't figure out how to make it connect to the human world until about an hour before you arrived. And you know how little time I've had to work it since then."
That explained a lot. And yet ... "You had one before this, right?"
He shook his head. "I'd never heard of one until a demon told me about them. He said it would help me learn things quicker. But I honestly don't see how. Books are much faster to navigate. I figured out how to open up one of those the instant I touched it. It took two days just to find the on switch for that damn thing."
His words stunned her. Had he honestly made a joke? She laughed, hoping it didn't offend him.
Seth froze at the sweetest sound he'd ever heard. A true and sincere laugh. And it wasn't at his expense.
No one had laughed like that around him in ...
He had no idea. Had he ever heard laughter that wasn't mocking or cruel? If he did, he had no memory of it. Nor had he seen anyone's eyes light up like hers did.
She was so beautiful that it took his breath away. Worse, it drew him toward her when he knew he should be running for the door.
His lips twitched as if they wanted to smile, but that, too, was something he had no memory of. Surely he'd smiled as a child? Hadn't he?
Why couldn't he remember?
She pressed her lips together and sobered. "Sorry."
Her apology confused him even more than her laughter had. It, too, was something he couldn't remember hearing from anyone. Ever. "For what?"
"I don't know. You looked upset. I wasn't laughing at you, I swear."
"I know."
Lydia felt suddenly very awkward. Even though he had an extremely expressive face, she had a hard time reading it. And he never reacted the way she thought he would. Things that should make him happy made him angry and things she thought would offend him, didn't.
She offered him a smile. "If it makes you feel better, you're not alone with that thought. Computers make fools of us all. But I have to say that I'm highly impressed."
"By what?"
"You got it up and running when you'd never seen one before? That's impressive. I have to call the Geek Squad every time I buy a new one and I've had one for years."
Again with the dancing, indecipherable emotions on his face. Finally, he settled on a stricken look that she didn't understand the source of. "Did you just compliment me?"
She widened her eyes as she debated how to answer. Was he offended that she'd complimented him? It was how he acted. But that made no sense whatsoever.
"Um ... yes."
