A faint blush stained her cheeks, making her eyes a full shade darker. In spite of the danger they were in, he wondered what she would look like after a full night of raw, exhausting sex. He could just see her eyes dark with passion, her hair mussed, her cheeks red from his whiskers, and her lips moist and swollen from his kisses.
The thought made his entire body burn.
Until Kyrian felt the familiar prickling on the back of his neck. "It will be dawn soon."
"How do you know?"
"I just do." He pulled her to the left, then began examining the rust-covered walls for an escape. "Once we're released, we'll have to find a way to break out of these cuffs."
"Nice of you to state the obvious." Amanda glanced down his body and saw the jagged wound through the torn material. "You really need to tend that."
"God forbid I should bleed to death, eh?" he asked sardonically. "Then you'd have to cart around my rotting corpse."
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Could you be any more morbid? Jeez. Who was your idol growing up? Boris Karloff?"
"Hannibal, actually."
"You're trying to scare me, aren't you?" she asked. "Well, it won't work. I grew up in a house with an angry poltergeist and two sisters who used to conjure demons just to fight them. Buster, I've seen it all, and your gallows humor isn't working on me."
Before he realized what she was doing, she grabbed the bottom of his shirt and lifted it.
Amanda froze at the sight of his bare stomach. It was lean, hard, and flat, and he had a rippling six-pack of abs that any gymnast would envy. But what made her gasp was the multitude of scars covering his flesh.
Worse, she saw the terrible gash in his side that ran along his lowest rib.
"Good Lord, what happened to you?"
He jerked his shirt down and took a step back. "If you mean the scars, it would take me years to account for all of them. If you mean the gash, it came from a thirteen-year-old Apollite I mistook for a child in need of help."
"You walked into a trap?"
He shrugged. "It's not the first time."
Amanda swallowed as she swept her gaze over him. An aura of danger and death surrounded him. He moved like a sleek, graceful predator, and those eyes...
They seemed to be able to take in more than just his basic surroundings. Those wicked jet eyes held an indescribable ethereal glint to them.
And they stole her breath every time he looked at her.
She'd never seen a blond man with eyes like that. Nor had she seen any man so incredibly handsome. His features were chiseled and perfect.
He oozed an almost unnatural masculine sexuality. She'd seen plenty of men who had tried their best to project what nature had dumped by the truckload onto this man.
"What is a Dark-Hunter?" she asked. "Is it like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"
He laughed at that. "Yes, I'm a small, emaciated teenage girl who struts around fighting vampires in earrings they would rip out of my ears and shove up my-"
"I know you're not a girl. But what is a Dark-Hunter?"
He sighed as he led her around the room, looking at the walls as if searching for a secret door. "In short, I execute the things that go bump in the night."
A chill went up her spine at his words, and yet she sensed there was something more than just his simple explanation. He appeared deadly, but not twisted, or even cruel. "Why do you want to kill Desiderius?"
He glanced at her before trying to open the steel door again.
He wrenched the handle so forcefully, she was amazed he didn't rip the doorknob off. "Because he not only kills humans, he steals their souls."
She tensed at his words. "Can he do that?"
"You said you've seen it all," he said in a mocking tone. "You tell me."
Amanda wanted to choke him. Never in her life had she met a more arrogant, or infuriating man.
"Why do I always get sucked into this supernatural mumbo jumbo?" she muttered. "Is it too much to ask that I have one average day?"
"Life is seldom what we want it to be."
She frowned at his words, and at the odd note in his voice.
Kyrian tilted his head, and held his hand up to signal her for silence.
Out of nowhere, the doorknob clicked.
"Knock, knock," Desiderius said. "You have the day to hide. Come nightfall, we hunt."
"Yeah, yeah," Hunter said. "You and your little dog, too."
His blithe tone amazed her. The chilling words had absolutely no effect on him. "You're not scared of his threats?"
He looked at her dryly. "Chere, the day I fear something like him is the day I lie down at his feet and hand him the knife to cut my heart out. The only fear I have is getting you back to your sister and convincing High Queen Hardhead to leave off this matter until I can locate Desiderius and send his soul into oblivion where it belongs."
In spite of herself and the danger they were in, Amanda laughed at his words. "High Queen Hardhead? You know Tabitha well."
He disregarded her comment as he carefully shielded her with his body, then opened the door slowly. He paused to look around.
Outside the door was a narrow hallway with large, dust-covered windows that showed the dawning sun.
"Damn," Hunter snarled under his breath as he took a step back into the room.
"What?" she asked, her heart skipping a beat in terror. "Is someone out there?"
"No."
"Then let's go." She started out the door.
He didn't budge.
Clenching his teeth, he looked down the hallway again and said something in a language she didn't know.
"What's the problem?" Amanda asked. "It's dawn, and no one's out there. Let's leave."
He took a deep, aggravated breath. "The problem isn't the people. The problem is the sun."
"And the problem with that is... ?"
He hesitated for a few heartbeats, then opened his mouth and ran his tongue over his long, pointed canine teeth.