Free Deliver Me from Darkness: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors by Tes Hilaire Page A

plane and angle of his features.
    He looped the curl around his index and middle fingers, leaned in, and brought his mouth down so it was mere millimeters from hers. “I think I like it better when our ships meet.”
    She yanked her head back, pulling the curl from his fingers with a wince. “I don’t.”
    He managed to tamp down his amusement, barely. He could smell her arousal. Whether she wanted it or not, her essence recognized that he was her mate. But he figured it was better not to give her a reason to attack him right now, not when the result would be them rolling around naked on the floor. She deserved a better initiation into the bonding process. Tender kisses, flowers, wine, and silk sheets. He wanted to court her.
    If he stayed here, that wasn’t going to happen. Cold shower. Best idea of the hour.
    Making a fist with his right hand, he brought his arm up across his body to cover his heart, giving her a formal little bow. She didn’t know what it meant, but he did. The promise of a bonded male to his mate: my heart, my body, my soul, for yours. “Then I shall give you a reprieve…for now.”
    With a string of muttered insults and curses following him down the hall, he retreated to the bathroom. The door whooshed open at the touch of his palm, and he stopped short of the threshold. Seemed her tantrum of earlier had extended here.
    He stepped gingerly into the bathroom and began to clean the mess. It was with amusement that he gathered up the tossed towels and shredded toilet paper and a wide smile that he began to wipe down the walls. It was there, among the many inventive insults scrawled in soap and shaving cream on the mirror above the sink, that one particular word popped out at him: Killer.
    The significance of it and what it would mean to his sweet Karissa ripped him apart, reaching for the place where his soul should have been. Heart, body, soul. A man could not give what he did not have.
    ***
     
    Tom signaled the bartender for another round. It was his fifth of the evening. The bartender—Greg, wasn’t it?—grabbed the Gentleman Jack from the shelving unit against the wall and with expert ease, he leveled off the shot glass without spilling a drop.
    “Should I leave the bottle?”
    Tom stared at the remaining four inches of amber liquid. At least five or six more shots left. Better not.
    “Nah.”
    Greg nodded, grabbed a twenty from the wad of bills Tom had placed before him on the polished oak, made quick change of it, and tossed back down a ten and four ones. Without so much as a nod, the three-quarters empty bottle was returned to the shelf and Tom was left alone with his dwindling pile of cash, the soon-to-be empty shot glass, and his dour mood.
    Lifting the glass, he contemplated what it was that had his craw misaligned. The day had been like any other. He got up that morning out of the same too-big-for-one-person king-sized bed, brushed his teeth and took his shower in the same deco-modern master bath, took the same route to work in his souped up Mustang GT500, and pushed some papers around at the same boring white-collar job at the bank.
    It was the bar, he decided, that was not the same. Normally he made a quick stop by his townhouse to change then headed downtown to where the streets were lit not by streetlamps so much as the glowing neon freak-show signs. Tattoo parlors, dance clubs, adult stores…This little sports den was like flat soda compared to the pop and sizzle of the places he was used to frequenting.
    There was nothing going on here. No thumping music to show his moves to, no strobing lights to play off his cuff links, no shuffle of Benjamins for little white packets of pure king-of-the-world Xstacy…no pretty coeds to fuck. He should be there. Not here. But he hadn’t felt up to going out to his usual haunts tonight.
    And why the hell not?
    Because of those eyes. Glowing red eyes that still stared at him from his nightmares. It had to be nightmares. What he’d dreamed