No.
He was catastrophic andnotnatural, if that meant anything. He looked like he was carved from shadows and winter, all sharp lines and cold elegance.
His face was cruelly captivating—high cheekbones, a razor-straight nose, a sharp jaw that looked like it could split the universe into tiny pieces. His lips were full, sitting beneath the most infuriatingly perfect philtrum I’d ever seen. And his eyes—
Gods.
They weren’t human. Couldn’t be.
Dark.
Deep.
Bottomless.
Deceptive.
Captivating.
They pinned me where I stood, reading me, touching things inside me that even I didn’t have names for.
His hair fell just to his shoulders, dark as ink and slightly wavy with strands slipping over brows that looked like they’d been etched with a razor. The softness of it was a lie, because nothing else about him felt soft. He was a perfect representation of a statue built to house something strongly violent.
My legs wanted to give way.
I wanted to kneel.
Not out of worship, but out of something I didn’t understand.
There was justsomething…pulling at my chest. It was a string, tight and invisible, buried beneath my ribs. That same pull from The Crater—the magnetic drag that made my ribs ache and my chest burn—was in him. Alive and strong and calling to me. My chest physically pulled forward.
Towards him.
My trance shattered the moment his gaze dropped from my face to my legs. I blinked, confused by the sudden coolness of the air against my thighs.
Oh no.
I looked down.
Panties.
Just panties and the first shirt I’d worn under my layers earlier.
“Shit.” I dropped back onto the bed and yanked the covers over my thighs, heat flooding my cheeks. Embarrassment hit me deadly in the gut and I groaned internally.
But then the horror crept in.
“You undressed me?”
He didn’t blink at my question.
He raised his gaze to mine, slowly, as if weighing whether I deserved an answer.
“You’re welcome,” he said, like I should be grateful.
I stared at him, frown lines deepening. “Are you serious right now? You undressed me to mypanties.”
“It was necessary. Something worse could’ve happened,” he replied, calm as ever. “Like dying.”
