The feeling from yesterday wrecked into me, and I bit the inside of my cheek to hold myself back. I’d come to terms with my head that he was the Soulless Man—all evidence pointed to him...and as the archer. Last night, after he dropped me in the bathroom and turned to leave, I’d caught the tiniest glimpse of the mark on his nape. And the little part I’d seen was identical to the one drawn in the book.
“Up early,” his deep voice rumbled, snapping me from the spiral.
I tore my eyes back up to his, heat flushing through me, even as he moved past, slipping between me and the doorway.
“How do you feel? Cold?”
I shook my head, dumbfounded at the sight of his bare back, down to his waistline and the black towel slung low on his hips. But then I remembered he could not see me shake my head and opened my mouth to—
“Good,” he said.
I closed my mouth.Okay.
He opened the door to his room, and my chest tightened, expecting it to close again, scared to lose the sight of him. but he left it ajar, as though silently inviting me.
My pulse skipped, then hammered with life. An invitation?
Recalling how he’d pulled me out of his room and told me not to come inside there again, I took cautious, silent steps to his threshold, standing at the side and drinking my fill of him.
The veins running over his forearms and biceps bulged faintly as he moved, flexing with strength that made my throat go dry. His shoulders were wide, arms thick with power that could cage me against a wall or lock around my throat and squeeze until I forgot my own name.
My gaze snagged on the tattoo of a dragon eating its own tail at his waist, the circle disappearing beneath the towel. Ouroboros, a symbol of eternity and endless cycle of life. Could he have drawn it to symbolise his life? His own kind of endless circle?
All my life, I’d convinced myself of the fact that he was not alive anymore, he just couldn’t be. Not knowing I would eventually stay under the same roof with the man I’d pronounced dead in my heart.
And perhaps that was the main reason for my tears yesterday, that a man had actually been punished by the sky and had lived more than one thousand years, andI knew him.
I knew a legend, and he was standing alive and half-naked in front of me.
And gods help me, my body reacted before my mind did, heat throbbing low in my belly with desire clawing through me.
When he turned to me, my lungs caved. His chest was all carved planes and ridges, water beading across his skin and trailing down, catching in the grooves between each line of his abdomen. His abs looked like they’d been cut from stone, every ripple a calling to my fingers. My eyes dragged lower, shamefully, hungrily, down to the way his abdomen tapered into that brutal V-line that disappeared into the black towel slung so low on his hips it left nothing to the imagination. The towel clung to him like it was holding on for dear life, and all I could think about was ripping it off, seeing how far that V went, how far he’d let me touch before he pinned me down for being shameless.
My thighs pressed together involuntarily. What was wrong with me? He had the kind of body that made my thoughts dirty without permission.
Even still, my eyes climbed back up, over the tattoo inked into the side of his skin, over the scar that slashed across his chest like the gods themselves had tried and failed to kill him, like they had tried to ruin perfection and failed miserably because it made him even more obscene.
He was breathtaking. He was a sin wrapped in muscle and heat and scars. And here I was, gawking like I’d never seen a man before, my mind running with filthy, feral things that I’d never admit aloud.
Did the universe used to make men like this before the moon’s wrath? Because no man should look like this and still walk this earth. No man should carry centuries on his back and look thisgoddamnedperfect.
And yet here he was, shirtless and damp, a towel standing between me and every filthy thought rushing through my head. Gods, I was pathetic.
When his eyes finally cut to mine, it was like being caught with my hand in a place it shouldn’t be.
“Are you done now?” he asked.
My jaw nearly dropped. Had he been waiting for me to finish ogling him?
He tilted his head, strands of wet hair clinging to his temple. “Now come inside.”
Draining the last dregs of my self-control, I shook my head. “You should put some clothes on.” Even those words begged not to fall out of my mouth.
He cocked his head. “Don’t act like you don’t want to see me completely naked. Come before I drag you in myself.”
My stomach flipped, treacherously thrilled at the threat. He turned, pulling clothes from his wardrobe and tossing them onto the bed.
He stopped to rake his fingers through wet hair, and my gaze involuntarily trailed on the raised arm roped with muscle, veins pulsing like a map I wanted to trace with the tip of my fingers. Again, I couldn’t help but picture them wrapped around my neck, around my waist, pinning me down while he decided what to do with me.
