Whipping around, I scanned him where he stood some feet away from the stairs, relief flooding me when I saw he was dressed, wearing the clothes he’d left on the bed.
Fuck, that was scary.
I shot him daggers, my blood sizzling at how he managed to stand behind me without a sound, hands shoved in his pockets like a king disguised in casual indifference.
I turned back quickly, desperate to get Amelia out. “I’m totally fine. Thanks again, Amelia. Sorry I didn’t invite you in.”
She dragged her eyes off Thrax and shook her head. “No, Sanora, it’s fine. I should get to work anyway.” With a final, lingering glance behind me, she stepped away.
Clicking the door shut, I closed my eyes and exhaled, then turned around to face him.
“Why were you staring like some creep?”
“Were you scared thinking I’d walked down in just a towel?”
Heat crept up my neck, betraying me. I bit down on my lip, knowing there was no use denying. “You sound like that was your plan.”
He smiled lazily. “Don’t worry. My body’s for your eyes only.” The smile slowly faded. “And your eyes are for my body only.”
A shiver shot down my spine. The pulse between my thighs ignited under the weight of that claim, his possessiveness shackling me where I stood. All I wanted to do at that moment was bow down and tell him yes, but where was the fun in that?
“That’s ridiculous,” I forced out. “I can look at whoever I want.”
His lips started tipping into another smile that made my skin crawl with dread. “Then you must hate them so much, seeing how you wish death upon them.”
What?
His voice had the same edge it carried when I talked about Weeny Man, cutting me open without effort. My chest hammered so violently I couldn’t summon a single comeback. I stayed rooted by the door until he finally turned away, striding into the kitchen as though nothing had happened.
Without a word, I escaped upstairs and into the bathroom. Throughout my shower, I reminded myself that he was the Soulless Man, and any rash thought from me again might send me skittering to the afterlife.
I let the water drown the wildfire still licking through my body
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SANORA
I was sitting on the couch closest to the front door, thumb tapping my phone awake for the hundredth time, watching the glow of the screen as it taunted me with numbers that crawled forward one reluctant minute at a time, when the door finally clicked open.
The sound jolted through me like lightning.
Thrax stepped inside, filling the doorway with the electrifying presence only he carried, and my body reacted before my brain did. I was on my feet, heart ramming against my chest. “You’re here.”
His eyes swept over me as he stripped his gloves off, that tired, assessing look of his grazing every inch of me. “And you aren’t in bed.”
“I figured that’s when you’d sneak in again.” My gaze caught on the faint scar marring his palm as he shut the door, the thin line of a healed cut that was definitely from today. Why had it not healed completely? Everything should have faded considering he could heal. Or did that type of cut usually take time?
I stepped closer, deciding against asking since there was a high chance that might lead him to realising that I knew who he was.
He had left yesterday well after midnight, returned only long enough to vanish again by morning, and here he was, walking back through the door past nine as though time bent differently for him.
“Where have you been? You look”—I reached up before I even thought about it, palm rising to his forehead, only to remember that his body temperature was always burning—“exhausted and...sick?”
Sick. The word sounded ridiculous the moment it left my mouth. With the kind of blood he had, I wasn’t sure illness was possible.
As I withdrew my hand from his forehead, his own hand shot out. His fingers clamped around my wrist with a grip that was searing, the heat of his skin bleeding into mine until I swore it sank straight into my veins. My breath stuttered, pulse leaping violently against his hold as his eyes locked on mine.
And when he spoke, his voice wasn’t tired anymore, it was filled with the new energy burning and thrumming through him.
