“If you wanted to kill me, just say it.”
I froze, my lungs burning with a breath I couldn’t release. My lips parted. “What are you…”
He let go slowly, each second stretching as if he was reluctant to sever the contact, and then he was moving past me without looking back.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Ignore it.”
I wasn’t about to. I followed, climbing the stairs with quick, uneven steps. “I learnt the hard way not to take anything you say for granted.”
A sound rumbled in his chest—half a chuckle, half a growl. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He pushed open his door and shrugged out of his coat, the air in his room carrying that suffocating warmth I’d come to associate with him. I understood, now, what he’d meant when he said Nimorran’s cold wanted him dead. He was staying close to The Crater, something he’d single handedly caused. It was only normal that Nimorran didn’t welcome him. He’d said the cold he was feeling would have killed anormal human, and I wondered how deep the cold was that his body was pushing out so much warmth to keep his blood from freezing.
“Why stay here?” I asked, following him inside his room. “There are plenty of places that wouldn’t try to kill you.”
He turned as he unfastened his shirt. “You forget that I’m just as ill as this town.”
My throat tightened. My gaze tried, and failed, to stay on his face as his shirt fell open, baring the expanse of his chest. Heat seared across my cheeks, a rush of dizziness spiralling through me. “Even so. If the cold could kill you, and your body’s fighting this hard just to keep you breathing, why stay?”
“Waiting for it to kill me.” He looked down at me with empty darkness in his eyes. “You also forget my dream is to die.”
Oh.
The word rattled in my chest. I dropped my gaze to the floor, heavy with the truth of it. He was right. His entire existence circled one desire: his death. And who could blame him? I would if I’d lived for fourteen hundred and twenty-three years. Centuries had stripped the desire to live from him. When I looked back up, his shirt was sliding from his arms, and suddenly his bare body was right there. The sight hit me like a physical blow.
Fuck.
Staring at him this way two days in a row had its own damages to the brain. And my brain wasn’t built for this kind of abuse.
“I heard that,” he said.
I blinked hard, heat crawling up my neck. “Did I say thatfuckaloud?”
His only answer was the amusement darkening his features before his hands went lower, the rasp of his belt sliding through its loops sounding louder than my own pulse. Then he unbuttoned and zipped down with a motion meant to taunt me.
I was holding my breath, torn between giving him privacy by leaving or staying there to see how much he’d let me see without asking me to excuse him.
When his trousers slid down and pooled at his feet, he didn’t look away. He was watching me, every inch of me as his fingers hooked into the waistband of his boxers. The sharp lines of his hips dipped lower, and my chest squeezed so tight I thought I might break apart.
With a strangled breath, I spun around, my lungs finally dragging air back in as if I’d been drowning. “I’ll…make dinner tonight,” I blurted. I couldn’t. I couldn’t handle seeing theSoulless mannaked. I’d just recovered from knowing he’d lived for over a millennium, barely survived witnessing him half-naked. But seeing his dick? I feared I might pass out from overstimulation.
Behind me, I didn’t need to see his face to know he had a shit-eating victorious smile plastered on his face.
I walked out, closing his door as though it could trap the heat in with him. My back pressed to the wood for a heartbeat, my chest heaving, before I stumbled downstairs. I got into the kitchen and immediately regretted opening my mouth. Cooking. Really?
Sure, I could cook. But just for myself. To me, sometimes, it tasted decent enough. Other times it tasted like trash. What would it taste like to the man whose meal had me ascending into the sky every time it touched my tongue? Mine would taste like mockery in comparison.
I closed my eyes as I exhaled through my nose, steeling myself. Then, dragging strength from nowhere, I began to rummage, gathering what I could. I had only the brief span of his shower to produce something edible with the hope that he wouldn’t choke to death on whatever I managed to scrape together.
By the time I heard Thrax’s footsteps descending the stairs, I was placing the slightly burnt side dishes onto plates, lining them neatly beside the others on the counter.
Straightening, I pressed a smile to my lips just as his steps slowed, his gaze fixed on the meal like it might lunge at him. His face flickered between horror and amusement, and my chest tightened in anticipation.
“You burnt the food?” His voice held genuine curiosity, as though the concept itself was foreign to him.
