Her eyes were a golden brown.With the sunshine lighting them up, they were almost amber, but not quite.A rare gem he had no name for.Her skin was a deep tan, her hair a shade darker as it bounced in soft waves around her bare shoulders.Her lips were plush, her lower lip so deliciously plump it was as if she were slightly pouting.
Her face was perfect.Her body was perfect.The woman had no flaws, not one.
Something hit him.He started.Looked from the woman to his friends.
Lev’s hand was still on his shoulder.
“Are you even listening to us?”Lev asked.“’Cause you don’t look like you’re paying attention.”
Alobaz looked at Lev, really tried to keep his eyes on him.But all on their own they veered behind him.
Landed on her again.
She was halfway across the street—headed his way, he thought with a skip of his heart.
Lev followed his gaze.So did the others.Probably every Galmeenian out there with them was staring.How could they not?
“Ohhhhh,” Lev said, whistling under his breath.“Dayum.Now that’s a woman.No offense, Zi.”
“None taken,” Zi said.“I’m not into women.But I could be into this one, I think.”
“Seriously?’Cause I’d pay to watch that.Scorch it, I’d pay a fortune to be in on that.”
The enchantress took her time crossing the wide street at such a leisurely pace she had to be aware of the attention she drew.Alobaz’s friends parted, allowing her to approach him—though they didn’t retreat.She was a stranger, and Alobaz had myriad enemies.
She stopped in front of him.She was half a head shorter than he was, which made her tall for a female, and perfect for him.
She dragged her eyes up and down his body in open appraisal, arching her brows as she did so, indicating, he thought, that she was impressed.
While she studied him, the sounds on the street dampened to a muffled hush.He examined her face.She looked nothing like his Arabella, who’d been small with a pleasant face that wasn’t plain to anyone who knew her and had been blessed by her laughter.It had been her warmth that transformed an otherwise ordinary face into one so pretty that Alobaz hadn’t forgotten a single thing about it in all these centuries.His Arabella had had strawberry-blond hair, a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a too-wide smile that revealed practically all her teeth—his favorite feature.She’d been joy personified.
This woman lacked Arabella’s joy … yet something enticing—mesmerizing, even—sparked behind her eyes.
If this enchantress reminded him of anyone, it had to be Shen.Unlike his Arabella, Shen had been a sänglure—a masterfully cunning one.Shen had pulled his strings so adeptly that it had taken him an embarrassing—and ultimately tragic—amount of time to discover she was reporting to his parents.At the order of the emperor, she had pointed Alobaz in any which direction Junot wanted, converting Alobaz into the submissive creature his father had always desired.
The Bazrian Seven should have been the Bazrian Eight, and they would have if not for Shen and his blind faith in her.He’d been so eager to love again, to believe hecouldlove again… He should have been the one to pay the price for his idiocy—not Cal.
Alobaz could never—would never—allow a sänglure to get that close to him again.
She would only betray him.
This perfectly beautiful woman who stood before him was not only a sänglure, but a very powerful one.Her blood smelled of unbreakable iron, the olandry flower in full bloom, and the untamable sea—intoxicating.
Her smile unfurled slowly, at once a precious secret being revealed, to be treasured, and also a snare, the kind that would attempt to hack his legs off at the knees, hobbling him.
Even sensing the danger she posed, his heart still thudded once—a betrayal to Arabella’s memory.But then, hadn’t he betrayed his wife a thousand times over, in a thousand awful ways?Except for his appearance, which would scarcely change until his death, his Arabella wouldn’t recognize the man he’d become without her.
“Good day to you, handsome,” said the woman—a temptress, the most mesmerizing he’d ever endured.
Her voice was more enthralling than her scent.It was a rolling purr that conjured darkened bedrooms, tangled sheets, and the musk of sex clinging to sweaty skin.
From somewhere beyond her—Alobaz couldn’t look away, dammit—Lev groaned, at the seduction that was her voice, he knew.
“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she said, and heat flushed his body.
Had his back not already been pressed to a post, he would have taken a step back to carve out some safety between him and her.When he found himself leaning toward her, he understood he was lying to himself.This woman could too easily cast her spell over him.
A powerful sänglure, who was the physical embodiment of sexual desire, looking forhim?Alarm bells should have been clanging all throughout his body instead of a rapid, excited heartbeat.
