Eli cracks his knuckles simply by squeezing his fists and soaks up my almost naked body. “If I do that, it’ll be to knock down an entire wall to get to you.”
My heart jitters on the edge of wide open and armored shut. “Get in here and fix the door.”
I don’t miss his glance at the empty edge of the sink before he wedges the door back in place, further bending the hinges. He stands over me. His presence is overwhelming, and I can’t quite find anywhereto look but at the outline of his length pressing against his pants. I beg my eyes to return to those biceps that nearly ripped his black shirt when he shoved the door into the frame, but they refuse. I close them instead, locking my walls into place. “What do you want from me? You know we can’t touch, and you couldn’t care less what I’m feeling.”
He steps closer and kicks my clothes across the tile floor. “Icouldcare less, but I don’t. Actually, I thought I could. I did. But I couldn’t care less. Not at all. Damn. I’ve tried.”
“What?”I can’t spare the mental energy to decipher that madness.
“I fucking care, okay?” He drops to his knees before me, eyes wide and bright, lips twitching in the way only an unplanned confession makes them.
That’s not what he’s supposed to say. He can’t care. It’s too late. And too tempting. I reach for his cheek, stopping short of brushing my fingers over his stubble, feeling the angles of his jaw. Despite the pain I hold in my hands, he doesn’t shy away, doesn’t flinch or grimace at the possibility of my touch. He’s perfectly still.
“Okay,” I whisper, then drop my hand back into my lap, my walls crumbling. I look away, basking in the stilted silence. Until my shoulder falls off. At least that’s what it feels like. I scream and clap my hand over my new scar. Then spin around.
Eli smiles at me innocently, holding up a half-full vial of blue liquid, but I see past the curve of his lips and twinkling eyes. This man knows no innocence. He’d collect up all my tears in a bottle and gulp them down with a smirk if so inclined. “That should get you another day or so without much pain.” Drops of tincture glide down my back. “Now tell me why your heart was beating like you were about to run.”
Shit. How could he tell from a heartbeat? Panic threatens to give me away. “The stone,” I blurt, inventing a reason, and shove myself backward into the bathtub, bra still on. Water gushes over the edge and soaks Eli’s thighs and knees. I submerse myself up to my neck, because the longer he looks at me like that, like he wants to bend me every which way, tongue sliding over his parted mouth with the occasional bite of his lip, has me forgetting what’s stopping him from doing precisely that. I tap the stone on my chest. “From my necklace. And the one from the Centress. They fused together, and someone talked to me.”
“Someone?”
“A god,” I say.
“Oh. The gods that don’t exist.” He cracks an infuriatingly stunning smirk.
“They don’t. And only one—Ametrine.”
“What did she say?”
I untie my bra and discard it outside the tub with a wetslapon the tile, then unstick the cork and coin and guitar pick from my breasts and drop them over the edge. They scatter across the floor. “She’s not real.”
“Do not make me get in that water and force it out of you.”
It’s impossible to hide my smile. “Why not?”
He might as well drown me now with the growl he sets loose. Then this giant man lifts his leg and steps inside the tub, boot and sock and pants submerged. Dirt loosens from the tread and floats to the surface, tiny brown specks clustering together.
“Have you completely lost it? You’re filthy,” I hiss, pulling my legs to my chest before his other foot goes under. “Get out!”
But no. That would be too much to ask. Fully clothed and pockets full, he sits, knees up, back against the tub. Water cascades over the edge again, flooding the floor and taking the floating dirt with it.
“You’re supposed to undress first!”
His eyebrows defy nature and twist in four rebellious directions at once with the devious face he makes. He leans forward and pulls off his shirt, leaving me staring—no,goggling—like a fool at his bare chest, at the scars and muscles, the beautiful brown bareness of it. My nipples turn to stone.
He smiles. “Better?”
“Worse.” I splash him.
A warm caress of air rides over my shoulders. His light aura. He pushes his palms through the water, sending a huge wave across the tub, so big that it drowns my face and soaks my hair. Half the contents of the tub now forms a shallow lake on the tile floor.
He stretches his arms out and rests them on the side edges. “Bathe.”
The simple command strikes low in my belly, his voice seductive and forceful at once. I can’t decide if I want to defy him and watch him fume… or wash between my legs and watch him drool.
Our eyes meet, mine teasing and questioning, his daring andthreatening. And even if the walls fell all around us, I still don’t think I could look away. That keeps happening. His eyes are like magnets.
When I’m about to burst a blood vessel, he speaks. “How many times did you fuck him?”
