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She’s wearing an enormous white faux-fur coat that swallows her entire frame, with one shoulder exposed, as if she has nothing underneath. The thought makes my pulse quicken and my blood heat just imagining her like that. A diamond choker rests against her throat, each stone flashing brilliantly whenever she turns her head. Her pale hair is slicked back, making it seem almost wet and exposing the elegant lines of her stunning face, while silver rings glitter on nearly every finger.

Every detail is immaculate.

The white against her glistening skin. The silver against the white. The diamonds sparkling at her pretty throat. The way the fur frames her shoulders, making her look less like someone standing in my garden and more like something that has wandered out of my fucking dreams.

Perfection.

That’s the only word my mind can come up with, and even that feels woefully inadequate.

I’ve seen her face printed across glossy magazine covers, her image edited and perfected until every detail appears almost unreal. I’ve watched people spend their lives trying to capture even a fraction of what makes her extraordinary. And somehow, they’ve all failed. Not because the photographs aren’t beautiful. They are. Anyone with functioning eyes could see that.

But a photo can only capture what exists in a single moment. It can preserve the curve of her full lips, the brilliance of her honey eyes, the elegance of her exotic features. It can catch the light against her skin and make the world believe it understands what it’s looking at.

What it can’t capture is the way the sight of her steals every coherent thought from my head. The way the smallest movement from her draws my attention, as though some part of me is instinctively attuned to her. The way I find myself noticing details I would never bother to look at in anyone else, only to discover that each one is somehow more beautiful than the last.

Fuck, this woman can’t be fucking real.

There’s no way a world filled with so much ugliness and cruelty could conjure someone like her.

I watch, almost in a trance, as she moves closer to the horse and growls at her. She fucking growls at her, and when the horse tosses her head and steps away, I catch the faintest smile playing on her lips. She thinks nobody noticed, but I did.

And my heart squeezes inside my chest like it’s Artemis’ little bitch.

I want to be the reason for that smile. For all her smiles, really.

Wanting this woman has become something deeper than attraction, something that follows me even when she is nowhere near me, filling the spaces between my thoughts until I find myself wondering what she might say, what she might feel, and whether she ever thinks of me with the same maddening need.

I’ve spent most of my life teaching myself not to need a fucking soul. Need makes you weak. Gives people something to rip out of you when they get tired of watching you bleed. So I learned to keep my distance, to never hold on so tight that losing someone would leave me on my knees, begging the universe to give me back a piece of myself I should’ve never handed over in the first place.

Then Artemis came into my life, and all of that changed.

I don’t just want her. I need her.

Fuck.

“She’s gorgeous.” Zymon’s voice drags me out of my thoughts.

I glance at him and he’s looking at Artemis.

I see fucking green.

I’m not a jealous man. Never have been. I also never cared enough about anyone to want to own it, to stake a claim and bare my teeth at anyone who dared get too close. Music was the only thing I ever loved enough to hold on to, and even that has never belonged to me.

But now I’m watching another man look at her, and something ugly is clawing its way out of the wreckage inside me.

I don’t fucking like it.

“You should go to her,” Zymon says, a smirk creeping into his voice. “Maybe she’ll growl at you, too.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’ll leave you to your muse, then,” he mutters, shaking his head with a quiet laugh as he walks away.

I don’t bother answering. I just keep watching her from a distance, like a wolf watching the moon.

Artemis leans closer to the horse when the photographer gives her instructions, her gloved hands hovering uncertainly near its neck. For all her usual elegance and composure, she looks adorably unsure of what to do with the enormous animal standing before her. When the handler offers her the reins, she takes them with a brave little nod, as though she has everything under control. The horse shifts beneath her touch, and she stiffens for half a second before smoothing her expression into something that might almost pass for confidence.

I bite back a smile.