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It wouldn’t happen if I hung around New Knossos and had to see him every time he came to town, if his shadow haunted every nook and cranny. There were some people you just couldn’t get over if you were near them and Rauf was one of them for me.

He knocked.

It had to be him; no one else would want to talk to me at this hour.

For the first second, I froze, as if pretending I was a statue would make Rauf disappear. He didn’t knock again, but before I lost my nerve I called out. “You can come in.”

The door opened, and Rauf stepped inside. He closed it behind him but didn’t come any farther. The room had seemed huge until he was standing in it.

He’d changed since the barn. His hair was damp, and he wore a clean shirt, but nothing about him looked relaxed. He stared at me with such fierce concentration that I forgot I was sitting there in pajamas. His hands were fisted at his sides.

“You’re nothing like I expected.” The words came out low and rough. I sat up straighter.

What had he expected?

“Rauf—”

“To survive the pits and the revolution, I had to do things I can never forget. There’s blood that will never wash off my hands.” He held them up in front of him and stared at his palms. “I don’t know how to be what you need.”

My heart hurt. He had come in here prepared to confess to being a monster, and all I could see was the man who’d carried a sick goat as carefully as a baby and stood outside my door all night because I was afraid.

“Have you considered asking me?”

His eyes lifted to mine. A small, wry smile pulled at his mouth. “Now why would I go and do a damn fool thing like that?”

“What you’re saying doesn’t change the facts. I told you that I’m not going to beg, and I mean that.” I tucked my legs beneath me and held his gaze.

“You haven’t asked me to talk to Nezara.”

“I don’t want a grudging husband. You know where Nezara’s office is. If you want a bride, you know what you need to do.”

“I don’t want a bride.”

I looked away before he could see how disappointed I was.

But he kept talking. “I want you, Teresa. You’re my mate.”

“Your what now?” I looked back at him. No one had said anything about mates. “Is this a minotaur thing?”

I slid off the bed, needing my feet beneath me for this conversation. Rauf finally moved away from the door. One slow step, then another. “They spoke of it in the pits. I thought it was superstition, something to keep us behaved. But the moment I saw you, I knew.”

I remembered seeing him in town. Korfas had gone to stop a fight, and I’d turned to find a scarred stranger staring at me from the edge of it. Heat had swept through me so hard I’d nearly stepped into the road. I’d wanted his name. I’d wanted his mouth. I’d known nothing about him, but some part of me had recognized something anyway.

I wanted him now with enough force to make the distance between us feel unbearable.

“Does that change anything?”

He was close enough now that I had to tip my head back to see him. His eyes burned gold in the dim room. “Why do you think I can’t walk away?”

His hand came up and cupped my cheek. The touch was careful, almost uncertain, nothing like the intensity in his face. His thumb moved once over my skin. “Please, let me have you.”

I knew that wasn’t an answer to every question waiting for us. I didn’t know whether mate meant forever or only that his body wanted mine as badly as mine wanted his. If it meant nothing beyond another night together, it might break me.

But his palm was warm against my cheek, and he had finally come to me.

I caught two fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him down. His mouth hit mine hard enough to steal my breath. Rauf opened for me with a groan, and I took his tongue into my mouth, needing the taste of him, the heat of him, proof that every impossible thing he’d just said was real.

His arms closed around me. One hand spread over my back while the other gripped my hip, dragging me flush against him. I couldn’t get close enough. The shirt beneath my hands was suddenly intolerable. I wanted skin. I wanted to feel the scars I’d stared at and the muscles I’d imagined beneath his clothes. I wanted everything he’d kept from me.