Tempted

Chapter 6

Demetrius shielded the glare of the sun with his hand and looked out across the barren beach. Water lapped gently at the golden sand and a light wind rustled the trees at his back. Sweat slid down his spine as he took in the miles of sand, the cliffs to his left and right that turned to sheltered forests beyond, and the water…so much damn water.

Atalanta had dumped them on an island. Of this he was sure. Where, he didn’t know. The trees, the temperature, the sand though…it was all vaguely familiar. Like a postcard straight out of the Mediterranean. A tingle low in his belly told him there was only one island in the area she would send them to where he’d be forced to keep Isadora close, but he refused to believe his suspicions. For all of Atalanta’s scheming, the bitch needed Isadora to live. She wouldn’t be so careless as to leave them alone in hell.

He looked down where Isadora was still out cold on the sand. He’d awakened next to her minutes before and, after checking to make sure she was still breathing, had spent the last five minutes taking stock of their surroundings. Knowing there was no imminent threat, he decided he needed to get Isadora out of the sun; to check her leg, which he feared had been broken in that daemon fight; and to figure out what the hell they were going to do next.

He crouched, lifted her into his arms. Her head lolled like a rag doll’s, but her breaths were steady and deep. He ignored the silky smooth feel of her skin against his, focused on the way his boots sank into the deep sand, making it hard to move. After carefully laying Isadora in the shade of a palm tree, he dropped down and unlaced his boots, then tossed them behind him.

Sweat beaded his forehead. His toes sank into warm sand as he found a downed branch, checked its strength. Bringing it back to where Isadora lay, he snapped the ends until it was roughly the length of her shin. Then he sank onto his knees next to her and took a deep breath.

Years of disuse left his powers rusty. He didn’t even know if he could conjure a healing spell, let alone if it would work, but he had to do something. Wiping his sweaty hands on his thighs, he glanced once at Isadora’s face and hoped like hell she didn’t wake up in the middle of this.

His eyes slid closed. He held his hands out in front of him, chanting words he’d shunned long ago. As power gathered in his fingers, heat and light radiated outward. Slowly, he lowered his hands to her broken leg.

She jumped but didn’t wake. He ran through the chant over and over, smoothing his hand over the broken bone, knitting it back together with a magick he’d long denied. Minutes later, tired and spent from the effort, he sank back onto his heels and wiped the sweat from his brow.

She lay in the same position she’d been in before—her head tipped to the side, her blond hair wild around her face. One hand lay in the sand; the other rested on her stomach as her chest rose and fell with her breaths. He had no idea if the spell had worked. He’d know only when she woke and tried to stand. Brushing his hand across her brow, he leaned down to her. “Wake up, kardia. Open those eyes for me.”

She didn’t move.

Worry pushed in, but he focused on her breathing, on the fact she didn’t have a fever, and tried again. “Wake up, kardia. Open your eyes so I know you’re there. Please open your eyes.”

Still nothing.

Disappointment filled his chest, but he refused to let it affect him. She was alive. For now that was all that mattered. Maybe it was a good thing she was out for the time being. At least she wasn’t in pain, and sleep would hopefully give her body the chance it needed to heal.

He decided to splint her leg just in case. He tugged off his shirt, dropped it on the ground. Casting another look over the barely-there nightgown those witches had dressed her in, he told himself to stop being a pansy and get on with it already.

He grasped the hem of the gown near her knees and gently pulled it up, careful not to look at what was being revealed. Shifting one arm underneath her back, he lifted her so he could drag the gown over her head. Then he reached for his shirt and slid her arms in one sleeve, then the other, and laid her back down as he tugged the two halves of the shirt closed at her front and started in on the buttons.

Damn these buttons. Why in Hades did there have to be so many? His hands grew slick as he fumbled to cover her as quickly as possible. Catching one button, he moved to the next, this one between her breasts. A flash of skin caught his attention. He tried to look away but couldn’t. Her skin was shades lighter than his, smooth where his was scarred, soft where his was rough. The button slipped from his large fingers. He grappled with it again, his knuckles grazing the swell of her breast as he moved.

Heat ignited through his torso, spread to his belly and into his groin. His gaze slid lower, to the strip of skin visible on her belly, lower to the juncture of her thighs…

He jumped to his feet, swiped his forearm across his brow, and turned away. Sonofabitch. This was exactly what Atalanta wanted. This was why she’d sent them here to this remote island. Well, she wasn’t going to get her way. He was getting away from Isadora before he did something he knew he’d regret later.

After tearing her gown into strips of cloth, he braced the wood against her shin and tied it in place, careful not to touch her more than was necessary. Then he set off into the trees in search of supplies to build a shelter and hopefully to cool himself the hell down.

Isadora was still asleep when he came back nearly an hour later and set to work. The sun beat against his bare skin as he lashed boards together with vines and covered the structure in foliage. When he was satisfied with the result, he carefully picked Isadora up and placed her inside, made sure she was covered again, then turned to look out over the water and the glowing sunset.

Okay, so, injuries looked after, shelter built…Now they needed food. He was good so long as he had a goal. It was the downtime alone with her that he was seriously dreading. He reached for one of the limbs he’d brought back with him, stripped off the foliage, and looked around for a rock to use to sharpen the end into a point so he could go fishing. That’s when he heard the howl.

He froze, lifted his head, turned to look back into the trees growing darker by the second as dusk crept in.

No, not a howl, he realized, dread racing down his spine. That was a scream. But not the kind that came from man or animal. This scream was made by a beast, and the roars that erupted around it were the sort that lived in nightmares.

His fingers tightened around the limb in his hand. He looked to Isadora, still asleep in the shelter. And knew—damn it—he’d been right. They really were in hell, and the first part of Atalanta’s plan was coming true. He couldn’t leave Isadora now, not even for a second. And that meant if he wasn’t careful, Atalanta just might get exactly what she wanted.

Isadora was floating again. The gentle push and pull echoed in her mind, tugged at her consciousness, dragged her from the depths of something murky and dark.

Images drifted through the haze, ones that made no sense and couldn’t be real. A seven-foot glowing blue man with floor-length hair. Yellow acid hitting her in the face. A field of daemons and a woman with soulless black eyes wearing a long bloodred robe. And then there was him.

Her blood warmed and a tingle ran along her skin as the image morphed and shifted. This male most definitely wasn’t blue. He was tall, muscular, powerful. With short jet-black hair and hands that seemed to span the width of her rib cage. She couldn’t make out his face, but his voice was familiar when it whispered in her ear. And when his arms came around her, his body was hotter than anything she’d ever felt.

She shifted, tried to reach for him because his touch felt so wickedly good she wanted it all over again. Anywhere. Everywhere. Only as she held out her hand, the image swirled and dissolved, leaving behind only the swish and sway of the wind.

No, not wind. Water.

Isadora listened closer. A strange sense of foreboding washed through her, pushing out all that heat from before.

She rolled to her stomach, groaned because every muscle in her body ached, then drew in a mouthful of sand. Pushing up on her hands, she coughed as she dragged her eyes open.

Blinding light burned her retinas. She dropped back onto her butt and winced as pain shot up her spine and down her legs. Holding up her hand to block the glare, she forced her eyes open again.

Her surroundings slowly came into view. She was sitting on a beach. The sound she’d heard was indeed water, but nothing seemed familiar.

Her mind spun and tendrils of panic wedged their way into her chest. Where was she? And how in Hades had she gotten here?

A figure moved to her right, and she looked that way only to be blinded all over again by the setting sun. She winced and squinted at the shadow coming toward her.

The mystery face was shrouded in shadow, dark hair wreathed in a halo of light from the sun behind. But even from this distance she could tell he was male. Male and massive and very impressive, especially wearing next to nothing as he was.

Tingles rushed over her as he drew closer. A smattering of dark hair covered his olive skin and impressive chest, catching the light as he moved. Her eyes drifted lower to chiseled six—no, eight—pack abs, to black pants that rode low on lean hips and were rolled up at the calves, to strong, perfect bare feet throwing sand as he moved with the grace of an Olympian.

For a fleeting moment she had the feeling she was in the presence of a god. She held her breath as he stopped feet from her, and though she tipped her head back and squinted to see more clearly, his face was still cast in shadows.

He dropped a rope on the sand at her side, one she now realized had been hooked over his shoulder as he’d dragged something behind him. Sunlight glinted off his muscular arms and chest, accented the droplets of sweat gathering on his tanned skin, which she could now see was marred with thin white scars.

“You’re finally awake,” he said in a clipped and familiar voice as he rested his hands on his hips. “About damn time.”

Wait. Gods didn’t have scars, did they? They were immortal. They couldn’t be hurt, not like humans and Argoleans. She tipped her head the other way, tried to get a good look at him. Still couldn’t.

“It’ll be nightfall before long. Unless you want to get caught out here in the dark, Princess, I suggest you get your ass up and try putting some weight on that leg.”

He began pulling seven- and eight-foot sections of wood from the rope he’d looped around the bundle. Tree trunks, she realized, none more than five inches wide, stripped of their limbs so they formed long poles. Her mind tumbled again. What on earth were the trees for? And who the hell was he?

The setting sun flashed over muscles in his arms and back that flexed and rippled beneath his skin as he worked. Three long red gashes, equally spaced, cut across the middle of his back. Another ran down the outside of his left bicep, this one redder and deeper, the puckered ridge indicating the injury had happened more recently than the others.

She tried to make sense of what was happening and who he was. As if he felt her eyes on him, he turned and glared at her.

And in the split second his face shifted from shadow to sunlight, Isadora gasped.

The voice finally registered. She scrambled back on her hands and feet, stopping only when her back hit something solid.

Demetrius’s glower darkened but he didn’t say anything, just clenched his jaw and went back to loosening the rope around the bundle of logs. But Isadora’s heart rate shot into the triple digits. The last thing she remembered was sitting in her suite at the castle, staring into her mirror as she prepared herself for the binding ceremony with Zander, and seeing a vision of her and Demetrius locked in an erotic scene.

Her hand shot to her mouth and her eyes clamped shut. She couldn’t even think the words, let alone remember the image—the first glimpse of the future she’d had in over a month. She forced her eyes open and looked across the sand to where Demetrius was now laying out the logs two feet apart.

Holy Hera, what was going on?

He turned before she could collect herself and marched in her direction. She tensed as he drew close and tried to scoot back more, but the wall—no, it wasn’t a wall, it was some kind of lean-to shelter built out of more logs and twigs and foliage—stopped her.

His mouth was set in a hard line, his jaw covered in a thin layer of stubble, his dark eyes flat and resigned as he leaned close. For a second she thought he was going to touch her and her body stiffened, the heady scent of sweet male sweat and something else she couldn’t quite place drifting in the air to make her light-headed. But instead of grabbing her, he reached past and picked up something at her back, then turned and walked away without a word.

Curious, she shifted forward and that’s when she realized he’d grabbed a rope from the mini-shelter at her back. Only it wasn’t like any other rope she’d seen before. This one was green and consisted of a number of differing vines woven together like a braid.

She watched as he strapped boards together. He worked in silence, his muscles flexing and relaxing as he moved, his skin shining with a thin layer of sweat. Head still spinning, Isadora sat silent, unsure what to say or do. Glancing around, she took a wider look at where they were.

Behind her, green mountains rose. To the right and left the white sand beach stretched into infinity, bordered with forest and dense brush and the occasional palm tree here and there. The air was temperate, the push and pull of the water familiar. In front of her lay a pile of black ashen logs, as if from a recent fire, and off to her right, just out of her reach, a collection of spears of differing lengths, all made of wood, the tips chiseled to dangerous points.

Trepidation washed over her. There was no other sound besides the gentle lap of water and ropes thwacking wood where Demetrius worked. There were no other people anywhere close, no signs of life either. She knew they weren’t in Argolea—at least nowhere she’d ever been—but nothing else made sense. And though she didn’t mean to, her eyes kept straying back to Demetrius as he worked. At the play of muscle and bone beneath his tanned skin. At what he was doing with his big, powerful hands.

Warmth gathered low in her belly. A warmth she didn’t want and didn’t understand. What was going on? Why was he here? And where the heck was here, anyway?

As the sun dropped toward the water, she finally realized he was building a ladder.

A loud shriek sounded in the trees at Isadora’s back, followed by a howl that seemed to shake the ground. She jerked, every hair on her body standing on end. Instinct had her scrambling out of the lean-to on her hands and knees and looking back into the trees. “Wh-what was that?”

“Skata,” Demetrius muttered. Rope thwacked board faster. “That, Your Pampered Highness, was either a Calydonian boar or a harpy. Take your fucking pick.”

Wide-eyed, she turned to look at Demetrius. His jaw was locked tight and his hands now moved with lightning speed over the boards. “A what or a what?”

“Not a what, Princess. A when.” He dropped the end of the ladder in the sand and stepped close to pick up a handful of spears. “And if you don’t get your ass moving, you’re gonna meet one or both up close and personal.”

The trees rattled and swayed as the shrieks and roars grew louder. Fear had Isadora struggling to her feet. She took a step back just as her left leg went out from under her.

Pain shot up from her shin and she cried out. Before she hit the sand, Demetrius’s arm wrapped around her waist and tugged her tight to his side.

“Fucking lovely,” he muttered. He shoved a spear into her hand. “Take this.”

She had little time to do anything else. He hooked the other weapons under his free arm, picked up the end of the ladder, and then he ran. Clamped tight to his side, Isadora could do nothing but put her good foot down in time with his to keep her balance and hold on tight to his shoulder with her free arm.

Her leg throbbed and every step sent pain ricocheting throughout her body. She had no idea where they were going, but the roars and screams behind ratcheted up her adrenaline. A loud crashing sound echoed and Demetrius slowed, whipped them both around. A gigantic boar sailed through the air as if launched from the trees and landed hard against the lean-to Isadora had just been sitting in.

The lean-to split apart into dozens of pieces. The boar grunted, squealed, rolled to its side, and righted itself. It whipped around and looked back into the trees. Then it opened its mouth and bared enormous fangs and razor-sharp teeth.

No way. It couldn’t be real. Before her brain could click into gear, a flutter of tree limbs drew her attention. She glanced back to the forest only to see a winged monster that looked like something straight out of a nightmare emerge and hover above the boar.

“Fuck,” Demetrius muttered.

“Wh-what is that?”

The sickeningly gray-colored thing that looked like a twisted cross between a woman and a bird shrieked, the sound so loud Isadora felt the sharp stab of pain in her eardrum. She slammed her free hand over her ear and cried out. The creature swung its gaze their way and narrowed bloodred eyes.

“Skata.” Demetrius let go of Isadora and shoved the end of the ladder into her free hand. “Run. Run hard.” Then he dropped the bundle of spears from under his arm and picked up one in each hand.

Terror leaped in Isadora’s throat. She had no idea how any of this could be real, but she wasn’t about to stand here and get into a debate with Demetrius. Balanced on her good leg, she turned to look behind her. Then had a moment of Oh, shit.

They’d run far enough down the beach that she could see around the next set of rocks. Fifty yards away the beach came to a dramatic end, a sheer cliff rising straight up at least four stories.

A hissing sound echoed at Isadora’s back. She turned just in time to see the winged creature open its mouth to reveal three rows of razor-sharp teeth dripping with blood. An ear-shattering shriek erupted from its throat and then, with a great flutter of wings, it charged.

Horror enveloped Isadora, held her tight where she stood. Her legs trembled as the monster flew through the air.

“Run!” Demetrius yelled just as it reached him. He swung out with the spear.

Screams and grunts mixed with the clash of Demetrius’s spear against flesh and bone. The beast’s claws arced out and caught Demetrius across the abdomen. He swiveled. Blood spurted from his wounds. He reached back and hurled the spear hard.

The spear caught the monster by the wing, tearing a large hole that gushed bloody fluid. The monster screamed and dropped to the ground.

Across the sand, the boar roared and dashed forward, as if it had suddenly realized it was about to miss out on all the fun.

Demetrius hooked another spear with his bare foot and kicked it up in the air. “Fucking run!”

His voice cut through the terror-filled haze. Isadora stumbled backward, caught herself on her good leg before she went down.

The boar charged. The winged creature screamed again, righted itself. Its eyes seemed to grow even redder.

Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit…

The pain in her leg only a dim thought, Isadora tore off across the sand as fast as her weak leg would let her. Her heart pounded hard as she dragged the ladder with one hand, which now made a sick sort of sense, and held the spear in the other.

Like she’d even know what to do with a spear. Like she stood a frickin’ chance if those things got by Demetrius. She’d only just learned how to use a blade—thanks to Orpheus’s help—and only when she thought methodically about how and where to strike. But a spear? A spear?

Oh, gods.

A fresh wave of panic consumed her when she reached the base of the cliff. Up close it was much higher than she’d thought. The ladder wouldn’t even come close to reaching the top. Fear closed her lungs, made it hard to breathe. Her heart pounded hard in her ears, drowning out the sounds of clashes and grunts and screams and roars behind her, where Demetrius still battled the two monsters.

She swallowed hard and pulled the ladder up so she could maneuver it against the cliff. It rose at least fifteen feet, not to the small lip that jutted out a good distance up but—yes!—close enough. Maybe if she could get high enough, she could pull herself the rest of the way up.

Her eyes flicked from the tree-trunk poles to the green woven-vine rope. Would it hold her weight? He’d lashed it together quickly. Would it splinter as soon as she was high enough to fall and break her neck?

A roar shook the ground. Isadora grasped the rung above her head and climbed.

The muscles in her arms quivered and ached as she tried to use her strength to pull herself up instead of putting weight on her bad leg. Fear stabbed into her chest like a hot, sharp knife. When she was three-quarters of the way up, breathing heavily from exertion and trying not to look down, the ladder shook.

Both hands clamped on to the rung in front of her. A scream tore from her mouth. Below she heard Demetrius yell, “Climb faster!”

A high-pitched shriek sounded from somewhere close. She didn’t look, knew she couldn’t. Instead she grabbed the rungs faster and climbed higher.

When she made it to the top of the ladder she reached for the closest rock sticking out of the cliff. She perched her bare foot on the uppermost rung, grabbed on, and hauled herself up. Her free hand reached the four-foot ledge. Her fingers dug into rock and dirt, and pain shot through her joints and muscles as she pulled with all her strength.

The creature screamed again at the base of the ladder.

“Go!” Demetrius yelled below her.

Her arms ached in protest, but somehow she managed to pull herself up and over the ledge. She fell onto her back, sucked air into her burning lungs. Demetrius appeared at the ledge before she’d taken three good breaths.

He didn’t even look winded as he hauled himself onto the ledge and jerked the ladder up with him. He placed it against the cliff again, reached for her hand, and yanked her to her feet. “This isn’t a pit stop, Princess. Move!”

Sweat covered every inch of Isadora’s skin. She was so tired she could barely move, but when that thing below screamed again, she realized he was right. This was no place to rest. He might have injured the beast, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t fly anymore, or—oh, gods—climb. She grabbed the ladder when he pushed her toward it, hooked the foot of her bad leg on the first rung, and pushed herself up.

Blinding pain shot from her leg to her skull, and she screamed out as she felt something crack. Her vision swirled and she nearly let go of the ladder, but the horrific cry of the thing below reminded her that if she gave up, she was going to be lunch. Gritting her teeth, she paused, drew in deep breaths. Then with Demetrius’s urging she kept climbing, letting her arms and good leg do as much of the work as they could.

She tried not to think about how high they were, about how unstable the ledge their ladder was perched on could be, about how close Demetrius was, right below her feet, or how much weight rested precariously on the rungs of this makeshift ladder. The next ledge was below the end of the ladder so she didn’t have to struggle so hard to make it to the top. She fell off the ladder onto her side on the hard rocky surface and just tried to breathe. Demetrius stepped off after her, pulled the ladder up again, and grabbed her by the arm, hauling her with him and pushing her toward the ladder again for the last climb.

“I can’t.” Her determination wavered. She leaned into him. The pain in her leg was so great she couldn’t put even an ounce of weight on it. Exhausted, she tried to push him away so she could sink back to the ground, but he was like a solid stone presence, preventing her from doing anything but what he wanted.

He picked her up at the waist, shifted her around, and placed her hands on the rungs in front of them. “You can do it. C’mon. We’re almost there.”

Tears burned the backs of her eyes. Gripping the rungs, she tried to pull herself up with the sheer weight of her arms, but her good leg slipped, and a scream tore out of her when she realized she was going down. Strong arms caught her and she felt Demetrius move in right behind her and place his hands over hers on the crossbeams. “Just a little farther, kardia.”

It took every ounce of strength she had to keep going. That and Demetrius pushing her up from behind. When they finally reached the top of the cliff, she collapsed onto the ground on her back and sucked in as much air as she could to stop the world from the crazy spin cycle it seemed to be on.

He yanked the ladder up from the last ledge, tossed it to the ground at her side. Wind whipped his dark hair back from his face as he held out his hands in front of him, closed his eyes, and chanted in a language that was oddly familiar.

Pain momentarily forgotten, Isadora watched, unable to tear her gaze away. With the waves crashing far below, the wind picking up speed to lift the hair away from his face, and blood and dirt staining his weathered skin, he looked like a god. Like Poseidon calling forth the seas, or Zeus preparing to unleash his wrath on the world. But when the language he was speaking finally registered, she knew the male in front of her was no god at all.

Run!

Instinct kicked in, drowned out the fear she’d felt earlier. She scooted back on her hands, winced when pain lanced up her leg and prevented her from moving.

The winged monster shrieked in anger. From his waistband Demetrius drew a three-foot spear, opened his eyes, and peered over the ledge to the beach below.

He hurled the spear down toward the beach. An agonizing cry echoed up to where Isadora lay watching in horror, and then all sound ceased but for the gentle whistle of wind through the trees and the crash of waves against rock at the base of the cliff.

No, not a god, she realized as she stared at him. This male was something else. Something dark and menacing, and if she wasn’t careful, a thousand times worse than the monsters they’d faced earlier.

He turned his gaze on her. His dark eyes were as focused as she’d ever seen them when he stalked in her direction. She tensed, closed her hand over a rock at her side to defend herself if need be. He picked up the end of the ladder and snapped the bottom rung off, leaving sharp ragged points of wood on one side, then dropped to his knees at her side.

Isadora’s whole body went rigid, unsure what he was going to do next. There was nowhere for her to go, no way to get away from him. When he reached for her bad leg, she flinched. “What are you doing?”

“I think you re-broke your leg. Hold still.” He immobilized her with ease, as if she were nothing but a child, then began unwrapping something from the bottom of her leg.

Isadora looked down and realized the shin of her left leg was wrapped in a sheer black gauze-type fabric. “What? When did I—”

“In the clearing with the daemons,” he answered without looking up at her. “I didn’t see it happen.” He removed the last bit of wrap and cringed. “Dammit.” He reached for the wood he’d broken off the makeshift ladder, picked at the ends so the jagged edge wasn’t quite so sharp. “Hold still. I’m not very good at this. It’ll probably hurt.”

Hurt? What was he going to—?

He set the wood near his knee, then placed both hands over her shin. Before she could ask what he was doing, he closed his eyes and chanted in that unsettling language again. Excruciating pain swirled and condensed in that one spot, stole her breath, and darkened her vision. Isadora cried out, tried to push his hands away, but the torture was too much and she dropped back against the rock in agony.

The pain seemed to go on and on. Just when she was sure he was killing her, the edges softened and inch by inch the roar in her head and leg turned to a dull throb. When the worst was over, she gasped for air and tore her eyes open to stare up at a swirling gray sky.

His hands shifted; the chanting stopped. She tried to focus on one single cloud to ground herself, couldn’t seem to make it work. His hands moved again as he braced the wood against her leg and rewrapped it with the same gauzy black fabric as before.

“You shouldn’t walk on this for at least a day.” His voice was thick as he worked. “I knit the bones back together, but it still needs to heal.”

Knit the bones?

Isadora blinked several times. Found one cloud she could focus on. As she worked on simply breathing, her mind wandered. Who the hell was this guy? Not a healer, that was for sure. She’d heard that chanting before. Recognized the language.

Medean. He’d been speaking Medean. Her stomach rolled with understanding, but the one thing circling loudest in her brain was the fact he’d just tried to heal her, not harm her.

Him. Demetrius. The one guardian who hated her more than any other and made no bones about the fact he thought she wasn’t qualified to burn toast, let alone rule Argolea. He’d never been nice to her, not once in all the years he’d served with the Argonauts, and yet…he’d not only just healed her broken leg with—she swallowed hard—magick, he’d saved her from two monsters straight out of a nightmare when he could have sacrificed her and gotten away with ease.

Questions hit her from all sides. Questions she needed answers to right now. Gritting her teeth, she pushed up to her elbows and looked down her body to where he still knelt, wrapping her injured leg.

She opened her mouth, then noticed the oversized white dress she was wearing wasn’t a dress at all but a male’s long-sleeved shirt. And the hem had ridden up so high on her thighs it was clear she wasn’t wearing anything beneath.

Warmth rushed through her body all over again. A heat that came out of nowhere seared her center with an intensity that stole her breath. Tingles she didn’t want or understand ignited in the skin beneath his hands and traveled up her leg, seemed to gather in that spot just barely covered by the edge of the oversized shirt. She tried to push her legs together, but his hands held her immobile.

He must have felt her tense because his fingers stopped moving on her lower leg. Her pulse ratcheted up as his eyes traveled up the length of her bare leg and zeroed in on the hem of her shirt.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

Yeah, that’s what she was suddenly thinking about too. With him. Here. Now. Any way he wanted. Which, considering her history and his history and the fact they couldn’t even stand each other, was utterly and mind-bendingly insane.