The last thing I need is a rash.
While Rhordyn tends to the fire, I shuck leaves off the sprigs and put them in a blue stone bowl with a splash of water, then grind it into a slurry with the pestle I found earlier. I just finish mashing it up when Rhordyn steps up behind me like a shifting mountain, snatching my breath as he shakes out a towel and drapes it around my shoulders.
I steal a backward glance at him as another bolt of lightning strikes, the cataclysmic look in his bold black eyes impaling me. So wild and unbalanced.
He’s never looked so haunted—sountethered—like he’s only a few heartbeats away from combusting.
He’s a beautiful, monstrous enigma, and I would doanythingto peek inside his head. To understand the darkness that toils behind his eyes.
“Thank you,” I whisper, heart thumping hard and fast.
He pulls out a stool and sits, tugging me between his thighs with such commanding, unflinching poise that my lungs compact, the room so packed full of him it feels pointless to avoid his gaze.
He’s everywhere.
All around me, pouring into my lungs in bursts of deep, frosty musk. He’s the single element my heart is pumping through my veins in rapid beats.
Lifting the bowl of salve, he digs his fingers through the muck, tips my head to the side, and begins painting the wounds on my neck in a calm, composed manner—a contrast to the energy rolling off him. Goosebumps erupt down my neck, across my shoulder, his mighty presence such a pressure upon my chest that my knees threaten to give way.
In an attempt to anchor myself, I look out the window.
He binds the gauze around my throat, ties it off, then lifts my hand, inspecting the re-agitated wounds.
Another bolt of lightning, the resultingboomso loud the windowpane almost shudders free of its confines. A shudder I feel all the way to my core. My gaze shifts to Rhordyn’s tattoos, and I notice the luminous pulse rippling through them is …
Erratic.
Frowning, I raise my other hand while he paints my palm in salve, dragging the tips of my fingers across the pretty words like I’m writing them myself.
His skin pebbles beneath my touch.
“They’re angry,” I whisper, looking out the window again, noticing their turbulent dance is in sync with the feral beat of the storm outside.
“Yes.”
Is the storm affecting him so greatly? Stirring him up and setting him on edge?
I continue tracing the script up the side of his neck, the uppermost one ending just below his carotid. I drag my finger back down again, following the hint of a line that weaves around his nipple.
“I wouldn’t do that, Milaje.”
His voice is a hoarse rumble.
“Why not?” I whisper, trailing a line down his sternum, imagining my finger is the tip of a paintbrush. That he’s a rock I’m swirling secrets upon.
“Because there’s a very big part of me that wants to see for himself that you’re okay,” he bites out, like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “And if you keep touching me like that, I’m going to lose control.”
I look up.
He’s watching me like a hunter, his eyes cast in that deeper darkness that’s as electrifying and unsettling as it isthrilling.
A big part ofmewants to keep going. To find out what he means. The curious, stupid part that’s utterly selfish.
He can’t be mine.
I look at the scar on his chest—nesting amidst the savage remains of his shredded tattoos—then pull my hand away and tuck it behind my back.
Not.
