At night, it would look like a forest. Several of the lighting options were merely candles on the walls, set before age-spotted mirrors. Some fabrics were slightly faded and some of the walls papered with tapestries of woods.
Whether Kyan had curated the space, or Biróg had, it was soKyanthat it made her heart hurt. Just being here felt like an education in his taste and personality. Quiet and contained. Earthy and slightly antique.
She could imagine him here, going silently from one room to the next, or coming in and out as briefly as possible. Yes, he had Biróg, and Nicole was increasingly grateful that he had Callum, but the idea of him being so solitary all this time got her by the throat. Made her not just upset, butangry.
Never again, she vowed. No matter what was brewing between them, how complicated, or how complex her feelings.
It meant so much that he trusted them in his secret home – whether he considered it one or not. She knew how personal that safe space could be. How sacred.
The front door to her left opened to a hulking silhouette.
She knew it was him immediately, but—
‘What happened?’ Nicole demanded as he closed the door.
Whatever wounds Kyan had sustained were healed now, but the smears of blood on his face and tears to his clothes gave them away. Instead of distress, capable danger breathed off him, but it barely tempered the way her blood dragged to her feet with panic.
The sight threw her back to the night he’d nearly died a few feet away from her. His stomach had been dark with too much blood, the pain and shock in his eyes such a stark, horrifying difference to his reassuring energy now.
‘I’m all right,’ Kyan said, more exasperated by the ordeal than wounded.
‘Who did this?’ she managed.
He must have noticed the dangerous tone of her voice, because a frown flickered across his brow and he drew closer carefully. ‘Just Logan and some of his friends, it’s over.’
Sure. It would be over if she could rip the bastard’s throat out.
‘Nicole,’ Kyan said softly, stroking her jaw and stooping to look at her.
She forced herself to listen over the rushing of her pulse. To meet his eyes and focus on the dry heat of his palms and the fact the pads of his fingers touched the curve of her ears, instead of on the scents of danger that perked her Empyreal up into a wild little menace.
‘You dealt with it?’ she asked, voice raw.
‘I did.’
‘You’re okay?’
He nodded, eyes sincere, the affection in them lightening the anger that had simmered there like just-painted ink.
She’d taken his wrist in her hand, feeling his bracelet and – a hair band? She focused on that instead of rehearsing the ways she could slip out of the townhouse and kill the little—
‘I’m going to clean up, all right? I’ll get rid of the blood. I’m all right.’
She managed a nod as he brushed a kiss across her temple, before he headed up the stairs behind her, the wood creaking beneath his steps.
Nicole watched, concerned. Perhaps he needed time alone.
She nearly headed into the dining room after Bells’ concerned peek around the door, until she heard Kyan’s sigh.
Nicole found him at the top of the stairs in a small, dim powder room with the door ajar. She knocked softly, causing the door to open wider and reveal him standing shirtless in the shadowed, darkly painted space. She was momentarily assailed by the heat and scent andsightof him. Not just the blood smeared on his knuckles, but the pump of fighting hormones that prickled musky and spiky over her tongue. His back was an epic canvas, defined by the low spotlights that cast shadows over his chest as he turned, the muscle slightly brushed with hair.
He must have just thrown water over his face because droplets ran down his mouth and jaw, and the sight hit her like a freight train. Her concern turned swiftly into something else and Kyan’s nostrils flared.
She cursed and twisted to leave. ‘I just—I’m sorry—’
His damp fingers closed around her wrist instead.
Kyan
