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“And the tattoos?” she asked, proud that her voice remained unshaken. “Are they commemorative as well?”
She air-traced the lines of indecipherable ancient text running from his upper arms down to the backs of both hands. His torso was bare, but more symbols and texts lined his sides, hips, riding the defined V of his lower abdomen.
She circled behind him and witnessed more text tightly packed around his shoulder blades, then narrowing into the deep groove of his spine, all the way over his tailbone and disappearing into the mysterious furrow between his muscular buttocks.
“What do they say?” She was beyond intrigued.
“Nothing important,” he answered brusquely.
Eir paused when she returned to his front, facing him.
It was the first time he lied to her. Or, at least, withheld the truth.
She could feel it. She could even see it in the flicker of his eyes. But it was quickly gone, and the opalescent depths were mysterious once more.
“Tell me the meaning of one of these texts,” she insisted in a half commanding, half cajoling tone.
She wanted badly toknowthis male.
He regarded her with steady, implacable eyes, staying silent for a long while.
And then he murmured:
“Are you here for me, Valkyrie?”
She understood perfectly his real question:
Was she here to mark him for death?
At the same time, there was a nuance to the ever-changing facets of his strange, beautiful eyes. One that also asked,Was she here forhim.
“Yes,” she replied.
The same answer to both questions.
“When?” he queried further.
“Do you really want to know?” she rejoined.
He considered this and did not pursue it.
Instead, he asked, “Why me?”
For death or for her? she wanted to clarify. But then, the answer simply tumbled out of her of its own accord.
“Because I want you. It is in my nature to take what I want.”
He stared at her for a long while, his thoughts inscrutable.
Just when she could no longer help it, reaching out once more to touch him truly this time, he extended his right arm and turned it so that she could see the neat line of symbols tattooed from the inside of his wrist to the crook of his elbow.
“This says:Fear not death. Fear only the absence of life.”
She gazed into his mesmerizing eyes and felt as if she were peering directly into his warrior soul.
This one small truth into his mind captivated her. Tantalized her. Instead of assuaging her need to know him, she only wantedmore.
“Why those words?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
