And I fling my hand back and grip a fistful of soft hair. My chair tips back on two precarious legs. I’m suspended in time for only a moment. Before we both go crashing down. Wood breaks beneath me, and for a moment, a single fleeting moment, those red eyes are looking down on me.
Until I flip him. And then he’s looking up at me. I drag him off the floor by his tight black shirt that wrinkles in my fists, and I slam him into the tabletop.
A slow smile stretches across his hauntingly beautiful face. His gaze lingers on the birthmark that splatters across my chest and kisses my neck. Calculating eyes sweep up over my features, and it’s then that I notice the dark shadow fading out of his appearance. Only the golden lines of his elaborate tattoos remain. He’s just a man. A very, very handsome, very manic-looking man.
But a man all the same.
“What do you want?” I press into him, and he simply leans into the surface of the table like it’s a luxurious bed.
“I just wanted to say the picture is a bit exaggerated by three—” He glances at the throbbing picture in the book out of the corner of his crimson eyes, “to five inches at least.” He speaks like he has a great knowledge of Incubus cocks. He’s making a casual mockery of the book as if it has bothered him for years, and he has just now gotten a chance to discuss it with his favorite book club member: me.
“Why are you following me?” I ask more sternly, tempted to slam his back harder into the table just to get his wandering attention back on the issue at hand.
His aloof gaze finds mine once more.
“Why is it you can see me?”
My lip curls as my brows pull together hard. The lashing words on the tip of my tongue falter.
“What!?”
This in-depth conversation feels strange with me pinning him down and him just lying there like it’s an afternoon nap. I fling myself off of him and start pacing the library floor. With his elbows, he lifts himself up into a leaning position but stays mostly undisturbed by our little feud.
It’s like he isn’t even aware of any negativity in life whatsoever.
“Most people, especially humans, they can’t see me. Sometimes with enough rising emotion, I can be seen. Empaths and people with combustible emotions, they can see me. Sometimes with enough force, I can move things, and that gets their attention, but they make excuses for it. Humans like to make excuses. Makes them feel safe.”
I’m seeing things that aren’t there?
No, he’s there. Ruiner saw him too...
No, Ruiner protected me from something he couldn’t see.
Shit.
“Other Monsters, can they see you?”
His drifting attention finds a squirrel outside the high window, and he seems entranced by the tiny creature and not at all concerned about his actual life.
“Excuse me?!” I blink at him, my arms folding over my chest hard before his eyes come back to find the dullest thing in this room filled with enthralling things.
Me? I’m really that much of a bore?
“You’re excused,” he offers, confusion pinching his inky brows.
Goddammit! What is with the Monsters in this chaotic realm? Can we just be fucking sane for one minute?!
“Why are you following me?” I bite out.
“Because King Leavon ordered me to.”
Finally! Finally, a real answer.
And not a good one.
“The king is having me followed? You’re stalking me?” He glances to me, his gaze lingering on the unique birthmark once again, but he doesn’t comment.
“Yes. Says you’re suspicious, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.”