Page 162 of Harbinger

Desire coils tight in my belly, sharp enough that my fingers curl around the edge of the bench, biting into stone, to keep myself from moving toward him. Weeks spent training my body to endure fear and pain and exhaustion—and just looking at him threatens to unravel me.

His gaze searches mine for a beat. Then another. Each moment is punctuated by a tick between my legs. Then another. The storm in his eyes builds with each second, the hunger there flashing like lightning trapped by clouds. “If your offer still stands …”

The rasp in his voice empties my brain completely, every word I know scattering. All I can do is stare.

He shifts, glancing around the room. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’ll use one of the other pools.”

The apology feels like a blade laid carefully at my feet. It’s up to me what I do with it.

I open my mouth … and close it. One word and this finally begins. One word and it ends here.

I’m still fumbling when Bishop turns just enough for me to glimpse the patterns laced across his back and woven down his spine. More power claimed by a man who protects me from everyone.

Especially himself.

“Wait.” That one word slips out, followed by a much more dangerous one. “Stay.”

He hesitates for the longest second of my life before his hands move to the knot of the towel. He loosens it with deliberate slowness, raising a brow as the terry cloth starts to slip free.

I turn away, cheeks flushing, and fix my eyes on the far wall, my heart pounding hard enough that I feel it in my throat.

It takes every scrap of restraint I possess not to look when I hear the muffled thud of his towel hitting the tile.

In fact, not looking is the single most disciplined thing I’ve done in my entire life—and I just spent six hours sword training in winter rain.

His foot slaps the tile on the first step, and I close my eyes, trying to remember how to breathe.

Because I want Bishop Marius.

I can’t deny it when he’s this close to me. I’ve wanted him longer than I should have. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.

And there was something in his eyes when he stood at the edge of the pool …

Something that makes me certain he wants me just as much.

Presumptuous? Perhaps.

But sometimes you can’t lie to yourself anymore.

Because now that he’s here, I can’t pretend that I don’t want his skin against mine or to know what that power inside him would feel like inside me. I tried to ignore it, tried to fight this urge that’s pulled me toward him since the first day we met. But that’s about as simple as resisting gravity.

The water shifts as he settles across from me, the surface rolling out in ripples that brush my skin. The contact is incidental. But the effect?

Fucking incendiary.

Like the water is trying to close the careful distance he’s still putting between us.

Steam rises around us, blurring the line of his shoulders, the pale geometry of his vestiges slipping in and out of view as he moves. He lounges, draping his arms on the edge, and groans. The sound bolts through me, lodging low in my belly before spreading into an insistent pulse.

I’m in so much trouble.

His head lolls back, his shoulders dropping an inch as if the water has taken off some of the weight he usually carries.

Meanwhile, I’m held together by tension alone, every part of me ready to fall apart.

“I’ve missed this … for years.”

The admission catches me off guard. I turn my head slightly to look for cracks in that control he wears like armor and notice how his gaze stays fixed very intently on the stars overhead.