With her fingertips pressed to his warm skin, she glanced up. Her breath caught at the look in Ian’s eyes.
Hunger. It cut through the exhaustion that had built up and hit her right in the chest, along with the reality of it all. She was in a tiny flat with a criminal. A man who hadn’t been with a woman in a century. The idea made her hot and cold at once.
She shook her head. Nerves over finding the book were making her jittery.
Liar. Nerves weren’t the only thing making her jittery. He made her jittery. The way he watched her made her jittery. No one had looked at her that way in years, or if they had, she’d had her nose so far in a book she hadn’t noticed.
His dark eyes never strayed from her face, never moved south to the parts she was sure he’d dreamed about in prison, all alone in his cell. The idea made her mind buzz. She wanted his gaze to stray. The idea made her hot, made dirty images flash through her mind like a magazine that should be shoved under a mattress.
This was the best opportunity she had to get the book back. Her career depended on this. Weird fantasies would get her nowhere.
She stepped back. “Well, your ribs are fine.”
He nodded.
“So, um… It’s getting late. Probably time for bed.” She was babbling. She knew she was, but she couldn’t help it.
“I assume I’m sleeping here?”
“Aye. There’re two bedrooms.”
“Thanks.” He glanced down, then back up, uncertainty drawing his brows together. The uncertainty was strange on such a big man—one who could fight like a warlord. Broad shoulders, forearms roped with muscles and those sexy veins that popped, big hands that hung at his sides. “You doona have to worry about me, you know.”
“What?” She flushed.
“You’re a woman alone and you doona know me. But we’re sharing a flat. I understand that you’re nervous, but you doona have to be. I’ll respect your boundaries. Stay right away from you.” He looked like he was worried he might scare her off.
“Oh. I— thank you.” And suddenly she was no longer jittery. Not from fear, at least. “Um, I’m going to hit the hay. But there’s TV if it’s still early for you.”
“TV?”
“Oh, shite. I’m sorry. Could you watch TV in prison?” The enormous differences between their lives loomed in the tiny space between them. Not only was he out of prison for the first time in nearly a century, it was the twenty-first century. But there was no leeway in their schedule for him to adjust to the outside world.
“I doona even know what it is.”
“Crap. Uh, I’ll show you some other time. Sorry.”
“Doona be. You keep saying that, but doona be. I sure as hell doona like that you work for the university, but quit saying you’re sorry.”
She nodded. Her apologies were so futile. There was no way she could understand it. Or him. But she wanted to. She didn’t want to analyze why, when she hadn’t cared enough to try to understand any other guy in years. But she wanted to understand him. “What did you do for all that time in prison?”
His eyes darkened. “I spent an eternity doing forced labor in a hellish afterworld, constructing a monstrosity of a cathedral in the middle of an abandoned hell. In the midst of hundred-degree heatwinds and smoldering embers, I worked for nearly a hundred fucking years creating something in hell that was constantly destroyed before my eyes.”
Horror carved a hole in her chest. “What? Why?”
“I’ve no idea. The university wanted something built, and prisoners are good labor. It kept us too tired to cause trouble at the end of the day. But it was hell.” His fists clenched at his sides.
Fiona’s heart ached for him, for what she imagined it must have been like. She loved the university and truly believed that it was a foundation of good in their world. They worked hard to protect mortals and Mytheans alike. But they were an ancient institution. Using prisoners as forced labor wasn’t at all strange to those who ran the university.
Most of the elders who ran the place were ancient. She was far younger—a mere thirty-six chronologically, though she’d stopped physically aging sometime in her mid-twenties. An infant to Mytheans. She had modern ideals about ethics that many at the university lacked. For the most part, the prisoners were truly evil. Ian wasn’t, but hearing his story made her want to fight harder to drag the university into the twenty-first century.
Guilt streaked through her at the knowledge that she’d lied to him about the university possibly releasing him if he helped her retrieve the book. She’d needed his help so badly—to preserve her very sanity and her life—that she’d have said anything to get him to help. But that was before she’d realized that she liked him. And now she’d have to send him back to that hell, else risk her own freedom. Permanently releasing a dangerous prisoner could get her in serious trouble.
Gods, this was all too complicated. She needed some space. “I’m headed to bed.”
“All right. I’m going to get cleaned up in the bathroom and do the same.”
“Do you know how to work the shower?”