The Return (Titan 1)

Holy Hottie-McHotters!

A curved, almost-stubborn chin was paired with a cut, strong jaw. The upper lip was only slightly thinner than his bottom one and those loose strands of hair now caressed broad, high, golden cheekbones.

Then I saw his eyes.

I jerked back, lost my balance, and my ass plopped down on the step behind me. Maybe later I’d be embarrassed, but at that moment, all I could do was stare at him.

He had to be the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen, and that was no joke. I couldn’t even think of anyone on TV, in the magazines, or in movies who looked like him. His male beauty was delicate and yet hard at the same time, rough and smooth, a total conundrum of splendor, but his eyes…

They were the strangest color—a tawny amber. There was no way they could be natural. But damn, he worked those contacts, paired with surprisingly dark lashes and brows a shade or two darker than his hair.

I suddenly wondered if it was possible to have a visual orgasm, because I think I might have just experienced that, except he… this unreal, beautiful man was staring at me with honey-colored eyes that kept getting wider.

And the way he was staring at me was not good—almost like he couldn’t believe what he was looking at—as if I had grown an extra head. While I knew I wasn’t going to be winning Miss USA anytime soon with the hip span I had going on, I had no idea why he was looking at me like he suddenly wanted to vomit.

Or hit something.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, and my bag slipped out of his fingers and landed once more with a heavy thud.

If I hadn’t already been sitting on my ass, I would’ve fallen on it again. His voice… I slowly shook my head, wanting him to speak again, because it was the deepest, smoothest voice I’d ever heard, with a slight accent I couldn’t place.

I needed to say something, but all I could do was sit there and stare at him in open wonder. And think about the fact that the only makeup I was wearing was lip-gloss, and I was the kind of girl who needed at least some blush, mascara…and an entire painted face.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

My mouth dried as I continued to stare at him like my brain had shorted out, which was possible. It felt like I’d lost some brain cells, maybe a few synapses, and maybe a few other important things…stuff.

He shot forward, moving as quickly as the striking rattlesnake I’d seen once by the lake back home—so fast that I had no way to move. One hand landed on the railing by my head, and the other two steps above me, and he was right there, in my face, breathing the same oxygen as I was. The wide stairwell with its red-washed walls constricted and the space seemed much smaller than before.

Our gazes locked, and…and as crazy as it sounded, his eyes… They looked as if there were some kind of light behind the pupils. “Are your initials J.B.?”

Way in the back of my head, I realized that was a weirdly on-point question. “How do you know that? We haven’t met. I’m sure of that, because I would’ve remembered that.” There I went again, rambling like an idiot. “I mean, I’m good with faces.”

Especially extraordinarily gorgeous faces—yeah, I remembered those.

Thick lashes lowered, covering those eyes briefly as he muttered, “Shit.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Your name?”

Part of me wanted to ask him what the hell his name was, but I was caught off-guard and I answered. “Josie. Josie Bethel.”

His gaze flew back to mine and for a long moment he didn’t speak. A sense of hyperawareness rushed over my skin, forming tiny little bumps. Tension poured into the air like kegs of it had been tapped open above us. My pulse picked up as I drew in a shallow breath. A muscle spasmed along his jaw and his lips parted as he said, “What in the fuck are you?”

Chapter 3

MY EYES had to be deceiving me, like some kind of twisted-off-its-ass wish fulfillment or something. The hair was the wrong color. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what color hair this girl had. Light brown? Blonde? Pale blonde? All the shades rolled into one? And her nose was too small, but this girl, she looked…

I couldn’t even bring myself to finish that train-wreck of a thought.

Her eyes, a shade of deep denim that was familiar in a nagging sort of way, were fixed on mine. When she didn’t answer my question, I decided to take a more touchy-feely kind of approach. My hand shot out, wrapping around her wrist.

I waited for something—a zap, a fissure of power signaling what she was.

Nothing.

Her eyes widened, almost consuming her face, and there was a quality of innocence to her suddenly wary gaze that I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“W-what are you doing?” She pulled on her arm, but she didn’t get very far.

Her question fell to the side. I was focused on trying to puzzle out what the hell she was and why in the hell I was here.

There’d been no awareness of her when I’d entered the stairwell—late, according to the schedule I had. I hadn’t even expected to find the mysterious J.B. after this class. Shit, I hadn’t even felt her until I’d zipped up the stairs, too fast for any human to track, and startled her. She was definitely not a pure or a half, because I would’ve sensed that. So she wasn’t hiding out in the mortal world, like some of them had managed to do in the past. But when I’d straightened and had seen her face, I knew—I just knew this had to be the person Apollo had sent me to find, and her initials had confirmed it.

There was nothing special that jumped from her skin to mine—no awareness of anything that would make her unique. She felt mortal, but she couldn’t be, because there’d be no reason Apollo would want me to guard a mortal college chick. Unless this was another warped form of punishment, and hell, that actually wouldn’t surprise me.

“You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

Her voice broke through my thoughts. My gaze dropped to where my fingers curled around her slender wrist. The skin around my hand was turning white. Shit—I was hurting her. I dropped my hold as if her skin had scalded mine. Surprise flitted through me, but I had no idea if it was real or just wishful thinking that I hadn’t truly intended to harm her.

Sometimes I wasn’t quite sure what my intentions were anymore.

“What are you?” she asked, her nose scrunching as she spoke. “Other than a heart-stopping hot guy with obvious boundary issues and problems with anger management?”

I blinked at her. She thought I was a heart-stopping hot guy? Well, of course she did.