Glint (The Plated Prisoner 2)

I clutch my own coat to my chest. “No, thanks.”

With lips twitching, his hands come up, deft fingers unlacing the brown straps across his jerkin. The spikes along his forearms and back recede beneath his skin before he slips the leather off and tosses it away.

He watches me as he reaches behind him, pul

ling the black cotton tunic off and dropping it on the pile. Then he’s standing there bare-chested in front of me, and time freezes, like suspended sand in an hourglass, grains paused in their plummet.

I shiver from the intimidation of seeing him like this, because he is intimidating. But he’s also beautiful. Rip has otherworldly allure and unmistakable magnetism.

I suddenly understand the insects that fly willingly into carnivorous plants. The draw is too strong, the pull too bewitching, that you forget about the danger until you’re already trapped inside.

Why is it that he can undress, and yet, it makes me feel vulnerable?

Bright side? At least the view is nice.

My eyes drift of their own accord as I take in just how strong Rip really is. His body is a vessel for battle. Every single muscle has been worked to perfection, and the sight makes my mouth go dry.

His pale skin isn’t ghostly or sickly like Malina’s. It’s chiseled, with a light dusting of hair on his chest, but my eyes move to the row of black dots that go up his forearms.

It should look odd, or freakish, or scary, but it’s none of those things.

He’s so entirely fae.

He stands in front of me, not hiding, but letting me see, letting me assess, and I can tell from his stance that he’s proud of who he is. Of what he is.

It makes something in me ache. I can’t look away from the fierce refinement of him, the predatory grace. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, my lips parting with a shaken breath.

Before I can stop myself, I’ve stepped forward, so close that my skirts brush against his pants. Rip goes still. I don’t think he’s breathing.

I stare at the four spots from wrist to elbow where the spikes have sunken in. There’s just the slightest peek of them beneath the separation of his skin, like a notch in his arm. There’s no strange bulging or odd angles with them retracted. It’s as if they’ve melded into his bones.

“Incredible...” My whisper passes unbidden.

Unable to help myself, I lift my hand, my fingertips brushing against the black indentations in his ashen-white skin. I hiss out a surprised breath when I feel the spike catch on the fabric of my glove, the sharp tip of a talon ready to pierce.

Rip clears his throat, and the noise yanks me out of my reverie.

Mortified that I’d touched him so boldly, I snatch my hand back. “I’m sorry,” I blurt. “I don’t know what came over me.”

The blacks of Rip’s eyes, indistinguishable between iris and pupil, look larger right now, like the color is taking over. “You don’t like to be touched. I don’t seem to mind so much.”

My cheeks go hot. There’s something there in his voice. A caress that smoothed over its harsh edges and slid over my skin. It scares me, even as it draws me in.

My already heated face burns hotter, but I don’t look away, don’t back up. I’m that beguiled insect, caught in his carnivorous clutches, ready to be devoured.

All this time, I’ve been cautious of him. Cautious because of his rumored viciousness, of the danger he poses to my secrets, of his threat to Midas.

But right now, I realize that there’s an entirely different reason I need to stay guarded against him. And it has everything to do with the way warmth is spreading through my chest, with the way chills have scattered over my skin from the purr of his voice.

Warning bells peal through my head, but they sound like the best sort of song.

He dips his chin. “Did you know, the color of your cheeks grows darker when you blush? Like warm umber,” Rip says, words pitched low, a sound that seems to dig beneath my skin and burrow in the deepest parts of me.

I shiver, as if a phantom drew a finger down my back. I can’t even hear the others fighting anymore. It’s just him and me, me and him.

“Why do they really call you Rip?” I ask. I barely recognize the whisper as mine.

He shakes his head once. “You remember the rules, Auren. Keep a lie for a lie, or tell a truth for a truth. That’s the only way I’ll play.”