had she worked in the library last night? Demanding to know why she’d stayed up so late wouldn’t be wise. He’d save that battle for another time. In an hour, perhaps.
She surveyed him again, and Cassian willed himself to stand still, to appear open and nonthreatening and not like his very heart was in his bloody, outstretched hands.
She said at last, “Fine. Let’s just say it will be a favor. Of whatever size I wish.”
It was dangerous to allow this. Deadly. Stupid. But he said, “Yes.”
He extended his hand. One last time.
Keep reaching out your hand.
“A bargain.” He met her steely expression with his own. “You train with me for an hour, and I’ll owe you one favor of whatever size you wish.”
“Agreed.” She slid her hand into his and shook firmly.
Magic zapped between them, and she gasped, recoiling.
Cassian let it thunder into him, like a stampede of galloping horses. He rode it out. Whatever her power was, it had made the bargain more intense. Demanding.
He scanned his hands, his bare forearms, seeking any hint of a tattoo beyond the Illyrian ones he bore for luck and glory. Nothing.
It had to be somewhere.
He peeled off his shirt and scanned the muscled planes of his torso. Nothing.
He approached the narrow mirror leaned against one end of the ring, left there for them to study their technique while exercising alone. Stopping before it, Cassian twisted, staring over a shoulder at his tattooed back.
There, dead in the center of the Illyrian tattoo snaking down his spine, a new tattoo had appeared. An eight-pointed star, whose compass points radiated in sharp lines across and up the groove of his back, twining with the Illyrian markings long inked there. The eastern and western points of the star shot right onto his wings, black blending into black. A matching one, he knew, would be on Nesta’s spine. He tried not to think about her bare expanse of skin, now marked in black ink, as he faced her.
Nesta’s eyes weren’t on the mirror, though.
No, they’d fixed on his torso. On his chest, on his abdominal muscles, on his bare arms. Her pulse fluttered in her throat.
He didn’t dare move, not as her gaze fixed on the vee of muscles that sloped beneath the waist of his pants. Not as her eyes darkened, her lashes bobbing as color crept over her pale skin.
His blood heated, skin tightening over bone and muscle, as if it could feel the touch of her blue-gray eyes, as if it were her fingers running over his stomach. Lower.
He knew better than to throw out a teasing remark. Rile her, and she’d not only refuse to train, bargain or no, but she’d stop looking at him like that.
Slowly, her eyes trailed up his body, lingering on his carved pectorals and the Illyrian tattoo that swirled over one of them before flowing down his left arm. He might have flexed. Slightly. His voice thick, he managed to say, “Ready?”
Cauldron boil him, he knew the question held more meanings than he cared to unravel.
From the glimmer in her eyes, he knew she got it. But she squared her shoulders. “All right. I owe you one hour of training.”
“You sure as hell do.” Cassian mastered his breathing, shoving aside that roaring desire. He strode to the center of the ring, but opted to keep his shirt off. Because of the warm day. Because his skin was now burning hot.
He gestured to the space beside him, and flashed her his broadest grin. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Archeron.”
A bargain—with Cassian. Nesta didn’t know how she’d allowed herself to agree to it, to let that magic pass between them and mark her, but …
Everyone hates you.
Maybe it was that fact alone that had her agreeing to this insanity. She had no idea what favor she’d call in from him, but … Fine. This training ring, with its high walls, the sky her only witness—here, she supposed, she could let him do his worst.
No matter that Cassian without a shirt bordered on obscene, even with the collection of scars peppering his golden-brown skin. The one on his left pectoral was especially horrific—and one she knew he hadn’t received during the war with Hybern. She didn’t want to know what had been bad enough to leave a scar on his quick-healing body. Especially when all evidence of the devastating wound he’d gotten during the war was gone. Only rippling muscle and skin remained.
Honestly, there were so many muscles she couldn’t count