by three inexcusably stunning—and unfamiliar—men.
2
Sorsha
To be clear, I was all for shockingly handsome men as a general principle. I enjoyed resting my eyes—and sometimes other parts—on them as the occasion presented itself. Just not when the occasion was them randomly appearing in my apartment without prior invitation or me having any idea who in the wide blue yonder they were.
These three had certainly made themselves at home. The brawniest of the bunch, a hulking dude with several scars marking his chiseled face and white-blond hair that grazed his considerable shoulders, had pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table. He sat there with his legs sprawled out and one of my dinner knives held to the light from the window.
Next to that window was a young man who could have been a sun god, all golden curls and radiant beauty. He’d perched his tall, slim form right on the counter, one knee drawn up and the other—bare—foot dangling. His long fingers curled around my last banana, now half-eaten.
Beside him, the last of the trio was poised by the sink, the sleeves of his collared shirt rolled up past his elbows and his well-toned arms submersed in the mountain of bubbles he’d stirred up under the running water. His eyebrows arched nearly all the way to the fringe of his messy chocolate-brown waves as he met my eyes.
“Have a good sleep?” he asked in a voice that was equally chocolatey: smooth, dark, and sweet.
They were all watching me now, the bubble enthusiast smirking, the sun god beaming like, well, the sun, and Mr. Brawn forming an expression as if he were trying very hard not to frown but his face wasn’t quite sure how to do anything else.
My body had tensed with that good old fight-or-flight instinct, faced with uncertain and potentially dangerous circumstances. “What the hell are you—” I started. Then my gaze caught on a couple of details that threw my understanding of the situation for a loop.
Paler shapes, more caramel than chocolate, poked from amid the bubble guy’s wavy hair. They were the curves of two small, pointed… horns, just above his ears. And the sunlight was glinting not just off my dinner knife in the hulk’s hand but also off his knuckles, which had crystalline edges even harder than his face and a blueish white tint like ice.
You could still have called them men, yeah, but a substantial portion of the population would have also called them monsters. I had three of the higher shadowkind camped out in my kitchen.
Which still begged a whole lot of questions, but also meant a different level of caution. I backed up a step. “Just a second. Stay right there.”
I hightailed it back to my bedroom and snatched up the undershirt I’d been wearing beneath my cat burglar outfit last night. The badge of silver and iron I wore over my heart was still pinned to it. I plucked it off and fixed it to my current T-shirt in the same spot.
The metals’ effects wouldn’t make me impervious to shadowkind powers, but the badge did deflect most attempts to manipulate human minds and emotions. While I believed in letting the shadowkind live freely, that didn’t mean I trusted them to keep their voodoo to themselves. Some of them had earned the label “monster.” And even the sweetest of shadow creatures often didn’t understand kindness and consideration the way we mortals did.
My hasty preparations woke up Pickle where he’d been baking in the sun on my bedroom windowsill. The kitten-sized, dragon-shaped creature, whose scales were as green and bumpy as his namesake, blinked at me, stretched his wings, and scrambled up into a jumping position.
I hesitated and then leaned toward him. “All right. But you might not like what’s out there.” He wouldn’t be much help if it came to a fight, but his response to their presence might tell me things my mortal senses didn’t register.
Pickle leapt into the air with a clumsy flap of his wings and landed on my shoulder. He hooked his claws—gently, after a couple of years of trial and error—into the fabric of my shirt and nudged my jaw with his flared nose. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether he saw me more as a helpful companion or a steed.
He settled in happily with his cool cheek tucked against the crook of my neck until I’d reached the threshold of the kitchen. The three gorgeous men had stayed exactly where they’d been when