Sighing, Susan decided to find herself a quiet room to read in. She opened the first door she came to and pulled up short as she found herself in the same room as Ravyn, who was asleep on a red futon.
It was all she could do to catch her breath as she saw him lying facedown, entwined in the stark white sheets that seemed to just highlight how tan his skin was. And the man was tan all over. That dark, tawny shade appeared to be his natural skin tone.
It was enough to set her heart pounding. He was all sinewy muscle. All man-in a shapeshifting... leopard... undead kind of way. And even stranger than that, most of the bullet wounds on his back were nothing more than puckered scars. Leo had told her that the Dark-Hunters healed fast, but dang. They really didn't waste any time with mending those wounds.
He opened one black eye to stare at her. "You need something?" His voice had a rumbling quality to it that was deepened by his sleep.
"I thought this room was empty. Sorry."
He stretched before he rolled over, and the sheet slipped to give her a nice view of one bare hip and the trail of black hair that ran from his navel to a thicker patch of hair. A wicked part of herself was hoping the sheet would pull down another few millimeters so that she could glimpse the rest of him.
Okay, so she already knew what he looked like naked, but earlier she'd been a bit occupied to notice the finer details of his body. Now she was feeling a little greedy and if the man wanted to run around naked...
Well, far be it from her to complain.
"No problem." He yawned as he scratched the arm that up until a short time ago had also had a bullet in it. Now it appeared all healed like the rest of him. "You doing any better?"
His question and the concern she heard in his deep voice surprised her. Why would he even care, and yet a part of her was grateful that even if he didn't, he at least pretended to. Having spent her entire adulthood alone, she really ached to have someone just for her. Someone whose love she didn't have to share. It was selfish, but she really did want to find that one person who could love her unconditionally. "I honestly don't know. What about you?"
He looked down and ran his hand over his tight, perfect chest. "Pretty much healed."
It was so strange to try to reconcile this man with the one she'd seen viciously kill the half-Apollite earlier. A chill went down her spine at the memory. Ravyn might be acting friendly toward her at the moment, but he was a ruthless killer. He hadn't even blinked or hesitated at taking the lives of those men in her house. Whether justified or not, it was a sobering thought that life meant so little to him.
Suddenly uneasy, she stepped back into the hallway. "Well, I won't keep you. You probably need more sleep."
He pulled the sheet up higher and tucked his exposed leg under it. "Yeah."
Nodding, she pulled the door closed and backtracked to the room she'd been in earlier that held the computers Leo had told her were for regular Squire use.
Kyl was in there alone, typing furiously at one station.
"Can I borrow one?" she asked hesitantly. Kyl, like Otto, still acted as if he'd like to kill her.
He looked up but didn't break in his typing at all. "The one on your left."
She sat down, placed the book beside her, then wiggled the mouse. As soon as the screen came up, she tried the site Leo had mentioned, only to pull up a porn site. "Holy cripes. I don't think this is right."
Kyl frowned at her. "What?"
"Leo said there was a Dark-Hunter Web site, but I don't think I have the right URL."
He laughed at her. "You didn't put the dash in between Dark and Hunter, did you?"
She looked at the field and realized he was right. "No."
"Put it there and try again."
Susan did and breathed a little easier as the right page came up. It was all black-and-white. "How very monochromatic."
Kyl snorted. "It's easier on the Dark-Hunters' eyes. They're a lot more sensitive than human eyes. The dark background is the easiest one for them to read. "
Hmmm, that was interesting. "Why's their sight different?"
"If you'll read your manual, which should be used for information and not a doorstop, you'll see that since they hunt during the night, they have special night vision. Their eyes are always dilated, so bright light is painful to them. It's why many of them wear dark sunglasses even indoors."
Tucking that away into her brain in case she ever needed to blind one of them, Susan clicked for the Dark-Hunter profiles and paused as she saw Ravyn Kontis's name. Oh, it was too much to resist. Clicking on it, she quickly read what they had listed for him.
It was actually highly fascinating. He was born in ancient Greece-304 B.C. to be precise. Dang, he was an old coot. She hoped she looked that good at two thousand plus years.