Arjun Read Free Page A

He fixed a glance at me with the jade eyes that had captivated me the first time I’d seen them. In fact, they still fascinated me, although I was careful not to let it show. Too much. “You live with your brother?”

I shook my head and perched on one side of the couch, painfully aware of the eyes that could have burned a hole straight through my body and out the other side. “Not live with him, per se. He lives in another state, but when he comes to see our mother, he stays in the spare room, and because it’s a lot more convenient than lugging around suitcases all the time, he keeps some spare clothes here. He could stay with her, but she would drive a saint to do some pretty bad things.” I wasn’t exaggerating.

He nodded, and the leaping flames in the modest-sized fireplace turned his hair a fiery crimson that made me think of poinsettias. “I see.”

The blood beat loudly in my ears, and as he padded silently to the window, where outside, snow started to drift lazily from the dark skies, I admired the grace in which he carried himself. He almost reminded me of a tree swaying gently in the breeze.

Which reminded me of the most important question that had been lying dormant in my mind since I’d had to strap him into the car.

“Arjun?”

“Yes.” He didn’t turn from the window, but kept his eyes forward, almost as if he was looking for something. I nearly got distracted to pieces letting my gaze rove over his perfect profile. No, he certainly wasn’t human. No man could have been shaped so beautifully, like a Raphael statue come to life.

The logs crackled in the hearth, and I turned away from him, unable to stare at him for too long; I was half-afraid I’d be rendered blind, just like the way people can’t look at the sun directly when it hangs high in a clear sky.

“What are you?” I asked and then wished I hadn’t, because ignorance was bliss. If I didn’t ask, then I could just pretend he was some poor guy who was slightly crazy and didn’t m The corners of his eyes crinkleds IQprind strolling out in the nude in the middle of winter. But if I asked…and if he said something completely out of this world…I would probably be questioning my sanity.

Not that I wasn’t doing it now.

He shook his head and put his back to the window. “It does not matter. I am Arjun, and that is the only thing you need to know. Other information would be superfluous, unneeded.”

And maybe he was right.

But as I watched him watching me from beneath those heavy-lidded emerald eyes, the breath caught painfully in my throat, and the palms of my hands started to sweat.

After a horrifying experience of getting left at the altar by my then-fiancé almost three years ago, I’d sworn off any sort of relationship. Sex and the release that came with it seemed completely useless. I didn’t need a man anymore. I didn’t want to deal with that again.

But Arjun made me think of things I hadn’t thought of in a very, very long time.

The silence in the living room felt stifling, as if someone had placed a bag over my head and was