Careful not to wake him, I tiptoed the rest of the way across the room on bare feet, slipping out and into the short hall where I edged toward the bathroom that sat between Ryder’s room and the guest rooms.
With how old the house was, I guessed Ryder was lucky that he even had a bathroom upstairs.
I kept my footsteps quiet as I crept for it, then I yipped when the door suddenly flew open.
Bright, blinding light blazed out from the opening and cut into the duskiness where I stood chained to the spot.
Or maybe I was just dumbstruck by the sight.
Ryder had been on his way out, and he halted in the doorway, standing there in only a pair of gray sweatpants, black hair wild and his chest bare.
So tall and imposing and perfect that the breath fled from my lungs.
It left my chest feeling empty and achy.
There was nothing I could do. My eyes roved. Drinking in every inch of him.
It wasn’t like I’d never seen him without a shirt before.
It didn’t matter.
Every time it knocked me upside the head.
Made me stupid.
Mouth watering, and my wayward heart hammering a thousand errant beats.
I barely even registered his gruff, “Dakota.”
I was too busy ogling the mantrap in front of me.
Literally, I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
His skin was taut and tanned a golden brown, all his corded muscle bristling with that power that vibrated beneath his cool exterior.
Though tonight, there was nothing cool about him.
He was heat.
Flames.
A freaking fire that would consume me in a beat.
A dark tower that loomed in the doorway.
His chest and shoulders an expanse of strength, wide and coarse and thick. Pecs hard and his abdomen cut in a severe line. A tease of his hip bones were exposed over the top of his waistband, and God, there was no stopping myself from peeking at the outline that pressed beneath the fabric of his sweats.
But what I could stare at for days were the designs that covered almost every inch of him.
He’d gotten them throughout the years, as if he’d used the designs as an album of his history.
Symbolic.
Graphic.
Explicit.
A tree grew up his right shoulder, the spindly branches stretching out to cover his right pec. A crow sat on one of the branches, ready to take flight, though there was a chain around its leg, keeping it from flying.
On the opposite shoulder was the face of his mother. A stamp of grief. The first one he’d ever gotten when his mother had passed when he was sixteen.
So much pain surrounded it. Her death so horrible. A wound that would never heal.
My eyes traced and foraged through the intricate designs interwoven with nonsensical things.
Hearts and skulls hidden in vines.
A scroll ran up his left ribs.
Meet me in the place of the forgotten.
And I wondered so many times if that’s the way he felt. As if he’d been forgotten. Left behind.
It made me freaking blush that he had a chocolate chip cookie tattooed just above his right hip.
But what always reminded me of my place was what sat in the center of his chest.
It was a broken clock.
Distorted and warped.
The bottom of it was crumbling, and a bleeding human heart had fallen through the hole. A hand held it up, crushing it while it struggled to beat.
My throat nearly closed off as I looked at where its fractured hands were forever stuck at five o’ four.
A moment in time that had marked him.
Scarred him.
Destroyed him.
A time that had crushed me, too, though I doubted he truly knew how deeply it had.
It was when I’d realized that I was just a foolish girl chasing down a fantasy.
Shame pressed down on my chest.
How damned selfish to make his loss about me.
Forcing myself out of the stupor, I cleared my throat and shifted on my bare feet, realizing I’d been staring at him awestruck for God knew how long.
“Hey,” I finally croaked.
“Did I wake you?” It was a rough, groggy grumble, like he’d wandered in here still half asleep.
“No. I just needed to pee.”
“Sorry there aren’t two bathrooms up here.”
Our voices were held, whispered on the same volume of the hum that resonated through the hall, and I felt him waver, hovering there like he wasn’t sure what to say.
“It’s not a problem. You’re the one who opened your house up to us.”
His expression flashed in intensity. His eyes raced over me so fast I had to have imagined it.
“My house is always open to you, Dakota.”
Everything tightened, glowed and pressed and burned.