"Need any help?" he asked, his gaze a little too wolfish.
I leaned into him. "I'm old enough to be your … much older sister."
I actually had no idea how old I was. The doctors put me somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-nine. Close enough for now. They wanted to run more tests, to involve more body parts than just my ailing brain. I wouldn't let them. For one thing, each test hemorrhaged more money than I made in a year. They were worried I'd been assaulted in some way. I assured them I hadn't been. I had no bruises. No scrapes other than the ones I'd sustained after waking up in that alley.
He raked a hand through his hair, revealing the alluring angles of his almost too-perfect face, then let it cascade back into place before leaning in, too. "I love older women."
I had a feeling he knew way more than his age would suggest. And that he was teasing as much as I was. I could test it. See how far the little shit would go. But the customers were piling up, and I had a sandwich – several, in fact – to deliver.
He broke the spell with a shake of his head, chuckled softly, then sat back and, with a forlorn sigh, said, "And all good things must come to an end."
Before I could ask what he meant, the door opened, the room quieted, and I knew who'd come for lunch. With the precision of a German infantryman – always in formation, always showing up third out of the three – Reyes Farrow walked in, thus completing the trio of Musketeers, and the world around me fell away.
As did all sense of logic.
Reyes Farrow was an enigma. He was his own energy source. Drowning in a perpetual darkness. Baptized in fire. It licked across his skin, the heat radiating out in blistering waves.
Before I'd realized that heat was coming from him, I thought I'd entered menopause early. I kept having hot flashes out of the blue. But then I saw him for the first time, saw the fire that bathed him, that rushed over his skin in bright oranges and yellows, that created the billowing smoke. He wore it like a robe. It cascaded over his wide shoulders, over his sinuous arms, and down his back to pool on the ground at his feet.
Even with the darkness that surrounded him, the unease I felt anytime he walked in, I welcomed his visits. I craved them the way an addict craved heroin. I often came back in the evenings, timing my dinner with his. A girl had to eat, after all. I told myself I went back to the café because of the familiarity of the place. The hominess. But if I were honest – something I rarely tried to be – it was because of him.
Like Osh, he was only part human. The other part, the questionable part, was still a mystery. He was like nothing I'd ever encountered. Not among the folks in Sleepy Hollow, anyway. His presence made the air crackle with electricity, mostly because of all the spontaneous ovulating going on when he walked in.
I'd slowed to an almost complete stop. Snapping out of my stupor, I picked up the pace to hurry past him. The closer I got, the more I saw, both physically and otherworldly. The molecules of his makeup seemed denser than those of a human, his DNA somehow wound tighter. He exuded a rare kind of power, as if he could command the seas and the stars alike. As if he could bend the universe to his will.
I looked past the fires that engulfed him to his slim hips that tapered up to wide shoulders. His arms, corded with muscle and sinew. His smooth biceps. Shadows undulated over them with even the slightest effort as the valleys between flesh and tendon shifted.
My gaze rose to the strong set of his chin, forever darkened with a day's growth, but only a day's worth. His mouth was truly one of his most spectacular accomplishments. It had the gentle fullness of passion, as though he'd just made love. As though he'd just satisfied some fortuitous woman's deepest desires. I continued my perusal to the straight line of his nose, neither too thin nor too wide with a tilt at the very tip.
But the most startling aspect of the entire encounter? His eyes. He often wore dark shades that hid one of his best features. When he didn't, the effect was breathtaking. He had gold flecks in his deep brown irises that sparkled beneath impossibly long lashes. They complemented his sculpted mouth and the hard set of his jaw to perfection.
Not that I was obsessed with his looks or anything.
Stepping so close to him was comparable to being within the reach of a jaguar's jaws. It was exhilarating and terrifying. I had no idea what he was exactly, but he was damned sure not dating material, no matter how tightly his molecules were wound.
Thankfully, he rarely looked at me. The sideways glances he did grace me with were mostly filled with anger and a seething kind of resentment. I had yet to discover what that was all about, because despite his acrimonious scowls, he was interested in me. I felt it leap out of him when our eyes met. Like now.