Rohmir was waiting for her when she got back to the bookstore.
He stood in the middle of the room, hands buried casually in his pockets, watching her as she unlocked the door. His sharp gaze followed her, dark and unreadable, but his posture was relaxed, exuding the bored confidence he always wore like a second skin.
Damn him.
The apricot-beige sport suit he wore was effortlessly elegant, tailored to his powerful frame. The casual set of long pants and the button-up shirt did nothing to diminish the sheer force of his presence. His muscles flexed subtly beneath the fabric, and she hated how her mind immediately supplied images of last night.
Heat crawled up her spine, a slow, insidious thing, making her breath hitch. He affected her far too easily, and from the way his dark eyes darkened as he watched her, she knew he wasn't unaffected either. Lust flickered there—raw and hungry, despite the cool expression he tried to maintain.
Evie forced herself to focus. Distance. Keep the distance.
"How was the meeting?" Rohmir's voice was smooth, but there was an edge to it.
"Not productive." She strode toward her desk, determined to put space between them. If she stared at him too long, she might forget herself, and that was dangerous. "Didn't learn much that we didn't already suspect."
Rohmir moved. Not fast. Not aggressive. Just a subtle step forward, but it was enough to put pressure in the room.
"So you didn't learn anything useful?"
Evie braced herself, standing quickly and moving away again, pretending to busy herself with rearranging the bookshelves. Just focus on the damn books.
"They implied they could break the bond without killing me," she admitted, her fingers tightening around the worn spine of a novel. "I don't trust them, obviously, but it's something. A thread to pull at."
She stood in a narrow aisle, forcing herself to focus on the books—on the tangible, safe reality of them. But she felt him before she saw him.
Rohmir followed, stepping into the aisle behind her, and in the next breath, she was trapped.
His arms lifted, hands braced against the shelves on either side of her, caging her in without touching her. The space between them was suffocatingly small.
"Are you avoiding me, pet?" His voice was low, laced with something dangerous.
"I'm just working," she murmured, refusing to look at him.
A dark chuckle. Then fingers on her chin, tilting her face up. His touch burned.
Evie's breath caught as she met his eyes—midnight, heated, searching.
"I want to talk about yesterday." His voice was barely more than a whisper, but she felt it like a caress.
She swallowed hard. "Which part?"
"The part where you used your mouth to thank me." His eyes flicked to her lips, and a slow, predatory smirk curled at the corner of his mouth. "Because if that's how you show gratitude, pet, I'm going to have to give you everything you could ever desire. And there's no way in hell you're allowed to thank anyone else like that. Ever."
Evie's heart skipped—then pounded violently.
Dangerous. This is dangerous.
She forced a smirk. "Or… just stop giving me things. Then I won't have to thank you at all. Let me work for what I want. You wouldn't have to worry about other men giving me things."
Rohmir's smirk deepened. "I like my idea better."
His thumb brushed lightly against her lower lip, and her knees nearly buckled.
"You know," he murmured, his voice thick with something heavier than desire, "for my first fuck after three thousand years… I wouldn't have wanted anyone else."
Her stomach twisted.
"You don't know that," she whispered. "It's the bond."
Rohmir's gaze hardened slightly. "The bond only enhances what's already there. This is all me. And you."
Her pulse roared in her ears.
"You don't have all your memories, Rohmir," she reminded him, forcing her voice to be steady. "You don't know what you're saying. But I'm glad I was at least… helpful to you."
Before he could reply, she ducked under his arm and fled to the front of the store.
Distance. Distance. Distance.
But he followed, relentless.
"Do you want to talk about the woman in the vision?" he asked, stepping up beside her.
Evie clenched her jaw.
She did not want to talk about that. About her. About the way Rohmir had looked at her in that memory—the raw affection, the way his hands had moved over the woman's skin, the way his lips had known hers.
He had loved her.
And Evie didn't know what to do with that knowledge.
She swallowed and forced indifference into her voice. "Don't you think that's a conversation for later? Preferably somewhere more secure?"
Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.
Rohmir exhaled sharply, staring at her. "I don't want her."
Evie blinked. Her heart leapt before she could stop it.
"What?"
"That woman…" His fingers raked through his hair in frustration. "When I watched her, felt her touch me in that vision, it felt wrong. It didn't feel the same as when it's you. I could feel her hands on me, feel myself kissing her back… but it didn't feel right."
Evie's stomach twisted. She didn't want to hear this.Didn't want to hear how he had felt everything. Didn't want to imagine it, knowing how much it had meant to him at the time.
But then he touched her cheek, a featherlight caress, and the bond sang between them, tingling at her skin.
"That was your past, Rohmir," she said softly. "It doesn't matter how you feel about her now. What matters is that she was important enough for the book to show us that memory. She's part of this story, whether we like it or not."
Silence.
Then—
"Sometimes you say some wise shit," Rohmir muttered.
She let out a breath, relieved for the shift in conversation.
"Look," she said, "I have interior designers coming in an hour to discuss the remodel. I need to prepare, so you'll have to excuse me."
He watched her, silent.
She hesitated, then added, remembering, "Oh. One more thing—the guy from the meeting said they're part of a whole organization. They have a building in town. I don't know if that helps."
Rohmir considered her words. Then he sighed. "Fine. I'll go."
. . .
Rohmir POV
With a flick of his magic, Rohmir materialized outside Mint Café.
He inhaled deeply, the crisp scent of roasted coffee and sugar-dusted pastries swirling in the air. Humans bustled past him, oblivious to the ancient power standing among them.
His gaze swept over the café's interior through the glass windows. He had been watching Evie earlier when she arrived for her meeting. He hadn't been able to hear what was discussed, but if something had gone wrong—if they had threatened her, insulted her, so much as breathed wrong in her direction—he would have burned the entire place to the ground.
He stepped inside.
Immediately, the waitress who had served Evie earlier spotted him. Her eyes brightened as she practically purred her way toward him, her hips swaying like a pendulum.
She adjusted her top mid-stride, subtly—or not so subtly—plumping up her cleavage. "Good afternoon," she cooed, her voice honeyed with intention. "Welcome to Mint Café. Let me take you to a table."
Rohmir's eyes remained cold and indifferent. "I want that one." He pointed to the exact table Evie had sat at.
The waitress hesitated, momentarily thrown off. "Of course," she recovered quickly, leading him over with a flutter of her lashes.
She handed him a menu and leaned in, her voice dripping with suggestion. "I'll be back to take your order… and if you need anything else"—her lips curved into a coy smile—"I'm more than happy to serve."
Rohmir didn't even glance at her.
How ironic.
In this life, people wanted to serve him. To please him. To offer themselves at his feet.
But in his past life, he had been the one bound. The one forced to obey. The one who had knelt, unwillingly, at another's command.
Disconcerting.
He exhaled slowly, pushing away the bitter memory. His magic curled around him, weaving into the air like an invisible thread.
The atmosphere darkened, shadows thickening at his command. The energy in the room stilled, unnoticed by the humans sipping their coffee and laughing over pastries. Smoke twisted and swirled, shaping itself into phantom figures—recreating the scene of Evie's meeting.
She stood from the table, her body language tense. Pissed. Frustrated. Her shadow-self pushed her chair in with a little too much force, confirming his suspicion—she hadn't gotten what she wanted from the meeting.
Then, his eyes slid to the shadow of the man who had been sitting across from her. He rose as well, adjusting his jacket, casual… but not too casual. Something about him set Rohmir on edge.
The shadow figure strode toward the exit.
Rohmir rose to his feet. He no longer had a reason to sit here.
With a single, effortless step, he was outside again. The moment the shadow man entered a car, Rohmir lifted a hand, summoning the one thing that had never betrayed him.
The air crackled.
A thundering sound echoed from the void.
Then came his steed—his beast of war.
A mighty black horse, its powerful form materializing from the darkness, its eyes burning with the light of distant galaxies. Its mane and tail shimmered like the cosmos itself, a cascade of shifting stars and endless night.
Rohmir swung onto its back effortlessly, gripping the reins with one hand.
He clicked his tongue.
The beast launched forward, hooves pounding against the pavement—but not a single human noticed. They continued their day, sipping coffee, typing on their phones, walking past him, completely unaware of the celestial storm galloping through their reality.
Only the occasional shiver down their spines or the unexplained gusts of wind hinted at his presence.
Rohmir smirked.
The chase began.
The shadow car wove through traffic, but his horse was faster. Rohmir leaned forward, his body moving in perfect sync with his steed. The city blurred around him, neon lights flashing past as he rode between cars, above them, through them.
And in the middle of the chase, as the wind roared past him, his thoughts betrayed him.
Evie.
Last night.
Her lips. The softness of them. The heat of them. The way she had looked up at him with those teasing, sinful eyes as she wrapped her mouth around him—
Rohmir growled low in his throat. His grip on the reins tightened.
Fuck.
If he wasn't careful, he was going to get hard while galloping through the damn spirit realm.
The things she had done to him… they had been more than amazing. More than breathtaking. She had ruined him. She had rewritten the definition of pleasure in his mind, and now, no one—no mortal, no immortal, no goddess or demon—could ever come close.
She belonged to him.
And he…
He was starting to think he belonged to her, too.
Ahead, the shadow man's car veered toward an intersection.
Rohmir's steed was gaining on it.
But then—
The horse let out a sharp, piercing neigh and reared back, its hooves striking the air.
Rohmir scowled.
There was a barrier.
A force of magic strong enough to stop even him.
He pulled his horse to a halt and narrowed his eyes at the massive glass building in front of him.
The shadow car entered the underground parking garage, vanishing from sight.
Rohmir swung off his horse, his boots hitting the ground soundlessly. His steed snorted, tossing its starry mane.
His gaze traveled upward, reading the words etched into the building's exterior.
Hemut Enterprise.
A slow frown tugged at his lips.
That name…
It felt familiar.
And familiarity, for someone who had spent three thousand years buried in darkness, was a ray of hope.