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“Show off,” I say.

He reclaims his knife and holds the point to the bottom of my throat. “You say you’re drawn to me.” I nod, not trusting myself to open my mouth. “What is it? Is it the darkness you like? The doubt that crawls under your skin?”

I look up at him. His brown eyes search mine, flicking back and forth beneath angled brows.

“Tell me,” he says.

“Maybe. How the fuck would I know? I can’t figure you out.”

He sits back a bit, my thighs under his. “That’s too bad.”

“What?”

Keeping the knife in place, he scoots down my body and lowers himself over my chest, my legs hugging his sides. Hischin rests in the hollow spot between my ribs, right over my birthmark, roughly the shape of an eye. “It’s a curse.”

“Curses aren’t—”

“They’re as real as your naked body under me, Never. Do you want to deny that too?” He shimmies his hips back and forth, desire igniting at every point of contact.

Somehow his words make the reality of our closeness palpable. I bury the denial, for him. “Your many lives are a curse?”

“No, what I am is the mistake. The curse is different.”

“So…you’re doubly fucked up?” I pull on a curl resting on his temple.

“You could say that.” His chin presses into me as he talks, his stubble scratchy. “I was cursed as a baby. My mother’s other lover did it out of jealousy of my father.”

The blade quakes against me in his grasp. “It forces people to see me a certain way. Either they look at me and see exactly what they want—someone they trust, someone they follow, even if they question it. Or they see the opposite. They fear and despise me, avoid me, and never trust. My whole fucking life. It doesn’t matter what I do or say. My actions are pointless. The curse sways them one way or the other.”

He lifts his head, pain-stricken eyes peering at me past the tips of his ringlets. “Do you know what that makes me?” Cool air blows from his lips over my chest, and the ashes float up, dusting my face in soot and catching on my lashes.

“No.” A fist takes my heart in its unforgiving grasp.

He swipes the knife down from my throat through the braided center string of my bra, marking me with the faintest red line as the blade drags between my breasts, then scrapes away the fabric. The blue stone and ring slide down my right side, and the key and jade button tumble over my left breast and onto themoss beside me. My face heats, my chest moving with sporadic breaths.

Knife tossed aside, he sits up straight and darts his eyes over the treasures he uncovered, breasts and blood and trinkets alike. And as though he has all the time in the world—which apparently he does—he tucks my mess of hair behind my ear then runs his tongue up the center of my chest before sharing the metallic taste with a rough kiss to my lips. Picking up the key, he positions it over my heart, then sticks the button in my navel and gives it a tap with a satisfied curl of his mouth.

I watch his every move, entranced, waiting for him to answer his own question. He bends until his body is flush with mine and plants a kiss on the stone of my necklace, setting off a sizzling heat, then another on my birthmark. The key tumbles to the moss, and his eyes find mine.

“Invisible. It makes the real me fucking invisible.” He blows again, a tiny hurricane against my breasts. My nipples harden, and I curl my fingers around the suspenders on his back.

“I see you,” I whisper, barely able to breathe.

“And you know what the worst part is?” His eyes are raw, buried in hurt. “I’ll never know if the people who claim to care about me truly care, or if it’s the curse that has them following blindly. If I can’t tell what’s real, then what’s the point?”

I simply look at him. This tragic man.

“I used to try. Growing up, I didn’t understand why some people hated me even though I was as nice as anyone else. Then my father died, and I got his memories of the fight with my mother. I learned about the curse that they never bothered to explain to me. It all made sense, but these people in my head…” His eyes close for a lengthy moment, long black lashes skimming his cheeks. “All the things I learned about the past. All the voices and memories. It’s too much. I stopped trying to make peoplesee past a curse. I give them what they’ll see anyway—a reason to run.”

He snakes his tongue over my nipple in tiny circles of wrath. I slam into him, arching my back and moaning through the entire assault.

He continues as though I hadn’t moved a muscle. “So, it’s either one or the other. Butyou—” I writhe and gasp under the pinch of his fingers on both my nipples, rolling so casually as he talks. “You see both sides of the curse. I don’t know why.” He twists so hard that I cry out, then frees my nipples from his vise. “But will you ever really see me? The man behind the curse?”

Tears trickle down my ashen cheeks, but not from pain. It’s the torment in his question, the way his voice cracks. My hands cup his cheeks, coarse hairs pricking my skin, and I’m reminded of how Kelter holds my cheeks and looks at me so tragically after my visions. I don’t want to be like that with Eli. I don’t want to hurt him—not his heart—but I do need to know…

“Why do you care what I see in you?”

He covers both my breasts with his hands, his thumbs stroking up along my nipples. His face changes, a look so sincere and vulnerable with the smoothed lines of his jaw and his softening eyes that I want to look away.