Page 15 of The Ecstasy of Sin

My hands rest gently on his biceps, and I can’t help but marvel at the thick, corded muscle beneath my fingers. Even through my blurred vision, I catch sight of the dirt beneath my nails against the ink of his heavily tattooed skin.

“Oops. Sorry. I’m homeless,” I blurt, laughing weakly. Everything feels funny—too funny—as I apologize for touching him.

He’s dressed in all black, but he smells divine. Masculine, woodsy, and clean.

Too clean to be touched by someone like me.

I blink hard, trying to clear the haze from my eyes, and manage to focus on the man in front of me.

His tattoos are the darkest I’ve ever seen—abstract, with slashing black lines that carve across his throat and disappear beneath the collar of his shirt. The ink trails down both of his arms in full sleeves, with his right hand inked and the other not. I can’t help but wonder how much of his body is covered.

He’s a lethal combination of dangerous and alluring, built like a warrior with darkness and brutality etched into his powerful body. He is male perfection with a wicked edge, and it should be illegal to be that beautiful. To be out walking among us peasants looking as good as he does.

I’m no better than a man, ogling him like he’s a piece of delectable meat, and I’m starving.

I giggle at that thought. My knees start to give out again, and his hands settle harder against my waist, steadying me. I lift my palms and rest them against his chest. The muscle beneath tenses, and I feel it ripple under my touch. “S-sorry, sir,” I mumble, my breath hitching. “I’m looking for a… d-doctor.”

“Are you hurt?” he asks. His voice reminds me of rich, dark chocolate melting on my tongue. It’s deep, but velvety smooth and so pleasing to the ear. What an incredible sound. He should sign up to record some romance audio books.

Or maybe he could read me to sleep on my last night alive, and help me leave this world in the best possible way.

“Yes,” I whisper, a delicate huff of amusement slipping out as I glance back up at him. For a moment, my vision clears, and I’monce again drowning in his mesmerizing eyes. They’re dark and vibrant at the same time, like a forest during a rainstorm.

Those eyes belong to the most handsome face I’ve ever set eyes upon. More breathtaking than any man has a right to be. The stranger is looking down at me, his brows furrowed in a dark expression I can’t read.

His jaw is sharp, accentuating his rugged and masculine features. In all honesty, I’m not sure I’ve seen this kind of beauty outside of the book covers of romance books.

I giggle, but the sound is light and pained. “You look like the hero from my current mafia romance read,” I tell him, nodding like he knows exactly what I'm talking about. I say it with absolute sincerity, like this is a perfectly normal thing to say to a stranger.

He watches me a little too closely as pain surges, the sensation of an ice pick driving into my skull stealing the breath from my lungs. I gasp, stumbling, and he catches me again, pulling me tight against the hard mass of his body.

“What’s happening?” His voice is a low rumble, like the symphony of a thunderstorm on the horizon.

I try to answer him, but my words slur and tumble out in garbled nonsense—my tongue sluggish and my mouth numb. My brain misfires, scrambling syllables as the storm inside my head finds a new section of my brain to terrorize.

I manage a few words despite the aphasia, focusing all of my energy on pronouncing them correctly. I can only hope it’s enough to make him understand.

Migraine. Pain. Meds.

The pain, the nausea, and the cognitive malfunction… it all becomes too much. The edges of my vision start to darken, and I sway on my feet. This migraine won’t let me go, the assault on my fragile brain escalating to unmanageable extremes without the necessary chemical intervention.

As I stare up into the stranger’s eyes, a small and undoubtedly sad smile spreads across my face. I'm happily lost in the stormy forest of his gaze as darkness creeps in like smoke, curling around the edges of my sight.

Once again, I slip into unconsciousness… collapsing into the arms of a stranger who smells like salvation and looks like sin.

CHAPTER 5

Dominic

“WhatcanIdofor you, Mr. Kael?”

My eyes track Dr. Denton as he steps into the cold, sanitized examination room. His voice is clipped and a little too formal, watching me like I’m a predator crossing his path, and he needs to calculate every careful step during our encounter.

An encounter he isn’t sure he’ll survive.

He’s tense, like my presence in his stark white 24-hour clinic is a bad omen.

I don’t move from where I’m leaning against the wall, arms crossed over my chest, my breath deep and even.