The bathroom was a crucible of steam and shadow.
Eli slipped through the door, her silver-white hair glinting like moonlight, her ash like eyes sharp with a hunger that could burn through stone.
Her silk robe clung to her curves, damp from the steam, outlining every line of her body—a weapon as deadly as the gauntlets she'd worn against Claire and lara.
Her bare feet slapped softly against the cold stone floor, each step deliberate, a predator closing in on her prey.
'She's always been my weakness.' Atlas thought, a memory flashing—her fight with other furing the war, her look aggressive, her touch free of this possessive fire. The contradiction clawed at him: the Eli he'd known, his enemy, versus the Eli now, a woman who burned to claim him, to break him.
Without another thought, Atlas crashed his mouth onto hers. It wasn't soft. It wasn't gentle. It was raw, desperate, furious.
