1 Chapter 1

? Rob Hawkes was a god.

That was Eli’s first coherent thought of the morning, and largely for the way Rob was inelegantly sprawled in the bed, the sheets twisted around his waist and the morning sun pooling gold over his skin. His physique—those hard lines of muscle, the breadth of his shoulders and the narrow taper down to flat abs to his hips—was nothing short of mythological divinity.

And fuck, Eli wanted him.

But Eli was loathe to disturb him when he looked so peaceful. Rob didn’t look peaceful, as a rule. He had a hard face with scowling brows and a tense jaw; to see those harsh angles softened was a treat, and one Eli wanted to enjoy for a little longer.

Carefully, biting his lip for fear of disturbing the sleeping dragon, Eli twitched the sheets down.

Rob mumbled, but didn’t stir, and Eli sat up against the pillows to drink in the sight of the sleeping, naked body. Long legs with taut thighs smattered with dark hair, large but narrow feet hanging at strange angles from thick ankles and calves like concrete. Even relaxed, there was nothing but muscle there. The left leg was covered from hip to toe in dark, intense tattoos, not an inch of skin left naked from the ink, even if the whole body was naked from clothes. A chain coiled around the ankle, buried in the skin and created out of ink instead of iron. Eli wished fervently he were able to get a real chain, tether Rob to the bed, and never let him leave.

The tattoos rose beyond the hips, but less crowded—a serpent hissed along the ribs, a mechanical heart beat over a breast and rose and fell gently with Rob’s breathing, and a galaxy, vivid purples and reds on a space-scape of black, disguised one powerful shoulder. His arms, one slung across the mattress towards Eli and the other tucked under the pillow, were as coated as his left leg in crowded sleeves, fire and skulls jostling for attention, the faces of loved ones immortalised in ink, dates and quotes hiding between leaves and eagles. Across his back, Eli knew more, but the sheets and mattress hid them from the morning.

For now.

Miles of inked skin stretched out in the sun like this was too much to resist. Eli sighed in disappointment at his own weakness, even as he bent low and dragged a dry, tempting kiss across slightly-parted lips. They were still swollen from the night before, the scar at the corner puckering the bottom lip a fraction. Eli buried his teeth around that fleck of white damage, and tugged.

Rob’s groan was primal.

“Morning,” Eli whispered, bracing himself with arms either side of Rob’s head. He nudged his nose against Rob’s face, pressing plucking, nipping kisses against the man’s chin and cheeks, nuzzling the harsh rasp of stubble and smelling the stale remnants of lager and wet leaves. Eli ached in memory, but the soreness was a welcome reminder. He dropped a hand down the bed to find idle, sated flesh and squeeze it.

That got Rob to open his eyes.

Just a crack, mind, but open was open. Eli—girly as it was—loved Rob’s eyes. The rest of the man was a hulking wall of dark, brooding temper. The body could have been cut from a men’s fitness magazine, but the eyes…

Rob’s eyes were so startlingly pale the contrast against his pupils was almost violent. The grey irises were barely a shade darker than the whites, and it made his gaze ferociously intense, no matter the mood he was actually in. It made him look dangerous, like a feral animal or a predator on the hunt. Made him look alert and watchful even when he wasn’t, and never failed to get attention from whoever was near him.

And, like every other time those incredible eyes fixed on him, Eli felt a jolt in his stomach, and leaned fractionally towards them, as though falling blindly—and uncaringly—into some abyss.

He caught himself—almost literally, splaying his fingers across the broad muscles below the gentle curve of collarbones under skin. A lazy blink and lazier smirk served to promote Rob from merely a sleeping god to one of the arrogant overlords of ancient Greco-Roman mythology.

“You look,” Eli whispered, “like Zeus. A beautiful, powerful, arrogant fuck.”

He did—even lying down, Rob had so much physical power that it could almost be smelt on him. The idle way those eyes tracked Eli’s movements spoke of someone who knew his own ability to control the situation; the rough thumb that came up to rub at the corner of Eli’s mouth and push demandingly past his lips and teeth showed his quiet arrogance.

And God, was it fucking true. Eli would—did, had—bend over and grab his ankles for this man at just the twitch of an eyebrow.