“Mercurial?” He laughed and immediately regretted it when his body seized in protest and the open wounds that crisscrossed his chest began to weep blood. “Dear girl, my temperament is as steady as they come.”

She snorted but her gaze strayed to his chest, and that beguiling pucker returned to her mouth. “When we first met, you acted the insouciant ass. Then you changed, becoming a brooding, snarling, cold, unfeeling —”

“You’ve made your point,” he cut in. “And if my mood was less than appealing, it had all to do with the dour, silent weight attached to me.” She had driven him half mad with her silence. Had she expected him to be happy about it?

Her pretty cheeks darkened. “It’s a good thing I left you then. You are far more pleasant now.”

“Sarcasm, Miss May, is not the mark of a lady.” He rather loved her unladylike barbs, but wasn’t about to confess it now. When storm clouds gathered in her eyes, he spoke again. “Why are you here? Pleasant a distraction though you may be, you appear far better dressed for a party.”

She was utterly lovely in her bronze satin gown that both hugged her curves and offered them up for one’s delectation, a hothouse lily both delicate and luscious. Tiny garnets glittered in her hair and at her throat, bringing out the velvet-brown color of her eyes. Eyes that were focused on his chest. Her fingers twitched over the folds of her skirts. And while Adam would like to think that her attention was due to pure feminine appreciation of his male form, he knew better. She could not stand to see a being in physical pain.

“The party has yet to begin.” Still eyeing his wounds, she rose and went for the leather doctoring satchel she’d brought before. “And I wanted to visit you.”

“Oh.”

Eliza May did something he thought he’d never witness: She laughed. It was a husky sound, full and round and wonderful. Her eyes crinkled, going triangular in shape with her mirth.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” she said, still grinning, “that the great and fearsome Adam of the GIM was reduced to a single exclamation.”

He wanted to scowl, but could not. Not when humor lightened her fine features. It did not help that her gaze slid down his unclothed length, and his cock began to take notice. He did not mind her seeing him naked. Not that there was much to boast of at the moment. He’d had better days. But her stare was altogether too probing for his comfort. And he rather thought now was not the time for his roger to be waving about and begging for attention.

“Keep staring,” he told her, “and I’ll assume you like what you see.”

Slowly, she stirred as if waking from a dream and met him head-on.

“I don’t.”

Adam blinked. Right then, the lass certainly wasn’t one for false praise. A scowl drew at his mouth despite the fact that he bloody well didn’t care what she thought. “You don’t.” He managed to fit a world of skepticism into those two words.

And her rosebud of a mouth twitched. “So certain of your charms.”

He wasn’t. “I am.”

Eliza shook her head, a patronizing gesture if ever he saw one. But her answer was not. “It seems wrong.” Her voice was soft then, thoughtful, and it held all of his attention.

“Wrong?”

“Yes. That I should see you unclothed this way.”

The tight unease in his belly grew. Shame. He felt ashamed. And he hated it. “Lass, it does not bother me in the least if you see me without clothes.”

That earned him a ghost of a smile. “I’m certain it doesn’t. But it still feels wrong. It’d be one thing if you undressed for me.” Adam studiously ignored the heat elicited by that image as she went on. “If you’d done that, I could feel free to be annoyed or disgusted.”

Oh, well, don’t hold back, lass. His glare grew in strength. Not that she noticed. Her bloody, pitying look remained.

“It isn’t your choice to expose yourself. Thus I cannot view your body with anything other than a sense of unfairness and anger that Mab should treat you in this manner.”

He couldn’t say a damned thing to that. In truth, he couldn’t even look at her. He wanted her out of his sight. He wanted to be out of hers. Desperately. A first, and it did not feel like a victory.

“Tell me why you’re here, dove.” Then perhaps she’d go and leave him in peace.

“Why did you treat me as you did?” Her voice was calm, quiet, and yet it rang like a shout between them. He ought to have expected the question, but it surprised him all the same.

Adam braced himself against flinching. Inside, however, an uncomfortable feeling coiled like a knot. All those months he’d held her captive, he hadn’t wanted to tell her the truth. The utter rot of it was that he’d been embarrassed and afraid. Afraid that she’d laugh in his face, embarrassed that he needed her, based on nothing more than a bloody curse. A man ought to have a choice over who his life mate should be.

But he couldn’t say all that now. Not with Miss Eliza May staring a hole through his skull. Flushed, he cleared his throat. “As I said before, I was cursed.”

One delicate golden brow lifted. An annoying prompt to continue. He scowled. “I’d lose possession of my freedom if I did not find my soul’s other half in the allotted time frame.”

Her silence was smothering, making it harder for him to get the words out. “I had a saving grace, however. It was prophesied that my soul’s mate would be one who died before her time yet stubbornly clung to life, and that I’d know her upon sight.” He shifted his arms, trying and failing to alleviate the ache in them. “The light of her soul would match mine.”