Page 241 of Caelum

“It’s beautiful,” Eve breathed, finally deciding now was the moment to pull away from me so she could tilt her head back and stare at the beauty overhead.

And while she wasn’t wrong, as I stared at her, I knew the true meaning of beauty as I beheld her glorious face.

Everything about Eve called to me.

It wasn’t just a sexual attraction thing, although that helped, it was just her. She was simple and complicated, and the two contrasts just riled me up inside.

After we’d all finished gaping at the library—and trust me, this kind of stuff wasn’t my bag, but even I was impressed—Bartlett cleared his throat and shut down his computer. Avalina turned in her swivel chair to face us too, and she motioned to the two sofas that were lined up with each of their desks.

It was a tight fit, but we all took a seat, and in the end, Eve nestled on my lap, and I wasn’t about to complain about that, was I?

Curling my arms around her was pretty fun, considering she kept wriggling and trying to sit upright.

“Stop fighting it,” Reed teased her under his breath, and since we were beside him, she tensed but didn’t concede defeat until she huffed and sagged into me.

“Much better,” I joked, squeezing her for a second.

There was a twinkle in Avalina’s eyes that told me she was amused, but Bartlett’s stony features made paper look expressive.

Considering this was Frazer’s show, I let him take point. I wasn’t really sure where we were even going with this though. How could a pair of bookworms help us with what was going on with Eve’s body and mind?

“In the pictures you sent, they were on the girl, yes?” Bartlett asked,tilting his head to the side. When Eve nodded, he hummed. “And what triggered this manifestation?”

“Look, we’re not interested in why, we want to knowwhatthey mean,” Frazer clarified, his tone commanding as he glared at Bartlett. He was coming on hot and heavy, but I understood. With academic sorts, you had to take control of a situation. They were more interested in the whys than anything else sometimes, and we didn’t have answers for them.

‘Umm, yeah, we walked through a pair of special gates that are actually a portal and she got an electric shock and turned into a Christmas tree afterward.’That was really going to go down well.

“Sometimes to understand what something means, you need to know the root of its appearance,” Avalina stated, her tone calm. Harmonious. It had me tipping my head to look at her, and where on Bartlett’s face there was no expression, hers was lively with curiosity. Her eyes were sparkling as though she were happy, and she’d begun edging forward in her seat as though she were unable to contain herself.

In all honesty, it gave me the creeps. What the fuck did she have to be happy about?

Wondering if this was some kind of trap and we’d just walked straight into it, I questioned everything we’d been aiming toward for the past two weeks. Once we’d made sure Eve knew we were traveling toward an end goal that might help explain the glow, the lights on her body had dimmed substantially. As though they accepted the fact that we weren’t ignoring them, and we were being proactive about it too. Because, yeah, light energy had feelings and knew whether to get pissy or not.

I ran a hand over my head, inadvertently jostling Eve on my knee. My fingers brushed her arm and the unnatural heat coming off her made me wonder if she was lit up again. The thick plaid shirt she wore—one of Nestor’s this time—covered her ink up like a charm, but I was certain when she’d been glowing before, it hadn’t given off any heat.

“Well, we don’t know why the ink appeared,” Frazer replied to the professor, and it wasn’t that much of a lie either. We didn’t have a fucking clue why Eve had reacted to the portal when none of us had. “Just that it did.”

Bartlett grunted. “May we see the tattoo?”

His irritation with us was almost amusing, and I had to admit that, for a couple who specialized in creepy shit, they didn’t give off weird vibes. Nor did their office. Perhaps I was prejudging them, but I’d anticipated skulls and shit everywhere, and old books tossed in cobwebs. Not an office that would have made a princeproud.

I helped push Eve onto her feet, copping a sneaky feel while I was there, and though she caught my eye and promised death with that glance, she made no other mention of the way I’d squeezed her gorgeous ass cheek.

Underneath her shirt, she wore a simple tank top. The scooped neckline showed too much of her tits—a complaint I was only making because she wore the flannel to cover them for the professors—and thin straps revealed every ounce of the newly marked flesh.

When she began unfastening the buttons, I was certain the professors were going to start salivating which, yeah, was definitely odd. But when she tossed her shirt at me, revealing her ripe curves in the white tank, her delicious ass in the yoga pants she continuously wore, Avalina and Bartlett appeared to stop salivating. If anything, their eyes rounded, and a tremor whispered through them as they gaped at my woman.

Bartlett remained in place, but Avalina got to her feet.

That he stayed lessened my tension some, but after last night, I realized how fucking stupid of me that was. I’d watched Eve use a leg as a javelin… All while her men had been frozen in a stasis worthy ofStar Trek.

Avalina might be deadlier than her husband for all we knew.

I sat up, readied myself for any attack, and saw that my brothers were all as on edge as me. It was scary to think, but Eve represented so much for us now that I knew we were going to drive her crazy for the rest of our lives. She was our walking world, and I wasn’t altogether certain she knew that yet.

With an ease of movement that belied her apparent age, Avalina approached Eve and whispered, “May I?”

Eve nodded and raised her arm so the woman could better see the markings. Avalina began to trace the ink, and though Eve shivered as though the move tickled her, she didn’t pull back or jerk away, so I relaxed some.

---