Soulbound by Kristen Callihan

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.”
    For a moment, she simply stared. Her voice, when she spoke, was crisp as burnt toast. “And you can see the light of souls.”
    Before he’d been stripped of his powers, yes. Adam merely gave a curt nod. Eliza’s eyes narrowed, her sweet mouth turning down at the corners. But she said nothing, forcing him to finish his confession. “It is why I created the GIM, you see. In return for their immortality, they had to bring me stubborn souls who refused to die.”
    “So you were searching all this time for —”
    “You.” He met her eyes. “Your light is an exact match to mine.”
    With those words, Eliza cocked her head as if he were a particularly odd object she’d happened across. And never had