Mirek came back a few minutes later.
He hadn't taken off the hide skirt, only rinsed himself beneath the waterfall. His long hair was damp but no longer dripping, red strands clinging loosely down his back. Water still traced slow paths over his skin, gathering at his collarbones and along the planes of his chest before soaking into the already-darkened hide around his waist.
But that wasn't what caught Lavayla's attention.
It was his face.
…Damn.
When she'd met Tharn, Garrick, and the Sunmane lion Beastmen, she'd assumed that was just how beastmen looked—rugged, dusty, rough-edged, all muscle and survival and very little refinement.
She had been extremely wrong.
Mirek was different.
