I didn’t want to elaborate, but I couldn’t seem to shut up. His face, the way he smelled and the nearness of his body made him impossible to ignore. My brain was screaming at me to shut up and walk away. While the rest of me wanted to sit here and do whatever he asked of me. It was a precarious situation.

“You see only outward beauty,” I replied honestly. Men were visual creatures. It wasn’t fair to judge them because of it, but I did. I judged them because, although they were attracted to beauty, they never seemed to dig deeper. At least the ones I’d met didn’t. Heath would have been the perfect man had he not been this way, too. He always chose beautiful women, and they ended up being crazy or mean. Sometimes both. I had yet to meet a man who sought a woman’s inner beauty first.

“The bitterness in your voice when you say that it’s as if you have been overlooked due to the way you look. Almost as if you’re angry because you believe you lack beauty… yet, you’re so damn beautiful it’s scary. You’re a perfect mix of confusing as hell.”

Hearing him call me beautiful had the same effect as the last time he had said it. My stomach felt all the silly butterflies, and I wished more than anything that wasn’t the case. The repel charm was definitely not working on Rathe. I could still repel him, but I’d need to cast a more complex spell. The idea didn’t appeal to me at all. Which made me annoyed with myself.

Rathe could possibly have the power to hurt me far more than Cody had five years ago. I was older now, but memories of Cody still stung. Cody… the only guy I had slept with… the guy I’d thought loved me and I’d given him my virginity. I had been young and idealistic about love. He had shown me at a young age that sex and love were not one in the same. Remembering the image of Cody and Geneva naked in her bed the day after he took my virginity always snapped me back to reality. The tingles Rathe caused immediately vanished.

“Outer beauty is a curse,” I said, holding his gaze. He wasn’t frowning anymore but he did appear to be listening intently, so I continued. “I know how I look but that doesn’t make me a person worth knowing. A person can be beautiful on the outside and evil on the inside. If you look deeper, watch how they interact, how they treat others, what they deem as important then you see their appearance clearly.” I stopped. That was enough explanation. There was no need for me to start ranting. It would change nothing. Human nature was never going to change.