There had never once been a day Phei wasn't robbedof speech and breath the instant his eyes found the goddess — no matter how little she'd troubled herself over the outfit, or how small or unremarkable the thing she happened to be doing, she had never failed, not a single time, to stop him cold in his tracks.
The world simply hushed around her, the way a room holds its breath on a sustained note, waiting to be told it may exhale.
And gods — gods — if she didn't feel like the only thing in all his world more breathtaking than everything else his world contained, combined and set on fire.
He paused now in the open doorway and simply looked as if she was proof of something he hadn't fully let himself believe was real — and her beauty alone seemed to coax his very soul up and out through his ribs, leaving behind a lovely, gratified husk whose only remaining purpose in this or any life was to stand here.
She never tired of that look he gave her:
