I had not meant to look, not truly. My hand had found him first—warm, hard, and trembling beneath my uncertain touch—and only then did my eyes, as though bound by some forbidden tether, dare to lower.

What I beheld stole the breath from my lungs. He was…vast, proud, carved as though the gods themselves had placed him in my palm, veined with strength and pulsing with a life that was all his own.