Zayn Malik named as shirtless hunk in Gigi Hadid's Instagram photo

Zayn Malik has been named as the person posing shirtless in the sexy snap supermodel Gigi Hadid shared via her Instagram account on Saturday (2Jan16).

A photo posted by Gigi Hadid (@gigihadid) on Jan 2, 2016 at 2:36pm PST

The 22-year-old former One Direction singer has been romantically linked to the 20-year-old catwalk superstar since November 2015, when photos emerged of the pair spending time together in Los Angeles.

Although they have not been spotted out in public with each other since November, it seems Zayn and Gigi are playing amorous games online, engaging in flirty exchanges through social media.

Over the weekend Gigi took to Instagram to share photo of a tattooed shirtless man holding her cat - with the markings being identified as the ones etched onto Zayn's body. Gigi did not write any text in the caption and the head of the man in the photo was cropped out, but the tattooes on the subject's arms were clearly the ones Zayn got inked on his left appendage, including a checkerboard artwork on his forearm and a tiger on the bicep.

The flirting was also evident on New Year's Eve (31Dec15) when Gigi shared a photo on Twitter of herself wearing a Bradford City football team shirt, an item of clothing that belongs to Zayn.

Bradford City caught wind of the snap and on New Year's Day (01Jan16) representatives from the athletic organisation tweeted the following message: "@GiGiHadid @bellahadid Gigi, do you not have the new #bcafc shirt? We'll have to get you one!"

Zayn joined the conversation on his own account by retweeting the sports team's post and making a coy comment on the origin of the shirt, writing: "It's a lil old ;)".

The romantic internet teasing seemed to have commenced a week before (ends25Dec15) when Zayn posted a selfie of himself with Gigi on his Instagram account. The sweet black and white photo saw Gigi pressing her face against his cheek.