Corroded

The earl’s, perhaps, from the wound I would not leave alone in my heart.

I do not know how much more time passed before a sound at the door earned my manic attention once more. It was a tap. A polite sort of sound.

I smothered an inane snort before it blasted through the vicious ache behind my forehead. “Go away,” I croaked.

A masculine voice trickled through the panel. I could not make it out, but it was not Osoba’s. Nor was it the nasal evenness of the Veil’s—not that I expected that one to tend to the likes of me himself.

“I am not leaving this room,” I said tightly. “Leave me.”

Was that my name I heard? A two-syllable decree?

Much to my surprise, I found my legs unfolding. I rose, clinging to the wall as my knees threatened to spill me headlong into the angled screen.

“Open this door, Miss Black.”

Hawke. The nascent threat inherent in every word was unmistakable, as was the all-too-familiar tones of command. Yet there was something else. Something that tugged at my inflamed mind and plucked from within a memory I had struggled so hard to bury.

Are you with me, Miss Black?

No. No, I wasn’t. Not this time. Did I want to be?

Would it matter so much when I had so little else to bargain with?

Oh, heavens. What was I saying? What was I thinking?

“No,” I replied sharply. Too much fear colored the denial. Too much uncertainty.

Hawke must have heard it. I could never accuse him of being dull-witted, not in my wildest of fancies. His voice came again, neither sharp nor loud. “You have been too long locked away,” he said, and would I in my right mind, I would never have called it gentle. Yet that was the very word I thought of.

Gentle. What madness was I mired in?

I climbed over the trunk, hiking the bulky folds of my borrowed robe over my knees as I did so. My palms slid over the wood, as if by doing so, I could see through it to where Hawke waited beyond.

Would he be clad in his working togs? Would he cover his scars once more?

Or would he stand outside this door, cloaked in the steely authority of his mantle? Glaring at this door as if it dared have the temerity to obstruct his aim.

I would be that aim. Reckless, obstinate, foolish Cherry St. Croix, the collector who could not collect.

“Cage,” I whispered. Some part of myself had the wherewithal to be shocked, but I could not summon the mask of cool derision I needed to maintain distance. If I saw him—if I saw his face, would I have the strength to turn away again? Now? Here?

I could not. More than half out of my senses and too hungry for something to fill this terrible ache inside me, I did not dare risk it.

The door creaked faintly, the lightest touch. My fingers shook against the smooth surface. Had he laid a hand atop it? Were our palms separated only by a bit of carved wood?

I wanted to weep for the pain of my body, the ache of my heart, and could not.

“Open the door, Miss Black,” came his voice, so low that I could imagine him murmuring against the panel I leaned against. So close. “Your lot is already difficult enough. Do not force me to make it the worse.”

A threat. Or a warning? Were they all that different?

“Cherry.”

My name in a rich, masculine command—on Hawke’s own lips—was my undoing. I am not certain when I made the decision, but I scrambled over the trunk before I became fully aware of my own intent, kicked aside the screen, and shoved away the heavy chest with a strength I did not know I had. The chair came next.

The door did not open.

I waited, fists clenched together under my chin, but it remained still. Quiet.

I would be forced to open it myself.

Trembling so hard as to clench my teeth against the chattering, I reached for the door knob. I turned it slowly, opened the panel with such effort, I could not imagine where the strength came from.

There were no curious eyes to stare as cool air wafted into the room. No servants to gawk, no angry lion- prince to threaten and snarl. Only Hawke, clad in the exquisite perfection of his ringmaster attire—black and brilliant blue, the same color as the bit of devilry in his left eye. He wore no gloves this time.

He crossed the threshold, very gently disengaged my clenched hand from the door’s edge, and shut it behind him.

It seemed as if all the air left the room upon his entry. He filled what I now realized was too small a space for the two of us. I had no oxygen to breathe, no room to maneuver.

My knees buckled—everything swayed as if I were on a net, a swing; yawning oblivion on each side.

With the agony of failing dignity, I collapsed.

But I did not fall. An arm banded across my lower back, warmth pressed from breast to hip to thigh, and a bare hand smoothed back my sweat-damp hair from my forehead. Surely I imagined that much.

Surely, Micajah Hawke—the ringmaster of the Midnight Menagerie, Gypsy-blooded bastard and bloody- minded authoritarian—was not cradling me on the bare floor in a cramped, cluttered room.

“What fools you make of my house,” he said, the words a harsh, if quiet, accusation. Yet the arm supporting me was gentle, the muscled press of his thigh against mine only marginally softer than the hard floor beneath me.

I shook my head, over and over as if by doing so, my point would be irrefutable. “No,” I said, pleading it. I had no pride left. Not here, with pain ravaging my body and a need clawing at my belly, my mind. That the robe had opened over my legs, exposing my knees and ankles, seemed unimportant. My modesty, what was left of it, did not matter. “I will not. I won’t.”

A rough hand seized my jaw, captured my face between thumb and fingers with unbreakable force. “Proud, ignorant, reckless creature.” Each name an insult, yet his voice was as music to me—a salve, a sweet harmony.

I did not understand it. I could not fathom why.

All I knew was that I hurt in ways I would do anything to end.

“Tu zi wei ba,” he murmured, “chang bu liao.”

The refrain lodged within my senses, echoing, underscored by mocking laughter that was not his.

With what seemed to be effortless strength, he rearranged my body to lay completely against his, enfolded by his arm, trapped by heat and power and iron will. It freed his other hand, but for what, I did not know until the fingers at my jaw tightened to painful degree.

“Open your mouth,” he ordered. His gaze burned into mine—darkness torn by azure radiance, too bright. Too knowing.

I squeezed my eyes shut, appalled when a tear leaked from the corner of my lashes.

His fingers dug in to my cheeks. “Open it.”

I had no choice. Parting my lips relieved the tension of his grasp. The sound I made was both anger and despair, a terrible noise I had only ever made at my dying husband’s side—so much blood, everywhere. It painted the backs of my eyelids now, a ghostly reminder that seemed as real as the man who held me.

Something passed between my lips. Before I could spit it out, turn away, Hawke placed his hand beneath my chin and forced my mouth to close.

My lips sealed over two of his fingers. I tasted the shock of heated flesh, the salt of callused skin.

The acrid burn of tar as it touched my tongue.

I gave myself no order. As if bearing a mind of its own, my tongue twined about the fingers enclosed in my mouth, dragged over calluses and warm skin.

A strained sound seemed to fill Hawke’s chest beneath my lolling head, but I paid no mind—opium’s sweet lure eased the ache inside me, calmed the chills and fevered sweat battering at my senses. I whimpered as he withdrew his fingers, my teeth closing over the rough pad of his index finger.

His other hand fisted in my hair. “Let go,” he ordered, so quietly it was nearly a growl.

I did not want to. I wanted to be sure to lick every bit of the tar from his fingers, to suck the very flavor of it from his flesh.