Corroded

If it occurred to him that he was shackled, held from the floor and powerless to force me to obey, he did not indicate it by so much as a flicker. His features were the same implacable stone I had come to expect, hauntingly beautiful in a way that only the truly deranged might appreciate. His beauty conveyed authority and power; cruelty where the sane might require none.

I understood myself to be among those considered deranged. Certainly, as the tar I’d eaten turned firelight to gold and warning to wicked menace, I had no call to reach up, gently place my gloved fingertips over his chest.

The muscle beneath flexed. Hawke’s jaw hardened to near impossible edges.

“This is my fault,” I whispered.

“This is my doing,” Hawke replied flatly, and his gaze conveyed a fury that should have frightened me. Perhaps it would have, were it not for the opium—or the belief that I was as untouchable as he. “You must leave me. Now.”

“No.” A single syllable it was, but it cracked between us like the lash of a whip.

“Damn you, for once—” He closed his mouth, cutting off his angry demand, until the cruel shape of it thinned. He closed his eyes again, hiding whatever thoughts my refusal engendered within him.

I turned, spied a chair I could use and hurried to drag it back to Hawke’s side. I climbed it easily, stripped off my gloves when I found the locks that would require finer manipulation to pick. It placed me on level with his head, forced me to stretch to reach the locks.

The position put me so close to him that I could feel the heat of his body, an inferno too hot for normalcy and too hard to ignore as I balanced my weight against him. His mouth was too close to my temple while I strained to reach. His breath stirred the fine hairs curling about my ears.

If he so much as twisted, I’d fall.

“Cherry.”

My name again, my given name, sweet as my namesake on his lips. But it was not said sweetly; it growled. It shook, a tremble of breath and snarled effort. The shock of it rent through my concentration. With my hands wrapped around the first of his chains, I jerked my head back, eyes wide to find his pinned not on my gaze, but my mouth.

My lips tingled, as if he’d touched me. As if a finger had drawn across my lower lip.

Open, he’d commanded, only hours ago.

My breath rasped out, and I sealed my lips so tightly, I imagine they whitened.

This was not the reason I was here. I’d come to beg Hawke’s help, not his attention. I’d come because I had nowhere else to ask for help.

I did not know what he could have done, but he was the bloody ringmaster, wasn’t he? He could do so much, if I only offered him my pride.

To find him like this, strung up like some kind of criminal? Isolated, alone. No. “Shush,” I counseled briskly, as if I were the greater force present. “You’re distracting me.”

Forcing my attention once more to my task, I leaned against Hawke’s rigid figure for balance and teased the first of his locks open.

I should have foreseen the consequence of loosening the pull upon one arm, yet I could not be expected to think so far ahead when the heat of the man’s body buried itself into my clothing, nestled into my skin. When I was aware of every second he stared at me, scowled at me, and my senses filled with the fragrance of heat and spice and overwhelming Hawke.

When the manacle released, his arm dropped, and the tension holding him in place lessened along his right side. His body swiveled, tore my balance free and I flailed atop my chair, cursing a sharp uncivility. The floor tilted. The chair tipped.

The muscles at Hawke’s left shoulder bunched, his swollen hand whitening around the remaining chain. With incredible control, his body wrenched back into place. His free arm banded across my shoulders, one hand seized the base of my plaited hair, cradled the back of my head, and as the chair righted itself upon all four legs, I found myself pulled hard against Hawke’s chest.

But it was no measure of safety, no rescue. Hawke’s fingers tightened in my hair, tugged my face up. My lips parted on a gasp.

He swallowed the sound. Plucked the air from my very lungs. His mouth closed over mine, a kiss that was nothing like the first we’d shared that night he’d saved me from alchemical ruin. Where that had been demanding, this was punishing. Where the first had coaxed, this taunted. Claimed. Devoured.

He did not wait for my invite, for I had none to give. No understanding how to give it. His tongue plunged between my lips, tasted the inside of my mouth as if it were nectar of the gods he lived in defiance of; rasped against mine with such controlled violence that I did not know whether to be frightened or intrigued.

Aroused, or silent.

The icy tomb I’d placed around me shuddered.

No. I couldn’t bear it.

My hands stiffened against his chest, fingers digging in to the warmth of his body veiled by thin cotton. I pushed, hard enough to garner his attention but incapable of the strength to break his grasp.

He paid no mind, lips punishing, mouth coaxing mine wider, until he could capture all that I had, claim my kiss as if it were his for the taking.

What it did to me, to the conflict raging within me, was nothing I was prepared to understand.

When it ended, I was left with no uncertainty that it was because he allowed it. He lifted his head, his mouth damp and mine aching.

Did the light pick out the gleam of it upon my lips as it did his? I read nothing of it in his stare, for what shaped his fierce expression was nothing close to kindness. “This is what I promise you,” he said, his voice a dark, violent pledge. I shuddered in the crook of his confining arm. “This is what your efforts will reap. Leave. You will not be allowed another opportunity.” His eyes glittered, too cold for the raw seduction of the kiss. “Lady Compton.”

The name of my title, my late husband’s surname now mine, hurt as nothing else did. As little else could have. A shard of ice to the heart.

Perhaps it would have undone me, had I not wrapped myself so carefully.

Instead of pain, simmering like a cauldron inside my very soul, I allowed pride to rise. Obstinacy to win.

I reached for the second and last lock.

He permitted it without further interruption. But his free hand did not leave my hanging plait, and he watched me so closely, until I could feel his gaze boring into me. Searing, challenging. He said nothing, but I knew his glare for the threat it was.

The taste of his mouth still burned upon mine, and he truly wanted me to leave him?

The man knew nothing of me. Or of my wants.

I did not even know myself.

The manacle released, tore at the tensile wrist it bound. Hawke fell to the floor, landed like an agile cat upon his bare feet, and he dragged me with him. Wrenched from the chair, I found myself gripped in hard hands as he spun, took long steps to the nearest wall and shoved me brutally against it. The impact jarred me to the bone, but it was nothing to the press of his body against mine, the feel of his lips taking mine with such controlled deliberation that I had no opportunity to mend my defenses.

His mouth trapped me, stripped away every word I knew, every bit of will I could pull together, until there was only the heat of him surrounding me. The taste of him upon my tongue. I moaned into his mouth; he took it, demanded more. Pinning me with nothing but his hands and his lips, he feasted at my kiss, sucked at my tongue, bit hard enough at my bottom lip that the pain wrenched a harsh sound of blatant arousal from me.

I would never have believed it of myself.

When he raised his head, I stared at him. My swollen lips parted on a discordant exhale. Yet silence would never soothe the chaos within me.

I could not bear it falling between us.

“What, then?” I whispered, a harsh inquiry. “Will you lay claim where there is nothing to gain?”