Corroded

Hawke’s mouth curled up, a cruel edge chiseled in exquisite resolve. “You lie, my lady.”

I winced at the courtesy. “Do I? You’re familiar enough with the precepts of flesh for demand—”

He shifted, and hard fingers bit at my cheeks, silencing my provocation. “Lie to yourself if you must,” he breathed against my lips, “but you will never lie to me.” It was not hope I heard, or consideration. It was statement of fact, as if by saying it, I would see it true—taste the lie as the weak obstacle it was.

Again with the demands, the orders, the effortless authority.

I shuddered in his grasp as Hawke wrenched my face away, such merciless strength that did not care what I wanted. What I needed. His lips drifted against my jaw, my throat. Over the rim of my corset’s protective collar, his tongue flicked, damp and hot. A groan rose in my chest; I swallowed this one down, bit at my throbbing lip.

“I warned you.” Hawke’s lips brushed my sensitive skin with every rough word. “Now I take what is mine.”

The very threat should have ended my reluctant capitulation, should have torn loose what was left of my sensibilities and flung me into action. It should have earned my ire.

I reached between us, caught two hands full of his long, velvet hair and wrenched hard enough to hurt my mending palms, pulling his head back from me. His nostrils flared, eyes widening before narrowing just as abruptly.

“I am no man’s,” I said fiercely. My grip tightened. “I am untouchable.”

“Say what you will,” he replied from between gritted teeth. “I know what you are, charlatan.” Stark arousal filled his features, and I remembered the same upon him that night—a tangle of half-formed memories shrouded in a curtain of pink and gold. There was no alchemical concoction to ease my way now, but in the silken grasp of opium’s bliss, I felt no fear.

“Then we are both the same,” said I.

His teeth bared. “Do not speak of what you don’t understand.”

I laughed in quiet amusement as I allowed the soft, silken strands of his hair to slip through my shaking fingers. The sound seemed to surprise him.

His eyes banked, tawny gold and blue shrouded in shielded reserve, and suddenly, he stepped away. That I was left feeling suddenly bereft snapped another layer from my protective armor.

How? How did he do that? How did he know how to dig his fingers under the measures I desperately utilized to protect myself?

It was as if he tore through them all, as if they were naught but silk and his attention a blade.

He turned, strode away from me across the bare stone floor. His feet made no sound. My heart beat unevenly inside the fragile cage of my ribs, echoed like a death knell in my hearing. I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or indignant at his departure.

Had I been saved?

No. I did not want saving. I did not need saving, not from the likes of him, and not from myself. I jammed my trembling hand into my pocket, fishing for the bit of opium I’d only just taken, when Hawke halted beside the hearth. The firelight loved him, as keenly as if it would bond with his skin, gilding him in wicked orange and devil’s gold.

Real enough to touch, were I brave enough to try.

“Come here.”

The order came softly. My fingers, newly wrapped around the found bit of paper wrapped tar, clenched.

Chapter Fifteen

I looked upon Hawke’s back and did not read welcome in the set of his shoulders, but that was not the way he had ever operated. His gift was not in welcome, not in the promise of safe harbor, but in temptation. In seduction.

In authority and demand.

Slowly, I straightened from the wall. My shoes made somewhat more noise than his bare feet against the stone, a faint rasp of boiled leather, but he did not turn as I approached.

My insides fluttered, as if I’d swallowed a ball of electricity and it sizzled within.

The fire jumped and flickered, painted this strange dungeon in wild flame, and I watched it play along Hawke’s hair. His back. Slide along the high, carved line of his cheekbones as he turned to pin those wicked eyes upon me.

“Fetch the water.”

As if in a dream, I found my feet moving. Obeying without rancor, without a struggle. My gaze slid to the shelf set over the hearth, close enough to keep its contents warmed but avoid burning.

The large pot resting atop it steamed gently.

Letting go of the opium in my pocket, I reached for the wooden handles on each side, polished and worn. I tried to move the whole, to lift it, but the large pot was too heavy for my efforts. I pulled harder. The water inside it sloshed too close to the edge. I flinched as it sizzled upon the fire-warmed hearth.

His hands curled over mine, dwarfed my own. He’d made no sound, but suddenly he surrounded me. Once more, I was ensnared between his arms, caged by the fell and smell of him. I shuddered as the force of my need, the sheer bloody-minded want of him, nearly took my knees out from under me.

He pressed my palms to the temperate wood. With his help, we lifted with an ease that set my heart pounding harder. I could all but taste the pulse at the back of my tongue, as if it were a flavor or a scent.

Walking in tandem, we set the pot down together.

Hawke took me by the shoulders, neither gentle nor patient, and turned me about. His eyes seemed darker, somehow, but the shape of his mouth, the set of his jaw, had not eased. As if he were angry. Conflicted.

Large, blunt fingers pushed the coat from my shoulders. Peeled it down my arms and left it where it fell.

My heart drummed faster. My mouth dried.

Hawke studied the fit of my collecting corset, straighter than fashionably required and thicker than most. Again, his fingers bit into my shoulders. Again, I turned beneath his unyielding guidance. This time, I felt the laces of my corset give.

I took a deep breath. It shook.

“Hawke, I—” It was not him that stalled me, but my own preoccupied consciousness. What would he do? What would I allow?

Would I be afforded a say?

Did I want to be?

The belt holding my various pouches slackened, and this, too, was stripped away. I heard it clink against the floor, the discarded buckle meeting stone.

I felt him step closer, felt the heat of him against my back as one arm came around me to withdraw the blade I carried from its sheathe. The edge winked, razor sharp and lit to brilliant gold.

I felt the same give in my back.

“Such toys,” Hawke murmured behind me.

Delicious shivers whispered over my skin.

The knives were abandoned. Clink. Thud. His fingers swept my loose braid to the side, and I felt the rasp of his calluses against my nape. The buckle at my throat gave.

The corset fell to the floor with the coat, and I stood clad in only my trousers, a thin cotton shirt and boots.

The air that surrounded me was not cold, yet my nipples tightened. I shuddered with the sensation. My fingers tightened into frightened fists at my side.

I swayed. “Hawke.”

“Say the word,” was his reply, but there was no kindness in it. “Beg me to let you run.”