Corroded

Run? He expected me to run? In that moment, I decided that I was through with running.

I had come to demand his intervention, but the game had changed. I would beg for nothing.

One large hand spread across my back, and the feel of it fractured something brittle inside me. Something cool and cautious; something I had forgotten at his first imperious directive.

I was to be untouchable, was I not?

How foolish I was.

He cradled me in the crook of his arm, supported by his strength, until my boots were removed. Then I was righted, as if I were no more than a toy at his beck and call, and I felt his fingers at the flap of my trousers.

My head came up. My hands laced around his, gripping tightly as heat suffused my cheeks. “Wait—”

Deftly, he reversed my grip, caught both hands and banded me securely between his arms. “Beg for me to stop.” The dark menace in the ultimatum ghosted across the sensitive skin of my ear and heightened that delicious sensation inside me. The flesh between my legs clenched, and I gasped.

I did not beg.

Holding my wrists with a single firm hand, he undid the buttons holding my trousers in place, and pushed them down. My saving grace was that my shirt, a man’s and much too big for me, hung to my knees. Yet I could not deny that I could feel the air upon my bare legs, shuddered as it slipped beneath my shirt to brush against my sensitive flesh.

I inhaled sharply.

Hawke drew me from the pile of discarded clothing, guided me closer to the basin of steaming water. It was not nearly large enough for a bath, and I wondered on a strained note of near hysteria if he intended to drown me in it.

“Kneel.” It was a taunt, a dare that I could not mistake.

He knew I wouldn’t misunderstand. Had counted on it.

My lips curved. Did he consider me so weak?

I knelt. The stone bit into my knees.

Hawke’s jaw shifted, a muscle leaping near his temple. A dull flush darkened the skin pulled taut across his cheekbones, and the answering thrill this engendered pulsed a wicked pleasure through me.

Slowly, deftly, he rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

It was easy to imagine this man center in the rings, whip stretched taut between his elegant hands; effortless in direction, unforgiving in expectation.

I watched him now, trembling with anticipation, as he cupped his hands and submerged them into the basin. Water splashed to the stone when he raised them again, trickled down his forearms and peppered his trousers. I watched the glistening liquid trace his skin, catch on the dark hair revealed by his rolled sleeves.

When he allowed it to drip over my shoulder, to seep into the pale fabric of my shirt, I stirred. The heat of it simmered against my skin, slid across my breast and down my back. To my surprise, a moan rose in my chest.

“Release your hair,” Hawke said, his eyes not on mine but the stain spreading over my shirt. I looked down, breath catching as I saw clearly the outline of one pale pink nipple, cradled gently by translucent fabric.

I’d never had to consider the issue before, as my corset concealed all.

Now color rose in my face, and self-conscious awareness shredded the remains of my calm. I sucked in a breath that broke half way, made as if to stand.

Wet hands caught my head, fingers speared into my hair. I was forced to look up, to meet the madness in Micajah Hawke’s mismatched eyes, the intensity with which he studied me.

I had never before seen that look upon a man, never understood to what lengths a woman might go to do so. What gripped him seemed as close to savage hunger as I could imagine, focused as a predator might upon such tender prey.

Madness, perhaps, but if it truly was, it was a kind of lunacy I understood.

Such things came with the blood, after all.

“Your hair,” he rasped, forcing the words out as if he were angry. Or desperate. “I would see you as you are.”

My undoing, that heated sentiment. Whatever he felt, whatever he wrestled with inside his own skin, it was me he looked at.

With shaking fingers, I unbound my plait. It left my fingers gray and smudged, but this did not last. For ten long, torturous minutes, the ringmaster of the Midnight Menagerie washed the lampblack from my hair. He smoothed the stains from my skin, ran his work-roughened hands over my shoulders, peeling down the shirt’s collar just enough. My arms, my throat, even my bare legs were not neglected. To see his golden skin against my much paler flesh was as shocking now as it was when first I’d noticed it, an uncomfortably powerful intensity that served to heighten my senses to the point of excruciating anticipation.

Each second burned, each stroke another finger of heat burning my resolve into nothing.

I watched him work, concentration and fierce passion branded upon him like the firelight that saturated us both. In him, I saw a hunger so desperate that I felt compelled to look away, as if I had seen a secret I was not supposed to.

Water dripped from my chin, my fingers. Even from my legs, draped by sodden fabric but bared to the warm air between my knees and the ground I knelt upon. My breath came too fast, shallow bursts of air that did nothing to ease the riotous sensations plaguing me from all directions.

Hawke wrung out my hair, and I peeked to the side to find his fingers tangled into the sodden red strands, a look of such possession upon his face that fear crawled inside my haze and shuddered.

I would not be a thing to own.

I scrambled to my feet. The act wrenched my hair from his hands. It swung wide, made heavier with the water, and flung droplets across the chamber. Over Hawke’s chest, scattered to the stony floor.

Hawke did not lunge for me, as I half expected. He did not reach. He rose to his feet, then fell so still, he could have been made of the stone I’d often likened him to.

For all his immobility, nothing in this world could hide the predatory control with which he marked my every movement.

With my heart in my throat, I backed from him. My hair clung to my waist in heavy wet strands.

His gaze touched upon my collar bones. Then my bosom, patently visible through the clinging fabric. I crossed my arms over my chest. It did no good. The shirt clung to me. I may as well be nude, for all the good it did.

Shame and fear and the sharp edges of arousal battled within me.

Hawke took a step closer. “Where do you run?”

My knees firmed. “I do not run,” I spat.

“Then what do you call it?”

He terrified me. This, what I felt, this oddly tender way he washed my hair and the fierce branding of his stare, were all too much. What was I to do with this?

What did it mean?

He closed the distance step by determined step. I backed away, until there was no more room to move and the wall came up hard against my shoulders. It was cooler on the far side of the chamber. Not as brightly lit.

His eyes glittered still, that devil’s streak bluer than any blue found in the natural world. Wicked bright.

Knowing.

“Are you frightened, my lady?”

“Do not call me that.” The words lashed out, ragged and angry.

“Do you fear what you’ll find, Countess?” He did not slow, did not pause. The taunt in his tone was not enough to hide the rough aggression buried beneath. He came closer until his hands pressed against the stone on either side of my head, and he bent until we were eye to eye.

Trapped, I could only bare my teeth at him. “Do not use that title.”

“Is it not true?” His lips touched mine. A skim, nothing more. “Are you not a countess?” Another, this time a nip of his white teeth against my lower lip, as if he could not help but steal a taste. Just a bite. I jerked. “Does not a man of my low-born consequence sully your white skin, my lady?”