Corroded

The man was damned difficult to read on any other day. I expected no different now. He was, in the end, just another man who’d gotten his flesh.

That I had enjoyed it—no, that it had stripped from me everything that held me down, tore from me the constraints of a life I had no control over, was something I could easily accept.

I now understood why there were them what risked all for the act I’d always considered more of a chore, a means to a wage.

The hearth painted the chamber in shades of gold, gilding Hawke’s silhouette. I eased the edges of the rumpled bedclothes around me, feeling a sense of insecurity I’d lost somewhere between the bath and the bed. The remains of his release still clung to my flesh, and I felt awkward beyond all measure.

By heaven, I made no logical sense.

Hawke did not turn. The stark contrast of white ridges against the tawny expanse of his back seemed all the more bleak this close, and the angry welts curved over his side left my cheeks hot with the realization that I’d put them there.

As I’d found myself doing the first I’d seen those lurid scars, I reached out a hand. Traced the edge of one with a gentle fingertip.

The muscle beneath jumped. Hawke stood, a fluid motion that only served to showcase the grace and agility with which he moved. A tiger, Zylphia had called him once. True enough. Black and gold.

And wicked as the Devil himself.

“Those aren’t old,” I said, daring to break the silence grown between us. That parts of me still ached, thrummed with pleasure and other unfamiliar sensations, made my casual observation all the more ludicrous.

I wish there’d been at least a pamphlet to guide a lady after her first encounter. At the very least, something for brides. Was the expectation that she would have more to speak of with the man she married?

Impossible. I could not imagine sharing this moment with my late husband. Of all the things we had shared, I could not think of the earl as a man to become more like...

Hawke.

Oh, what a horrid thing I was to compared the two, and unfairly at that. The very thought turned me cold, stripped the vestiges of a fading heat from me and left me scrambling for a different need altogether.

I sat up, clutching the bedclothes to me.

Hawke strode for the small table beside the hearth, poured himself a glass of something that gleamed like garnets held to flame. Wine, perhaps. Or brandy. “Leave it alone,” was his only reply, before downing much of the liquid.

My eyes narrowed. “You must think me one of your bits of flesh.”

“Aren’t you?”

It took effort to refrain from gasping from the verbal blow. “If you believe that,” I replied, coolly as I was able, “you’re rather more deranged than I credited you.”

At least he turned, one black eyebrow arched high. The glass in his hand winked. “You’ve no measure of it, Miss Black.”

The cool return of that moniker cemented my hatred for it. I stood so quickly that my legs bumped the bed behind me. The noise it made as it shifted seemed overly loud in my suddenly pounding ears.

“Very well,” I snapped, striding to the pile of my discarded clothing—and the opium within the pocket. The yawning void opening in my belly spoke of feelings, of injury, I had no desire to share. “I shall leave you to your prison.”

“As you should have the moment you found it.”

The reminder only served to widen the ache, tear free the wound inside me. I stumbled over the edge of the blanket I’d taken with me, sank to my knees and found myself fumbling with the coat I suddenly could not see. Not through the blur affecting my vision.

Not tears. I would never cry for the bastard. Not for him.

Perhaps for other reasons. Other wounds.

Even perhaps for me.

I muttered wordless frustration as I sought blindly for my coat pocket.

Warm hands covered mine.

I stilled, blinked hard to find Hawke kneeling before me, his features implacable. Yet he tugged the coat from me. “What is it you want?” he asked, each word constrained to terse effort.

“The truth,” I snapped.

Even I did not know what truth I spoke of, but Hawke only looked down to my coat. Long fingers dipped into the pocket. “The scars are the reminder of a punishment that did not take.”

Any other person might have displayed humiliation, or perhaps a self-conscious regard. Hawke spoke matter-of-factly, unbowed by the whip that had taken his flesh. Unbroken by the badge of shame he carried with no shame at all.

“They’re fresh,” I said again. “Enough that the scars are still pale. Was it recent?”

He inclined his head, looking up when he withdrew the bit of opium I’d searched for. His gaze told me nothing, banked and reserved.

Mine widened. “My doing?” Of course it was. It made sudden sense. Zylphia whipped for her temerity to hire her own collector, Hawke whipped for...what? What part? What had I done to cause his punishment?

I watched him peel back the wax paper with neat precision, my mind spinning wildly. “I don’t understand. I didn’t know... Why? Why would you be punished for me?”

“It was not your doing.” There was no arguing that tone.

I did anyway. “Of course it was. The timing is too neat, you did something the Veil did not like. For me?”

“Never flatter yourself, Miss Black.”

“If it’s truth—”

“It isn’t.” Hawke lifted the finger-width bit of resin to his lips. Strong, white teeth flashed, and my insides twisted as he bit off half of the globule.

My mouth dried.

He plucked the bit from his lips, damp and misshapen. “My Menagerie does not revolve around you, troublesome pet that you are.”

“But—”

“Leave it.”

“What about this?” I demanded, gesturing at the chamber I’d called a prison. “You were chained, Hawke.”

“I said leave it.” His free hand cupped the back of my head, pulled me to my knees and forced me to brace one hand against his bare shoulder. God above, he was warm. Brilliantly, blazingly hot. “Open,” he ordered.

The will drained from me. “Damn you, Hawke.”

“Open your mouth.” Unyielding.

Lost in the driving intensity of his stare, I obediently parted my lips. His fingers passed between them, depositing the tar on my tongue, and this time, I did not await his efforts. I closed my mouth, deliberately sucked at the flesh that had so intimately known mine moments before.

His gaze darkened. His jaw tightened.

This time, when he withdrew his fingers from mouth, he did not allow the distance to keep. The hand at my nape tugged me closer, so close that his mouth seized mine, claimed my lips for a kiss that did not speak of tenderness or sympathy. Neither would ever be Hawke’s language, and I did not care. His tongue slid between my lips, to taste deeply of me, my breath, and the bitter tar that melted between us.

All that I was liquefied into a wild-light river of blue sensation.

It was not until later, after he’d taken me again against the wall, my cries muffled against unforgiving stone and my hair wrapped about his fist—after he’d driven me beyond all grasp of reality and dreamy insanity—that I realized he had not given me any sort of explanation at all.

The things we demanded of each other were not selfless—and oh, I knew I would carry the scars of this night forever.