Corroded

straight, a dark stain across the fit of his black coat. He wore a top hat of black silk, banded in bloody red, and his arms were spread as if in welcome.

I’d been right. The gloves he wore tonight were white. I could not recall ever seeing him choose formal white for his gloves before. It was always too...predictable.

“Welcome!” he called, and his voice projected over the amphitheater with trained finesse.

I gasped, struggling to look beyond him, yet all I saw were more shadows. Shapes, silhouettes, faceless and without name.

An audience. God help me, how long had they been there? How long had they watched him taunt me? Touch me?

Fear stole my breath. I struggled to inhale, to force oxygen into my shivering body.

It came on another wash of spice. Warmth filled me. Eased the shiver.

Euphoric.

Bloody hell and the devil’s own tricks. Opium or something derivative to loosen the inhibitions, free the purse strings. I recognized it, now. The underpinning of the incense, the thing that made it so different and still so familiar. It was to be another skin-show, was it?

With my skin the lure.

Reluctant arousal faded to shuddering fear, and fear gave rise to an anger no opium could ease.

I was a slave to the medicinal tar, I would say that much, but I would not be a docile thing for him to exhibit.

I glared at Hawke’s back, hurling insults at him that did not take shape beyond the muzzle he’d forced upon me. My skin burned, not all of it the substance I breathed upon the air. Shame and anger conspired to strip me of what dignity I had left.

Hawke turned to bestow his devilish smile upon me.

In his eyes burned blue fire; his lips, always a cruel edge, spoke of malice I had never before seen upon his face.

I could no longer convince myself that I dreamed the change.

My fingers tightened on the silks. “Who a’ y’u?” It was a terrible butchering of the question, but I did not let that stop me. As I looked up into the wild blue of Hawke’s eyes, one truth became abundantly clear—a warning I recognized far too late.

This was not Hawke.

He lifted his left hand to his mouth, touching his lips with the tip of his forefinger before pressing that indirect kiss to my lower lip. He did not content himself with a gentle touch. He pushed that gloved finger against my lip until my flesh gave way, smearing the rouge over his pristine white glove and causing gathered saliva to leak over my chin.

I heard gasps from the audience behind him.

Humiliation pricked tears into my eyes.

“To be owned,” the creature wearing Hawke’s face intoned. “A dream denied by a prudish society too frightened to embrace the vices that give us life.” Slowly, he brought his finger to his mouth once more. His tongue darted over the red stain, but it was not me he paid attention to.

When he stepped aside, revealing me completely to the shadowed audience, I wrenched my face to the side, eyes squeezed shut.

His fingers curled in my hair. The pain of his grip demanded I look where he willed it, or lose my scalp. The sound I made was more a grunt.

This could not be Hawke. The devil of this earthly Garden of Eden had always been dangerous, even cruel, but he had never been...this.

Had he?

I shuddered, forcing my eyes wide lest the shameful tears fall.

“You’ve dreamed of it, haven’t you?” Hawke asked, his voice slipping through the hazy candlelight as if it were the very serpent I’d accused him of being. “You yearn for freedom, to be relieved of all expectation and burden.” A born showman, even I found my senses pulled to him—sight, sound, even the yearning of secret flesh.

I swallowed, bit down hard enough on the wooden shaft that pain split through my skull.

“Who better to afford such freedom,” he added, doffing his top hat with exaggerated courtesy at the audience, “than fine men, and such extraordinary ladies.”

I heard a woman’s sultry laugh.

I peered into the golden glow, barely making out the shapes of a dozen or so avid viewers. In the reflected haze that was as much the smoke as it was the glare, I saw the rich color of dyed fabric, lazily flicked fans and the glint of fine jewelry. Enough that I recognized wealth.

What madness was this? That the audience bore the entitled, the wealthy, I had no doubt; no one else could afford this show. What horrors would the uppercrust I’d once been part of encourage? Would they truly watch this and say nothing? All for the sake of what?

A humiliation? A reprieve from endless ennui?

I glared at the audience, staring hard enough that I hoped to shame them all. Each and every one who’d given his coin for this unholy entertainment.

In the leaping candlelight, I saw the glint of flame on copper red hair, but I did not recognize the aristocratic face that watched without expression. A glimpse of finely barbered chops in golden shade, masked by the sudden turning of his head, left me uneasy with fading awareness.

I saw elegant emerald taffeta, and the wide-lipped smile of a lady who did not turn away from my stare. Beautiful, with her brunette hair in a stunning array of loose curls, Lady Sarah Elizabeth Persimmon trapped my gaze with her own.

I could not fathom what dark desires had brought the earl’s daughter so far afield, but I would never forget the look of abject malice upon her lovely face that night.

What was left of my reputation was in tatters.

What had I left to lose?

Nothing.

And so nothing would I give them, these vultures and thieves. Baring my teeth around the wooden rod, I snarled my loathing at them all.

“There are those who deny these wants.” As if I’d given him the cue he desired, Hawke stood beside me. His fingers came to rest over my nape. “Poor creatures that they are, forever burdened by the demands of those who do not understand them.”

I jerked sharply. Though there was too much knowing in his words, I did not like the sound of this little monologue.

“Is it not our responsibility to free them from such?”

I flinched when the fingers at my nape tightened.

“Is it not our duty, as greater men, to bring these fragile birds to our hands? To treat them as they deserve to be treated?” His free hand, rouge-stained, cupped my cheek. I averted my gaze rather than be forced to meet that blue stare again. Devil-bright—filled with a knowledge I myself had handed him.

What a fool, I was.

“Let ‘e go,” I rasped. That more of my gathered saliva dribbled from my straining lips seemed to titillate the crowd who watched; I heard murmuring, even a chuckle.

Hawke’s fingers drifted to my throat. Then lower. Sifting through the froth of lace, they skimmed over the swell of my breast.

My flesh heated where he touched.

My face burned with mortification.

“She fights, because she has been told no self-respecting woman would allow herself to be so revealed.” Hawke’s gentle reproach was not so soft as to be for my ears alone. No, he knew what it was he did, projecting such kindness and understanding across the amphitheater. “No one has allowed her the opportunity to be free of the burden of choice.”