These thoughts came to me on the back of such simplicity that it seemed tragic I had missed it earlier in my high temper.
I did not pause to examine the root of my concern; had I done so, I might have taken things with greater tact. I might have also realized that there were no silent Chinese warriors waiting outside the Veil’s door, indicating there was nothing to enforce.
Instead, I burst through the two ornately carved doors into a wall of heat so thick that it stole what little breath I had left. The screens I had grown accustomed to had been moved, clearing the center of the hardwood floor and turning two fires into glowing jewels behind patterned silk. The light may have been directed away, but the heat did not lessen. I was sweating in seconds.
Yet it was not the light glittering on silk and gilt that snared my attention so fully, but that what snagged on tawny skin.
Hawke sat in the center of the floor, his back to the door. If my interruption bothered him, there was no sign of it. Not so much of a strand of his ink-black hair twitched out of place. Left loose, it tumbled to his shoulders in a pin-straight fall, hid any glimpse of his jaw or profile from me. Sweat gleamed on his back, turned his swarthy flesh to gold.
The man had removed his shirt.
Firelight danced behind the screens, but no shadows fell on the broad expanse of bared muscle and ridged strength. What I had suspected beneath Hawke’s cleverly tailored attire was true. This was no waifish gentleman flattered by the fit of a coat.
What I had never dreamed were the wicked lines of puckered flesh marring that dusky skin. My heart shuddered in my chest as I counted as far as twenty before losing where one furrow ended and another overlaid. Each scar spoke of ruthless effort, relentless energy. They criss-crossed his shoulders, his spine, as low as his waist.
I could not fathom what grave transgression would coerce Micajah Hawke to tolerate a whip’s lash.
My mouth went dry. My voice, tight with breathless astonishment, balled up in my throat and even if my soul depended on its use, I could not summon a single word.
Rage flickered somewhere beneath my wordless inanity. Rage that some monster would mar such a perfect back, that a lash would be allowed to touch a creature of such strength and pride.
Hot, damp shivers wriggled down my spine—the heat of the room and the cool of the hall’s air behind me warring to claim my attention. That the awareness of all that bare muscle and skin conspired to add to my discomfort was a fact I chose to ignore.
Hawke had still not moved.
For the first time since tasting that bit of resin, fear touched me. That it could do so even while the bliss worked to take me was a testament to the strength of the feeling.
A feeling I chose to turn into abject curiosity, rather than truly explore what it was I suffered.
I left the door behind me ajar, as if the mere promise of an escape route would protect me, and walked silently across the sweltering room.
I halted just behind him, torn between wanting to crane about to see his face—make certain that he still lived—and to flee while I still possessed the opportunity.
“Hawke?” It was a croak, and one that barely earned the definition of whisper.
A muscle twitched in his back. The scars over it whitened briefly, and relaxed again. To me, to my searching study, it was as if the very air rolled over his skin like a caress. The firelight gilded his body, turned swarthy color to an uncanny luminosity tempting the senses. I wondered if he would be as hot as the air surrounding us.
If he would warm me as a fire would, or if I would simply turn to ash were I to try.
My greater sensibilities warned me away, but the dreamy space I occupied—that Chinese bliss so named for the sweet innocence it engendered within a body and mind—did not heed the warning.
To my great disbelief, my own hand reached to touch him. With him sitting the way I’d seen some of the Chinese do, legs folded, and myself standing, it seemed that he was in greater reach.
That he was somehow less intimidating.
A moment of fickle-minded folly.
What I intended, I could not say. All I know is that the tips of my middle—and forefinger settled upon one of those terrible grooves whitening the skin of his back. It was ridged, almost delightfully so in my opium-ridden senses, with a tactile pleat carved in skin at once smooth and rippled.
The muscle beneath my fingers contracted; the breadth of his shoulders went taut. His skin was damp, blazing hot where I dared to touch.
As if in a dream, I watched my own hand—eerily pale in comparison to his flesh—stroke the wicked line. “Who dared?” I whispered, shocked. At the question, at the rippled scars. At my own temerity.
What I had mistaken for unawareness turned to lethal poise. With a grace and speed I could not wholly follow, Hawke unfolded, rose as a tiger might from a disarming laze. I snatched my hand back, but my pride would not allow me to put distance between us. This game was one I was more familiar with—Hawke enjoyed brandishing his physical dominance over my smaller stature.
Yet as he turned, I realized too late that games were not the goal this day.
Ruthless intent shaped the stark lines of his features, hardening planes and angles I had spent too long admiring from afar. Hawke had always been a handsome man, even a blind woman would say so, but his was not the fashionably masculine beauty reserved for the harmless or weak.
A flush stained his high, sculpted cheeks, a strand of dark silk clung to his lower lip, and framed a gaze that was as direct as it was damning.
Blue eyes blazed from a frame of black lashes.
The room spun. Chills seized me, alternately cooling my skin and burning up where the heat battered at me from all sides.
It had been too long since I’d considered the quantities of opium or laudanum taken, and when was too much.
Perhaps, unbeknownst to my own reason, I’d passed that point.
I shook my head hard enough that I staggered one step back. One hand flailed for stability in a suddenly mad moment; fingers like hammered steel wrapped about my own. I found my equilibrium, but lost what calm I had left as Hawke utilized that single hold to pull me once more off balance.
I collided into his chest, inhaled deeply to feed my oxygen-starved mind and scented the unmistakable fragrance of warmed spice. With it, what I assumed to be the scent of overheated male.
It was not an unpleasant combination.
I craned my neck to glare up at his face, turned down to search mine.
If he had words, I did not know what he intended to say. He did not say them. Instead, very deliberately, he turned my wounded palm to his gaze, studied the ragged flesh.
Blue. His eyes were blue, weren’t they? It all seemed so unclear, as if my dreams had once more replaced the reality I struggled to perceive. I could not understand what had changed. Were his eyes blue?
Were they always?
I wanted to deny his touch, to flee from this frightening scene, yet it was as if another force held me still—a return to my terrible dreams when I knew I was not sleeping.
Hawke’s unfamiliar eyes burned with a hunger I had never in my life seen before, did not know how to manage. Such fiery blue, the heart of a flame searing my flesh with but a look.
I inhaled an astonished breath as he lifted my hand higher still. Exhaled on a mingled gasp of pain and a whimper of outright confusion as his tongue dipped into the shallow furrow the rope had caused. Warmth pooled in my palm, shocks of stinging pain and the wet heat of his open mouth over the wound combined with the blatant certainty of danger. His tongue dragged across the aching groove like a cat’s. My hand shook in his.
I bit back another trembling sound, sharply aware of a treacherous awakening in my chest, in my belly. Lower, still, where the flesh he’d already tasted once warmed.
I swayed, possibly would have fallen if he did not suddenly remove my hand from his lips, pull it to the side.
“You should not be here,” he said, clipped t
o nearly nothing. His lips seemed softer, somehow. Damp from the caress of his tongue on my flesh or the sweat covering us both. His larger hand engulfed mine, holding it out at an angle that forced me to maintain contact against his bare chest. He did not touch me otherwise.
I stared not at him, but my hand, splayed wide as if my traitorous palm would demand more of his attentions. His fingers were very brown against my skin. Not so dark as Zylphia’s mixed color, but nothing as pale as mine, soot or otherwise. A golden shackle, outlined by firelight.
It was a startling contrast; a disconcerting observation that should not have caused an answering echo of want within me. Something fiercely hungry had replaced my fear, battled within me for dominance when all I craved was to be let go, set free.
A lie, that one, and my addled thoughts wasted no time in assuring me of it.
Unfair. So unfair. How could he do such a depraved act and then revert to business as if it had not happened? I wanted to reach up between us and slap his face with the wounded hand he had not so violated, I wanted to stomp on his bare feet and demand satisfaction.
That the word held no single meaning was a fact I instinctively knew he would throw back at me, and I was off-balance enough to attempt the challenge.
Bloody bastard.
A deep breath forced my corseted breast against him—a deed that did not earn me as much composure as I’d hoped the breath might.
“Gangs,” I managed, a semblance of sense. I forced myself to look at him, meet his stare with my own and damn the consequences.
His eyes narrowed. I had been wrong, after all. What I’d mistaken for blue were not—simply the river of flame down the left, turning warmed brown to a devil’s fury.
I had eaten too much, ’tis all. An easy mistake to make. Certainly, I was not the only opium eater to have done it. I resolved to be more careful next time.
At least I’d found my words. “The Ferrymen are amassing in Ratcliffe, where they shouldn’t—” The brief tumble of hard-won words ceased abruptly as Hawke’s fingers closed around my throat.
I froze, barely breathing at all.
“Out,” he said, quiet but nothing remotely soft.
The high neck of my collecting corset helped, but it was merely leather, designed to keep the slats in place over my chest. “Hawke, ‘tis—”
Muscle tightened along his arm. I found myself on my toes, chin high to ease the pressure from between his fingers. “Get out,” he said, this time sharper. The threat apparent in the order drew blood. So used, now discarded.
What was happening? Hawke had always been physical—his was not the patience reserved for intellectual debate—but I had never felt truly in danger. My throat felt ludicrously fragile in his powerful grip, as if he would only need to strain a little before the high collar between his fingers and my flesh no longer mattered.
I wanted to argue, to fight, to demand that satisfaction in a very bloody way, but Hawke did not humor me. Using the hand he still held and his grip on my neck, he forced me backward. Step by step, oddly graceful as I was forced to remain upon my toes, he pushed me from the room. An absurdly agile dance no Society maven would ever see.
My back hit a wall of cool air, then sank into it.
Immediately, the hand he held throbbed in pain. I winced.
He let me go. No push, no struggle. He simply removed his hands, as if I were something to be rejected. Or forgotten. He turned, presenting me that scarred back, and still one part of me ached in sympathy.
The rest snarled in a fit.
What was he thinking? Who was he to discount my help? My intentions were pure, and he could not even afford me the courtesy of hearing me out. Half-blooded bastard as he was, what did he know?
My rage cracked through a bliss that seemed somehow lessened, now that I was removed from the intolerable heat.
I was not kind in my fury. I was, however, not so far gone that I did not recognize the threat his greater physical strength posed. I did not let fly with any of the terrible names crowding my thoughts.
“This is important,” I said to his back, and though I did not shout, it was near enough a thing. “You can play all you like, but this problem is not going to wait!”
“Leave him,” came the evocative voice of the lion-prince I’d left behind. I near jumped from my skin.
Hawke did not address me or to acknowledge Osoba. He did not turn. As the firelight danced within the overheated room smelling of fragrant spice, he simply reached out with both hands, muscles pulled taut across his bare back, and shut the doors. The panels slammed into place, practically in my face.
Furious, I thumped my fist against a painted dragon’s leer, which only brought tears of pain to my eyes.
A hand touched my sweaty shoulder.
“I warned you,” Osoba said, in a manner that suggested I’d brought this upon myself.
I shook off the touch, rounded on him—and found myself face to face with Zylphia, instead. Behind her, the lion-prince waited, his features no more or less composed than when I’d left him.
When had either arrived? Had they seen my forceful ejection from that room? I shot Osoba a glare designed to quell any mockery, but I saw none in the prince’s demeanor.
Zylphia’s expression did not reflect dismay to find her touch so rejected. In truth, she barely looked upon my face, her chin high and shoulders square in a frock that was more tea gown than true day-dress. Jealousy seized me, for no matter how often I begged Fanny to allow me to wear the unstructured fashion of the suffragettes, she had refused.
Now that I had seen a tea gown on Zylphia, I would never measure up.
She was lovely. The pale blue turned her skin to the hue of tea and rich cream, and her hair was loose in a long fall of heavy black. Her blue eyes, startlingly pretty in already exquisite features, were focused on the door behind me.
I stepped aside, because I did not like having no exit at my back. “Why is he in there?” I demanded.
Zylphia said nothing. Avoiding my gaze, she opened the doors, gathered her fine skirts—sheer in material but layered as if to provide a modest, cloudlike effect—and stepped inside.
For the second time, the doors closed on me.
Something ugly twisted my heart. Painfully, malice and poison conspired to turn my rage on Zylphia. To paint upon her the target of my reproach.
But it did not sit right, and I did not know what to do with it. I had no call to think of Zylphia so uncharitably. She had always done what was best for me, trained to act as my maid when the Veil forced her to accompany me above the drift. She had helped me when the sweet tooth had taken Betsy, my dear friend and childhood maid.
Zylphia had even brought me opium when the shock of Earl Compton’s death threatened to overwhelm me.
That I would not allow her to accompany me now was not her doing. It was mine. I feared for her safety—for all who befriended me. I suffered no argument, would broach no debate. It was temporary, I assured myself. Only as long as it took to bring the sweet tooth to justice. Surely she understood that.
Surely, she of all could read the fear that underscored my behavior.
I stared at that door and realized the cost of my independence. With nowhere else to go, Zylphia had obviously returned fully to her role as a sweet.
Like all the sweets, her duties included that of tending to the ringmaster’s every whim.
My fists clenched.
“It is time to go,” Osoba said, spreading one long arm to the side in gentlemanly mimicry.
I could not speak around the pained lump in my throat.
Instead of making any further attempt, I clasped my wounded hands to my chest and turned away from the polished door with its scenes of fantastical conflict. Dragons, tigers and ornate birds tangled together, as if caught in a dance, or a fight.
I would lay good coin on the latter. If I had a fight of my own to attend, I would have traded all I had to be there.
Perhaps it would have hurt less.
I had not even made up my mind if what I’d seen was true, or if I’d only been taken in by the pressing heat and my own imagination. Hawke had thrown me for a terrible spin, and I did not like it. Not one little bit.
I expected Osoba to leave me once I’d been removed from Hawke’s presence, but he did not. He stayed near enough on my backside that I could bear my silence no longer. I spun in the foyer, glaring up at him with all the indignation I could muster. “What do you require of me, Your Highness?”
His teeth were rather white against his black skin, and I noted with some unease that his eyeteeth were slightly sharper than usually seen on a man. Not unheard of in the occasional person, but off-putting nevertheless. “Biddableness,” he informed me.
“Quite a few syllables for a savage prince,” I retorted, snide beyond measure.
His smile did not dim. “Your English disposition is laughably out of place.”
“So is yours,” I muttered, giving him my back in a huff. That I had not yet uncurled my fingers was an omission I chose to ignore. The feel of Hawke’s mouth on my sensitive flesh was something I had entirely too much trouble forgetting.
Damn him. Just when I felt as if I were gaining ground, he went and did something so...so...incongruous.
Osoba’s hand settled on my shoulder. It was not a friendly gesture. “Be still.”
My head jerked up, shaking loose a fine layer of black. “Take your hands off me.”
An order to no avail. The strong fingers gripping my shoulder did not ease, and as two men in red trousers and wide-sleeved tunics stepped soundlessly into the receiving room, I understood why.
I did not often deal with the Veil’s men direct, yet when I did, they were servants—or perhaps some version thereof. They wore black breeches in that funny foreign style and black slippers. The red trousers these men wore suggested they were of a different caste, though I knew little enough of the system to which they ascribed to call it that with any authority.
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