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 to 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.