But it was no measure of safety, no rescue. Hawke’s fingers tightened in my hair, tugged my face up. My lips parted on a gasp.
He swallowed the sound. Plucked the air from my very lungs. His mouth closed over mine, a kiss that was nothing like the first we’d shared that night he’d saved me from alchemical ruin. Where that had been demanding, this was punishing. Where the first had coaxed, this taunted. Claimed. Devoured.
He did not wait for my invite, for I had none to give. No understanding how to give it. His tongue plunged between my lips, tasted the inside of my mouth as if it were nectar of the gods he lived in defiance of; rasped against mine with such controlled violence that I did not know whether to be frightened or intrigued.
Aroused, or silent.
The icy tomb I’d placed around me shuddered.
No. I couldn’t bear it.
My hands stiffened against his chest, fingers digging in to the warmth of his body veiled by thin cotton. I pushed, hard enough to garner his attention but incapable of the strength to break his grasp.
He paid no mind, lips punishing, mouth coaxing mine wider, until he could capture all that I had, claim my kiss as if it were his for the taking.
What it did to me, to the conflict raging within me, was nothing I was prepared to understand.
When it ended, I was left with no uncertainty that it was because he allowed it. He lifted his head, his mouth damp and mine aching.
Did the light pick out the gleam of it upon my lips as it did his? I read nothing of it in his stare, for what shaped his fierce expression was nothing close to kindness. “This is what I promise you,” he said, his voice a dark, violent pledge. I shuddered in the crook of his confining arm. “This is what your efforts will reap. Leave. You will not be allowed another opportunity.” His eyes glittered, too cold for the raw seduction of the kiss. “Lady Compton.”
The name of my title, my late husband’s surname now mine, hurt as nothing else did. As little else could have. A shard of ice to the heart.
Perhaps it would have undone me, had I not wrapped myself so carefully.
Instead of pain, simmering like a cauldron inside my very soul, I allowed pride to rise. Obstinacy to win.
I reached for the second and last lock.
He permitted it without further interruption. But his free hand did not leave my hanging plait, and he watched me so closely, until I could feel his gaze boring into me. Searing, challenging. He said nothing, but I knew his glare for the threat it was.
The taste of his mouth still burned upon mine, and he truly wanted me to leave him?
The man knew nothing of me. Or of my wants.
I did not even know myself.
The manacle released, tore at the tensile wrist it bound. Hawke fell to the floor, landed like an agile cat upon his bare feet, and he dragged me with him. Wrenched from the chair, I found myself gripped in hard hands as he spun, took long steps to the nearest wall and shoved me brutally against it. The impact jarred me to the bone, but it was nothing to the press of his body against mine, the feel of his lips taking mine with such controlled deliberation that I had no opportunity to mend my defenses.
His mouth trapped me, stripped away every word I knew, every bit of will I could pull together, until there was only the heat of him surrounding me. The taste of him upon my tongue. I moaned into his mouth; he took it, demanded more. Pinning me with nothing but his hands and his lips, he feasted at my kiss, sucked at my tongue, bit hard enough at my bottom lip that the pain wrenched a harsh sound of blatant arousal from me.
I would never have believed it of myself.
When he raised his head, I stared at him. My swollen lips parted on a discordant exhale. Yet silence would never soothe the chaos within me.
I could not bear it falling between us.
“What, then?” I whispered, a harsh inquiry. “Will you lay claim where there is nothing to gain?”
Hawke’s mouth curled up, a cruel edge chiseled in exquisite resolve. “You lie, my lady.”
I winced at the courtesy. “Do I? You’re familiar enough with the precepts of flesh for demand—”
He shifted, and hard fingers bit at my cheeks, silencing my provocation. “Lie to yourself if you must,” he breathed against my lips, “but you will never lie to me.” It was not hope I heard, or consideration. It was statement of fact, as if by saying it, I would see it true—taste the lie as the weak obstacle it was.
Again with the demands, the orders, the effortless authority.
I shuddered in his grasp as Hawke wrenched my face away, such merciless strength that did not care what I wanted. What I needed. His lips drifted against my jaw, my throat. Over the rim of my corset’s protective collar, his tongue flicked, damp and hot. A groan rose in my chest; I swallowed this one down, bit at my throbbing lip.
“I warned you.” Hawke’s lips brushed my sensitive skin with every rough word. “Now I take what is mine.”
The very threat should have ended my reluctant capitulation, should have torn loose what was left of my sensibilities and flung me into action. It should have earned my ire.
I reached between us, caught two hands full of his long, velvet hair and wrenched hard enough to hurt my mending palms, pulling his head back from me. His nostrils flared, eyes widening before narrowing just as abruptly.
“I am no man’s,” I said fiercely. My grip tightened. “I am untouchable.”
“Say what you will,” he replied from between gritted teeth. “I know what you are, charlatan.” Stark arousal filled his features, and I remembered the same upon him that night—a tangle of half-formed memories shrouded in a curtain of pink and gold. There was no alchemical concoction to ease my way now, but in the silken grasp of opium’s bliss, I felt no fear.
“Then we are both the same,” said I.
His teeth bared. “Do not speak of what you don’t understand.”
I laughed in quiet amusement as I allowed the soft, silken strands of his hair to slip through my shaking fingers. The sound seemed to surprise him.
His eyes banked, tawny gold and blue shrouded in shielded reserve, and suddenly, he stepped away. That I was left feeling suddenly bereft snapped another layer from my protective armor.
How? How did he do that? How did he know how to dig his fingers under the measures I desperately utilized to protect myself?
It was as if he tore through them all, as if they were naught but silk and his attention a blade.
He turned, strode away from me across the bare stone floor. His feet made no sound. My heart beat unevenly inside the fragile cage of my ribs, echoed like a death knell in my hearing. I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or indignant at his departure.
Had I been saved?
No. I did not want saving. I did not need saving, not from the likes of him, and not from myself. I jammed my trembling hand into my pocket, fishing for the bit of opium I’d only just taken, when Hawke halted beside the hearth. The firelight loved him, as keenly as if it would bond with his skin, gilding him in wicked orange and devil’s gold.
Real enough to touch, were I brave enough to try.
“Come here.”
The order came softly. My fingers, newly wrapped around the found bit of paper wrapped tar, clenched.
Chapter Fifteen
I looked upon Hawke’s back and did not read welcome in the set of his shoulders, but that was not the way he had ever operated. His gift was not in welcome, not in the promise of safe harbor, but in temptation. In seduction.
In authority and demand.
Slowly, I straightened from the wall. My shoes made somewhat more noise than his bare feet against the stone, a faint rasp of boiled leather, but he did not turn as I approached.