Tarnished (22 page)

My hips lifted almost off the bed, so hard and sudden that Hawke was forced to let me go. My hands moved of their own accord, fingers spearing into the luxurious silk of his hair. I held his head as he licked at me, pulled him closer as he tasted me where no other man had ever tasted me. Where I’d never imagined any would dare try.

Where I’d never even considered letting any man near.

High, keening pants filled the room and I realized somewhere that it was me. That I struggled to breathe and had no ability to censor myself. That I was shamelessly encouraging him with every dip of his tongue, every rasp of his lips and soul-shocking skim of his teeth.

When the dam burst inside me, I screamed with release. The pressure flowed from me, burst from me like a spring released from extraordinary tension. Every muscle in my body snapped at once; every color in the world conjoined into one glorious vision. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed into me, a cooling spray against my fevered skin, a tidal wave of sensation.

Somewhere beyond the drug-addled confines of my own mind, I heard a woman scream in fury.

Strong, muscled arms came around me, steady and gleaming faintly with sweat. I was shifted, repositioned so that I was cradled against his chest. Held in case I slid bonelessly into unconsciousness? I didn’t know.

I took a slow, deep breath. Smelled spice and musk and something indefinable.

I swallowed hard, my cheek pillowed against Hawke’s chest. The even rhythm of his heart steadied mine, and I set my palm over the taut muscle by my ear.

He stiffened.

Somehow, I found words. “It’s . . . better,” I whispered.

“You still glow.”

The statement should have been incongruous. People didn’t glow. Humans didn’t light up rooms, save in the metaphorical sense.

There was no such thing as magic.

But I looked down at my fingers, shaking and still covered in blood against his shirt, and saw that he was right. A faint, shimmering light pulsed from my skin, turning my flesh into something whiter than milk. Brighter than moonlight.

What could I say? Nothing. For a long, silent moment, I only allowed myself to breathe. I could actually breathe.

I was
me.

Oh, God, I was
mortified
.

Despite all the conflict I’d ever had with the man, despite the flutter he caused in my stomach, I’d never dared to even
imagine
what a night in his arms would be like. I had no basis upon which to compare. He’d never even
kissed
me, not like Compton had, but I had nowhere to hide now. Nowhere to look but at myself. My own mind.

My own demons, strengthened by an unknown drug as they were.

They taunted me. I had no choice but to admit then that a dark part of me was always tempted, but I’d never even considered the reality.

There would never have been a reality, I was sure of it. I was just
Miss Black.
A collector. And he was the serpent of an earthly Garden of Eden. He tempted everyone. That was his job.

And I’d gone and . . . he’d . . .

Would the bed open up and swallow me whole? I prayed so. Even as I thought it, my chest twisted. My stomach spasmed, fainter, but there.

I shuddered. “It’s n-not over.”

Hawke slid his fingers into the tangled, half-tumbled knot of my hair, cradling the back of my head in his broad, callused palm. He pressed his mouth to my temple. “It won’t be. The drug must run its course. Until it does, the magic will find a way in.”

“God help me.”

His chuckle, strained as it was, vibrated against my ear. “No need. I’ll stay with you.”

I wasn’t sure that would be any better. I clenched my teeth, but the pain didn’t begin right away. Into his chest, desperate to hide my burning face from Hawke’s too-acute scrutiny, I mumbled, “How long?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. And then, as his fingers pushed through my blackened hair, he asked, “How long have you taken opium?”

I jerked, but his hand flattened against the back of my head, keeping my body pressed to his. My face against his shoulder. I stiffened, to no avail. “I don’t—”

“How long, Miss Black?” There was steel in the question now.

My fingers clenched into his shirtfront as my skin tingled. Prickled as if it would find seams and peel itself open. “All my life,” I whispered.

He stilled. And then, all at once, he let out a long, wordless breath. It stirred my hair, cooled my still-feverish skin as his arm tightened around my back. “Then take heart,” he said against my temple. “Those who eat it for many years must eat more to find the same peace of mind. Your body will run through it quicker than if you had never.”

“Thank God,” I gasped.

“If you must.” But I wasn’t listening. My fingers were already searching for the hem of his working shirt. Tunneling under to find the hot, smooth flesh I knew waited for us . . .
me
.

Me. Not me. I was losing myself.

His stomach clenched under my seeking touch.

“It’s starting again, isn’t it?” he asked roughly. He didn’t need to wait for an answer. Despite my own mortification, it was as if my addled mind had joined the rising pain and Hawke’s touch, as if it knew how to save itself. “I’ll keep you grounded,” he said again.

I didn’t know what Hawke was talking about. I desperately wanted to ask. But my fingers slid over his belly without my command and I gasped. Swearing, he caught my hands, forcing them out from under his shirt, and laid me once more on the bed. This time on my stomach. As my body started to writhe, involuntarily twisting against the growing strain of whatever it was struggling to claim me, his lips came down on the nape of my neck.

His teeth caught the flesh there. Bit down hard enough to draw an aching gasp from my lips.

“It will end,” he whispered against the pulsing spot.

I grabbed fistfuls of the bedclothes beneath me. His tongue dipped into the small hollows along my spine, but it wasn’t enough.

The force, the weight, slammed into me. Again and again. Inside me. Twisting, clawing. Filling me until the room glowed once more and light spilled from my eyes in shimmering green.

My own hair slid over my shoulder, muted by the lampblack I’d coated across it, but the occasional glimmer of ruby and flame flickered as I twisted and turned.

Hawke remained by my bedside. In my bed. For what seemed an eternity, he battled my demons from the outside as I screamed and fought them from within.

I don’t know when I fell. Something in me gave up.

Oblivion replaced pain, and that was the last I knew.

Chapter Fourteen

A
lthough a lady could maintain a certain elegance of appearance while in public, I’d always felt that among the many hazards of marriage, that time between finding sleep and waking up is the most dangerous for appearances.

Case in point, I woke up with my cheek pillowed into damp bedclothes. I’d been drooling.

My eyelashes scraped against the cushion beneath my head. I blinked slowly, aware that among all of my usual waking complaints, aches and pain always seemed to be at the top of the list.

This time was no different.

My head throbbed. My mouth was dry, my tongue felt like it was swaddled in cotton. My body ached from forehead to heels. It was as if I’d been clubbed and beaten and stomped on by angry men wearing wooden shoes. Nausea clamored in my belly, which felt unsettled and wrung out as if I’d spent the night losing the contents of my stomach.

I didn’t recall that.

I struggled to raise myself to my elbows. Slowly, the details of my surroundings swam into focus. White cotton. Black silk. Smudged black stains, as if someone had taken charcoal and ground it into the pristine sheets. A faint glimmer of gold.

Browned stains. Disappearing into the bedclothes beneath me.

“God in heaven!” I scrambled away from the streaks of dried blood, then flailed for the sliding bedclothes as I realized I was nude beneath the sheets. I grabbed at the trailing material, gathering it to myself in whatever shred of modesty I could possibly have left, and glanced quickly at my surroundings.

A large room. Much larger than my own above the drift, and displaying a decidedly masculine flair. The furniture was sparse but elegant, reflecting elements of Oriental design merged with English sensibilities.

The bed I knelt in was large, much too large for a single body, and the black silk coverlet was patterned with uniquely Chinese embroidery in shades of red, green and gold.

The sheets beneath were white. White as snow, save for the lampblack rubbed from my hair. And the brown stains of dried blood.

My dried blood.

I backed off the edge of the mattress, my knees suddenly weak. That was
my
blood. Mortification warred with anger. Tears pulsed behind my eyes, ached in my jaw, but I gritted my teeth and tried desperately not to think about the dull pain centered low in my body.

What had I done?

I staggered as my feet found floor. My toes sank into the brilliant Oriental carpet, but it wasn’t the masterfully woven pattern I saw as I stared at it.

A vision of Micajah Hawke, his bare chest rising above me, his eyes focused and brilliant in his taut features, was suddenly all I could see.

All I could remember.

Had I—I’d
begged him
, hadn’t I?

“Oh, God.” My cheeks caught fire as I buried my face into the trailing ends of the bedclothes. I was ruined. I was more than just a girl astray; I was
impure
. Never fit for marriage, now. Who would want me?

I wasn’t fit for anything but the streets below the drift.

My knees buckled. The nausea roiled, yawned wildly in my stomach and I swayed. I was going to be sick again.

A light knock slid through my muddled, chaotic thoughts, and I jerked my head up as the door swung open. “Wait, I’m not—”

It wasn’t Hawke. Even as I realized it, as Zylphia stepped inside, my legs gave out. I sank to the floor in a tangle of silk and fine cotton, my eyes squeezing shut.

She hurried to me. “What’s wrong?” Small, cool hands cradled my face.

I clenched my teeth as tears welled up in my throat. Behind my eyes. “Where,” I rasped. “Where am I?”

“The Menagerie.” Her voice was low and soft. Pitying, I thought. Knowing. She knew. She
knew
what I’d done with that . . . that
man
and she—“How are you feeling?” she asked gently. “You gave us all a terrible scare.”

My eyes snapped open, and though hot words of abuse and recrimination sprang to my lips, I found her studying me with such worry in her blue eyes, such heart-wrenching concern, that I couldn’t let them fly.

I sagged. Her arms came around me as I wilted. She pulled me close as the first spasms wracked my body, splayed a hand at my cheek and set my head against her shoulder.

I didn’t fight it. I cried. I let the tears loose and she held me, whispering nonsensical things that soothed and did not judge. She let me sob, great wracking heaves of muddled air and tears, until I was reduced to nothing but blotched skin and the occasional, wringing hiccup.

I was spent. Exhausted and feeling ill and so very alone.

And angry.

That I’d lost my virginity to Micajah Hawke wasn’t truthfully the root of my upset. Truly, I’d never considered it one way or the other. The Church of England would have an impure woman cast aside, fallen and beyond redemption. Society would be the first to send me to the streets for my sin, but I was neither overly dependent on the clergy’s favor nor particularly interested in the peerage that would see me cast aside one way or another.

The men who’d propositioned me in the past had never succeeded simply because I’d spent too long among the doves who peddled themselves. I knew what came of such things. To my way of thinking, there was always a price for that sort of behavior, and I was in no hurry to pay it.

Somewhere along the way, my virginity had simply become a part of who I was. And now it was gone. I couldn’t even remember the event.

One more thing to lay at the feet of my drug-addled memory.

Zylphia smoothed a hand along my loose hair, her other supporting the bedclothes she held to my naked back. “There,” she soothed. “A good cry does wonders. You’re well again, that’s all we can ask right now.”

I sucked in a shuddering breath.

And raised my head. Her gaze was steady, not a shred of recrimination in them as she took the edge of the sheet and wiped at my cheeks. It came away smudged with gray.

Her lashes flickered.

“Where is—”
Hawke.
“—everyone?” I somehow managed calm. Wrung dry, but calm.

“Working,” Zylphia told me. “It’s nearly midnight, and there’s a show to put on.” For the first time, I realized that she wore a draping confection that was
almost
sheer. Just opaque enough to keep a man guessing. It gathered at her shoulders, hugging her lush body, made of a pale blue gauze that made her skin look rich and inviting.

And the cut of its draped collar revealed the outermost edges of raw, scabbed lines at her back.

My gaze narrowed. “Zylla—”

She rose to her feet, suddenly overly brisk as she fixed the collar to cover the dark lines. “You’re a mess. Your wounds are gone, but you’re still smeared with the aftermath.” The word made me flinch. “We’ve got to get you cleaned up. My employers want to see you.”

“Wait, they what?” My voice rose two octaves in the space of a breath.

Zylphia picked up a handful of leather and linen from the edge of the bed, and as I watched her, trying to get a better glimpse of what I feared were whipping marks, she bustled to a small basin and collected dampened cloths.

Slowly, feeling even sicker than I already had, I shut my mouth.

She’d seen my hair; her palm was black with it. She’d noticed the stains I’d left on the pillow, and she’d let me cry. She didn’t ask. And she quite obviously didn’t want to talk about the wounds on her back.

I looked down at my unmarred, bare flesh beneath the blanket and repressed another shudder.

I could respect her privacy. I would have to. At least I wouldn’t have to meet the Karakash Veil nude. Would I be whipped, as well? Like some slave?

Like Zylphia?

I got to my feet, swallowing back a knot of raw anger. “The Karakash Veil wants to see me, then.”

The look Zylphia shot me as she helped me dress was filled to the brim with worry. And dark warning. “Mind yourself,” she said quietly. “This isn’t a lark about. Whatever happened before, it’s gotten the Veil’s attention, it has.”

“Whatever happened before,” I replied, straightening my work shirt while Zylphia sponged off my face, “it got
my
attention.”

“Is it related?”

“To what?” Then I met her direct gaze and remembered. “It might be,” I replied, taking a deep, steadying breath. I shrugged into my corset, waving away her hands as Zylphia tried to help. I’d designed it to be a one-woman affair, easily pulled tight by my own efforts. The plating slid into place.

“The professor I thought might be the murderer . . .” I hesitated. “Well,
wasn’t.
In fact, he was murdered in a spectacularly brutal fashion.” I fastened the corset’s high collar around my neck, quickly running my hands down the leather facing tailored to protect me from chin to waist.

“You think the sweet tooth did it?”

I blinked at her. “The . . . sweet tooth?”

Zylphia shrugged, but sheepishly. “We needed a name. We couldn’t just call him
him
all the time. There’s a lot of
hims
in the gardens.”

The sweet tooth. It was too macabre to be funny. “I think it’s possible,” I finally replied, “but not proven. I was hoping to find something at the Square.”

Zylphia’s lush mouth compressed. “So you did.”

And how. “A man drugged me, and that’s telling enough. I was getting close to something.” I took a deep, steadying breath. Then another. “But all I’ve got is a hangover and—”
Patchy memories.
I flinched, rubbing my face. “Nothing I can use.” I checked my hands.

“It’s gone,” she assured me. Speculation lingered in her features, but she very deliberately collected the blackened cloths and said nothing else. As I watched, pulling on my boots, she stripped the bedclothes with brisk efficiency and balled it all together.

I bit my lip. “Zylla, I—”

“Some of the girls have said that Micajah Hawke is a fierce thing between the sheets,” she said offhandedly.

I froze. My cheeks warmed.

“But you wouldn’t know, would you?”

“What?” I croaked.

“You,” she said as she bundled the bedclothes under her arm. “And him. Rather, the lack of a you and him. They say all he did was keep you from giving in.”

Giving in? I stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Of course, I felt more like I’d lost mine. “I don’t follow,” I said carefully.

She flicked me a glance. “Really? You think—Oh,” she finished on a knowing sound. “You think he lay with you.” She shook her head. “
Cherie
, I’ve seen that man after a night of lovemaking.”

I bit my lip before I asked if she’d been the one in his bed that night. Or any night. Then caught myself imagining Hawke in the very bed I stood beside and looked away.

“Trust me,” she said, “he didn’t ravish you in your haze.”

“He didn’t?” I was beginning to sound stupid, even to my own ears. I cleared my throat quickly. “Of course he didn’t, he only—” But I couldn’t finish the sentence. I had very distinct images rattling about in my mind, and I wasn’t sure I could steady myself long enough to explain them.

Not to her satisfaction, and certainly not to my own. It was a relief to know that Micajah Hawke might not have actually ruined me, but he’d come close enough that I wasn’t sure where the line was. He’d seen me nude. He’d put his hands on me. His
mouth
on me.

Where had he stopped? Did it matter?

I just wasn’t sure.

“He’d be in a finer mood if he had,” she added tartly. “They call him Cage, by the by.”

I blinked my friend back into focus. “What? Why?”

“I suspect it has to do with the fact that it’s a natural shortening of Micajah, isn’t it?” But a corner of her mouth slid upward as she gestured me to the door. “Or it may be a so-subtle reminder of his circumstance. A tiger, that one is. Caged but not tamed, trapped between iron bars.”

I swallowed hard, rubbing my suddenly chilled arms. Gooseflesh peppered my skin.

“But then,” my friend continued, oh so nonchalantly, “aren’t we all?”

I did not look back as we left the room.

Zylphia held on to the bundle of soot-stained cotton as she escorted me through a vast, elaborately decorated hall. Here and there, Chinese men and women bent to servile tasks—cleaning, sweeping, polishing, carrying—and the occasional white or mixed face worked among them. Servants, indentured or slaves.

Slavery wasn’t exactly the thing these days. Not officially. The Queen had abolished the ownership of slaves and the Anti-Slavery Society had long since lobbied Her Majesty to outlaw slavers as pirates.

But signing a writ didn’t make it so. And the Veil had a long reach.

Zylphia paid them no mind, hastening me past several other rooms and doors. I caught glimpses of rich furnishings and affluent décor, all flavored heavily by the Orient.