Tarnished (21 page)

“Get it out,” I sobbed. “I can’t—I can’t take it, get it out of me!”

Hawke stared at the Chinese man.

And then Ishmael’s voice, resonant like the deepest bell at Westminster Abbey. “She said something about a cameo. And a man.”

“Where?” he demanded.

“The Philosopher’s Square.”

Hawke’s eyes shifted to me, angry and tight. His sculpted mouth compressed. “Too many spirits?” he asked, but he wasn’t asking me. I thrashed against him, kicking the blankets free, wresting every inch of control I could.

The Chinese man put away his dust. “Only room for one,” he said in English so heavily accented that it was almost its own language. “Another one want in. She waits there.” He pointed to the ceiling above me, but I saw nothing. Felt nothing but fear and anger and pain.

And pressure.

Hawke’s lip curled. “Get out.”

The man stiffened. “
Wˇo xiˇang
—”

Hawke let me go. I arched into the bed, naked and uncaring, grabbing at the pillows around me. Searching, struggling to find something, anything that could soothe my feverish brow. That could protect me.

Footsteps clattered. Voices rose. The Chinese man hurled invectives as the commotion passed me, and all I knew was that they were leaving. The pain slammed home, stole my breath; I could only gasp as it welled inside me. A deep, viscous fluid, a rising sense of . . . of
other
. Of
not me
.

“Don’t let anyone in,” Hawke ordered.

“As you wish.” Ishmael hesitated. “Cage, will she . . . ?”

“She’s ignorant and a fool,” Hawke said flatly. “But I won’t let her go.”

“The Karakash Veil—”

“You let me handle the Veil,” Hawke said.

Ishmael sighed deeply, and I felt it drag against me. Inside me. “I had nowhere else to take her.”

Hawke swore. Then, curtly, he said, “You saved her life.” The door shut.

The bowstring of my body snapped. Throwing my head back, I screamed, dragging my nails along my body in a desperate bid for release. It hammered inside me; filled me, overflowed from my body and my mouth and my thoughts until I was nothing but pink and gold and bloody red and
not me
.

Hawke’s hands closed around my wrists again. Pinned them to the bed above my head. Hawke’s eyes glittered down into mine. “I told you,” he seethed, his voice strapped taut. “I told you to leave it alone.”

I wrenched against his grip, but could only gasp as every nerve under the seal of his flesh around mine compressed to wild points of heightened awareness. No words made it through the wild cacophony of my thoughts and feelings.

“Miss Black.” He shook me. My gaze snapped back into focus, but it was hard. So hard. “Do you recognize me? Do you know where you are?”

“Menagerie,” I managed around a tongue thick and dry as cotton. I swallowed with effort, and my eyes once more darted around the room. “What . . . what’s wrong with me?”

Hawke hesitated.

I clenched my teeth as another vicious cramp swept through me, toes to forehead. “I feel . . . I feel like I’m going to tear apart. I feel like I’m going to . . . to burn away.”

“Too many spirits,” he said grimly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

I laughed. It sobbed on a wild note of amusement. “T-try me,” I gasped.

He held me as I wrenched beneath him, his grip implacable. His eyes glittering dangerously while he waited me out. I sank back into the bed, sucking in air. “You’re being haunted,” he finally said, as flatly as if he spoke of collector’s business. “A ghost of a woman.” His eyes narrowed. “Have you been mucking about with the dead, Miss Black?”

This time, my laugh bordered on hysteria. “People . . . dropping dead.”

The thick sweep of his lashes was like a fan, I realized. Lacy and black as the hair sliding over his shoulders like a velvet curtain. I could see each individual hair. Some were traced with gold. Lingering gold dust.

What was it?

And was it the opium within the drug that caused my senses to react this way? It had to be. I could
almost
think through it. Almost.

I wasn’t so far gone that I’d swallow the tale of a ghost so easily.

My stomach twisted. My eyes widened. I yanked against his hold as the first spasm crept over me. “N-no,” I whispered. “Hurts. Help, p-please—Augh!” I clenched my teeth as it rolled through me. A fist made with shattered glass and hot knives.

He flinched, but he didn’t let me go. He transferred both of my wrists to one large hand, easily shackling me in place, and dragged his thumb by my nose. As caresses went, it wasn’t kind.

He raised his finger to my eyes. It shone, vaguely pink. Vaguely gold. “What is this?” he demanded.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Hurts,” I begged.

“Miss Black, where did it come from?”

He was relentless. As my pain climbed to excruciating heights, I managed, “It’s . . . the drug. Came from the cameo.”

Rough fingers slid behind my head. Cradled it. “God give me strength,” he muttered.

“What?” I gasped. “Please, Hawke, what?”

He shook his head, his gaze tipping up to the ceiling. His eyes narrowed once more, that fine line I’d seen at his most resolute. Usually, it was directed at me. Now, he aimed it above my head. “You won’t find purchase here,” he told . . . nothing.

There was nothing there.

Even my hallucination in gold dust had gone.

“Hawke,” I gritted out between clenched teeth.

“I will not let you fade so easily,” he told me, almost conversationally were it not for the implacability of each word. And then he let loose a stream of Chinese that felt thicker than anything I’d ever heard; pulsed as if it lit the air. It didn’t, of course it didn’t, but every hair on my body rose as if with static discharge.

In answer, the pain slammed through me. I opened my mouth to scream.

To my undying surprise, he covered it with his own.

And it was if he’d found a switch; as if he’d flipped it with a casual flick. Electricity sparked somewhere deep inside me. A shower of blue and yellow sparks collided somewhere in my mind and there was only Micajah Hawke. His mouth, warm and demanding and coaxing against mine. His body heat, so close but still too far. The pressure of his fingers locked around my wrists.

The smell of him, spicy and hot and masculine.

The pressure eased. A fraction. Distracted. I gasped and his tongue slid between my lips, rough and wet. It touched mine, rasped against it, coaxing. Daring.

Beckoning.

As dangerous as a hand lifted in a humid bathhouse.

I craved. Moaning, I opened my mouth to his kiss, to his demand. My back arched; his fingers tightened around the back of my head, tangled so deeply in my loosened hair that I couldn’t get away even if I wanted to. The overly sensitive tips of my breasts brushed his clothed chest and I heard him gasp in turn.

He drew back, panting. Color darkened the taut skin over his cheekbones. He studied me. His mouth glistened, damp from mine.

Did mine look like that?

He cleared his throat. “Are you with me, Miss Black?”

I shuddered. “More,” I breathed.

A muscle leapt in his jaw. “Are you
with me
, Miss Black?”

The
other,
the only name by which I could call the heavy sensation struggling inside my skin, roiled.
Not me
. I felt it as if it were its own voice. Its own mind.

This was the worst opium flavor I had ever in my life encountered. Cut with . . . a hallucinogen of some sort? I bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough that his arm flexed, pulled me up on my knees. I sank against him, my hands now locked behind my back.

My nipples brushed his still-clothed chest. It rocked me to my core, flooded my body with liquid heat.

I sucked in a breath. “I’m here,” I said. Was that my voice? Was that me, sultry and breathy and pleading?

Or was it the thing that filled me?

He grabbed my jaw between thumb and fingers, tilting my face up to his. His gaze searched mine. “This isn’t you,” he said tightly. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for this magic.” I opened my mouth; he didn’t let me say anything. His voice rough, he shook his head and said angrily, “Whatever you got into, it’s not
you
begging for it. Don’t think I don’t know.”

I laughed. It hurt, even as it uncoiled inside me like a lush, fragrant flower. “I can’t fight it alone,” I whispered. “There isn’t . . . there’s too much. There’s too much inside me. This drug . . . opium and something. Pink.” Tears gathered in my eyes as pain slid burning tendrils up my spine. My fingers flexed, nails digging in. “Help me.”

Hawke gasped, teeth baring. His nostrils flared, a hound scenting a bitch in heat, and I watched stark arousal fill his features. Watched it and didn’t understand.

But it was his wrist my nails had found.

His blood now trickling down the curve of my hip.

“Save me,” I pleaded.

He laid me back, grabbed my hands as I struggled to dig them into the center of my chest. To peel away the flesh and bone trapping my stampeding heart and let it go. “Stay with me,” he ordered. He leaned over me, once more holding my hands down beneath his.

His lips were a breath from mine. “You hear me, Miss Black? Focus on me. If it hurts, fight back. Force her out.”

Her?

I clenched my eyes shut. “What will you—”

“Patience be damned,” he cut in savagely. “I’ll do whatever I must.” And then his tongue slid along the corner of my lips. It was a faint trigger at first. The slightest pressure. It did nothing to combat the furious battle raging inside my skin. His lips traced the curve of my jaw. I tilted my head back, inhaling deeply as I struggled to find a path through the pink-and-gold violence of my mind.

His tongue trailed a warm, wet line down the column of my throat. A different sort of pressure gathered low in my belly. A different kind of burn.

I gasped as his whiskered jaw rasped against the sensitive flesh of my breast. He tongued the pale upper slope, and my eyes flew open. The world shimmered in vibrant color. Diamond white, shimmering gold. Black onyx, sapphire blue, bloody, vibrant crimson.

My stomach quivered, and I looked down to see Hawke’s dark head against the pale skin of my breast.

His mouth closed over one nipple and the
other
inside me struggled to surface. Arrowed in with such focus that I moaned.

It was distracted? God Almighty,
I
was distracted.

Sensations shot from breast to groin, flooding us—me . . .
us
with pleasure. With warmth. Raw satisfaction. I arched into his mouth, surged out of my skin as his teeth closed gently around the hardened point.

He gave the other breast the same attention, and I barely remembered how to breathe. He slid down my body, and I thought somewhere that I should have protested. That I should have argued, fought him, protected—

What?

He was muttering something against my flesh. Each word skimmed across my too-sensitive nerves, scored as if branded there. Across my ribs, my belly. My hips lifted as he tongued the hollow beneath my left hip and I jerked against his steely grip.

He didn’t let me go.

He raised his head, looking at me from along the length of my own body. My eyes widened.

The man was beautiful. I’d always thought so, but here with the world lit by fire and God’s own colors, I knew him as the dark angel he was. His hair was loose around his face, strands of black pulsating with an eerie lack of light. His skin was burnished gold, lit as if the sun itself burned within him. Control shaped every nuance of his strong jaw and set mouth. Of his eyes, hooded and so guarded, but glittering with such intensity that it took my breath away.

And as if that was the opening it needed, the
other
erupted into life.

I had no chance to take a breath. No real chance to scream; it strangled in my chest half formed as pain ripped through my body. I felt it; I lived it, I struggled against it as the pressure built and built. As it thrashed against the boundary of
me
. As it fought for purchase.

It was trying to overtake me. It was trying to
devour
me!

And even as I fought it off within the hallucinating cages of my own mind, the ringmaster of the Midnight Menagerie firmed his grip on my wrists, lowered his head, and covered my most secret and sensitive flesh with his mouth.

My back bowed. The cords in my neck stood to abrupt attention as I threw my head back, screaming in mingled pain and pleasure. In forbidden delight and raw terror.

His tongue dragged across my wet flesh, and without my control or command, my knees lifted. My legs fell open. The pressure slammed into place somewhere I’d never known it, coiling higher and tighter and hotter as his lips closed over a tiny nub of flesh and nerves.