Transmuted

by Karina Cooper

  I dared not blink, lest the bit of devilry bisecting his left eye flood the tawny circle of his irises in that instant.

  Was this Hawke who spoke?

  I trusted that it was. I trusted that the man I knew, though colored by the beast he labored to conceal, would never let himself truly do me harm.

  But I would not fold so easy.

  “Enough of this,” I replied, vicious for the hiss of it. “I belong to no man.”

  “And yet you run for that ponced-up headmaster the moment you are allowed,” Hawke countered, no less cruel.

  Heat flooded my cheeks, and my heart thudded as the blood surged within me. With a sharp gesture, I slammed my hand down upon his wrist and broke his hold around my chin.

  That I could not similarly ease the grip upon my hair mattered less than the soundless snarl shaping his mouth. His teeth gleamed white against his swarthy skin, and that I knew the feel of them upon my flesh was a memory that sent fingers of warmth to places dark and secret.

  I refused to cower. “Ashmore is a friend,” I said. “And I’ll not have you—”

  “You love him.”

  I stilled, pinned into place by the surety with which Hawke said the word. Guilt pinched; I shoved it ruthlessly aside. I would give it no purchase when anger flamed hot and free.

  Was he searching for a reason to contest me? A thing upon which to pin his ire?

  Very well. I would bloody well deliver it. “I love him.”

  I’d always known that Hawke was a bastard in every degree, but I was not so soft that I would be cowed.

  I braced for thunder; Hawke’s fingers eased from my hair. His palm slid over my cheek, rough andworn and oh, so familiar. “Finally,” he murmured. “A bit of truth. It is too rare between us.”

  My heart, thrust against my breast with such emotion scorching the air, now sank like a stone. “Hawke—”

  “Do not.” A hard word. A ragged sound. Hawke gave me his back, shoulders rigid as they always were, and yet different. Never would I see the great tiger bow his head, but for all my exasperation on the matter, I never wanted to.

  So why did I feel as though for all his posturing, Hawke gave way?

  Loneliness swept over me; a haunting refrain that took the cavern of my chest and made of it a terrible darkness, empty and hollow. My throat closed.

  Was this what it was to have one’s heart utterly stolen?

  I had always had sympathy for Ashmore, who had loved my mother deeply, but I had not truly known what it was to fear the loss of such terrifying feelings. Not even when vengeance consumed me did I profess love for the man who had married me.

  Was this, then, the dark art of love? That thing that drove all to madness?

  It hurt.

  “Go, then,” came the order, such pristine authority as I might expect. “Go to your man.”

  It hurt, and I would not tolerate it.

  My footsteps made no sound, but the rustle of crape and petticoats seemed as though an avalanche in the silence.

  At his side, his fists strained.

  Because I knew of no other language with which to speak, because I could not form the words that Hawke would hear, I made a fist of my right hand and drove it into the comparatively soft portion of his muscle bunched tautly over the fragile meat of internal organ.

  I had not learned anatomy for naught. Often was a hard hit to the soft kidney enough to cow a man, even one bigger than I.

  Though Hawke was never so unaware as that.

  He moved as quicksilver, fluid and bright. Muscle gave way under my knuckles to thin air, then his fingers closed like shackles around my wrist; I was not accustomed to fragility, but the shape of his large hand over the fine bones there made me feel it.

  I afforded neither of us the opportunity to think.

  As I’d done before, I kicked aside my skirts and drove the heel of my foot into his boot.

  A curse was my reward, growled from clenched teeth, and he pulled my arm high above my head, swinging me all but off my feet with the brute strength I knew him so capable of. Driven back by the force of his body pressing mine, I swallowed a startled cry when my back met the heavy drapes covering the window.

  A cold draft pressed against my shoulders.

  Glass rattled but did not crack, though I could not say the same for either of our tempers.

  I thrust my chin out. “I will not obey your every command.”

  “If you did,” he shot back, looming over me with all the presence of his powerful bearing, “all of this would be so much easier.”

  “Liar!” I delivered a blow to his chest with my left hand that was no less formidable than the right. It knocked him back one pace, but he made up for it in the space of a breath. Catching that wrist in his other, he dragged it high and pinned both with a single hand.

  His teeth bared as he thrust his face to mine. “Behave.”

  “I am nota child,” I snapped, and earned another grasp for my efforts. His long fingers framed my cheeks, chin held so securely in his palm that if I were to struggle, I would only hurt myself.

  More than anger bled from his eyes. Exasperation. That hunger I always marked in him.

  And something else. Something more than I was not accustomed to seeing beneath the mismatched hue of his stare.

  An emotion both raw and infinitely more telling than any snarl, any order.

  “I have never,” he said, quietly for all it rasped as a rusted scrape against my nerves, “looked upon you as a child.”

  This astonished me. The first I’d ever laid eyes upon the Menagerie’s ringmaster, I had been far more reckless than I ever was now. We both had been so much younger, though I had never truly known his age. His features had filled out in that time, his showman’s accord given a measure of polish in the intervening years.

  Showmanship that he did not bother putting on for the likes of me.

  And yet for me, he had always been himself. Cruel, demanding, beautiful Hawke.

  I knew that whatever his curse, it had fixated upon me. I did not realize that it had begun so long ago.

  “I was but fifteen years when we met,” I pointed out, very cautiously. His gaze fell to my lips.

  His features hardened. “I know it.”

  Bemused, straining in the flesh and bone shackle he’d made of his grip, all I could do was stare as his truth thrust like a blade into my heart.

  Such was what it took to love, especially when one’s senses erred on the side of punishment to crave the touch of a man like Micajah Hawke.

  How desperately long had he hungered? How long had I flitted about him like a careless bird, teasing what I did not understand?

  Comprehension must have dawned overtly within me, for his jaw shifted, his mouth twisted into a scornful slant. He let me go so abruptly that I sagged against the window, clutching the drapes for balance.

  As the tiger he’d become, he paced to the fireplace. It took little enough imagination to see the lethal grace that shaped his prowl, to picture a beast’s stalking in place of his stride. “Go,” he said, a harsh allowance.

  “Cage—”

  “Go to him,” he said again, only just under a shout for all the strain within. “Before I do not allow you the courtesy of a choice.”

  If I could not have softness, then anger would suffice. I pushed myself upright. “How dare you?” It was not a question, but an accusation that did not earn the response I wanted.

  He did not come at me again, but remained where he was, the mantel gripped in both hands. He stared down into the fire. I could not see how it traced the harsh perfection of his features, but I had long burned the memory of it into my senses.

  Was he so convinced I loved another that he would force himself to let me go?

  “Yes,” I said, tracing his steps. “I love Ashmore.”

  I had not thought him capable of turning to something harder than stone, sterner than steel. My words caused exactly that.

  Inhuman, and yet I had seen th
e heart that beat within.

  A thrill of something fragile and ever so depraved whispered through me. Conceit followed.

  Could I be right? Would I be so fortunate?

  So utterly mad?

  “I love him, Cage, as one would a dear friend.” I honed my voice to a knife’s point. “He was there when I had need of it most.”

  “If all you wanted was flesh—”

  “Finish that statement,” I interjected before any more blood be flayed from my heart, “and you will live to fear me, I swear it.”

  To my surprise, to something softer and forgiving, he did not. “Why him?” he asked instead, a raw sound.

  Because he was there seemed an awful reason, and not entirely true. I closed my eyes. “He was kind, and I was hurting.”

  Hawke’s snort bore a terrible insult.

  I flung my hands at his back. “What would you have me do?” I cried, unable to refrain. That it shook was an admission I dared not say aloud. “I could no longer tolerate the unbearable burden of solitude.”

  A slow, ponderous groan lurched through the parlor. “Damn you. This is not the cause of my anger.” He dug the heel of his palm into his eyes, as though they hurt. “I am not so corrupt that I would have demanded fidelity of you when I could offer nothing more than chains.”

  “What right had you to demand anything at all?” I replied, my voice lifted despite myself.

  Crack. Wood splintered under Hawke’s other hand. The mantel fractured, shedding flakes of paint as he whirled on me.

  A warning I should have heeded, and cared not a toss for.

  Not hell nor the burden of propriety would keep from me the answers I needed.

  Without concern for my flesh, for my well-being, I stepped closer and reached up with both hands. His face was warm between my palms, the edges of his jaw sharp in my grasp.

  He did not turn away, but he stilled in the manner of a predator caught by the aroma of prey. Such emotion ran so deep, locked behind hard planes and cruel edges, that he seemed to be a man on the brink of famine.

  If I was that prey, then I would ensure he ran hard for it.

  “What,” I asked, plain as I could, “do you want from me?”

  His teeth ground; an audible sound.

  “You demand I capitulate.” I softened nothing. I gripped his face between my hands and asked outright, “But will you? Will yoube mine?”

  His lips peeled back. “Yes,” he managed through clenched teeth.

  My eyes narrowed. “You don’t understand what that means. No more secrets, Cage. No more lies.”

  Another harsh sound. “I know.”

  Frustration forced an uncivility into my exhale. For all the confirmation, it did not sit right.

  I could not breathe.

  “’Tis not that easy.” I released him as suddenly as he had me, turned away with my lungs clamoring for air.

  Another hand locked around my upper arm.

  This time, there was no stillness to it. He jerked me hard about, pulled me against his body and this time, he wasted no effort with words. The moment his mouth slanted over mine, fierce and hungry—as much an arbitrary demand as any he might have spoken—the ache in my chest turned to something hotter, driven.

  Hopeful.

  And at the same time, bittersweet.

  Any man could kiss a woman and feel nothing. Any man could lie, with word or with gesture.

  Any man could force a woman to his bidding by sheer want of the bliss found within a bedchamber, or furnished by them fallen doves at East End.

  Hawke was not any man.

  And I was not so helpless a female as to fall prey to such easy manipulations. Not even when his tongue, scandalous and sublime, slipped between my lips to thrust against mine.

  My fingers caught in the loose hair just above his braid, tangled and pulled sharply.

  His growl caught on a harsh word, one hand locking about my wrist to ease the strain upon his scalp; Hawke was not the only one skilled in the art of physical confrontation.

  I glared up at him, my lips tingling from his assault. The taste of him rattled me all the way to my very soul.

  And still, as I panted from want of more, I bit off every word. “Tell me what you want from me.”

  I should have known that a veritable mountain of crape would not be enough to halt a man like him. Giving up on my grip upon his hair, he bent until his face was level with mine, caught my skirts and flung them from his way. Before the voluminous petticoats and crinolines had settled, he caught me around the backside, dragged me against him and lifted me full off the floor.

  There was nowhere easy to brace me, no place I might rest, but Hawke was nothing if not resourceful. That my legs went ’round his waist was a matter of course, and that my muscles clamped there brought such a look of fierce satisfaction from him that I trembled.

  His hands spanned the backs of my thighs, above my stockings, and the rasp of his flesh against my soft, bare skin did not drive my anger down so much as wrench the aching need I possessed for him higher.

  Yet he did not touch me more intimately, as I expected. He did not drive himself within my body, claim me in a physical manner.

  He wanted to. I could read it easily in the cords that stood from his throat, the vicious tension riding him.

  I could even feel it in the hard ridge of his body locked behind the placard of his trousers.

  What he did was worse.

  Supporting my weight entirely, he stared into my eyes with his own a nova of blue eating through brown. Again, he commanded me. “Say you need me.”

  My throat dried.

  “You have never said it,” he said, a ragged edge of hunger and fury. “For all your years haunting my domain, you have never claimed to need me.” His fingers bit into my thighs. “Say it, Cherry. I cannot act in the way I want to unless you do.”

  The way he wanted to?

  The whole of my body shook as I inhaled a gasping breath.

  “Say it,” he said again, his mouth a mere breath from mine. “Give me leave to do as I wish.”

  To my consternation, tears burned at my eyes. I clutched at his shoulders, curled my fingers around the warmth of his nape and managed a breathy laugh. “You daft bastard,” I whispered.

  His eyes flared wide, thick black lashes flicking once when they narrowed just as fast.

  “Haven’t I always gone looking for you?” I thumped his shoulder with a closed fist as the first ofmy tears dripped from my lashes. “I have needed you forever.”

  Any other man might have smiled. He might have thanked me, or sealed such a thing with a gentle kiss.

  I loved Micajah Hawke precisely because he was no other man.

  A fierce rumble filled his chest, and the kiss he took my mouth with was no softer than the first. Because he was, after all, the predator and I the prey, his was a kiss that devoured, that claimed.

  That feasted upon me, heart and body and soul, and did not relent until I had returned to him everything.

  Trusting my weight to him, knowing it to be lighter than the weight that had filled my heart until this moment, I licked at his lower lip until his tongue dragged against mine, tasted me thoroughly.

  To think that I’d thought the euphoria of bliss forever removed from me.

  I had not realized how wrong I had been, how utterly enfolded I was in him, until a throat cleared behind me.

  “I realize that this is an inopportune time,” drawled the lilting refrains of Lord Piers, “but perhaps the, er, countess would care to remove herself from the ringmaster and attend her guest?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Until I stepped inside the lavish room appointed Ashmore, I had not known that Hawke had brought with him our hostage. The first I noted of Zhànzhàn, she was kneeling in that oddly formal posture I’d seen of the Veil’s servants.

  Ashmore, rather than be ensconced upon a bed as I’d expected, had been transferred to a palette upon the floor. Though his chest rose and f
ell with shallow, jerky rhythm, his face was waxen. Sweat gleamed in sickly pallor upon him, soaking his clothing. Living he might be, but for how long was an estimation I quailed to consider.

  Drawn upon the floor around him were four points made of some thick red chalk, bold and precise. A mirror occupied the place above his head.

  The measure of my ire must have translated to my stride, forI’d taken two steps before Hawke caught me at the shoulder and hauled me farther aside. “What is she doing?” I demanded, unmoved by the physical force.

  Piers ran both hands over his hair, mussing the sandy hue into awkward points. “This is all rather beyond me,” he said, obviously ill at ease. “She claims a physician will be too late.”

  “Wait longer, and he will die,” Zhànzhàn said. She raised the dart I’d plucked, held neatly between two fingers. The black fletching stirred. “His jing is to be commended. This is meant to kill at once.”

  “Jing?”

  “His life essence,” Hawke said in my ear. He did not let me go, but as she laid out other items—a bar of soap at Ashmore’s feet, a bowl of milk at his left, candles surrounding her own form at his right—I fixed a look of such scorn upon Hawke that his eyes narrowed. “You continue to astound with your closedmindedness.”

  “Enlighten me,” I returned evenly.

  A challenge as much as an order.

  I did not like knowing that the female half of the Karakash Veil seemed all that stood between my tutor and death.

  Hawke snapped out a curt phrase in the language I hated that I hadn’t learned.

  Zhànzhàn’s hair gleamed in a raven fall as she leaned over Ashmore’s chest, fitting her hand into a soft portion of his torso. After a moment, she replied back in the same language.

  She did not look at us.

  Piers sighed. “I am sure this is all very fascinating,” he announced, “but I am excusing myself lest this becomes too much to explain. I shall be,” he added at the door, “in the parlor drinking myself insensible. Please keep this all down, there are those who utilize this hour to sleep.”

  The door closed behind him, and I was grateful for the earl’s sensitivity.

  Hawke’s grip eased on my shoulders. “However you feel about her,” he said quietly, ignoring the earl entirely, “know that she is saving your man’s life.”