Karina Cooper: Corroded

I rifled through what I knew of the Menagerie’s acts. They employed knife-throwers—two, to be precise, though only one was as good as Monsieur Marceaux’s, I think.

However, the binding they’d put me in wasn’t nearly effective for a good knife-throwing display. So, something else?

Blast it. Why couldn’t I think ?

A step behind me was all the warning I received before a hand reached around me to cup my chin. The fingers were long, severe, gloved in what looked like white—not a color Hawke usually wore. Yet I could not mistake his voice beside my ear. “Awake at last...” The fingers bit at my jaw. “Countess.”

I flinched, yet had no room with which to move away. “Ha’ke,” I managed, straining against the binding at my mouth. “Unha’ ‘e!”

In answer, he forced my chin higher, my head back, until I was all but balanced upon my toes. Saliva I had not been able to swallow filled my throat, earning me a reprieve from drooling like an abram flaunting his false insanity.

“You don’t look scared.” Was that disappointment I heard?

Bollocks to that.

I cursed at him to show just how scared I wanted him to believe I wasn’t, but the finer detail fell short behind the constraining muzzle.

Slowly, the grip at my face eased, until I could once more balance my weight upon both feet. Yet I was given no reprieve, for his gloved fingers trailed lower, to skim my neck beside the false cravat. I shuddered. To my dismay, my vision distorted.

When his palm spanned my throat, fingers tightening without warning or gentleness, my breath fragmented. Pain plucked at the cords tightened beneath his palm, fingers biting hard enough to pinch.

“There,” he murmured. “Now you look scared.” A wicked heat entered his voice; a mocking, knowing lilt that I had never heard from him before. “I like it.”

I did not. I wrenched my face away, heedless of the grip upon my throat, and gagged when it did not loosen. Yet I did not cry.

This was naught but a dream—and dreams, I had come to realize, were too ephemeral to last.

Hawke did not loosen his grip. Instead, his free hand came about my other side, splayed possessively over my corseted stomach. His laughter slid over my skin like a mocking benediction. “You have done this dance before.”

No. Not this one. I could not shake my head, not beneath the grip he claimed about my throat, but I garbled a denial.

“Liar.” His breath touched my ear. His tongue flicked the sensitive skin.

His other hand slid lower, closer to the bloomers. The inordinately powerful heat of his palm seared through the material, as if I wore nothing at all.

In that instant—when my body clenched and my mind shrieked a terrible warning—I hated him.

I clamped my eyes shut.

If this was all the Veil demanded of my punishment, so be it. I would suffer under Hawke’s ministrations, knowing that it was no suffering but that of my pride.

I had already given my flesh to him once. My choice, my doing. That the Veil now demanded it was nothing I would not survive.

His grasp tightened at my throat. Caught my surprise, I choked on the deliberate cruelty of it, my airways compressed, and screwed my eyes tighter shut as tears of fear gathered where I had sworn there would be none.

“How I have longed to see you so debased,” he whispered. His voice carried an undercurrent of such menace, such terrible spite, that I flinched. The whole of my body convulsed; the bonds held fast. My breath wheezed out from between his cruel fingers. “That what you did with him will seem a gentle whisper to what I will see you do.”

His fingers let go so suddenly, I sagged against the silks, gasping for air. “Do?” I was able to frame, a harsh sound.

“Do,” he repeated. “Perform. Commit.” His lips nuzzled the curve where my throbbing neck met shoulder. “By the end of this night, you will beg for more.”

Left no other recourse, I snorted.

Teeth closed over that spot, bit down hard enough that a streak of red fragmented through my sealed eyes. Scorn flipped again to fear. And then to conflicted arousal as his other hand tucked neatly between my legs. When I screamed, even I could not be sure whether it was pain or pleasure I felt.

Everything seemed so unreal.

“I will take from you what he was too weak to seize,” Hawke said. The warning did not growl. It did not resonate. He spoke calmly, matter-of-factly, his breath hot on my throbbing skin. His fingers stilled. “I will give you what you seek.”

I held myself motionless, breath held.

What I sought was... What I needed was—

I...I didn’t know.

Tears burned like acid behind my eyelids. “Why?”

The word bore so many questions in one. Why do this to me? Why force me?

Why did he hurt me and feel nothing?

“Why?” Both hands left my body, left me feeling bereft, relieved. Cold. “Because he won’t.”

He? What he? What had I missed?

None of this felt right at all. I felt a player in a stage play with no direction, no script. He demanded something of me, and I couldn’t imagine what it was that drove him.

This was Hawke—the Midnight Menagerie’s wicked serpent. He had always been so difficult to read, and no hours spent in his bed lessened that, but this was something beyond understanding.

I took a deep breath, and swayed when the fragrance I had long associated with Hawke’s presence filled my nose.

“The price they pay to see a countess humbled.” His voice left my back, circled me until I could all but feel him come to a halt in front of me. Seized with the sudden fear that he reached for me again, I jerked back, eyes flaring open.

Yet it was his back I saw, his gaze focused on the doors leading out to the grounds. His hair was loose and straight, a dark stain across the fit of his black coat. He wore a top hat of black silk, banded in bloody red, and his arms were spread as if in welcome.

I’d been right. The gloves he wore tonight were white. I could not recall ever seeing him choose formal white for his gloves before. It was always too... predictable .

“Welcome!” he called, and his voice projected over the amphitheater with trained finesse.

I gasped, struggling to look beyond him, yet all I saw were more shadows. Shapes, silhouettes, faceless and without name.

An audience. God help me, how long had they been there? How long had they watched him taunt me? Touch me?

Fear stole my breath. I struggled to inhale, to force oxygen into my shivering body.

It came on another wash of spice. Warmth filled me. Eased the shiver.

Euphoric.

Bloody hell and the devil’s own tricks. Opium or something derivative to loosen the inhibitions, free the purse strings. I recognized it, now. The underpinning of the incense, the thing that made it so different and still so familiar. It was to be another skin-show, was it?

With my skin the lure.

Reluctant arousal faded to shuddering fear, and fear gave rise to an anger no opium could ease.

I was a slave to the medicinal tar, I would say that much, but I would not be a docile thing for him to exhibit.

I glared at Hawke’s back, hurling insults at him that did not take shape beyond the muzzle he’d forced upon me. My skin burned, not all of it the substance I breathed upon the air. Shame and anger conspired to strip me of what dignity I had left.

Hawke turned to bestow his devilish smile upon me.

In his eyes burned blue fire; his lips, always a cruel edge, spoke of malice I had never before seen upon his face.

I could no longer convince myself that I dreamed the change.

My fingers tightened on the silks. “Who a’ y’u?” It was a terrible butchering of the question, but I did not let that stop me. As I looked up into the wild blue of Hawke’s eyes, one truth became abundantly clear—a warning I recognized far too late.