My Darkest Passion (8 page)

Harsh pushed the door open enough to reach inside and turn on the light. He faced her and held out his hand again, but she wasn’t going to touch him, and he knew it. “A bedroom,” he said. “With a shower.”

Moving into the room while she fought to bring her awareness of the spaces around her back to normal took just about all her concentration. She whirled when he slipped in behind her. “Leave that door open.”

“I’ll wait right here.”

The room wasn’t large, but the high ceilings and tall windows gave an impression of space. Much bigger than the shed. There was a bed with a blue quilt that looked handmade. A desk. A walk-in closet and a bathroom. She took a step toward the bathroom.

Another flare of awareness went through her. Harsh looked in the direction of the door. She did the same even though she knew what she’d see. A few seconds later, Kynan strolled in. He glanced toward the open bathroom door and threw himself on the bed. He tucked his hands behind his head and muscles slid and flexed under his golden skin. “Lonely down there.”

Harsh bowed his head in Kynan’s direction and touched three fingers to his forehead. From nowhere, she understood the gesture was his acknowledgment of Kynan’s rank. That motion Harsh had made earlier and tried to take back? Same thing. Well, she wasn’t going to bow to Kynan because he didn’t outrank her.

Kynan crossed his legs. “Awesome, honey, you need that shower so we can eat.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

Kynan laughed. “Just stating a fact. You smell rank, and I’m starving. Do whatever you want, but if you don’t take a shower, you’re not sitting at the table with us. Not smelling like that.”

She walked into the bathroom but left the door open, and that was beyond bizarre to her. What woman in her right mind left the bathroom door open when there were men she barely knew right outside? She gripped the side of the door. If this were a normal situation, she’d close the door. And lock it; maybe even shove a chair or something under the knob. And she wasn’t going to do that. She didn’t trust either of them, but the fact was, with them here, some of the edge came off her jumpiness.

She turned her back to the bedroom. Navy blue towels hung from a silver rack on the near wall. There was a matching blue bath mat. On the sink was a bar of white soap, a man’s razor, and a can of shaving gel. In the shower, there was more of the same soap, shampoo, no conditioner. Since she didn’t even have stubble on her head, the lack of conditioner didn’t matter. She turned on the shower and brushed her teeth while she waited for the water to get hot. The entire time, the skin down her back shuddered with awareness of the two in the bedroom.

Her chest got tight, and she had trouble getting a breath. Her vision went off again. More lines that didn’t meet, colors she couldn’t name. She didn’t want to be alone. She’d die if she was.

She wasn’t going to last like this. Alone. With no one in sight.

She gripped the sides of the sink and fought the urge to go back to the bedroom. Breathe. One breath in. Another out. After a few more breaths, she forced herself to step into the shower. See? She was fine.

When she was, at last, standing under water as hot as she could tolerate, every scrape, bruise, bite and cut came alive. Her mind and her body connected, and the pain obliterated her. She hurt so badly she couldn’t move, and it was shocking. Appalling to think of being injured like this, damaged inside and out. Physically and mentally. Her ribs hurt, her muscles screamed with every flex, every breath. Her joints ached. The slightest movement seared her white-hot. She pressed both hands to the shower wall, and she remembered getting that slash on her forearm. Not from a knife. From a talon.

The memory took her away from where she was now and trapped her back in that room with Bejar. Alone. So alone. A scream welled up in her chest and stuck there. Killing her. Twisting her from the inside out.

Harsh appeared in the open bathroom door, and it was like someone turning on the light when you thought the electricity was out for the rest of forever. She stared at him through the glass walls of the shower. He shucked off his clothes.

She noted, in a remote way, that men who looked like him were models in the pages of glossy magazines. They were featured on internet websites dedicated to male perfection. He was tall and gorgeous and more heavily muscled than she would have guessed. His hair was black. A true, deep black. He wasn’t as dark as some people of Indian ancestry she’d met, but he wasn’t as pale either.

He got into the shower with her and slid his arms around her, and she sank into the contact, too broken right now to push him away.

“Better?”

She nodded.

“Good.”

She didn’t object when he picked up the shampoo and washed her head. It didn’t take long. The water in the bottom of the shower turned pink. She watched the swirls of color in the water fade away. When he was done with her head, he soaped up a washcloth, and the scent of peppermint floated in the air. His fingers were gentle when they slid over her bruises. Probably, it hurt, but she was cut off from all that. Thank God.

After he finished washing her, she scrubbed and washed herself again and then again and again, sometimes with his help and sometimes not. At one point, he moved under the water and tipped his head back while he ran his hands through his black hair, slicking away the water. She stared at him, at his physical perfection, and wondered if his kind were always brutal when it came to sex with humans.

He brought his head back and with water sluicing down his face, said, “No.” Just as if he’d plucked the thoughts right from her mind. “Done?”

She nodded. There was no reason to believe him. Except he hadn’t had the slightest sexual reaction to her. They were standing here naked and it didn’t matter that way. “You?”

“Yes.” He turned off the water and stepped out. He handed her one of the towels and used the other himself.

She got herself dried off, but in the process she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her first thought was
who is that woman
? Behind that stranger, the reflection of Harsh Marit slowly dried himself off.

That was her. That woman with no hair and hollow cheeks and bruises and scrapes all over her body was her. Her head was white compared to the less-pasty-white rest of her. She flashed back to seeing her hair on the floor, scattered around her. She’d been fighting the urge to vomit, and there had been this obscene stench, and Infante and several others held her down while the wall between her mind and her body had slammed down. From that point forward it was as if sensory data came to her through a filter that stripped the experience of everything but the word for it. She understood she hurt, she just didn’t feel it.

Harsh moved close behind her while she touched her head and stared at a face she barely recognized. She’d known about her hair, but not her eyes. They weren’t the hazel they’d always been. They were a stranger’s eyes and a pale, pale blue. So pale they were nearly white. In that sea of translucent aquamarine, her pupils stood out like abnormally black discs. She took a step toward the mirror. Silver flecks whirled through her irises. She leaned closer. The flecks were in her sclera, too.

She stepped back and forced herself to look at her face because maybe the whole problem was that this body was not hers. Maybe that’s why she felt so uneasy in her skin. But, and this was a gut-wrenching relief and horror at one and the same time, she recognized herself. Her features were gaunt but they were hers.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen yourself, then?”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” She blinked and whatever was floating in her eyes glittered at the edges of her awareness.

“Not wrong. Different.”

She ran a hand over her head. “My hair’s going to grow back.” She touched the lump at the back of her head. “That’s going to heal. All of it.”

“Yes.”

“Are my eyes going to stop looking like this?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged and in the mirror, his body flexed. “I don’t think so.”

“I can’t let people see me like this. They’ll think I’m a freak.”

His silence reminded her that she had no idea if she was ever going to see anyone she’d known.

Her eyes weren’t going to be a problem if they weren’t going to let her go home.

8

A
ddison walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. Kynan slid off the bed and pointed at a pile of folded clothes there. “Should be stuff here that will fit okay.”

It almost killed her to say thanks, but she managed to get the word out. Once Kynan had retreated, she walked to the bed and took a look. The underwear was new, some of the tags were still attached, but all of it was the kind worn by a woman in a relationship. Silk with lots of barely there lace. She didn’t want to wear any of it.

Better some clothes than none at all. Harsh came out of the bathroom while she was lost in her thoughts about clothes that weren’t hers. He hadn’t bothered with a towel, and she had zero reaction to so much naked man. No panic at all. He went to the chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt instead of putting on the suit he’d been wearing. Those clothes were draped over a chair.

After he fastened his jeans, he grabbed another tee-shirt and threw it at Kynan. “Here.”

“Somebody needs to tell her a thing or two,” Kynan said. He put on the shirt, but he just didn’t wear clothes the way Harsh did, as if being gorgeous came with responsibility. Kynan didn’t care, or if he did, you couldn’t tell.

“Thank you for volunteering, Kynan.” A devastating smile curved Harsh’s mouth, except it didn’t touch her. Same with him being naked earlier. He was like a painting in a museum. You admired the artistry, but you knew you were never taking it home. On the desk across the room, a phone beeped. Harsh’s, since he walked over to examine the screen. “Don’t let me stop the lesson.”

Kynan sat on the dresser. If she’d seen him at school, she wouldn’t have doubted he was a student, and exactly the kind of guy she avoided. Too pretty. Too aware he could have any girl he wanted. Harsh didn’t strike her as much different in that department.

She picked up the pile of another woman’s clothes. There was a pair of rubber plastic sandals tucked underneath. “I’ll just get dressed. If you don’t mind.”

Kynan held her gaze, and she got stuck there. Going off again like he was threatening her or something when he wasn’t. “You want my number one piece of advice?”

“No.”

“As much as you might be thinking Harsh is hard to get along with—”

She shot a glance at Harsh, but he was oblivious, tapping away at his phone with both hands.

“Don’t be fooled. He’s quality,” Kynan went on. “I don’t say this about many others, but I’d trust him with my life. I have.” He touched his chest. His new tee-shirt had a steampunk owl on it, with a be-goggled mouse driving from a perch on the owl’s head. “Still here. Still free.”

“Oh.” That was the best she could do. The least offensive thing she could think to say.

Oh.

“You and I”—he gestured between them—”this will settle down eventually. I promise. Best friends some day.”

“I don’t think so.” Out of habit she touched her temple to sweep the hair away from her face, but her fingers encountered nothing but air and her skin. Her stomach clenched because she was afraid that her old life, her real life, existed only in her memories. She might have dreamed all of it; that she’d ever had a family, a mother and father who loved her, siblings who cared about her.

“Mine grew back pretty quick.”

Despite his offering information she was sure was meant to comfort, she had the nearly irresistible urge to challenge him. If his hair grew back quickly, well, then, her hair ought to grow back twice as fast. She stood there by the bed, the words on the tip of her tongue and knew the reaction was petty and ridiculous.

Harsh looked up. “Kynan’s right. You need to learn some control.”

“I’ll get on that.” She brushed her fingers over her head in a line from her temple to the knot at the back of her skull. Kynan was the primary source of the tension zinging through her, and that knowledge was as disconcerting as her bald head. Funny how she hadn’t had a problem with Harsh getting into the shower with her. She would have clocked Kynan if he’d done that.

The corner of Kynan’s mouth curled, and it wasn’t a smile. When he spoke, though, his tone was neutral. “Once it grew back, for the first time in a couple centuries, I could see what color my hair is. Didn’t recognize myself for months.”

She blinked at that. “A couple of centuries.”

“My life sucked for a long time.” He shrugged. “Now it doesn’t.”

“You were—” She searched for the word and pulled it from the new vocabulary she was acquiring. “Mageheld, is that right?”

“By someone just like Infante.”

“Harsh, too?”

That pulled Harsh’s attention from whatever he was tapping into the phone. “Most of Nikodemus’s inner circle were magehelds once. And yes.”

Kynan lowered his voice, and gripped the edge of the dresser. “Year after year of doing exactly what you’re told. No matter how much you hate it. No matter who you’re hurting. Nikodemus and his witch got me free of that, and now? I’d die for either one of them. You’re lucky, Awesome. You have no idea how lucky you are that Infante involved Nikodemus. Another warlord might not have given a shit what happened to you.”

At the other side of the room, Harsh snapped on a headset.

Kynan hopped off the dresser and jerked a thumb in Harsh’s direction. “I know you think I’m a pain in the ass. But don’t underestimate that one. He’s running the Empire.”

He continued tapping away at his phone like he had no idea they were talking about him.

“His problem,” Addison said. “Not mine.”

“Keep it down.” Harsh touched his headset and a blue light flashed on. “I need to make a call.”

“There’s a reason he’s Nikodemus’s go-to guy. The one he trusts more than any of us.”

“Okay.”

“I’m telling you this because you need to know. This friction between you and me, that’s about as normal as your fucked up situation gets. But don’t make the mistake of thinking the guy who doesn’t rub you the wrong way is any safer than I am. You have no idea what it took for him to go in there with you—” He cocked his head in the direction of the bathroom. “Without you having any reaction to him at all.”