He was calling her bluff, damn him, and he seemed infuriatingly unconcerned by the strength of her disdainful glare. She’d never been very good at nasty looks or confrontation, but she had an idea that before she and Dorian Blackwell were through with each other, she’d have a great deal of practice with both. “Well … say your piece, then,” she prompted, hating that her eyes couldn’t rest on him for any length of time without being quite overwhelmed.
“I intend to do exactly that.” His voice, usually the texture of cold marble, roughened with a husky note that was intriguing and alarming all at once. “I will talk whilst you finish bathing yourself.”
“Impossible!” she huffed, drawing her knees in tighter to her chest.
One dark eyebrow lifted. “Is it?” His fingers skimmed the milky water, sending ripples toward her that lapped against her knees. “I’d be happy to assist if you find yourself unequal to the task.”
Farah remembered what he’d said in the study. That he didn’t particularly like physical contact. Though the pads of his fingers idling in her bathwater suggested he may have been lying. Or was he bluffing now? Was she brave enough to test the veracity of his own admission?
“Touch me, and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” His voice cooled as did his regard, but he pulled his fingers from the water.
Farah desperately grasped for something to say, but her mind was suddenly blank as a sheaf of paper.
“You’ll learn that I do not respond favorably to threats,” he said rather drolly as he wiped his fingers on a hand towel hanging from a rack at the foot of the tub.
“Neither do I,” she countered, and watched his other eyebrow rise to join the first. “I gather that you want something from me, Mr. Blackwell; well, let me inform you that this is not the way to go about obtaining someone’s cooperation.”
“And yet, I always manage to get what I want from people.”
“I highly doubt very many of those people are self-respecting women.”
Blackwell smirked and rubbed his hard jaw, smooth from a morning shave, as some of the ice receded from his eyes. “I’ll grant you that,” he said, turning and stepping from the dais toward a plush velvet chair. “But, as you know, my world is ruled by many laws, not the least of which is quid pro quo.” He settled his long frame into the chair, his legs falling open and his hands resting on the arms with the indolence of a royal. “I can give you everything you want, Farah Leigh Mackenzie, and all you have to do is wash.” He gave the bar of soap a meaningful glance.
Farah couldn’t think of anything she wanted badly enough to warrant such humiliation, but then she remembered what Blackwell had said before. Dougan may have been brutally murdered. Blackwell was seeking vengeance for his death and wanted her help. If there was any truth to those words, Farah needed to hear them to ascertain it.
Bracing herself, she stretched her legs along the bottom of the bath and lifted her hand to reach for the soap. Her neck and jaw seemed an innocent enough place to start washing, as long as she was careful to keep the swell of her breasts below the murky water. “Tell me what it is I want,” she demanded, chagrined to hear that her voice had become husky and low, the words sounding like an altogether different command. A lover’s command. But they both knew better.
Blackwell’s anomalous eyes glinted as they followed the path of the soap down the column of her neck but, surprisingly, he complied. “Seven years is a long time to spend almost every moment with someone. Over the course of our time together, Mackenzie and I became like brothers. We not only fought, worked, and suffered alongside each other, we shared everything to keep our bond as leaders—as brothers—strong. And to help pass the endless time, I suppose. He shared with me the food you left, though now I doubt he’d done it if he’d known it was you who’d left it. We shared every sordid detail of our pasts, every name, every story, every … secret.”
Farah’s head snapped up, the soap pausing halfway down her shoulder. “Secret?”
Blackwell’s head dipped in a single, meaningful nod, though his eyes remained locked on the bar of soap. He didn’t continue until the soap resumed its glistening path along her flesh.
“In prison, needs, emotions, and fears are only weaknesses to be exploited,” he explained. “Mackenzie’s primary fear was for you. It tortured him that he didn’t know what had happened to you after his capture. His only consolation was that he’d killed Father MacLean, and thereby knew you were out of danger from him, at least.”
Blackwell turned his head to a slight degree, so his good eye focused on the soap she slid along her other arm. Farah became acutely aware that she was running out of skin, and the anticipatory intensity of Blackwell’s stare proved he relished that fact. Her arms could only get so clean, before she had to wash elsewhere.
How absurd this situation had become. The humiliating memories and dank, raw pain of Newgate Prison didn’t belong in this sunlit room with the fragrant, moist heat settling around them, turning the atmosphere hazy with steam. To Farah, the effect was something of a dream, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. Blackwell spoke of hard and valid truths, but the way he watched the soap turn her flesh into slick paths of glinting silk evoked the most sinful and debauched renderings her thoughts could devise.
“How fortunate for you that the water obscures so much.” Blackwell shifted in his chair, his knees falling wider and his nostrils flaring.