Women used it to manipulate.
Men used it to dominate. To humiliate.
Even now, he could feel the desire to press her beneath him and demonstrate to her his superior strength. To claim that mouth that had so tortured him at dinner as his own. The milk-white cream she licked off her lips and finger had evoked unwanted images of branding her mouth with the creamy evidence of his release while she licked at it with as much relish as she had the dessert.
Farah had been right. He was a villain, a monster, a killer, and a thief. A man without conscience or mercy. His past had twisted his desire into something dark and deviant.
He liked to watch her. To scrutinize her when she had no idea she was being observed. He loved how her expression lit with the unguarded curiosity he knew she’d been born with. The way she reached for things that intrigued her, needing to touch with her hands and not just her gaze. The way she ran her fingers over her discoveries with an almost carnal relish as though, in her own innocent way, she found a sensuous delight from the entire world.
The sight inflamed him beyond his comprehension. Her slim, pale, elegant hands and clever, nimble fingers. Exploring. Discovering.
Stroking.
His cock twitched and flexed, demanding something from him that he could not give. He’d tried in the past to relieve his body’s need. But even the feel of his own hand repulsed him.
Desire and disgust roiled in his gut, leaving very little room for the sumptuous dinner he’d shared with Farah, and intensifying the trembling in his limbs.
Tonight would be another eternity.
He could already feel the itching and prickling beneath his skin. The heat would follow. A feverish, pulsating torture. His body and mind locked in a stalemate of desire and hostility. His natural instincts to fuck overcome by memories of thrashing shadows and violent lust. Brutality. Helplessness. Weakness. Screaming. Memories of whispering a beloved name against the cold, fetid ground by his desperate, bleeding lips. He would disassociate from the pain. Imagine the feel of a small hand within his own. Moonbeam curls made of silk. Eyes like pools of liquid silver. A dimpled smile that held the light of the far-reaching cosmos.
One duty had kept him from succumbing to the darkness in that dank, rotting prison.
One vow.
It had given him the strength to lead, the bravery he transformed into ruthlessness, and the desperation he wielded like a blade until it was his enemies with their faces in the dirt.
On nights like this, before she slumbered beneath his roof, Dorian gave up attempting sleep. If it claimed him, so would the shadows, thrusting into his psyche until he woke sweating and screaming, a blade in his hand. Other nights, flames would lick at him instead of the shadows. Rip at his skin and hold him in their muscle-wrenching grip until he would wake to the wet shame of his release soiling his sheets.
On those mornings, he’d bathe in scalding water, scrubbing until the flames died, until his skin was red and raw and bleeding.
Instead of sleeping, he’d taken to roaming the halls, usually ending up in the library to escape into a book.
Dorian looked at his bed, neatly made and turned down for his comfort. The red linens a constant reminder of the blood he spilled. Of the blood he lost.
He suddenly didn’t want to look at it, let alone climb between the covers. He would not be fodder for the terrors of the past tonight.
Finishing his last stitch, Dorian inspected his handiwork. It would heal and scar nicely.
A different scar caught his eye, and he ran a finger across the long-healed wound. He had to make sure she never saw this, for it would expose a secret he could never reveal.
For it could be the destruction of them both.
Dorian wrapped the wound as he walked toward the door. There would be no sleep tonight.
Tonight, he would watch.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Heavy clouds threatened to drench Farah’s wedding day. She’d fought the pull of sleep until very late, and so she hadn’t woken until noon, which generally would have distressed her. Instead, she lay beneath the cozy counterpane and watched the storm clouds crawl over each other in their haste to reach the shore, congregated by the wind and clashing like unruly children in a school yard.
Reaching for a glass of water on the bedside table, she paused, noting how the high-backed chair crowded the bed. Had it been pulled that close when she’d turned in? She didn’t think so, but then, she’d been rather distracted the night before, puzzling over the events at dinner.
She’d uncovered another crack in Dorian Blackwell’s façade, a rather large one. A chink in the armor of ice he encased around his humanity. Regardless of his aversion to touch, and despite the vow that bound them both to this course of action, Blackwell’s eyes were drawn to her. His body responded to the sight of her mouth. Her tongue. Watching her eat, enjoy, lick her fingers and her lips, those things inflamed him.
Farah hadn’t meant to entice him with her actions over dessert. But she knew she had, she’d seen the heat in his eyes. The alarm. The banked passion.
And his body wasn’t the only one affected by whatever this was between them. Something had awakened within her, as well. Something previously missing, or perhaps merely dormant all this time. Lying in wait for the perfect mix of shadow and intrigue to draw it out. Some wicked, playful thing comprised of equal parts curiosity and womanly knowledge. Of timidity and desire.
All she knew was that she came alive beneath Dorian Blackwell’s inscrutable gaze. He watched her with an intensity she’d never before seen, and she wanted to fill his insatiable mind with images he’d not likely forget.