She stumbled forward, her gaze darting around. She was alone. Save for him. And then she let herself really look, and bile burned her throat. She’d found him.
Jack Talent hung on the wall, na**d and crucified. Thick iron spikes drove through his hands, shoulders, thighs, feet, and heart. Iron to keep him from shifting. His blood ran in thick rivulets to be collected in iron pails beneath him. Hair shorn off, his head hung forward, resting against one pike.
“Jack,” she whispered, shaking so hard it came out as a sob. Whatever she felt for him, he did not deserve this. No one did. He did not move. The scent of death was too thick for her to determine if it was his or another’s. Oh, but he was pale. So pale. Her baton clattered to the floor as she reached him. His skin was clammy yet hot and covered with symbols carved directly into his skin. A grunt, so low and weak she might have missed it, broke from his cracked lips.
“Help!” She hadn’t realized she’d shouted the words until footsteps pounded along the iron floor. She glanced back and saw the familiar outlines of Mr. and Mrs. Lane.
Mary pressed her palm against Talent’s quivering side, and his pain screamed in her ears. “Help him.”
The inspector swore as he rushed forward, his strong arms lifting Talent’s weight off the spikes as he began to wrench them out. But it was Mum’s face that captured Mary’s attention, for it promised vengeance and death.
Jack lay within the womb of his bedding. If he kept perfectly still, barely drawing a breath, he could almost remain numb and think of nothing more than how good the weight of the quilt felt on top of him and the softness of the mattress beneath him. But it was impossible to keep himself in that state of nothingness forever. A sound would break out from somewhere in the house, a laugh or the creak of a floorboard, or perhaps the rattle of a passing conveyance outside, and he’d flinch, his entire body seizing with terror and pain, and then the panic would claw at him. He was safe. Safe in Ranulf House. His true home. The thought held as much weight as smoke. It drifted away too soon, leaving him with the memories. Pain, degradation, the sick slide of it that had him shivering like a babe and burrowing down further into the bed.
When the terror had him, those once soft and secure blankets meant nothing. They could not protect him. Not from the memory of those hands on him, pinning him down, holding him tight as the knife scored through his flesh, or worse, when they’d stroked him, gently, manipulating a response that rose his gorge. And then the horrid, churning humiliation as they pinned him in a different manner, and their laughter as they enjoyed him.
Jack curled in on himself, gagging even as he held himself as tightly coiled as he could manage, his arms wrapped about his drawn up-knees. The position hurt and tore into his wounds. But he’d fly into pieces if he didn’t hold on.
The door opened, and he tensed. He was safe. Safe. It wasn’t them. Couldn’t be. He shivered hard and held on.
“Jack.” Ian’s voice. Ian’s scent, as familiar as his own. He swallowed convulsively. He’d never admit it to anyone, but Ian’s scent struck a chord deep within him, at the childlike part of him that immediately thought, “father.” His own father meant nothing compared to this man. Humiliation writhed inside of him that Ian should see him like this. That he should know what had happened—for Jack was certain he did—he could not bear it.
“Get out.” His voice was no more than a dry whisper.
Footsteps sounded, bringing Ian closer, not away. Jack tucked his chin into his chest. Ian stopped next to the bed. Jack could feel him there, hovering.
“Lad.” Ian sighed, and Jack shivered until his teeth rattled. His eyes burned, a hot, wet pressure building behind them. Oh, hell, just leave. Do not see this too.
But the edge of the bed dipped as Ian sat. In the periphery of his vision, Jack saw Ian’s broad hand and his golden wolfhead ring wink in the light. Jack squeezed his eyes shut.
Ian’s voice came just the same, blunt and unemotional. “It’s a bolloxed shite thing that happened to you.”
Jack stilled, his heart in his throat and his stomach twisting. Ian made a sound of anger. “I do not know what to say to you, mo mhac. Other than if you think yourself unmanned because of… of what they did, then I’ll personally rip yer cods off and feed them to ye.”
Irritation made Jack snort. It wasn’t bloody Ian’s body being tortured in that bloody room. Bastard lycan.
“Brassed you off, did I?” Ian retorted. “Good. You deserve your rage.”
He moved, and the edge of his thigh came close enough to touch. Or punch. It was tempting, but the shaking had started again.
“You’ll heal,” Ian said. “You’re too strong to do anything less.”
The shaking grew until Jack couldn’t control it, and his world grew watery. A blur as the rage and pain tore out of him in a sob. He wasn’t aware of moving; perhaps he hadn’t, but in a blink, his face was crushed against Ian’s chest, his fists slamming into Ian’s sides as if he could pound him to dust. But the man who’d called him his son, the man he called father in his heart, simply held him fast and took the punishment as Jack raged against the irrevocable tear in his soul.
Chapter Thirty-one
London, 1869—Love Requited
Well, I think you are wrong.”
Winston stopped and gently turned Poppy away from the foot traffic that flowed along the busy sidewalk on Oxford Street, tucking her between his body and the large glass window of an empty storefront to let. Most couples took their strolls around Hyde Park or some such landscaped area. Not Poppy. She preferred to roam the city proper. And as Winston would follow her anywhere, he simply let her take them wherever her whim demanded. “Explain.”
Her stubborn chin rose a touch. “Ophelia absolutely did not go mad because of Hamlet’s defection. It is utterly absurd to presume that unrequited love can drive a person to madness. Clearly that poor woman contained a fractured mind well before Hamlet waltzed onto her stage.”
His cheeks ached in an effort not to grin. He braced an arm on the window frame, which gave him an excellent excuse to lean in close and lose himself in her lemony scent and feel the subtle warmth of her body. The ever present ache in his gut—one that she’d put there—tightened a bit more. They had been married a week. A strange time, for whenever Winston thought of events before their marriage, his mind went a bit fuzzy. They’d fought. She’d been afraid to marry… and that was when his memory became muddled. He’d gone to Paris, drunk too much absinthe—a beverage he resolved never to touch again—and he’d come home, only to be cut off by his father. Win hardly remembered the words they’d exchanged. But Poppy had married him. That joy he knew to be true.
Now, however, he needed to find work, preferably with the Metropolitan Police, needed to find a home for them, for they were staying with her father, and still his want of her stayed foremost in his mind.
“You do not think it romantic that her love for Hamlet was so great that she fell into unending despair when he left?” he asked.
Sharp red brows snapped together, and he wanted to kiss the little furrow between them. His hand curled into a fist as she, oblivious of his lust, proceeded to lecture him. “Romantic? Bah. Such is a man’s idea of how a woman ought to love. By all means, let us poor, emotionally weak females fall into utter helplessness for the want of a man. Especially a man who couldn’t be bothered to treat her with any sort of—”
He kissed her. Because he couldn’t stop himself and didn’t have to. Her lips were soft, her tongue tart and slick. He slid an arm about her slim waist and suckled her lower lip before breaking away. “You’ll soon have me in despair,” he whispered, smiling against her mouth, “if you don’t believe in all-consuming love.”
Her arm snaked around his neck, her cool fingers slipping into his hair to toy with it. Had he the ability to purr, he would.
“That isn’t love,” she said.
“No?”
“No.”
He nuzzled closer, brushing his mouth against hers. “Kiss me again.”
“We are in public.” But she sipped at his upper lip as though she liked the taste of it.
Winston chuckled and reluctantly stepped back a pace. His gaze landed again on the storefront window beside them, and he looked back at a wonderfully flushed and mussed Poppy. “Do you realize you take us past this empty shop with every walk we take?”
Her cheeks darkened more. “Do I?” She moved to go, but he blocked her way with his shoulder.
“Yes.” He nudged her chin with his knuckle. “And you won’t get me to believe it’s by chance, either. Confess, Boadicea. Why this shop?”
Standing straight and smoothing her hair back into place, she attempted to look past him, her sweet lips pressed into an annoyed line. But then a noise of defeat sounded in her throat, and she glanced at the shop before meeting his eyes. “I want to let it.”
When his brows rose in surprise, she pushed on. “It is a bookshop. Or was.” Her nose wrinkled as she made herself speak. “I would like to see it reopened. I-I have always wanted… It is a silly dream, I know.”
Her words cut into him. He hadn’t expected her to have dreams. Why? Why hadn’t he thought of her wants? It shamed him that he’d been so oblivious. Putting a staying hand around her waist when she squirmed to get away, he looked over her shoulder and studied the shop. “Have you any experience in running a bookshop?”
Poppy’s expression closed. Tension tightened the muscles along her back. But she did not drop her gaze from his. “No.”
He looked into her dark eyes, his hand firm upon her. “Then you shall learn.”
She flinched. “What?”
He smiled then, tucking a stray lock of fire-bright hair behind her ear. “We have need of funds and a place to live. There is a flat attached to the shop, I see. You want this shop. So you will have it.”
Her breath left in a gust. “Win… How can you…” She drew herself up. “What if I fail?”