Chapter 9 Eliza #4
I turned to look at him, and his eyes were dark, unreadable, but there was a flicker of tenderness there. And I was too stunned to do anything but glare at him.
“Don’t,” he murmured.
His hand stayed on mine, and every muscle in my body tensed, every nerve lighting up in such an intense way that it made me want to pull away, as if I’d accidentally touched a hot stove. But I didn’t move, and neither did he.
“Let me help,” he said after a long pause, his voice a raspy whisper.
I could feel my pulse in my throat, in my fingertips. I should have pulled away. I should have stepped back, told him to leave me alone. But the words were stuck, lodged somewhere deep in my chest. Instead, I nodded, just slightly, too stunned to speak, too intoxicated by his masculine nearness.
He reached into the pocket of his coat, pulling out a small dark cloth, and gently pressed it against the cut on my hand.
I could smell his cologne or aftershave.
It was dark and mysterious, like him. Oud and vetiver cloaked in rich leather coiled into my senses.
His touch was careful, deliberate, and for the first time since I’d met him, I saw something not so guarded, not so distant.
His fingers were cool against my skin, and my breath wouldn’t seem to regulate.
A thrum of fear ricocheted up my spine and lower belly, making my shoulders quake for a second.
A much different sensation danced with fear and fluttered in my lower abdomen.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t pull away. Instead, he looked at me with a heavy gaze, his expression unreadable. “You’re not fine. Not here.”
I could feel the shift between us, like something was unraveling. I was torn between feelings and logic.
“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’ll scar,” he said with a hint of humor, referencing his own scar.
“How did you get it?” I whispered, unable to stop myself. He was so close, it took everything to not reach out and touch the deep, jagged line across his forehead.
He focused on my hand, cleared his throat, and kept his eyes down, looking almost ashamed. “Bike accident when I was sixteen,” he murmured.
“How did the bike fare? Matching scar?” I said in an attempt to lighten the moment.
His face grew even more stern and humorless. “Bike was fine; the scar was given to me when the man I stole it from bashed my head in with a shovel.”
I tried not to visibly show how surprised I was at that.
The muscles in his jaw twitched and his brows lowered.
“I know what it’s like,” he said, his voice quieter now, almost a murmur.
“To feel…like you’re alone and everyone is waiting for you to fail.
” His voice broke on the last word, but only for a second.
Just a crack, like a faint echo of something deep inside him.
I swallowed, my throat tight, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what words could fix whatever it was he was feeling or if I wanted to.
I thought of the rumors, all the tales of him murdering his parents after being an evil, spoiled child and all the stories of him lashing out at them in public.
The sight of Jasper’s mother grasping at her throat at the foot of my bed snapped into my head.
Suddenly, I was feeling a thousand different things, and I couldn’t pick just one to focus on.
Pure danger seemed to ooze out of his pores in a confusing, almost appealing way.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” I said defensively.
“I doubt you even loved your parents before you killed them.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
I hadn’t meant to say any of them, hadn’t meant to go there, but the words were already out, and I was grateful.
I needed the distance—but I prayed it didn’t come with consequences.
His gaze shifted, a flicker of something dark crossing his features.
He pulled his hand back, as if my words had physically pushed him away, and I flinched reflexively before seeing his hand was at his side.
I’d never met another person that elicited such a chaotic, loose-tongued response from me.
Of course it would be someone extremely dangerous to do that to.
“I’m sorry for whatever it is you’ve gone through.” His voice was cold again. His eyes didn’t meet mine anymore. They were focused on something else—something far away. “Though, contrary to what you might believe, I did very much love my parents.”
Underneath his anger, I heard it—the rawness in his voice. The echo of something broken, something that spoke to a pain I knew too well. I was struck by the realization that he didn’t want to be confessing his vulnerabilities to me either, but like me, he couldn’t seem to stop.
“I don’t need you to be sorry for me. My parents are still alive.”
The words hit harder than I meant them to, but I couldn’t stop them now.
He didn’t speak at first, but the silence between us was no longer full of distance. There was a flicker of understanding—silent, fleeting—but there. Just for a moment. We were both thrown off with our response to one another.
It made Jasper seem…human. He wasn’t the impenetrable figure I had tried to understand. He wasn’t the brooding man hiding secrets in a strange, dark manor. For one moment, he was just someone who felt the same brokenness that I did.
His lips parted, but no words came out. Instead, he glanced down at my hand, the cut still there but the bleeding slowing. His eyes flickered to my face. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he murmured again, his thick brows pinching together.
He turned to leave again, and I didn’t stop him. I watched him retreat into the shadows of the doorway, my heart still hammering in my chest.
Something was happening that I didn’t fully understand.
Never in my life had I experienced such dark fear from someone mixing with such a confusing whisper of attraction.
There was something so oddly thrilling, intoxicating about the sensations that shot through my system when he was close to me.
Danger had swirled with hunger in a very, very unsafe way.
I had never been one to play with fire, and I wouldn’t start now.
I knew that if I wanted to leave this manor alive, I needed to stay as far away from Jasper as possible.