Riley had gotten close to him only long enough to find his weakest spots, waiting for the perfect opportunity to go in for the kill.
It was even more humiliating, somehow, that he’d tried his hand at deceiving her only last week and failed so spectacularly. Apparently six months of moody reflection and self-flagellation had taught Clark nothing about betrayal. Riley hadn’t slipped past his defenses; he’d lowered them for her willingly, practically fell over himself to do her bidding.
Hadn’t he been drawn to her—a moth to a flame—the first night they’d met? Was it any wonder, then, that in trying to touch her he’d gotten burned?
At least now he was well and truly done. Clark should thank her for knocking some sense into him. Under no circumstances would he allow himself to go near Riley Rhodes again. If that meant abandoning his camper in the middle of a terrible storm, so be it. His entire home smelled of her anyway. Of them. It would take days to air out.
Instead of finding somewhere dry to sleep, he’d gone back to the castle and worked, shivering through the last howls of the rain. The survey grounded him. Demanded exertion, concentration. With tools in hand, all that mattered was completing the assignment. Clark labored until his body mirrored his emotions—wrung out, used.
When he’d finally gone back to the camper after dawn, it was empty except for the full kind of silence that came after a violent storm. He yanked a comb through his hair until he looked like a man who didn’t know the word ravished. Shaved with savage precision. Cinched his tool belt and relaced his boots.
Clark wasn’t born yesterday. He understood casual sex. It wasn’t like he thought Riley was his girlfriend or something because she let him put his mouth on her. But he certainly believed that when you got naked with someone, you should treat them with respect. Part of that unspoken covenant meant not throwing their worst insecurities in their face before the come had even dried.
His face heated. Clark knew he had a filthy mouth in bed, but that was different. He could let himself go carnal, unfiltered in the heat of the moment, when blood abandoned his brain for more urgent demands. Riley brought it out in him like no other partner, daring him at every turn to show her how base he could be. He found her responses—equal parts yielding and resistance—singularly addictive.
But he couldn’t have let her into his bed without a considerable degree of trust. That offering mattered—to him, at least—when they’d done nothing since they met but break faith with each other. He’d thought that if nothing else, their interaction last night had been honest. To know she could lie so well about something so raw only made him fear her more.
No one had ever seen him as clearly as Riley. Frankly, he’d never wanted them to. All the effort he put into controlling his temper, keeping up appearances, hadn’t stopped her from finding his weak spots.
Clark loved being a little bit mean to her in bed—it made both of them hot. But last night, after, when she’d gone for his throat, he’d seen how desperately she wanted him to fight back and declined to give her the satisfaction. He didn’t understand what had changed. Why she’d turned on him so suddenly. Had she confused the boundaries between bedplay and real life?
He told himself it didn’t matter why she’d done it—determined not to care.
Gathering his tools and supplies, Clark made his way down to the dungeon, an area he hadn’t explored yet. Unsurprisingly, the cramped space was exceptionally dark, not to mention damp, the dirt floor flooded from the storm.
Clark reckoned Riley wouldn’t follow him down here, now that she knew he could resist her baiting. What fun was a dog who wouldn’t fetch?
As he descended the stone steps, the wrought-iron door of a cage that took up the entire room swung, creaking, in the cold morning breeze. Inside the cell, runoff from the damp soil rushed toward a drain in the corner. Clark tried not to think too hard about all the other fluids that might have been spilled here over centuries as he stepped inside.
It was macabre, but he loved dungeons. They held so much desperate emotion. And desperate people thought most about leaving a mark. That thought harkened back to something Riley had said early on about this castle and curses, but Clark shoved the memory away, unwilling to admit she’d polluted his mind.
Moss grew between the thick gray slabs of stone in the walls, the scent of undergrowth mingling with other minerals in the air. He searched methodically for loose stones, hoping to find a hiding place left by one of the dungeon’s former prisoners. According to his research, Malcolm Graphm was the most famous man held here. As far as Clark could tell, he’d also been the last.
It was slow work. Occasionally, he’d find a piece that shifted at his touch, but more often the deterioration came from age rather than intent. Still, determination fed him better than any food. He needed to find an artifact of his own today, something untouched by Riley and all her confusing theories.
Finally, at ground level, his eyes snagged on something. It was a collection of lines scraped into the iron cage that looked like they might be . . . tally marks? And then, as he wiped away layers of dirt and dust, underneath the count, tiny, was a line of Gaelic.
Bho a bilean, bàs
Immediately, he thought of the cave, though the etching here looked different, thin and slanted, and when Clark translated the line he didn’t see an immediate correlation.
His phone showed the phrase in English. From her lips, death.
“Tell me about it, mate.” Clark could feel the prisoner here in this dank cell, trapped but methodical, counting the days, hoping for rescue. Unsure if they’d make it out. Leaving a last word the only way they could.
When the walls yielded nothing else but dust, Clark went to work on the ground. Shoveling gave him an outlet for his anger. It was harder to think when all his muscles strained, working together to sift through the long-dormant earth.
A few minutes in, the tip of the shovel hit something. The clink of metal on metal in his ears was like crawling to water after days wandering in the desert. Clark’s pulse kicked up. Could it be? Salvation?
He didn’t care what he’d found. Let it be a chamber pot. All he wanted was to have something to show for coming here beyond emotional bruises.
Dropping the shovel, he got down on his hands and knees. The wet earth soaked into his pants as he gathered coarse soil between his fingers, too frenzied for gloves or even tools. Carefully, Clark swiped at the surface of something dark and curved in the ground. Whatever the object, it had been crafted in heavy metal.