“This would please you? Honesty from a man?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged a beautiful, sun-kissed shoulder. “I hate the Hawk.”

“Why?” Adrienne asked indignantly.

“He’s a fool. He fails to cede appropriate due to your beauty, Beauty.”

“To my what?” The least important thing about her.

The smithy flashed a blinding smile. “He seeks but to spread them, to slip between your thighs, but those love-slick dewy petals I would immortalize.”

Adrienne stiffened. “That’s very poetic, but there’s no need to be rude, Adam. And you don’t even know me.”

“I can think of nothing I’d rather do with my time than spend it knowing you. In the biblical sense, since you find my other references too graphic. Is that pretty enough for you?”

“Who are you?”

“I can be anyone you want me to be.”

“But who are you?” she repeated stubbornly.

“I am the man you’ve needed all your life. I can give you whatever you wish before you even realize you’re wishing for it. I can fill your every longing, heal your every wound, right your every wrong. You have enemies? Not with me at your side. You have hunger? I will find the most succulent, ripe morsel and feed you with my bare hands. You have pain? I will ease it. Bad dreams? I will chase them asunder. Regrets? I will go back and undo them. Command me, Beauty, and I am yours.”

Adrienne shot him a withering look. “The only regrets I have are all centered around beautiful men. So I suggest you get yourself out of my—”

“You find me beautiful?”

Something about this man’s eyes was just not quite right. “Aesthetically speaking,” she clarified.

“As beautiful as the Hawk?”

Adrienne paused. She could be cutting at times, but when push came to shove it was her nature to go out of her way not to hurt people’s feelings. Adrienne preferred to maintain her silence when her opinion was not the answer sought, and in this case, her silence was answer enough.

Adam’s jaw tightened.

“As beautiful as the Hawk?”

“Men are different. You can’t compare apples to oranges.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to compare a man to a man. The Hawk and myself,” he growled.

“Adam, I am not getting into this with you. You’re trying to force me to say something—”

“I am only requesting a fair answer.”

“Why is this so important to you? Why do you even care?”

His mood changed, quicksilver. “Give me a chance, Beauty. You said aesthetically I please. You can’t truly compare men until you’ve tasted the pleasure they can give you. Lie with me Beauty. Let me—”

“Stop it!”

“When you watched me forge the metal it made you burn.” Adam’s intense black eyes bored into hers, penetrating and deep. He claimed her hand and turned it palm up to his lips.

“Yes, but that was before I saw—” She broke off quickly.

“The Hawk,” Adam spit out bitterly. “Hawk the magnificent. Hawk the living legend. Hawk the seductive bastard. Hawk—the king’s whore. Remember?”

She gazed sadly at him. “Stop it, Adam,” she finally said.

“Have you bedded him?”

“That’s none of your business! And let go of my hand!” She tried to tug her hand out of his grasp, but his grip tightened and as his fingers caressed her wrist she felt confusion assail her senses.

“Answer me, Beauty. Have you lain with the Hawk?”

She swallowed tightly. I won’t answer him, she vowed stubbornly even as her lips murmured, “No.”

“Then the game still plays, Beauty and I have yet to win. Forget the Hawk. Think of Adam,” he crooned as he claimed her lips in a brutal kiss.

Adrienne seemed to sink deeper and deeper into a murky sea that made her want to curl up and pull into herself.

“Adam. Say it, Beauty. Cry for me.”

Where was the Hawk when she needed him? “H-h-hawk,” she whispered against Adam’s punishing mouth.

Enraged, Adam forced her head back until she met his furious gaze. As Adrienne watched, Adam’s dark features seemed to shimmer strangely, changing … but that wasn’t possible, she assured herself. Adam’s dark eyes suddenly seemed to have the Hawk’s flecks of gold, Adam’s lower lip suddenly curved in Hawk’s sensual invitation.

“Is this what I must do to have you, Beauty?” Adam asked bitterly.