They had been tiptoeing around each other ever since she had arrived. She had noted that he made a valiant effort to not treat her differently from everybody else, all the other members of his crew, but nevertheless, there were subtle nuances to the way he behaved around her.
The rest of the world, including their own people, were shown the smooth façade, perfect in every way, cold, uncaring, emotionless. Around her, after only a few weeks, he allowed himself to be vulnerable in a way he didn't do it with anyone else, not even when he had bullets stuck in his flesh or was leaking blood from cuts or stab wounds.
Kaz Brekker was always fine – except around Inej Ghafa.
Around Inej, he was barely able to keep his emotions in check, his hands to himself, his body from inching closer to hers, when normally he avoided any form of physical contact like the plague. Around her, close proximity did not raise the specters of dead bodies piled above and all around him. Around her, close proximity did not raise his heart rate or speed up his breathing. Around her, touching skin with his gloved hands did not evoke the cursed, haunting sensation of the bloated body of his brother keeping him afloat.
Around her, he wanted more of what he usually detested, feared, and loathed.
He just hoped that nobody else would notice, for exposing himself to that degree would make him vulnerable to attack, would open a flank he had kept sealed and defended like a fortress.
.-.
They stepped into his private room, his desk strewn with reams of paper as always. At a signal from Kaz, Inej closed the door behind herself and watched him stalk around his desk and sit down, relieved to be off his feet after climbing all the way up here at the end of a long day of negotiations.
Taking a deep breath, Kaz leaned back in his chair. "So, tell me, Wraith, what did you find today?" he rasped. His gloved hands played with the crow's head of his cane, stroking it gently, almost lovingly. To him, it wasn't just a cane. It had become a part of him that he cherished. It represented a part of him that he didn't want to do without, however painful the memories.
She looked at him across the room through the gathering shadows, his eyes hidden in pools of darkness, unreadable, inscrutable. Probably realizing that he was unable to read her eyes as well at exactly the same moment, he reached out and switched on the lamp on his desk, which mainly served to highlight the darkness in the corners of the room that weren't touched by the light.
He folded his gloved hands in the circle of light cast by the lamp, the cuffs of his sleeves pulled down so as to cover his wrists. She had never seen an inch of his skin exposed except for his face and neck. If rumors could be trusted, neither had anyone else. Rumor also had it that his hands were grotesque, that this was why he was constantly hiding them - scarred, clawed, marked in some way or other that made them a horror to behold, a visible reflection of what he was - or pretended to be.
For just a moment, Kaz let go of himself long enough to gesture to the chair opposite his own, inviting her to sit down. She complied, moving toward his table with the grace of a dancer - his Wraith, soundless, her movements as fluid and silent as shadows or fog. Her eyes were riveted to his hands, waiting for him to move them again. Waiting for them to give away their terrible secret.
Kaz watched her approaching, with a grace nobody had ever matched in his eyes. The mere fact that she was getting closer to him within his personal room had him giddy, with his heart beating like a drum, his pulse thrumming in his wrists. His body seemed awash in heat, and he felt that his physical desire was making him somehow unclean - too dirty and sullied for her to be near.
Inej sat down on her chair and listed the secrets she had uncovered for him today - an unfaithful husband, a merch feeding his partner wrong numbers to get more than his share, a shipment arriving sooner than expected with nobody but the two people in the know any the wiser so far.
Nobody except Kaz Brekker.
He sat in silence, trying to control his response to her, taking in the information she had brought him, weighing it and its implications on the dealings in this town, and his own reactions to them. Assessing what he should do in answer to what she'd found out, where he should apply pressure for best outcome - which, to him, always equalled greatest profit, with profit not necessarily being countable in coins or shares. Profit could be a handle on someone, profit could be new information hitherto unknown to anyone else. Profit could be anything.
Greed served Kaz Brekker.
Once she fell silent, his dark eyes met hers for long moments before he rose, slowly, and moved over to his water basin, just on the edge of the shadows cloaking most of his room now. He leaned his cane against the basin's stand and then, very deliberately, began tugging off his gloves, with her still in the room.
He felt as if he were on fire, as if he would burst into flames if he didn't cool himself down immediately, just from sitting on the other side of the table from her and talking business. He couldn't even have put into words what it was about her that drew him in like a moth to a flame - her perfect, coffee-with-milk skin, her dark eyes, the honesty she had always shown him. He knew that, of all the people he had met or known, she alone would never betray him or let him down. He would always know, with her.
And just like that, there it was, the answer to his question.
Just like him, she would always be loyal once she had committed herself, and this was what he valued most in her. This was what was setting him on fire.
His gloves came off, first one, then the other, and he dipped his hands in the cool water waiting for him. Kaz could feel her eyes on him from across the room, could sense her tension - and her resolve not to ask.
Inej had followed him with her eyes and could hardly believe what she was seeing when he took off his gloves right in front of her which, to her knowledge, he had never done before with anybody. Surprisingly, in stark contrast to the rumors she'd heard, his hands were pale, and delicate, and human, with a single scar that seemed to have been left behind by a knife wound.
No claws. No myriad scars. No disfigurements of any kind. A lockpick's hands, slender, fragile … beautiful. He stood there, not ten steps away, with his hands bare in front of her, exposing as much as she felt he could to her. Allowing her to see what, apparently, no man living had seen so far.
His movements were hypnotic. He was a lockpick, after all. Unhurried, careful, delicate movements of his fingers were his specialty. Never once did he look her way but she knew that he felt her eyes on his back, on his exposed and vulnerable hands.
And she knew, without a word being spoken, that he trusted her with this, for now and forever, absolutely, no questions asked. He was certain that she would never tell anyone about this moment, and this would never be mentioned even between them.
Kaz picked up his towel, shivers running down his arms, back, and legs, and gently and carefully dried his hands - and then slipped his gloves back on, tugging them in place and adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves again so every inch of bare skin was covered once more - nothing vulnerable left for anyone to see.
She had seen, she had his trust, and it was enough.