Page 86 of Tempting the Scoundrel
They were hunters who had caught a deer in their snare.
The voice behind her sounded amused. “Figured you’d run. I’m not taking any chances with Whelan. He doesn’t take too kindly to failure.”
“Ye didn’t tell me she were a looker, Elijah,” Blond said.
“Looker or not, we take her.” Alexandra gasped as Elijah seized her by the arm and shoved her into the building wall, setting the tip of his knife to her cheek. His hard grey eyes glinted as he studied her face. “Whelan’s said to bring her alive. He has plans for this one.” To Alexandra, he said, “Come without a fuss, or I will carve up that pretty face, though.”
Three against one. Alexandra didn’t like her odds.
Nick, she thought to herself, as she got ready to act. She wished she’d kissed him one last time. Had kept to the last words she’d spoken to him.
I shall return shortly.
Perhaps she wouldn’t.
But she would fight to make certain she did.
As he eased the knife away, thinking he had won, she slammed her forehead into his and smacked the knife out of his hand. Elijah shouted in surprise, and she swung her fist into his face. He staggered, colliding with the brick wall of the closest building.
Alexandra dove for the knife. The other men came at her, one grasping her by the hair. A hard strike to her face made her cry out. Stars burst in front of her vision.
Do not lose consciousness, she thought.Stay awake!
Her hand closed around the hilt of the blade and she struck. The blond man gave a sharp swear and shoved Alexandra back to the ground.
“You should have come quietly, bitch,” the blond breathed in her ear. “You should’ve—”
His heavy weight left her. The ugly crack of a fist breaking bones filled the alleyway, and the man screamed. Alexandra blinked to clear her vision, lifting her head as two of her assailants sprinted away in a hurry.What had scared them?
A growl came from behind her. Alexandra turned in time to see Nick slam his fist into the squat man’s jaw. Blood smeared across her abductor’s burly face as he sagged against her husband.
Nick pushed him into the wall. He bared his teeth in a savage grimace that was so unfamiliar to her. She had only seen the remnants, once, of this mood: after he’d killed another of Whelan’s men. For Nick’s expression, as he touched the tip of his blade to the corner of the man’s eye, was one of silent calculation.
“You know who I am?” he asked in a low voice that was as frigid as a winter sea. His accent gave it some lulling cadence that made Alexandra shiver. “Your friends knew, which is why they fled like fucking cowards.”
The man hesitated, then gave a nod.
“Yet you still came after my wife.” Nick’s smile was cruel. “How much did Whelan offer you to do such a stupid thing?” The man hesitated, and Nick’s smile disappeared. “How much.”
The blond man swallowed. “Two quid.”
“Two quid,” Nick repeated in a clipped voice. Then he said it again, more softly, as his eyes sought Alexandra’s.
He regarded her with a narrowed stare. Alexandra was suddenly aware of how she must have looked. The blood and dirt on her cheeks, her dress torn. Her lip was swollen from where one of her assailants had struck her.
Nick’s lip curled in a snarl.
He reared back and jammed his blade into the man’s shoulder. The blond’s scream was stifled by Nick’s hand. “What do you think, Alex?” he asked in that strange voice. “Is your life worth so little?”
The blond gave her a desperate look behind Nick’s firm grip at his mouth.
“Nick,” Alexandra said as she rose to her feet. “Don’t do this.”
Her husband’s lips flattened. “Does he deserve my mercy, then?”
She reached for his shoulder, felt his shudder beneath her hand. “It’s not yours to give. It’s mine.”
Nick’s black gaze met hers. That look struck her like a bludgeon. Now she understood the strangeness to his anger, how it seemed so different: he was terrified.
