Not once does he ask me for my address.
We drive past Trafalgar Square and over Blackfriars Bridge, past the Custom House overlooking the Thames and then, soon after, the Jack the Ripper Museum, until finally he’s pulling in front of my flat on Alderney Road.
The hum of the engine descends into silence.
I let out a slow exhale that tightens my chest. “Well, this is it. I suppose I should thank you again for not kidnapping me—”
“Today, you told me that you had a proposition to make.”
My head snaps to the right, so that he’s all I see. And my heart . . . suddenly, the chill is rapidly thawing as hope eternal springs to life. “I . . . Yes, I did. I do.”
He’s stillness personified. No quirk of his lips. No drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. Even when we tumbled into the grass earlier, his breathing never escalated from the exertion, and it doesn’t now, either. But he watches me—with that same, steady expression that he wore when he flipped me over onto my back, the one that suggested I was an inconvenience—and I find my knees clenching together as I wait him out.
What it would take to breathe fire into a man like Saxon Priest, I doubt the world will ever know.
“You won’t work at The Bell & Hand,” he says, his voice deep and arrogant, as though he knows my back is up against the wall and I have little in the way of options, “but I could use you.”
A shiver snakes down my spine and my dirt-encrusted fingers knit together in my lap. And a visual, the kind that’s best not to imagine while in the midst of company, slips to the forefront of my mind and won’t let go.
Big hands traveling up my naked back, pushing me down to my knees. A dark, sinister voice whispering in my ear just before my hair is wrapped in a possessive fist and yanked sharply to the side, to make room for his imperfect lips on my neck. Saxon Priest would rule my body the same way he rules his emotions: tightly, with no give or hint of softness.
I’m instantly ashamed of the way heat floods my core at the mere possibility of a man like Saxon fucking me.
Which he won’t be—ever.
Lifting my chin, I ignore the irrational flutter of my pulse. “Didn’t we already settle this? I’m not for sale.”
Nothing in his expression shifts, but I’m all too aware of the way he wraps an arm around the back of my headrest. Warm breath wafts over my face as he leans in, intruding in my space, until his mouth is scant centimeters from mine. If he wanted to, he could close the narrow gap between us and I would be stuck, cornered, his for the taking.
My chest rises with a sharp inhale, just before his raspy voice echoes in the quiet of the car: “You couldn’t handle a man like me.” Indignation sparks on my tongue, but not before he cuts me off: “And I would never fuck a girl like you.”
Callous. Cold. Cruel.
My heart slams against my rib cage and I don’t hesitate in planting a firm hand on his hard chest to shove him backward. “I don’t need your pity.”
I don’t miss the less-than-subtle glance he throws at my building. I’ve done what I can with the place, with my landlord’s approval—a newly painted front door, some potted plants on the front stoop—but even in the darkness, there’s no missing the signs of age . . . nor the way the homes on either side of mine look more than a little worse for wear.
“Ten tomorrow morning at the pub,” he says, turning the key in the ignition. “If you don’t show, I’ll know you’re not interested.”
“Interested in what?”
“Money, Isla.” He growls the words like I’m insipid, and the temptation rises once more to bash him over the head, to hell with the consequences. “Show, don’t show,” he adds when I don’t reply, “doesn’t make a difference to me.”
But it makes a difference to me, and the bloody bastard knows it.
I throw open the door and slide out from my seat.
Walk away. Go upstairs. Leave him to rot.
I do none of those things and instead bend at the waist so I can peer into the car. Darkness envelops him like a second skin, but I stare at him anyway, hoping he can feel the fire behind my words when I vow, “I will never sleep with you, even if you get down on your knees and beg.”
I don’t wait to hear him respond, if he even does.
The vibration of the engine roars to life as I let myself into my house, but it’s not until I’m unlocking the door to my flat that I remember Saxon still has my knife—Dad’s knife—which means he’s left me with no choice.
And he knows that I’ll show.
Josie is sound asleep when I crawl into bed beside her, and it’s not until early in the morning that I hear the front door crack open and Peter’s heavy footsteps pad inside.
He’s home, he’s safe.
That should appease the knot in my belly, but something tells me I’ve bargained with the devil . . . and it’s not my brother’s arse that’s now on the line.
It’s mine.
9
Saxon
“He won’t talk.”
“Freely, probably not.” With my arms folded over my chest, I sink my weight back to half sit on the metal desk behind me. Through the one-sided mirror, I watch Alfie Barker tug at his restraints, panic pinching his ashen features. “But a man will do just about anything to keep a pulse.”
A man with a cause would, anyway. A man who has something to live for.
And from what Damien’s already discovered about the bloke, Barker fits under both categories. He’s a father, a widower. One wrong move on his part and his two little girls will find themselves as orphans before the night’s through.
I cut a sharp glance over to my younger brother, who’s seated at his monstrosity of a computer. Boy genius, Guy and I used to call him. Damien despised the nickname—still does—but it was entirely too apt. Holyrood, pre-Damien Godwin, might as well have been operating out of the Stone Age.
Old equipment. Dated tech.
The older agents, men like Pa, relied on their fists and wits to uncover information. Our return from Paris, almost six years after Henry Godwin was murdered, changed all that.
Or rather, Damien changed all that.
With a soft cap pulled down over his ears, my brother clicks through a series of pages on the monitor, so fast that I’m unable to keep up. Doesn’t help that we’ve dimmed the overhead lights to the barest glow, so Barker, in the interrogation room, won’t realize that he has company stalking his every move.
“I sent Jude to follow his family this afternoon,” Damien says, extending a hand to tap the computer screen. Pinching his fingers, he glides them apart and the picture he’s uploaded grows larger. It’s a blurry shot, taken at a park somewhere in the City, by the looks of it, but there’s no mistaking the two little girls that a nanny is corralling toward a swing set.
Damien pauses, his fingers falling to the mouse. “Cute kids.”
“Don’t get attached.”
If I’m the frozen tundra, then my brother is a volcano. At first glance, he’s just another figure in the Holyrood landscape but with the added potential to destroy everything in his path with a single touch of a button.