“Of course I must,” she replied, not looking up at him. Knowing he was looking down at her. “If not for me—”
His hand captured hers, pressing it against his now clean chest, and she could feel the spring of his chest hair against her wrist. “Mara,” he said, the name coming foreign, as though it was another’s.
This man, this place was not for her.
She twisted her hand in his grip, and he released her, letting her return to her ministrations as though he’d never had her in his grasp to begin with. “Tend to me then.”
“It needs stitching,” she said.
His brows rose. “You’ve knowledge of wounds needing stitching?”
She’d stitched dozens of wounds in her life. More than she could count. Too many when she was still a child. But she said none of those things. “I do. And this one needs it.”
“I suppose it will cost me?”
The words were a surprise. The reminder of their agreement. For a moment, she’d allowed herself to pretend they were different people. In a different place.
Silly girl.
Nothing had changed that night. He was still out for vengeance and she was still out for money. And the longer they both remembered it, the better.
She took a breath, steeled herself. “I shall give you a bargain.”
One black brow rose. “Name your price.”
“Two pounds.” She disliked the words on her lips.
Something flashed in his eyes. Boredom? No. It was gone before she could take the time to identify it, and he was already opening a small compartment in the table at his elbow and removed a needle and thread. “Stitch it, then.”
It occurred to her that only a man who was regularly wounded would have a needle and thread at arm’s length. Her gaze skittered over his chest, tracking a score of scars in various stages of healing. More.
How much pain had he suffered over the last twelve years?
She ignored the question, instead moving to the sideboard and pouring two fingers of whiskey in a glass. When she returned to him, he shook his head. “I won’t drink that.”
She cut him a look. “I did not drug it.”
He inclined his head. “Nevertheless, I prefer to be sure.”
“It wasn’t for you, anyway,” she said, dropping the needle into the glass before cutting a long piece of thread.
“That’s a waste of good whiskey.”
“It will make the stitches less painful.”
“Bollocks.”
She lifted one shoulder and said, “The woman who taught me to sew a wound learned it from men in battle. Seems reasonable.”
“Men in battle no doubt wanted the bottle nearby.”
She ignored the words and threaded the needle carefully, before returning her attention to his wound. “It shall hurt.”
“Despite the addition of my excellent scotch?”
She inserted the needle. “You tell me.”
He hissed at the sting. “Dammit.”
She raised a brow at him. “Shall I pour you a drink now?”
“No. I’d rather have your weapon visible.”
Her lips twitched. She would not be amused. She would not like him. He was foe, not friend.
She completed the stitching quickly and with experienced precision. As she snipped the final length of string, he reached into the drawer once more and extracted a pot of liniment from within. She opened it to a waft of thyme and clove—familiar. “This is why you smell as you do.”
He raised a wry brow. “You’ve noticed my scent?”
Her cheeks warmed at the words, to her great dismay. “It’s impossible to miss,” she defended. Still, she brought the pot to her nose, inhaling, the scent sending a tight thread of awareness through her. She dipped a finger in the pot and spread it across the enflamed skin around his wound, taking care not to hurt him before folding a piece of clean linen carefully and securing it with a long strip of the cloth.
Once finished, she cleared her throat, said the first thing that came to her. “You shall have a wicked scar.”
“Neither the first, nor the last,” he said.
“But the one for which I am responsible,” she replied. He chuckled at that, and she couldn’t help but look up, meeting his black gaze. “You think it is amusing?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I think it is interesting that you claim the one scar that has nothing to do with you.”
Her eyes went wide. “But the others do?”
He tilted his head, watching her carefully. “Each one, earned in a fight. Bouts I would not have fought were I not . . .” He hesitated, and she wondered how he would finish the sentence.
Were I not ruined.
Were I not destroyed.
Were I not disowned.
“ . . . Temple,” he finished simply.
Temple. The name he had assumed only after she’d run. After he’d been exorcised from family and Society and God knew what else. The name that had no bearing on the life he’d had. The one where he’d been William Harrow, Marquess of Chapin. Heir to the dukedom of Lamont.
All-powerful.
Until she’d stripped him of that power.
She looked at him then, cataloging his scars. The map of white and pink lines that ended in week-old bruises, the hallmarks of his profession.
Except it was not a profession.
He was wealthy and titled and with or without her death on his head, he was not required to fight. And still he did.
Temple. The fighter.
She’d made him. Perhaps that was why it seemed so right to tend to him now.
Who had tended to him the other times?
Because she could not allow herself to ask that, she asked instead, “Why Temple?”
He inhaled at the question, the hand of his good arm flexing into a fist, then back. “What do you mean?”
“Why choose that name?”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “I’m built like one.”
It was a flippant, practiced answer. Years of telling truth from lies told her it was the latter, but she did not press him to say more. Instead, her gaze tracked down one massive arm to the place where the wide black band of ink stood stark against his skin.
“And the ink?”
“Tattoos.”
Her hand moved of its own volition, fingers inching toward him before she realized that she was overstepping her bounds. She stopped a hairsbreadth from him.
“Go ahead,” he said, his voice low.
She looked up to him, but his gaze was on the band. On her fingers. “I shouldn’t,” she said, and the words unstuck her. She snatched her hand back.
“You want to.” He flexed his arm, the muscle making the ink shift as though it breathed. “It will not hurt.”
The room was not warm—the fire was new and it was winter outside the walls of the home—but still his arm was burning with heat. She ran her fingertips across the elaborate markings, all curving lines and dark space, amazed by the smoothness of his skin. “How?” she asked.
“A small needle and a large pot of ink,” he said.
“Who did it?” she met his black gaze.
His flickered away, back to where her fingers slid across smooth skin. Comfortable now. “One of the girls in the club.”
Her fingers stilled. “She is very skilled.”
He shifted beneath her touch. “She is. And thankfully has a steady hand.”
Is she your lover? Mara wanted to ask. Except she didn’t want the answer. Didn’t want to want it.
She didn’t want to think of a beautiful woman leaning over him with her keen sense of artistry and her wicked needle. Did not want to think of what happened later, after the needle had pricked his skin a thousand times. More. “Did it hurt?”
“No more t
han a fight on any given night.”
Pain was his currency, after all. She didn’t care for that thought, either.
“It’s my turn,” he said, and she returned her attention to him as he qualified. “To ask questions.”
The words broke the spell between them, and she let her hand fall away from his arm. “What kind of questions?” As though she didn’t know.
As though she hadn’t known for years that there would come a point when she had to answer them.
She wished he would put on a shirt.
No, she didn’t.
Except, if he was to press her into telling him about that night, ages ago, when she’d made a dozen life-altering mistakes, perhaps it would be best if he were fully clothed. If he were not so close. If he were not so suddenly compelling.
It was not sudden.
“How is it that you know so much about tending wounds?”
It was not the question she expected, and so she was blindsided by the images that came in response. Blood and screams. Knives and piles of red-stained linens. Her mother’s last gasp of breath and Kit’s tears and her father’s cold, brutal face, revealing nothing. Not emotion. Not guilt.
Certainly not remorse.
She looked down at her hands, the fingers now twisted together, a confusing tangle of cold skin, and she considered her words, finally settling on: “Twelve years has afforded me much opportunity to tend any number of wounds.”
He did not reply, and the silence stretched for an eternity before he slipped a finger beneath her chin and urged her to meet his serious black gaze. “The truth, now.”
She tried to ignore the way the simple touch shattered her concentration. “You think you know me well enough to see when I am lying?”
He did not speak for a long while, the tips of his fingers stroking across her cheek to her temple, then around the curve of her ear, reminding her of the way he’d whispered and kissed at that place in the dressmaker’s shop. She caught her breath as those wicked fingers slid down the column of her neck, resting on the place where her pulse threatened to thunder from beneath her skin.
And through it all, she kept her gaze on his, refusing to be the first to look away. Refusing to let him win, even when he closed in on her, tilting her face up and to the side, until her lips were parting at the promise of the caress he threatened.
The caress she found she wanted more than anything.
He almost gave it to her, his lips stroking once, twice, featherlight, across hers, until every inch of her ached for the touch to come firmer. To deliver on the whisper of a promise.
She sighed against his lips, and a dark, wicked sound rolled in his throat, sending a thrill through her. Had he growled? How scandalous. How wonderful.
But he didn’t kiss her properly. Instead, he spoke, wretched man. “I have spent a lifetime watching men lie, Mara. Gentlemen and scoundrels. I’ve become a tremendous judge of truth.”
She swallowed, feeling his fingers at her throat. “And I suppose you never lie?”
He watched her for a long moment. “I lie all the time. I’m the worst kind of scoundrel.”
Now, as she hovered on the edge of the caress with which he teased, she believed it. He was a scoundrel. Worse.
But it did not stop her from wondering what it would be like to tell him the truth. To unload it like a bricklayer into a perfect little pile right at his feet. All of it.
And if she did? If she told him everything—all she’d done, and why? If she laid herself bare and let him judge her for her good deeds as well as her sins?
“Tell me the truth.” The words were a caress. A temptation. “Who have you healed, Mara?” and the echo of patience in them—as though he would wait an eternity for the answer—was enough to make her ache to tell him.
Nothing you could say would make me forgive.
His words from earlier echoed through her, a threat and a promise. A warning not to give herself over to him.
He wanted his retribution, and she was the means to that end.
She’d best remember that.
Truth was a strange, ethereal thing—so few ever used it, and it was so often only noticeable in the lies one told.
“No one of consequence,” she said, “I am simply good with a needle, as well.”
“I would pay you for the truth,” he said, and even as the words came gentle, like a caress, they stung, harsh and unpleasant. This was the game they played.
She shook her head. “It’s not for sale.”
He was not through. She could see it in his gaze. And so she did the only thing she could think to distract him. She came up on her toes, and kissed him.
Chapter 7
If he’d been asked to wager everything he owned on what would happen in that room that evening, he might have laid it on his kissing her.
He’d wanted to kiss her from the moment he’d taken her in his arms in that alleyway.
From before that.
From the moment she’d wrecked him with the hint that there might have been something more between them that night twelve years earlier.
From before that.
There was always an edge after a handy trouncing, one that did not go away until an opponent landed a strong, sure blow. The theory held true if the opponent was a woman, and the blow one of pleasure.
So he’d ignored the desire, sure it was no more than a need to ease post-fight tension. He’d experienced the edge enough to know that it would wane.
Except it hadn’t. It had roared through him as her hands had stroked down his arm in that dark alley, even as she’d worried his wound and sent pain coursing through him. And it had nearly consumed him as they rode to his town house—so much that he hadn’t been able to stop himself from asking her to join him inside.
The request had been salt in the wound, for he’d known that if she came, he would only desire her more. Her long legs and her pretty face and that hair that he itched to release from its moorings on a sea of auburn silk. And all that was nothing compared to the way her strength moved him. The way her sharp retorts and her smart words set him on edge. The way she made a strong, worthy opponent.
The desire had come to a head as she’d stitched his wound and kept her secrets. And when he’d finally touched her, it had coursed through him, undeniable and dangerous.
So, yes. He’d have wagered on kissing her.
But he wouldn’t have laid a penny on her kissing him. He would have miswagered, for it seemed that Mara Lowe was full of secrets, and willing to do anything to keep them from him.
Even kiss the Killer Duke.
And Christ, did she kiss him—her strong, soft hand tilting him down to her even as she lifted to meet him, capturing his lips with hers. Stealing his breath with the soft, tentative, devastating caress. Teasing him with the way her lips brushed across his, testing the waters. Questioning.
He willed himself still, refusing to touch her, to take control. Terrified that if he put his giant, brutal hands on her, he would scare her away. That she would run again. And then her mouth opened beneath his, unschooled and still so perfect, and the tip of her tongue edged along his bottom lip, a smooth, slick caress.
A man could only take so much.
His control snapped.
He caught her into his arms, a groan escaping from him, the sound low and likely terrifying for her, but he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t stop any part of it, not as he took hold of her, as he tilted his head and lifted her to him, and found the perfect angle at which he could kiss her like she was meant to be kissed.
Like he’d dreamed of kissing her.
Claiming her.
And damned if she didn’t claim him in return. Her hands wrapped around his neck, her fingers sinking into his hair, and he settled into her mouth, stroking deep until she sighed her pleasure, the sound rushing th
rough him, straight to the core of him, where he’d been heavy and hard for what seemed like days—any time he was around her.
He worried her lower lip with his teeth, loving the way she shivered in his arms, letting his hands find their way into her hair, scattering pins and setting loose a tide of curls. He traced the silken strands with his touch once, twice, until he couldn’t bear not to look any longer. He pulled back, loving the way she followed him, the way she resisted their separation. “Temple,” she sighed, an edge of irritation in the name.
“Wait,” he whispered. “Let me look at you.”
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. His gaze devoured her, her dark hair spread wild around her shoulders, gleaming hints of red in the candlelight, her strange, gorgeous eyes filled with frustration and desire. Her lips swollen from his kiss—
He took those lips again, unable to resist them. Kissed her deep and thoroughly, memorizing the sound of her sighs, the spice of her, the feel of her against him, like nothing he’d ever felt before—
Except . . .
His head snapped up, and her eyes blinked open. “You really ought to stop stopping,” she said with a smile.
He shook his head. “At the dressmaker’s,” he began, hating the way her gaze cleared of sensuality at the words. “What you said . . .”
It is not the first time you’ve seen my underclothes.
“We’ve done this before,” he said.
Her eyes flickered to his arm, to his tattoo. “Yes.”
No. It couldn’t be the truth. He would remember this—the way her mouth felt right against hers. The way she felt right in his arms.
He kissed her again, this time a test. An experiment. He would remember her. Surely he would remember the taste of her. The sounds she made. The way she somehow drove the caress and gave herself up to it.
He would remember her.
He released her mouth, directing his kiss down the column of her neck, to the hollow of her collarbone, dipping his tongue into the indentation there, tasting her. Savoring the sigh that escaped from her lips as he slid his hands to the front tie of her bodice and released the tension there, sliding his hand into the fabric to caress the straining tip of one breast.