Heart of Iron (43 page)

Steel screamed as it rang against stone. Rosalind spun on her heel and looked around, fists clenched protectively in front of her. Her gaze raked the shadows. He wouldn’t have followed her here, would he? The enclaves were dangerous for a creature of his ilk.

Nothing but stillness greeted her questioning gaze. Sparks sprayed in the distance from a steam-driven welding rig but there was no one in sight.

Didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

Easing a foot behind her, she stepped back slowly, watching the shadows. The feeling of danger was a familiar one. She’d been a child-spy, an assassin, and years of such work had taught her when she was being watched and when she wasn’t.

“You’re clever,” a cool voice said behind her.

Rosalind spun with her fist raised. The Nighthawk caught her arm in a brutal grip, barely flinching at the blow.

“But I expected that,” he murmured, looking down at her from his great height. His fingers locked on her right arm in a cruel grip.

“I’d return the compliment,” she snapped breathlessly, forcing her voice lower. Where the hell had he come from? “But I don’t think it very clever for a man like you to ’ave ventured ’ere.”

She jerked against his grip but it was immoveable. Harsh red light lit his face, highlighting the stark slash of his brows and his hawkish nose. He looked like the Devil’s own, his lips hard and cruel and his eyes glaring straight through her. A hard black leather carapace protected his chest; the body armor of the Guild of Nighthawks.

“You and I both know I could kill any number of mechs if they come running.” His voice was soft, she noticed, a low gravely pitch that one strained to listen to none the less. He’d be someone who didn’t bother to raise it often. Someone who expected his word to be obeyed and wasn’t often disappointed.

“Aye,” she agreed, curling her middle finger and twisting the tip of it. The thin six inch blade concealed in the knuckle at the base of her hand slid through the glove silently, one of the many enhancements to the joint she’d received. Punch a man like this and she could skewer him. “But I weren’t speakin’ o’ them. This is my world, not yours.”

Rosalind stabbed hard, stepping forward with her body to give strength to the thrust. Lynch caught her wrist, jerking to the side so that the blade skittered across his ribs and not through them. Shoving away from her, his fingers came away from his side sticky with black blood. In daylight there would be a faint bluish-red tinge to it—the color gave the blue bloods their name.

He looked up, his pale eyes burning with intensity and the promise of revenge. The blood in Rosalind’s veins turned cold at the sight and she snatched the knife from her boot, feeling its familiar weight in her right hand.

Lynch sucked in a sharp breath and looked away from his bloodied fingers. “That wasn’t very wise.”

Shadows moved. Rosalind shifted, striking up with the knife to where she thought he would come at her. A hand caught hers, thumb digging into the nerve that ran along her thumb.

“Damn you,” she swore, as the knife dropped from her suddenly useless hand. She knew a hundred ways to disarm a man. But her arm was yanked hard behind her and as the Nighthawk spun her, shoving her face-first against a brick wall, she realized none of them would matter. For he knew them too.

His strength terrified her, even as it exhilarated. Here was a match, she thought with a shiver. An enemy she just might not be able to vanquish.

Shoving her between the shoulder blades, he jerked her arm up behind her back. Black spots appeared in her vision, but she didn’t cry out. Instead she relaxed into it, the pain slowly softening, much like digging a thumb into a hard knot of muscle. She knew pain; it was an old friend and she’d faced far worse than this in her time. Pain didn’t scare her. No, indeed she welcomed it. The physical ache was something that she could fight, unlike the gut-wrenching, hopeless fear that assailed her whenever she thought of her missing brother.

Lynch’s firm body pressed against her, one knee driving into the back of hers. There was nowhere to move, nowhere to go. He had trapped her quite neatly. But then, she had a surprise up her sleeve, one last ace to play.

Lynch paused. Then he caught her wrist and peeled her mech hand off the wall, examining it. The useless fingers splayed wide as he touched a pressure point in the steel tendons, turning it this way and that. Hatred burned within her.

“Aye,” she murmured. “I’m a mech.”

His thumb ran over the shiv where it erupted through the glove, revealing just a hint of the gleaming steel of her hand. She hadn’t bothered with the synthetic flesh some used to conceal their enhancements. They were never real enough, never the right color or consistency. And she didn’t want to conform to the Echelon’s demands. Damn them. She was human enough, with all the rights a human should have, no matter what they said about mechs.

Lynch found the catching mechanism and the blade slid back within the steel. “Very clever, lad. No wonder you hit like Molineaux.”

“Let me go and I’ll give you another.”

Silence hung between them. Then Lynch laughed, a short, barking cough of amusement that sounded as if it had been a long time since he’d found anything remotely amusing.

The laughter died as swiftly as it had appeared. His pressure on her arm relaxed and Rosalind slumped against the brickwork as her injured shoulder protested.

“No doubt you would.” Grabbing a handful of her coat, he spun her around, one fist clenching in the shirt at her throat. “And perhaps you’d overwhelm me eventually, but I don’t care to test the theory. You’re bound for Chancery Lane.”

The Nighthawk Guild Quarters. Once there, she’d never see the light of day again. Except for a brief view of it on her way to the scaffold.

“I’ve got a better idea,” she said recklessly. The ace up her sleeve… “You and I… We could come at some sort o’ arrangement.”

Those cold grey eyes met hers. She could see them more clearly now that her sight had adjusted to the hellish red glow but her perception hadn’t altered. Lynch would give his mother to the law if she broke it.

There was always a way to manipulate a man though. Even Lynch had to want something, to desire it… She just had to work out what it was.

“You’re trying to bribe the wrong man,” he said coldly, shoving her arms out wide.

A cool, impersonal hand ran along each arm, under her armpits and lower, to her hips. His hard fingers found the small pouches attached to her belt—powders and poisons that specifically injured a blue blood. Their eyes met and Lynch jerked hard on her belt buckle. The belt slithered through the belt loops on her breeches with a leathery slap and Rosalind sucked in a sharp breath.

“Every man can be bribed,” she said. “What is it you want, Lynch? Money? Power?” She saw the contemptuous answer in his eyes as he discarded her belt with a jerking toss.

“Nothing you can give me. If you move your hands, I’ll break them. Even the steel one.”

With that, he knelt, sliding his hands down the inside of her legs. His palms were cool and impersonal, but Rosalind jerked at the touch. No man since her husband had touched her there and the feeling unnerved her.

There was another knife in her boot. He took it, tucking it behind his own belt as he started the return journey. Smooth hands slid behind her knees, the pressure just firm enough to make her breath catch. Higher… Higher… Then shying away just before he cupped her arse.

“You missed somewhat,” Rosalind forced herself to say as he straightened. To escape she would have to outwit him and for that she needed his senses dulled.

His fingers lingered on her hip. “Where?”

“’Igher,” she whispered, tilting her head back to look at him. The smooth leather of his gloves slid over the rough linen of her shirt. “It’s me greatest asset.”

His thumb splayed over her ribs, beneath her breast. So close. Though she’d wanted to keep her sex a secret, men often underestimated a woman, or were fooled by the flirtatious bat of her eyelashes. She had nothing but contempt for those who’d fallen to her knife for that mistake.

“’Igher,” she dared him. Her stomach twisted in anticipation, unexpected heat spearing lower, between her thighs. Rosalind licked dry lips. Don’t think about what he is. Use him, use your body.

Lynch’s hand slid over the faint, unmistakable curve of her breast, his eyes widening. They were tightly bound, so as not to interfere with her movement, but he was a man. He knew what it meant.

“Surprise,” she whispered.

“Bloody hell.” He yanked his hand back as if burned. His eyes narrowed but she could see thought racing behind them. “You! You were in the Tower. With the bomb.”

One hand curved around her skull and he grabbed a fistful of her hair. Rosalind snatched at his cloak as he dragged her head back, exposing her throat.

Stubble rasped against her cheek and Rosalind’s gut turned to ash as his jaw brushed against the smooth skin just below her ear. No! She flailed wildly, her iron fingers wrapping around his wrist, knowing even as she grabbed him that she couldn’t stop him. Not if he wanted her blood.

“You are her,” he whispered.

And she realized that he was inhaling her scent.

He wasn’t going for the vein, after all. Rosalind’s body trembled as it relaxed, her stomach quivering. Lord have mercy. She was safe from that particular violation.

Then her mind started racing. “Who?” How had he known that she was in the Ivory Tower the day the mechs had bombed it? The day the Duke of Lannister had died?

Lynch lifted his head, his hand cradling her skull. She saw his eyes and stilled. Dangerous.

He dragged a scrap of leather from his pocket and held it between two fingers. “You left this behind. I could smell you all over the leather. Your scent—and gunpowder.”

A perfectly innocuous piece of leather, its absence barely noticed. “And you’ve been carryin’ it around all this time? How touchin’.”

“In case I forget the scent.”

Rosalind stared into his eyes, her mind making one of those insane leaps of intuition it sometimes did. Lynch wanted her. His own personal obsession, she realized. A mystery—one that appealed to his intellect as well as his desire.

“And now?” she whispered, knowing she had him. This was his weakness, right here. “Ain’t there nothin’ I can bribe you with now?”

He understood her meaning, his pupils flaring as he jerked away from her. Rosalind tumbled against the bricks, her hand splayed to catch herself. If she were a lesser woman she might have known some prick to her conscience at the rapid rejection. But she’d searched his eyes as she said the words; this wasn’t repulsion. For a moment interest had flared there.

“You shot the Duke of Lannister and tried to blow up the Court. If you think I’ll make any sort of arrangement with you, you’re a fool.”

“I shot the duke,” she admitted. “A woundin’ blow only. ’E was tryin’ to strangle an acquaintance of mine.”

“You deny being behind the bombing attack?”

“I tried to stop it.”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

She dared to take a step toward him. “If I thought it would ’ave worked, then I would ’ave led the action, but this were no plan of mine.” No, she’d gone to find Jeremy.

“No?” Lynch loomed closer, his nostrils flaring. “Then what were you doing tonight? Just what are you up to?”

“You tell me.” She looked up through the gauze of her mask’s eye-slits.

Lynch caught her chin, his finger stroking over the black satin. His thumb slipped beneath the edge of the mask, lifting it over her mouth and higher. “I want to see you.”

Her hand caught his. “No.” Rosalind took a chance and darted her tongue out, licking the edge of his thumb.

Lynch jerked his hand back, heat smoldering in his gaze. “You disappoint me. Nothing you say or do will change my mind. You’re under arrest, petticoats or not.”

He reached for her wrist and she twisted, capturing his own. The tendons in his arm tensed, but Rosalind slowly brought his hand up, keeping her gaze locked on his the whole time. She pressed the palm of his hand against her cheek, turning her lips into it. Lynch returned her stare with cool disinterest, but the pulse in his throat had quickened.

Rosalind licked his palm, tracing her tongue slowly across the seam there. “Don’t it excite you?” His gaze flickered to hers and she stepped closer, turning his hand over to trace her lips against the tender flesh between the back of his fingers. “You,” she whispered. “Me. Two enemies finally come together.” Palm out, she pressed her other hand flatly against the rippled abdomen of his body armor and flexed her fingers. The leather was polished with age and use. Impossibly smooth. Like his skin.

The thought took her by surprise. In all her years she’d only ever felt such a curiosity stirring within her once, and that had been for her husband, a man she admired and respected. Lynch was worthy of neither, in her eyes.

Or was he?

She’d learned enough about him in recent months. Testing his weaknesses, discovering what type of man he was—what type of enemy she faced. The answer made her nervous. Cold and implacable, people whispered. Ruthless. Even the Echelon called him Sir Iron Heart, but never to his face.

The man in front of her was hard. She could sense that innately. But the look in his eyes… Oh no, that was not cold. Not cold at all.

“All these months you’ve been chasin’ me, Lynch.” The words were a caress, but her mind raced. “And now you’ve caught me. Ain’t you curious? Don’t you want just a little taste before you turn me over to the Prince Consort?”

Her own trembling thoughts, used against him.

“No.” His head tilted toward her, his breath coming harshly.

Excitement thrilled through her. Anticipation. It was the only time she ever truly felt alive these days. As if she’d been sleepwalking for so long, Lynch’s presence was like an icy dash of water to her face. Sliding her hand over each ripple of leather, Rosalind let her fingers pause on the edge of his belt and looked up, beneath her lashes. “Liar.”

Furious color flushed the stark edges of his cheekbones. Lynch glared down at her, but the cool disinterest in his eyes had burned away. The blackness of his pupils overwhelmed his irises until she stared into a demon’s eyes, his rational thoughts obliterated by hunger, by desire.