22. Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

T he hairs along the back of Thomas’s neck spiked.

Even with three too many pours of whisky sloshing in his belly, he knew when someone was stalking him.

Shit.

He never should have taken that last turn in between two buildings to cut to the back stairwell at the rear of the coaching inn.

The whisky had dulled his instincts just enough to slow his reflexes.

He should have stopped at his second glass. Enough to dull his raging cock. Not so much he lost his head.

But at two, he could still see Izzie’s naked body imprinted on the insides of his eyelids every time he blinked. Hear the echoes of her screams as she came. Feel the intense rush of hot satisfaction in his blood knowing it was him that made her body writhe as she did.

The very thing the whisky was supposed to erase.

So he’d had three too many.

And now he was about to pay for it.

Without turning around to look at who had followed him down the alleyway, he imagined it was that crew of men in the corner of the tavern he’d gotten soused in.

They had sat with their shoulders hunched, their heads down over their cups with their caps covering their foreheads, but he could feel their stares eating into him during the three hours he had sat at that table. His back had been to a wall, facing the bar, where he’d imagined he would be inconspicuous—he hadn’t stopped to get his coat from Izzie’s room. But even underdressed in his rumpled lawn shirt, his clothes and boots had to be worth more than most of the clothes in that tavern put together.

But that tavern had been where the whisky was. Where oblivion was.

Those five men hadn’t moved from their spot in the corner from the second he’d stepped into that tavern.

And he was fairly certain they were the direct threat that had spiked his senses as he stumbled back toward the inn.

Footsteps, more than one, clunked into the puddles of muck behind him in the dark alleyway. He cocked his good ear slightly back.

A perfect place to accost a drunken fool.

He’d better sober up quick.

The footsteps sped up and Thomas shifted his right hand in front of him, curling his fingers into a fist as he kept his steps moving forward in the same drunken manner that he’d entered the alleyway.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

There.

He spun back to his left, his fist a hammer that cracked into the side of the first man’s skull before the man even realized Thomas had turned on him.

It sent the man flying, his head cracking into the brick wall of the building. The man dropped, a rag doll, into the muck of the alley before the next ruffian reached him.

Coming at him fast, the next man had his dagger set high, the silver of it flashing in the thin light bleeding into the alley from the street side. Two more behind him charging hot on his heels. Sheer luck that the alley wasn’t wide enough for all of them to attack at once.

And where was the fifth from the tavern?

Hell. No time to pull his blade from his boot.

Thomas dropped just before the knife-wielding brute reached him, swinging out his leg and sweeping the man off his feet. The man went down crooked, but caught himself on the far wall. The second of the three jumped over the man Thomas had just kicked under, eager to take a swipe at Thomas before he gained his feet.

A thick fist rammed into his jaw and it made Thomas stumble a step backward before catching a hand on the brick wall to stop his momentum. Launching himself upright, he was ready to take on that brute at the very moment he saw a flash of white jumping onto the back of the last man, trying to send him to the ground.

What in the hell?

He threw a punch at the man in front of him, sending him stumbling, and it afforded him a second to look at what he thought he just saw.

A white shift. An arm cutting across the man’s neck, choking him. The man growled as he spun and knocked the body in the white shift attached to his back into the brick wall—hard.

A grunt squeaked out and the face above the white shift tilted up.

Izzie.

Shit.

The blow didn’t make her let go of the man, her arm still wrapped solidly around his neck as he stepped forward and slammed her back into the brick once more.

A flash of silver reflected just above him, and it took Thomas a slow second to realize a blade was coming down at his chest. He jumped to the side, just enough so the blade didn’t sink into him, but the tip of it still drew blood across the left side of his chest.

He got one last obstructed glance at Izzie still managing to hold onto the brute she’d attacked, choking him, before he had to shift into defensive moves for the blades swinging at him—two, now.

He parried backward, dodging the two blades being thrust at his belly. He tried again and again to look up, to find Izzie, but he couldn’t for the two brutes blocking the width of the alleyway.

Taking a double hop back to his left gave him an extra second to move, and he snatched the wrist of the next swipe of a dagger at his torso. Yanking hard on the arm, he jerked the brute forward and the man stumbled onto his knees.

There. A sightline to her. Izzie had been forced off the man’s back and was on her feet, avoiding a blade swinging wildly at her. The brute after her lifted it high, in a direct line to her neck, but just as the man lunged at her with it, her leg flew up high, kicking the blade out of the man’s hand.

What in hades?

A beautiful move, smooth and effective and damn well practiced.

Thomas slammed his knee into the temple of the man he’d sent to his knees, just before he dodged the next swipe of the blade in the hand of the other brute in front of him.

His attention forced off of Izzie, he looked directly at the man attacking him.

Hell.

The light was low, but even in the shadows he knew this man. Older than when Thomas knew him years ago. A bastard of the highest order. Santiago. His hair now grey, but the same wrinkled brow and squinty eyes Thomas remembered.

The man had been a vicious ass back then, and that he’d survived this long in his line of work only meant that he’d gotten meaner over the many years.

Santiago sneered as he drove his dagger in low with a jab meant for Thomas’s gut and Thomas barely sidestepped the blade.

Izzie grunted and Thomas glanced at her just as she crumpled over, but then sent her elbow straight into the man’s ballocks. He folded over.

“Izzie—run!”

Stupid to call out to her, for the second she looked up to Thomas, the brute attacked her with a rabid howl.

The man’s hands wrapping around her neck. Lifting her. Choking her.

No. Fuck, no.

That fucking bastard was going to pay for touching her like that.

Thomas whipped his hand down to the blade tucked along the edge of his boot and drove it into Santiago’s neck.

He twisted it, assured it hit the mark, then he yanked it out of the flesh. With one swift move he slid the blade across the throat of the man he’d already sent to the ground, and then rushed toward Izzie hanging in the air, her forearms lifting and slamming down against the brute’s meaty arms, trying to break his hold.

Just before Thomas reached her, her left leg came up and she wedged it against the brute’s chest. Shoving off of him, she broke his hold on her neck, but Thomas could see in the way her arms fell limply down to her sides, that she had just lost consciousness.

Her body dropped into the muck of the alley—that would have to be enough cradling, for he was already flying past her through the air at the brute, tackling him.

Thomas slammed him against the brick wall, his blade sinking into the man’s side again and again and again. Blood splattering until the man slid down against the wall, all fight bled out of him.

Seething breaths, Thomas pushed himself away from the brick wall and staggered over to the first man he had felled. He looked down at the rat for not even a moment before leaning over and slitting his throat.

If these men were all with Santiago, then Thomas knew exactly where they had come from. Exactly why they had come after him.

There would be not a hint of mercy allowed for them. For they certainly would never have allowed it from their own hands. Kill or be killed. He knew it too well.

Five.

His head snapped upward, his eyes squinting as he scanned the ends of the alleyway. There had been five men in the tavern. Only four had attacked him. What happened to the fifth?

No movement, no noise from either direction. A coward. Probably slinked back to the rat’s nest he’d come from.

The night air still, Thomas turned toward Izzie.

She’d landed on her side in the muck of the alleyway, the mud and dirt having stolen most of the white from her chemise.

One heavy step toward her. Then another.

Steps he had to take, though a part of him railed against it. He didn’t want to know if she survived intact. Didn’t want to know if she’d left this earth.

For if she had, he wasn’t sure what he would do. What it would cost him.

Slowly, he slid down onto his knees alongside her back, staring at the bare slope of her chest, waiting for it to move, to lift with breath.

Waiting…waiting…waiting…

There. The slightest inhale, her chest rising just enough for a breath, just enough to keep her heart beating.

Well…fuck.

Now he had a decision to make.

What he had just seen her do—how she had attacked that man—it wasn’t instinct and it wasn’t a deranged reaction. Her skill in fighting had been too smooth, too practiced, too trained.

Whatever he’d just seen in her, he knew to his bones she wasn’t what she’d told him she was.

She’d lied.

It had started with the feral act and it had just rolled onward from there.

Probably lied about everything.

His head hung for a long moment, anger warring against how badly he wanted to touch her, to pull her into his arms and curl her body into his, safe. Hold her there so no man would ever attack her like that again.

Yet she’d lied.

Everything about her was fake.

He needed to walk away.

Except his legs wouldn’t allow it and he hovered over her, staring at her closed eyes. Eyes that held so many secrets.

If he touched her now, that would be it.

He wouldn’t be able to let her go.

No matter what.

His future in this moment.

It took him long minutes. Long minutes of his breath heaving, his stare watching her chest lift and fall in shallow breaths.

Long minutes before he leaned forward, sliding his hands under her legs and torso and picking her up, bringing her pliant body close to his. Cradling her to his heat.

Whatever she was.

She was his.