AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You shouldn’t be here.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “I came for my business.”
Excitement thrummed through him. She was fucking glorious.
She also wasn’t hurt. He gave her a once-over to be certain, then rolled her to the ground and came to his feet, immediately heading for the man who’d been about to hit her.
The man whose anger had turned to fear.
“If you’re looking for a bout, you’ll have it with me,” he growled, turning the man pale in the light from one of the nearby fires.
“I—” The man shook his head. “He pushed me first!”
Whit set his hands to the man’s shoulders and pushed, the crowd parting to let him fall onto his backside. “Now I’ve pushed you. Do you intend to fight me?”
“N-no.” He scrambled away like an insect.
It wasn’t enough. Whit was gone, turned full Beast. He took a step toward his enemy, wanting nothing more than to end him.
A hand fell on his shoulder, the weight of it heavy and familiar. His brother.
Whit stilled.
“Let it go,” Devil said, soft at his ear. “Get your girl. And get her out of here, before people sort out what just happened and start asking questions.”
It was too late to prevent that—he turned to her—the woman Devil called his girl. She wasn’t, of course. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t stop himself from protecting her. It was habit. It had nothing to do with her.
But he couldn’t protect her from him.
Whit turned to find Hattie several yards away, on her feet again, with her friend Nora, who was, apparently, as much trouble as Hattie was. Felicity was fussing over her, brushing dirt from her sleeve and chattering, as though this were all perfectly normal. Nora was transfixed by Annika, who stood nearby, hip cocked, the long blade she kept there gleaming in the firelight.
As his gaze tracked Hattie, Whit went stiff with renewed anger. Her hat was askew and dirt smudged her face, her coat was torn at the shoulder—a fact that made him want to do immense damage. A wild thought came—had the man who’d touched her been sent by Ewan?
A growl sounded from low in his throat, and he started to turn back, but Devil stayed the movement, seeming to understand. “Just a drunk.” And then a single, strong word. “Her.”
She was what was important. Christ. He wanted to pick her up and carry her from there like a damn Neanderthal. “She can’t be seen with me.”
Devil looked straight at him. “He isn’t here.”
“He could be.”
He nodded. “He could be. But he’s not.”
Whit spun away, approaching the cluster of women, keenly aware of Hattie’s eyes on him, widening as he closed the distance between them. “You—” she said, and the tremor in her voice nearly did him in. “You’re bleeding.”
He did not slow his approach even as he looked down to find a three-inch gash low on his right side. A knife wound. He looked back at her, hand still, clutching a pocketknife. “You stabbed me.”
Her jaw dropped. “I did not!” She narrowed her eyes on his. “Though you certainly would have deserved it, you bastard.”
Devil laughed, low enough that only Whit could hear him. “Now I know why you like her so much. She’ll run you ragged.”
Before Whit could argue that he did not like her, and she absolutely would not run him ragged because she wasn’t getting anywhere near him after he saw her home tonight, Devil was looking to Sarita, the young bookmaker trying to calm the crowd, now arguing that Hattie’s interruption had impacted the outcome of the fight.
“We told ya there’d be free O’Malleys in the dirt, gents, and free there are,” the girl crowed, backed by two larger men from the Bastards’ crew. “I’ve no wagers on Beast gettin’ knifed by a spectator, so sod off wi’ that—not that I’d pay out on it, as there ’e stands, right as rain.”
Devil waved the girl over, and she came like a flash to receive her orders, cheeks glowing copper with excitement. While they spoke, Whit did what he could to hold himself together, to keep from taking Hattie in hand, from railing at her for turning up here, where anything could have happened. What if he hadn’t been here? What if he hadn’t been able to protect her?
The idea was unbearable.
He rubbed a hand over his chest to ease the aggravated tightness there as Devil returned to him, pressing a linen sack filled with ice into his hands. “Take the girl home. Get yourself sorted.”
Removing his coat, Devil went to his wife, handing it to her, along with his walking stick. Felicity’s eyes lit with confusion and then delighted understanding. “You’re to fight?” she asked, breathless.
“You could be a touch less excited by the prospect of me in the ring, wife.”
“Do you plan to lose?”
Devil’s affront was palpable. “I do not.”
Felicity’s grin widened. “I shall be certain to give you a proper prize when you win, then.”
“We’re tradin’ one Bastard for another tonight, lads!” Sarita crowed from the center of the ring. “Who’ll step forward to fight the Devil himself?”
A handful of senseless underdogs immediately lined up to have their asses handed to them, clearly thinking that Devil, long and lean and rarely in the ring, was an easier battle than Beast. They were wrong.
Devil pulled his shirt over his head, and a cluster of women to Whit’s left dissolved into sighs. Not that his brother had eyes for any of them; he was already hauling his wife close, lifting her off her feet, and kissing her thoroughly before turning to the crowd, arms wide, smile on his brutally scarred face.
“You’ve had Beast, gents! Now Beauty takes his turn!”
The crowd went wild, charging Sarita to lay their bets.
In the melee, Whit finally found himself able to face Hattie. Hattie, who had pushed past Devil and was coming for him, worry on her brow, unable to take her gaze from the gash on his side. She came up short, her breath coming fast, her full lips slightly parted. Her eyes lifted to his, tracking over his face. “I’m very angry, but I don’t wish you dead.”
He pulled her to the outskirts of the circle, away from the notice of the rest of the assembly. The crowd dropped away. She swallowed, and he was drawn to the movement of her throat, his own mouth going dry as he thought of leaning down and putting his lips there. Licking over it. Scraping his teeth across her soft skin.
He could hear the sigh she’d make. The cries he’d wring from her.
His cock throbbed with the promise it heard.
No promise. He couldn’t touch her.
He was danger to her.
He met her eyes, seeing the heat there. Feeling it everywhere. “I’m taking you home.”
She swallowed again, and a low growl came from deep in his throat. She looked down at the wound she’d given him. “It seems only right that I should bandage that.”
A vision flashed, of her soft fingers on his body, healing him. Pleasuring him. He grunted his approval.
She cleared her throat, forced ice into her tone. “And if you think I’m leaving before we discuss your betrayal, you are quite mistaken.”
He shouldn’t. He should pack her off with Nik, mere feet away, and send her home. Safe. Far from him. He shook his head. “There’s nothing to discuss.”
