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His fingers squeezed into the flesh along the back of her neck. What the hell kind of game did she think to play with him?Him.She had no clue who he was now. The pain he could inflict without remorse.
He leaned down, his face only a breath away from hers as his fingers tightened along her neck. “I don’t make deals with ignorant, innocent chits who dare to wander into my den.”
Her green eyes met his, fire flashing. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t wander in here. I came here for you. For your help, Strider. And I intend to have it. Are you going to help me or not?”
Her glare set on him, slicing him through. The uncanny color of her eyes, the depths of them had always done that—seared through to the deep within. Unearthly, how she could see the souls of men.
He seethed for long breaths, his fingers twitching, thinking to squeeze out of her whatever she was pretending to have.
She had nothing. He knew it.
He saw their home burn to ash just the same as she had. They had even gone back, sifting through the charred remnants of their life, only to be run off by a neighbor.
There was nothing.
Her green eyes didn’t blink. She didn’t back down. She never had. She’d never known when to give something up—never known what was good for her. For she was staring at the worst of the worst right now.
Him.
He was definitely not good for her. Not since the fire. He never had been. Never would be.
But if she wasn’t lying…if she had something—anything—from his father, it could be the difference. It could give him the one thing he’d been working toward for all these years.
For that, he just may have to chance it.
His fingers loosened on her neck. “I’ll help you, Pen. But it will be on my terms and you will do exactly what I tell you.”
She nodded.
Fool girl.
She had no idea she’d just crawled into the devil’s bed.
{ Chapter 3 }
Walking as slowly as she could afford to through the gardens behind the townhouse Mrs. Flagton had rented in London, Pen fingered the note deep in the pocket of her skirt that had been passed to her by the fishmonger at the market.
Strider had remembered something—something that she had no recollection of.
Part of her mother’s family name and that she had been the third youngest of her family.
It was more than she remembered.
Mama June had always referred to her mother as Mrs. Willington. That was all. That her mother had been a princess that had floated across the sea to land at their shores.
Pen just hoped those few facts Strider remembered would be enough for him to find her mother’s family. He’d noted in the missive that he was already exploring a number of leads in order to track her down.
It had been a week since she had found him at the Den of Diablo and a lead couldn’t come fast enough. This was the first she had heard from him—it’d been pure agony waiting for him to investigate. She wanted—needed to be doing something to speed finding her family along. To be this close, in the same land where her mother once walked, where her grandparents lived, but to not know who they were, was torture.
But she was helpless in this mission. She was in a strange land, she had no resources to hire an investigator, and she knew no one. Strider was still her best chance.
Her only chance.
A fact that still didn’t sit well with her. He’d changed so much. So much bigger—a man. A man like his father—who had been so tall and strong she had thought the sun revolved around him.
Strider’s honey-brown eyes had hardened so much in the years they’d been apart—though that didn’t stop her from staring at them, getting lost in the heat of them. No matter that he looked at her with a healthy note of disdain.
With his disregard of her, his ridicule—she wasn’t sure it was wise to rest her future on his broad shoulders.
