The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(19)

Her heart thudded as he slid a hand about her, cupping her at the nape. He’s going to kiss me. He’s going to kiss me, and I want it . . .

She recoiled. What in blazes was wrong with her? Get control of yourself. You are Cleopatra Killoran. One of the Queens of St. Giles.

“It wasn’t my hand that brought you down,” she whispered. She wrestled her knee back, but this time he caught her before she connected. Only, instead of wrestling it back into place, he caressed that portion of her leg.

Cleopatra gulped.

“Adair.”

They looked as one to that sharp exclamation. Ryker Black, Niall Marksman, and Calum Dabney stood at the end of the hall, pistols trained on them. Burning with humiliation at her own body’s reaction, Cleopatra had never been more grateful in the whole of her rotten existence for both having a gun pointed at her person and the intrusion of a Black.

“Wot in blazes are ya doing?” Marksman growled, eyeing his brother as though he’d sprung a second head.

A ruddy flush marred Adair’s chiseled cheeks. “The girl was armed.”

“That wasn’t a weapon you were grabbing,” she taunted, relishing the deepening color in his cheeks. “And I’m not a girl.” She bucked against him.

“You no doubt sprang from Satan’s side,” he muttered. “You’re barely—”

The tread of footfalls cut across whatever other insult he intended to toss out.

“Adair,” Ryker Black said sharply.

Using that distraction, Cleopatra jerked her knee between his legs.

With a groan befitting a wounded beast, Adair rolled off her and collapsed onto his back. She scrambled out from under him and crawled over to her knife. Cleopatra grabbed the serpent handle and got herself into a fighting stance. “Get the ’ell away from me,” she warned, breathless. My God, she’d been lusting after Adair Thorne.

She jabbed the dagger in the direction of each Black. This was never going to work. The mistrust was too great on each of their parts. One simply couldn’t overcome a lifetime’s worth of hatred, not even to achieve a goal that Broderick felt was for the greater good.

The proprietor of the Hell and Sin lowered his weapon to his side, and his brothers followed suit.

Guarded, she pressed her back against the wall.

“We have no intention of hurting you,” he said in gravelly tones. He looked over to Adair, who shoved himself into a standing position. “You were asked to escort her to her rooms, not to wrestle her in my damned corridors.”

Most other men, even the fearless Killoran lot, would have backed down when presented with Black’s palpable fury. Adair dug his heels in. “She is armed.” Not taking his gaze from Cleopatra, he grabbed her valise and unlatched it. He dumped the pistols and knives contained within on the hall floor. The cache clattered to the floor with a noisy thump.

“I’d be mad to enter your home weaponless,” she spat into the silence.

Tucking his pistol inside his waistband, Ryker Black dragged a hand over his face. “You cannot remain here, armed as you are.”

Then I’ll leave . . .

The words hovered on her lips and hung there. For if she marched out with her head up and her weapons in hand, where would they be? Broderick would merely send Ophelia—or worse—a too-compliant Gertrude back in her place. Only—giving over her ability to defend herself went against every lesson she’d learned on the streets of St. Giles.

“What will it be, Miss Killoran?” Mr. Dabney pressed. Had that emerged as a barking command, it would be easier than his calm matter-of-factness.

“Leave,” Adair said in hushed tones out of the corner of his mouth. His demand barely reached her ears. He wanted her here no more than she wanted to be here . . . and yet—she slid her eyes closed. There was a challenge there, and she heard it. And the world could say any number of things about Cleopatra Killoran—most of which would be true—but none would ever find her one to back down from a threat or challenge.

She forced her eyes open. Bending slowly, she held Ryker Black’s gaze as she purposefully resheathed her dagger. “You can have my guns and other knives. But this one I keep.”

He was already shaking his head. “No one here means you harm, but I have people here dependent upon me.” And he didn’t trust that she wouldn’t bring harm to his kin. Then, that was the way of their world.

“What about this guard you’ve set on me?” she nodded toward Adair.

“Given what we’ve witnessed, you’re quite capable of protecting yourself against Adair,” Niall Marksman drawled, earning a round of guffaws.

Adair shot his middle finger up in a crude gesture that merely resulted in another bevy of laughter.

She started. Those expressions of amusement and mirth were unexpected and unfamiliar. She’d seen the men before her as blank souls with blackness inside. To now know they shared her own family’s sense of loyalty, and managed to find amusement in life, stirred a restlessness. She preferred them cold and unfeeling to . . . human.

“What will it be, Miss Killoran?” Ryker Black repeated, his amusement fading so quickly that she might have well imagined that crack in his icy veneer.

She hesitated, at war with herself. Think of your sisters. Think of Gertie and Fie . . . “God rot all your souls,” she muttered, and removed her knife once more.