While the Duke Was Sleeping (The Rogue Files #1)(31)

“Well, if you like ’er.” Cam lifted an arm, stretching past Mackenzie to touch her shoulder lightly. “Maybe the big chap won’t mind if—”

Mackenzie’s hand sliced through the air with stunning swiftness and wrenched Cam’s hand from her. “You have my money and the ring. Take them and go.”

Cadaver-face moved with a swiftness that matched Mackenzie’s. He brought a blade up, waving it before Mackenzie’s face.

She gasped, but Mackenzie didn’t even flinch. His big body didn’t move. Nor did his hand loosen from Cam.

Mackenzie stood as still as a column of stone, hard and immobile, only his voice rippling over the air like a warm current. “I won’t warn you again.”

Cam snickered at the whispered threat, clearly not worried. “If I were you, I’d lift your ’and off me before Kenny here decides to use that there knife and—”

Mackenzie moved in a blinding flash.

She didn’t think someone of his size could move with such speed. In a maneuver she couldn’t even process, he disarmed Kenny, seizing the knife from him and bringing it down in an arc and driving it into Cam’s arm.

There was a moment of absolute stunned silence.

Poppy froze, gaping. Then Cam started screaming, registering the pain of the knife embedded in his arm.

“Oh?” Mackenzie queried in that deep brogue of his, his manner eerily mild. “Hurts, does it? Aye, I’ve been stabbed before.” He blinked with mocking innocence. “Would you like me to remove this wee blade from your arm, then?”

Cam nodded and started pleading and blubbering amid his sobs.

Kenny made a move as though to do it for him, but Mackenzie waved him away and turned the hilt of the blade, twisting and digging it deeper into his cohort’s arm, producing a fresh wave of sobs. Kenny watched, frozen and wearing an expression of mingled fear and dismay.

“Mackenzie,” she murmured, not sure what she was asking. She only knew she didn’t like the situation. The tinny smell of blood in the night air. The violence. The fear. Hers or theirs, she wasn’t even certain anymore.

Mackenzie looked at her beneath hooded eyes and her heart tripped. He looked like some fierce Viking with his glittering eyes and hard expression. “Yes, kitten?”

“Please.” She shook her head, unsure what she wanted to say. What she wanted him to do. He held her gaze and the pulse at her neck continued its wild tempo, threatening to break free of her skin.

She only knew that she had misjudged him. This man was no coward. She wasn’t certain what he was, but he was not that.

Mackenzie grunted and looked away from her. He reached inside Cam’s pocket and fished about until he pulled out her ring. He brandished it in the air between thumb and forefinger, offering it to her.

She hesitated only a moment before snatching it from him with a happy cry and slipping it back on her finger. “Thank you.”

He gave her another one of those enigmatic looks and turned his attention back to the would-be thieves. “I’ll take my pocketbook back, too.”

Kenny hesitated and Cam shouted at him, panting and perspiring now, his face in a perpetual grimace as he suffered the blade in his arm. “Gor, give the man what ’e wants!”

Kenny fumbled for the purse and practically threw it in their direction. Mackenzie caught it nimbly and slid it back inside his jacket. Without removing his gaze from the pair of thugs, he slid the knife from Cam’s arm like it was nothing to him. A task he did all the time. Plucking a flower from a vase.

Cam collapsed against his friend, clutching his arm and gasping.

Mackenzie’s deep brogue rolled over the air. “Now you two disappear before I call the Watch. And don’t let me ever see your faces again.”

Their heads bobbed. “Y-yes, guv’nor. Apologies to you and yer lady.” They shuffled away, eyeing Mackenzie as though he might change his mind and spring at them.

Poppy watched them flee down the alley where the shadows were the deepest. They turned at the far end until they were out of sight. Only then did she realize her mouth sagged open. She closed it with a snap and swung her gaze back to Mackenzie. She’d been wrong about him. She shook her head slightly, still perplexed. He’d simply been restraining himself the entire time.

His fingers lightly brushed her elbow. “Are you well? I don’t need to fetch the smelling salts, do I?”

She inhaled and that only made her head spin with the scent of him. She hadn’t noticed it before. Masculine and woodsy. How he smelled woodsy in the midst of London she could not begin to fathom.

That hand on her elbow drifted up, trailing along her arm to curl over her shoulder. “Your heart is racing.”

“How can you know that?” Her voice came out in a scratchy rasp. He couldn’t feel her racing heart. God willing, he could not hear it pounding like a drum. No, he couldn’t know how it pounded.

As though he could read her mind, he said, “I can see your pulse here.” His gloved fingers brushed the patch of skin visible at the base of her throat. Her breath quickened at the sensation. “It’s fighting against your skin.”

She swallowed and nodded jerkily, wishing she could blame it on the fear of moments ago. Their brush with danger. And yet it wasn’t that. It wasn’t those men. He was more dangerous to her than them.

It was this. Him.