Page 61 of A Murder in Trinity Lane
“You didn’t have to.”
She tried to wrench away. “You have no right?—”
“I have every bloody right,” I snapped. “Because I’ve been in this alley. I know the kind of men who crawl through here—they beat other men for the sport of it.” I leaned in. “I won’t tell you what they do to women.”
She swallowed. “I—I could have frightened them off.”
“With what? That toy penknife of yours?”
“The pistol you gave me last night.”
“The one withno bullets? Christ, woman. You’d drive a saint to drink.”
She stared up at me, lips parted, chest rising and falling too fast. “What would you have me do? Sit at home while you chase justice?”
We were too close.
She was too flushed. Too fierce. Too alive.
Before I knew it, I was moving, backing her against the wall. Her cape snagged on a broken crate. The alley stank of rotted onions and spilled ale, but all I could smell was her—soap, starch, rain.
Rosalynd.
“You drive me mad,” I said hoarsely.
“Good,” she challenged.
That’s when I kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It couldn’t be. Not with everything churning in my chest—fear, fury, need. Her mouth met mine with equalfire, lips parted, breath catching as I pressed her harder against the alley wall.
Her hands fisted in the lapels of my coat. I felt the tremor in her fingers, the defiance in her kiss. She wasn’t yielding—she was matching me, challenge for challenge, heat for heat.
The crates behind her groaned. Somewhere down the alley, a bottle shattered. Neither of us flinched.
I tilted her head back, deepening the kiss, and she responded with a sound low in her throat—half gasp, half something else entirely. It lit something inside me. Something reckless.
The taste of her—tea and rain and something sharper—was enough to undo me.
I didn’t want to let her go. Not yet. Not ever.
But I had to.
Slowly, I pulled back, both of us breathing hard.
“I swear to God,” I murmured, “if you ever do something like this again?—”
Her eyes flashed. “You’ll kiss me harder?” She gazed at me—eyes blazing, cheeks flushed, defiance burning in every line of her expression.
She couldn’t be more beautiful if she tried.
“We’re leaving.” I took her arm and turned her toward the mouth of the alley.
“But I?—”
“Now, Rosalynd.” Without another word, I led her back through the fog-drenched street, past the broken stall and the stink of old food, past the crooked sign of the Boar and Fiddle to where the hackney I’d arrived in was still waiting and helped her inside.
Chapter
