Page 11 of The Steel Rogue

His arm tightened around her waist, squeezing her until a squeak that she abhorred hearing let loose from her chest.

“Your silence is all the confirmation I need. Why were you following me?”

She pushed down on his forearm. “It would be easier to answer your question if I wasn’t in a vise taking my very breath from me.”

“You seem to be talking just fine.”

“Yet I’m not giving you answers, am I?”

He scoffed, almost a chuckle, and his arm dropped from around her waist. “Sit.”

She took a step away from him. “I’ll stand, thank you.”

“Sit. You’ll be in front of me in case you think to try anything else.”

She shrugged, her hands flinging out. “What else could I do—you just took from me the only thing in the room that could be used as a weapon.”

“Did I?” He pointed to an open-topped chest wedged between the foot of the bed and the wall.

The handles of three swords leaned out the top of the chest. She moved to her left to peek into the box. At least four dirks and several daggers and pistols were scattered about the bottom of the chest.

“Oh. I didn’t see that.”

He inclined his head to her. “And now you have. Sit.”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing.

“Sit before I make you sit.” The words so hard, so commanding, that she couldn’t refuse them any longer.

With a sigh, she moved to the bed and spun, sitting on the very edge of the sheet, only the slightest part of her body atop it. Sitting. But barely.

“Blast, what’s that on your arm?”

Her forehead scrunching, she looked down to her left arm. Nothing.

“No, your right arm.” He took one long stride to her and picked up her right wrist, his fingers going to her upper arm.

A gash tore along the blue sleeve of her spencer, long and dark with dried blood.

Lifting her arm higher, he plucked the rip in the wool and the shirt beneath it wide open and poked at her skin.

She flinched, the sharp pain of his poking catching her off guard.

“Hell, the blade got you as well.”

“What blade?”

He ripped the sleeve open wider.

She tried to jerk her arm from his grasp. “Stop, you’re wrecking my jacket.”

His dark grey eyes lifted to her for one second, staring at her as if she’d grown another head. He couldn’t care less about her clothes.

He looked back down at her scabbed skin, pulling the wound wide. “It’s deep—too deep. And it’s still seeping—not just blood.”

She yanked her arm from his grip. “It wouldn’t be seeping if you hadn’t just ripped it open.”

His jaw going tight, he stepped back from her and drew himself to his full height—just shy of the wood planks of the ceiling.

---