She wasn’t wearing gloves.
He barely had time to register the fact before she gasped, going utterly still for a split second before first tugging at her wrists and, once discovering them caught in his strong grip, struggling in earnest.
She was taller than most, and stronger than he expected. She didn’t cry or call out, instead using all her breath, all her strength, to fuel her attempt to extricate herself, which made her smarter than most of the men he’d met in the ring.
She was no match for him, however, and so he held her. Tight and firm, until she gave up.
He rather regretted that she gave up.
But she did, realizing the futility of her actions after a long moment . . . hesitating briefly before she turned her face up to his and said, “Release me.”
There was something in the words, a quiet, unexpected honesty that almost made him do it. Almost made him let her go, to run off into the night.
Almost.
But it had been a long time since he’d been so intrigued by an opponent.
Pulling her closer, he easily transferred both her wrists into one of his hands as he used the other to check her cloak for weapons.
His hand closed on the hilt of a knife, hidden deep in the lining of the cloak. He extracted it. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“That’s mine,” she said, reaching for the weapon, cursing as he held it out of her reach.
“I don’t care for late-night meetings with armed attackers.”
“I’m not armed.”
He raised a brow.
She exhaled harshly. “I mean, I am armed, of course. It’s the dead of night and anyone with the sense of a trout would be. But I have no intention of stabbing you.”
“And I’m simply to take your word for it?”
Her words came straight and true. “If I wanted to stab you, you’d have been stabbed.”
He cursed the darkness and its secrets, wanting to see her face. “What are you after?” He asked softly, sliding the knife into his boot, “My pockets? You should have picked a smaller mark.” Though he wasn’t exactly sorry that she’d chosen him. He liked it.
Even more when she answered.
“I’m after you.”
The response was quick enough to be true, and to shock the hell out of him.
Wariness flared. “You’re not a lightskirt.”
The words were not a question. It was clear the woman wasn’t a whore—in the way she stiffened in response to his statement, keeping space between them.
She wasn’t comfortable with a man’s touch.
With his touch.
She redoubled her efforts to free herself. “Is that all people want from you? Your purse or your—” She stopped, and Temple resisted the urge to laugh. She most certainly was not a prostitute.
“The two options are usually enough for women.” He stared into her dark face, wishing for a street lamp. For a shadow of light from a nearby window. “All right, darling, if not my purse or my . . .” He trailed off, enjoying the way her breath caught before he finished. She was curious. “ . . . prowess, what then?”
She took a deep breath, its weight falling between them, as though what she were about to say would change her world. Would change his. He waited, barely noticing that his breath held, as well.
“I’m here to challenge you.”
He let her go and turned away, irritation and frustration and not a small amount of disappointment flaring. She hadn’t come for him as a man. She’d come for him as a means to an end. Just as they always did.
Her boots clattered on the cobblestones as she ran after him. “Wait.”
He did not wait.
“Your Grace—” The title cut through the darkness. Stung. She wouldn’t get anywhere with such good manners. “Hold a moment. Please.”
It might have been the softness in the word. It might have been the word itself—one the Killer Duke did not often hear—that stopped him. Turned him back. “I don’t fight women. I don’t care who your lover is. Tell him to find his manhood and come after me himself.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Perhaps you should have told him. Then he might have stopped you from making the rash and reckless decision to stand in the dead of night in the middle of a dark alley with a man widely believed to be one of the most dangerous in Britain.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Something flared deep in him at the words. At the truth in them. And for the briefest of moments, he considered reaching for her again. Taking her to his town house.
It had been a long time since a woman had intrigued him.
Sanity returned. “You should believe it.”
“It’s nonsense. It has been since the beginning.”
His gaze narrowed on her. “Go home and find yourself a man who cares enough to save you from yourself.”