When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,126

fingers on her skin. Nor did the heat that still pulsed through her body diminish with space.

“Noted,” he said, tucking the missive into the inside of his coat.

Adeline hesitated, this dance of questions and answers a complex series of steps. “I have no quarrel with you, King.”

“I heard you say that to a man already once this evening before you ran him through.” A smile drifted across his lips, and Adeline’s mouth went dry. Never had she met a man who was as casually intimidating and as effortlessly provocative at the same time. The combination was far more alluring than was safe.

“I did not run him through. I do not enjoy killing stupid men.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.”

She swirled the last of her champagne in the bottom of the glass she still held before draining it. “Think of me what you will, I am not an assassin.”

“The inescapable,” King said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your name. Adrestia. Meaning ‘the inescapable.’ Goddess of retribution and vengeance.”

“Most of my clients prefer the term justice.”

“A much more civilized word indeed.” King took the empty glass from her and set it on the desk without looking away. “Be that as it may, your reputation precedes you as well.”

“I wasn’t aware.” She frowned.

“I have excellent sources. Sources who have a great deal of respect for your work administering…justice when all else has failed.”

Adeline wasn’t sure if King was trying to flatter her into revealing information, but she wasn’t about to discuss past contracts with this man or anyone. Now or ever.

“Tell me why you’re here, Miss Archambault.”

Adeline’s heart stuttered, her lungs squeezing the air from her chest. It took all of her willpower to remain still. “I’m impressed,” she said, pleased that her voice was steady.

“You underestimated me.”

“No. Just your sources. I’ve never been anything other than Adrestia in my work. I’d prefer it to remain so.”

“As you wish,” King murmured. “Some say Adrestia was handmaiden to the merciless Nemesis.” He set his walking stick against the edge of the desk and stepped closer.

Adeline didn’t move. “And some say they were one and the same.”

King slipped his fingers under the weight of her locket, a featherlight touch against her skin. “I suppose, in our business, ambiguity and duplicity are advantageous.”

Whatever breath Adeline had caught fled again.

“Tell me why you’re here,” he repeated, his eyes never leaving hers. “For I cannot let you leave with something that is not yours.” He tapped the locket with his thumb, and Adeline understood he had been watching her all along. Probably since the moment she had stepped from her hired carriage.

This close, Adeline could see the tiny lines around his eyes, lines not of laughter but of burden. Of living a life in a world that offered survival only to those strong enough to take it. Adeline knew, because she lived in that world too. And had survived.

She reached up and wrapped her fingers around his hand, pressing it against the slope of her breasts, the locket trapped between them. Then she whispered, “This was never yours to sell in the first place.”

Chapter 4

Adeline Archambault was bewitching.

And breathtaking and daring and possibly mad, and the desire coursing through King right now was unlike anything he had ever experienced. She had trapped his hand beneath hers, and beneath her smooth skin, her heart thumped steadily. The edges of the heavy locket pressed against the pads of his fingers, the gold warm under his touch. All he needed to do, all he had intended to do, all he should do, was yank the locket from her beautiful neck. Take back what was his. Except he couldn’t move.

“I do not suffer thieves,” he said roughly. “No matter what they call themselves.”

“Then we have that in common,” she replied. She didn’t flinch, didn’t cower, didn’t plead or beg or dissemble. She simply held his gaze until her eyes dropped to his mouth. A new arc of need flashed through him like liquid lightning, and he shivered.

King released the locket and jerked his hand from hers, stepping away from this woman and the unacceptable longings she stirred within him. He could not put together a coherent thought when she was looking at him like that. He didn’t understand her, or her motivations, or her layers.

Worst of all, he didn’t understand what she did to him.

King shifted farther away, until the bulk of the desk nudged against the backs of his thighs. The men he had set to following this woman who called herself Adrestia had