Road To Fire: Broken Crown Trilogy, Book 1

by Luis, Maria

  Before I can summon a response, he’s flipped me over. My clothes, already soaked through, meld with the damp grass. Any attempt to wrestle my way out of this mess is thwarted when he pins my hands above my head and straddles my thighs.

  Though the position is intimate, the look on Saxon’s face is anything but.

  The cast of light from one of the park’s lampposts reveals his expression to be nothing less than merciless. Mouth firm, jaw locked, he stares down at me as though I’m an inconvenience.

  “I found you unconscious,” he growls, his lips barely moving as he spits out the words.

  Unconscious.

  The all-too-vivid memory of being swallowed by the crowd twines its way around me like a thorny vine. Bodies rushing to safety, feet trampling my hands, my legs. Every time I’d attempted to stand back up, someone else had knocked me down until it seemed easier, less strenuous, to simply hold on tight until it was all over.

  The irony of life, I suppose.

  I meet Saxon’s steady green gaze. “I thought you were kidnapping me.”

  “I’m many things,” he says stiffly, still restraining my hands, “but a kidnapper isn’t one of them.”

  “Brilliant.” I wriggle my fingers. “Now that we’ve established that, will you let me go?”

  His thumbs press down on my inner wrists, right over my pulse. “Do you still plan to stab me?”

  “I’m many things but a murderer isn’t one of them.”

  I utter the words primly, and it must do the job of convincing him well enough because the brawny pub owner releases his grip. Electricity shoots up to my fingertips from the sudden release of pressure, and for a single moment, I find myself staring at his rough-hewn features, this man who speaks without a hint of warmth but still saved me from being crushed by the crowd.

  Who are you really, Saxon Priest?

  Finally, as though he’s confident that I won’t double back on my word, he lifts off me and climbs to his feet. Still sprawled out on the ground as I am, he appears all the more intimidating as he rises to his full height. Those broad shoulders block the light from the lamppost behind him, so that I see nothing of his face but shadows.

  “Can you stand?” he asks, abruptly bending low to swipe my knife from where he buried it to the hilt in the soil.

  “Will you carry me again if I say no?”

  He pauses, blade in hand, and angles his head down to look at me. “Have you forgotten already, Miss Quinn? I don’t do charity.”

  At least some things never change.

  Rolling over onto my knees, I steady a hand on my thigh as I stand. For a moment, the world goes topsy-turvy and the corners of my vision turn a deep maroon. Oh, bollocks. I feel myself sway on weakened knees, only for warmth to circle my bicep at the very last second when Saxon keeps me upright.

  “Thank you,” I murmur, my mouth dry. “I feel like I’ve been run over. Once for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; twice just for sport.”

  His grip slides south, to my forearm. “I didn’t take you for a rabid dissenter.”

  “I’m not.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  “My brother—” I cut off as guilt takes a sledgehammer to my lungs. If I hadn’t fallen, would I have found Peter by now? The thought that he might be alone, that something even more disastrous may have happened to him than it did to me, hastens my breathing. If he’s been hurt . . .

  Stop. Don’t think like that.

  “Your brother?” Saxon prompts, his voice low, emotionally untethered.

  “I forbade him from coming to any of the protests. What happened to our parents”—I shake my head, forbidding myself from going there, to those memories I wish I could erase forever—“could happen to him. He doesn’t see it that way because he’s too damned stubborn to think he’s anything less than immortal.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Saxon steers me toward one of the park’s paved paths. “Eighteen-year-old boys are hard-headed.” When I snort under my breath in agreement, he only pulls me along, keeping me beside him. “But something tells me that stubbornness is a uniquely Quinn trait.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but clamp it shut a moment later. Begrudgingly, I mutter, “You’re not wrong.”

  “Didn’t think I would be.”

  My teeth crack together at his impassive tone. “Do you ever feel suffocated by your own arrogance?”

  “No.”

  Good God, the blasted man is rigid as stone.

  Standing in his presence is like being thrust, naked, beneath the icy surface of a frozen lake. Even my pulse feels sluggish, as though the very chill of him is now seeping into every one of my extremities. Another ten minutes of this halfhearted banter and there’s a good chance I’ll have frostbite.

  I tug at my arm, and he lets me go without issue. “I need to find Peter.”

  “You’re swaying again.”

  He’s right, I am. But there’s nothing to be done about that right now.

  Squaring off my shoulders, I plant my hands on my hips. “You have brothers. How would you feel knowing that they might be out there, hurting but unable to save themselves?”

  “They’re self-sufficient,” he says, sounding particularly untroubled by the fact that his heart must be as dead as my hope in his humanity.

  “They’re your brothers.”

  “They’re grown men, Miss Quinn, and they can handle themselves.”

  “Isla.”

  Of everything I’ve said, it’s that which prompts a reaction out of him. Shadows dance across his face as his head snaps back. “What?”

  “Don’t call me Miss Quinn. It makes me feel old. Which, all right, my soul feels positively ancient, so I guess there is some truth to it.” Aware that he’s openly scrutinizing me, I offer a loose-armed shrug. “I doubt we’ll ever see each other again. It’s an odd twist of fate that you found me at all. So, Isla.”

  I don’t go so far as to stick my hand out for him, and even if I did, I doubt he would accept the offer for what it is: an olive branch.

  Instead, he only studies me silently, his gaze flicking over my face. Then, brusquely, he mutters, “You’re bleeding.”

  “I am?”

  He lifts a hand, reaching for my head—but at the last second, he veers off course and rakes his fingers through his dark hair. “Right temple.” He points to his own forehead. “It’s not awful but you ought to visit a doctor.” A small pause and then a rather lackluster, “I’ll take you home.”

  Take me home? Absolutely not.

  “What? Is this your way of making yourself feel better for being a complete arse during our interview?”

  He casts me a single, inscrutable look before striding down the paved path, as though he knows I’ll follow. And, damn him, but I do. Like some bumbling puppy determined to please its master. Which I’m not, of course, and even if I were, it certainly wouldn’t be him who I’m trying to impress.

  I’d rather freeze to death than be sucked dry of all warmth by a coldhearted bastard like Saxon Priest.

  When he doesn’t answer, I demand, “Well?”

  “I wasn’t an ass,” is his only reply.

  My temper, already simmering from my argument with Josie earlier, threatens to ignite. “You told me I’d be dead within the year.”

  “Based on how I found you tonight, I’d say that I was right.”

  No doubt about it, I should have clobbered him over the head while he had me hanging upside down from his shoulder. From between gritted teeth, I seethe, “I was trying to find my brother, which is clearly a concept you’re too boneheaded to understand.”

  “Boneheaded, eh?” Sharp eyes find me over his shoulder. Any other man would have the decency to walk face-first into a lamppost, but not him. Never him, I’m starting to realize. “Suppose it’s unfortunate that I didn’t hire you, after all.”

  “Why is that?” The words come out clipped, annoyed.

  �
��Because, Isla, I would enjoy nothing more than to sack you.”

  My feet stumble to a stop, just as we hit a main street—Birdcage Walk—where a black car is parked along the curb. Despite the fact that it’s a no-parking zone, the car looks like something yanked straight from a Hollywood-studded action movie, sleek and gleaming and utterly luxurious. My surprise ratchets up another notch when Saxon moves to the driver’s side door and pops it open.

  He meets my gaze. Tilts his chin toward the vehicle. “Get in.”

  I don’t even hesitate when I reply, “You’re out of your bloody mind.”

  His big hand curves over the door, near the top. “I’m not the one with a possible concussion.”

  As if he needs to remind me that my head is pounding like I’ve been thwacked with a two-by-four. “I don’t get into cars with strangers.”

  “I saved you.”

  “You want to sack me!”

  “Semantics.” He thumps his hand down on the roof. “Either you get in or you walk yourself across London—to Stepney, isn’t it? You’re quite a ways from home.”

  I’m starting to regret showing up to The Bell & Hand with my CV. No position is worth this aggravation. Not. A. One. And since the Tube shuts down when protests take a violent turn, I’m right and truly stranded. Although I could hail a cab . . .

  Reaching for my interior coat pocket, I pat around for my purse. Wait—where—? My heart sinks when I brush nothing but the inner silk seam.

  “Looking for this?” comes that taunting, antagonistic voice.

  I snap my gaze to his, only to find him holding my canary-yellow purse between his index and middle fingers. My jaw drops open. “You . . . you pickpocketed me.”

  Saxon doesn’t give me the satisfaction of looking the least bit guilty. He twirls my purse between his fingers, murmuring, “Now pickpocketing I have experience with,” and promptly tosses the purse into the car. “It’ll go to your flat, with or without you.”

  Without waiting for a response, he slips into the front seat and slams the door closed.

  Self-righteousness wars with frustration as I turn to look at St. James’s Park. The likelihood of Peter already being back home is greater than the alternative. I know that. In my heart, I feel that he’s safe.

  Wouldn’t I know—wouldn’t my soul know—if he were gone, just as I’d felt with Mum and Dad? I’ll never know the exact moment they died, but I’d felt their loss all the same. Like a candle being snuffed out while basking in the sun, I hadn’t needed their light, their guidance, but their absence struck me down anyway.

  And the terror of losing them has yet to fade.

  It stirs my paranoia.

  It steals my sleep when I rise from bed at night to make sure Josie is beside me before checking on Peter in the other room.

  I’m going crazy.

  My palms are caked with dirt and gravel, but I drag my fingers through my hair anyway, in a pitiful effort to abate the anxiety.

  Peter is okay.

  He won’t be okay when I give him an earful at home, but—

  Saxon honks the horn and the sound nearly has me flying to the ground for cover.

  The entire night is clearly catching up to me.

  With slow, measured steps, I round the car’s bonnet and eye the man in the driver’s seat. He sits like a panther in wait, his wrist resting nonchalantly on the steering wheel, but the passing of another vehicle, coming from the opposite direction, illuminates his face. What I see there doesn’t do anything to alleviate the heavy weight in my stomach.

  Saxon Priest may have saved me tonight, but as I open the passenger’s side door, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m entering the killer’s lair.

  I suppose that puts us on equal footing.

  He guns the accelerator at the same time that I lock the seatbelt into place, my purse returned to my coat pocket. I force myself to draw in a steadying breath.

  The ride is anything but pleasant.

  Saxon drives like a madman, like a savage, winding us in and out of lanes. With his hood down and his sleeves rolled up, he looks less like a businessman and more like someone who has lived and breathed the streets of London for his entire life.

  Not once does he ask me for my address.

  We drive past Trafalgar Square and over Blackfriars Bridge, past the Custom House overlooking the Thames and then, soon after, the Jack the Ripper Museum, until finally he’s pulling in front of my flat on Alderney Road.

  The hum of the engine descends into silence.

  I let out a slow exhale that tightens my chest. “Well, this is it. I suppose I should thank you again for not kidnapping me—”

  “Today, you told me that you had a proposition to make.”

  My head snaps to the right, so that he’s all I see. And my heart . . . suddenly, the chill is rapidly thawing as hope eternal springs to life. “I . . . Yes, I did. I do.”

  He’s stillness personified. No quirk of his lips. No drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. Even when we tumbled into the grass earlier, his breathing never escalated from the exertion, and it doesn’t now, either. But he watches me—with that same, steady expression that he wore when he flipped me over onto my back, the one that suggested I was an inconvenience—and I find my knees clenching together as I wait him out.

  What it would take to breathe fire into a man like Saxon Priest, I doubt the world will ever know.

  “You won’t work at The Bell & Hand,” he says, his voice deep and arrogant, as though he knows my back is up against the wall and I have little in the way of options, “but I could use you.”

  A shiver snakes down my spine and my dirt-encrusted fingers knit together in my lap. And a visual, the kind that’s best not to imagine while in the midst of company, slips to the forefront of my mind and won’t let go.

  Big hands traveling up my naked back, pushing me down to my knees. A dark, sinister voice whispering in my ear just before my hair is wrapped in a possessive fist and yanked sharply to the side, to make room for his imperfect lips on my neck. Saxon Priest would rule my body the same way he rules his emotions: tightly, with no give or hint of softness.

  I’m instantly ashamed of the way heat floods my core at the mere possibility of a man like Saxon fucking me.

  Which he won’t be—ever.

  Lifting my chin, I ignore the irrational flutter of my pulse. “Didn’t we already settle this? I’m not for sale.”

  Nothing in his expression shifts, but I’m all too aware of the way he wraps an arm around the back of my headrest. Warm breath wafts over my face as he leans in, intruding in my space, until his mouth is scant centimeters from mine. If he wanted to, he could close the narrow gap between us and I would be stuck, cornered, his for the taking.

  My chest rises with a sharp inhale, just before his raspy voice echoes in the quiet of the car: “You couldn’t handle a man like me.” Indignation sparks on my tongue, but not before he cuts me off: “And I would never fuck a girl like you.”

  Callous. Cold. Cruel.

  My heart slams against my rib cage and I don’t hesitate in planting a firm hand on his hard chest to shove him backward. “I don’t need your pity.”

  I don’t miss the less-than-subtle glance he throws at my building. I’ve done what I can with the place, with my landlord’s approval—a newly painted front door, some potted plants on the front stoop—but even in the darkness, there’s no missing the signs of age . . . nor the way the homes on either side of mine look more than a little worse for wear.

  “Ten tomorrow morning at the pub,” he says, turning the key in the ignition. “If you don’t show, I’ll know you’re not interested.”

  “Interested in what?”

  “Money, Isla.” He growls the words like I’m insipid, and the temptation rises once more to bash him over the head, to hell with the consequences. “Show, don’t show,” he adds when I don’t reply, “doesn’t make a difference to me.”

  But it makes a difference to me, and the
bloody bastard knows it.

  I throw open the door and slide out from my seat.

  Walk away. Go upstairs. Leave him to rot.

  I do none of those things and instead bend at the waist so I can peer into the car. Darkness envelops him like a second skin, but I stare at him anyway, hoping he can feel the fire behind my words when I vow, “I will never sleep with you, even if you get down on your knees and beg.”

  I don’t wait to hear him respond, if he even does.

  The vibration of the engine roars to life as I let myself into my house, but it’s not until I’m unlocking the door to my flat that I remember Saxon still has my knife—Dad’s knife—which means he’s left me with no choice.

  And he knows that I’ll show.

  * * *

  Josie is sound asleep when I crawl into bed beside her, and it’s not until early in the morning that I hear the front door crack open and Peter’s heavy footsteps pad inside.

  He’s home, he’s safe.

  That should appease the knot in my belly, but something tells me I’ve bargained with the devil . . . and it’s not my brother’s arse that’s now on the line.

  It’s mine.

  9

  Saxon

  “He won’t talk.”

  “Freely, probably not.” With my arms folded over my chest, I sink my weight back to half sit on the metal desk behind me. Through the one-sided mirror, I watch Alfie Barker tug at his restraints, panic pinching his ashen features. “But a man will do just about anything to keep a pulse.”

  A man with a cause would, anyway. A man who has something to live for.

  And from what Damien’s already discovered about the bloke, Barker fits under both categories. He’s a father, a widower. One wrong move on his part and his two little girls will find themselves as orphans before the night’s through.

  I cut a sharp glance over to my younger brother, who’s seated at his monstrosity of a computer. Boy genius, Guy and I used to call him. Damien despised the nickname—still does—but it was entirely too apt. Holyrood, pre-Damien Godwin, might as well have been operating out of the Stone Age.