Lady of Desire Read Free Page B

hung open halfway down his chest. Black trousers hugged his compact hips and long legs. As his hand curled into a fist at his side, she saw the gaudy gleam of thick gold rings on his fingers.
    Jacinda stared at him, holding her breath. In a glance, she knew instinctually that, in this brick-and-mortar jungle, he was king.
    Then the gang leader charged. The sharp blow of his boot heel resounded overhead as he sprang off the tooth powder placard, cracking it under his muscled weight, and leaped off the junk pile, landing in the midst of the fight. With a fist reinforced by his chunky metal rings, he dealt O’Dell a punch in the jaw that sent the man flying across the alley as though he’d been struck by a cannonball.
    And then all hell broke loose.
    Eagerly pressing her eye to the crack between the placard and the spool, Jacinda watched the gang leader wreak havoc on his opponents with dark thrill pounding in her veins. Once he had thrown the first punch, his men reengaged their enemies with renewed gusto. They were still outnumbered, but their leader’s arrival had decidedly evened the odds. Back and forth across the alley the battle raged.
    “How many times have I told you,” the gang leader growled as he threw one of his enemies to the ground, “you stay off my turf or you die.” He kicked the prone man in the stomach, then swooped down and, she feared, made good on the threat.
    She blanched.
    Crashing blows, curses, and guttural male grunts of exertion filled the alley, then the gang leader appeared again in the strip of moonlight, nimbly twisting out of the way as O’Dell swung at his lean middle with a spiked club. She drew in her breath silently. It was a terrible weapon, though crude. The makeshift mace, with its bristle of long nails, was designed to tear flesh off bone, but its intended victim danced out of range by a hair’s breadth as the club whistled through the air again and again. Wielding it menacingly, O’Dell advanced.
    Jacinda cringed against the barrel as the fight moved closer. With another two steps, they were so near that she could practically feel the heat of their bodies. She hunkered down in her hiding place, but when O’Dell struck again with a bellow, the gang leader dove aside. The great club plummeted through the air, crashing into the top of the barrel mere inches over her head, showering her in a rain of dust and splinters.
    How she kept from screaming or coughing in the sudden cloud of debris, she did not know. The placard, thank God, remained in place, keeping her hidden, but a meaty thud sounded from somewhere nearby, and the next thing she knew, the gang leader came crashing down on his back amid the garbage pile. She stifled a gasp, still clutching the snapped placard desperately over her head as she saw that his dagger had flown out of his hand amid the trash. It lay within her reach, gleaming in the moonlight.
    O’Dell wrestled the spiked mace free from the barrel’s wood; the gang leader, still on his back, scrabbled for his knife. With the alley ringing with shouts and the gang leader totally absorbed in his reckless fight, he did not notice her, though a mere two feet separated them. Jacinda’s heart pounded. Everything in her shouted for her to nudge his knife toward his hand so he could defend himself, but what if they saw her?
    O’Dell’s eyes gleamed evilly in the darkness. He raised the club over his head to deal the death blow. Jacinda could not help herself. She stuck out her gold-slippered toe and furtively nudged the dagger toward him, but his searching hand found the coil of rusty chain instead. His fingers wrapped around it. With a growl, he yanked the chain upward like a whip, clomping O’Dell in the face. The man let out a scream and dropped the club, clapping his hand to his injured eye. Temporarily blinded, unable to fight, he chose to retreat.
    The gang leader grabbed his dagger and leaped to his feet. His fury quickly broke the others’ resistance.