Breathe. Breathe. Breathe…
A stream of bubbles spilled from her lips. All at once she remembered. She looked up at the distant, pale blur of reflected moonlight shining on the river’s surface. It was a million miles away.
Swim. Swim, damn you.
But the air was gone, salvation beyond her reach. She stretched her arms, clutching at a substance that literally slipped through her fingers. An inky curtain fell over her eyes. She made one great effort, propelling her aching body a few feet closer to heaven.
Something gripped her hand, seizing her like the jaws of a killer shark. Her cry emptied her lungs. The last thing she saw was a face…a face that might have belonged to an angel or the most enchanting devil hell ever imagined.
“BREATHE!”
The voice was both harsh and beautiful, like music from another world. It came from very far away, a place out of space and time, and yet it pulled her from the seductive darkness with all the tenderness of a mob enforcer working over some poor schmuck in an alley.
Rough hands turned her over and pummeled her back. A rush of liquid surged into her throat and pushed out of her mouth. She coughed violently, jagged sparks zigzagging through her brain.
“Breathe!”
She gasped. Blessed air flooded her chest. The hands that had shaken and bullied her softened on her arms and lifted her against a warm, firm surface. She heard a heartbeat, slow and steady, felt ridges of muscle under a once-fine broadcloth shirt, smelled a slightly pungent but not unpleasant scent, as if the one who held her had been living in the same clothes for a week.
Still dazed, shivering from a chill dawn wind against her wet skin, she let herself be held. It was absurd to feel so safe in the arms of a total stranger, even one who had saved her life. Crazy to feel as if she could stay there forever.
She pushed at her rescuer, muscles still not entirely under her control. He released her and steadied her as she struggled into a sitting position on the weathered wood of the pier.
For the first time she got a good look at his face. It was the devil-angel she’d seen in the river, distorted then by brackish water and her own clouded vision. Now that she could see him more clearly, she still couldn’t decide if he belonged in Heaven or that other place.
His features were those of a young man in his prime, handsome in the truest sense of the word. Bright moonlight picked out planes and angles joined in perfect symmetry. His skin was smooth, free of stubble, though everything else about his appearance suggested that he hadn’t seen a razor in several days. His cheekbones were high, his chin firm and a little square, his hair dark and badly in need of a good cut, his brows straight above deeply shadowed eyes.
It was the eyes that captured her attention. Gwen couldn’t make out their color, but that hardly mattered. They simply didn’t belong in the face of a good Samaritan who had probably risked his life to save a stranger, a man in his midtwenties with at least forty good years ahead of him. They were as dangerous as a storm about to break, as grim as the bloodstained steel of a Thompson’s machine gun. If they’d ever seen a smile, it was in some distant past she could scarcely imagine.
Most women—yes, even most men—would have cringed from that remorseless gaze. Not Gwen Murphy. She continued her scrutiny, taking in the frayed cuffs of his shirt, the jacket that had seen better days, the patched trousers and scuffed shoes. This was a fellow down on his luck; there were still people like him in New York, though business was booming and almost everyone seemed to be sharing in the general prosperity.
Everyone except the unlucky few: men crippled in the Great War, widows struggling to raise fatherless children, immigrants who hadn’t yet found their way in a strange country, drunks who couldn’t keep money in their pockets.
Her savior looked perfectly healthy and whole. He didn’t appear to be drunk. He could be a foreigner who didn’t speak enough English to find a decent job.
There was only one way to find out.
“You saved my life,” she said, her voice emerging as a croak. “Thanks.”
The man cocked his head, his gaze still locked on hers.
She cleared her throat and tugged her drenched glove from her shaking right hand. “I’m Gwen Murphy,” she said, offering the hand.
He glanced down, studying her trembling fingers as if he suspected she had some nasty and highly contagious disease. She was about to withdraw her hand when he seized it in the same bulldog grip that had snatched her from a watery grave.
“Dorian,” he said, filling the air with that strange music. “Dorian Black.”
Gwen almost laughed. She recognized the edge of hysteria that lurked beneath her enforced calm and swallowed the laughter. Once she started, she might have a hard time stopping. And Mr. Black didn’t look as though he would appreciate the reaction.
“Mr. Black,” she said, returning his grip as firmly as she could. “I don’t know how you happened to show up right when I needed you, but I’m grateful.”
He dropped her hand and curled his fingers against his thigh. “It was no trouble,” he said, each word clearly enunciated, as if English were a second language painstakingly acquired. “Do you require a doctor?”
She suppressed a shiver. “I’m all right. Just a little cold. And waterlogged.”
Still no smile cracked his sculpted face, but his brows drew down in an expression that might have been concern. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The coat wasn’t entirely clean, but Gwen was grateful for both the warmth and the gesture.
“Thanks,” she said.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that betrayed a whole world of discomfort. “How did it happen?” he asked.
The question took Gwen a little by surprise. Black was so taciturn that prying an interview out of him would be worse than pulling teeth. Maybe he wasn’t really interested, but she had to give him points for trying.
“I’m a reporter for the Sentinel,” she said. “I was on the docks investigating a lead when I was jumped by some hooligans who thought I’d be an easy mark.” She suffered an annoying surge of embarrassment and probed at the growing bump on the back of her head. “I wasn’t that easy. When I fought back, one of them hit me over the head and dumped me in the river.”
Black’s eyes narrowed. He looked up the pier to the boardwalk, as if he might still find the young men who’d done the deed. Even if they’d hung around to make sure their victim had well and truly drowned, they would be lost to sight; the nearest street lamp was a hundred yards away, and there were plenty of places to hide. It was close enough to dawn that longshoremen and sailors on leave were starting to turn up at the docks. If it weren’t for the relative isolation of this particular pier, the roughnecks never could have gotten away with their attack in the first place.
“Do you usually come to Hell’s Kitchen in the middle of the night?” Black asked, turning back to her with subtle menace.
Gwen sat up straighter, squaring her shoulders beneath the oversized jacket. “Certain activities are less conspicuous in the
