Of Silk and Steam (26 page)

“It’s not just—” Did she have the nerve to say this? “I want you to be careful,” she blurted. “Tonight.”

Another slow look that seemed to see right through her. “You lost your entire family.” This time his kiss was a feather stroke of lips against hers. His hands softened on her wrists and the sheets rustled beneath them as he moved slowly, deepening the caress. “It makes sense for you to be nervous to let yourself care for someone.”

She’d never even admitted it to herself, but it was true. Though she’d taken lovers, she’d kept them at arm’s length, and there’d only been one true friendship since her parents died… Mina felt the choking weight of something in her throat. She nodded.

“And a part of you is lonely,” he murmured, kissing her jaw. “But you don’t know if you can trust me—”

“Of course I trust you. I wouldn’t—”

“Trust me not to leave you,” he corrected. “Trust me not to die, if you let yourself care.”

She fell silent again, so full of feeling that she was afraid if she opened her mouth to speak it would all come welling out.

“It’s a risk,” he admitted. “But if you don’t take it, then you’ll never truly live, Mina. And I admit I’m biased. I want you to take that risk.” His voice grew husky. “I want you to be my Grace O’Malley—fearless and defiant, despite the odds.”

“I want to be that girl too. I want her back… But I’m so frightened that she died with Stephen, with my mother and father—”

“Then forge her anew.” A hot, molten whisper against her skin.

Silence. Nothing except the pounding of their hearts. Mina let out the breath she’d sucked in. “Yes,” she said. “I could.” Perhaps he wasn’t the only one finding himself again.

This time when he kissed her, she could sense the change. No holding back. Not for either of them.

A kiss to change her world. Suddenly, surrendering didn’t seem like it would be such a bad thing. He knew her fears, her hopes… He knew, without her even saying, what she really wanted.

Mina’s tongue plunged into his mouth as she set herself free. Taking what she wanted from him and demanding the same. Barrons—God, she had to stop thinking of him like that. Not now, when his hands and mouth wrought such delicious damage on her body…

“Leo,” she whispered in his ear as he caressed the full curve of her breast. The word was a shocking intimacy between them, and his eyes lit up with something heated before he tugged her trousers down her legs. His were gone too, the proud jut of his cock angling against the flat plane of his stomach. She hadn’t had time to admire him before, but she did now—from the tempting trail of dark hair leading south from his navel to the chiseled vee of his hips… Mina held out a hand to him and he lowered himself over her.

“Say it again,” he demanded.

“Leo…”

The whisper of his skin against hers made her writhe. A hot mouth closed over the rosy bud of her nipple and she gasped, hands sinking into his hair and encouraging him lower, her eyes clenched shut as she threw herself into the sensations. His heated tongue dipped into her navel, the gravel of his stubble rasping against sensitive skin as he moved lower. Mina’s fist curled in his hair as he cupped her bottom in both hands and spread her thighs, leaning down to devour her.

“Blood and glory!” Her eyes shot open, staring at the ceiling as her hips worked beneath him. She was shameless.

And so was he. The things he did to her with his mouth… The heated coil tightened within her, leaving her wet and gasping, demanding more with harsh whispers and her own hands clenching in his hair. Her sex throbbed at the sight of those broad shoulders spreading her thighs apart… Mina threw her head back with a cry as his tongue circled her, thrusting deep into her molten body.

The sounds she made… It wasn’t her, and yet somehow she felt like she’d never existed like this before, never given herself over to a man to be loved like this. Pleasure mounted within her until she felt as though she were on the verge of falling. Mina held her breath, her body arching—

Leo lifted his mouth, a devastating smile curling over his lips as he wiped them with the back of his hand.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her hips collapsing back on the bed with an explosive exhale of air from her lungs. She lifted her head weakly from the pillow. So damned close…

Hunger filled his eyes, the blackened heat of the craving. Mina’s heart thundered to a halt in her chest at the sight.

“I’m taking what is mine.”

This time, when he pressed her into the bed, there was a sense of urgency to their actions. Hooking her knee up against his chest, he drove into her, his eyes lost to anything but lust and his lip curled in a silent snarl. The feel of his hard body inside her… She’d forgotten how large he was, how delicious it felt to be utterly, utterly claimed.

Mina clutched at him, unable to take her eyes off his face, until she could no longer hold herself together. She shattered with a cry, fingernails biting into the sleek muscles of his back, leaving little red marks on his shoulders. The angle was shockingly intimate, her knee trapped so that she couldn’t escape the flood of sensation. She came again, her entire body shaking as he buried himself inside her with short, hard thrusts, knowing exactly what he was doing to her.

A quiver ran through his shoulders. “Mina,” he said, burying his face in her throat as he thrust a little deeper. A gasp was torn from his lips. “Damn it…” He filled her again, long and hard. “Wanted to take this slower…”

She met his eyes and saw the feral need there—Leo Barrons stripped of all his cultured finesse, all of his smooth, seductive devices lost in a shattering haze of need. And suddenly she wanted to drive him beyond control, to prove that he was just as much hers as she was his.

A tight clenching of her body around his wrought another strangled groan. He knew what she was doing, thrusting harder, deeper…until her entire body ached with possession. And still it wasn’t enough. She wanted to shatter him.

Nails digging into his back, she bit at his throat and jaw, sharp, stinging nips that made him groan. The
hunger
within her was violent, shocking, completely unrestrained. Yet there was something missing, and by the blood, she knew what it was… Sinking her teeth into the corded tendons in his neck, she bit just hard enough to make his hips jerk.

“Fuck.” Hardly the tender love words she’d imagined, but somehow rawer, more primitive for it.

He came with a violent shudder, rocking hard into her, his entire body shaking as he gave himself over to her. The sight of his face, his eyes clenched shut and his mouth parted in ecstasy, did something to her deep inside.

Mine
, the hunger inside her purred. But something within her wanted more.

Her mind raced. She’d never drunk fresh from the vein before the other day. Control was vital, and yet a part of her felt sleekly fulfilled, as if some darker recess of her nature had unfurled itself, glutting itself on the lack of control, the fierce, primitive nature of what had just occurred between them. Reveling in a claiming that was possessive and fierce, owing nothing to the rational part of her mind. Perhaps she’d been suppressing her needs for so long that she hadn’t truly understood the darkest part of herself.

Leo collapsed atop her. When he tried to move, Mina curled her arms around him and held him tight, feeling him still inside her. She needed to hold him right now, a little afraid of what had occurred between them. Her entire body was wrung out with the intensity, but she couldn’t deny that her heart thundered in her chest, reminding her of the gloriousness of living. She felt dangerously alive, the predator inside her still alert.

Leo finally lifted his face from the pillow. “That wasn’t entirely what I intended.”

“No?” Mina nuzzled her face against his throat. “Perhaps it’s what I planned instead.”

His eyelids lowered, only the dark hint of his pupils watching her. Leo slowly withdrew from her body, leaving her wet and aching and loving every moment of it. He curled her into his strong arms, tucking her back into the hollow of his chest and hips. A position that could be either a prison—or total protection.

Mina relaxed her head back onto the pillow of his arm, kissing his biceps.

“You like it when I lose control,” he murmured.

“Of course I do. Surrender goes both ways, my love.”

“My love?” he repeated with a questioning lilt, tracing skittering circles over her hip.

Mina froze at the realization of what she’d said. Feeling it, Leo kissed the back of her neck and settled in against her, his breath shivering over her skin. “Do you need blood?”

The sharp ache of unfulfillment echoed sharply within her, yet she was nervous. Leo rolled over her and reached for his leather-bound kit, taking out a small razor and testing it against his thumb. He looked at her, accurately reading her expression.

“I know how much you want it, how much you fear it.” He held the razor out to her. “And I know this means another surrender for you, but think of it this way: you’ve been holding your hunger in check for years. Tonight, what we do is dangerous. I want you sharp and alert, and this will grant you that.”

At what point had control become fear? Mina eyed the razor. Her mouth watered, nostrils flaring. Everything in her went predatory still.

In the silence she could hear his heart beating. He lay down and stretched one arm above him, cupping his head in his palm, eyeing her with the type of smile she’d never seen on his face before. Completely relaxed and open, with a faint hint of boyishness. Dragging the tip of the razor over his own skin, he let the smile die as her interest flared.

Heart hammering, Mina reached out and took it from him, letting its sharp edge glide down his abdomen just enough to leave a white pressure line on his skin. With her vision enhanced, she could make out every tiny blond hair on his body, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, even the grain of his dark stubble. She wanted to lick her way up his body, trailing the razor with her.

“You’re making me want things I’ve never wanted before.” She let a tiny bead of blood well near his nipple as she pressed the razor harder. Leo sucked in a taut hiss of breath, but his gaze never left hers.

“Perhaps I’m simply encouraging you to do what you’ve always secretly wanted to, even if that means merely admitting it to yourself.” His other hand slid up her thigh, helping her straddle him. “I like it when
you
lose control. I like seeing this part of you, knowing that no one else ever has. Even Malloryn.”

Tangled red hair tumbled over her shoulders as she looked up. “You’re jealous.”

“Of course I am.” She saw the same hint of possession in his eyes that she knew dwelled in hers. Almost a challenge.

“You shouldn’t be.” Reaching out, she touched her fingertip to the droplet of blood on his chest and sucked it into her mouth. The taste of it exploded through her, igniting her senses. Beneath her his cock surged, pressing against wet, sensitive flesh.

“Where?” he asked, knowing the decision had been made.

Mina’s heart raced. She knew, even before her vision shattered into shadows, where she wanted to take him. The perfect imprint of her teeth still marred the column of his throat.

Leo saw the direction of her gaze and tilted his head to the side. “Take me, then. Mark me.”

And so she did.

Undertown existed deep beneath the rookeries and streets of the East End, a mishmash of tunnels and hidey-holes carved into the old, abandoned, and partially collapsed train tunnels of the Eastern Underground link. Three years ago a vampire haunting Whitechapel had culled most of the denizens that lived down there, until Blade and Honoria killed it. The slasher gangs that frequently haunted the rookeries had killed the remaining humans, selling their blood to the Echelon’s draining factories or to those rogue blue bloods who could pay coin for it on the black market. Now only desperation drove people to seek refuge down here in the dank, whispering darkness.

Desperation
and
revolution.

Splashing along the tunnels, Mina counted quietly under her breath as they reached each intersection. Tiny marks were chiseled onto the tunnel walls, indicating which way to go. Not that any of the others understood them.

“Bold,” Leo murmured. “To create an automaton army right in the midst of the enclaves.”

“Who would know?” she asked, aware of how closely he followed. Ever since the blood-letting she’d been hyperaware of him, her senses transformed until she wondered how long she’d been only half-asleep and unaware of it. It excited her, even as caution reared. She could feel her blood rushing through her veins, the ache of his claiming deep within her body.

“Kincaid rules the enclaves and he’s our man, through and through. Any Echelon inspections are always carried out with advance notice. They’re not looking for revolutionaries. Not in the enclaves. They think the mechs nothing but brutes, too stupid to overthrow them and less even than human. Besides, Mercury kept the prince consort’s spies busy.”

“If Rosalind Lynch finds out she was only a decoy for you, she’s going to be furious.”

“The Duchess of Bleight is far more practical than that,” she countered. “She’ll see the purpose behind it.”

“Are you so certain of that?”

No
. Rosalind had been a practical, utterly ruthless woman. Until Lynch came along and somehow swayed her into giving up her work. Now, as the Duchess of Bleight, Rosalind was proving to be a political thorn in the prince consort’s side with him none the wiser about her previous identity, but Mina hadn’t forgotten the lesson. Even a ruthless woman could have her head turned by a man, with disastrous consequences.

A part of her could understand the temptation.

“The Duchess of Bleight would have to discover such a truth first, and I’m hardly about to reveal my hand to her,” Mina replied. “Here. This tunnel. We’re getting closer.”

Wispy tendrils of steam filled the tunnel as they turned down it, Blade’s men sloshing along behind. Another couple of hundred feet and the hellish red glow of the enclaves began seeping through the grates above them. Mina began to relax. Almost there. A ladder appeared and she reached on her tiptoes to grasp it.

“Do you know the one thing that still makes me curious?” Leo’s hard body framed her own as he reached up and unlatched the ladder.

“What?”

“Why you give a damn about restoring human rights and setting the queen in power. Or even how you two came to be involved.”

“It’s complicated.”

“It always is.” He held out his cupped hands, gesturing for her to use them to climb up.

Not one token protest about how perhaps he should go first. As she stepped into his cupped palms and used them to haul herself up to the lower rungs of the iron ladder, she frowned. Perhaps she feared her intolerances, not his. She was always waiting for him to protest her abilities, when he’d shown not the slightest indication of doing so.

With a deep breath, she relented, telling him about her first meeting with the princess. Leo listened as he climbed, following at her heels so that his hard body almost caged her in.

Turning the sewer cover at the top, Mina gritted her teeth and gave it an almighty shove. The metal cover shifted sideways, a spill of orange light blinding her. Strategically placed behind a row of boilers, the cover hid anyone trying to sneak in, but she could see hazy figures shoveling coal into the boilers and men lurching past with wheelbarrows.

Easing herself through the hole brought her into a world of heat, the kind that shimmered in the air and rained sweat down every brow she could see. Staying low, she kept watch as she gestured for Leo and several of the others to follow.

“Stay here,” she murmured to the scarred brute they’d called Tin Man. “I need to find Kincaid first. Make sure none of the men are seen.”

The mute man nodded and Leo fell into step beside her as she scurried through the shadows behind the row of boilers, darting through hissing steam and along the wall to the end of the massive foundry.

“Devil take it, it’s like hell in here,” Leo murmured.

One of the many reasons the mechs were so bound to the humanist cause. If humans had few rights, mechs had even less. They were forced to work in the enclaves until their mech debt—the cost of their mechanical enhancements—was paid off, working steel to create the Echelon’s dreadnought ships and automaton armies, or crafting even finer works in the smaller foundries closer to the edge of the enclave walls, where clockwork organs and mechanical hands fetched top dollar.

“Must be second shift,” she said, catching a glimpse of a slim shape moving through the overseer’s offices above them. “That looks like Maggie Doyle, Kincaid’s assistant.”

“Will she know you?”

“She’ll know me,” Mina replied grimly. Whether Maggie would send for Kincaid was another matter.

Time to find out. Mina rose out of the darkness and set off purposefully toward the metal stairs leading to the overseer’s office. Nobody even glanced at them as they climbed, the workers too busy trying to make their quota.

The door opened and Maggie shut it behind her, glaring through narrowed eyes. “What do you want?”

“A word with Kincaid,” Mina replied coolly.

“He’s busy.”

“He’ll want to hear me out.”

“Busy,” Maggie repeated, but this time her sloe-shaped eyes slid over Leo, as if in curiosity. “He’s got two girls in there with him. I ain’t interruptin’.”

Indeed, now that she concentrated, Mina could just make out a hint of giggling coming from the inner offices. “Allow me,” she said, stepping past Maggie and reaching for the door.

“You can’t just—” The words cut off as Leo no doubt dealt with her.

Striding across the office, Mina didn’t bother to knock. “Kincaid?” Jerking the other door open, she found him immediately. Naked as the day he’d been born, with one girl splayed beneath him on an old sofa and the other wrapped over his broad back like a blanket.

A set of evil blue eyes locked on her, and he raked his thick black hair out of his face as he straightened to his knees, cock rampant in front of him and some strange steel contraption seemingly wrapped around his waist, prongs like little steel spider legs caressing his hips. “My mysterious Madame M.,” he said. “Come to join the fun?”

“Come to extend an invitation to you,” Mina replied. There was some kind of mechanical device running down the back of his thighs, bolts sticking out of the skin. As he shifted, she saw them embedded in his calves too, pistons hissing in the support frame as he moved. An exoskeleton? “I’ve got something much more enjoyable in mind.”

Kincaid glanced at the girl beneath him. “Really? You wouldn’t believe what Clara can do with—”

“It’s time,” Mina interrupted.

That caught his attention. A ripple of something hard and mercenary danced over his features. He snapped his fingers at the two girls. “Leave us.”

“Oh, but—”

“Now,” he told the pouting girl at his back.

“Excellent prosthesis,” Mina murmured as the girl snatched up her shirt and stalked past, steel gleaming at her hip.

The second girl—Clara, she thought—stalked across the floorboards, draping a shirt over her shoulders without buttoning it. Her voluptuous curves taunted in the gaslight and even Mina arched a brow as she stopped in front of Leo, trailing her fingers over his shoulder.

“How ’bout you? Want to play with me?” There was no sign of a mechanical body part, which she’d have to have to live in the enclaves.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Leo replied, his gaze meeting Mina’s with a challenge. “I’ve got everything I want right in front of me.”

Mina felt heat rising in her cheeks.

A cynical snort came from behind. Kincaid had laced himself into his leather trousers, thank goodness, and was eyeing Leo with considerable mistrust. “Who’s the leech?”

“A friend of mine,” she replied.

That made his eyes narrow. “Out,” Kincaid commanded Clara, circling Leo as if he were some muscled gladiator in the Pits in the East End, where men wagered on blood and death.

She didn’t have time for this—and she also wasn’t entirely certain how Kincaid would react. The mech was a dangerous man, used to ruling his enclaves with an iron fist—literally. She’d seen him kill men for the smallest of infractions, and he despised blue bloods.

“Leo Barrons,” Leo said, holding out his hand.

Kincaid gripped it, squeezing hard. Mina took a step forward but Leo’s swift glance spoke volumes and she froze. Muscle strained in his forearm as Kincaid tightened his iron grip with a nasty grin, and it was a surprise to see that Leo was taller than the burly mech.

“Got a good grip on you.” Kincaid laughed. “Come on, why don’t you show me how good?”

A mocking arch of the brow. “I don’t need to. I already know my cock’s bigger than yours.”

That startled a laugh out of Kincaid, and Mina watched with bated breath as he released Leo’s hand and stepped back with narrowed eyes. “Barrons, eh? You’re the one with the price on your head.”

“Don’t go getting any ideas. In short order, nobody’s going to have any coin to pay that reward.”

Kincaid scratched his jaw. Almost as if someone blew out the flame on a match, his entire demeanor changed, leaving her wondering just what kind of man Kincaid truly was. “We’re not ready,” he said bluntly. “The Echelon’s been squeezing our resources, pushin’ our quotas. Haven’t had a bloody chance to sneak in any work on the Cyclops.” All business.

“We’ll take what you have,” she replied.

“And ruin the bloody lot?” A scowl darkened his brow and he took a step toward her.

Leo somehow just happened to be standing in the way, looking down at the shorter man as he picked a fanciful clockwork paperweight off his desk and rolled it over the back of his deft fingers. Nothing in his expression changed but Mina had that breathless feeling that they were walking the edge of a knife again and that he was daring Kincaid to push him.

“You’re not the only pocket of revolutionists producing the Cyclops,” she admitted. “There are four hidden foundries in the city. This is merely the largest.”

That made Kincaid’s eyes narrow.

“Men can’t speak of what they don’t know,” she reminded him.

“They’re all risin’ up?”

“As many of them as we can outfit with the Cyclops.” All of the humanists she could summon, anyway. The message she’d sent to Sir Gideon Scott would hopefully have found him by now.

Their job wasn’t to wait. Sir Gideon could rouse the humanists in their network and fit out the Cyclops in the other sectors. She needed this sector, however, to crush Morioch’s forces and spare the rookery.

A devilish gleam burned in those blue eyes. “We’re taking the Tower?”

“A slight detour first, then, yes, the Tower.”

Kincaid snatched up a metal brace from the desk, drawing it over his head and fixing the leather straps in place to support his iron arm. He hooked a pair of small chains onto the steel hydraulics in his forearm. “Been waitin’ on this moment for a long time, lass. My steel wants to taste blood. Blue blood.” A pair of thin blades shot out through his steel knuckles.

“Just remember—some of the blue bloods are on our side,” she warned. “If we do this, you follow my command.”

There was a momentary pause. Then Kincaid graced her with a dangerous smile. “Of course. Wouldn’t dream otherwise.”

* * *

“Bloody hell.”

Leo rapped a knuckle against one of the steel breastplates on the first Cyclops. They gleamed in the darkness as Kincaid lifted his phosphorescent smuggler’s lantern, dozens of them…no, hundreds…stretching into the cavernous warehouse buried deep beneath the enclaves. All of them faceless, with thin, glass eye slits at the throat through which a man inside could peer as he operated the massive device. They stood a good three feet taller than the largest spitfire, wielding enormous flame-throwing cannons fitted to their arms.

“It reminds me of an old tale I once read about rumors of a hidden, long-lost army in the Orient,” Leo murmured.

Mina came into view, her hand sliding over the elbow joint of the Cyclops in front of him. “You’ve read Sir Nicodemus Banks’s
Travels
to
the
Orient
?”

Few blue bloods gave a damn about their origins. Banks had written of his journeys through such foreign lands, including rumors of the Emperors of the White Court hunting for word of the craving virus when the whispers first came to their attention and then deliberately infecting themselves with it to become gods to their people.

“Curiosity is my greatest affliction,” he admitted wryly. “I like to know how things work. Why they work. Where they come from.”

The human classes in France had dealt with their blue-blood aristocracy during the Revolution, and the Spaniards had used the Inquisition with theirs. Leo paused for a moment, wondering if he was on the brink of the downfall of the remaining blue bloods in London.
Change
, he told himself,
is
the
way
of
the
future
.

Perhaps England could forge a new way forward, involving mechs, humans,
and
blue bloods, the way the other countries hadn’t.

“How does it work?” he asked.

“Like this.” She couldn’t hide the proud glint in her eyes as she reached up and pressed something high on the breastplate. With a faint hiss, it swung open, revealing a cavity inside where a man could stand, and levers and buttons with which to manipulate it.