The Iron Duke (36 page)

Now, she was studying him with her keen inspector’s gaze, patient and razor-sharp, as if she was preparing to peel him apart.

All right.
But only if he could peel away something from her in trade.

Rhys turned onto his side. “Take off your nightgown,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

“Because you have small tits and big nipples.” Both the perfect size for his mouth. “I want them now.”

She still hadn’t recovered from her confusion and surprise. She glanced at the sun streaming through the portholes. “Now? But—”

In a quick movement, he rolled over onto his stomach, his elbows alongside her knees, his palms cupping her hips. All he had to do was shove her nightshirt up and lower his head, and he could bury his face in the crevice of her thighs. Her fragrance penetrated the cotton, warm and earthy, the musk of sweat and woman. His cock ached. To take the edge off, he rocked his hips into the mattress.

“You’re about to interrogate me. I’ll answer. But I intend to suck on your nipples while I do.” His gaze dropped. “And when you’re done, I’ll spread your legs and fuck you with my tongue.”

“Oh, blue.” On a gasp, she twisted away. He caught her knee with his right hand and ran his left up the inside of her thigh. She quivered and looked back over her shoulder.

His fingers found moisture, heat. She wasn’t wet. Not yet. He slipped through her folds and circled her clit.

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. Her head bowed. “Stop that.”

He didn’t. The little bud was swelling beneath his fingertips, stiff and slick. “Because there’s daylight outside? Because it’s difficult to interrogate me like this? Or because you’re afraid?”

He’d stop for the last. Only for the last.

“Because I can’t think.”

Good.
He dragged her beneath him and onto her back. Her nightgown rode up on her waist. She was naked beneath. He came down between her parted thighs, his weight on his elbows, pinning her hips with his. Letting her feel him through his drawers. She was hot now—and so wet, soaking the linen through to his cock.

“Ask what you want to know,” he said, lifting his hand to his mouth. Her lips parted in shock as he licked her flavor from his fingers.

“I—he—Scarsdale.” She closed her eyes. Her throat worked, and she continued with slow deliberation, “Scarsdale said that Hunt threw a zombie off an airship onto the
Terror
and it bit you.”

“It did.” He angled his forearm until she could see the scar. “A big chunk.”

And the feel of her beneath him was doing a lot to keep that memory at bay. But not for her. Horror had filled her eyes, as if she was imagining it. And still not understanding.

“But how—?”

“Am I still alive?” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Her brow furrowed when she frowned up at him. Rhys kissed the frown away, but had to admit he wouldn’t last long like this. And she seemed determined.

So he’d let the lady have her way.

He rolled over and off the bed, glad he’d visited the privy before he’d fallen asleep and had no need for it now. His erection was so hard, he’d either break his cock bending it the right direction or piss in his own face.

The cabin girls had already been in. Coffee, grapes, and melon waited on the small table, along with bowls of the yogurt and honey that Yasmeen favored. Aviators were lucky bastards. Traveling short routes and stopping often enough, they could load up on fresh food and supplies as needed. Never down to hardtack and picking worms out of it.

Coffee in hand, Rhys glanced around at Mina. Her gaze wasn’t on his face, but fixed somewhere on his chest and stomach, and hungry—as if she wanted to take a bite of him, too. He resisted the urge to find a breeches and shirt. If she liked it, he’d let her look.

Though he sure as hell couldn’t understand it, any more than he understood Scarsdale, or what any woman saw in a man when he was all but naked. In the Market, they’d tried to keep him shaved and oiled up after he reached puberty. Probably for good reason. Twenty years later, he was nothing but hair. Hairy chest. Hairy legs. A jaw that was rough five hours after he scraped a razor over it. But even with all the hair gone, there were just harsh angles and rough muscle. Hands coarse and callused. The jut of his cock against his drawers was ridiculous, and uncovered, was nothing but a blunt ugly tool. But Mina . . . God, look at her. Even on the thin side, she was soft and curvy, with every part of her made to fit his hands, his mouth.

But still thin. Frowning, he glanced down at the plate. There was enough here for two, but he knew himself well enough that he could polish this off without a second thought. And so would she. At dinner, she ate with concentration, and though she never asked for seconds, she never left a crumb, either.

He did that, too. He had too many memories of plates that weren’t full to waste what was put in front of him. He pulled out a chair. “Get over here and eat this with me.”

She did. Unable to turn down a meal, even when he ordered her around like a sailor. Christ, that twisted at him. She pulled her blue wrap on over the nightshirt and sat. Taking her coffee, she said, “You must have some idea why you survived.”

“My bugs are different.”

He said it without thinking, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He might run her off before they reached the Ivory Market tonight. Of course, as quick as her mind was, she might have already figured it out. He didn’t see any surprise on her face. Instead, she popped a grape into her mouth and arched her brows, waiting for him to continue.

“But I don’t know if that’s why. Might have been that I shoved my arm in a boiling pot right after. Maybe that killed the diseased ones.” And had hurt enough, had felt like it’d almost killed him. “I might just be that lucky. Whatever the reason, I’m not looking to get bit again.”

“Animals don’t become zombies.”

His lips quirked. “I’m not an animal.”

Though some would say he wasn’t entirely human, either—even less human than other buggers. Hell, if they knew it, some buggers would think so, too.

“I didn’t mean—Just that ratcatchers . . .” She flushed a little and pressed her lips together. “The Horde tried to control them with the tower, too. To lock them down, to freeze their bugs. They couldn’t. The first ones, the ones they made, yes. But not the second generation.”

So she
had
figured it out. “They must have used the wrong frequencies,” he said.

She stared at him. Maybe searching out the differences. Carefully, she said, “Were your parents born with their nanoagents, too?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. There was a Frenzy nine months before I was taken to the crèche.”

“So they must have been affected by the towers,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

“And if you have children?”

“I wouldn’t know. And I don’t know if I ever will.” That depended on whether she’d want to have children off a man who’d been born with iron bones and bugs that hadn’t replicated, but had become something new. And he wouldn’t ask her now. He’d wait until they returned to London—but since he’d be sharing Mina’s bed before that, he realized he ought to tell her, “I’ll use a sheath when I’m inside you.”

He watched her reaction, but he didn’t see the relief he expected. He saw understanding, instead.

With a sad little twist of her lips, she looked down at her plate. “I don’t know if I will, either,” she said quietly. “I’d like to. But my children would be . . . It would be difficult for them. And I don’t know if I could watch it happen.”

He frowned at the top of her head. The reasons for her uncertainty weren’t anything like his. And by God—she must be thinking of children that came from another man. No child of theirs would be left unprotected, any more than he’d allow her to be hurt. But reassuring her meant asking her
now
to bear his children.

After her confession, however, he had no doubt that they’d raise children, even if they weren’t from his seed. Blood didn’t matter to him. What Rhys called his
was
his, and Mina wanted to be a mother—so he’d make certain she was, in one way or another.

“There are always children in the crèches.”

Her head jerked up. She stared at him, her face slowly brightening. A smile broke from her, then a wondering half laugh. “Yes. I don’t know why I didn’t—
Yes
. That would be the perfect solution.”

Good.
He didn’t know a thing about families, but he’d damn well get theirs right.

Her gaze unfocused, and she continued eating with a soft expression on her face. Perhaps thinking of future children. But it wasn’t long before her attention returned to him, and that keen look entered her eyes.

“So you didn’t know that the zombie’s bite wouldn’t kill you.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And thought you were dead. So you loaded up the
Terror
with explosives and made a run for the tower.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

That was a big question for such a little word. But boiled down, the answer was simple enough. “Dying pissed me off. Worse, that I’d come back a zombie.”

“So you struck at the Horde for making them?”

He nodded. “I couldn’t get to Hunt. So I got to the tower. And they had so few guards, the Horde might as well have invited me in.”

“Because the radio signal wouldn’t let the rest of us come near it.” She was staring at him, her brows slightly pinched together. Still not satisfied with his answer, he realized, even before she said, “And that’s it? It wasn’t because you wanted to destroy every government, every institution?—And why did you want
that
?”

For the same reason. “Because I was pissed off.”

She looked baffled. “At what?”

“At how fucking useless they all were.” He frowned back at her. “Why weren’t you pissed off?”

She blinked. Her shock melted into wry humor. “The Horde wouldn’t let us become that angry.”

That was true enough. But that wasn’t what he meant. “No. I’m talking about afterward. I strolled into that tower with a few members of my crew who weren’t infected with bugs, and brought the damn thing down. And for two hundred years, Manhattan City was full of men without a nanoagent between them. The navy was, too. They
ought
to have been saving you. All bloody fucking cowards.”

Something flickered in her eyes. Anger, yes. But resignation, too. “One: They thought we weren’t worth saving. Two: Bugs and the Horde terrify them. Three: They thought they couldn’t defeat the Horde. Did you know you’d be able to stroll in? When you served on Baxter’s ship, did you tell him he ought to sail up the Thames so that you could walk in? Did you know one tower would affect
so
much?”

He clenched his jaw, but had to admit, “No.”

“Was Baxter a coward? Was he useless?”

His inspector was ruthless. Evenly, he said, “Not a coward. But useless? Yes. Before that tower came down, yes. All of them were. The Khan, who can’t stop his
dargas
from earning extra money on the side by selling eight-year-old boys to the skin trade. The Lusitanian parliament that forbids buggers from crossing their borders, but won’t stop the mines from bringing in slave ships full of men with pulverizing hammers and drills grafted to their bodies. I could spend an hour naming them. From the moment I was chained on a ship heading to the Ivory Market, I began making lists of every government and institution that was useless or run by hypocrites, and by the time I killed Adams and took the
Terror
, the whole fucking world was going to pay.”

She regarded him quietly. He tried to read her expression, but she’d retreated into that penetrating, inscrutable look. Christ. He didn’t know what she thought of that. He couldn’t change his past, wouldn’t be ashamed of it, didn’t need to defend it. And he couldn’t regret anything he’d done. But her opinion mattered.

After a long moment, she only observed, “You
were
angry.”

“Ah, well.” He shrugged. “I was young. And then I grew out of it.”

“The revolution?”

“Yes. I’ve seen worse in my time. But I hadn’t been the one to do it. And I’d never been so careless that I destroyed more than I intended.”

“We aren’t sorry.”

“I know.” He smiled slightly. “But all of the English are mad.”

Her eyes lit with laughter. “That, from a Welshman?”

“Born in Caerwys doesn’t make me Welsh.”

His inspector appeared ready to argue before she shook her head. “What does it make you?”

“What would you say?”

Her lips pursed. “You sound like a sailor: French, Lusitanian, and a dockworker all combined. And a bit of a bounder in there, too.”

Someone who didn’t quite belong anywhere, except for a ship. He nodded. “That’s about right.”

“Even with the title? That ties you to both England and Wales.”

“Yes. But that’s something else.”

“Paying for the revolution?”

So she remembered their conversation up on deck two nights before, even though she’d been three sheets to the wind. “Yes,” he said. “And I’ve Baxter to thank for it.”

“Not the king or his council?”

She didn’t let up. Holding back his laugh, Rhys finished his coffee. He usually didn’t like interrupting eating with talking, but he was enjoying the hell out of breakfast with the inspector. Her every response fascinated him, the challenge of trying to predict her next question and the direction her thoughts would take. He could easily imagine beginning every day like this—and ending them the same way, too. Maybe even reading newssheets, just to hear her reaction to every report.

But she was waiting to hear his answer. “The title meant nothing to me, except that it represented something that I’d hated for almost twenty years. And I’d have left—until Baxter told me what it meant. I had people and holdings to take care of, and they were mine now.”