by Archer, Zoe
Slowly, his flesh was revealed. His neck. The hollow at the base of his throat. The span between his pectorals, lightly brushed with red-gold hair. The top of his ridged abdomen, then lower, to the indentation of his navel, and below, where a thin trail of more hair traced down his flat stomach to vanish beneath the waistband of his breeches.
He peeled away the shirt and added it to his discarded clothes. She was conscious of his gaze on her, conscious that he could see every play of emotion and need, but for all her skill at deception, she couldn’t hide her reaction to him.
“Oh,” she breathed, “what a wonder is science.”
She’d known that he had physically changed as a result of the implants, had seen hints and glimpses, but here he was, nude from the waist up, and the transformation was astonishing.
Where once he’d been lean and compactly muscled, now he possessed the exaggerated masculine beauty of a summer god. The delineations of his abdominal muscles were precise, his chest broad, his arms potently hewn. Her gaze strayed farther up to his shoulders, wide as the sky itself. Her searching perusal stopped when she finally beheld the telumium implants.
Metal had been fused to the skin of his left shoulder and pectoral, sculpted in the shape of muscle, like Roman armor. The telumium gleamed in the reflected sunlight, and her fingers itched to touch it.
She actually took a step forward, hand upraised, before realizing what she was doing.
“Touch it,” he murmured. “You won’t hurt me.”
Closing the distance between them, she stood very close and saw herself reflected in the telumium. Her breath misted slightly on the implants. She brought her hand up slowly, tentatively, before lightly touching her fingertips to the metal.
“Warm.”
“It heats me, and I heat it.” He raised his arm smoothly. “One of the unique properties of telumium. It retains its strength and durability but is also flexible, so no mobility is lost.”
She bent even closer, studying the metal. This was the first time she’d ever seen actual Man O’ War implants. There had been photos and cinemagraphs, but never had she beheld this with her own eyes, felt its heat and strange suppleness beneath her fingers.
He’d said the procedure had taken many painful hours. Seeing the seamless way in which the telumium was integrated with his flesh, she could believe it. He must have wanted this very badly to have endured so much. She’d been trained in resisting torture, but she doubted she could have borne what he had.
Glancing up, she saw him watching her guardedly. Tension tightened along his jaw and neck.
He was troubled. By what she might think of him. Of this final proof that he had truly altered into something not entirely human.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
Heat flared in his gaze before he looked away.
She wanted to touch the rest of him, too. Not merely to test the new strength of his body, but to feel him, this man she had known and cared for. His unique combination of bravado and kindness that challenged and cherished her. The gleam of purpose as well as humor in his gaze. When she pushed, he pushed back, and when she needed tenderness, his arms had always been ready to hold her close.
The drumming of her pulse revealed that she cared for him still. Wanted him. He might desire her, but what of his heart? Could she move past her own fear?
She had to keep silent. They had reached a tentative entente, perhaps even a small fragment of friendship, and if she spoke of her heart, she could destroy it all. He had every right to push her away. She must give him no cause to.
Pulling back, she tried to speak briskly. “If you’ll just sit there,” she nodded toward the chair, “I’ll take some samples.”
He moved fluidly to take a seat. Without his shirt, in motion, his body was a brutal poem. She attempted to steady herself by grabbing her spectacles and meticulously polishing them with a small cloth. After donning her glasses, she sorted through her tools to find precisely what she needed. She selected a rasp and a smaller file, then pulled out another chair to sit beside him.
Despite the fact that they had been in the magazine together for some time, the chamber felt a good deal smaller now. He seemed to fill the space with his presence. Lacking the barrier of his clothing, he exuded heat, and her own skin warmed to be so close to him. He stared straight ahead, hands braced on his knees, as Louisa bent close to the implants.
“Let me know at any time if you feel the slightest discomfort.”
He gave a slight nod.
With a piece of paper cupped just beneath to collect the filings, she began to run the rasp along the metal. The angle was awkward, her purchase minimal, as she was trying not to touch his bare flesh. The rasp skidded over the telumium, succeeded only in creating a few scrapes. A tiny flake of metal drifted down onto the paper. At this rate, by the time she gathered enough telumium, the Hapsburgs would conquer London.
“Could you hold this here?” She pressed the paper into his right hand and guided it to the proper position beneath his implant.
Drawing a breath, she cupped her free hand around his bicep to hold it steady as she worked.
They both hissed in a breath at the sensation.
Good god, it was as if his whole body was made of metal. He’d never been a loose and flabby man, far from it, but now he was impossibly hard and solid. She could hardly believe she touched flesh, save for the slight yield to the pressure of her fingers and the hot, satiny feel of his skin. Yet more than these changes, she was acutely aware that it was Christopher she touched. And she touched a place reserved for intimacy. How many nights had she gripped him, just here, as he stretched above her, with her legs wrapped around his waist and the dimmed gaslight all around them like antique gold? How often had she watched the bunch and flex of muscles in his arms as he gripped the headboard, her atop him, riding them both toward ecstasy?
Desire and sorrow combined within her in a mystifying alchemy, so she could not separate one from the other.
Mouth pressed tight, she made herself focus on her work. She ran the rasp back and forth across the implant. With the additional leverage, she had more success, and curls of metal gathered on the paper.
“This doesn’t hurt?”
“No.”
“Even if it did, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?”
“No.”
She scanned his face for any signs that he might be in pain, but there was no way to know if the lines bracketing his mouth came from her scraping at his implants, or him simply having to endure her touch. Unless he said otherwise, she’d just have to proceed.
The only sounds in the magazine came from the rasp and the faint noise of repairs continuing throughout the ship. Someone in the passageway outside walked by, whistling an old sea shanty.
She thought being this close to Christopher might help her get used to him, that she could hold his arm and feel its weight, and think of him as any man. Take away some of the mystique. The opposite proved to be true. For the more she touched him and saw up close the rise and fall of his chest—the same chest on which she used to rest her head—the more she ached and wanted and cursed herself.
The tension within the magazine ratcheted higher, far more explosive than the powder in the cannon shells.
She could stand it no longer.
“I could never become anyone’s wife, Christopher,” she said quietly. “I made no secret of it. But you asked me, anyway.”
He tensed, as if her words had been an unexpected blow. For several moments, he didn’t speak. Perhaps he’d simply ignore her. She couldn’t decide whether to press him, or just continue with her work.
Then, “It’s what men typically do,” he said tightly, his face in pristine profile, “when they fall in love.”
“We aren’t typical, you and I.”
“True. Typical women don’t react to a marriage proposal by running off on a mission without leaving even a damned note.” He kept his body still, but he stared at her. “D’you know
, I didn’t find out where you’d gone until Admiral Davidson told me at a briefing. That you were overseas for an indefinite period of time. Apparently, you’d begged him for the assignment and left that very day.”
Her gaze dropped away. “That wasn’t . . . well done of me.”
He snorted.
“But, Christopher,” she said, spreading her hands, “I didn’t know what to do when you asked.”
“If you didn’t want to marry me, you could have said no. Better that than running.”
“I know you, Christopher. If someone says no, you redouble your efforts. You don’t stop until you get exactly what you want. I’m just as stubborn.” She struggled to find the words, fumbling through the chaos of her own emotions. “We would’ve battered against each other until we were nothing but dust.”
“There’s such a thing as compromise.”
Her brows rose. “Since when has either of us compromised?”
“You didn’t even goddamn try.”
“It’s true. I was . . . a coward.” She stared down at the tools now resting in her lap. So simple, so elegant, these tools. If she faced a mechanical problem, it was a matter of working the situation out, slowly, thoroughly, until a solution was found. “A coward in many ways. I was . . . afraid. To say no to your face. Afraid you’d change my mind. Afraid that if you did, we’d just . . . make each other miserable.”
Fear gripped her now. Could she ever make things right between them? They could never go back to what they had before, but they couldn’t go on this way. Neither friends nor enemies. A volatile mixture of both.
He set the paper with the filings on the table before swinging around to face her. “I was so goddamn happy being with you. And you were happy being with me. Where in any of that did you see a future of misery?”
“Marriage changes people, changes how they see each other, treat each other.” Restless, she put her tools and spectacles aside, and walked tight circles around the perimeter of the magazine. How to articulate her feelings to him when she didn’t fully understand them herself?
“I’ve seen it so many times,” she continued. “The courtship and the first years after a wedding—everything’s wonderful. The love between the couple is a palpable thing, hot and alive and shining. But then . . .” Words and fears smashed against each other. A struggle to break free, to verbalize what she only now could fully comprehend. “ . . . that love changes. Withers. Or dies altogether.”
He shot to his feet. “It doesn’t have to. Yes, maybe it does change, but not into something worse. Into . . . something different.” Like her, he wrestled with words. “Something perhaps even better than that consuming fire. There’s trust . . . and comfort. And strength.”
“What of passion? You say that trust, comfort, and strength are better, but I couldn’t live without passion.”
“Did we ever lack passion?” He stalked close. “Could something so bright fade?”
He wrapped one iron-hard arm around her waist, and brought his other hand up to cup the back of her head. His gaze raked her for a moment, eyes bright as blue fire. They had both exhausted the limitations of words. Action was far more articulate.
His mouth came down onto hers.
At the first touch of his lips to hers, need tore through her. She clung to his shoulders, one of flesh, one of metal, yet she felt all of him at once. The long, unyielding length of his body. His large hands holding her tightly. The sensation of his mouth, hot and demanding. She knew him, his mouth, had tasted countless of his kisses, but he was different now. Taller. Tougher. Angrier.
There was a consuming hunger as he kissed her, as his tongue swept into her mouth. Yet she wasn’t cowed into submission. She met his kiss with her own demand. It had been so long. Since she’d shared this with him. Since she had burned from the inside out. She gripped him, hard, pressing herself against him.
He tasted of whiskey, tobacco, and regret for what could have been.
She wasn’t aware of being walked backwards until the racks of shells rattled against her back. At the sound, he abruptly released her and stepped away. Her hands hovered in the air for a moment before she slowly lowered them.
Now the only sound in the magazine came from them as they panted, fighting for breath and sense. Her breathing slowed, but sense didn’t return. She was alight with desire. Her yearning body knew him, wanted him, and so did her heart.
His face was dark, either from anger or arousal or both. The great mass of his body shuddered.
She said, “I have to—”
He held up a hand, silencing her. “Don’t.”
But she wouldn’t be silenced. “I have to apologize. I’m sorry, Christopher. So sorry.”
“I’m not sorry I kissed you.” His eyes seemed to glow.
“I’m not either.” She, who never cried, blinked back tears. “But I am sorry about what I did three years ago. I made a mistake. I ran, when I shouldn’t have. I didn’t give us a chance. Now . . . I don’t know what to do.”
He smiled mirthlessly. “I’ve flown this ship through storms that had our compasses spinning. Captained a sea ship that was blown thousands of miles off course by a hurricane. But I’ve never been as lost as I am in this room.” He eyed the distance between them. “In this, we’re both adrift.”
Chapter Seven
CHRISTOPHER STAYED CLOSE. The heat of their kiss kept him in Louisa’s orbit. If questioned—which he wouldn’t be—he had a convenient reason to remain near. There was no way to know how much telumium she would need for the bombs, compelling him to remain with her in the magazine as she conducted her experiments. She tried various amounts of the metal, making small adjustments as necessary, and taking more filings from his implant.
In truth, he might have insisted she take a larger amount of telumium at once, thus enabling him to leave the magazine and find work elsewhere in the ship. God knew he had enough to do. Yet he remained with her as the afternoon edged toward early evening. Every five minutes, someone in his crew popped his head in and asked him different questions. If the crewmen thought it strange that the ship’s captain sat shirtless in the magazine with a woman from Naval Intelligence, they wisely kept their mouths shut. Around him, anyway.
He watched her work, fascinated by the process that only she seemed to understand. Her hands were nimble, precise, and a small line appeared between her brows as she concentrated. She’d always frowned when working out a puzzle. In the few years since they’d been apart, the line had grown a little deeper, become more permanent. Tiny lines fanned out in the very corners of her eyes. She hadn’t needed the spectacles three years ago, either.
She was a woman. A woman who subtly aged with the passage of time. Who made mistakes, and admitted to them.
He didn’t know if it made it worse or better that she’d done so. A few words couldn’t undo the damage she’d caused. Yet the fact that she had understanding and courage enough to own up to her actions helped solder shut the giant fractures in his heart.
One thing he wasn’t comforted by: the knowledge that she desired him still. He’d tasted it in her kiss. Felt it in the grip of her hands on him, how her body molded to his. His own body still tightened in readiness. His appetite had been whetted. But it was a hunger that had to go unsatisfied. This was not the time. Not the place.
He might go to his death wanting her.
To occupy himself in between her taking more telumium, he picked up and studied whichever tool she wasn’t using. Turned them over and over in his hands and felt their wooden handles, their metal pieces.
“A wondrous age of mechanical marvels, this is,” he murmured. “When I was a boy, no one had heard of aurorae vires, nor telumium. Ether, too, was just a subject of speculation.”
Still bent over her work, she added, “Tetrol was only a rumor, also. Wild stories told by visitors to China. Vast soya bean fields being turned into fuel that burned faster and cleaner than coal. Who’d have believed it?”
“Now all of it’s real
.” He spun a screwdriver on the tip of his finger. “My very existence proves it.”
Reaching over, she snatched the screwdriver away with a single, deft move, and used it to make adjustments on the bomb. “Wonder what the next few decades will bring.”
“Something marvelous, or terrible.”
“Or both.”
“Can something be both marvelous and terrible?”
She gazed at him. “Love.”
He made a soft snort of agreement. “Perhaps we should send a telegram to Dr. Rossini. Suggest she study the scientific properties of love. She could power half of London’s electricity if she found a way to harness love’s energy.”
“It wouldn’t be a very reliable power source.” She turned to him and ran the rasp over his implant, one hand on his arm. It didn’t matter that she’d touched him thusly half a dozen times in the past few hours. One brush of her fingertips against his bare skin and his pulse raced like a turbine.
“Maybe not.” He stared down at the crown of her head, where the lamplight turned her hair to gleaming mahogany. “But there are always new fools falling in love.”
After a few passes of the rasp, she hunched over the worktable again. “We’ll have to find another scientist to conduct the experiments. Dr. Rossini is a bloody hard woman to find.”
“I heard her flying city was last seen over the coast of West Africa.”
“And I heard she’d been spotted over Brazil,” he said. “She and that group of rogue Man O’ Wars that believe her some kind of god, or queen, or both. She doesn’t disabuse them of the notion, or so I’ve heard. The Hera had a run in with that flying city of hers. The ship was almost shot from the sky.”
“The price of genius is often madness. Me, I’d rather have just enough brilliance to keep everyone in awe of me, but not so much that it chips away at my sanity. And I do think that this qualifies as a work of brilliance.” She straightened, pushing her hair out of her face, and gestured to the device on the table.