Steel Kisses

by Laura Strickland

  They looked at Reynold; one of them raised his eyebrows before they resumed their conversation and ignored him.

  Reynold said to the woman—was she Dr. Landry?—“I was given to understand there are pictures.”

  “Of course. Please sit down.” She indicated an elaborate chair situated beside what must be her desk. He sat on the edge of the seat, and she pulled forward a large album, the cover of which she flipped open.

  Pictures, they’d said, but these were drawings—portraits, some of the most exquisitely delicate things Reynold had ever seen. The woman flipped the pages before handing it to him. “See if there’s anything you like, and choose whichever catches your fancy. Oh, and the fee…”

  Reynold began to sweat. What if she wasn’t in the book? He would lose all that money for nothing. “Do I have to pay you now?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What if none of them…catches my fancy?”

  “They are all quite beautiful. I’m sure something will.”

  He gnawed the inside of his cheek. An enormous sum. But two hours made a generous allowance. The whores he’d tumbled in the past had given him barely time to get his trousers undone.

  He still couldn’t believe she—his dove—might be a prostitute, even in a place like this.

  The book had fallen open to a picture of a young girl with brown eyes, flawless skin, and butterscotch-colored hair. Not his dove, but Reynold felt sure he’d seen her before in his dove’s company, exiting the tram.

  He dug the money from his pocket and counted it out carefully. Not his money anyway.

  The woman took the bills and used a key on a chain dangling from her wrist to open a small drawer in the desk, where she put the money away.

  Then she rose.

  “Take your time making your selection. Let me know when you decide.”

  Heart pounding, hands shaking, Reynold flipped to the front of the book. Each drawing had its own page. All beautiful. None his.

  A woman appeared at the door, snagging his attention. Young and immensely beautiful, with red hair and a serene face, she posed, and the woman fetched one of the men from the sofa on the far wall. They went out together.

  Maybe he should leave now. Sure, he’d lose the money, but—

  He turned to the next page and found himself gazing at his dove. Smooth brow, finely boned features set in a perfect oval of a face. A rose of a little mouth, golden ringlets, and eyes that stared directly into his from the page.

  Ice blue eyes.

  Each page had a name inscribed across the bottom. Hers said Lily.

  Reynold got to his feet, the book clutched in his hands.

  Chapter Four

  “This is our Lily. Lily, you will entertain this gentleman for the next two hours.”

  Lily nodded. She had come at once when summoned. Dr. Landry did not like it when they dallied once the receptionist called them; she would hear about it later if Miss Crump complained. Dr. Landry usually stopped in at least once a day to oversee operations.

  She focused on the gentleman in question, the only one in the room at the moment. They were not supposed to care what the client looked like. Clients came in all shapes and sizes—had all kinds of tastes—and Dr. Landry stressed they were all to be accommodated in every way possible.

  Automatons—even highly sophisticated hybrid specimens like Lily—had no preferences and were not permitted to mind.

  Only, inexplicably, she found she did mind. Some of the clients were rough. Some left marks on the delicate surface of her skin, which could bruise and tear. Some grunted and farted and swore at her and asked for impossibly degrading acts.

  That, as Dr. Landry explained, was why Lily and her sisters existed—so real flesh and blood women would not have to do those disgusting things. If Dr. Landry earned a good amount of money in the process, enough to build more units, so much the better.

  Lily wondered what this man would want. At first glance, he did not look demented. But she had learned that at first glance few of them did.

  This one—tall and broad—at least had a healthy look about him. Though she was not expected to have opinions or tastes, she liked his hair, which tumbled over his forehead in a rich, brown mop. He looked tentative and uncertain, but his brown gaze fastened on her when she came in, to the exclusion of all else.

  Maybe this one would not be too awful.

  “Run along then,” Miss Crump told her. “Up to your room. He has until five o’clock.”

  Lily bowed her head, turned, and went out, leaving the client to follow. At the foot of the stairs, she paused and looked into his face. “Would you like whiskey sent up? It is included in the price.”

  “That would be nice.” He had a husky voice, deep.

  Lily nodded again and called to the receptionist. “Have them send up whiskey, room eight.”

  They climbed the stairs, Lily just ahead of her guest, so all she could see of him was one hand on the banister. Big hands. She wondered if he were as large everywhere else. Honoria once had a client so big he tore her up inside. She had to be shut down almost a week for the repairs.

  “In here.” She pulled open the door to her room and invited him with a sweep of the arm as she had been taught. Always be welcoming. Smile no matter what they ask. Seem eager.

  Her chamber, decorated in lavender, contained the bed—of course—one chair, and ample floor space. Some clients liked to use the floor. In the corner stood a screen behind which Lily took care of necessary maintenance—cleaning between clients, occasional light repair, and refreshing.

  Her client shut the door behind him and stood looking at her. He appeared nervous. But he would complain later if he thought she had wasted time.

  She smiled at him. “How would you like to begin?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  She reached for the buttons on the front of her dress, sewn of pearl-colored silk. “Most of my clients like to see what they have paid for. Would you like me to strip?”

  He swallowed convulsively. A dull flush rose to his cheeks.

  “Have you ever visited with one of Landry’s Ladies before?” Maybe he did not know what to expect, thought she would not look or feel like a human woman. Unless he touched her in certain places, he should not be able to tell the difference.

  “No. No, I haven’t.”

  She wondered how to put him at ease. She abandoned the buttons and reached for her hairpins instead. “Would you like me to take my hair down?”

  “I would. I’d like that very much.”

  A scratch came at the door, and then it opened to admit the little mechanical maid with a tray holding whiskey and one glass.

  The client leaped away, but as soon as the maid left, he filled the glass with whiskey and gulped half of it down.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He extended the glass to Lily. “Will you take some?”

  “I cannot drink.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. Her loosened hair fell down around her shoulders in separate tendrils, and he took a step closer.

  “My God, you’re beautiful.”

  “Would you like to tell me your name?” Some clients did; others liked to remain anonymous. Many expected her to call it out at the moment of climax.

  Not that she ever climaxed, but they did.

  “Reynold. You can call me Rey.”

  “Thank you, Rey. I hope you enjoy your afternoon. I am instructed to provide any pleasure you require. Would you prefer the bed or the floor?”

  He took another big swig from his glass. “Neither.”

  That did not make sense. Lily put her head to one side, searching her intelligence.

  “I’ve seen you before, you know.” His voice, low and gravelly, sounded breathless. “You get off the tram up the street every morning. I can see you from the alley that leads from the place I work.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “McMahon’s. I… But it doesn’t really matter what I do, does it? I
couldn’t believe you worked here. I mean, you look so untouchable and perfect. Yet here you are, after all.”

  “Everyone must be somewhere, Rey.” Most humans could not comprehend her sense of humor—only the other girls understood.

  But he smiled. “I guess that’s so.”

  “If you would like to remove your clothes, we will get started. Or would you prefer me to remove them? Some clients do.”

  “Clients.”

  “Or you can perform with your pants open. In this room, your word is law.”

  “Don’t you mind?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He lifted both hands, one still holding his glass. “I still can’t believe it. I’m standing here looking at you—hearing you offer to take your clothes off for me—yet I can’t get hold of it. How can this be the only way for you to make a living? Why would you let men, strangers, put their grubby hands all over you? And worse.”

  Did she mind? That question again. She had been created for the purpose he described and no other. Yet lately, just lately…she had noticed some things displeased her.

  Carefully she answered, “I am not allowed to mind.”

  She reached for her buttons again and continued to unfasten them. For some reason, men liked that and, indeed, his eyes followed her movements avidly. Her breasts had been formed of human skin over molded gelatin. Her clients tended to focus a lot of attention on them.

  But he reached out and caught her wrist. “Don’t.” His fingers felt warm to her sensors, and his brown eyes met hers earnestly. “I didn’t come here for—for that. I just wanted to see you up close, to meet you.”

  She recoiled. This had never happened before. Men wanted what they wanted, with considerable variations. Never just to meet her.

  She stood with his hand still clutching her wrist, staring blankly. She admitted, “I do not know what to do.”

  “Sit down. We’ll—we’ll just talk. Talk to me.”

  He released her wrist, and she backed up a step and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. Dr. Landry had said to accommodate their clients’ every request, and this definitely was one.

  He perched in the single chair with the whiskey in his hand, never taking his eyes off her. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “There is not much to tell.”

  “There must be. How did you come to be working here? What happened to your family? Was it poverty that drove you to this? Some other misfortune?”

  Lily tipped her head and consulted her artificial intelligence once more. Did he not comprehend the truth about Dr. Landry’s creations? Did he even understand what she was—a manufactured, third-generation, high-quality steam unit?

  He believed her a human woman. A human prostitute. One of the very women she had been created to relieve from lives of danger and degradation.

  Provided a client had sufficient money.

  Her intelligence contained no information about this. Those who had designed her had assumed all clients would already know what she was.

  She wished she could go downstairs for instruction, but she was never to leave the room—ever—before the end of the session.

  When this client’s allotted time was up, a chime over her door would sound. If the client refused to leave then, two steamies would come to escort him out.

  Should she tell this man the truth? He seemed so earnest and so…so kind.

  Lilly knew how to deal with impatience, cruelty, and brutality.

  Kindness, for her, made a new proposition.

  Chapter Five

  “I’ve made you uncomfortable,” Reynold observed, marking Lily’s hesitation and her apparent bafflement. She didn’t know how to respond to a man who wished to treat her like something more than a piece of meat. That made him angry, and he was not a man who resorted to anger easily, as Sasha Belsky could attest.

  But the implication that this exquisite woman wouldn’t so much as consider her own feelings—more, wasn’t allowed to consider them—argued such abuse he wanted to tear this awful place apart with his bare hands, find whoever was responsible, and obliterate him.

  He couldn’t imagine adding to her misery. Not that he didn’t want to see her unclothed—the glimpse he’d had of her breasts through the unbuttoned front of her gown made his mouth go dry. And not that he didn’t want to touch her, and more. His member had responded as soon as they came into the room and he saw the bed, and it hadn’t settled down yet. But the last thing he would do was disrespect her.

  “I am unprepared for this,” she admitted, her ice-blue eyes meeting his. “My story is a very simple one. I was always destined for this life, nothing else.”

  He frowned. “How is that possible? No one is destined for…”

  “Please Rey, could we speak of you? I find it much more interesting.”

  “Do you?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Tell me about your work. What do you do for a living?”

  Well, here it comes, Reynold thought—the moment when he destroyed any chance of a future relationship with her. Did he want a future relationship with a prostitute, however beautiful? One who’d been pawed, and worse, by God alone knew how many men?

  His head said probably not. His heart shouted yes.

  He drew a breath. “I collect corpses for a living.”

  She tipped her head again, those amazing eyes still fixed on him. Not so much as a flicker there to betray dismay or repugnance. One golden curl slid along the white column of her neck when she moved, and it fell inside the open front of her dress. Reynold’s fingers twitched.

  “That is an interesting profession.”

  “I work for a fellow who makes coffins. He sends me all over the city at the request of our clients. Not the dead clients, you understand, but the bereaved.”

  “The dead do not speak to you then?” She half smiled, letting Reynold know this for a kind of joke.

  “Once or twice,” he admitted. “They do make little sounds when I move them. And I tend to talk to them—I’m in their company so much, you see, and they’re good listeners.” Now she’d think him mad. He’d made a terrible impression—but why should he be surprised? Sasha never left off reminding him he was dull and thick, a fool in the body of a bear, with nothing to recommend him.

  Yet she said, “A worthy and honorable line of work, performing a vital service.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. I have been informed that what I do is vital, also.”

  “Well, I suppose so.” Reynold tried to think about that and failed, his mind more or less blanking at the point where she and some other man walked into this room and…

  “Speak about your family, Rey. Do you have a wife?”

  “Me? No. I wouldn’t be here if I did.”

  “Many married men come. They request acts their wives refuse to perform.”

  “And you…you perform those acts?”

  “Yes. I am trained to fulfill every request.”

  And how could she be so matter-of-fact about it, so accepting? How did her expression remain so serene? Had she been drugged?

  “I can’t understand how you can do that,” he burst out. “I mean, a stranger walks in here, someone you’ve never seen before, and you just let him…” A sudden cascade of images tumbled through his mind: Lily naked, her skin glowing white. Lily with her legs spread on the bed, in invitation. Lily on her knees, offering her mouth not to some stranger but to him, Reynold. His member leaped in agony.

  He could not ask for that. Not now.

  No, no, no.

  But other men did.

  He wasn’t other men. As his ma had always said, he was like nobody else.

  “Do you have other family?” she asked, ignoring his passionate comment. “Parents? Siblings?”

  “I never knew my pa. He was killed when I was only two.”

  “Killed?”

  “He worked the docks and was crushed when a stack of cargo slipped. My ma said he lived four days in terrible pain. She died of
a fever a few years ago. At first it seemed like the winter ague—she kept going out and working. Worked as a laundress. I tried to persuade her to call a doctor, but she said she’d get better on her own. We didn’t have the money, see, to pay a doctor’s fee.” And here he’d spent a fortune to sit talking to a prostitute. “By the time she was down in bed and I insisted on calling the doc, it was too late.”

  “I sympathize with your loss. Any brothers or sisters?”

  “One of each. My brother—he’s the oldest—moved away years ago. My sister’s married and living on the other side of the city. I’m the youngest. You? Tell me about your family.” He still couldn’t accept they’d leave her to this life if they knew.

  But she shook her head. “Dr. Landry says the other girls here are my sisters. It does seem that way. There is a bond. Tell me about your childhood—your life.”

  And so he did, sitting there in the comfortable chair and talking more than he ever had in his life, while she perched on the edge of the bed and listened, apparently rapt. He’d never known anyone to listen to him that way, and it drew things from him he’d never confided to anyone.

  At last, though, a chime sounded, reverberating through the room. He stopped in mid-spate; her gaze left his face for the first time and moved to the door.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “The signal. Your time is up.”

  “It can’t be. That can’t have been two hours.”

  “Please finish what you were telling me.”

  Instead he stumbled to his feet. He didn’t want to leave her company. He didn’t want to abandon her here. But now, suddenly, the words all clogged up in his throat.

  She rose also, slid from the edge of the bed, and came to stand before him. The top of her shining head barely reached his nose.

  What to say to her? What, in parting? He didn’t know.

  She smiled at him. “I have enjoyed this encounter very much, Rey.”

  “As…as have I.” Except he didn’t want to leave. Doubtless none of her clients wanted to leave.

  “Would you like anything else before you go?”