Before he could interrogate her, she asked in her most professional voice, “ACL and MCL tears, right? How many surgeries did you have?”
“Two, with a third on the horizon if things don’t improve.”
She wrapped her hands around his upper thigh and firmly drew his leg through her fingers, over his knee and down his calf.
On a low groan, he dropped his head back against the wall.
“Too much?”
“Hell, no. I can stand it harder if your hands are up to it.”
She repeated the long strokes, concentrating on the deep tissues above and below his knee to work out all the knots that had built up over time. Think of him as a patient, not as a man you’ve dreamed about for months.
After a good fifteen minutes, he asked, “Where did you learn how to do this?”
His voice sounded thick and mellow, his muscles melting beneath her hands. What she wouldn’t give to give him a full body massage. “I took a sports injury class at a highly recommended massage school.”
“My knee has never hurt this good before. You’ve got magic hands, baby. I don’t remember anything on your resume about certification.”
She felt her cheeks heating, so she concentrated on her work. “I never worked as a massage therapist. Just a hobby, I guess.”
He leaned forward and grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to his. His fingers were gentler than when he’d touched earlier. Even his eyes were softer, and hot enough to melt her into a puddle. “You took that class for me.”
“A hunch,” she admitted. “If you lie down I can do a better job.”
He studied her for long seconds while her heart lodged somewhere in her throat. With a wide, startling smile, he set his phone on the floor and stretched out on the bench, shifting to get his long frame comfortable. She didn’t fail to note that he kept the towel he’d used on his hair strategically placed across his lap. “Well, then, I’d better think real hard about the best way to thank you.”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she stood and moved to the foot of the bench. “Getting my hands on your body is reward enough, sir.”
“V,” he replied in an easy voice. “Or Victor, I don’t care which. I might be a Master, but I really don’t care for all the formalities. I’m not interested in a slave relationship.”
With firm, deep strokes, she rubbed her thumbs down the top of his knee to the back on both sides, using cross friction against those sore tendons. “What are you interested in?”
“You, whatever that means.”
Ducking her head a little, she concentrated on his knee. After meeting his ex-girlfriend, she had her doubts.
As though he read her mind, he said, “I apologize for not telling you about Kimberly. She means nothing to me.”
She worked her hands up higher, kneading his quadriceps. “She wants to be on the show with us, along with Ryan.”
“I couldn’t care less. If you don’t want her there, tell them both to forget it with my blessing.”
“Why me?” She bit her lip and flicked her gaze up to his face to check his reaction. He had closed his eyes and his mouth was soft, his lips barely parted. She’d never seen his face so fully relaxed before. He could almost be asleep. Good, maybe he didn’t hear my insecurities blurted out like a teenager.
“Did you see my picture at Silken?”
She shuddered at the memory. Not asleep, then. “Yes.”
“I should have demanded they give it to me instead of letting them keep it in their office like some sort of holy display.” He blew out a disgusted breath that made her lips twitch. “Which Victor was in that picture: the CEO of a sexy cable channel or the sadist?”
His thigh was heavily muscled from the years of physical therapy he’d invested to rehabilitate his knee. Dark hair sprinkled across his skin, matching the thin line of hair that led up his ridged abs to the darker patch on his chest. She licked her lips and thought about pressing her face between his pectorals. Would he allow her to breathe in his scent and rub her face on him? “You were all Master V.”
Softly, he whispered, “What did you see in my eyes?”
She clenched her thighs, trying to calm the need burning through her body. She ached, desire humming in her so loudly she was surprised he didn’t hear it like a siren call luring a ship to its doom. “Hunger.”
“That’s why you’re here with me now. Ryan and Kimberly think that picture is just a sexy photograph done as an old-time Western. They don’t see the real me in that picture.” He paused, waiting until she looked back into his face. His eyes bored into her. Even lying flat on his back with a swelling knee, he possessed the commanding presence of an emperor. “They don’t see the man who aches to use that crop on you until you beg me to stop.”
“I won’t,” she choked.
His eyes narrowed and he tensed beneath her hands. His breathing rasped loud in the silence. Blistering coldness flooded over her, along with a sense of his withdrawal.
Quickly, she explained. “I won’t beg you to stop.”
The tension bled out of him, but he closed his eyes, and his voice was gruff. “You will, baby. You will.”
“You don’t know me well enough to make that judgment.” Leaving his knee, she moved to the opposite end of the bench. She sank trembling fingers into his hair, seeking his scalp. He made a low purring sound and tipped his head back into her caress, so she swirled her fingertips along his temples. She drew her fingers back in firm strokes, as though she could pull out every last bit of tension and pain that lingered in his magnificent body.
“Every time I go home, Mama threatens to have my brother hogtie me so they can give me a proper hair cut.”
“Don’t you dare,” she growled out.
He arched a brow at her but didn’t open his eyes. Afraid she’d overstepped her bounds with him, she changed the subject. “You should ice your knee tonight to keep the swelling down.”
“Hand me my cell. I’m lucky I didn’t fumble it when you tackled me.”
Blushing furiously, she handed him his phone. “I did not tackle you. I pushed you to get you off your knee. You’d already strained it enough.”
He leaned up on his right elbow and typed in a text message. “I’ll ask Léon to bring up some ice packs and bandages, if you’ll be so kind as to help me wrap it.”
“Of course.”
He set the phone aside and stretched back out on the bench. His eyes smoldered, but a faint smile played about his lips. “Now you have approximately five minutes to kiss me before we’re interrupted. This is your chance to taste me without me trying to bite a hunk out of you.”
Love, science, death. She is all three.
Bluebeard’s Machine
© 2010 Mari Fee
A Silk, Steel and Steam Story
Determined to discover what new experiment is stealing her husband’s attentions, Annette Parker ventures into forbidden territory—his study—only to discover a secret he would kill to keep. She is his fifth attempt to clone the original Annette and, according to his journal, he’s planning a sixth…after he dissects her dead body.
Unsure of who or what she is, she assumes a new identity and flees to the Orkney Islands and her last hope. The man she once rejected.
Isaac Ward’s first instinct is to get this mysterious “Miss Ada” out of his undersea laboratory—and out of his life—before he repeats the mistakes that drove him there in the first place. Her wild stories and stubborn insistence that they’re true wear his patience thin, but it doesn’t matter. She is as irresistible as the tide.
Then the truth appears right outside the portholes of his lab, stripping away her dubious disguise. Exposing a secret that could kill them both…unless Isaac abandons the science he knows for a second chance with the woman who broke his heart.
Warning: contains mad scientists, wanton murder, identity crises, and boiling hot underwater sex. Submersible instructions not included.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Bluebea
rd’s Machine:
The top of the column was pushed open by a large male hand, followed by a white shirtsleeve stained with ink, and then by the head and shoulders of Isaac Ward himself. The naturalist’s long face was clean-shaven, and he had fiercely intelligent green eyes beneath a tangle of brown hair badly in need of a trim, or at least a bit of grease. The beginnings of crow’s feet radiated from the corners of his eyes, which grew wide when he spotted Ada.
“Mr. Ward?” Ada’s cheeks grew warm as he stared. Dragging her gaze from his was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but looking at the sea was so much easier than looking at Mr. Ward. He wore his years well. Too well.
She cleared her throat and started again. “Mr. Ward, I hate to intrude, but I’m Miss Ada Powell. I…”
“Miss Powell?” The sound of his voice doubled the butterflies in her stomach. “Have we met?”
“Only briefly. Many years ago.” She forced a smile. “I, uh… I have a request, but this isn’t the best place to discuss it.”
“A request.” When she glanced at him, he was staring at her intently enough to make her squirm. “I don’t often receive visitors, Miss Powell.”
“I hoped you would make an exception for me.” Ada resisted the urge to look away as he studied her. This was not the man she remembered. Time had ground the softness from him, and perhaps running to him for help wasn’t as good of an idea as she’d first thought. He was a man of science, after all. Like her husband.
“Fine. You and Mr…?” Ward pointed at the Whitemaa’s captain.
“I hired Mr. Marwick to bring me here. He will return when I send for him. You do have a way to contact the—surface?”
“I have a telegraph.” Ward ascended the rest of the way up the ladder inside the column and stepped onto the platform next to Ada. Her heart thumped painfully at his nearness, and she stepped back without thinking about it. He grabbed her elbow to steady her as her heels hit the edge of the platform. “Careful—you almost walked into the sea.”
“Thank you.” Ada put a hand to her throat and took a deep, calming breath as the ocean lapped at her feet. His hand radiated heat through the sleeve of her tweed jacket, and he waited another heartbeat before releasing her. He was taller than she remembered, and smelled faintly of brine and Indian tobacco.
“Perhaps you and I ought to talk aboard Mr. Marwick’s fine salvage vessel. I’m sure it will be much more comfortable for a lady. My observatory is quite cramped—”
Ada shook her head. “I wish to speak with you privately, Mr. Ward. If you fit down that hole, I am quite sure I will as well.”
“I’m not sure I agree. Climbing a ladder in skirts—”
Picking up her carpetbag, Ada thrust it at Ward. “I am perfectly able to climb down a ladder as long as my hands are free. Mr. Marwick, I will have Mr. Ward send for you when I wish to leave. Thank you for your services thus far.”
“Any day, Miss.” Marwick tipped his hat to her even as he rolled his eyes at Ward, who growled something inaudible in return. The masculine exchange clearly said women! and it raised Ada’s hackles, then depressed her. If they only knew the truth of it, she thought dismally, then hiked her tweed skirt over her knees, sat on the edge of the ladder column and swung her legs into the hole. A ladder was welded onto the side of the round column, and the air coming up the shaft smelled of tobacco and salt.
Ada looked at Ward, who sighed and stuck her carpetbag beneath his arm. “We still have time to go to the ship.”
“Good day, Mr. Marwick.” Ada gathered her skirts in one hand and threw the majority of the fabric over her arm, then slowly descended beneath the waves. Her shoes rang against the metal rungs of the ladder as the light filtering through the portholes in the column walls became dimmer and dyed blue-grey the deeper she went.
The hatch closed with a clang that made her wince. Ada gripped the rungs a little tighter. “I’m not at the bottom yet.”
“Then keep climbing.” Ward sounded annoyed, so she took a deep breath of stale air and resumed her descent. There were thirty-four rungs in total before Ada’s groping feet found the floor.
Ward’s undersea observatory was a living room, kitchen and study combined. A leather couch and a black wingback chair bisected the room, and behind the seating was an electric range with a huge black hood. Copper pans and iron skillets hung against the wood-paneled wall above a massive wooden chest—presumably a pantry—and two heavy bookshelves loomed to her right. To her left stood a lamp with a stained-glass shade on a desk overflowing with papers.
Most wondrous of all were the windows.
There were four, two on each side wall, and behind the wavy glass was the sea. Ada gasped and crossed the room to press her face to the window. The water was slightly murky and she couldn’t see more than twenty feet, but beds of green-grey kelp danced in the current. Darting silver fish with bulging eyes swam in the seaweed, and purple starfish splayed across the rocks. Above the observatory was the dark belly of the Whitemaa. The Whitemaa’s hull was pierced with rows of portholes, perhaps because of the salvage operation Ward had mentioned. The ship seemed like a fishing vessel to her, but what did she know?
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Ward spoke from just behind her, and Ada jumped. Her heart fluttered as he reached over her shoulder to tap the glass. “Most people never see past tide pools and the fish that grace their dinner plates, let alone Ascophyllum nodosum in its natural habitat.”
“What?”
“Kelp. The forests of the deep, and largely taken for granted.” He turned on his heel and strode across the room, depositing her carpetbag and umbrella on the couch as he passed. “Why are you here, Miss Powell?”
The plan: Kidnap H.G. Wells. Definitely not part of the plan: Falling in love.
Stealing Utopia
© 2010 Tilda Booth
A Silk, Steel and Steam Story
The year is 1897, the place, a Britain that could have been, but never was. H. George Wells is helping lead Britain into a new Golden Age, driven by technological advances and discoveries of the human brain. Then one night a beautiful woman abducts him at gunpoint, and she seems to despise everything he’s worked for. Despite his outrage, he can’t help but be intrigued by this adventuress and her passion for her cause.
Jane Robbins, agent provocateur, has reason to fear her country’s march towards a new world order. Using her wits and her arsenal of spy gadgets to infiltrate Wells’ house, she delivers him to her employer, who plans to use him as leverage to halt the coming Utopia. But when Wells’ life is threatened, she must choose between saving him or sacrificing him to the cause.
Scientist and spy, they are irresistibly drawn to each other even as the future pushes them apart.
Warning: This book contains gadgets, guns, death rays, dirigibles, sexy scientists and a smoking hot Victorian spy who’s as much steam as she is punk. Don’t blame us if it makes you want to slip a pistol into your garter and abduct the man of your dreams.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Stealing Utopia:
Damn and blast. What to do? What to do? She retrieved her special sal volatile, the one that had put the Scotland Yard man to sleep so effectively outside of Wells’ house, and took a deep breath and screamed, “A mouse! A mouse!”
In a flash, Mary was at her door, barging in without even knocking.
Jane stepped behind the maid and waved the vial under Mary’s nose, causing her to collapse backward straight into Jane’s arms.
“Oh Lord, help! Jack, come quick. Mary’s fainted.”
When Jack came into the room, he rushed to Mary’s prostrate form. With a silent plea for forgiveness, Jane whacked him on the back of his head with the bedwarmer. It wasn’t enough to render him unconscious, but a strong whiff of the ether from her doctored sal volatile was enough to finish the job. She searched through his pockets until she found his keys, then left, careful to lock her door behind her. On cat feet, she ran down the hall, unlocked Wells’ door and opened it.
Wells looked up from the book in his lap and stared at her in astonishment. “I beg your pardon?”
She almost burst into nervous tears. “For God’s Sake, George, we have no time. Get dressed and come with me, if you want to live.”
Something in her voice must have made him understand that this was no trick, for he jumped up and grabbed his trousers, putting them on under his robe without even asking her to turn around. She looked behind her up and down the hall to make sure that no one was coming, and by the time she’d finished checking, he was already at her side, pulling on his shirt, jacket in one hand, feet stuffed haphazardly into his shoes.
She led him down the back stairs, to the entrance to the garden, but then she stopped, at a loss where to go next. There were guards all around the house, and she had no idea how she would get George past them.
George grabbed a raincoat off a peg by the door, a voluminous affair made to cover a much more massive man than him. He put it on, shrouding himself, then turned down the gaslight next to the door, leaving the entryway in darkness. “Now what?”
She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. Through the glass panel of the door she could see the shadowy outline of one of the guards, just yards from them, standing like a stone under one of the eaves, out of the rain. “I don’t know. Easton has men at all the exits.”
“Easton?”
“You know him as Mr. Smith.”
“Ah.” He pondered for a moment. “We’ll need a distraction.”
She nodded, hands clenched tight. “I’ll go to the front, call to the guards, and you can escape out the back.”
“What will they do to you when they realize that you’ve helped me escape?”
Images of Flewellyn as she’d last seen him, giving his wife a kiss before they’d all piled into the coach the night of the kidnapping, entered her head. “Nothing. I’ll be all right.”
Lady Doctor Wyre: Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 1 Page 11