Almost. I have to wonder where he draws that particular line but I don’t ask. I’m too new to all this--caring about him, wanting the best for him, wondering how he and I fit together, hoping with everything I possess that we do. That last thought is harsh enough to knock the air from me.
“You’re not eating, babe,” he says, glancing at my plate. He looks up, meeting my eyes, and I see the cautious smile in his. “What do you say we get out of here?”
I stare at him in surprise. His gaze is intent but guileless. He appears almost boyish, as though he’s shucked off his concerns or at least stored them away somewhere in favor of simply embracing the moment. Making no effort to disguise my eagerness, I ask, “Can we?”
He stands, holding out his hand. My prince in every sense but suddenly not quite so dark. All the same, he looks as commanding as ever as he grins and says, “Who’s going to stop us?”
Chapter Fifteen
Ian
I’ve never taken a woman to the beach house before. It’s where I head to when I need a quick break, closer to the city than the palazzo and the one refuge where no one gives a damn who I am. Women would just complicate that. Or at least that’s how I’ve felt in the past. Amelia is different. In more ways than I can begin to count.
“Where are we going?” she asks when we’re in the chopper. We take off from the roof pad on top of Pinnacle House, clear the city in seconds, and swoop over the cookie-cutter buildings to the east, stuffed with micro-apartments for the worker bees. I can hear the excitement in her voice. If anything really fazes this woman, I’ve yet to discover it. She embraces life with an ardor that leaves me reeling. Not that I’m in any hurry to let her know that. I’m already vulnerable enough where she’s concerned.
“Montauk,” I say. “It’s a little town out on the tip of Long Island. My mother’s people came from there. They were potato farmers and fishermen until the Wall Street guys moved in. After the super storm in 2029 turned the beachfront mansions into kindling, the rich folks disappeared. Life’s going back to what it was a century ago.”
I’m explaining more than I normally would but I’ve got an irresistible impulse to open up to her. It baffles me at the same time that I sort of understand it. I want Amelia to know the real me, including the parts I don’t usually show to other people. At the same time, I’m scared shitless of what will happen when she does. I have to be crazy to be doing this in the aftermath of the attack on the Crystal Palace but I can’t help myself. In the past, I’ve seen death as a grim aspect of the reality we all inhabit, to be accepted and moved past. Now it’s urging me to pause, reflect, and seize happiness where and when I can.
She turns her head and meets my gaze. I’m struck yet again by her beauty--not merely of her face and body, although heaven knows I appreciate both--but in the spirit that shines from her eyes. As challenging and impetuous as she can be, she is also the most genuinely warm and giving woman I have ever known. There are moments when she actually makes me believe that I can be a better man.
“I can’t imagine you as a potato farmer,” she admits with a smile. “Fishing, maybe.”
I laugh. “You should see me land a marlin.”
“Is that what we’re going to be doing today?” She sounds up for it but then I haven’t seen her turn away from any experience. She embraces life with a fervor that makes everything around her seem new.
“I might drop a line in the water, among other things. Mostly, I think we can both use a little time away from the craziness. You’ve got to admit, ever since we met life has been coming at us like the proverbial freight train.”
Amelia looks relieved. “I’m glad it’s not just me. I’ve been afraid that if I blink, I’ll miss something.”
“Not today,” I tell her. “Today it’s just us. All right?”
She nods but I catch a flicker of hesitation. I can’t blame her for that. I’m not being entirely truthful and on some level she senses it. I want this day for us not just for its own sake but because I’ve got a good idea what’s coming. A bigger storm in its own way than the one that hit in ’29 only this time Mother Nature won’t be to blame. This will be a purely manmade disaster compounded of greed, the lust for power, and the devaluing of the lives of all but the fortunate few. I’ve got a chance, maybe, to head it off but whether I can or not one thing is damn sure, I will keep Amelia safe no matter what comes at us. I have tremendous respect for her courage and intelligence but she’s far too inexperienced to be left to her own devices in a dangerous world.
“You’re frowning,” she says. “Is something wrong?”
Not much except I’m wondering if I should send her back to the palazzo and keep her there under guard until this is over. She wouldn’t like that. Hell, she’d fight it tooth and nail. But she’d be safe.
She also might never forgive me.
I’ll keep that option in mind all the same but for now I meant what I said, I want this day to be for us.
“Everything’s fine,” I assure her. “Just sit back and relax. We’ll be there soon.”
Twenty minutes later, I angle the chopper down toward the concrete slab sitting beside a former potato field within sight of the ocean. Amelia has been silent for most of the trip, riveted by the sight of the Atlantic rushing toward us. The view from Pinnacle House, impressive though it is, barely prepared her for the reality.
“This is incredible,” she says, gazing at the diamond bursts of light on the gray-blue surface. Gulls circle overhead, squawking at the chopper’s intrusion. The sandpipers have vanished temporarily from the strip of sandy beach within sight of the landing pad but I see a sleek head rise from the rocky outcropping that extends beyond the shore. The seals are stubborn, not so easily disturbed.
I take her hand, helping her out, and breathe in her scent--that jasmine body wash she uses and something else that is pure Amelia and makes me think of her, of us in the night, her skin against mine, soft moans spilling from her throat.
My cock hardens. I do my best to ignore it and draw her attention to the small house sheltered by a hillock but within sight of the beach. It’s nothing like the mansions that used to litter this shore, just two-stories covered in gray shingles with dark green shutters and a wrap-around porch. It’s the kind of house that was common in these parts for a century and more.
“Is this where your mother’s family lived?” she asks as we climb the few steps to the front door.
“This was their land but it’s not the original house.”
“What happened to that? The storm in ’29?”
“No, it was actually one of the few structures around here that survived.” Keeping in mind what I want this day to be about, I add, “When my mother left my father, he got control of the property and had the house razed to the ground.”
Amelia’s eyes go dark, resembling nothing so much as the deep, fast running currents that sweep along the coast after a big blow. “To hurt her?” she asks.
I nod. The house was one more thing I’d tried to fix. “I had it rebuilt although at her urging, it’s not identical. The outside is the same, the interior’s been updated.”
“Does your mother ever stay here?”
“No, she’s happy that it’s been rebuilt but she wants it to be mine now.”
That surprised me until I realized that she was right to see it as a place that I could come to and connect with the better part of my past. That’s why I’m here. To try to convince myself that I haven’t made a terrible mistake by being with Amelia again. If I have, I’m all too aware of how much she could be harmed but I’d hardly escape unscathed myself. Hurting her would destroy me.
I unlock the front door and stand aside for Amelia to enter. She does so but pauses at once and looks around slowly. I wait, not sure what to expect.
Finally, after what seems like forever, she says, “This is very different from your apartment in the city.”
She’s right. The penthouse is a statement of power. This is a modest home buil
t for solid people who lived quiet lives built on strength and faith. I don’t question why it feels so right to me, it just does.
“My forbearers probably would have been a little surprised by the new layout--” It’s an open plan that sweeps from the front door clear to the back with a glimpse of the beach beyond. “But I like to think they would have been comfortable here.”
She looks around at the white walls and pickled floors, the simple furniture, and the few works of art that I’ve acquired from local painters and sculptors. They are mostly images of the natural world just outside the door. Moving over to the windows at the back, she peers out. The palm of her hand rests lightly against the glass. When she turns her head, she looks excited but tentative.
“Can we go for a walk along the beach?”
My heart twists at the thought that she believes I would deny her anything. “We can do whatever you want but a walk sounds great.”
A minute or so from the house lies a stretch of the Atlantic shore that looks as pristine as it must have to the first humans ever to see it. Small waves lap at golden sand dotted with drift wood and patches of stranded sea weed. The scent of beach roses that line the path from the house fills the diamond-clear air.
On a workday, no one else is in sight. We might as well be the only people in the world. It occurs to me that I’ve run for miles along this beach more times than I can count but I’ve never just strolled along it. With Amelia, there’s no other option. We have to stop every few yards as she makes a new discovery.
“What is this?” she asks, holding up a dark, rectangular object that she’s plucked from the sand. I’ve already noticed that she doesn’t hesitate to touch anything that catches her eye. Hell, she puts most of it right up to her nose and takes a good sniff. If there’s a squeamish bone in her body, I haven’t noticed.
“That’s a mermaid’s purse,” I say with a grin. Her eager embrace of the world I’m showing to her delights me. For the first time in years, I feel a stirring of my own wonder at this place when I was young and innocent, an eon ago.
She gives me a chiding look. “It is not.”
“How do you know? Or are you just going to make some blanket statement about there being no such thing as mermaids?”
She tosses her head and slants me a glance that suggests I’m being deliberately obtuse.
“Don’t be silly. There’s no room in here for a mermaid to keep her shell comb much less her tail moisturizer, water-proof mascara, sunglasses--”
I raise a brow. This is a side of Amelia I haven’t seen before--whimsical, playful, and utterly captivating. “Mermaids need sunglasses?”
“For when they come up to the surface. The light can be very glaring there.”
I nod, considering. “That would explain why we don’t see more of them?”
She gives me a teasing smile. “Exactly. Now, since we’ve established that this cannot be a mermaid’s purse, what is it?”
I look at what she’s holding, something I discovered when I was maybe three years old and have seen so often ever since that the truth is I don’t really see it any more. Until now. Suddenly, I’m seeing it again for the first time, through her eyes.
I step closer to her and cup my hand around hers. Her skin is soft, smooth, and warmed by the sun. I have to fight the urge to bury myself in her.
“It’s the egg pouch of a skate. What’s left after the eggs hatch and the baby fish are born.”
She turns the pouch over in her palm, staring at it. Her focus is intent. I can’t begin to guess what’s going through her mind until she says softly, “Everywhere I look, everything I see, it’s all about life really, in all its astonishing variety. Sometimes it overwhelms me.”
My throat tightens as I think of her struggling to make sense of the world without the benefit of memories or experience. I could have made things easier for her and would have if I hadn’t let my cock do my thinking for me.
Dropping my hand, I take a step back. “You’ve had more to cope with than any person should.”
She looks surprised until she sees that I’m sincere. A flash of anger darts across her face. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I’m incredibly fortunate, not just to be in this world but to be surrounded by every comfort and luxury. I’ve seen for myself what it’s like for other people.”
“What other people?” So far as I know, the only people she’s associated with are others of her class or close to it, like the damn Russian. Unless she’s talking about servants.
“Scavengers,” she says. “I’ve seen them.”
“How the hell?” Belatedly, I remember what Edward told me, something about Amelia coming to the defense of a young man being beaten by the MPS.
But that isn’t what she means, as I discover a moment later.
“Children. I saw them in the park. They came up out of a tunnel. They were dirty and ragged, and so hungry.” Her voice breaks.
I curse under my breath. The presence of adult scavengers is bad enough but that there are children among them makes the whole situation all the more screwed up and reprehensible. Every time the matter of what to do about the so-called scavs comes up, I’ve signaled loud and clear that Slade Enterprises won’t tolerate an attack on civilians. I’ve done so again in the aftermath of the idiotic attempt to blame them for the Crystal Palace disaster. But I’m not kidding myself. I can only hold the line for so long. Something has to change, and sooner rather than later. The problem is how to make that happen without turning the streets red with blood.
“They shouldn’t have been there,” I say. “If they’d been caught--”
“What if they had been, Ian? What would have been done to them?”
The truth is that I’m not sure. The law calls for the children of scavengers to be put into foster care. But there are rumors of under-aged workers trapped in occupations considered too dangerous to risk expensive robots. Even worse are the stories of children trafficked into the sex trade. I have my people looking into all that. If we can pin it down as anything other than rumor, I won’t hesitate to act.
Rather than reveal even a hint of this to Amelia, I punt. “What were you doing in the park by yourself?” She wasn’t actually alone; my security guys were on her but they’d been ordered to keep a discrete distance and I can understand that would be hard in the park. Still, I plan on having a word with them.
“I was walking home, the way people do through the park.” Grudgingly, she adds, “Sergei was concerned about the number of police on the streets. He thought something bad might be coming and, as it turns out, he was right.”
Good old Sergei. Except he isn’t old. He’s a young guy in peak condition who shares Amelia’s passion for dance and who apparently also cares about her safety. I could thank him but I’m more in the mood to go a few rounds, see if all that physical strength and agility counts for anything besides prancing around in tights.
“I don’t understand how anyone can tolerate the way the scavengers are treated,” she says. The glare in her eyes makes it clear that by ‘anyone’ she means me.
This isn’t what I had in mind when we came out on the beach but I’m not going to run away from it either. If I’m serious about wanting Amelia to know me better, I’ve got to be square with her even if she doesn’t like what I have to say.
“I don’t have to approve of something to recognize that changing it is difficult. The scavengers are a symptom of the larger problem of who controls resources in our society. Until that’s addressed, the best way to help them is privately.”
“You mean through charity?” The curl of her lip makes it clear what she thinks of that.
“Among other things. Let’s just say there’s more communication between the scavengers and certain other people in the city than the government needs to know about.”
“You’re in contact with them?” She looks hopeful. I hate to disappoint her but I don’t want her to have any misconceptions about me either.
“Not directly but-
-” Do I want to tell her that Gab’s surveillance of the city’s communication nodes has turned up evidence that Edward is in contact with the scavengers’ leaders? He hasn’t chosen to tell me why and I haven’t pressed him--yet. We’ll clear the air eventually but in the meantime, Gab is running interference to make sure the authorities don’t stumble across whatever it is that he’s doing.
“There are things you’re better off not knowing.” Before she can protest, I add, “Anyone who was at the Crystal Palace last night and survived is liable to be questioned at some point. The clearer and more focused you can be, the better.”
That’s true as far as it goes but beyond it is the fact that anyone with an urge to question Amelia will have to go through me. I’ll make sure that they don’t enjoy the process.
I can tell she isn’t happy with my evasiveness but she lets it go. A wave, rolling in with the advancing tide, creeps high enough up the beach to wash over our toes. Amelia gasps and jumps back a little.
“That’s cold!”
“It won’t be warm enough to swim in until July.” I’d be perfectly happy swimming now but I don’t want her getting any ideas. As much as I’m looking forward to warming up Amelia, I don’t want to have to do it because she’s blue with hypothermia.
“Ready to head back to the house?” I ask softly.
She tucks a strand of wind-blown hair behind her ear and nods.
When we’re within sight of it, I detour to a small shed, open it, and take out a couple of plastic buckets. Offering one to her, I ask, “Want to try something new?”
She doesn’t hesitate. Her trust in me is humbling at the same time I’m perfectly willing to take full advantage of it. “What do you have in mind?”
Anew: Book Two: Hunted Page 13