The heated tension that had gripped her before changed into something sharper, tighter. No longer pleasant but roiling like sickness inside her.
Steeling her resolve, she said, “I don’t want anyone to die for me, Caius. If they come, just give me to him. I’ll escape again.”
“No,” he said. Not even raising his voice, yet she couldn’t mistake the implacable tone.
It wasn’t his decision, though. “You can’t—”
“No. And if you argue, I’ll tie you to the bed again until this is over with.”
If she argued? “So this is how you intend to be my friend? If I scream, you kiss me. If I say something you disagree with, you tie me to a bed. I can’t imagine what you’ll do if I walk to the quarterdeck without your permission.”
Oh, but the words had barely left her mouth before she did imagine what he could do—and she would not be tied, but her hands roaming over hard muscle and tanned skin. She saw the flash of his grin and was suddenly grateful for the darkness that hid the heat in her cheeks.
But he only said, “I’m a friend who will let you do anything but give yourself up.”
Blast him. Yet Elizabeth wouldn’t have let a friend give herself up, either. With a sigh, she stared into the dark again.
He took her hand and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze before releasing her. “We do have a fair chance of losing them in this storm. We’ll reach the Ivory Market. I know you can hide well enough that he won’t find you. And if you need help…I’ll tell you how to find me.”
Heart full, she nodded. That was exactly as she’d hoped. Exactly as she’d planned, if her father and his hunters didn’t board Kingfisher. Her alternative to anyone dying.
When Caius had warned the crew of the airship’s presence, he’d known the storm was their best chance of evading her father’s pursuit. Caius must have been trying to create the same alternative—because even though he’d planned to kill anyone who tried to take Elizabeth, she’d told him in her cabin that she didn’t want anyone to die.
So he was attempting to offer her the chance to hide. Now she wanted to tell him, Come with me. But Elizabeth didn’t speak the words, still unsure whether she’d begun to trust him just because she wanted to so badly.
And if they did escape her father tonight, she would have days to make certain that she could trust him.
“Well, I hope that we lose them,” she said. “Then the next three days will be like a holiday.”
Though the shadows concealed his eyes, she felt Caius’s gaze on her. “And how would you pass the time?”
“Study, perhaps. Read more of Guerra’s monograph on megalodon predation of whales in the North Sea.” Along with clothes and money, she always carried the naturalist society’s most recent publication in her satchel. “All of the crew believes we’re having a tryst.”
He didn’t reply for a long second. “Does that worry you?”
“No. If there is a real woman named Magdalena Dvorak, I would worry that her reputation is ruined, but mine is not. I might use their assumption as an excuse to be very lazy in bed and rise well past a productive hour.” She gave him a wry glance. “The truth is, I already do that more often than I should.”
Caius abruptly turned his face away from her.
Of course. Her heart constricted. Throat tight, she said, “What do you wish to say? Do you wonder if I’ll complain about the softness of my mattress or the many hours I can sleep?”
His head whipped back around. “No,” he denied sharply. “I was trying not to think of you in bed. Or how I want to be there with you.”
The huffing engine seemed to quiet, muffled by the pounding of her heart. She touched his sleeve. “What else do you want?”
He shook his head.
“You said that the least you could give me was the truth, Caius. So tell me, what else do you want?”
The shadow over his jaw deepened slightly, as if he’d clenched his teeth. “I want to kiss you again.”
She wanted him to kiss her, too. To feel him cup her face in his hands and hold her as everything burned away into the heat of his mouth.
But that wasn’t all he wanted. Roughly, he continued, “I want to taste the skin on the side of your neck. I used to watch you feed the mink at the sanctuary, and when you leaned over the edge of their pond your braid would fall forward over your shoulder against that spot and I would think of it for days, of holding you still while I licked and licked. I want to tear away your dress and worship your breasts with my hands. I want to kiss your nipples and suck until they’re hard against my tongue. You destroyed me two years ago, offering yourself to me. Afterward, I stood at the door of your cabin and listened to you bathe, trying to imagine how you looked and knowing that I only had to turn around to see how beautiful you were. But if I did, you would have seen what imagining you had done to me, and you’d know how I’d lied about not wanting you.”
Breathless, she had to know— “What did I do to you?”
“Elizabeth—”
“Tell me.”
“Bludging hell, Elizabeth!” Voice harsh with frustration, he said, “My prick was hard as stone. Just as it is now, being here with you.”
Her gaze dropped, but in the dark, there was nothing to see except the solid shadow of his body. But it didn’t matter. Elizabeth had yearned for evidence that she could trust him, and his words now were enough.
Caius was here to help her. He would never admit to such things if he was working for her father. And whether the protective parent she’d known or the madman who believed she was his wife, if he’d had any idea that Caius wanted her, her father wouldn’t have let him anywhere near her.
Her heart buoyed by joy, she turned her face away.
He was here to help her, to be her friend. And she knew him. It was so incredible to discover that Caius was the man she’d always dreamed he was.
“God forgive me, Elizabeth. I shouldn’t have said— I wouldn’t have…” Trailing off, he angled his head lower as if trying to see her expression. “Are you smiling?”
Elizabeth lifted her chin. No hiding now. “Yes. I was thinking that if this does become a holiday, I would like to have a tryst. Not as Magdalena Dvorak,” she said, “but as Elizabeth Jannsen.”
It seemed that an eternity passed, but it lasted only a few beats of her racing pulse. When he answered, tension strained his voice. “Would you?”
She nodded.
“With me?”
She nodded again.
And gasped when hard fingers circled her waist and pushed her deeper into the shadows behind the lifeboat, the timber post against her back and the edge of a folded glider pressing into her shoulder. Already difficult to see, now they were completely hidden from the sight of the crew.
His gloved hands rose and caught her face. “Are you certain? Because I would take any opportunity to be with you, Elizabeth, but I don’t want to make a mistake and hurt you again. So don’t play with me about this.”
If not for the hoarseness of his voice, his doubt might have hurt her. But he was terrified of being wrong, Elizabeth realized. Just as she’d been afraid when he’d said he loved her. Because if he didn’t…
It tore her apart to even think of it. She had to trust that he did. But she knew that wasn’t easy.
“I never would play with you, Caius.” She might tease him, but never mislead him. “Not about this.”
“I know.” His thumbs stroked her cheeks. “But it’s so impossible to believe that you want me.”
God, she did. So much. And all so overwhelming, so new. “I’ve barely grasped that you want me.” After years of believing that he hated her. “What you told me—is that all you want to do?”
“It was not even near to all the ways I want to touch you.”
“Then tell me that, too.”
His groan was a low rumble. “Are you trying to torture me?”
“A little,” she admitted. But everything he’d said had tortured her, too.
He didn’t need to see her. She would prove it to him. Sliding her hands over his shoulders, she lifted onto her toes. “Caius.”
“Elizabeth,” he said gruffly. The shadow of his head lowered—then stopped, as if he was waiting.
For her explicit permission?
Need overpowered her ability to speak. Heart pounding, she pushed her fingers into his hair and hauled him down to her lips.
Heat surrounded her. His mouth opened over hers with a demanding stroke of his tongue. His hands dropped to her waist and his arms gathered her close, his groan of pleasure a thrum through her chest and his arousal hard against her stomach. Hunger seared her nerves. She tried to push closer, closer, but Caius was pulling away from her, lifting his head.
Cold air kissed her moist lips. Breath ragged, she looked up. “Caius?”
His body stiffened. Still holding her against his chest, he turned toward the stern of the airship. She looked over his shoulder as a warning sounded from the crew.
Her stomach twisted into a knot. Had her father caught up to them?
Captain Harker began shouting orders, then his voice was lost as the roar of the engine changed—deeper, louder. Not a steady rattling huff but fast and irregular.
Not the sound of one engine, she realized with sudden horror. They were hearing two engines.
And both were at full steam. Her father’s airship had caught up to them but his crew must not have seen them yet, because no one would barrel through a storm like this so close to another airship.
How close? Were they higher or lower? Off to the side and on a parallel heading or coming directly toward them?
Desperately, she searched the snow-filled night. Her arms tightened around Caius’s neck. “Where are they?”
Even as she asked, a shadow moved through the swirling white on the portside tail. Just off to the side. Maybe they would miss each other—
All at once, the shadow’s shape resolved into the jutting prow of an airship, like a spear tossed out of the dark.
Directly at Kingfisher’s propellers.
“Oh, dear God,” she whispered, just Caius’s arm cinched around her and he dove for the deck.
A heartbeat later, her father’s airship rammed into them.
Chapter Four
ELIZABETH’S BACK SLAMMED INTO THE boards, knocking away her breath. A rhythmic thunk thunk thunk thumped heavily through the dark. Beneath her, Kingfisher shuddered in time with each thump—then jolted sharply to port.
Metal shrieked, a piercing scream that drowned out every other sound and resonated in Elizabeth’s teeth and skull, spiking agony through her ears. She couldn’t hear her own scream, only feel Caius above her, shielding her body with his and shoving her along the smooth deck. Around behind the lifeboat, she realized. Using it for cover.
The shriek rose and snapped. The boards trembled and the grinding of gears reverberated through the deck. The rumble of Kingfisher’s engine died.
Oh, thank God. Someone below must have thrown the engine to full stop.
Splintered wood hailed around them, pelting the boat.
Then nothing.
For a breathless second, Elizabeth couldn’t believe it. She lay still, waiting, with Caius’s tense body like steel over hers.
Well. That hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared.
In the sudden quiet, joyful shouts rose around them. Murmuring that he loved her, he loved her, Caius pressed kisses to her forehead and cheeks. Laughing and coughing, she sat up, clinging to him.
A metallic thwipkt! whipped through the air. The deck lurched.
Silence fell for a taut moment—then a high-pitched scream of pain and horror split the dark.
“Get down, Elizabeth!” Caius flattened her to the deck. “Down!”
Thwipkt!
The deck seemed to drop toward the stern. More screams—but the first abruptly cut off. Glass shattered nearby. The pilot’s wheelhouse. All around them, wood splintered and groaned. Another thwipkt! And another. Each followed by a jolt of the deck, as if it were falling out from beneath them.
The cables tethering the balloon to the wooden cruiser were breaking, Elizabeth realized—the tension snapping them like whips.
Terror dug into her heart with feral claws. The crash must have fractured the primary tether anchors at the stern. Now the weight of the cruiser and its massive steam engine were tearing the secondary cables from their anchors in succession, from stern to bow. Like a clamshell being forced open, the ship was ripping away from the balloon.
“Hold on to me!” Caius shouted.
The deck dropped again, a sharp downward slant. Elizabeth cried out as they suddenly slid past the lifeboat—then jerked to a stop.
Caius had caught the timber. But even that wouldn’t save them. She could hear wood cracking all around them. It wouldn’t be long before their support broke free.
Another thwipkt! and she screamed as the deck suddenly seemed to disappear beneath them. But they weren’t dropping to the ground. They dangled high above it, Caius’s arm around her waist and hanging on to the timber with his opposite hand.
A scream rushed past them. Someone falling. Dear God.
Wood creaking, the airship seemed to swing, as if the cruiser was hanging vertically from the balloon by the few cables remaining near the bow. It couldn’t be long before the metal fabric of the balloon ripped. The envelope was strong, designed to carry the weight of the cruiser and withstand the effects of extreme weather. It wasn’t made to do this.
Caius couldn’t hold them forever, either—though she knew he would try. Thank the heavens he didn’t have to.
“The glider!” she cried. “Can you reach it?”
“I can’t reach it without letting you go!”
She tightened her arms around his shoulders. “Then let go of me. I’ll hold on!”
He hesitated.
“Do it, Caius! I’ll hold on!”
The ship groaned, swinging as another cable broke. Elizabeth’s heart stopped for a terrifying moment when Caius’s hold vanished from around her waist and her arms bore her full weight. Frantically, she wrapped her legs around him. Grunting with effort, he hauled them both upward with one hand, blindly reaching for the glider’s hooks with the other.
Another scream as someone else fell. She prayed that others had gotten to the gliders, too.
A ratcheting series of clicks sounded by her ear—he’d opened the glider. Sheer relief made her weight seem like a feather’s. Clinging to him, she tucked her head against his neck.
“Don’t let go.” Urgency hardened his voice. “Whatever happens, Elizabeth, don’t let go.”
Heavy muscle bunched beneath her hands. He seemed to swing—so his feet could push them away from the deck, she realized, jumping out away from the ship instead of just dropping—and then there was nothing around them, and the sharp jolt of their leap and the glider catching the air knocked her legs from around him. Gritting her teeth, she locked her arms tighter.
“Elizabeth!” Desperation filled his shout. Flying the glider required both hands. He couldn’t hold on to her.
“I’m all right!”
Terrified, but alive and hanging on. Her stomach dropped and swooped as they leveled out, her feet dangling and skirts whipping around her legs.
Her eyes had squeezed shut. She made herself open them, looking into the dark beyond his shoulder.
An explosion of orange light burned her eyes. A blast of heated air hit her legs, seemed to toss the glider upward.
“Hold on!”
/> Arms shaking with strain, she did. The glider leveled out again and banked to the left.
Elizabeth dared another look and her heart pulled in two, ripping a denial from her throat.
On the ground, her father’s airship had caught fire, the falling snow forming a glowing halo around the wreckage and lighting the scene. A rolling white plain stretched around the airship, broken here and there by bodies or crates and pieces of the engine. Kingfisher floated above, balloon up-ended, the cruiser dangling beneath. A small two-seater balloon was in the air, flying toward Kingfisher. More emergency gliders circled around the airship. Eleven or twelve. Not enough for everyone who must have been on the two vessels.
She glanced down again. Oh, thank God. There were more people down there, racing across the snow—
Not people. Fear slicked the back of her neck in a cold sweat.
Zombies.
Drawn by the noise and the light, the ravenous creatures were converging on the wreck. She watched in horror as a glider landed on the snow and four of the zombies sped in that direction. A figure burst away from the glider. Not fast enough.
Eyes burning, she looked away, then bit back her scream when Kingfisher’s balloon suddenly split along a seam. The cruiser dropped—a lone glider flying away from the ship as it fell, a long sickening silence that ended with a deafening crash. The stern collapsed on impact, smashing in on itself. The bow snapped backward and slammed upside-down onto the ground. The remains of the heavy balloon flopped down around it.
More zombies turned toward Kingfisher’s wreckage, then Caius banked the glider away from the site and she couldn’t see either of the airships, only the glow of the fire illuminating the falling flakes of snow.
Flying away from the light and the noise and the zombies...but they had to land sometime. Kingfisher’s bow might provide a shelter.
But she couldn’t ask where Caius was going. She needed to be quiet, to avoid attracting the zombies’ notice. And every bit of her concentration and strength centered on her arms, the trembling pain that weakened her hold with every minute that she dangled above the ground. A few more zombies roamed below—all heading toward the wreck while she and Caius flew silently above the creatures’ heads.
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