He was a dancer, possessing graceful, vicious movement. It was both beautiful and repulsive to watch. It was sexual.
All of a sudden William let loose with a dizzying serious of punches, the last one an uppercut that sent the red man flying backward. The defeated landed with a splat in the mud, not moving. A worried silence drifted over the onlookers. When at last the red man moaned and curled onto his side, William smiled and spat, blood in his teeth. Someone handed him a mug and he swished the drink around in his mouth before swallowing.
As the crowd dispersed, the losers complaining about William’s sobriety and the winners laughing at the losers’ stupidity, William went to the red man and stood over him.
“You even think of Jem again,” he snarled, “and I’ll fucking kill you.”
Jem? What the hell did Jem have to do with this? Who was that guy?
William backed away from the scene. Blood splattered his chest and arms. A welt formed above his eyebrow and his bottom lip swelled. He used his shirt sleeve to dab at the blood running from that cut on his cheek. He barely acknowledged the men who grumbled words of praise or slapped him on the back. Some handed him money, which he accepted without a nod.
A few of the men stumbled back into Cook’s, but most ventured into the narrow streets, their paths crooked with liquor. Some walked right past Sera, but she kept pressed into the shadows and they were too drunk to notice.
William dropped his coins into one boot and tucked the pair of them under his arm. Throwing his shirt over his shoulder, he headed away from the pub, down where warehouses lined the shore and docks made a crooked spine out into the water.
She knew he wouldn’t want her to follow. She knew he’d hate her walking around the Rocks in the dead of night—to tell the truth, she hated it, too. She also wasn’t stupid. She was painfully aware of where and when she was, and how the differences here between men and women were a matter of safety and not just the fact that one was from Mars and the other from Venus.
But this was William. He was hurt and he might need her.
Or maybe she just hated having him too far away. Maybe she just needed him.
Only after she’d trailed him all the way down to the water’s edge, where the ground was soft and the skeletons of the daily harbor life rested for the night, did she realize that none of those thoughts had anything to do with Ramsesh.
William rolled up his pant legs and waded into the shallows. He cupped water and gently washed away the blood and sweat from his chest and face. His body moved methodically, muscles undulating under his reddened skin. He hissed as the salt stung his cuts, but he seemed to welcome the extra pain. Here, alone, he finally let his shoulders sag, the brunt of the fight catching up with him as the adrenaline died.
She moved quietly behind him. “Did you get what you came for?”
He whirled, rising. “Christ, Sera!” His eyes darted over her shoulder, scanning the Rocks. “You shouldn’t be out here alone. What the hell are you thinking?”
“No one saw me. I’m good at hiding.”
“It doesn’t matter. Do you have any idea where you are?”
A shiver made its way down her spine. “I do. I absolutely do.”
His jaw clenched.
“You told me you were looking for information,” she said softly, “but you really came for a fight.”
He advanced on her, kicking water out of his way. The bright moonlight threw shadows that made his injuries look huge and painful. “You saw it?”
“I did. The whole thing.”
“I’m sorry. You weren’t meant to.”
She found his shame genuinely amusing. A man from her time probably would’ve loved to have kicked the shit out of another guy in front of a woman he was trying to impress. She gave him a small smile. “Don’t you know by now? I’m no lady.”
A tiny grin broke through his pain. “You’re many things, yes, but a lady you’re not. And I’m glad for it.”
It eased something between them.
“That man you fought…you knew him?”
His eyes darkened. “Richard Riley. He was on the John Barry with me.”
“And Jem,” she added. His face paled. “I heard you mention Jem. What happened?”
A new anger furrowed William’s brow, but he said nothing.
A realization came to her. “You saw Riley last night in Cook’s. That’s what was bugging you.”
He blinked. “‘Bugging’ me?”
“Yeah. Bugging.” She reached out and poked him a bunch of times on non-injured patches of skin. “Bothering.”
He nodded, then looked down at her hand. “Bugging.”
She realized she’d stopped poking him and her hand was just resting on his damp chest. Despite the desire to slip that hand around his neck, she let it drop.
He looked at her for a long moment before pulling his shirt over his head.
“I saw your face out there,” she said softly. “You fight for pleasure. You love it. Why?”
He rolled his shoulders, still silent. She loved his hair shorter, the way the blond curls stuck out all over the place, untamed. Like him.
God, she missed touching him. It had been less than a minute since she’d removed her hand and it felt like a year.
As he turned his head and met her eyes, the space between them was erased. She slid her arms around his waist just as his strong hands wrapped around her back. She kissed his neck, her mouth open and wet. A shudder coursed through his body and his forehead dropped to her shoulder.
“Why do you like to fight, William?”
He nudged the high collar of her blouse with his nose. When his warm breath caressed her skin, the unfulfilled lust from the night next to the river came blazing back.
“I fight,” he murmured into the tender place below her ear, “because it’s all I know.”
Hands slid down her back and tugged her blouse from her skirt. She didn’t even think about stopping him.
“I fight because when I use my fists, it doesn’t matter that I can’t read or don’t have a trade beyond the sails, or that I’ve had to beg for food.”
Hot fingers skimmed her waist, coming around to her belly. Her lungs refused to expand or contract. His touch was made of a thousand delicious points of flame, and she pressed herself deeper into the fire.
“When I fight, I’m not thinking about how the visions ruined my life.”
Calloused palms slid up to cover her breasts, and she moaned into his neck. Every move, every stroke of his hands was agonizingly slow. Wonderfully tormenting.
“When I fight, I don’t miss being out on the ocean.”
Thumbs played with her nipples, making her buzz. Turning her legs liquid.
“I fight because it’s what I’m good at.”
Tongue in her ear, one of his hands swept down to clutch her ass and pull her against his erection.
“I fight because sometimes I just want another person to feel what I feel.”
Swollen lips trailed up one side of her jaw, then the other.
His mouth against hers. “I fight for the release.”
A strong thigh inserted between hers, he grabbed her hips and rubbed himself against her. She whimpered as a jolt of pleasure rocketed out from the place of friction. If he could make her feel this with clothes on…
“I fight”—now he finally took her mouth and commanded a deep, hard kiss—“because it’s been the only thing in my life I’ve been able to control.”
Something inside her iced over. She jerked back. The regretful look in his eyes told her he knew exactly what had scared her.
“Except for now,” he amended. “I don’t feel that way now that I know what the Spectre is, now that the visions are gone. Now that I know I can control myself again.”
“Can you?” She gestured to his body. “Because I’m not so sure I can, and it scares the hell out of me. More so even than how much I want a man I’ve only just met.”
He tilted his head in a sympathetic
expression.
“Tell me you haven’t wondered whether we’re just game pieces,” she pressed. “Tell me you haven’t doubted your own humanity.”
“I have. Of course. But it doesn’t make me want you any less.”
“But does it make you want me to begin with? Is there any of you feeling that desire?”
He let out a small laugh, his hands coming to his hips. “Yes. I believe you could say that.”
Cute. “That night by the river you said you felt me. Me, William.”
“God, I did.” The little bit of humor drained away and he slid his hands up her arms. “I do now.”
She couldn’t help it. She sighed and it came out long and stuttered. “And I you.”
His fingers tightened but he didn’t bring her closer. “Hardly anything I’ve done in the past eighteen years has been of my own volition. My visions are the reason we’re together. End of story. You know it. I know it. Over the years I learned to go along with what they demanded of me, to accept them like a punch I couldn’t duck. I’d absorb them and then recover. But with you…” His chin dropped and his voice turned thick. “I’m not recovering. I think about you all the bloody time and we haven’t left each other’s sight in days. I don’t care how much of it comes from…Amonteh…because I’m well aware of who I am. And I will be here while you figure it out for yourself.” He touched his forehead to hers.
She curled her fingers around his forearms, noting their tension. “I have no idea what’s going on inside my own skin. Ramsesh wants you. She wants us together. I so much as step away from you, and she yanks me back.”
He listened intently.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she went on, “that if I didn’t feel anything for you myself, if there wasn’t a base attraction there to begin with, wouldn’t I feel revolted by this manipulation? Wouldn’t I want to fight it?”
“Aren’t you fighting it right now?”
“My head is telling me to, but I really, really don’t want to. I’m having the hardest time reconciling that.”
He stared at her heavily from beneath his lashes. “I think I understand.”
“I don’t want what I’m starting to feel for you to come from anywhere but my own heart. I don’t want to touch you with anything but my own body and mind. And I’m not sure that’s the case.”
“It’s okay to be scared. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
“Because of Amonteh?”
“No. Because of you.”
The top of her head tipped forward, coming to rest on his chest. “I need time. Please give me time.”
“I get a go wit’ ’er after you,” slurred another male voice.
William whirled, sweeping Sera behind his body. “Touch her,” he growled to the drunk pissing into the water thirty feet away, “and I’ll fix you like I fixed Riley.”
Squinting into the darkness, it took a moment for the weaving drunk to comprehend the threat. “Ah. So you’re ’im. From tonight.”
William hugged her tighter against his back. “Aye, I’m him. If anyone goes near this woman they answer to me.”
The drunk threw up his hands and stumbled off. William’s protective grip on her loosened.
“No man’s ever fought for me before.”
William looked at her over his shoulder. “I can’t imagine that’s true.” He took her hand and the feel of it was warm and solid and…right. “Come. Let’s go back to Waldgrave’s. Whatever is meant for us, we’re not going to find it here.”
And she couldn’t help but wonder, as they made their way back to their decrepit little room, if he meant Sydney’s harbor or New South Wales or this year.
CHAPTER 18
“Where’s Jem?”
The sound of Sera’s sleepy voice drifted over from the corner in which they’d slept last night, separate but still somehow together. William turned in the chair to see her peeling back the blanket and stretching, her back arching off the cold stone floor, the long shift Francine had given her doing nothing to hide her body’s shape.
The first night she’d huddled underneath her own blanket, her big eyes set on William but her body nowhere near him. But last night, after she’d watched him fight Riley, and they’d touched and confessed things by the water, she’d fallen asleep with her leg flush against his. And when they’d awakened, her elbow was crooked over his arm, her forehead resting on his shoulder.
Amonteh approved, but William loved it more.
“Gone out already,” he said as she rose. “He said he wanted to do something before Waldgrave needed him in the tannery, and it’s early enough I thought it would be all right. I mean”—he had to think for a moment—“okay.”
She smiled, but it was strained. He understood. There was so much to ask about her life, and even more to try to comprehend. Almost too much.
“What are you doing?” She advanced toward the table.
He spread out the paper he’d brought home yesterday and frowned at the letters. “I’m…trying.”
“To what?” She peered over his shoulder. “Oh.”
He tried to push the paper away in frustration because the sounds of the letters and the way they looked just didn’t match up. The harder he tried, the more difficult it seemed. But she pressed the heel of her hand to a corner and held the paper in place.
“Would you like me to read it to you?”
He looked up at her in surprise and awe. She could read? And then he remembered. It was easy to forget sometimes when she was standing in front of him or touching him.
He nodded, humbled. She sat on the other chair, the one he’d hammered back together, and picked up the paper. He nudged the lantern closer and she smiled at him in thanks, then began to read about shipments recently received and news from Mother England.
“Go back,” he interrupted. “Read that line again.”
As she repeated the part about Macquarie’s plans for the abandoned, unfinished Fort Philip up on the bluff west of the Rocks, William rose and went around the table to stand behind her.
“Can you…I mean, will you point to the words as you read them?” He hated the hiccup in his voice, but he liked the way she gazed at him, her brown eyes wonderfully dark and big in the dim room. He liked it even more when she did as he asked.
One hand braced on the table, the other on her chair back, he bent closer, setting his cheek to hers. His eyes followed her finger on the page, and he tried to match up the letters with the sounds on her tongue, but the pull between them was distracting. Disarming. He did not, however, move away.
“Now you try.” She pointed to a four-letter word. Her voice came out stilted and a little breathless.
“That’s an h, isn’t it?” He gently rubbed her with his scruffy chin, and she exhaled.
The door to the hidden room opened, throwing the table into light. They both looked up.
Jem stood there, his face a distorted mask of disappointment, hurt eyes trained on William. In one hand he held a pen and ink, in the other a fresh sheet of paper.
Excellent. New tickets of leave. They’ll buy us some time.
Jem’s eyes narrowed and shifted to Sera, and his expression twisted into a bitter, accusatory glare. “I was going to teach him to read and write.”
William straightened and pushed away from the table. “Calm yourself—”
Jem marched into the room, threw the inkpot onto the table, and spat at Sera, “Do you have to have everything?”
She calmly stood up and raised her palms. “I had no idea that’s what you wanted to do. How was I supposed to know that?”
Excellent question. Jem only glared harder, his breath wheezing in and out of his large nose.
“I’ll leave you to it, if you like. I can go see if Francine needs any help.” As she moved to the door, Jem watched her like a mother bird eyeing a predator who was circling her baby. It put William at great unease.
Once she’d left, Jem’s expression tumbled into shame and embarrassment. William had no idea w
hat to say.
Jem poked the inkpot. “’Twas supposed to be a surprise.”
“And it’s a good one.” William’s instinct was to placate, though he was slightly disturbed by Jem’s outburst. “I would greatly appreciate it if you taught me to read.”
That soothed Jem some, the bunch of his shoulders unwinding. He started to sit, then stopped. “She gets so much of you.”
He remembered Jem’s words to him just before they’d returned to Sydney. I forget sometimes, when I’m with you. I forget what happened to me, what Riley did. You make me feel safe. Perhaps William’s preoccupation with Sera and Amonteh and Ramsesh had stolen Jem’s sense of security.
He could never tell Jem that Riley frequented the Rocks, that he slept in the Hyde Park Barracks not too far away. It would send Jem into a quivering ball, like he’d been that day cowling beneath the steps of the John Barry. It would make Jem cling to William’s apron strings even tighter.
Which also meant he couldn’t tell Jem he’d beaten Riley to a pulp in his honor.
He drew a deep breath, nudged his chin at the paper and ink, and gave Jem what he could. “Shall we begin then?”
Jem grinned.
#
A few hours later, William climbed the steps and knocked on Waldgrave’s door. Francine answered and sent Sera out. She’d tied back her hair again, which showed off the roundness of her face and the tint to her skin that had deepened during their walk from Parramatta.
There was something about seeing her for the first time after an absence, even if that time apart had been short and even if the space between them had only been a ceiling and floor. The way her face changed, sweetening and turning slack with desire all at the same time, made his heart pound.
“I’m here to apologize,” he said.
She exited the Waldgraves’ flat and closed the door behind her. “For what?”
“On behalf of Jem.”
She started to roll her eyes, but didn’t. “Why doesn’t he do it himself?”
“Because I don’t think he understands his own behavior.”
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. When she did speak, he was fairly sure it wasn’t what she’d originally wanted to say. “You have to explain something to me. I mean, I get why he’s attached to you—he’s a young man who’s still quite a boy, emulating someone older—but I don’t understand what he is to you.”
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