Kiss of Steel

by McMaster, Bec

  A cheroot dangled between the bare fingers of his left hand. The other was gloved and curled over the back of an enormous tomcat that regarded her with an evil expression. She sensed a glint of green watching her and realized that Blade was examining her as carefully as she was him.

  “What’s wrong, luv? Cat got your tongue?” His fingers stroked the cat’s black throat. The tom arched its neck, its yellow eyes shutting with pleasure. A scar slashed across the tom’s face, distorting its features, and the left ear was a ragged mess. The deep rumble of the cat’s purr filled the air.

  Honoria gave a start. “Is that a threat? Or simply an uncouth method of welcoming a person?” Her voice didn’t betray her. Years of schooling kept her tone crisp and bereft of inflection. Almost bored, even.

  Living among the Echelon for ten years had taught her the benefit of managing her emotions. One hint of fear and they would turn their pale eyes on her like sharks smelling blood. This man might rule the rookeries with an iron fist, but she had faced down the prince consort himself, with his colorless, red-rimmed eyes and too-pink lips. Blade was dangerous, but she couldn’t afford to let him see how much he frightened her. That wasn’t how the game was played. And the cursed blue bloods liked their games so very much…

  Honoria took a deep, steadying breath and crossed to the fireplace, holding out her pale hands to warm them. She could feel his gaze between her shoulder blades. It lingered, almost like the sensation of a pair of lips brushing against her neck. Every hair down her spine rose and her nipples tightened painfully.

  The silence stretched out. She let it, knowing he was testing her mettle. The fire crackled in the grate, a wall of warmth against her front. The wet cotton of her dress began to steam.

  He broke first. “It weren’t a threat. If it were”—his voice dropped to a murmur—“you’d know it. You wouldn’t need to ask.”

  Honoria closed her eyes and let the warmth wash over her. This was a waste of time. She should be home, using these last few precious hours to help Lena with the mending she took in for extra coin.

  “What do you want?” She was tired and wet and hungry, and if he was trying to frighten her, then he had best get on with it.

  “I want you to turn and look at me.”

  Honoria half glanced over her shoulder. It was foolishness to give him her back. One last act of defiance. She’d learned how to take such punitive steps and still make her obeisances. It had amused her father’s patron, Lord Vickers. Her small rebellions were the only reason he hadn’t simply taken her. It made him wait, made him drag out the hunt.

  Honoria held the pose just long enough to imply that she turned only of her own accord. Then she met Blade’s gaze again, the warmth curling up her back.

  “And then?” she asked, tipping her chin up.

  He put the cheroot to his lips, his features disappearing in a wreath of smoke. The embers on the end glowed red and then faded, and he breathed out, dispersing the sweet-smelling smoke across the room.

  “You’ve been six months in me turf and not paid a visit,” he said. “That ain’t polite, dove. It ain’t wise for a woman to be without protection. You been lucky so far. People been wonderin’ if you and I ’ad struck a deal. Now they’re wonderin’ if I would care if you went missin’.” He flicked the cheroot over a small tray and the ashes crumbled. “Consider this a polite warnin’ and an offer. You won’t be unmolested for long.”

  The pistol was a heavy, reassuring weight in her skirt pocket. “Then they shall receive a little surprise if they do. Only a fool walks these streets without protection.”

  “That little barker in your pocket and the pig-sticker in your boot?” He laughed, low and husky. “Won’t do you much good when your throat is slit.”

  That little barker was highly modified. Her lips thinned. If he made a move toward her, she would show him just how clever—and distrustful—her father had been. One shot could rip a hole through a man’s chest the size of her head and explode on impact. Not even a blue blood could survive such a shot at close range, and it had been designed for precisely that. Her father had known Lord Vickers would turn on him someday.

  “It’s served me well so far,” she replied.

  “Aye. That knuckler on Vertigo Street and the pair of bludgers in Butcher’s Square,” he said, proving how closely he’d been having her watched. “A child and a pair of idiots. I ain’t impressed.”

  “How about now?” she asked, drawing the pistol smoothly and pointing it at him.

  He smiled.

  There was a blur of movement and something grabbed her from behind. Honoria gasped, the knife a sharp warning against her throat as Blade drew her back against his hard body. Her chin tipped up and she swallowed hard, the edge of the knife hovering directly over her carotid artery. His arm was a steel band about her waist, hugging her close.

  His lips brushed her ear. “Still not impressed,” he whispered.

  The fire spat. Her wide eyes took in the room: the cheroot sitting in the ashtray and still smoking, the abandoned cat giving them a disgruntled look from the floor as it turned and sauntered away, and the long stretch of shadow that showed them locked together in a parody of an embrace.

  “Put it down, luv,” he said. “And don’t ever draw on me again unless you intend to use it.”

  Honoria lowered the pistol. “I was proving a point. I didn’t bother to cock it.”

  “Just as I were provin’ my point,” he replied in that husky whisper. His cool breath stirred the curls at her throat, pebbling her damp skin. “Who do you think won?”

  “I may have been…somewhat precipitous,” she admitted.

  His hand slid along hers, closing over her fingers. “Give it to me.”

  No. Honoria shut her eyes and took a deep breath. She forced her fingers to relax. To let him take the smooth weight of the pistol.

  He thumbed open the barrel and examined the shot inside with a soft grunt. “What the bleedin’ devil are you usin’ for rounds?”

  “Firebolts,” she replied. “My father designed them.” And then she shut her mouth. He didn’t need to know anything about her father. It was safer that way. Vickers still had a price on her head, and who knew what this man would do for that much money?

  Blade snapped the pistol barrel back into place, then tucked it away somewhere on his person. The razor-edged knife against her throat kept her locked in place. The pressure was perfect. She couldn’t move an inch, but it hadn’t broken the skin either.

  Then suddenly it eased. Honoria took a deeper breath, her head spinning with the sudden rush of oxygen into starved lungs. With the knife gone, other impressions started leeching into her. The hard body imprinted against hers, separated only by the thickness of her bedraggled bustle. The press of his belt buckle, tugging at the fabric of her skirts. And the sound of his breathing, quickening just slightly.

  His arm slid around her waist again. “And now you’re disarmed. And at me mercy. Now what do you do, Miz Pryor?”

  A sharp heel to the instep. Her father’s voice echoed in her head. Then a brutal knee to the unmentionables. But that was how to bring a human man down. Not a blue blood. Nothing short of decapitation could bring one of them down. Unless…

  Honoria slid a hand over his, feeling the coolness of his skin. The steel ring she wore on her right forefinger brushed against his knuckle. It resembled a band of thorns, the sharp barbs curling around a delicate steel rosebud. One flick of her finger and the sharp thorn needle contained within the rosebud would pop out, smothered in a particular toxin that could incapacitate a blue blood.

  Ten minutes before it would wear off. Not long, but perhaps long enough to escape. The concentrated toxin was one of many weapons her father had discovered for Vickers. And she had only enough toxin for one use.

  Honoria took a slow breath. Then drew her hand away and bowed her head. It was her own foolish sense of pride that had seen her into this situation. She should never have drawn the pistol.

/>   “I’m sorry.” The words burned on her tongue, but she said them. “I mishandled the situation. I meant only to prove that I was not wholly without defense. You may unhand me, if you will.”

  “And what will you do…” he asked, “if I do not will it?”

  Honoria turned her head. Met his gaze. This close, she could see the intense green depths that flickered with firelight. His pupils darkened, expanding as though to swallow the irises. Her breath caught. Memory flashed of another man holding her, his fist tight in her hair and his cold lips brushing against the vein in her throat. Whispering what he was going to do to her…

  Suddenly the arm about her waist felt like a cage. She pushed at it, heat burning through her cheeks. “Let me go. Please.” His hand tightened and she felt a scream bubbling up in her throat. “Let me go!”

  Blade released her and Honoria staggered forward. Her hands fell on the back of one of the armchairs in the room, her fingers digging into the stuffed embroidery. She felt as though she’d been running up a flight of stairs, her pulse throbbing through the artery of her throat and thundering in her ears. She couldn’t breathe. The damned corset…

  Blade moved in front of her, his feet crossing over like a swordsman carefully circling an opponent. For the first time she got a good look at him.

  His hair was close-cropped and guinea-gold. Some of the panic went out of her at the sight. He was close to the Fade—when the color leeched out of a blue blood just before he displayed symptoms of turning—but not standing on the edge. Still in control of his inner demon, thank goodness.

  Firelight gilded the muscle in his arms, delineating the veins that ran up the inside of his wrist and curled over his bicep. A white shirt opened at the throat, a black scrap of silk knotted and looped twice around his neck. A hint of a tattoo peeked out from the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt.

  And her pistol was tucked behind his belt.

  Honoria eyed it hungrily, shivering a little as she caught her breath. There was no more pretense left in her. She just wanted to be gone.

  “What do you want?” she asked. “I won’t be your blood whore.” She was not that desperate. Yet.

  His hands hovered in the air as though to reassure her. Those penetrating eyes locked on her face. “I can’t offer you protection for nothin’. It don’t work that way, luv.” His eyelids narrowed lazily, his voice dropping to a silky whisper. “And I think we’ve proved that you need protection.”

  “Only from you,” she retorted.

  His lips thinned. “Per’aps…Per’aps I mis’andled the situation too.”

  Honoria stared at him. Was this a trick? All blue bloods lied. She licked her dry lips, racking her brain. “Do you want payment? I could find money…” Somewhere. There was little left to sell. Her clothes, the ones she wore to fool Mr. Macy. They were made of fine wool and printed cottons. Charlie’s clockwork soldiers. Or even her father’s diaries.

  She shied away from that thought. Those diaries had cost her father his life. He’d made her swear to keep them safe. Too many lives depended on it. She couldn’t sell them, not even to protect her innocence.

  The clothing it would have to be. And perhaps her job with it.

  A swell of anger rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. Every time she thought she found her feet, something swept them out from under her. Struggling, always struggling, to keep out of the mire of debt and starvation. If she lost her job, then she would find herself facing this same dilemma, but a month from now.

  She wanted to scream again in frustration. It wasn’t fair. Tears burned in the backs of her eyes. There were only two things she had that were worth anything to him: her virginity and her blood. And she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice either. Not just yet.

  “Find money?” His eyes narrowed. “Where? The Drainers?”

  Honoria shook her head. She’d seen too many people forced by starvation to sell their blood to the Drainers. Every man and woman over the age of eighteen had to donate two pints of blood a year for the blood taxes, but there were those who took advantage of the poor to find a cheap way to find more.

  In the last six months she’d seen a man slowly bleed away his life week by week to feed his family, before he finally died. Honoria had spared what she could of their own food supplies, but within two weeks the man’s wife was dead too and the children vanished. The only ones who made any profit out of the venture were the Drainers.

  “No,” she replied quietly. She would be his blood whore before she went anywhere near the Drainers. They were the lowest of scum. At least Blade would have some interest in keeping her alive. Tradition stated that a thrall—a blood whore—was to be protected and looked after.

  “Then we’re at an impasse.” He sank back down into the armchair and ground out the smoldering cheroot. “I can’t afford to be lenient. And you ain’t prepared to offer me anythin’ o’ worth.”

  She winced at his butchered words. And then her eyes went wide. “I could teach you to speak,” she blurted, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

  His gaze flickered up, his fingers pausing on the cheroot stub. A scowl drew his eyebrows down. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with ’ow I speak, luv.”

  “I never meant…It’s what I do. I correct the sounds of people’s speech and teach them genteel mannerisms. I’m a finishing tutor for young ladies. And the occasional gentleman.”

  He ground the stub down to nothing. She eyed it nervously.

  “And what would I do with fancy talk?” He deliberately placed harsh accent on the words. A sneer curled his lip. “Join the Ech’lon?”

  “Whatever you wished to do with it. It’s the only thing I have that I can give you.”

  His gaze made a slow perusal of her figure.

  “Will give you,” she corrected, a flare of heat burning in her cheeks.

  “Am I to visit your place o’ employment, then?”

  Honoria blanched. “No. No. That would be inconvenient for you and uncomfortable for Mr. Macy.” Not to mention what Mr. Macy would say about her continued employment prospects. She barely suppressed a shudder. An image sprang to mind—of this dangerous ruffian stalking among the fluttering young ladies whom she taught. A wolf set among innocent young chicks, practically licking its lips.

  Blade sat back, making a steeple of his fingers. “Then you will come ’ere. Three nights a week.”

  “Three?”

  “Three,” he confirmed.

  It would leave her exhausted. She barely had the strength to get through the days as it was. And yet she would have this dangerous man’s protection. She could walk through the roughest alleys of the slums without even a pistol on her. Lena wouldn’t have to walk an extra mile each day merely to arrive at the clockmakers safely, and they could leave Charlie alone at the house without worrying about thieves.

  Suddenly what had seemed a hopeless situation became the best stroke of luck she’d had all year.

  “Three nights a week,” she heard herself say. “Two hours a night. I can’t sacrifice any more. Night might be your day, but I’ve work to do when the sun is up. I’ll need some sleep.”

  A hint of satisfaction glinted in his eyes. Honoria stilled again. Then the look was gone and his face remained admirably blank.

  “You do realize what people’ll think,” he said.

  Honoria folded her hands in front of her. She knew precisely what he meant. Visiting him three nights a week would have everyone assuming she’d paid for his protection with her body. It stung. She’d thought six months of poverty had desensitized her to the worst, but there was still a tiny, deeply buried part of her that remembered what it had been like to be respectable. Her voice was soft when she said, “That is the least of my concerns.”

  “Done then.” Blade’s smile curled over his mouth. “My protection, for your lessons.”

  It hit her. She had survived. She had won. Coming here tonight, she didn’t think she’d have left without losing something important to her. Instead she had
gained the power of Blade’s name without losing anything. Teaching him to speak and behave properly would cost her nothing but a few hours’ sleep a week.

  Dizziness washed over her. Relief or hunger, she wasn’t quite sure. She suddenly felt the urge to sit down hard. But she didn’t dare show any sign of weakness in front of this man.

  He might have consented to an agreement that was advantageous for her, but he certainly wasn’t any less dangerous. She’d seen the hunger burning in his eyes. That was all a blue blood was. Sooner or later it showed in all of them, no matter how carefully they hid it.

  She couldn’t let down her guard, not even for a moment.

  “When shall we begin?” she asked, forcing her knees to straighten. If she clutched at the armchair a little too firmly, his gaze never turned toward it. It was locked on her face, as though memorizing her features.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “At ten.”

  Chapter 2

  “Well?”

  Blade stared into the crackling flames, his hand resting against the brick chimney. The slight scent of mechanical oil drifted past, and the whir of the hydraulics on Rip’s arm as he shut the door made a quiet hiss. It almost masked the faint scent of musk and man that accompanied him.

  “She’s mine.” She just didn’t know it yet.

  “I don’t understand why she’s so important?”

  Blade turned, his gaze alighting on his two lieutenants. Rip scowled, crossing his arms over his chest. Most people thought him merely muscle, but he had the kind of cunning that could have ruled a rookery gang. Instead he’d thrown his lot in with Blade. Fewer knives in the back that way.

  Blade’s second lieutenant, Will Carver, crossed toward the fireplace on silent feet. He held his hands out, the firelight gleaming in his amber eyes. He topped Rip by a hand, and his shoulders were nearly twice again as broad.

  Blade leaned against the mantel. “Well? Will?”

  “She smells good. Clean.” Will shrugged. “Ain’t your usual sort.”