His expression darkened. “Who the hell said anything about cosseting?”
“It’s—”
“A ship can’t run on its own,” he said, his voice rough. “Not even the biggest ironclad or most heavily armed airship. Without a crew, it just drifts. Maybe . . .” He seemed to struggle to find the words. “Maybe people are the same way. Maybe they need each other to keep from foundering. And maybe . . . maybe there’s no shame in that. In . . . needing.”
She opened her mouth to speak. But no words came. Because he kissed her.
The first touch of his lips to hers verged on tentative. But the kiss turned fevered, hungry, in an instant. He brought up his hands and cradled her head, his mouth against hers, both demanding and giving. He tasted of rainwater and burning need. She answered his need with her own, a floodgate of desire opening.
Her hands clutched at his shoulders. Beneath her palms, his skin was hot, so hot—tight and satiny where he was flesh, sleek and burnished where he was metal. He resonated with energy barely restrained. She’d seen the feats of strength and speed he was capable of, but nothing truly revealed his power until now. Her belly clutched in excitement, and her pulse roared in her ears louder than the storm outside.
She dug her nails into his flesh. He growled in approval, deepening the kiss. One of his hands wrapped around her waist. He pulled her hard against him, her breasts pressed to his unyielding chest. Sensation shot through her, the tight tips of her nipples sensitive, radiating pleasure from the rub of the blanket’s coarse fabric and the feel of him, solid, male.
God, it had been so long since she felt anything like this. Even before the attack at Liverpool, she’d not had this kind of want. No one she needed this badly, or who wanted her with the same demand.
She jolted as his hand dipped beneath the blanket and cupped her breast, then moaned as he stroked her. His large palm easily held the fullness of her breast, caressing her, teasing her. His teeth scraped along her neck, then he kissed her throat as if to soothe the blaze he’d roused in her—she wasn’t soothed. Only inflamed.
He bent his head, and when his tongue found her nipple, circling it, she gasped. The brush of his beard, the feel of his lips and tongue—it was too much, and hardly enough.
Her hands went exploring. Feeling the solidity and contours of his torso, and lower, along the ridges of his abdomen.
Before her hand could travel lower, something skittered across her whole leg.
Hazed with pleasure, she glanced down. And yelped.
A rat perched on her leg. Sitting back on his hindquarters, its little pink hands held in front of its gray body, black eyes staring up at her inquisitively.
She wasn’t afraid of rodents, exactly. But she hadn’t anticipated hungrily kissing Fletcher and then finding a rat on her leg.
Fletcher pulled back. He sighed as he looked at the rodent. But instead of flinging the rat across the room, he scooped it up in his hand and held it up to eye level.
“Bloody bad timing, old man,” he growled.
The rat’s whiskers twitched, and it crept forward and nuzzled Fletcher’s nose.
“That’s your pet?” Kali pulled the blanket close around her.
“Saved him from an owl. Then made the mistake of feeding him. Now he won’t leave.” He glanced at Kali. “I suppose he’s curious about visitors.”
“I . . .” She didn’t know what to say. Her body still hummed from his kiss, his touch, and now they were talking about his pet rat. The story would’ve charmed her, if she hadn’t been so muzzy-headed with thwarted desire.
“Shove off, Four.” He set the rat onto the floor, and it scurried away, but not before casting another inquisitive glance at her.
“Four?”
“Short for four-pound shot. The smallest cannon shot.”
“Of course.” She took several deep breaths, steadying herself. “But I’m not finished with you. Not at all.” But when she reached for him again, he captured her hands with one of his.
“Kali, listen—”
She tugged her hands away and crossed her arms over her chest. “No good conversations ever begin with Listen.” If only she could get up and storm off.
“Too bad,” he countered. His face looked carved of granite. “You’ll hear what I have to say.”
She didn’t know if she wanted to, but she couldn’t very well get up and leave.
“You have a man?” he demanded. “Some lover or sweetheart you left behind in Liverpool?
“No,” she said quietly.
He looked stricken. “Hell—he wasn’t killed, was he?”
“I didn’t have anyone when the battle happened. A lover, a few months before, but he wasn’t . . . we couldn’t make it work. And he survived the attack. Moved back to his hometown of Barnsley and married his childhood sweetheart.” She couldn’t blame Wallace for hurrying into the shelter of normal life, but she did wonder if he’d found the safety he had sought.
But none of that mattered now. Not after that kiss with Fletcher.
“I want you, Kali. So damn much.” Hot as a furnace, his gaze raked her. She could see in his eyes what he wanted to do to her. To do with her.
Every part of her body seemed to burst into flame. She could picture all the things he wanted, picture them as vividly as images projected from a cinemagraph.
“I want you, too,” she rasped. “But I sense a reason we’re not going to have each other.”
There was a long, agonizing pause. Then, “I care about you, Kali.” His voice was rough, as though he had to pull the words from deep within himself and present them to her, bloody and beating.
He stood from the bed and strode to the windows. His trousers hung low on his hips, and the fabric barely hid the shape of his cock beneath. Pure sexual frustration threatened to strangle her.
His back to her, he braced his hands on the windowsill. Firelight carved his back into an intricate topography of dark and gold, including the scars from his lashing.
“Damn it,” he growled without looking at her, “I want to take you to bed, so damned much. But I won’t lose this . . . this friendship we have.”
“We won’t—”
But he didn’t, or wouldn’t, hear her. “Becoming a captain lost me friends. I couldn’t have them. I was in command. Can’t command men to fight and possibly go to their deaths if you’re also their friend.”
She’d never thought of it in those terms. The island itself was remote, but he’d been isolated before, even surrounded by a hundred crewmen.
“And with . . . Emily . . .” He seemed to not want to speak her name. “We liked each other. Maybe loved each other.”
Gods and goddesses, Kali did not want to hear this.
“But I don’t think she ever really knew me,” he continued. “Not the way you do. Don’t take that from me,” he said, low and rough. He spun to face her. “Don’t take this”—he gestured to the space between them—“away from me.”
“I . . . won’t.” This had to be the oddest conversation she’d ever had, with a man begging her not to have sex with him. Odd, and wonderful. She desired him, so much that she ached with it—but a person to care about and who cared for her, who respected her and she respected in kind . . . that was far more rare than desire. It had taken careful, slow navigation to get them where they were now. And she wouldn’t throw any of that away.
“Look,” she added. She stuck her hands under her thighs, pinning them to the mattress. “I can’t even pinch your bottom.”
He laughed, a rueful sound. But grateful, too. Finally, he said, “I’d say I’m sorry about your cottage, but it makes me happy to have you here.”
“I’m glad to be here,” she said, and meant it. But she’d never sleep easy aboard the Persephone. Not with him so close, and so impossible.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
Fletcher refused to look at her arse. In theory, anyway. But if Kali was going to wear trousers, trousers that he’d supplied, staring a
t her ripe peach of a behind was unavoidable. If a mermaid swam past a seagoing vessel, or a winged horse soared alongside an airship, he’d look. Yet he wouldn’t feel like such a damned hypocrite.
No, not a hypocrite. He’d been plain last night. He hungered for her. They’d struck a delicate balance, though. One he wouldn’t spoil.
But—God. Did she have to have such a pretty arse? Round and pert, perfect to grip. He’d grab hold of her bottom and pull her to him, and they’d . . .
“Find anything more?”
Her voice snapped him out of his trance. Tearing his gaze away from her as she picked over the remains of her cottage, he kicked aside a heap of rubble, revealing the gleam of brass and wood.
“Tools,” he said.
Face alight, she hurried through the wreckage. She bent over to examine his findings, and this time, he made himself stare at the pile of her salvaged belongings. The rain had stopped early that morning, leaving everything slick and muddy. Some of her projects—things he couldn’t begin to understand their function—were beyond recovering, smashed to tiny bits by the fallen roof. Her cooking apparatus now resembled a large crumpled rubbish bin. A few items had managed to survive in decent condition, and she’d greeted them like lost friends.
Her food supplies had been thoroughly spoiled by the rain. And her trunk of clothing had been partially crushed by the roof. The contents had survived, thank God. That morning, he’d given her a midshipman’s uniform, and though she’d expressed some worry about her prosthetic leg and the trousers, her movement hadn’t been compromised at all.
His moral fortitude, however, was being battered against an anvil.
“My rasps and pliers!” She sounded like a child visiting their first Mechanical Twelfth fair. He heard the clink of metal as she placed the tools in her satchel. “That’s nearly everything. Keep an eye out for my hammer.”
“We already found three hammers.” He’d discovered them and the majority of her tools beneath her destroyed workbench.
“Not my repoussé hammer,” she said. “Ah, wait—here it is!” Grinning, she held up a hammer with a wide, flat face and a rounded end.
“Ruddy fantastic,” he muttered.
Placing the hammer into her satchel, she stood. “What’s got your rigging in a knot?” She smirked at her own nautical reference.
“Didn’t sleep well.” As a Man O’ War, he didn’t need much sleep to function, only a few hours, but even that had been tough to come by last night. He’d given his quarters—and bed—to Kali, and slept in what had been the first mate’s cabin. The mattress lay on the floor because the bed frame had been destroyed in the crash, but that hadn’t been the source of his restlessness.
No, he was looking at the reason why sleep was going to be scarce, and she was surprisingly cheerful considering that her family’s cottage had been practically flattened. He would’ve thought that facing more wrecked buildings would trigger memories of Liverpool. But at least here, she’d been able to recoup some of her losses, and that seemed to be the difference.
Her cheerfulness dimmed slightly. “I couldn’t sleep much, either.”
Damn, he’d been so fuddled with Kali in trousers and having her aboard the Persephone, he hadn’t noticed the shadows beneath her eyes.
“Are my quarters too cold? Is the bed uncomfortable? There are more mattresses in the ship. I can move them in, and I’ll find something to seal up the windows so no breezes get in. Or was it Four? He likes to sleep on my chest, but if he bothered you—”
She held up a hand. “At ease. Or stand down, or whatever you call it. I had . . . other things on my mind.”
Their gazes locked. Her cheeks darkened, and he realized something—she’d been thinking about him, about their kiss. Just as he had.
“I’ll acclimatize,” she said. “A few days, and it’ll be just like sharing a house with my brother—if I had one.” Then she shook her head. “What a bunch of delusional codswallop. I’ll never think of you like a brother.”
Thank God for that. Because if brothers felt for their sisters anything like what he felt for her, the world would be populated by people with single eyes or extra fingers.
“We’ll work on fixing this place up,” he said instead.
She glanced around critically at the wreckage. One of the walls had caved in, half the roof lay across the field, and the rest of the place was covered in mud and debris. “It seems like a forlorn hope.”
“We’ve got a Man O’ War’s strength and an engineer’s brains,” he insisted. “It’ll come together before you can say . . .” He couldn’t think of a single appropriate engineering term.
“Hydrometer,” she offered. “And I believe I just said it, but my cottage is still a shambles.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I think you were placed on this island to be my personal torment.”
Instead of scowling or taking offense, she only smiled. “Examine your karma.”
“What’s karma?”
“Bringing certain consequences on yourself, good or bad, because of past actions. Could be in this life, or from a previous one, but the result’s the same.”
Fletcher sighed. “I’m doomed.”
They’d brought lengths of rope and planks of wood from the Persephone, and from this Fletcher and Kali fashioned a pallet. Apparently, she had used a special device to carry all her belongings from the ferry to the cottage, but this had been destroyed, including the ether tanks the mechanism used. He hadn’t thought to bring ether canisters from his ship, so they were left with a four-by-four foot pallet loaded down with her surviving possessions, ropes lashing them to the wood.
“If you bring me some ether,” she said, “I can jury-rig an apparatus to help us carry all this across the island.”
“Not necessary.” He grabbed the ropes that held her possessions onto the pallet, and began to drag the whole heavy mass behind him.
“Now you’re just bragging,” she said.
“Tighten your screws, madam. This is the fastest way to get your kit to the Persephone.”
She didn’t look convinced, and he didn’t blame her. It would have been a quick matter for him to run back to the ship and grab some extra ether. But he wasn’t above a bit of flaunting. The key word in Man O’ War was Man. And he was no better than any ordinary man, wanting to show off for a woman.
Moron. He didn’t have anything to gain with this display.
Except that he wanted it.
After a last, resigned look at her ruined cottage, she turned away and together they made their way back across the island to the ship. The pallet did slow him some, and even with her leg, she’d manage to get ahead of him a little, treating—or tormenting—him with the vision of her hips and arse in trousers.
He’d seen many women in trousers. They still weren’t preferred over dresses, but a woman couldn’t be a shipbuilder or navvy or stevedore if her legs kept tangling in skirts. And he’d be a liar if he said he didn’t sometimes look, but he was always careful not to leer or let his gaze dawdle too long. Nobody wanted to be treated like a thing and not a human.
But, damn and curse him again, because he was mesmerized by the sway and curve of Kali’s hips, the length of her legs, and that delectable bum.
You made your bunk. Lie in it.
Yet how could he learn the feel of her skin if he didn’t know himself? Each day with her, the deadness inside him broke apart, bit by bit. But he was still coming to understand what it was to have her as a friend. What it was to be a man again, not a ghost.
Finally, his torment ended when they reached the Persephone and hauled her belongings aboard. She tried to refuse when he ceded his quarters to her, but he wouldn’t be gainsaid. His own possessions had always been minimal, and in less than five minutes, he’d taken up semipermanent residence in the first mate’s cabin. It was smaller, dusty, and littered with broken furniture and papers, but the mattress and blanket were clean. He carried an intact desk into the cabin—someplace for him to
read—and with a lantern, all his needs were met.
He’d avoided the other crewmen’s cabins until now. It felt like . . . an invasion of privacy. Some of the men had taken a few things with them when abandoning ship, but there hadn’t been time for much. So Fletcher never looked at their personal letters and telegrams, their framed photographs, their journals.
Now he was living in First Lieutenant Walters’s quarters. Fletcher had seen Walters safely piloting the jollyboat away from the crashing ship, so he didn’t feel quite like a grave robber.
As Fletcher pushed Walters’s belongings into a corner, he wondered. How was the first lieutenant now? He would’ve been assigned to a new airship. They wouldn’t waste a man of his skill and experience on a seafaring ship. Crewmen and officers trained in aerial warfare were tough to come by. A good man, Walters. Young, and eager to learn, but cool in battle. It wouldn’t surprise Fletcher in the slightest if the first lieutenant was promoted after what happened at Liverpool, with the possibility of becoming a Man O’ War.
But no, Walters had had a fiancée. He’d spoken of starting a family. All impossible after the transformation. Though Walters’s fiancée might be willing to accept his metamorphosis and the loss of having children.
A furious banging pulled him from his thoughts. It was coming from his quarters. He hurried down the passageway, but his cabin was empty.
He found her in his washroom, on her back, a wrench in her hands as she worked on some pipes.
“I can’t believe you’ve gone four months without indoor plumbing,” she said without looking at him.
“Captains don’t learn how to fix their washroom pipes.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the jamb. “There are woods nearby for . . . needs. And I bathe in the stream every day.” Since she’d arrived at the island, he actually bathed twice a day—once before seeing her, and once after.
She eyed him. “You really have been living like an animal, haven’t you?” Shaking her head, she resumed working on the plumbing.
“A healthy, clean animal.”
Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] Page 13