Kiss of Steel

Page 2

Despite her prejudice, she found herself peering at him curiously. The only blue bloods she’d known were of the Echelon, those born to the Great Houses and offered infected blood during the blood rites when they were fifteen. Only the extremely well born or influential were allowed the rites, but accidents occurred, of course, when the virus could be spread by the merest scratch or droplet of blood. Blade himself was considered a rogue blue blood, unsanctioned, his very existence an insult. If the Echelon could have killed him, they would have.
She’d never met a rogue before. The only others who survived became Nighthawks, a guild of hunters and thief takers, or if they could claim some minor aristocratic connections or blood, they might be offered a place in the elite Coldrush Guards who stood watch over the Ivory Tower. Neither were the type of people she’d come into contact with when she served on the very edges of the Echelon. She hadn’t been considered well bred enough to attend the Ivory Tower functions, nor was she lowborn enough to come across one of the Nighthawks.
“Good evening…” She paused. What did one call a man who went by only one name? “You sent for me?”
“Warm yourself by the fire,” he said in that atrocious accent.
Honoria took a hesitant step forward. The hulking giant followed her in, shutting the door behind him. But at least he didn’t leave her here alone with the master of the ’Chapel.
She slid a sidelong glance at the man in the chair, concentrating superficially on tucking her gloves away. A step to the right gave her a better view—a chiseled profile with a strong nose and heavy brows. Firelight gleamed on his hair, gilding it, his eyelashes stained almost silver by the light, and she realized he was looking down, stroking something that rested in his lap.
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 ni**les 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 c**k 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?”