Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [72]
He nodded, gaze roaming all over her face. She rinsed his body with handfuls of clean water, wiped him with the towel. After taking off his shirt, she hung it on the hook to dry and climbed into her bunk.
A few moments later, wearing only his drawers again, Archimedes crouched next to her with a cigarillo between his lips. He lit the end and passed it to her. His emerald eyes regarded her, and for the first time, she could not discern his thoughts from his expression.
Between them, they’d smoked almost to the end of the cigarillo before he said, “Was it all practical?”
Yasmeen smiled. “No.”
“You also don’t like to owe.”
“No, I don’t.”
“It wouldn’t have been a debt. I enjoyed touching you, too.”
“As much as touching yourself?”
“No, touching you was . . . different. More pleasurable than orgasm. And even stroking myself, I felt more than I usually . . .” He trailed off, his gaze caressing her face. “How goes your heart? Still of steel?”
Like a strongbox, battered on all sides. She took a final drag, passed the stub back to him. “I have not kissed you yet, Mr. Fox. Is your longing strong enough to initiate it, instead?”
His serious gaze never left hers. “I think my longing will be much, much greater than I thought.”
“You mean to break your heart against mine,” she realized, and understanding slid through her. He’d been terrified of the Horde tower’s dampening effect on his emotions. “You want to feel as much as you can, even if it hurts. You never want to feel anything so shallowly again.”
“Yes.”
So he planned to have her break his heart. “And what will you do if I fall in love with you, instead?”
He grinned. “Then God help us both.”
Chapter Nine
The forest had reclaimed most of Vienna. The old walls marked out a rough perimeter of the city, and ruins were marked by sparser growth, long grasses upon heaps of stone. To the east, the twisting branches of the Danube flowed in a meandering path. When the initial wave of zombies had spread west from the Hapsburg Wall, that river had helped slow the zombies’ progress and saved many of Vienna’s residents . . . for a time.
Vienna had been one of the first cities affected, and the number of zombies had still been relatively few. The river, city wall, and a garrison of soldiers had served as adequate defense, giving the Hapsburgs and their generals opportunity to study the creatures—and, when it became clear that the zombies’ numbers were growing and that the infection spread so easily that one loose zombie could destroy a city, to plan an evacuation. It had been similar to a story repeated across Europe: At the first sign of the zombie mobs, the populations of many great cities had used the rivers to protect them, rushing in a panic to the opposite bank. Once there, they destroyed the bridges and executed or confined anyone discovered with a bite. The water only held the zombies off for a while, however—if only one bite was overlooked, or concealed by someone still hoping to find a cure, the infection spread.
The stories had taught Archimedes well, though. From the airship, he scouted the locations of the nearest water—even if it was nothing more than a big puddle. Aside from the river, however, he wouldn’t find much water in the snow-covered landscape, so he took other precautions.
He’d traded the bright waistcoat and breeches for heavier, darker clothing that wouldn’t shout his presence to the zombies. Leather guards buckled over his neck, his arms and legs—if he went down under a zombie, the guards might save him from a bite long enough to get back up. His shoulder harness carried his grapnel and pneumatic launcher, rope, a hand-winch, a miners’ drip lamp for underground and darkened chambers, extra ammunition, a prybar, and machetes. Though revolvers were holstered at his hips, he preferred blades when fighting zombies: they were quiet and never needed to be reloaded. He kept several strapped to his thighs