Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [73]
Guillouet cut Ceres’ engines as they passed over the city, allowing them to sail in silence toward the foothills. Archimedes saw Ollivier’s confusion when he came up to the deck and looked out, and remembered his own disorientation upon his first visit. Almost every painting of Vienna showed the hills close in the background, but in truth, they were still some distance away.
The quietness of the engines was welcome after a full day and night of huffing and vibrations, and the look on Yasmeen’s features even more so. Her expression was pure pleasure as she lifted her face to the wind, her heavy lashes lowered against the morning sun as if she were soaking up the warmth through her skin.
Had she looked half so satisfied last night? Unable to see her face as he’d dried her body, he didn’t know—and he hadn’t seen her expression when she’d wrapped herself around him, either.
She’d been so hot against him, so sleek. He still reeled from the memory of how she’d purred against him, then so easily offered the means of his release without touching him.
He had few inhibitions, but he’d never pictured stroking himself off while a woman washed him like . . . a wife? He didn’t know; he’d never imagined having a wife at all. She’d washed him as if she were completely content to do only that, though he knew she wanted him in the bed. More like a mistress, or a concubine, though Yasmeen fit neither. He didn’t keep her.
Perhaps it was the opposite. Perhaps he was to be the concubine, serving her every need.
A tempting thought.
Almost an hour later, a signal from one of the marines at the bow pushed him out of those imaginings. Amid the first rise, within a stand of tall trees, stood a stone tower—round and solid, and more like the cylindrical Rouen keep than the arches and peaks of the contemporary Viennese buildings. Snow topped a conical roof—parts of it had collapsed, though not badly, as if the roof structure was well-supported beneath. A pass overhead didn’t reveal any gaping holes that would allow Archimedes to rappel directly into the keep. Only narrow arrow slits opened the stone walls.
Archimedes circled the deck as the airship began to turn for another pass, taking a layout of the surrounding area. Trees made the zombies more difficult to spot, but if he and Yasmeen were quiet, it meant any zombie would have more difficulty spotting them, too. Still, in a forest it often seemed as if the creatures sprang from nowhere—many lay motionless and mindless until something caught their attention. Archimedes had been surprised more than once, saved only by his reflexes, leather guards, and luck.
He glanced at Yasmeen and his heart constricted.
God. The mere thought of her hurt down there destroyed him—a fear that stabbed at his chest, just as painful as he could have hoped. This was part of love, to suffer. He’d planned to do it in silence, to experience the beautiful agony of the great romantics.
Faced with it, however, beautiful agony was shit. He’d crow if it meant she was never in pain. Quickly, he made his way back to her side.
“I ought to go alone,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“One person makes less noise. And—”
“I’m coming,” she said.
He reached for the buckles on his arm. “Take my guards, then.”
“They’ll only slow me down.”
Panic caught in his chest. He stepped close, spoke so only she could hear. “Watching Lady Corsair burn was hell. But I think now, it would kill me. And if you were bit by the zombies . . .”
No, he could not even think it. His breathing stopped when she pushed her face close to his, looked into his eyes with an expression that was almost gentle.
“Stop letting yourself fall for me, Archimedes. Anything that makes you worry for someone else’s ass over your own does you no favors, and I like you too well to see you die.”
He couldn’t have stopped now if he tried. “I’d die to protect you.”
“Idiot.”
Why, when he knew she’d have done the same? “Don’t tell me that