Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [85]
Mouth firmly set, Archimedes shook his head. “And hearing all that only makes me more glad that you killed him.”
“Then why didn’t you? And how is it that an educated son of a fanatical mercenary became a weapons smuggler with the Horde rebellion?”
“Why not kill him? I thought I’d eventually prove him wrong. And as the war heated up, he was home less often, and left us there. I don’t doubt that if he’d gone back for good while Geraldine—Zenobia—was still living there, I would have.” He swung his legs over the side of the bunk, dropped to the floor. “As to the rest, I was just trying to get away from my father as much as possible. That meant supporting whoever he didn’t.”
“The Liberé?”
“Yes.”
Going down on his heels, he dragged their trunk from under the bed—intending to start on their packs as they talked, she realized. Not yet. When he stood and reached into his watch pocket for the key, she hooked her foot behind his knee and pushed against his chest. Unbalanced, he sat down hard on the trunk’s lid and almost tipped over backward, stopping when he braced his hands against the bunk behind him. She straddled his hips, smiling, looking down at his face as his expression moved from surprised to amused . . . and then, with a subtle shift, gained a wicked edge.
“I think you like this position, Mrs. Fox.”
She rasped her claw across the rough stubble beneath his jaw, marveling at how easily he lifted his chin, exposing his throat. He wasn’t stupid, so that had to be trust.
“With you between my legs, at my mercy?” She squeezed him with her thighs. “Yes, I like this position very much. So do you, I think.”
His cock was already rigid beneath her. She rocked forward, loving the way his eyes closed, his teeth clenched. He shifted his feet, widened his legs. Yasmeen’s breath caught as she settled more firmly against him.
“I like it,” he said. “Very much. Now hold still.”
“I don’t take orders well.”
“For this, you will.” He sat up. At her back, his hands slipped beneath her shirt. His strong fingers began slow circles up the length of her spine.
“Oh, yes.” Yasmeen’s eyelids seemed suddenly heavy, weighed down by the pleasure sliding across her skin with each circular stroke. She all but melted against his chest, slipping her arms around his back to hold herself against him, and let him do as he willed. “But tell me about the smuggling.”
“There’s little to tell. Bilson was a friend from university. We both supported the Liberé, and he knew someone who needed men to bring weapons in from Horde territory. So we did.”
But that wasn’t all, Yasmeen wagered. “And it was dangerous.”
“You have me down, don’t you?” His mouth curved into a wry smile. “Yes. Almost all of the meet-ups with suppliers were at the Hapsburg Wall, or at the edges of the empire. The first was on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. I saw my first megalodon, my first zombies, spent the whole journey with my heart pounding, certain I would die. And the moment we were done, I couldn’t wait to return.”
She laid her cheek onto his shoulder. “According to the stories, you were good at it.”
“I was.”
“Until you lost your cargo.” The smooth motion of his hands faltered slightly, and made her wonder—“Did you lose it? Did you sell it to someone else? What did you do with