Steamed (15 page)

Before she could say anything more, I pulled her into an embrace that allowed her to feel every inch of me, including the parts that were presently trying to burst out of my pants, and nibbled her lower lip until she parted her mouth with a sigh. “Very well, but just a quick—”

I groaned with the taste and feel of her mouth, the heat of it firing desire that already burned deep in my guts. She was like a bonfire of passion, a sweet, endlessly sweet pool of desire, and I dipped into it again and again, savoring every blessed moment. I pulled her hips closer to me, and she rewarded me with a wiggle that almost had me coming on the spot. But when she moaned into my mouth, her fingers digging into my butt, trying to pull me closer as her tongue danced around mine, I knew that something profound was happening. This wasn’t just a sexual itch that badly needed scratching. This was something more, and I didn’t know if there was any way I could stop it from happening.

“Captain, I—crikey! Unhand her, you murderous thuggee!”

I was rudely jerked backward out of Octavia’s embrace, my body crying a lament over that fact. “You have the worst timing of anyone I’ve ever known, and that includes my sister,” I told Al the first officer as he glowered at me. His face was almost as red as his hair.

“It’s all right, Mr. Christian,” Octavia said, clearing her throat a couple of times. She was almost as red as he was, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You have nothing for which to chastise Mr. Fletcher.”

“I don’t?” He looked from her to me, enlightenment dawning. I didn’t think it was possible, but he flushed even harder than she did. “Oh. I . . . oh. I’ll just . . . yes.”

He slipped out without stammering anything more. Octavia sighed. “He thinks we’re lovers.”

I gave her my most insouciant grin. “Nothing wrong with that idea.”

“On the contrary, I can think of a number of things. And no, I will not detail them now,” she added quickly, forestalling the request I was about to make. She returned to the table bearing the machinery, and picked up her wrench. “If you will excuse me, Mr. Fletcher, I have work to do.”

“This isn’t over, you know,” I told her, opening the door.

She sighed again. “I know.”

 

I
spent the next two days avoiding the man whose very presence upset everything in my life, including my peace of mind.

Twice Jack caught me hurrying past him in the gangway, intent on some business or other. The first time he let me go with nothing but a laugh, but the second was much more disconcerting.

“You’re not still avoiding me, are you?” he asked two days after he had kissed me in the navigation room.

“What an absurd question. As if I would avoid anyone,” I said, adroitly sidestepping the question.

“I’m sorry if you think it’s absurd, but I don’t play games with people,” he said, the amusement in his eyes fading. “At least not those sort. I believe in calling a spade a spade, and I’ve had the feeling the last day that you’re deliberately keeping yourself unavailable. I had hoped we could get to know each other a little better.”

“Is that a euphemism for those acts you engaged in on Monday?”

He made a little shrugging gesture, his mismatched eyes twinkling with enjoyment. “I wouldn’t have any objection at all to kissing you again, if that’s what you’re asking. Otherwise, no, it wasn’t a euphemism. I’m quite honest in my desire to get to know you better.”

“It’s been my experience that most men who say that simply do so in order to seduce women to their beds.”

“I am not most men,” he pointed out.

Oh, how I knew that. No other man had filled my mind so completely with thoughts of the most intimate nature, not to mention all the usual desires, needs, and wants that accompanied such a fascination. I glanced down the gangway toward the direction I had just come, wanting to escape, knowing if I didn’t keep my distance from him, I’d end up with a bigger situation on my hands than I already had. “I am the captain, Mr. Fletcher. You might be unfamiliar with airship travel, but surely even you must realize that I have duties and obligations that do not include the entertainment of unexpected passengers. I have tasked Mr. Dooley with seeing to the comforts of your sister and you; I am sorry if he has not been able to achieve the level of service you are used to—”

“Stop,” Jack said, putting his hand on my arm as I was in the process of sidling past him. I froze, feeling his hand as if it were a brand on my flesh. “I am not complaining. Neither of us are—Hallie says you have excellent taste in literature, and she’s enjoying reading the books you gave her. And I’m perfectly happy following Mowen around and learning the ins and outs of steam boilers, although he’s probably getting sick and tired of my questions. It’s not the fact that you’re busy and have a job to do that bothers me.”

“I am delighted to hear that,” I said, trying to edge past him again. All that did was bring me into close proximity to him, however. He took my other arm in his hand, turning me gently until I faced him.

“You’re avoiding me, Octavia. And I have a bad feeling I said something to offend you.”

I stared at the cross tie sitting so jauntily in the center of his two snowy collar tips. I knew his face would reflect nothing but earnestness, but I didn’t want to see it. One look at those eyes, and I would be lost. It was far better that he think me a coward, a woman who didn’t care how rude she was so long as she did her job. There would be no complications, no potential trouble, that way.

“Octavia?”

His voice was low and intimate, caressing me, but I hardened my heart against it. “I am wanted in the propeller room, Mr. Fletcher. If you will allow me to pass, I would be grateful.”

His hands dropped away from my arms. I felt lower than a beetle as I edged around him. I made it past him, taking a deep breath as I started on my way to the rear of the airship, and congratulating myself on standing firm when my heart screamed its protest of such actions.

“I’m sorry for whatever it is I’ve done,” Jack said from behind me. Unbidden, my feet stopped.

The pain in his voice pierced through to my soul. I turned back to face him, wanting to explain everything, wanting to tell him about Etienne, about Alan and William, about my goals and my plans and my dreams. And more than anything, I wanted to kiss him again. But I couldn’t do any of those things. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” I said with regret for all that had been, and all that couldn’t be. “If things were different—but they aren’t. Tomorrow we will land in Rome. You and your sister will be free to pursue your return to wherever it is that you came from.”

“Assuming we can,” he said, making a wry face.

“I’m afraid I have little advice to offer you there,” I said primly.

“I know. I’ll find a way, I’m sure. But what about you?”

“Me?”

“What will you do?”

My gaze dropped. “I will do my duty, Mr. Fletcher. It’s what I have been raised to do.”

“That sounds like a very cold and unhappy future,” he said, then gave me a little bow, turned on his heel, and strode off in the opposite direction.

The following day we stopped at Parcetti, a small village about an hour outside Rome. In an attempt to spare the crew of any charges of complicity, I ordered them to their quarters, assisting Mr. Mowen myself as we lowered the airship to the uneven ground of a rocky hillside. I watched the engines while he wrestled two crates out of the forward hold, depositing them without any ceremony. We regained our standard flying altitude, then continued on to Rome, having lost less than an hour from our schedule.

“
J
ack.”

“Hush. You know what Matthew said—we are to stay quiet until he or Octavia knocks on the wall to let us know the coast is clear.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Hallie whispered after a moment of silence. “And I’ll go crazy if I have to just stand here being quiet. It’s like being walled up alive.”

I grinned despite the fact that she couldn’t see it, carefully sliding my hand along the wooden wall to find her arm. I gave her fingers a little squeeze. Judging by the way she clutched my hand, I guessed she was a lot more nervous than she let on. “Afraid?”

“No. Yes. Just a little.” Her voice was thin as if she was close to panic. I gave her fingers another squeeze.

“Hang in there, Hal. Octavia said the inspectors are usually pretty quick, and hardly ever glance into the engineer’s rooms.”

“There’s only a thin sheet of wood between us and them,” she whispered back. “What if they discover the bookcase has a false back? What if they trigger the mechanism that opens it like a door? What if they go around behind us and find us?”

“Octavia assured me that no one has ever given the bookcase a second glance, and there’s a big boiler on the other side of us, so there’s no way anyone could shift it to find us.” The throb of the boiler, which had made the wall vibrate, had slowly died down as we landed, eventually falling silent.

“One of the crew could tell someone,” she persisted. “I talked to Beatrice Ho quite a bit yesterday—she said the bounty given for spies turned over would be enough for her to retire on.”

“That’s why Octavia set up that little scene with the two crates that were dropped off when we slipped in here—if one of the crew was going to turn us in, they’d find nothing but a couple of crates filled with barrels of salt beef.”

“The engineer knows we’re here. He could rat us out.”

That was a valid concern. “You remember that first night when we woke up to find ourselves here?”

She shuddered. “How could I forget?”

“Octavia told me that this ship was taken from a smuggler, and although all of the other smuggling spaces had been renovated, this one had escaped detection. She suggested then that we’d have to hide here when we landed, but that Matt would have to know. That’s why I spent the last few days palling around with him. He might have thought I was trying to learn about the steam engine systems, but the truth was that I wanted to have a chance to assess what sort of man he was. He doesn’t strike me at all like the type of man who’d take blood money.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in a few days’ acquaintance,” she said, stiffening at the sound of a metal clang.

“Shhh. Someone’s coming. Just don’t panic, and for God’s sake, don’t make a noise. We’ll get through this all right.”

She was silent, although her fingers gripped mine with an intensity that was painful. The wooden backing to the bookcase might not have been thick—it had to swing outward in order to allow access to the narrow closetlike storage space into which we were currently packed like a pair of human sardines—but it did a great job of muffling sound. I strained my ears to pick up a clue as to what was going on out there, but all I heard was the rumble of male voices. A few minutes later and they were gone.

“See?” I whispered, letting go of her hand. “Nothing to worry abo—”

An explosion rocked the floor.

Hearing the intake of her breath, I slapped a hand over Hallie’s mouth before she could scream. “Quiet!” I ordered, listening for any clue to what was going on.

“We’re going to die!” she yelled, jerking down my hand. “They found us! Oh, God, I knew this would happen! We’re going to die on a strange, alien world, and no one from back home will know what happened to us!”

“This isn’t an alien world—,” I started to say, but stopped when the wall in front of us suddenly gave way.

“Hurry,” Octavia said as she yanked open the false back to the bookcase. “We must get you off the ship immediately.”

“What happened?” I asked, grabbing Hallie’s arm and following her. “Did they find us?”

“No. The inspectors were leaving the ship when—duck!”

I dived with her behind one of the boilers, pulling a squawking Hallie with me, my hand over her mouth as we froze.