Fire & Frost (25 page)

His frown smoothed away, leaving an amused gleam in his eyes. “We’re not in danger yet. A man doesn’t fly as long as I have without learning how to disappear in a snowstorm—and this wily old fox knows a few tricks.”

THEY’D EXTINGUISHED THE lanterns on deck. Bundled tightly in her coat, Elizabeth climbed up the ladder and into the rushing dark. The wind snapped at her scarf and whipped tears from her eyes. She stopped at the edge of the companionway near the middle of the ship, waiting for her vision to adjust.

Engine huffing and rattling,
Kingfisher
hurtled through the night and the falling snow. Somewhere above, a full moon was shining. Only faint light penetrated the thick clouds, but after a few seconds she recognized the shape of the pilot’s wheelhouse and the framework of pipes warming the balloon overhead. Looking for Caius, she searched the deck for upright figures. Supporting timbers stood at intervals from bow to stern. Equipment lashed to the posts gave them irregular outlines, making it difficult to distinguish between the timbers and the aviators.

A shadow emerged from a nearby post. Her heart caught, then resumed on a thick, heavy beat.
Caius.
She couldn’t have mistaken the silhouette of his hat and broad shoulders or the long column of his coat for anyone else’s.

Without a word, he took her gloved hand in his. Pulse pounding, she let him draw her back into the shadows—where a lifeboat tied to the timber blocked the worst of the wind, she realized. From his position, he could watch over both sides of the airship and behind it.

His head bent to hers. Though loud, the engine wasn’t as deafening as at the stern, and he didn’t have to raise his voice as much to speak.

His warm breath caressed her cheek as he said, “Your father will either lose our trail or he won’t, but you don’t have to wait in the cold with us. If you want to return to your cabin to rest, I’ll wake you as soon as we know.”

After it was all over. “If you believe I would ever go below and wait for someone else to resolve my future, Caius, then you don’t know me as well as you think.”

His smile was a faint gleam. “You do often surprise me.”

Good. But she didn’t know what to do with the strange, heated tension rising through her. Feeling slightly breathless, she turned away from Caius and searched the sky behind them.

No sign of any lanterns. “Do you think we’ve lost them?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and when she glanced up, his profile was a sharp series of shadows layered over shadows: impenetrable from the brim of his hat to his eyes, the lighter slash of his cheekbone, dark again over his jaw. “We’ve changed heading and there are no lights to track us by. The storm will conceal the exhaust trail.”

“But?” Elizabeth knew, though. Captain Harker might be a wily fox. But her father had hunters—and hounds. “Can a hound track an airship?”

“I’ve seen Amelia do it before. Though not in a storm like this—and the wind is at our tail now.”

So
Kingfisher
might still have the advantage. “Have you seen their lanterns since we changed course?”

“No.”

That didn’t mean her father wasn’t following them. When
Kingfisher
’s lanterns went out, they might have realized that they’d been spotted and extinguished their own. The only way to be certain was to listen for her father’s engine...but that meant hovering motionless in the dark with
Kingfisher
’s engine at full stop. In that time, her father might close the distance between them, and it wouldn’t matter if the crew of
Kingfisher
could hear his engine then. Her father would be on them before they could fly ahead of him again.

The heated tension that had gripped her before changed into something sharper, tighter. No longer pleasant but roiling like sickness inside her.

Steeling her resolve, she said, “I don’t want anyone to die for me, Caius. If they come, just give me to him. I’ll escape again.”

“No,” he said. Not even raising his voice, yet she couldn’t mistake the implacable tone.

It wasn’t his decision, though. “You can’t—”

“No. And if you argue, I’ll tie you to the bed again until this is over with.”

If she argued?
“So this is how you intend to be my friend? If I scream, you kiss me. If I say something you disagree with, you tie me to a bed. I can’t imagine what you’ll do if I walk to the quarterdeck without your permission.”

Oh, but the words had barely left her mouth before she
did
imagine what he could do—and she would not be tied, but her hands roaming over hard muscle and tanned skin. She saw the flash of his grin and was suddenly grateful for the darkness that hid the heat in her cheeks.

But he only said, “I’m a friend who will let you do anything but give yourself up.”

Blast him. Yet Elizabeth wouldn’t have let a friend give herself up, either. With a sigh, she stared into the dark again.

He took her hand and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze before releasing her. “We
do
have a fair chance of losing them in this storm. We’ll reach the Ivory Market. I know you can hide well enough that he won’t find you. And if you need help…I’ll tell you how to find me.”

Heart full, she nodded. That was exactly as she’d hoped. Exactly as she’d planned, if her father and his hunters didn’t board
Kingfisher
. Her alternative to anyone dying.

When Caius had warned the crew of the airship’s presence, he’d known the storm was their best chance of evading her father’s pursuit. Caius must have been trying to create the same alternative—because even though he’d planned to kill anyone who tried to take Elizabeth, she’d told him in her cabin that she didn’t want anyone to die.

So he was attempting to offer her the chance to hide. Now she wanted to tell him,
Come with me
. But Elizabeth didn’t speak the words, still unsure whether she’d begun to trust him just because she wanted to so badly.

And if they did escape her father tonight, she would have days to make certain that she
could
trust him.

“Well, I hope that we lose them,” she said. “Then the next three days will be like a holiday.”

Though the shadows concealed his eyes, she felt Caius’s gaze on her. “And how would you pass the time?”

“Study, perhaps. Read more of Guerra’s monograph on megalodon predation of whales in the North Sea.” Along with clothes and money, she always carried the naturalist society’s most recent publication in her satchel. “All of the crew believes we’re having a tryst.”

He didn’t reply for a long second. “Does that worry you?”

“No. If there is a real woman named Magdalena Dvorak, I would worry that her reputation is ruined, but
mine
is not. I might use their assumption as an excuse to be very lazy in bed and rise well past a productive hour.” She gave him a wry glance. “The truth is, I already do that more often than I should.”

Caius abruptly turned his face away from her.

Of course.
Her heart constricted. Throat tight, she said, “What do you wish to say? Do you wonder if I’ll complain about the softness of my mattress or the many hours I can sleep?”

His head whipped back around. “No,” he denied sharply. “I was trying not to think of you in bed. Or how I want to be there with you.”

The huffing engine seemed to quiet, muffled by the pounding of her heart. She touched his sleeve. “What else do you want?”

He shook his head.

“You said that the least you could give me was the truth, Caius. So tell me, what else do you want?”

The shadow over his jaw deepened slightly, as if he’d clenched his teeth. “I want to kiss you again.”

She wanted him to kiss her, too. To feel him cup her face in his hands and hold her as everything burned away into the heat of his mouth.

But that wasn’t all he wanted. Roughly, he continued, “I want to taste the skin on the side of your neck. I used to watch you feed the mink at the sanctuary, and when you leaned over the edge of their pond your braid would fall forward over your shoulder against that spot and I would think of it for days, of holding you still while I licked and licked. I want to tear away your dress and worship your breasts with my hands. I want to kiss your nipples and suck until they’re hard against my tongue. You destroyed me two years ago, offering yourself to me. Afterward, I stood at the door of your cabin and listened to you bathe, trying to imagine how you looked and knowing that I only had to turn around to see how beautiful you were. But if I did, you would have seen what imagining you had done to me, and you’d know how I’d lied about not wanting you.”

Breathless, she had to know— “What did I do to you?”

“Elizabeth—”

“Tell me.”

“Bludging hell, Elizabeth!” Voice harsh with frustration, he said, “My prick was hard as stone. Just as it is now, being here with you.”

Her gaze dropped, but in the dark, there was nothing to see except the solid shadow of his body. But it didn’t matter. Elizabeth had yearned for evidence that she could trust him, and his words now were enough.

Caius
was
here to help her. He would never admit to such things if he was working for her father. And whether the protective parent she’d known or the madman who believed she was his wife, if he’d had any idea that Caius wanted her, her father wouldn’t have let him anywhere near her.

Her heart buoyed by joy, she turned her face away.

He was here to help her, to be her friend. And she
knew
him. It was so incredible to discover that Caius was the man she’d always dreamed he was.

“God forgive me, Elizabeth. I shouldn’t have said— I wouldn’t have…” Trailing off, he angled his head lower as if trying to see her expression. “Are you smiling?”

Elizabeth lifted her chin. No hiding now. “Yes. I was thinking that if this does become a holiday, I would like to have a tryst. Not as Magdalena Dvorak,” she said, “but as Elizabeth Jannsen.”

It seemed that an eternity passed, but it lasted only a few beats of her racing pulse. When he answered, tension strained his voice. “Would you?”

She nodded.

“With
me
?”

She nodded again.

And gasped when hard fingers circled her waist and pushed her deeper into the shadows behind the lifeboat, the timber post against her back and the edge of a folded glider pressing into her shoulder. Already difficult to see, now they were completely hidden from the sight of the crew.

His gloved hands rose and caught her face. “Are you certain? Because I would take
any
opportunity to be with you, Elizabeth, but I don’t want to make a mistake and hurt you again. So don’t play with me about this.”

If not for the hoarseness of his voice, his doubt might have hurt her. But he was terrified of being wrong, Elizabeth realized. Just as she’d been afraid when he’d said he loved her. Because if he didn’t…

It tore her apart to even think of it. She had to trust that he did. But she knew that wasn’t easy.

“I never would play with you, Caius.” She might tease him, but never mislead him. “Not about this.”

“I know.” His thumbs stroked her cheeks. “But it’s so impossible to believe that you want me.”

God, she did. So much. And all so overwhelming, so new. “I’ve barely grasped that
you
want
me
.” After years of believing that he hated her. “What you told me—is that all you want to do?”

“It was not even near to all the ways I want to touch you.”

“Then tell me that, too.”

His groan was a low rumble. “Are you trying to torture me?”

“A little,” she admitted. But everything he’d said had tortured her, too.

“Then I would part your legs and taste you until you’re wet and begging for me to make you come. I’d cover your body with mine and drive as deep as I could again and again, watching your face because you don’t hide anything, and I’d know how you felt when I was inside you.” His voice deepened, so low and rough she could barely hear him over the engine. “I wish I could see you now. If I could, it would be easier to believe you want me as much as I want you.”

He didn’t need to see her. She would prove it to him. Sliding her hands over his shoulders, she lifted onto her toes. “Caius.”

“Elizabeth,” he said gruffly. The shadow of his head lowered—then stopped, as if he was waiting.

For her explicit permission?

Need overpowered her ability to speak. Heart pounding, she pushed her fingers into his hair and hauled him down to her lips.

Heat surrounded her. His mouth opened over hers with a demanding stroke of his tongue. His hands dropped to her waist and his arms gathered her close, his groan of pleasure a thrum through her chest and his arousal hard against her stomach. Hunger seared her nerves. She tried to push closer, closer, but Caius was pulling away from her, lifting his head.

Cold air kissed her moist lips. Breath ragged, she looked up. “Caius?”

His body stiffened. Still holding her against his chest, he turned toward the stern of the airship. She looked over his shoulder as a warning sounded from the crew.