Forged by Desire (8 page)

“
Perry
,” he ground out as her strong fingers caressed his calves and circled his boots.
How
bloody
eloquent.
All of his charm and wits seemed to have fled. Perhaps south, with the rest of his intellect. He ground his teeth together as she began the return journey.

“Not hidden here,” she murmured, stroking his outer thighs.

“Obviously.” Somehow he bit out the word.

Her hands curled over his arse, sliding over the tight leather and then delving between the backs of his thighs with a touch that rocked him to the core. He made a small sound in his throat, more of an exhale than a word.
Hell
. She knew what she was doing. Turning him inside out. How could a man think? Heat blinded him, darkness shadowed his vision. It should have been a warning, should have told him something, but he didn’t care. All he cared about were those devious hands and where they were going.

“You may be able to steal my bits and pieces, but I love it when I steal your words,” Perry whispered, her breath curling over his ear as she pressed against him. Her arms curled around his body, her lethal touch sliding up the hard planes of his abdomen and over his chest. Thorough as sin, stealing over and under his skin. Every touch echoing through his raging erection as if he could feel the whisper-soft stroke of her fingers there.

Heat raced through him. Someone, somewhere had struck a match and set it to a line of gunpowder. The shock of it, that this was
Perry
, nearly undid him.

He should have stopped her. This was taking things too far. But the part of him that was purely male caught his tongue. Why stop her? Just how far would she go? The words broke on his lips.
Stop. Tell her to stop.
But those hands were still doing wicked things to him, stirring the darkness within him, the hunger…

The alley was thick with silence. Only the sound of their harsh breaths. A silence of their own making, cocooning around them like velvet gloves. Intimate. Dangerous.

“Not here,” she whispered, hands sliding up under his arms. “Not there… Spread your hands against the brick.”

He hesitated and suddenly the long tip of her sword cane slid between his legs, a lingering threat. The way they’d both been taught to act when apprehending criminals.

“Spread them,” Perry insisted, her breath hot against the back of his neck.

Garrett slowly pressed both hands against the brickwork. A hot shiver ran through him. Darkness uncurling like a serpent in his gut, sliding through his veins like poison. This was the last chance to stop her. He could feel it. But everything in him wanted to see where she’d take this.

He’d never felt this way before. Usually he preferred to be in charge, but there was something tempting about the way she took control. A game of command between them. Garrett slowly straightened his arms. Every inch of her pressed against him, hips flush against hips. Perry’s breath caught and he could smell the sweet vanilla oil she sometimes wore.

With her pressed this close, all he could do was tremble as her palms caressed his shoulders. “I always took you for an innocent,” he murmured.

“Of what crime?” The shock of her hand sliding over his hip.

“Are you?” he insisted.

A minute pause in her wicked search. “A lady never reveals her secrets.”

“You never reveal anything.” He wondered if she heard the touch of irritation there.

A soft, wicked laugh, her breath wet against his ear. “If you knew my secrets, Garrett, you wouldn’t be so curious, would you? As soon as a woman’s mysteries are revealed, you’re hying off on the next challenge.”

Garrett glanced over his shoulder, his lips an inch from hers. “You’re talking about other women? Now?”

“What would you like to talk about?” Her finger traced teasing little circles around the waistcoat over his nipple. Slowly tiptoeing down.

Every muscle in his abdomen clenched. If there’d been a thought in his head, it was gone, lost in the feel of her hands.
Hell.
There wasn’t much of him left to search. She couldn’t be an innocent; she knew only too well how a man’s body reacted and how to do the most damage to him. The thought fired his blood.

“What would you like me to reveal?”

Soft, tantalizing words.

And the surge of answering thoughts was a tangle in his head. “Everything.”

Where had that come from? Every choking emotion from the last month rushed over him. The aching, self-imposed loneliness… The fear, the lack of sleep, and the wish, deep down inside, that he had someone to talk to about it. Someone to tell him that it was going to be all right.
Her.

He wanted to know her. To learn her secrets, to discover everything she kept hidden within her. She’d said he liked a mystery. Well, she was the greatest mystery he’d ever come across. Everything he’d thought he knew about her had been smashed by this change between them. He liked it only too much.

And he knew she could feel it in the sudden shudder racking his body, in the way her eyes met his, gray against blue, and then swiftly lowered, sooty black lashes hovering over her cheeks. For a moment, the smile slid off her lips, the laughter dying.
This. Yes, this.
Hovering between them. Unsaid, unspoken, burning in the air every time they were together.

Even as her hands slid lower,
lower
…tangling in his steel-plated waistcoat and the softness of his shirt. Fingertips darting under the edge of his belt. Suddenly it was skin on skin and Garrett realized he’d stopped breathing. No doubt a while ago.

Perry’s hand stilled. A tease. Utterly torturous. But the look in her eyes was terribly serious. She was shutting down before him, as if that single uttered word had been a key twisted in a lock.
Everything.

“No. You’re not going to stop there.” He caught her hand as it withdrew, holding it trapped against the smooth skin above his waistband.

“Garrett.” That was the Perry he knew. Expression melting smoothly off her face, her voice hard and tight.

He’d pushed too far and now she was pushing back, erecting those damned walls she’d never let him past. How he hated those bloody walls.

Garrett turned, her hand tugging at his. He held her by the wrist, forcing her to meet his gaze. Eyes a man could drown in. They weren’t smiling now.

“And just like that, she disappears,” he murmured. He could think now. Breathe. Barely.

A flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “
She?
”

“The woman inside you.”

“You’re speaking in riddles.” Another tug at her hand. This time she got free. “I am the woman I am.”

“Are you? Or is it simply more convenient to pretend to be devoid of any feminine wants and pleasures?”

Perry’s gaze dropped, as if to look elsewhere, but somehow it never made it past his lips. Instantly he stiffened.

“You want me.” His voice was rough. “I’m not a damned fool. Sometimes, when you forget yourself, you let it show. And you can’t blame me for wanting to know more, for wanting—”

“More?” she suggested, taking a step away from him. “Everything?”

His hand dropped to his side.

“I’m not doing this,” she said. “You’re right, sometimes I do forget myself. And you’re a handsome man, Garrett.” Here her cheeks colored and she faltered. “You know that. I know that. Every woman from here to Hampshire knows it—”

“That’s not fair, bringing my past into—”

“But it’s true,” Perry countered. “I shouldn’t have done this. I’m sorry.” Then she turned and stalked up the alley, her shoulders squared.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to do my damned job!” she threw over her shoulder. “Which is not lingering in alleys with my superior or…or discussing inappropriate relations. I intend to go question the people on the streets, those who might have seen or heard something. As we should be doing now!”

Throwing the job in his face. As if she damned well hadn’t been the one to start this mess. Heat burned up his throat. “Superior?” he asked. “As though we haven’t been friends for years?”

He went after her, matching her stride for angry stride. Perry shot him a dark glare, but her cheeks were pale. “You
are
my superior now. And this is highly unprofessional.”

“Also, incredibly convenient.”

Perry stopped. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean”—Garrett leaned close, cupping her cheek with one hand and tracing the edge of her lips—“that you’d rather throw my rank in my face than discuss what happened.”

A long, dangerous silence. “Because nothing did happen, Garrett.”

He threw his hands up in defeat as she hurried away from him. “You stubborn—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he called after her, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Because nothing happened.”

One last dirty look, and then she was gone, vanishing into the pedestrian mass on the street.

“Nothing,” Garrett muttered.

Which was why he felt like she’d punched him hard in the solar plexus, why he felt like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. Or feared he never would again.

“Bloody hell.” He took the coin from a hidden pocket in his sleeve and looked at it, at that haughty falcon’s head embossed on the silver. Nothing there, either. Nothing to say why she’d been so keen to get it back.

With a silent snarl he flipped it in the air and pocketed it again. She damned well wasn’t getting it back, not now.

Not unless she paid the price he wanted.

She was a fool who just couldn’t stop playing with fire.

And now she’d gone and opened Pandora’s box, and clearly Garrett was curious about
this
—whatever this was—too.

But just curious? Perry felt a small thrill at the idea that he desired her, yet she knew it wouldn’t be enough. Garrett liked
women
. And she was never feminine enough for men. No matter how hard she tried to hold herself back and pretend to be just an accomplished young lady, she could never quite manage it.

She’d seen that look of disappointment in too many eyes to expect more here. And once the challenge was gone, Garrett’s interest would fade. Someone else would catch his eye, and then their friendship—the one thing that had held her together all these years—would be destroyed.

That was the one disappointment she didn’t think she could ever stomach.

For the next hour, they worked the streets surrounding the factory. Questioning people. Everyone knew about the murders it seemed, but the facts were skewed. A ghost who’d torn apart three girls. A factory man who’d finally grown weary of his blue blood masters and murdered two of their own. The theories came thick and fast. Steel Jaw, one vagrant whispered. A terror who’d begun stalking the East End months past.

“Ridiculous,” Perry murmured, but this was the second time she’d heard that name.

Hague had been adept with biomechanics, after all. Most of his core work revolved around creating truly functional steel inner organs, unlike the crude chest pumps or iron bellows that sometimes worked as lungs. It would hardly be a stretch of the imagination for him to create a new jaw for himself.

If
he
lived…

Growing far too easy to believe that now. Slowly her gaze lifted, locking on the silent brick chimneys of the draining factory at the end of the street. Like a hulking stone-and-steel behemoth, lying in wait.

Perry couldn’t tell Garrett her theories, not without letting him know how she knew, and then he would want to dredge it all up. The ghost of Octavia Morrow prowled restlessly within her.
You
always
knew
she’d never stay dead. Not entirely
.

If she told anyone, it would be Garrett. But…her fists clenched and unclenched. If she told him, then he would be involved. Or rather, he would
involve
himself. She knew him only too well. Then there’d be a target practically painted on his chest. Perry was never going to let that happen.

And she had no proof. If it was Hague, how had he gotten to the two girls? Why the factory? Connections… She needed to find connections. Not just dwell on the past and the fact that Hague had once cut the heart out of a girl in Moncrieff’s cellar. Once. He’d taken other organs from the other girls. It wasn’t his modus operandi.

He was dead.

Garrett rubbed at his temples, strain showing in the fine lines around his eyes. “I think we’ve gotten all we can. Time to head back. Get some sleep perhaps.”

Perry only half heard what he said. She was still staring at the factory. She needed to find this mysterious Steel Jaw. Find out if he and Hague were one and the same.

The thought made her feel violently ill.

“Of course,” she murmured, wondering just how she was going to manage this.

***

Garrett awoke with a shout.

Sucking in air, he stared at his hands, at the fading image of blood coating them.
A
dream. Hell, just a dream.
He let out a shaky breath and sank his head into his hands with a quiver. Not
just
a dream. They never were; they felt so real. A craving for blood and sex, his cock sinking into Perry’s warm flesh even as blood dripped from the gash in her throat.

“
Fuck
,” he whispered, dragging himself out of the bed on shaky limbs. Yesterday, what had happened in the alley had been a mistake. It only haunted his dreams more, made him crave her more intensely. More than anything, he wanted to be able to pursue what had happened between them, but he didn’t dare.

You
selfish
bastard.
Wanting to seduce her, even now, knowing what was happening to him. He had to stop this…this…whatever it was between them.

By the time he’d recovered well enough to check his blood levels, the faint morning sunlight was beginning to seep through the steel slats that covered the window. His CV levels held at sixty-eight percent. Every day he waited for the brass spectrometer to spit out his reading, wondering if today would be the day they finally hit seventy.

Not today. Garrett splashed himself clean, then dressed swiftly and made his way downstairs, even though few others would be up and about. Night was a blue blood’s haunt, though the job often forced him to keep odd hours.

The moment he entered the dining room, he knew she was there. Those smoky gray eyes met his, dark shadows circling them. Perry looked as well-rested as he did, hunched over a mug of blood-laced tea with her feet tucked up on the chair.

“Did you get any sleep?” she murmured.

“An hour or two. Maybe.” Garrett gave her a nod, tearing his gaze away from her and toward the sideboard. He helped himself to a flagon of blood. The instant he put his lips to it, the world shifted, his vision darkening.

Bloody
hell
. He drained his glass. Then another. Only then did the sharp, gut-clenching ache recede enough for color to come rushing back into the world.

“Where do we start?” Perry asked, pushing the newspaper aside.

Business as usual, then.

Garrett leaned his hip against the sideboard. He didn’t quite trust himself to sit beside her. “I’m waiting for Gibson’s final autopsy reports. Larkin and Hayes should be back this morning, hopefully with some information about our debutantes—their regular movements, who saw them last, that sort of thing.”

It was different from the way he usually managed an investigation, this delegation of tasks rather than running the footwork himself. He didn’t know if he liked the waiting or not. He’d spent half the night trying to compile data into something that resembled a theory and still had nothing. “Anything occur to you last night? You look like you’ve barely slept, either. Something keeping you awake?”

“Bad dreams,” Perry murmured, rubbing at her chest absently.

Here in the guild she often stripped out of her coat, leaving only the billowing black sleeves of her silk undershirt and the hard leather of her armored corset. Leather straps and gleaming silver buckles crisscrossed the corset, hiding a virtual arsenal. Hiding too the faint hint of curves that he knew existed there.

Somehow not being able to see her breasts made him want to strip her naked even more than a gaping display of flesh would have. Perry was a mystery; he wanted to uncover her, wanted to discover every little secret she owned, like an archaeologist unearthing a hidden treasure.

“Anything you wish to discuss?”

One dark brow arched. Of course Perry didn’t want to discuss it; she never discussed anything personal with him. His jaw tightened. He was beginning to realize just how one-sided this relationship was.

Then she sighed, her gaze dropping to the bleached timbers of the table as she stared through it. “The girls… Finding them like that. I just kept seeing them. All night.”

“We all have our moments.” His had been a particularly nasty fire down in Abbott’s Lane. He hadn’t been able to get the stink of the dead prostitutes out of his nose for weeks. “Do you want a sabbatical?”

“Of course not. I’d rather find the bastard who did this.”

Garrett nodded, his gaze dropping to the paper. “Let me guess…it’s the talk of the town?”

“Surprisingly not,” Perry replied, giving the paper a nudge toward him. The tension was leaving her shoulders, as if she thought she was safe now. Talking work, rather than anything personal. “The prince consort’s upcoming exhibition has stolen the front page.”

Garrett crossed to the table and shook the paper out. “You sound almost put out.”

“Frankly, I’m not. Doyle’s already chased three journalists from the door. You’re going to have to give them an interview shortly, or they’ll begin making up all manner of nonsense. And then we’ll have both the front page and a murderer named something ridiculous like the ‘Phantom of Factory Five.’”

His lips thinned. That was one part of the job he wouldn’t relish. “Do you honestly believe the rubbish about ghosts?”

“No. But in my experience, newspapers rarely concern themselves with facts.”

That stole a smile from him. Most people couldn’t tell when she was jesting. Not an inch of her expression or tone ever changed. Only through years of familiarity had he aligned himself with her dry sense of humor.

“Exhibition,” he murmured, scanning the front page and a grainy photograph of a pair of handsomely dressed foreigners stepping down from the rail of what looked like a dirigible. Garrett looked closer. England had sunk its resources into the seas, building steam liners and the enormous iron warships they called Dreadnoughts, but many foreign countries preferred air travel to the sea. From the military cut of the men’s dark uniforms and the heavy fur hats they wore, he suspected they were from one of the more northerly European countries. “I’m surprised we weren’t given the contract for security.”

The prince consort had vowed to stun the nations with a display of fine British technology and all the wonders the Empire could offer at his exhibition. Garrett had loosely followed the news in the papers, but he’d lost track recently. “Opening this weekend,” he murmured. “Exclusive to the Echelon and their invited guests for the first week, then open to the public for a shilling entrance fee after that.”

“What’s caught your attention?” Perry could follow his mind as easily as if she held a map.

One could only wish the opposite was true. In that, she was distinctly female.

“‘The Russian ambassador,’” he read, “‘the Scandinavian Embassy, several Bavarian and Saxon dukes…’ There are a lot of foreigners in the city at the moment.” He frowned, something tickling his mind. “What am I forgetting?”

“With an event like this, there’ll be all manner of welcoming balls and social niceties planned,” Perry added promptly. “Both Miss Fortescue and Miss Keller could have come into contact with our foreign visitors.”

“No. That’s not it.” Garrett closed his eyes, racking his brain. Where the devil had he seen something about foreign nobility? His eyes shot open. “The factory logbook. A week ago. A party of noblemen was escorted through. Some bloody names I couldn’t pronounce without mangling them fiercely.”

“It should be in the evidence locker by now. Scoresby collected it.”

“Excellent.” He folded up the paper and discarded it on the table as Perry uncurled herself from the chair.

The storage facility was located in an adjoining building. The yard between was almost empty at this time of day, with only a stable drone spluttering over the cobbles, its circular brooms sweeping away the debris. The automaton moved with swift efficiency, courtesy of Fitz and his mechanical meddling.

Pushing into the library, Garrett nodded to the warden and strode to the locked clockwork doors that opened into Storage. Dozens of interlocking gears covered the heavy brass door. The only way to open it was to correctly turn two or three gears, so that the whole thing would turn. Turn the wrong one, though, and it would lock tight.

“One would presume the draining factory party was comprised of Russians or the Bavarians or Saxons.” Perry followed him inside. “The Scandinavian verwulfen clans would have little interest in learning how to collect and store blood.”

“I’ll send Hayes and Larkin out to check the docking records at the airfields to see who arrived and when.”

“I thought you liked Sykes for the murders.” She closed the door behind them.

“I do. But I’m going to keep all the possibilities open.”

Storage was a set of rooms with cold iron lockers in rows. A good thing they kept new evidence compiled in the lockers nearest the doors. Tugging out his identity card—a square brass card with ridges and indentations in it—he slid it home into the slot on the nearest locker. Metal teeth crunched through the matching holes in his card, and then the locker opened.

The logbook was heavier than he remembered. Garrett flipped through the pages, with Perry peering over his shoulder, her body nestled close to his. The moment he caught her faint vanilla scent, his body went still.

Sometimes he could forget her or the cursed heat of the craving within him. And then she would do something to draw his attention back to her, even something as innocuous as standing beside him.

He breathed her scent in, tasting the vanilla oil on his tongue. Sweet. Where did she wear it? A touch to her wrists and the side of her throat?

Garrett swallowed hard. He tried to blink away the flashes of dark shadow that threatened to consume him. “Count Mikhail Golorukov, Countess Yekaterina Orlova, Prince Pyotr Demitzkoy, and Duchess Elizabeta Kalovna.”

“They’re definitely Russian,” she murmured in a small voice that drew his attention.

Something about her expression warned him that she’d noticed his withdrawal. Hopefully not the reason for it. “How do you know such a thing? I couldn’t tell a Bavarian designation from a Russian one. I can barely pronounce either.”

A little shrug that could have meant nothing at all. “I read the papers.”

“Well.” He snapped the logbook shut. “At least we have some names to ask questions about—a connection between the Echelon and the factory. I’ll send Larkin to inquire quietly into Golorukov and Demitzkoy.”

“I wouldn’t presume that the killer is a man.”

“Not that I doubt you—or any other woman—could kill someone, but statistically the chances are higher, you must admit.” He started toward the door.

“In normal circumstances I might agree with you. But we’re dealing with the Russian court. Both men and women are allowed to be infected with the craving there, and each is equally as dangerous as the other. They make the Echelon look like a bunch of lambs. Or so I’ve heard.”