Clockwork Heart: Clockwork Love, Book 1 (19 page)

That was, he cried out until a man from the crowd came forward, freed his cock and plunged it into Conny’s mouth.

Johann knew a flash of jealousy, an urge to pull his beloved back, but the beautiful drink smothered this, let him simply laugh and fuck harder into Cornelius’s body as the strange man fucked his other end. It felt wicked and thrilling and perfectly right. He’d never watched anyone else fuck Conny’s mouth, and it was erotic to see his lover speared in both his holes. When the man fucking Conny’s mouth came, Conny choked as he tried to swallow.

That was pretty,
Johann thought, and pushed deeper into Conny.

They were surrounded now, by men and women, though mostly men. Nearly all the men had their cocks out, pushing each other aside to get to Conny’s mouth, the women fondling themselves or leaning back as other men and women touched them intimately. The scene was chaotic, rousing Johann’s protective instincts even through the absinthe. He withdrew from Conny and settled his lover onto his lap, trying to decide what he wanted them to do next. Whether or not they should leave and find a quiet room.

Mateus appeared.

The crowd parted for him, every man yielding at the approach of their host. Mateus’s gaze was fixed on Johann and Conny, his eyes dark with lust and want. The look made Johann ache. The man was so handsome, so powerful. Pretty like Conny, but different. The absinthe pushed aside his worries that he shouldn’t think that about a man other than Conny, made him yearn to try this new flavor of man.

Then the man himself smiled at the two of them and held out his hand.

“
Venez avec moi
.”

Johann rose, bringing Conny with him as he followed their host through the crush. He remembered, belatedly, that Conny had left his clothes on the couch, but when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw a servant bearing all their discarded clothing.

How thoughtful.

Mateus led them into a smaller parlor, though it was not empty. A collection of men and women decorated the sofas and chairs, and in a few instances, tables. On one of them a woman lay sprawled, her breasts free and naked, skirt about her waist and her legs spread as two other ladies attended her. It was Olivia and Molly, Johann realized. Molly stroked the girl’s face and nipples while Olivia’s head bobbed against the woman’s cunt. It looked wicked and delicious, and for a moment, Johann wanted to be between the woman’s legs too.

A long couch with no sides, only a small roll at one end, stood empty in the center of the room, and it was to here Mateus led them. He smiled as he petted first Conny’s face, then Johann’s.

“You are precious,” he said in his rough French. His hand lingered on Johann’s neck, his thumb massaging Johann’s collarbone. Then he pushed Johann’s shoulder gently, then more firmly, until Johann had to yield and fall to his knees. He watched as Mateus freed his cock, which was longer and thinner than Conny’s. He breathed in the musky, sweaty scent of the strange man, marveling at how similar and yet different this organ was.

He shivered as Mateus traced the outline of Johann’s lips with the tip of his cock, and then, shutting his eyes, Johann opened his mouth and took the merchant inside.

Conny had fucked into Johann’s mouth, but with Mateus it was rougher, a fact Johann found thrilling. Mateus used him, and Johann let him, losing himself in the sensation of having his throat fucked. He opened his eyes when he heard Conny whimper, felt him stiffen in their bond—Mateus had lifted Conny’s right foot onto the couch and was thrusting into his hole with his fingers as above Mateus thrust his tongue just as roughly into Conny’s mouth.

This Johann wasn’t certain he liked, but he could hardly object with his mouth full of cock. When Mateus freed him, tugging Johann to his feet, he tried to say something—but then he was the one being kissed.

He had so many feelings at once. He knew he didn’t truly want this, that the merchant wasn’t the one he wanted to kiss, and yet the sensation was so decadent and perfect with the rest of the evening. When Mateus drew Conny into the kiss too, Johann stopped feeling conflicted and gave in to the sensation. Familiar, submissive Conny, different, confident Mateus. Two tongues in his mouth at once, then one, then none as Mateus kissed Conny alone. Then he came back to Johann, running his tongue along Johann’s cheek as he made his way to whisper in Johann’s ear in perfect German.

“Lie on the couch. I will show you how we can both fuck him at once.”

Johann wanted to tell Mateus he already knew how to do this, that he’d done it with a stranger in the other room, though with his fingers, not his cock. He realized his clockwork fingers were still bent together, and he wondered if he should ask Conny to put them back to rights.

Then Mateus undid his trousers, encouraged them off his legs and eased Johann onto the sofa.

It was thrilling to watch Mateus arrange Conny on top of him. Their hands were still bound, and Johann brought their other hands together as well. He smiled as Conny absently fixed his fingers, as if he couldn’t help tinkering, even in this moment.

Then Mateus took hold of Johann’s cock and pushed Conny down so the organ went roughly into his hole.

For a few minutes this was all that happened: Mateus directed their fucking, urging Conny up and down, stroking Johann’s chest and tracing his open, gasping lips. When he turned Johann’s head and aimed his cock, Johann opened for him, moaning as he became overloaded with the duel sensations of having Conny ride him while Mateus fucked him. Mateus tugged on his hair, held him still while he fucked deeper, choking Johann, but still Johann yielded, loving this feeling of surrender.

He ached when Mateus withdrew, but he watched with interest as the merchant moved around the couch, climbing behind Conny. All around them in the room were the sounds and smells of sex, slapping of flesh and moans and the sharp, rich scent of musk and arousal. Part of Johann wanted to look around and see the decadence, but he couldn’t bear to turn away from his lover and the wicked man behind him.

He saw Mateus’s hand disappear, felt the brush of those fingers at his balls, against the base of his cock as Conny rode it.

Then he felt first one finger, then two work their way inside Conny beside Johann’s cock.

Conny’s eyes shut, rolling back in his head as he collapsed backward against Mateus. Johann groaned, transfixed by the sensation of Conny’s heat and Mateus’s cool, insistent fingers alongside his cock in that dark sheath. Conny made sounds Johann had never heard—desperate, terrified, eager sounds. When Mateus forced him into a kiss, he sobbed into it, his whole body shaking—until Mateus spread his fingers. Conny stiffened, almost screamed, but Mateus swallowed the sound. And pinched Conny’s nipple with his other hand.

Johann took it all in, mesmerized. Nothing floated as it had in the drawing room, but he watched Mateus and Conny as if in a dream. Mateus spoke in Portuguese, a language neither of them knew, and it sounded delicious. Conny wept, tears streaming down his face, but he couldn’t stop touching Mateus. Until the merchant pushed Conny forward, arranging him on top of Johann. The two of them stared, drugged and delirious at one another as behind them, Mateus held Conny open enough to push his cock inside along Johann’s.

Conny’s cry rose in pitch until it almost became a song, and then he shut his eyes and babbled in rapid-fire French as Mateus directed the two cocks in and out of his body. Johann caught some of the words and realized Conny was begging—for more, for them never to stop.

Johann didn’t want it to stop either. He felt so good, so wicked, so safe. Conny came undone above him, his body quivering. The hole Johann fucked with Mateus expanded to accommodate the two of them.

“
Je t’aime.
” Conny collapsed onto Johann, his body thrust forward by Mateus’s thrusts as he fumbled for Johann’s mouth. “I love you, my beloved Johann. You are my everything. You give so much to me. You understand me.” He groaned, pushing back into the fucking even as he stroked Johann’s face. “You are perfect. I want to be with you always. Your lover, forever.”

Johann kissed him clumsily. “I love you too. I love you like this, Conny. Undone and open. Do you like this? Two of us inside you?”

Eyes still unfocused, Conny kept pushing forward. “It’s only you inside me, darling. You told this man he could fuck me. It’s you doing this to me. It will only be you forever, my love. You could give me to twenty men, twenty thousand, and I would know it was your cock inside me. Your command.” He shut his eyes, lost for a moment as Mateus urged his legs wider and tipped him to fuck deeper. Glazed, nearly drooling, he spoke again, slurring as he stared down at Johann. “I could never rule you with a clockwork heart, darling. I could never rule you with anything. I am yours, utterly, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Johann’s chest filled with love, with pride, with quiet happiness. He had no words to express this, so he kissed Conny instead.

They kept kissing as Mateus withdrew from Conny’s body and removed Johann’s cock as well. They kissed as Mateus lay them side by side, drawing the three of their cocks together and rubbing them against one another until they had to quit kissing and throw back their heads as they came.

Mateus smiled over them when it was finished, nuzzling their still-bound wrists with his nose. “You are delightful. You will play with me again someday. In my villa in Portugal. I will fuck you both as we gaze out at the beautiful sea.”

Conny made no reply, his eyes shut, face pressed to Johann’s neck as he caught his breath. He smiled too, looking content and almost serene.

Johann felt that way too.
He loves me. And I love him more than anything in this world. Enough that even after all of this, we are only closer, not further apart.

“Yes,” Johann replied at last, stroking Conny’s disheveled hair with his clockwork hand. “I believe we will do this, someday.”

* * * * *

Johann didn’t remember finding a bed, yet he was in one with Conny when the shouting began.

He sat up, blinking and confused, surprised to see he was alone with Conny in a small but elegant bedroom full of fine antique furnishings and thick draperies on the windows. Hearing raised voices in the hallway, his soldier instincts kicked in, and he rose, seeking their clothing.

“Conny, wake.” He tossed his lover’s trousers onto the bed as he stepped into his own. “Something is wrong. You must get dressed.”

Cornelius stirred to life, groaning and clutching his head. Johann’s skull ached too, his brains feeling loose and sloshy. But he pushed past this, convinced something was wrong and that they must leave at once.

“You must get dressed.” He helped Conny, urging first one leg and then the other into place. When the shouting drew closer, accompanied by several pairs of heavy boots, Johann’s skin prickled as adrenaline pushed all his drunkenness aside. “Come. We must leave this place in haste.”

“Who is here?” Cornelius yawned, frowning as he fastened his clothing. A loud crash and more voices from the floor below made him quickly alert, and now he looked to Johann with his eyes full of fear. “Do you think they’re looking for the two of us?” He gasped and covered his mouth. “Oh, Johann, what if they know you have the heart?”

“We can escape through the window.” Johann pulled back the curtain carefully and peered out with his body shielded by the wall. “There is a roof below us to another part of the house, and we can make our way to the ground and out through the garden.”

He had the two of them on the small balcony, ready to leap over the edge, when the door burst open. Men in dark clothes bearing guns and short swords filled the bedroom, all of them descending on Johann and Conny.

“Hurry!” Johann tried to send Conny over the edge, but he was too late.

Johann attempted to reclaim Cornelius, but the intruders beat him back, then broke his hand—his flesh hand. Stomped on it with their boots. The bones crunched as Johann screamed, pain flooding him. Cornelius cried out too, and Johann reached this time with his clockwork arm. The soldiers stepped on this too, mangling the metal and sending confused, alarmed signals from the sensors to his brain.

They have come for me. They have come to kill me and take the heart.

Johann would not go quietly. He let them break what they would, because he had nothing to lose but his life. He swore in German, swiping at them with his ruined arms, tasting blood in his mouth as they punched him. Even when he lay on the floor in a wrecked heap, he fought, struggling to get away even though his body was too broken to move.

I will resist them.
He heard Conny crying out to him, and he told himself he would not let his lover down
. I won’t let them have the heart. I will find a way to escape them. I will come back to you, Cornelius Stevens. I swear on my love for you.

The men converged, and Johann waited to be lifted, carted off to the belly of an airship, his final destination some terrible French dungeon or surgeon’s table. But no one touched him now. They spoke in French too rapid-fire for him to follow. Conny told them
no
over and over again.

The men hadn’t come for the heart. They’d come for Cornelius.

Cursing them in German, Johann pushed past the pain and dragged his bent and broken body forward. “I will not leave you, Conny!”

He had a brief, grisly view of Conny’s pale, terrified face as he struggled with the men bearing him away. Then a boot came down on the side of Johann’s head, and he saw nothing but darkness.

Chapter Fifteen

O
ne moment Cornelius was screaming in an Italian bedroom as he watched his father’s secret police brutalize his lover. The next thing he knew, he lay on a lumpy, dirty cot in a desolate castle tower whose ancient arrow-slit windows revealed he was somewhere in the Alps. One of the archduke’s interrogation keeps, no doubt.

Was Johann here somewhere too?

Was there any hope he was still alive?

Conny’s head throbbed as he stumbled, dizzy with aether hangover, to the door. It was locked, and a quick exploration suggested it was also bolted in a very tinker-unfriendly manner from the outside. He noticed the room was singularly devoid of potential tools, though with a bit of effort he thought he could do quite a lot with the cot. There was a bottle of sour wine and a hunk of moldy bread, which he ignored for now. The mold was encouraging, though. The few spy lessons he’d absorbed from his mother was
never trust the food
, though usually the poorer the fare, the less likely it was laced with poison or a hallucinogenic designed to encourage confession.

He kept himself busy mentally designing a handheld weapon and launchable deterrents from his bed and bedding, though he refrained from executing any of those plans until he knew what it was he was up against. This knowledge came at dusk, when soldiers escorted him down the long, winding stairs to the main floor of the keep, to a warm, finely appointed dining room where more guards and a burgeoning feast awaited him.

As did his father and Dr. Savoy.

The Grand Archduke, commander of the French-Germanic Army, Francis Cornielle Guillory sat at the head of the twelve-person table, already well into his meal. He drank deeply from a goblet of brandy and saluted Conny rakishly with a loaf of half-eaten bread.

“Ah, here he is at last. My son. Come, child, and share a meal with me and my friend, whom I understand you have already had the pleasure of meeting.”

No apologies for having him abducted, drugged and tossed in the tower, as if that had been a misunderstanding, not crude calculation. “I don’t wish to share a meal with you, Father. Not until you explain why you brought me here and why you did it in such a rude manner.”

Francis wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed it aside before motioning impatiently for the footman to refill his glass. “I brought you here in the manner most suitable to me and that will look the most pleasing to the damned newspapermen. This will allow me to be outraged and furious publicly over the abduction of my son and allow me to demand recompense when it’s revealed you are likely dead.” He winked at Conny. “I won’t forget the favor you did me, making me hunt you down in Italy. I was being lazy, trying to take you in Calais, but this is so much better. Now I can insinuate the Italians helped. It’s likely not enough to get them involved in the war, but it should at least help keep them quieter whenever I stray a bit over their border.”

Conny sat down with a heavy thump on his chair. “That was you? You sent those thugs to kidnap me at The Alison?”

“Naturally. As I sent them to Italy for you. Took far too long to apprehend you, but Savoy’s suggestion we always haunt the house parties, especially the risqué ones, was genius.” Francis smiled and nudged a tureen toward Cornelius. “Do have the soup. It’s quite good.”

It took everything in Conny not to dump the tureen over his father’s head. “Why have you brought me here? What could you possibly want of me, and why would you attempt to get it from me in this manner?”

“I did it in this manner because none of my ministers or the public must know my true plans, not until they see the wisdom of them. And I brought you here because
you
, dear child, will help me end this war. Just as you’ve always wanted.” He speared a piece of beef and shook it at Conny with a cheeky wink. “You’re going to build me a clockwork army, Cornelius. And power it with copies of that traitor Félix’s clockwork heart.”

Though Conny’s heart sank and his soul filled with despair, he refused to let his father see him cry. He would mourn Johann in private. For the rest of his life. “So…you found it, then?”

Francis rolled his eyes. “
Found
. You make it sound as if I discovered it under my bed when chasing a button. No, I damned well scoured the country for it. I was certain he had it with him for a time, but of course I was too slow.” He grinned. “But so was he, alas. We captured it from the gypsy he hired to transport it to one of his fellow conspirators. Lily-livered fool ran off at the first sound of steel.”

The despair roiling inside Conny hesitated, uncertain. “You…found the heart…with a gypsy?”

“I did indeed. Just outside Marseille. Can you imagine if we were any later? It would have been bound for Africa or the damnable Americas. But now it’s mine. You’re going to study it, copy it and install it in my automatons. You can stand beside me as we watch them march across the fields and mountains and bring endless peace to all of Europe. United under one flag at last.”

Savoy’s smile was oily. “We will work together, dear boy.
Closely
together. I believe you’ll enjoy seeing what I can do with some rudimentary electricity on a body. I’ve been able to animate a corpse for almost half an hour. Think what we can do when you make copies of the heart. What I can do when you show me how to build one myself.”

Though Savoy’s suggestions revolted him, Conny was overcome with joy at what their boasts told him. They didn’t have Johann’s heart. This must have be a decoy, what they’d captured. He didn’t yet know if Johann had been captured, but he had a chance. Perhaps he was still alive and safe in Italy.

At least until Savoy’s terrible clockwork soldiers stormed through Naples to take it for France.

Conny folded his hands in his lap and regarded his father calmly. “I will not stand beside you and watch you terrorize Europe, because I will not help you build your metal army. I will not copy the heart. No matter what you threaten or do to me. You can torture me all you like. I will not yield in this.”

“Yes, well, Savoy in fact is quite good at getting you to surrender. But it would be needlessly complicated to achieve this and still keep you hale enough to outfit my metal men to suit my schedule. Which is why I brought along some incentive.”

The sludge of sick terror rolled in Conny’s belly, making him glad he’d declined to eat. Who did they have? Val? Félix? Oh dear God, did they have Johann after all?

Francis leaned back in his chair, patted his belly and grinned. “Goodness, but it has to have been
ages
since you last saw your mother. I’ll have them pull her out of the stocks, clean up the blood from her lashes and let you wave to her from the observation area of the dungeon.”

* *
* * *

When Johann opened his eyes after the attack, it was the aftermath of the Siege of Calais all over again. Except this time, it was Master Félix who hovered over him. Because Conny was gone.

He wanted to rage, to fight off the tubes and pipes and insist they go after Conny’s abductors, to find the traitors who’d given them away, but he could barely stay awake for all the aether, and all his speech was slurred and slightly crazed. Each time he closed his eyes, he dreamed of the raid, trying this time to stop Cornelius from being taken, but each time he failed and woke on the table with Félix peering worryingly at him through his tinker’s goggles.

As he healed and they began to dose him with less aether, Johann realized his clockwork had changed. His left arm had been replaced, and he had a metal, articulated brace over his right flesh wrist. His legs were different also—subtly so, but he noticed. It made him ache, to lose not only Conny but his clockwork too.

Félix hushed him when he tried to ask after his lover. “Not now, child. The others are hunting him down, but right now your duty is to rest. You have a great deal of healing to do.”

Johann wanted to ask more about this, to find out
who
was hunting Conny down and how, and were they coming back for him, but the aether claimed him again before he could organize the query. The next time he opened his eyes, however, Crawley, Olivia and Valentin hovered over him, looking relieved. Before they could begin speaking, though, Johann interrupted them. “Where is Conny?”

Crawley grimaced. “We’re not sure yet, but we’re starting to narrow it down. Félix put us in contact with Elizabeth’s spy network, but we can only use the wireless to the French border, so the best information is delayed.”

Olivia stroked his flesh arm above the cuff. “I’ve got someone on the wireless every hour of every day, looking for news. If anything comes through, we’ll fly out in a heartbeat and bring him home.”

That would be suicide, Johann wanted to tell them, but even thinking of explaining why made him weary. He contented himself to listening to them instead, glad they were there with him.

When the others left, Valentin lingered. He clutched the French-German dictionary in his arms as he approached the bed. “Hello. Are you feeling well?” he asked in butchered, horrible German.

Johann smiled through his weariness and answered in French. “I’m better. Thank you.”

Val nodded and came hesitantly closer. He switched back to French to speak now, but spoke slowly in deference to Johann. “I’m doing my best to help find Conny. We all are. Thank you for trying to save him.”

Johann averted his gaze. “There were too many soldiers. I couldn’t be strong enough. Even with the heart.”

“Félix says without the heart, you would be dead.” Val sat on the edge of Johann’s bed. “They brought you back in pieces. It was horrifying, but also revealing. I didn’t understand how much you loved him until I saw it. The archduke’s men wouldn’t have wasted time torturing you if you weren’t fighting them. But you fought them with everything you had in you, didn’t you?”

Johann nodded woodenly. “It wasn’t enough.”

“Yes, it was. But now you don’t have to fight them all yourself. We’ll help you.
I
will help you.” He flipped through the dictionary on his lap. “I wanted to ask you something. I’ve been studying this so I could speak with you more easily. But I don’t understand all these marks. These lines above words or sometimes letters. Did you and Conny make these? Are they notes that can help me learn, if I know the code?”

Johann peered at the book, frowning. Yes, he remembered those marks from his own lessons. He’d assumed they were notes from whomever the book had initially belonged to. But this time when he looked at them, he assumed nothing. He remembered where the book had come from. What Cornelius’s mother had done to the note she’d sent to warn him away.

“Have you shown this to Félix?” he asked at last.

Val shook his head. “No. Do you think I should? Why?”

“Because I think it might be a code.”

Val’s eyes widened, and he took the book back, clutching it hopefully. “A code that might help Conny?”

Johann hoped so.

Val left him then, and after another drift on aether, Molly appeared. She didn’t weep, but her brown eyes shone, and she stroked Johann’s face tenderly. Johann fumbled to take her hand, a gesture difficult with his new metal wrist.

“Molly.” His voice was a rasp, rough with sleep and pain. “Molly, I’m afraid I won’t get him back.”

“We will, darling. I promise we will.” She kissed his hand and held tight to the metal of his arm. “Félix and Olivia are poring over that book Val had. Heng and Crawley are bribing everyone they can find, trying to find a trail. Mateus is helping too—he feels sick the abduction happened in his house and wants to prove he had no part in it.”

“I want to help too.”

Molly smoothed his hair from his face. “Right now you do that by resting, love. Rest and get strong. Your tinker needs his soldier hale and hearty.”

Yes, he did need to be strong. Stronger than he’d been. Stronger than the other soldiers. He’d tell Félix he wanted armor, enough to bash in doors and take down walls. He would find Conny again if he had to smash everything in France.

But first he had to rest just a little longer.

Just a little bit longer.

* * * * *

T
he first two weeks of Cornelius’s imprisonment were a nightmare.

Nothing happened to
him
, outside of enduring Savoy’s innuendo as they worked together
.
No, he was installed in what under other circumstances would have been the workshop of his dreams. He had every tool, every material he could dream of, workspace enough for an army of tinkers. Assistants who would lift and carry and work in whatever way he demanded. He had food and drink, even absinthe to his heart’s content. His bed was as soft as an angel’s wings, and his bedchamber adjoined his workstation.
He
was fine. But every night he did not produce the heart, he was escorted to the dungeons so he could watch his mother be tortured because he hadn’t finished his work.

He pleaded with his workers, with his jailers, with anyone he thought might be able to bend the archduke’s ear. On the third night when his mother’s whipping sent him into hysterics, he held an improvised knife to his own throat until they brought his father to him.

“What is it, boy?” The archduke looked impatient, unimpressed with Conny’s dramatics. “Why was I dragged out for this performance?”

Cornelius would not waste his audience. “I can’t make it work. It’s not the real heart. It’s nothing more than a decoy. I’ve seen the real thing, worked on it, and this isn’t it. Stop torturing her, because
I cannot make this heart what you want it to be.
”

Francis clucked his tongue. “Dear boy. I’ve seen you build miracles out of bits of scrap simply because you were bored. You can make this heart work in a fortnight, no matter what it might be now. Because if you don’t, I’ll start taking your mother’s fingers. And I’ll make you pull the lever that lowers the knife.”

With that he winked, saluted and sauntered back down the hallway.

That night was the worst. Conny sobbed into his pillow so hard he eventually had to stop and throw up. When even this didn’t lessen his hysteria, he drank barely diluted absinthe and took cocaine directly through his nose until the world’s edges didn’t simply soften, they evaporated. He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling as he watched it shift and transform. He drifted in and out of sleep, got up to piss.