Kiss of Steel (38 page)

Blade groaned. “Bloody ’ell, Honor. Don’t tease a man so.”

“But it’s so very exciting.”

His cock grazed her tender flesh. Desire swept through him like a flood of heat. Christ, she made him feel warm all the way through, as though his blood weren’t cold.

“Well, damn me, if you ain’t got a touch o’ the devil yourself,” he muttered.

Another kiss. Against his throat. Her tongue sliding over the hollow of his collarbone. “I’ve been so tired and scared for so long. It’s nice to feel safe.” Her hands slid down his body. “To laugh. To tease you. When I’m with you, I don’t think of anything else. I don’t think I’ve felt this happy since before my father died.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Honoria.” A husky warning. “You’re ’bout three seconds away from bein’ bent over that vanity and pumped.”

She sat up, water streaming off her. Wide, innocent eyes met his and she brushed her hair behind her ears. The action thrust her breasts forward, her hips rocking against his. As he dug his hands into her thighs with a hiss, he saw the wicked little gleam in her eyes.

“So be it,” Blade said, his voice harsh with need.

He dragged her out of the tub. Water poured off them, splashing across the tiles. Honoria’s eyes widened as he started toward the doorway.

“Where are you going?” she asked, clinging to his shoulders.

“The bed,” he replied curtly. “As I shoulda done weeks ago.”

Chapter 24

A knock sounded at the door. Honoria lifted her head off the pillow, but Blade’s hips and legs were thrown over her carelessly and she couldn’t move.

“Wake up,” she whispered, stroking his jaw. The prickle of his stubble tickled her fingers. He gave a rather inelegant snore.

A smile curled over her lips. He was exhausted. A fierce little part of her wanted to tell whoever was at the door to go away and leave him alone for the day, but she didn’t dare. Who knew what news they brought?

Wriggling out from under him, she left him snoring on the bed and slipped into one of his robes before answering the door.

“Esme.” Honoria slipped through the door, shutting it behind her. “Is it Rip? Is he well?”

Esme’s chignon dangled from its pins and her eyes were bloodshot with weariness. “He’s still sleeping. There’s been no change.”

“What is it, then?”

“There’s an Echelon lord here. That man Barrons whom Blade is working with. He’s got a company of metaljackets with him.”

“I won’t let him go out today. He’s exhausted and there’s nobody to watch his back.”

Esme arched a brow. “You don’t know Blade if you think he’s going to stay abed and not do his duty.”

“If he doesn’t know about it, then he can’t do it, can he?”

“And what about the Echelon lord?”

“Let me deal with him,” she replied. “Is there anything that I can wear? My dress…it’s wet.”

A smile flickered over Esme’s lips. “I won’t ask how that happened. Stay here, I’ll fetch you one of mine. It might fit if we pin it in.”

Twenty minutes later Honoria was dressed, her hair pinned into a tight chignon. She descended the stairs toward the front parlor, where Leo was waiting.

The room was full of cobwebs and dust. Leo paced by the fireplace, his hands clasped behind his back. He wore unrelieved black—a leather carapace over his chest with obscenely carved muscles, and a pair of tight, black wool breeches thrust into his knee-high boots. The only sign of adornment was the heavy gold signet ring on his finger.

His eyes lit on her and he stopped in his tracks. “Honoria.”

“Leo.”

“You’re well?”

“I shouldn’t see why you care,” she replied.

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t. Particularly. But it’s considered polite to start a conversation with such trivialities. How are Helena and Frederick?”

She stared at him, her fists clenching. “Charlie,” she insisted. “We call him
Charlie
. And they’re both well.” How she longed to simply tell him, but she didn’t dare. Leo had never looked more like one of the Echelon, and if he betrayed Charlie’s condition to the authorities, both she and Blade would be in trouble. It might be an excuse for the prince consort to send his metaljackets down upon the rookery, and this time he would have the law on his side.

“May I ask whether you are Blade’s emissary, or whether he will be along shortly?”

“He’s asleep,” she replied. “The vampire attacked last night and killed one of his men, injuring another two.”

Leo stilled. “And the vampire?”

“Got away,” she replied.

“Where was it?” he asked. “If we can pinpoint its location or discover what’s drawing it to the rookery, we might be able to set a trap.”

An icy flush ran through her, tingling in her veins. “What do you mean, ‘drawing it to the rookery’? Isn’t that where the tunnels come out?”

“The tunnels run through this half of London,” he replied. “It’s unusual for it to keep coming here.”

She rested her hands along the back of a chair, her fingers tapping. There had been one thing that was common in all of the attacks: her. That time in the street, it had tried to chase after her, practically ignoring Will and Blade, who were both bleeding. And then it had been near her home.

“Honey?” he asked, in the quiet voice he used to use when they were children and had signed a temporary truce.

“Don’t call me that. That was Father’s name for me. Don’t you dare use it.”

“You know something.”

She met his gaze. “Perhaps.”

“Share it with me,” he said. “It might be a way to trap it before anyone else gets hurt.”

Still she hesitated. How much could she trust Leo? Not very much, she concluded. “Why are you hunting it? Why you?”

“The prince consort sent me.” His tone was abruptly curt, and he looked at her hair rather than meeting her eyes.

Honoria’s fingers stilled on the chair. “You’re lying. You never could look me in the eye when you lied.”

His gaze shot to hers then. “And you know me so well?”

“Not at all,” she admitted. “I used to think you were someone I could trust.”

“You hated me as a child,” he said incredulously. “And with good reason.”

“I pitied you.” Her voice softened. “I never hated you.” A rueful twist of the lips. “Perhaps once or twice, when you put those mechanical spiders in my bed or cut off my doll’s head and buried her.”

Silence crackled in the room.

“Pitied me?”

Honoria looked at him. If things had been different, she would have accepted him as her half brother. But both her father and the duke of Caine had destroyed any chance of that.

“Because the duke despised you, and Father…Father was indifferent.” It hurt to admit that anything her father had done was wrong. But she could not deny that he had not done his best by Leo. Memory flashed through her mind of a little boy with angelic blond curls—a little boy who looked a lot like Charlie at that age—watching her with hate in his eyes as she drew back from her father’s hug. The boy had turned and run off, and that night little mechanical spiders were crawling through her sheets.

Only as she matured did she come to understand why she was being so persecuted. The boy who claimed he didn’t care cared far too much.

“I don’t know whether I preferred your dislike of me to your pity.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Pity makes one sound so weak. But you haven’t managed to divert me, alas. You know something about the vampire.”

“I also haven’t been diverted,” she replied. “You lied to me about your reasons for hunting it. You have some personal investment in this, which leads me to believe that you know who it used to be.”

Leo stared at her with considering eyes. “And now you ask me to trust
you
?”

“I wouldn’t betray you,” she replied.

“How refreshing. Forgive me if I can’t quite trust the sentiment.” Cynicism curled across his mouth. “I think, in this circumstance, that you might.”

“Then we’re at a quandary. Your information for mine.”

“People might die, Honoria.” He took a step forward, looming over her. “Don’t you give a damn?”

“They might either way. I don’t know yet.”

A frustrated sound rumbled in his throat, and he grabbed her arm. “Are you always this bloody argumentative?”

“The answer to that would be ‘aye’.” The words were softly spoken and came from behind.

Honoria turned to the voice. “Blade.”

Blade took a step into the room, slowly surveying it. His dark gaze—blackened to that demonic obsidian—swept over Leo and her. She had the feeling that he noted precisely how closely the two of them stood to each other.

“You should be in bed,” she said. She felt guilty, and she had not a damned reason in the world to feel so.

“Sorry to spoil your plans, sweet’eart.”

***

“Plans?” Honoria took a step toward him. “And what, precisely, do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know, exactly.”

Blade pushed the door shut behind him using just his fingertips. His gaze narrowed on the hand Barrons held her with, and the ease of familiarity it showed. She had asked him to trust her, and after last night he’d finally felt as though she’d made some form of commitment to him. There was just one anomaly. Barrons.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she murmured.

He assessed the situation again, taking a slow step forward. Every hair along the back of his neck rose as he caught the scent of Barrons’s bay rum aftershave. The demon in him, the dark, hungry part he could never quite excise, wanted to go for Barrons, blades swinging. But…last night. It had to mean something.

Light streamed into the room, highlighting the pair of them within the golden rectangle of the window’s sphere. It gleamed off Barrons’s gilt-colored hair and the vibrant crimson of the dress that Honoria wore. They made a handsome couple. Both young and slim, with creamy skin and dark brown eyes. He felt incredibly old all of a sudden, relegated to the shadows.

“I know what it looks like,” he said, hurt burning within him. “And I want to trust you. But…bloody ’ell, Honoria…Would it kill you to give me one damned scrap of explanation?”

“You were sleeping. I thought it best to see to Leo myself. And I had questions for him regarding the vampire.”

All of which he’d overheard before he entered. “I’m not askin’ ’bout why you’re ’ere.”

Barrons took a careful step away from her. “I’m not poaching.”

“I ain’t askin’
you
.”

Her fists were clenched, her lips thinned. And yet it wasn’t anger that shone in her dark eyes but hurt. “You claim to trust me.”

“I do. But Barrons just seems to keep comin’ between us, and you won’t tell me what ’e means to you.” He couldn’t help himself from giving way to frustration. Taking another step forward, he almost reached for her, almost grabbed her by the arm, but that was the angry, hungry part of himself.
No. She’ll take fright
. His nostrils flared and he drank in the scent of her, still warm from his bed. She had cleansed with rose water, but the faint underlying tang of sex and blood stained her skin. “I’m tryin’ very ’ard to trust you.”

A little quiver went through her. “I wish that you could.” Her voice was soft with hurt. “Leo?”

Barrons stiffened. “No.”

Honoria turned on him. “I’ve had enough of secrets. And I’m tired of protecting you when you don’t seem to give a damn about any of us. Perhaps you’ve been too long in the Echelon not to recognize when a man doesn’t give a damn about all of your little games. Blade won’t use this information to harm you.”

That
depends
.

“I don’t trust anybody, and with good reason. Or have you forgotten who infected me in the first place?” Barrons glared at her.

She blanched. “He didn’t mean it. He was trying to prevent you from succumbing to the disease.”

“He was trying to test his bloody vaccine,” Barrons snapped. “He didn’t care whether I succumbed or not. I was never anything but another test subject to him.”

“Who the ’ell are you talkin’ ’bout?” Blade demanded.

Both of them looked at him with thick-lashed dark eyes. The expression in them was almost identical. Just a moment, and then she turned away, the angle of her face changing the perspective. Yet he couldn’t forget what he’d seen.
Christ
Jaysus
. He froze in his tracks.

“You’re ’is sister,” he said in an incredulous tone. “You’re ’is bloody sister.”

The blood drained out of Barrons’s face, but Honoria slumped in relief. “Yes,” she whispered. “Half sister. Leo and I share a father but little else. I’m the only one who knows. Lena and Charlie have never met him.”

Blade’s mind was racing. There was little similarity between their features, only a certain look about the eyes. No wonder he’d missed it. Charlie shared more in resemblance to Barrons, which would probably strengthen as he matured. “Who’s Barrons’s father? The duke or Artemus Todd?” Then he answered his own question. There was no other reason to hide this. “It’s Todd, ain’t it?”