by Zoë Archer
“Sam, I’m—”
Release took her once more. Only this time, she contracted around Sam, deep within her, and this urged the climax onward, a seemingly endless succession of orgasms that decimated self.
Then it had him, too. He stiffened, muscles tensing, and he groaned—a sound of profound pleasure, of need and want and relief and…sorrow.
His climax went on, tearing from him as if tearing open the darkest places within. She felt him pulsing inside her, even after he could no longer hold himself upright, and collapsed atop her—though he was careful to keep from crushing her with his substantial weight. For some time, neither of them could move, but then he wrapped his arms around her, and took her with him when he rolled to his side.
“I haven’t come in three years.” He sounded awed. “Couldn’t even get hard. But that…that was…” He shook his head, unable to find words to describe the sensation.
Even in the radiance following her own orgasm, a new pleasure engulfed her. “I’m glad I could give that to you.”
They lay entwined, bodies slick and spent. A breeze passed through the open timbers of the barn. She shivered involuntarily.
Before she drew another breath, he’d risen and retrieved her cloak, which he spread over them both like a blanket.
Cassandra draped over him as he lay on his back. He stroked her hair, winding it around his fingers and letting the heavy tresses uncoil, over and over. Her ear pressed against the hard muscles of his chest, but he did not rise and fall with breathing, and she felt no heartbeat beneath her hand. As she leisurely brushed her fingers back and forth across his pectorals, raking her nails through the scattering of dark, curled hair, she carefully avoided his wound. They both knew a profound gulf separated them—his wound would only remind them of what neither wanted to acknowledge.
Despite this, she felt replete, almost content. Her eyes drifted closed, then opened again when he spoke.
“Tell me how you became a Blade of the Rose.” His voice didn’t sound sleepy at all, but his words were soft—out of consideration for her.
It took a few moments for her thoughts to cohere. “I’d been campaigning for years to obtain factory reform,” she eventually murmured. “Showed up in a few newspapers. A gentleman’s daughter appearing in public, fighting for change. I’d have thought the Grub Street hacks would have more important things to write about. But it seemed they didn’t.”
She fought a yawn. “And that’s when the Blades recruited me. They’d been following me in the papers and thought I’d make a good operative in England. At first, it all seemed preposterous. Magic? In the modern nineteenth century?” She made a soft noise of disbelief, recalling her own skepticism from that first trip to Southampton.
“Yet I learned,” she continued, “it was very real, and very powerful. Very easily used by corrupt people, and thus vulnerable. It was a cause I could not ignore. As a Blade, I could continue my work with the factories, but when the others needed me, I would obey the summons. And so I did—so I do.”
“So you tell them you want to become a Blade of the Rose, and that’s all.” Even though she heard no heartbeat, she felt the vibrations of his deep voice, and this lulled her.
She shook her head. “You have to prove yourself in a field assignment. And before you ask,” she added, “mine was in Scotland. I went with two other Blades to rescue a fairy of the Seelie Court. She’d been abducted by the Heirs and held for ransom. The ransom in this case being surrender of her magic. They had the poor thing for a week before we were able to get her free.”
“No wonder Broadwell’s one of the Heirs,” he rumbled, stiffening. “They’re just as foul as he is.”
The world would intrude soon enough. For now, Cassandra wanted to give herself and Sam the brief illusion of peace. So, she steered the conversation away from the topic of their enemies. “The fairy was extremely grateful,” she continued, “and shocked we’d managed to free her without benefit of magic. Yes,” she said when Sam made a noise of surprise, “Blades ensure that we won’t grow hungry for magic by not using it ourselves. If magic is ours by right or gift, then we may use it, but otherwise, we must rely on our strength and wits to protect Sources.”
“A code of honor,” Sam mused. “Such things are obsolete.”
“Not so archaic. There’s honor in most everyone.” She snuggled closer to him, feeling the solidity of his body, his potency. How many nights had she dreamt of just this, lying entwined with Sam in the aftermath of lovemaking? Too many to recall. “Especially you.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, but she could tell he still did not agree with her on this matter. “And you and the other Blades fought the Heirs for the fairy’s freedom.”
“To be honest,” she said, “I acted more in an observational capacity. The other Blades with me—Philippa Mallory and a young man named Catullus Graves—they did the actual fighting. But I helped,” she added quickly. “Acted as a lookout and decoy.”
“And your second field mission for the Blades?”
Now she was silent. She thought about feigning sleep, yet he was far too alert to believe that ruse. So she said, rather quietly, “This is my second field mission.”
The veteran soldier had truly been caught off guard. His whole body tensed. “What?”
“This is my second—”
“I heard you.” He disentangled himself from her as he sat up. She could only see his rigid, broad back, the muscles contracting as his hands curled and uncurled. For some time, he said nothing, yet she felt the waves of shock and anger roiling out from him. He swore under his breath. Yet she would not accept his anger toward her.
She, too, sat up, though her head still felt muzzy.
“The risks are mine to take.” She spoke to the clean, hard line of his profile.
He stared at the wall of the barn with unseeing eyes. “Tell me where those damned Blades are. I’ll ride down there right now and beat every one of them into oblivion.” He turned to her, fury flaring in his eyes. “What the hell were those idiots thinking, to send you up against a dangerous bastard like Broadwell, on your own?”
“They didn’t,” she shot back. “Blades always work in teams. But with the telegraph lines down, and Broadwell on the move, I had to make a decision. Let him go, or pursue.”
“Alone, you’re no match for him,” he snarled. “He’ll kill you, Cassandra.” His voice dropped until it was so deep she felt his words more than heard them. “Or worse.” One of his hands came up of its own accord to hover above the wound in his chest. “I won’t let what happened to me also doom you.”
Cassandra’s fury dropped away. She stroked the lean planes of his face, and, even though it had been many hours, he had no beard coming in. He was frozen in time at the moment of his death—yet only his body remained unchanging. Within, he could transform. The Sam she’d encountered in the stonemason’s yard was not the Sam she touched now. He could move onward.
“I’m not facing Broadwell on my own,” she said gently.
He stared into her eyes, holding her gaze as if staring into a well of secrets. She allowed Sam to see her as no one else ever had—all of her, withholding nothing. For this Sam, more so than the boy she’d known or the dream she had constructed, captivated and understood her in a way no man could. She’d just given him the gift of her body, now she gave him the gift of her mind. Only you, she told him with her eyes. Only you are given this.
And when he nodded slightly, leaned forward, and then took her mouth in a kiss of surpassing sweetness, her throat constricted and burned, even as she smiled against his lips.
Exhaustion flowed in, a breaking dam. He saw her eyes droop, and gently laid her down. He tucked the cloak around her, whispering, “I’ll watch over you. Sleep now.”
And she did just that.
Chapter Five
For hours, Sam watched Cassandra sleep. She’d fallen asleep with the speed of the exhausted, her body growing slack and still, and soon after,
the delicate skin of her eyelids twitched as she began to dream. He envied her this. Years since he’d slept, since he’d dreamt, and now both were distant lands he knew he’d once visited but could no longer remember. His own life long ago turned into one long nightmare from which he could not wake.
What did she dream of? He hoped her dreams were beautiful and soft, comforting, because God knew how hard and cruel the waking world was.
Cassandra. Lightly, he brushed his fingertips over her face as if to learn her topography, carve it into his own unmoving heart. She’d made love to him as if he wasn’t a monster, had given him wealth unsurpassed by any treasury. The way she’d responded to him—without reserve, entirely open—even now, he felt his icy blood heating. His flesh hadn’t been warm for three years, and she changed that, stoking fires within him from cold ashes. Reminding him he was still a man, when he no longer believed it himself.
He could never grow weary of her. This fierce little creature of indomitable strength and generous heart. For just a moment, Sam allowed himself the indulgence of picturing what their life could have been together. Not a typical domestic scene of hearth and children, for that was not her, but a series of battles, he and Cassandra against the world. They could shore each other up in defeat and celebrate victories. Endless passion. The promise of tomorrow. Love, at last.
Never to be. The undead claimed no future.
Restless, angry, Sam rose. He kept her covered with her cloak, ensuring her warmth, then threw on his clothes. He paced. Wanted to take his horse and ride. Do something with the energy and momentum of his mind and body. But he wouldn’t leave her alone and unprotected. So he stayed, and gnawed upon his thoughts, all the while keeping watch over her small, slumbering form.
She looked so damned delicate. No denying her inner strength, but she’d been born and raised a gentlewoman. She might campaign for reform, but she’d never campaigned as a soldier. This was only her second mission for the Blades of the Rose. And in her first, she’d been more an observer than combatant.
Sam didn’t fear death. He’d already died, and had been eagerly looking forward to finally achieving rest once Broadwell, and the magic that had transformed Sam, had been destroyed. Vengeance had driven Sam for the past three years. Now one goal rose above all others. No matter the cost—to himself or anyone else—he would protect Cassandra.
He could give her safety, though he could not give her a future.
Sunset, finally. Enough shelter in the dusk for Cassandra to go to the back of a farmhouse and buy some provisions for herself. Sam had no choice but to brood and pace in the shadows. If he went with her, he’d draw more hostile notice, just as he had before, and he wouldn’t endanger Cassandra again. He watched her from the darkness as she talked to the wife of the house and made her purchases. They set off for the shore, and Cassandra ate as she rode. They had to reach the sunken ship and its drowned passengers before Broadwell could transform the men aboard. Sam knew the bastard was either already there, waiting for the right time, or would show soon. If Broadwell was at the ship by now, then Sam would make sure he couldn’t transform the dead men. And if Broadwell wasn’t there, then Sam would wait.
The transport ship had sunk along a part of the coast Sam knew well. His father had taken him and his two older brothers there every summer to learn to swim. A narrow beach, with a rocky promontory rising up from one side of the sand and jutting into the sea. Sam and his brothers always wanted to run off the promontory and jump into the water, but his father had forbidden them. The drop was too precarious. But that didn’t stop Sam from trying to scramble up the rocky cliff the moment his father’s back was turned. He never made it all the way to the top before his father caught him. But his father never thrashed him—only laughed and called him hellion before tossing him into the waves.
As he now rode toward the beach with Cassandra beside him, fond memories rose like the tide. But they would soon be replaced with others much less nostalgic.
Roars of pounding waves reached his ears before he sighted the water. When he and Cassandra drew up their horses at the edge of the sand, where numerous rocks marked the boundary of the beach, night turned the scene into a study of deepest blue, with moonlight painting the waves silver. Just as he remembered, the rocky cliff rose to the left, towering high before plunging into the frothing sea. The beach was deserted.
“I don’t see Broadwell,” Cassandra said quietly.
“Nor I.” Sam scanned the beach, yet his heightened senses could not detect his former commanding officer. “There,” he said, pointing out beyond the breaking waves.
“Broadwell?”
“The ship.”
She peered through the darkness, then started at the dark shape over two hundred yards from the shore. “Good God.”
An awful view. The stern of the transport ship jutted from the water, and several shattered masts also projected out of the sea like compound fractures, their tattered sails flapping white and useless. Sam could well picture the scene—the ship foundering on the rocks, chaos and confusion above and below decks, so close to land but far enough to condemn everyone on board. The screams and pleas of men as icy seawater rushed in, bringing cold death. Soldiers whose losing battle was against indifferent nature.
Now he and Cassandra stared at the partially submerged tomb.
“Why hasn’t anyone recovered the bodies?” he asked.
“Too dangerous,” she answered. “All efforts have been beaten back by the waves. Everyone is waiting for low tide.”
For someone who needn’t fear drowning, none of that was a concern.
“Sam, look!” She rose in the saddle. “You see them? Men in the water!”
A few shadowy forms toiled to rise to the surface next to the sunken ship. From this distance, they looked to be dark insects, arms flailing, slowly crawling up the hull that rose above the water.
“Some of the Marines must have survived,” Cassandra exclaimed.
Clammy dread slithered along his neck. “Look at their eyes.”
She strained to see, then sank back down. “They’re…glowing.”
“Like mine.”
She glanced over at him, then turned away with a stricken expression. He knew what she saw. The unearthly light shining from his eyes. The same light that appeared as pallid specks across the water, where the resurrected soldiers clambered to the surface. Sam knew what the men must be feeling at that moment—the pull of magic on their minds, dragging them from the tranquility of death, the confusion, the fear. He knew well they had good cause to be afraid.
“We’re too late,” she rasped. “Broadwell already transformed them.”
Where that son of a bitch was, Sam didn’t know, but he did know what he must do now. He swung down from the saddle.
“You have your pistol primed and ready?” he demanded.
She took the weapon from her pocket and rested it in her lap.
He gave her a clipped nod, hating that he was going to have to leave her alone. But he had to. If the undead soldiers reached the shore, she would be in even greater danger.
“Stay alert,” he said. “If you see anything suspicious, there’s to be no hesitation. Shoot whoever, whatever, you see. In the head and in the heart.” He strode toward her and handed her both his own pistol and the reins of his horse. “Keep the hammer cocked and your eyes open.”
“What are you going to do?” No trembling in her voice, and he admired her like hell. Few women, or men, could witness the resurrection of dozens of the living dead without screaming and fleeing in terror.
Sam cast a grim look toward the partially sunken ship and its unnatural compliment. “Don’t know yet,” he growled. “But I’ll do them the kindness I never received. I’m going to destroy them.”
He found several rocks and put them into his pockets. Then he turned to go, carrying his sword, but her voice stopped him before he took a step.
“Wait.” She also alit from her horse, and crossed to him. In the moon
light, her upturned face was carved of creamy ivory, and her eyes gleamed, not with an uncanny fire like his own, but with emotion. For him.
She placed her hand upon his chest. “Come back, Sam,” she whispered. “When you’ve done what you must, please come back. To me.”
He went still. She had known, without him saying a word, what he’d been searching for ever since that night at the Redan, and that it tempted him even now. Release from the hell of his existence. Nothingness. Yet only one thing could call him back from oblivion.
Her.
He bent and kissed her, tasting her sweet strength, summoning the part of him that yearned for life. Yearned, though he knew it could never be given to him again. For now, he would give Cassandra what he could.
“I will,” he said, then strode off into the surf.
Breaking waves churned around his legs as he pushed into the cold water. He hissed at the chill. Only a day earlier, he wouldn’t have felt the water’s temperature, but warmth still permeated his body after making love to Cassandra. His once-numb body sparked with new awareness and new pain. But he’d endure the agony of bitter cold or blistering fire to make love to her again.
As the water surged around his chest, he broke his own rule and looked back. She stood at the top of the beach, slim body straight and vigilant, while her cloak billowed about her and her hair whipped over her shoulders. Brave beyond measure, stubborn as hell, passionate. Come back, she had said. To me.
He said he would. He needed to return to her. She drew him back with the warmth and strength of her heart, as unexpected as a songbird on the battlefield.
After one last look, he turned back and moved onward. Farther into the sea, and it rose to his shoulders, then higher. In a moment, the heaving water was over his head. A brief vestige of fear as seawater flooded his nose, his mouth. Down his throat and into his lungs, chilling him from the inside out. He fought against his own impulse to struggle. Nothing to panic about. He couldn’t drown.
