Lust Plague (Steamwork Chronicles)

by Silverwood, Cari

  “If you don’t go to damn sleep and stop waking me, I’ll come over there and do something you’ll regret.”

  “I’ll regret? Hmph.” She moved on the makeshift bed, trying to get comfy on the straw and the two burlap sacks. The chunk missing from the roof let her see moonlit wisps of clouds sift across the blue-black sky. Where would her ship be right now? Her crew?

  “You thinking of your people up there?”

  His voice startled her.

  “Won’t hurt no one to tell me that, you know. Is there someone special?”

  She frowned. No. It wouldn’t hurt, but it seemed inappropriate. Talking was alluring, though. It’d ease her heart and the acid squirming in her stomach. She got up on her elbow, found him in the darkness, his shoulder and head silhouetted against the wall. The long gleam in front of him would be the shotgun. It was good to see the man…the frankenstruct, had some sense. And he hadn’t made another move on her, just like he’d promised.

  “I was thinking of them.” She wasn’t going to mention Ling. Her awful memory of his blood and flesh blowing out his back after she’d pulled the trigger…too raw to share. “Especially of Emily.”

  “The young lady outside the gym door? Pigtails? She got off the ship, far as I know. I sent her to the landing bay with two others. Since a gyro was gone when I got back, least some of them made it off.”

  “Oh. Good.” She shut her eyes, counted to ten. “Thank you.” Second time she’d said that to him. It pained her to do so, but the surge of relief at knowing he’d helped her crew made thanking him worth it. Emily especially somehow touched her heart. Her youth, maybe?

  In the past, nothing had affected her like this. It was new and weird, this feeling, like finding a tooth where none had been before. She didn’t like it. A captain should be aloof.

  “So you weren’t fucking anyone?”

  The air in the barn boiled. “My gods. Having you around is like walking with a burr in my shoe. No, but then no one on my ship fucks. You are so foul of mouth. I would appreciate it if you kept that word to yourself in future.”

  “No one fucks? Must be fucking boring, then.”

  She pressed her lips firmly together, refusing to reply to his taunt.

  “Guess that plants me right in the middle of low-life territory, then?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thought so. Point made. You judge people on goddamned flimsy reasons, Kaysana. People use different words—you condemn them. Frankenstruct—condemned. Guilty. Done with.”

  “I do not. I judge people by many criteria.” Why was she arguing with this fool?

  “Sure you do. Fuck. Fuckitty fuck fuck. Fuck.”

  She glared hard enough to send a heated trail across the barn. Damn him.

  “G’night, Kaysana.”

  “Captain,” she snapped. “It’s Captain, to you!”

  “The fuck it is.”

  Sleeping wasn’t easy. At all.

  Breakfast turned out to be beef sticks washed down with water. Though Sten had offered her an egg from the coop at the back of the barn, Kaysana found her stomach churning at the idea of raw eggs.

  She sat on a hay bale, looking out through the barn doors at the charred remains of the house. Ironic, really—all that flame last night and they couldn’t cook breakfast. Maybe if they scrounged around, they could find something to fry the eggs on?

  She blinked away the tiredness in her eyes. Someone had used a scrubbing brush on them.

  The wolf was nowhere to be seen, almost like she’d imagined it.

  She got up, picked stalks of straw from the back of her shirt, and pulled one piece from between her butt cheeks. If the house hadn’t burned, she’d have clothes, for sure. As it was, underneath the shirt she was still indecent, and she had to constantly fight the urge to look away whenever Sten showed up. Bare-chested, he was magnificent. An ugly, or at least a rugged face, but his body made her drool. Couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t do anything about the way her body revved up like some teenage girl with too many hormones. This weird side effect must go away eventually, mustn’t it?

  She strode over to the steam cycle.

  “Do you know anything about the engines on these?” Sten asked as he came across from where he’d just shooed the last of the chickens from the coop. One madly flapping hen charged past Kaysana, squawking and headed for the open.

  She frowned. With no one to feed them, they may as well be let loose. But she’d expected Sten to wring their necks like the brute he was. The way he’d gently herded them out seemed…wrong somehow. Like a wolf helping little girls across the road.

  The engine—he’d asked her about it. “You’ve not seen to the fuel?” If there was no boosted coal, the steam cycle was as useless as tits on a dragon.

  Curious. The dolphin ornament had been bent back until it nearly touched the hood. For such a pampered bit of machinery to suffer so without the owner fixing it seemed odd. Had it been that way yesterday? She went to the front, heard him coming up behind as she reached for the handle to pull open the hood, knew instantly he had devious plans but with no time to react…then his hand ran up the inside of her leg. She shivered, let out a slow breath.

  Time to show him her ice lady side. Her heart beat faster.

  “You forgot our morning kiss, darling.”

  Anger would help her resist this strange alteration of her psyche. She clenched her teeth. “No. I did n—”

  Then he put his hands to her waist, picked her up, and resettled her at the very front, over the curve of the hood, with her legs dangling either side of the dolphin ornament.

  “Put me down!”

  “Agreement. Remember? You obey. I get to kiss. This morning”—he laid a finger on her backbone, just above where her bottom swelled out—“I’m kissing your back.”

  “You are quite mad.” She smiled, shook her head a little in dismissal of his odd notion. Over the top of the steam cycle’s roof, she saw the wolf at the door, sitting on its haunches, in the square of bright daylight. Between its paws, two chickens pecked at the ground, oblivious to the danger.

  Then Sten’s finger, slow as sweat on a hot summer night, started to trace a line up her spine, over the shirt. Tingles fanned out from beneath his touch, a slow-moving tide across her body.

  Her toes couldn’t touch the ground. Slowly, very slowly, with the shirt riding up under her stomach, she was slipping down, with the dolphin’s nose nudging at her entrance. This wasn’t accidental.

  “Hey!” Wriggling, she tried to move out of the way. “No sex. Remember?”

  The slow stretch of her cleft made her take one long breath, let it out slow and shuddery. She fanned the fingers of both hands on the hood, unsure if she was pushing herself away or not.

  “Not sex, Kaysana, just gravity doing its thing.”

  In a firm, no-nonsense way, he pushed her stomach flat onto the hood, then gently kissed the base of her spine.

  The kiss zapped straight to her clitoris. She froze. “No. We…we have to get going.”

  Spread-eagled half-naked across the front of the hood, the cool metal of the ball on the dolphin’s nose slid a half inch farther between her already soaked lips. Sten planted another kiss on her back, just a little higher than before. His hands held her waist, and his thighs were under her thighs, supporting her enough that she wasn’t falling. Her clit, forced onto the hard surface, throbbed like a hot little engine. She moaned.

  “That’s my girl. Put your arms up higher.”

  The sensations sang gloriously to her. She said nothing, just turned her head sideways to rest her cheek on the cold surface with her arms across the hood as if hugging it.

  Another kiss in his advance up her body, and she took another slippery inch of the dolphin inside her. Step by step, kiss by kiss, he conquered her back. By the time he reached her neck, she was writhing in tiny circles atop the dolphin. Some rounded part pushed at an exquisite place within, and with shudder after shudder, as her walls pulsed around
it, she was climbing toward orgasm.

  The last half inch slid up inside. Seated fully on the ornament, she panted wildly and made small pleading noises. Unsure why she did, except that she knew she shouldn’t come, didn’t want to, even if that was exactly where she was headed.

  Sten nibbled and licked at her neck, then bit down hard at the side of her nape. He lay full length on her body, the head of his cock poking into her above where the dolphin lodged in her cunt, thrusting just enough to tantalize. “Would you like me in there instead?” he whispered, then bit her again, thrust at her a little.

  “No.” She whimpered and stopped moving, striving to hold herself back. “Let me down. Don’t want to—”

  He took his weight off her but left his hands on her bottom, pressing her down, pushing rhythmically. Her clitoris loved it. If she came now, he would know, she would know it had happened while she was impaled here. No. Cao, no.

  Finally, when she was seconds away from coming and crazily moaning and gasping, he casually lifted her off the dolphin and set her on the ground. Her legs folded. She collapsed at his feet, shuddering, and stayed there on all fours, recovering.

  “Still don’t want me inside you?” He placed his hand on the back of her head.

  It took a moment to summon her thoughts, but she managed and said firmly, “No. No I do not. Damn you. I don’t want you touching me, either. Go away.” Then she willed him to leave, but he only squatted next to her and combed his fingers though her hair while her breathing slowed.

  To her, that was worse. She’d rather he walk away than be gentle. And that she leaned into his hand… What was wrong with her?

  “Why do you hate us, Kaysana? Us frankenstructs?”

  She bit her lip to steady herself. “I don’t hate you, not exactly, but you killed my family.”

  “No. I did not.”

  His rough voice played havoc with her mind, made her remember how he’d controlled her so easily—so strong and competent, he’d left her no choice but to obey.

  “No. Not you…not you precisely.” Dragging up the memories hurt, but she would tell him. Not sure why. Maybe he’d leave her alone if he understood. Though that implied he could understand. She’d always thought of frankenstructs as subhuman beings of poor intelligence. Sten, though, he’d outsmarted her at times as well as overpowered her.

  And he stirred her in so many damn ways. Ways she’d never thought a man could do.

  “When I was twelve, while I was away at my aunt’s in another town, my family’s farmhouse was raided—bandits massacred everyone. Frankenstructs did it.”

  No matter how much blood she saw in the course of doing her duty by the air fleet, no matter how many battles and corpses…the blow struck at her heart whenever she recalled the red snake of blood curling in the stream beneath their bridge. Death where fun and laughter should’ve been. Blood on water. Mingzhu, you died too young. Prettier than me, so happy with life, and you died first. Wasn’t right. The guilt ever wrenched at her. Pulled. Plucked. Stuck ice needles in her soul.

  I should’ve been there…could’ve done something… But none of it ever mattered in the now.

  Weary, too wrung out to be angry any longer, she pushed herself up and sat back on her heels, looked Sten in the eye.

  What she’d expected to see, she wasn’t certain. Anger, annoyance, derision maybe? Instead his blue eyes held only compassion. She tucked some stray hair behind her ear, felt the shirt slip down over her bottom, adjusted the front, making sure her breasts didn’t show.

  “I’m sorry.” Sten’s muscled thighs flexed as he shifted position, making his brown trousers stretch. “But how do you know they were all frankenstructs?”

  She frowned. “I don’t. I can only go on what I was told.”

  “Childhood memories, huh? You wouldn’t condemn all men because some of them did something bad. Don’t do the same with us. Maybe some of them were just plain men. Maybe some were frankenstructs like me, ugly, strange-born creations. Do you look at an ugly face and just go, hell, he’s got to be bad?”

  “What? No!” She wasn’t that shallow, was she? “Besides, you’re not ugly.” How did that get past her tongue?

  True, though, he wasn’t ugly, not really, just different. Uneasy, she studied him. And something about him turned her on, no matter how disturbing that fact. But she wasn’t telling him that.

  Damn. He was distracting her again.

  To her shock, he reached out, took her hand, and kissed the back. “I’m sorry. I wish your childhood had been different. I know my kind aren’t totally innocent. Besides, I felt that way about plain humans for a while.”

  He stared off over her shoulder as if seeing something out there, beyond the doors, but she doubted he focused on anything particular. “My line got given double muscling—supposed to make us strong—good soldiers, good fighters. We got bad tempers too. I’m the only one left. They put everyone else down once the rage got too much. Too many people had died. All PME staff and trainers, though, nobody off base. We were kept locked up most of the time once they figured it out.” He flicked his gaze back down to her. “I was lucky. I escaped once. I was whipped by the captain on one of your GAM ships, then returned to the PME. When they recaptured me, one of the higher-up trainers, a woman who’d studied something called Zen, showed me how to meditate, how to think my way past the rage. She got me spared.”

  Despite everything, despite the way he’d hauled her around, curiosity sparked. He didn’t get angry anymore? How true, though. Sten was like a rock under a waterfall. Everything spilled over and past him while he remained serene. Some men would have yelled at her after she’d blown up the gyro. She hadn’t made him chase after her, sure, but he hadn’t done more than call her a few bad names. The zombie situation alone would be enough to unsettle most.

  Just for a moment, she let the way he held her hand get to her, saw how his roughly hewn fingers surrounded hers, his thumb rubbing lightly over the back of her hand. Calmness flowed into her. No. She shook herself, pulled her fingers away. Her imagination was playing tricks.

  Yet…sympathy stirred.

  “They were all killed? Everyone else?”

  “Yes.” The silver wolf pendant swung at the center of a thong about his neck, caught her eye as he snagged it with finger and thumb. “This,” he murmured, eyes low as he looked at what he held, “was given to me by a friend…one of the last of us killed. This is all I have of him still.” He released the pendant and let it spin.

  Specks of silvery reflected lights flickered in her eyes.

  A friend? Funny. She’d never thought of frankenstructs as having friends. Yet in no way was Sten anything but human. He was far more tolerant than she was. More evenhanded. In her bones, she knew it. When else have I ever gotten anything so wrong?

  His other words came to her. All the others like him were killed? How would it be to grow up beside someone, play with them, talk with them, know them inside out, and then see them taken away to be killed? All because of a mistake made by whoever designed your bodies?

  “He and the others like him were killed because it was the law.” He inclined his head, shifted on his toes, his hands casually clasped between his folded legs. “Like your law that said I should be whipped and returned to slavery.”

  Ah. This was where he was headed.

  “My country’s law?”

  Those foundations she’d always held dear and close had shifted this last day, like a stone door shivered loose by an earthquake. She stared at him and, for a fragment of time, saw not a frankenstruct but a man.

  “Yes. Do you think maybe the law was wrong? Kaysana?”

  She weighed his words, played with a button on her shirt. “The law’s changed since then. Besides, I only uphold them, I don’t make them. Why are you doing this…to me? Revenge on humans?”

  “You don’t have an opinion?” He shook his head, amused. “And no, like I said, I don’t do angry anymore.”

  Kaysana swallowed. “You
don’t?”

  “No. And after I had that orange-eyed fellow creep up on me, I could see this thing was bigger than anything else. It needs doing and every day counts, and I sure wasn’t letting you do it by yourself.”

  “That…” Struck by the oddity of his decision, she paused and figured her way through the maze. He admits this needs doing and knew it back then? Yet he’d bargained with her and coaxed that damn agreement about kissing out of her? Reality crept back into her head. What were they both doing?

  “Then you can call our agreement off. Though I can do with your backup. You have no reason—”

  “Yes, I do.” His tone dropped into rumbling depths, a coarse sound that went straight into her middle and set her quivering, anticipating, watching him. “I did it this way because I wanted to.”

  “But this is just an aberration. This attraction between us is purely temporary. It’s not us.” Yet her body ached to close the distance between them.

  “Are you sure?” He grasped her chin, tilted her head back, and slowly leaned in to kiss her.

  Move, her inner voice said. She didn’t. Could’ve, but didn’t. Why, she still couldn’t understand. His mouth descended onto hers. He devoured her, his lips on hers, pressing down, shoving her lips apart with his tongue like he might spread her legs to fuck her. She shuddered, opened wider, let him in. Let him eat her all up as the heat surged in her middle, where she wanted him, deep, deep inside.

  Chapter Eight

  The steam cycle churned through the crop. Going down the cleared paths worked best but the machine happily went straight over the top, crunching the stalks flat to the tune of a racket that made hearing anything else difficult. Kaysana adjusted her goggles, cursed at Sten’s back, and wiped away more shreds of wheat. The man…frankenstruct, whatever, clearly had forgotten about roads.

  She’d had a choice—front seat squeezed in with, or on, Sten, or backseat with more room and the wolf next to her. The wolf had won. God knew why. She glanced sideways carefully, wary of attracting attention. Cadrach leered back, his big wolf teeth showing in the gap of lip. His meat-flavored breath warmed her shoulder. Already she had half a ton of shed silver-gray wolf hair on the shirt and no doubt on her bottom.