You Only Love Twice (London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy Book 3)

by Bec McMaster

  Of course. During the Echelon's peak, it had been common for blue bloods to attempt to elevate their position within their house via a stealthy assassination—or ten. Every manor had a handful of exits, just in case.

  "I can't see a damned thing," she whispered, staggering after him.

  She'd often trained with a blindfold. Being blind wasn't a problem; being forced to rely upon him was. Because she didn't trust him. How could she?

  "Follow me."

  Then they were feeling their way down a flight of damp stone steps, the air growing colder and moss slicking the tunnel walls beneath her outstretched fingers.

  Water splashed ahead of them. The tunnel led down into the sewers, and Gemma wrinkled her nose. Wet. Damn it. She'd just gotten jolly well clean. No help for it. She was forced to wade into the frigid waters, the invading chill seeping into her boots.

  "Where are we going? Who was it? What's—"

  "Be quiet, and keep moving," he hissed, planting a hand firmly in the middle of her back. "Unless you want your throat slit."

  On and on, through dark tunnels. Wading through ever deepening water. A glance over her shoulder revealed a faint phosphorescent light bobbing along behind them. "They're following us."

  Obsidian froze. Light streamed into the sewer ahead of them through some grate, highlighting his stark, expressionless face. "Damn it. They're not following us. They're following me."

  Reaching up with the knife, he felt under the back of his hairline, and then made a sharp jerking motion with the blade. Blood flavored the air, and when he withdrew his hand, his fingers were slick with it.

  "What are you doing?" She caught a glimpse of a tiny silver disc in his hand, faint silvery legs spreading away from its body like a spider's legs.

  Obsidian turned and threw the tiny device down the other tunnel. "Move, Gemma."

  A tracking device. She slammed a hand to his chest when he moved to push past her, spat on her fingers, and then reached up to smear her saliva across the small wound. "They'll be able to scent the blood. My saliva will help the cut heal."

  He nodded.

  She splashed through the tunnels ahead of him, chasing the rippling blue light. They came to an intersection, the sluggish water starting to move faster past her boots. "Which way?"

  He glanced toward the rushing sound down the tunnel to their right. "This way."

  Behind them, a shout echoed.

  Had their assailants discovered the tracking beacon?

  There was a sharp drop ahead of them, water rushing toward it. Gemma skidded to a halt on the edge of it. "What are we going to do now?"

  "Do you trust me?"

  The jury was still undecided. "Perhaps."

  He grabbed her arm and looked over the lip of the spillway.

  "No. Absolutely not." The darkened waters gleamed far below them, water draining rapidly toward some hidden grate. London was full of underground rivers, and this section of London was frequently flooded when the ELU Underground Railway Project collapsed. The government had installed a steam-driven drainage plant to maintain the water levels.

  "No choice."

  "I am wearing a dress," she hissed. "Do you have any idea how heavy—"

  "Don't scream." Obsidian slammed a hand between her breasts, and Gemma lurched off the edge of the circular hole. Arms windmilling, she caught a scream behind her teeth and plunged into the darkened well.

  She slammed into a sheet of water, plummeting like a stone. Bubbles streamed from her mouth, and she clawed toward the surface.

  An enormous shadow smashed into the water beside her, sending her rocking from the impact.

  Gemma surfaced with a gasp, her skirts threatening to drag her under again. Kicking hard, she struggled to keep her head above water. Panic bloomed within her. Drowning was the one fear she owned.

  Water closed over her head as her body plunged beneath the frigid waters of the Griboedov River. She'd smashed through the thin layer of ice on the surface, the shock of cold water stealing her breath in a gasp of bubbles until her lungs were flooding with it, drowning her....

  She caught a mouthful of water now, her throat closing as she spat desperately. Gemma panicked.

  "I've got you." Strong hands captured her shoulders, and then Obsidian hauled her against him. "Shhh, Gemma. We cannot afford to make a sound."

  Shh?

  Shh?

  Gemma clung to him, her lungs heaving. "I am going to kill you when we're out of this mess."

  But her fingers tangled in his wet shirt, and her heart beat a sharp staccato in her chest, belying the firmness of her voice.

  His arm snagged around her waist as he hauled her out of the circle of light that was painted on the inky waters. With her skirts dragging at her body, she felt shockingly vulnerable. If he released her, she'd eventually vanish beneath this unknown depth.

  "Don't let me go," she gasped.

  Obsidian's pale gaze locked on hers as if he'd finally sensed some of the turmoil hidden beneath her cool expression.

  A spillway hovered under a stone arch, water pouring through it. This was how the levels had split. It sucked the pair of them toward it.

  Obsidian kicked them beneath the faint overhang of the tunnel, pressing them both against the bars there. His hand rubbed circles on her back, as the other clung to one of the bars. "I won't ever let you go," he breathed in her ear. "Now, be quiet."

  Gemma sucked in a sharp sob and simply pressed her head to his chest.

  Difficult to stop her legs from thrashing in the wet cage of her skirts. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been forced to rely upon someone else. Or trusted them enough to do so.

  Malloryn, perhaps, but then he'd earned her undying loyalty when he pulled her from the Griboedov and resuscitated her.

  Now?

  She had no choice.

  It had nothing to do with the sound of Obsidian's voice, so like the Dmitri she remembered. Nothing to do with the familiar touch of his hands. Love had betrayed her all those years ago. She couldn't afford to trust in it again, ensnared in a dream that had never existed.

  Footsteps splashed through the tunnel above them. Obsidian's grip on her tightened, and Gemma returned the embrace, trying to slow her racing heart.

  The pair of them barely dared breathe, locked together under the overhang of the grate.

  "Any sign of them?" someone called in a low voice.

  "No. He cut the bleedin' tracker out of his head."

  "Hell. What are we going to tell Ghost?" The splashing sounded like it was growing distant. "This is three times she's escaped death."

  "Aye, well, she had help the first couple."

  Then they were gone.

  Gemma's heart pounded as she lifted her gaze to Obsidian's face. Three times? How many attempts had these dhampir made to kill her?

  "We need to get out of here," he breathed, still looking up, completely oblivious to the shock rampaging through her.

  But Gemma's heart pounded madly.

  Because she finally had some inkling of his intentions toward her.

  He hadn't kidnapped her in order to kill her.

  He'd done it to keep her safe.

  Chapter 13

  "I swear to God this is the last straw," Gemma spat. "You locked me in an abandoned manor, threw me into a bloody well, and now this? Again?"

  Obsidian peered into the streets, trying to ignore her, which was particularly difficult when she hit that strident note at the end. "It's for your own good."

  "Have I not proved I can be trusted?" Her voice turned pleading, as she toweled her hair dry. They'd washed under a water pump outside, and most of her clothes were still dripping. "There have been a hundred ways I could have escaped you today, but no, I played along."

  "Which doesn't negate the fact you were trying to run when I returned to Mably House."

  He'd barely managed to return to the manor when he saw the lanterns flickering through the boarded-up windows. Every inch of him had gone c
old, and he'd rushed to the observatory.

  Only to find it empty.

  Somehow his fellow dhampir had found him, and now they knew he was keeping her safe.

  Hell and damnation. What was he going to do?

  "Who were we running from?" Gemma demanded, straining against the cuffs that bound her hands together.

  That was the problem. She'd always been too smart for her own good. And she'd been furious when he'd hauled the cuffs from his waistcoat, insisting on putting them on her.

  "It's none of your business." Obsidian let the curtains fall back into place, flinching as the glare of the afternoon sunlight left bands of white across his vision. He could barely remember the days when he'd been able to stomach the light of day. It was the only thing he missed from his life before his transformation.

  Or one of the few things he truly recalled of it.

  Sunlight would force his brethren out of action for the day. He'd managed to get the pair of them all the way across the city to a safe house of his own, using the drains to protect himself from the light.

  Perhaps he'd known it would always come to this. Some unconscious part of him must have suspected he'd need somewhere safe, somewhere even Silas wasn't aware of.

  "None of my b-business? They were dhampir," she said, through chattering teeth. "They were hunting us. Or should I say, me?"

  Obsidian turned and surveyed his unwilling captive.

  With her black hair tangled and knotted from the water, she should have looked like a drowned rat, but despite her trembling lip and pale skin, Gemma drew his eyes like a lodestone.

  "I'm not stupid," she warned, her lips almost blue with cold.

  No. Never that.

  "And I will d-discover the truth."

  "Turn around," he told her, unlocking one of the cuffs from her wrists and then snapping it to the exposed pipe on the wall before she could take advantage of his empathy.

  "You don't need the cuffs. I couldn't run even if I w-wished to," Gemma told him through chattering teeth. "Besides, it seems a forgone conclusion you'd catch me before I took two steps. You're faster than I am, unhampered by wet skirts, and you blindfolded me for the last part of the journey, so I have no clue where we even are right now."

  "I wasn't worried about you running." No, he'd seen the way her gaze dipped to his belt and the array of knives there.

  "I thought we'd grown past that?"

  "That doesn't mean I trust you.'"

  "Likewise. What I am curious about is precisely what you intend to do with me." Gemma slanted a look at him from beneath the dangerous fan of her black lashes. They were spiked together with water. "Kidnapping usually serves a purpose. You haven't made any demands of Malloryn, as far as I can work out. You haven't tortured me for information. You've barely spoken to me. Apart from your penchant for handcuffs, I'd think you quite content to lock me away for an undetermined period of time." Her expression shifted, her shoulder lifting coquettishly. "One could be mistaken for thinking this an obsession. And yet, you also seem to have no intentions of touching me unless necessary."

  Curse her quick mind. He turned away from her, fractured memories of her bleeding through his mind like the broken pieces of a stained glass window.

  He knew they should fit together somehow, and yet all he managed was fragments.

  The quick flash of her laughter.

  Hollis tucking a scrap of paper down her bodice with a knowing little smile, as if aware of how it drew his eyes.

  The feel of her hand sliding down his naked abdomen.

  Waking from a drugged stupor to flames creeping up his bed hangings, and her lithe body conveniently vanished from the bed.

  Obsidian pressed a hand to his temples as they throbbed.

  She's a weakness you cannot afford.

  Months of aversion therapy flashed through his mind, sending a searing wave of pain across his nerves. He could almost feel the leather mouthpiece between his teeth, preventing him from biting his own tongue off as Ghost fisted a handful of his hair and wrenched his head back, "Tell me about the girl. The one you betrayed your brothers for."

  "She's a lying, treacherous bitch," he'd finally spat, and then Dr. Richter shocked him with electric current one more time, just to reinforce the message.

  The conditioning worked well.

  It had been years since he'd thought of Gemma without feeling a flinch along his nerves. He'd even stood there in Ghost's parlor four months ago when they first arrived in London and stared dully at her photograph when Ghost pinned Malloryn's allies to the board—the targets he and his team of dhampir were preparing to destroy. Nothing in him had stirred at the sight of her pretty heart-shaped face, except for pain, and he'd locked eyes on his Master and said flatly, "She's mine."

  He'd meant as a target. The knot of pain and past that tied him and Gemma together was something he'd vowed to finally erase.

  Until the second he watched one of Ghost's minions try to end her life... and realized whatever she'd once meant to him, those ties still bound him.

  "Dmitri?" she whispered, pulling him out of the fragmented mire of the past.

  "Dmitri's dead," he said tonelessly. "There is only Obsidian."

  "I'm not entirely certain that's the truth."

  He looked at her sharply.

  "Obsidian would have let me drown today. Obsidian would have killed me himself. Do you know what I think? I think someone wants me dead, and Dmitri kidnapped me so this mysterious person who was hunting us couldn't get their hands on me."

  "Do you? It sounds almost as plausible as your tale of our past."

  "It's an outlandish theory," Gemma admitted, her lip still shivering. "But they're the best ones. So what now?" She examined their accommodations. "It's a little less roomy than my observatory." Her gaze fell on the bed. "And I have an atrocious habit of sprawling across the entire bed when I sleep, so it looks like it shall be close quarters. E-elbows at two paces. That kind of thing."

  Their eyes met again.

  He knew what she was doing. Pushing him. A flirtatious challenge to see just what he intended to do with her.

  "Who said you're getting the bed?" Obsidian arched a defiant brow.

  "Y-you blackguard. You w-would take the bed yourself?"

  I'd rather have you in it.

  Under me.

  The burst of odd familiarity swept over him, as if they'd done this a hundred times before, but it was the sudden surge of the hunger that made him look away.

  Disconcerting. His memories of her were still thin, but it was the look in her eye he recognized.

  He couldn't afford to touch her.

  Because a part of him knew she would destroy him.

  "Is there a-any chance they have a bath h-here?" Gemma slumped against the wall. "I don't think I've ever been so wretchedly cold in my entire life as I have b-been this week."

  "Then you haven't lived through a Russian winter," he murmured. "And it's unlikely there's a bath. I can fetch you a basin of warm water and soap."

  "Do you think.... Do you think you could help me out of m-my dress then?" Gemma tried to undo the buttons down her spine, but clearly couldn't quite reach. "U-unless you want to untie my other hand?"

  "We're not playing this game again."

  "I'm wet, Obsidian. And cold. Don't worry, I have more intention of giving all my affections to those lovely thick blankets on the bed. You have nothing to fear."

  "I don't fear you."

  "No?"

  "Turn around," he said, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her to turn.

  The row of buttons down her spine gleamed. Obsidian scraped the tangled snarl of her hair forward over her shoulder, and then set to work on the top button. Her skin felt clammy to the touch. It seemed she'd been telling the truth. For him to have even noticed, she had to be cold indeed.

  "You were born in Russia," she murmured, glancing over her shoulder as she launched her opening gambit.

  "Da." He concentrated on her button
s and nothing else. "My mother was Russian. She gave me a name from her country, and taught me her language. Sergey always told me I had a terrible accent, like a serf."

  "I don't know." Gemma gave a minute shrug. "I quite liked it, and you sounded like the rest of the court to me."

  Curse her.

  "What happened to her?"

  A knot of pain twisted deep inside him. "I don't remember.”

  This time, Gemma almost turned all the way around.

  He stepped back. "Your buttons are undone. I'm certain you can manage the rest yourself."

  Gemma held up her manacled wrist.

  Obsidian unlatched it, just enough to strip the sleeve of her gown over her hand. Her fingers felt like ice. He paused, but she'd find no warmth from him. Dhampir were as cold-blooded as blue bloods.

  And yet....

  He rubbed his hand up her arm, feeling the burr of her goose bumps. Gemma tensed, but then she began to soften, her lashes closing in quiet approval. He used friction to warm her, and the gown began to slip down her body, revealing the upthrust mounds of her breasts. Soft and creamy globes that threatened to spill from her damp bodice.

  "What do you mean, you cannot remember your mother?" She lifted her eyes to his.

  He stepped back as she tugged her other sleeve down, revealing the straps of her chemise.

  "I have little recollection of my life before Falkirk."

  "And seemingly little recollection since it," she pointed out.

  What would she say if she knew the truth?

  His "conditioning" with Dr. Richter saw to his scattered memories, he suspected. It used to always make him "feel better" after a session with the doctor, but now....

  Just what were they doing to him?

  And how long had they been doing it to him?

  "I lost track of her once I was sent to Falkirk. I remember her name. Marina. She became a cook at an inn, I believe. I remember the way she would swear in Russian. And I remember her nightmares. But little else."

  He frowned. What little he could recall of his childhood didn’t seem to fit the story. He remembered other children laughing and playing in the snow with him; a man bent over an enormous desk in a gilded study, pointing to some sort of ledger or book; a smiling woman in elegant court attire bending down to kiss his forehead before she was handed up into a carriage….