“So beautiful, Imogen. I’m almost scared to touch you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a biological imperative. An ancient dance.” She swallowed hard and pulled him forward by the waistband of his trousers. He followed willingly, fitting himself over her and brushing back her hair with one hand. “So stop stalling, and let’s dance.”
“I don’t think we need a daimon to teach us the right steps this time.”
He took her lips again, grinding his hips against her. Moaning, she ran her fingernails down his back, urging him closer. He licked down her throat to her breasts, and she writhed against him and struggled to unbutton his trousers and push them down past his hips. He lapped at her nipples, teased her, rubbing against her further down, making her as dizzy as she had been when they danced under the starlight. His clever fingers found her again, the softly slick core of her buried in petticoats, and she moaned and hooked a boot around his back. When she pulled him closer, he moaned, too, pushing up her skirts and fitting himself against her to rub so deliciously that she squirmed and whimpered, all words forgotten in the frenzy of warm flesh.
He was there and ready, easing into her with an agonizing slowness that drove her mad, and she dug her boot in and rose to meet him, taking all of him and making him gasp against her neck. He found her nipple, suckling and licking as he worked against her in a gentle rhythm driven by her bare calf and sharp boot heel. She met him with every thrust, dancing skin to skin, her hands clutching his hair, his neck, his back with desperate wonder and wild abandon.
Her mind all but shut down, lost in panting hunger. His loose hair flashed against the starry canopy above, and she felt as if she were wrapped up in the sparkling magic that seemed to spice every moment in the caravan. Half-naked in the open, wildly writhing against an almost-stranger like an animal in heat, she had never felt more alive, more wanting. When his finger found the crux of her, rubbing in time with his grinding hips, she set her teeth in his ear, moaning and panting and muttering his name as the sweetness built inside her like nothing she had ever known.
The tightness of the corset, the press of his body, the fire of his tongue, the wet slickness where they met; the sensations possessed her until they pushed her over the edge and into utter oblivion. Imogen arched her back and tossed her hair and screamed in release, and he plunged into her faster and faster and harder and harder. The moment went on and on forever, throbbing inside her as he groaned and pressed his face into her neck, shuddering against her.
In the silence that followed, she heard nothing but her own desperately thudding heart and his gasping breaths.
“Have you reached any conclusions?” she murmured, finding it hard to form the words.
“I must admit my hypothesis was proven true. Given the chance, I will gladly be your ruination.”
Then, without warning, he dropped her skirts and sat beside her, crossing his legs demurely and bending to throw his black coat over them both. Imogen sat up, spluttering, startled by the damp cold of the leather. Torno the Strong Man stood just inside the tent, blushing fiercely under his hat and hugging an enormous barbell to his chest as if it was an infant.
“So sorry, my lady,” he said. “The twins hid my weights as a joke. Many times did I clear my throat, but . . . the caravan, it is so loud. Excuse me, signore. I will be going now. My show, it is starting soon.”
She could only shake her head numbly and blush.
“Good night, sir,” Henry said pleasantly. As soon as Torno nodded and turned away, he adjusted himself and exhaled, sliding down on the couch so that their heads were even. “Are you all right? Or do you hate me now?”
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? Why would you think I hate you? What did you mean about my ruination?” she asked dazedly. “And where did you learn how to do that?”
“I find a good novel can be very instructive. Where did you learn?”
“As with the dancing, I simply followed your lead.”
He sighed and stood to tug up his breeches and shrug on his shirt. She also sat up to put herself to rights, enjoying the sweet calm of a man who remained after the act instead of rushing away in disgust.
Handing over her jacket and hat, he watched her dreamily for a moment before a horrified look came over his face. “Oh, my poor girl. I didn’t ask. Have you taken precautions? Do we need to . . . I’m so sorry I . . .” He gestured vaguely at her skirts, and she sat up straighter.
“Of course I take the herbs. Stop looking at me like I’m going to fall apart like a wet biscuit. And don’t change the subject.”
He sighed. “I am a dangerous man, Imogen.”
He held out a hand. After buttoning the last button on her jacket, she took it, and he helped her stand.
She wobbled for a moment before sticking her chin out and poking him in the chest. “And what if I don’t care? What if I’m just as dangerous for you?”
“Then we’ll do what any good scientist does,” he answered, tracing one finger along her cheek. “We’ll research. And come up with a new hypothesis.”
She smoothed her skirts and set her hat at its usual jaunty angle. “I find that I like to experiment with you. But I also appreciate firm conclusions.”
He snorted. “Firm, indeed. Let us hope this experiment doesn’t backfire.”
“Backfire? My dear artificer, I find I like it better from the front.”
12
With Beauregard, it had always been awkward afterward, like two strangers who had accidentally run into each other on the sidewalk. Sometimes, in the museum, he had handed her a handkerchief before dropping her skirts and disappearing behind a convenient stuffed mammoth, leaving her to pick up the books she had dropped or the ledger she had been marking. No wonder she had never felt fire or hunger or even warmth. Most of the time, he had shown more fondness for the mammoths.
Not so with Henry. Although there was some strangeness to being caught, half-clad in his arms, his warmth and kindness in helping her get dressed warmed her even more toward him. Feeling his gentle fingers buttoning her hat to her collar was nearly as intimate as feeling them below her skirts. Whatever he had meant about being dangerous, right now, he was simply tender.
“So anyone can pass the clockworks to get back here?” she asked, trying to fill the silence under the tent with something besides the pounding of her heart.
“As you have seen, a clockwork guards each space between wagons.” He tucked his hair back under his hat and scratched his beard as if he wanted to rip it off. “And each clockwork has a safe phrase that will shut it down for one minute, long enough to allow passage through to here. I know the passcode for every clockwork, but the carnivalleros are given only one. They must enter and leave past Cadmus the cassowarrel. This is, after all, a public space. Should you ever wish to come here, simply say this to Cadmus: ‘Orangutan posthumous grotesque.’ He will freeze and allow you through, in or out.”
“What would happen if someone unfamiliar with the code attempted to bypass one of your masterpieces?”
He grinned. “First, they would receive a warning, and then they would face some rather dastardly consequences, I’m afraid. The clockworks are as much a defense as an entertainment, you see. The caravan defends her own.”
“But how do they work? Do they maim or kill? Are there other commands?”
He cupped her face to kiss her gently, surprising her. “I would love nothing more than to tell you everything I know. No one has ever shown any interest in my work, other than Criminy, and I don’t consider him nearly as kissable as you. But let us go and enjoy the last minutes of the carnival. You’ve never actually been to one before, have you?”
“No. My father didn’t believe in idleness, and my . . . well, my subsequent education didn’t include frivolity of any sort.”
He smiled indulgently at her, setting her hat just so and readjusting a button that was off with a gentle care that she found touching.
“Let us go, then, you and I. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed the sights.”
He adjusted his mask and pulled down the goggles, shrouding his fine eyes in smoky gray. Together they stepped out from under the magic glow of the rainbow-streaked tent. He led her in a different direction and nudged her forward, and she spoke the passcode to the long-necked clockwork bird. It paused in the midst of laying its own egg, going still and cold so they could duck beyond its neck. Once safe on the other side, Henry paused, her arm tucked into his, until the cassowarrel came alive again, swallowing the egg in a strange, contortionist dance.
They were in a different part of the caravan now, and they moved amid the crowd with bland anonymity. Arm-in-arm, they watched Torno lift his weights, his strength defying physics thanks to Criminy’s magic. Emerlie juggled hedgehogs and rode her unicycle high up on the wire, her lime and magenta costume glowing against the velvety night sky. Next up came Abilene and Eblick and the two-headed Bludman, each waiting behind a curtain to amuse and entertain and, in the twins’ case, terrify. A collection of bizarre creatures floating in large jars of liquid was surrounded by a crowd so deep that Imogen caught only a glimpse of the horrors within. They passed Letitia in her turban, telling fortunes in a sequin-spangled tent. She looked over an awestruck city girl’s stylishly huge bonnet to grin knowingly at them, and Imogen blushed despite herself.
“And how are you enjoying the caravan?”
Criminy Stain himself materialized beside her, his grin as mischievous as Letitia’s had been.
“It’s a bit overwhelming,” Imogen said. She could only imagine how flustered she appeared to his predator’s eyes and hoped his sharp nose wouldn’t pick up on what had happened under the tent. Wrapped again in hat and goggles and oversized black coat, Henry was a solid but unreadable enigma at her side, his silent tension betrayed only by the tight squeeze of his glove on her arm.
“And if it isn’t the Mysterious Mr. Murdoch,” Criminy said, falling into step with them. “I suspect everyone else believes you to be Vil in that get-up.”