Revenge and the Wild(78)

She looked at his face. His eyes met hers, blue and illuminated against the grayness around them. Being there alone with Alistair in the woods, she realized she’d wasted their years together, avoiding her true feelings. If the loss of her family and Alistair’s near death had taught her anything, it was that time with loved ones moved faster than wild horses burning the breeze.

His pupils dilated when she reached out to him. With two snaps she undid his mask and pulled it off. Stubble dotted his jaw around the silver map of scars. Everything seemed to stop. Leaves paused on their way to the ground, birds silenced. It was as though the world held its breath.

She moved to kiss his scars, but he recoiled before her lips could touch them. Fear wrinkled the skin between his eyes. The fold smoothed in an instant.

She pulled back, wondering what she’d done wrong. They’d kissed before, so why in blazes . . .

Then it hit her. She’d tried to kiss his scars. Last time anyone had put their mouth to his cheek, it was to eat his flesh.

“Balls,” she cursed. She leaned away from him, put her hand to her mouth, and talked between her fingers. “I’m so stupid. I should’ve known—”

He put his finger to her mouth to keep her quiet.

She pressed her lips together, tried really hard, but just couldn’t do it. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you, don’t you?” she said.

He took her hand, put her palm against his cheek, and nodded. She ran her finger along the raised lines of his scars, read his heartbreaking story down to his neck, and stopped when she reached his breastbone. His body quivered beneath her touch. She felt the bomp-bomp of his heart racing against her own, both rushing to the finish line to connect to each other once more. She breathed him in, the sweat, the rain.

Leaning forward, she put her lips to his chest, tasted the salt of his skin. His breathing became more labored, and his muscles began to twitch.

A confidence like nothing she’d known prior to that moment led her actions. She let her hands slip down to his narrow waist, where she grasped his hips and pulled him toward her. She smiled when she felt the evidence of him wanting her too.

He pressed against her, none too gently. She didn’t want gentle. She wanted the anguish that had been building up inside her for so long to be decimated. His hands moved across her skin and knew exactly where to touch. Each perfect landing made her body shiver.

Westie drew in a sharp breath as he rolled on top of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck while their lips consumed each other. They kissed until Westie felt like she would detonate. She grabbed hold of his arm with her machine and flipped him onto his back, where she shredded the rest of his underclothes. An animated smile split his face in two and made Westie laugh, but as soon as she removed her own underclothes, his smile melted away.

Her confidence fell apart when he looked at the part of her arm where the pins of her machine had been drilled into skin and bone, latched on like some metal parasite. Westie had always kept that place hidden, even as a child. She started to wrap the blanket around her shoulders to hide herself, but he stopped her and reached out, touching the raised scars around the pins where Nigel had attached two other machines that hadn’t worked.

The teasing and stares from strangers had formed a callus around her heart over the years, but being there, exposed to Alistair, Westie felt soft and pliable. Like one disappointed frown could shatter her world.

His finger traveled from the edge of her skin to her machine, caressing the gears, cogs, the copper wire, down to the metal fingers. The muscles in Alistair’s jaw rippled when he touched the bare skin of her leg. There was a long pause before his hand moved again. He pulled away, and Westie watched his fingers fold into the sign for beautiful. For once she felt it was true.

Alistair rolled her slowly onto her back. She blew out a shaking breath and worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. He propped himself on his elbows, cradled her face in his hands, and looked at her in a way she’d never seen before, a way that needed no words. She knew then that she would give him a gift she could never get back. It made no matter. That gift was always meant for Alistair and no one else. With a kiss and an arch of her back, it was his forever.





Thirty-Five


They slept for a couple of hours. By the time they woke up, Henry had settled down enough for them to ride. They arrived in Sacramento by noon, Westie on the verge of bashful and Alistair with eyes squinting in a permanent smile.

Fleets of aeroskiffs flew over the city, the sky tinted brown from the smoke exhaling from their stacks. Most of the coaches on the road were the walking kind, just like the one Isabelle’s parents had bought her. They struggled to move as their sharp metal legs sank into the softened mud of the streets.

“Are you ready for this?” Alistair asked her when they reached the bank. His hair was wet and had turned to soft waves.

“Ready as I’m likely to get.”

They climbed down from their horses. Alistair held her hand, a gesture that would’ve felt foreign only days ago. She wrapped her fingers around his, taking comfort in the strength of his grip.

When they stepped through the doors of the bank, everyone inside stopped what they were doing to stare. Some gasped, others shied away upon seeing the pair’s mechanics. Westie noticed Alistair’s eyes shift to the ground as they did whenever people stared.

“Is it my dress?” Westie said, loud enough for all to hear.