Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

tunnel collapse.” Lorenzo offered a strange smile, as if the sides of his lips had been jerked back. “Isn’t that right, Father?”
    “Yes.”
    Annika looked to Källa, who nodded.
    “I insist,” Lorenzo said.
    Instead of ice blocks, wooden planks formed the bath chamber’s walls. Copper pipes crossed the ceiling, dripping hot water to the boards below. David’s eyepiece fogged the moment he entered. Switching to thermal offered him a view of a fuzzy yellow mess. He reached for one of the towels rolled up on the shelf instead.
    Annika looked doubtfully at the tin tub sitting beneath a gooseneck faucet. She tested the stream of water with the back of her hand, nodded. “It is nice.” She glanced back at him. “Do you want to join me? It’s big enough for two.”
    Though David would have liked to, he shook his head. He wasn’t prepared to show her that much of himself yet. “You don’t have todrive to the tunnel tomorrow. Lorenzo can insist all he likes; I won’t have you forced into it.”
    “I know. But if nothing else, I’ll have access to a troll, and permission given by Lorenzo to drive it. If I ever have to use the troll to smash him flat, the guards won’t be so quick to shoot at me when I start her up.”
    If she chose to go, then David would try to push away his worry. “I’m beginning to realize that you’re a bit bloodthirsty.”
    “No.” She pulled her tunic over her head, revealing the beautiful curve of her spine. Familiar heat pooled in his groin. “I just like to see people get what they deserve.”
    “Which includes smashing them flat.”
    “All right. A bit bloodthirsty, then.”
    David supposed that he was, too. But he didn’t want to think of Lorenzo now. He dragged a chair up to the tub as she peeled away the rest of her clothes.
    She kicked away her drawers, glanced over her shoulder. “You plan to watch?”
    “I’m hoping that you’ll teach me how to be modest.”
    Her grin matched his, then changed to a quiet hiss when she stepped in. David lived and died a thousand happy deaths in the brief second when she bent over to brace herself, rump high and her sleek thigh lifting over the edge. A soft groan filled the chamber as she eased down, and he could only imagine her making the same noise if she eased down over him, hot and wet. God. His cock swelled as he pictured it, and David welcomed the throbbing ache, loved the wholehearted response of his body. Annika didn’t deserve anything less.
    And by God, when he looked at her, even the painful constriction of his trousers felt good.
    She dunked her head, came up dripping and pushing the hair out of her face. Her eyes opened and met his. With a playful smile,she moved toward him and folded her forearms on top of the tub’s rolled edge. She crooked her finger, gesturing him closer.
    He was happy to oblige. Bracing his hands on the edge of the tub, he leaned forward. “Close your eyes.”
    She did, her wet eyelashes forming spiky fans against her cheeks. He sipped a warm drop from her jaw before coaxing her lips open, his heart pounding and his eyepiece fogging again as he savored her taste.
    When he drew back, she followed him for a few inches, her moist lips parted, her cheeks flushed from the heat and the kiss. Slowly, as if her eyelids were heavy, she looked up at him. He didn’t want to wipe his eyepiece clear again when she did. He didn’t want to ask her to look away.
    Damn it all. He hated having half of his vision obscured.
    He rubbed the lens shield clear. She watched—not his eyepiece, but his face. God knew what she saw.
    But of course, being Annika, she told him.
    “David, I want to tell you…I don’t know if any of this hesitation is to spare my feelings, but I wanted you to know, the scars, the steel—they don’t matter to me.” She stopped. Frowning, she pushed the wet flop of curls back from her forehead, tried again. “No, that’s not what I mean. They do matter, because they are a part of you. But I don’t see them in the same way that I think many others do.”
    From that first night on Phatéon , when they’d spoken so easily after Mary Chandler had called him horrid, he’d known that Annika didn’t see them in the same way. But he still did, sometimes. “I was almost never this self-conscious with stumps. That was just…what happened. And when people reacted or stared, it was easier to push away.” He lifted his hand. “But this, I did to myself—and sometimes it’s