The Mech Who Loved Me(32)

Kincaid shrugged. "It happened quickly.

Ava slowly looked up from beneath her lashes. "You don't like it when I praise you."

He graced her with another careless smile. "I'm not a hero, angel-"

"I beg to differ," she said, "considering both Dr. Harricks and I most likely owe our lives to your quick thinking."

He had such astonishingly blue eyes. Ava blushed. "Thank you." Straightening out of her crouch, she pressed a swift kiss to his cheek, the smoothness of his freshly shaved skin like silk beneath her lips. "For everything."

Kincaid inhaled slowly, and his fingers caught in her skirts, trapping her. Heat darkened his eyes, and Ava was suddenly aware of how a simple turn of his head might result in her mouth meeting his. She reluctantly lowered her hand from his shoulder and turned away, flushing a little. The kiss had been instinctive. A tender thank-you.

But it wasn't tenderness she saw blazing in the sapphire blue of his eyes. It wasn't tenderness that made his fist clench in her skirts.

"Are you going to let me go?" she whispered, not certain whether she truly wanted him to.

Kincaid looked up from beneath thick black lashes, his fist flexing a little in the fabric of her skirts. "Should I?"

The words stole her breath. She didn't know how to answer him. And maybe he saw it in her face, for he released her, stretching back in his chair and running both hands-human and mech-through his thick, dark hair. "Go, Ava. Give me a minute alone."

"Thank you," she whispered, stepping back out of reach.

She'd thought his flirtations meaningless, and had brushed them aside until now, but as Ava headed for the alley outside to catch her breath, she suddenly realized he wasn't just flirting with her because she was a woman, and that was what Kincaid did. Those heated looks he sent her were specific. The offer he'd made her was centered purely on her. It was Ava he was imagining in his bed in those moments, Ava he visualized whenever he gave her that wicked smile. 

And it had been for a while.

"Oh." Ava paused, pressing her back to the wall and sucking in a huge breath. Goodness. Liam Kincaid was flirting with her, Ava McLaren, owner of enough fichus to sink an airship, and the lady most likely to end her days as a spinster, surrounded by a dozen cats.

And he meant every single thing he was silently telling her when their eyes met.

Including his proposition.



* * *

There was no sign of Malloryn when they returned to the safe house, but the woman he'd left in charge in his absence, Isabella Rouchard-or the baroness, as Ava referred to her-was there, and in Malloryn's absence, she was the person they reported to.

"Someone's tampering with the vaccination clinics?" Isabella echoed, once Ava finished giving her report. "I can scarcely believe this. People stricken with the craving virus after receiving a vaccination, this Black Vein, bombs.... What on earth does it all mean?"

Ava exchanged a look with Kincaid. "We have no proof, my lady, but... it has to be connected."

"These riots aren't coming from nowhere," Kincaid added. "I haven't heard much from my mech friends, but the good doctor mentioned unrest among the population. Perhaps that has something to do with it? Maybe someone's got a grudge against the vaccination clinics."

"Or... it could be something more sinister," Ava pointed out.

"You think this has something to do with the dhampir or Ulbricht?" Isabella demanded.

At this Ava hesitated. She wanted the suspect to be their mysterious enemy, but.... "It could be anyone with humanist sympathies who can't forgive the blue bloods, despite the revolution. It might be some of the humanist contingents that were left over from the revolution. It might be the dhampir. We don't know."

Isabella paced the rug in front of Malloryn's ornate desk, her hands clasped behind her back. The woman ran the Rogues in Malloryn's absence, but Ava had had little to do with her in their time together. Gemma could stir the blood in a dead man's veins, but Isabella Rouchard intimidated her on an entirely different level. The baroness was frighteningly beautiful, with sharp black-winged brows, and hair the color of a raven's wings. "I'll mention it to Malloryn. He's busy with his forthcoming wedding at the moment, but I know he'll want word of this. In the meantime...." The woman tapped her ruby lips, staring into the distance. "Keep digging. We need to know who is behind this. If the unrest in the human population grows any worse, it could threaten our peace, and even the crown. We cannot tolerate that."

Ava curtsied politely, and began backing away. "Yes, my lady."

"Ava?" the baroness called.

She paused, her shoulder brushing Kincaid's. "Yes?"