The Mech Who Loved Me(64)

"Well, there's a first. Can you talk about her?"

"Aye," he said, exhaling sharply, before words about Ava started spilling from his mouth, almost as if he'd needed someone to confess to. He was babbling, and he couldn't help himself. "She's smart, beautiful, shy, and bookish. But she's kind too. The type of woman who rescues abandoned kittens. And utterly oblivious to her own qualities. There was a man today who was flirting with her, and she had no idea." He shook his head. "Not a fucking clue."

"Sounds like she's got you wrapped around her little finger. Though she doesn't seem like your usual sort."

You have no idea.

Xander, wisely, poured him a whiskey. "So what's the problem?"

"She's never been with a man, she's in love with someone else, and she's a romantic through and through. She sees me as an experiment, I think. A no-risk affair." And while the idea had seemed perfect at first-something uncomplicated-it was bothering him now.

He had to keep reminding himself he had no future. Nothing to offer her. Keep it nice and uncomplicated, and have a little fun. That was the plan.

The plan had failed.

"I like her," he admitted. "Too much."

Xander snorted. "If you tell me you're falling in love with her, I will gladly punch some sense into you."

Kincaid shot him a look.

"Shit," Xander said, snagging the whiskey bottle and drinking straight out of it. He wiped his mouth, and then handed the bottle to Kincaid. "All yours, old son. You clearly need it more than me."

Kincaid glared at the three-quarters-full bottle, and then sighed and tipped it up. "I'm not falling in love with her."

A look.

"I'm not," he repeated. "I know where this ends-no, I know it has an end." He scraped his hand over his face, looking down at his mech fingers drumming on the counter. Sometimes he could still almost feel the actual hand. "I'm the next victim of the Kincaid curse, whether you believe in it or not, and she... she's got her whole life ahead of her."

Years and years. He'd almost started to forget what she truly was, but this brought it into perspective. Ava wasn't immortal-no blue blood was-but sometimes it seemed like it. Some of the older blue bloods were over a century and a half old, still wearing their powdered wigs and rouged faces from the Georgian era. He'd seen them from a distance, and while they were slowly aging, they still looked barely old enough to be his father.



       
         
       
        

Ava had a good century ahead of her. He had a dozen years at most. Maybe more, maybe less. And they weren't going to be kind years.

"Have you told her?" Xander asked, and then sighed. "Of course you haven't. That's why you're here."

"It's got nothing to do with it," he growled. "We argued. I needed some time to clear my head."

"What did you argue about?"

"Nothing." Nothing he could mention here anyway. Kincaid rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No more talk of Ava. Tell me all your news. What have you been up to? What mischief have the lads been causing?"

Xander's gaze shifted, raking over the crowd as he leaned closer. "Heard there's something brewing on the winds."

Kincaid nursed his whiskey bottle. "Something specific?"

"Something... bloody."

Damn it. "The revolution's over, Xander. Don't get yourself killed." His gaze flicked to Maggie. "Not when you just got handed the world on a platter."

Xander eyed her too. "Some things are worth fighting for. Maggie's one of them. But so's a man's right to live his life freely, and to see his children grow without threat of a leash around their necks-"

"We earned our peace," he countered. "The human queen sits on the throne now, and this"-he held up his mech hand and waggled its fingers-"no longer denies me even basic human rights."

"The same queen who signed off on the Blood Tax bill?" Xander demanded. "The same queen who saw the Packenham riot crushed in favor of her blue blood friends?"

The same arguments he'd used. Kincaid shook his head. Funny how now he was the voice of reason. "It was never going to be easy, damn you. Three races living side by side.... It will take time to understand how that works."

"Well, maybe there should be one race left standing? The human one."

Kincaid grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him close. "Tell me you haven't been joining those riots."

Xander brushed him off with a careless gesture. "You might have forgotten what you are, K, but me and the rest of the lads haven't." Unlacing his shirt cuff, he revealed the small tattoo on the inside of his wrist, the same one Kincaid wore on his hip. A branded H. "Humanists through and through, and we signed on to crush those pasty-faced cravers, no matter what it took."