Until he looked at her and saw her face.
Shit.
Glancing around, Kincaid captured her cheeks in his hands, carefully wielding the screwdriver. "I didn't think we wanted anyone else to know."
"We don't."
Kincaid kissed her gently on the lips, his heart softening. "Then that's all it was. Should you even be out of bed?" He could still see it, the moment he'd seen her face and realized she'd been poisoned.
That he could lose her.
He wasn't coping very well with the idea, and Ava made a small sound as his grip on her face tightened.
Kincaid released a heavy breath and let her go.
"I'm fine," she said, frowning in confusion, as though she'd sensed some part of his inner turmoil. "My chest still aches a little, but every hour I can feel the weight in my lungs easing. At least there's one good thing about the craving virus... it heals very quickly."
One good thing.... He'd have never even thought it before, but he could admit it now. And he knew she was making a point to him, one he couldn't accept.
Can't you? He'd deliberately not vaccinated himself, after all, and though he'd told her it had to do with a fear of needles, he'd been lying.
"What have you been doing down here? What are you making?" Ava stepped around him, gaping at the steel mech-suit. "Is it a Cyclops?"
The enormous Cyclops had been used to thwart the mechanical army the prince consort used to protect himself during the revolution.
"Not a Cyclops," Kincaid muttered, swinging under the arm of the suit and prying open the electrical panel on the back. "Though it's inspired by one of them." He tugged a few wires loose, examining the circuit board. Something still wasn't right in the boiler, and he set his mind to the problem of working out what. "I call it the Achilles, an invincible exosuit I can fit inside. It's smaller than a Cyclops, and designed to protect a human's vulnerable points, while also packing power behind any movements. The idea is that wearing this means I can jump off a building and land without busting a kneecap, or punch my way through a brick wall. Jack's been working on it with me in his spare time."
There was a moment of silence.
He turned to find Ava peering at him with big eyes. "You'd be as strong as a blue blood," she said softly, seeing straight to the heart of the matter.
"Not as fast though," he muttered, finding the loose wire in the circuit that was currently thwarting him. Aha. "Not until I can get the pistons in the leg armor working better."
"You do realize Achilles had one major vulnerability?"
Kincaid knelt and patted the steel boots he'd fit his foot inside. "As you can see, no issues with the heel here."
"I didn't know you had an interest in mechanical... creations." Ava knelt beside him, stroking a curious finger down the slick spar that bound the thigh armor to the shin guard.
"I spent ten years in the enclaves," he replied, looking down at her gilded blonde curls. Jaysus. If she turned her head, she'd catch an eyeful of his hardening cock. "That's what my sentence was to repay the cost of my hand."
"How'd you lose it?"
Ava looked up, and Kincaid had the sudden urge to grab a fistful of her hair and haul her toward his aching cock. He could suddenly picture her on her knees, her hands on his thighs as he undid his belt, her lips parting to swallow his cock whole....
Not going there. Not at this moment. Gemma's words had undone him. Kincaid scowled, and slammed the electrical panel shut, pinching his finger in the process. Thinking about his hand deflated his cock. He could almost feel his nonexistent fingers tingling. "I was an apprentice mech-maker when I was fifteen. The older lads thought it'd be funny to hold my hand close to a threshing machine and turn it on."
Her face drained of color. "It didn't-"
"It did." He stepped back from the mech-suit, wiping his hands clean on a rag. "Nearly killed me, what with the shock and blood loss, and then the surgeon removing what was left. My brother nursed me through the fever, then went to the enclaves to barter for a replacement." Kincaid looked down, clenching the rag in his fist. Bloody William. Always trying to play the knight in shining armor. "He served two years in that hellhole while I recovered and learned to use the bloody thing. Then I took over the debt, and took his place. His health wasn't.... He should never have been there."
"I'm so sorry. They say they were horrible places."
"Aye." No denying that. "But I'll be honest and admit I made something of myself there. I've got a gift for mechanics. Wires, and steel and cogs... it all makes a certain sort of sense to me. I've always been good with my hands and I worked my way up to overseer. Gave me a chance to get in on the action when the humanist cause first started rearing its head among the downtrodden classes. The Duchess of Casavian gave me the designs for the Cyclops, and the mechs in my enclave created them, right beneath the noses of the blue blood lords who owned shares in the place."