Mila was trying to undress him. Mila.
Mila, who he had first found in a box—not even fully formed. She’d been monstrous and heartbreaking. Guilt had made him take her in and look after her, but something else made him let her stay. Responsibility was only part of it. Watching her grow and change made his head spin, it had all happened so fast. He tried to keep up, but he had to constantly remind himself that, while she was childlike, she grew in maturity by leaps and bounds. She was gorgeous and looked like a young woman. Pretty soon she was going to be just that, but not yet. And he had no right to take advantage of her curiosity.
Logic and sense returned with a vengeance. It didn’t matter that she felt and tasted like a dream. Didn’t matter that she made his heart pound or his limbs tremble. She was his ward. His responsibility. It was his duty to protect her, not to treat her like one of his girls. She was so much better than that. Better than him. She was naive and sweet and good. He would not be the one who ruined that.
But bloody hell, he wanted to.
Jack put his palms against her shoulders and pushed. Her metal skeleton made her heavier than she looked, and stronger, too. Still, he managed to put a couple of inches between them, which was just enough to break the kiss. The moment his lips left hers he felt a profound sense of loss that was both awesome and terrifying. Damnation, what was that feeling?
“Stop, poppet.”
“Don’t call me that.” She tried to pull him close again, but he stepped back, and she ended up with nothing but a strip of his shirt in either hand. She looked at him, eyes wide and full of hurt confusion. She didn’t understand, did she? No, of course she wouldn’t. So smart in many ways, but the subtleties of humanity still escaped her grasp. She wouldn’t understand that he couldn’t treat her like that; she would only know that he’d pushed her away.
“We can’t do this, Mila,” he told her. “Do you understand that?”
“But I thought you liked it.”
A strangled laugh lurched in his throat. Liked it? Liked didn’t even begin to describe how he felt, which was all the more reason to walk out of this room right bloody now.
“It doesn’t matter what I like. What matters is what’s right.”
She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t understand. You liked it. I liked it. How can that not be right?”
He swore to himself. How could he make her understand when she hated all the bollocks about rules and expectations? “You’re right, you don’t understand, and I don’t know how to make you. I just can’t.”
“You could with your doxy.”
“You’re not like her.” No, she certainly wasn’t. “You’re not the same as those girls.” She had the world laid out before her. He could make sure she had an education, employment if she wanted. And when the time came, he’d pay all the right people to make certain she found her way into good society and caught the eye of a man who might someday deserve her.
Mila nodded. “No, I’m not. It’s all right, Jack. I understand. I’m sorry about your shirt.”
His shirt? He didn’t care about his shirt. He had other shirts. He cared about her. “It’s all right, poppet. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, with all these changes that have been happening in the past weeks.” She’d gone from machine to human—a miracle in itself. She couldn’t possibly understand it all. “I know very little about womanly...things. I’ll ask Finley to talk to you about...how these things work.” He had to assume that by now Treasure’s relationship with His pain-in-the-arse Grace had progressed to a certain level. Not long ago that would have made him jealous enough to drink. Now he hoped for it. Hoped that Finley would know how to make Mila understand that he respected her too much to use her.
Something sparked in her eyes but quickly disappeared. “I wouldn’t want to bother her.”
“It would be no bother.” Besides, Treasure owed him a favor or two. “I’m going to let you rest now. We’ll talk about this more later, all right?” Truth was he was a top-notch coward, running away from the situation because he had no bloody idea what to do or say. His gut told him one thing and his conscience told him another. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he wanted to kiss her again. He wanted it very badly.
She just watched him with those big sad eyes. “Goodbye, Jack.”
“It’s not really goodbye, poppet. We’ll see each other at dinner.”
Mila nodded. “Right.”
Jack walked over to her and kissed her forehead. “It’s all going to be fine.” And it would be. He’d do everything in his power to make certain she had the best life she could ever have. She was not going to be tossed aside like he had been. He would care for and protect her until the world wasn’t such a danger to her.
Only then would he let her go.
A trip to the library was not what Finley had in mind when she followed Sam from the cellar laboratory. It was not the sort of room that invited violence.
“Is this a new form of fighting?” she asked, glancing around the familiar room. She remembered when she’d first come there, Griffin smiling down at her from the balcony that ran along each wall. That day she’d thought him the finest thing she’d ever seen.
Floor to ceiling was shelf after shelf of books, and the ceiling was very, very high. Griffin had more books than her stepfather’s shop, and he was a bookseller! Large, multipaned windows provided ample reading light during daylight hours, and gave the room an almost churchlike feel. Of course, that might just be her imagination, having grown up believing that knowledge gleaned through reading was close to godliness. “Are we going to throw books at each other?” Of course, she was joking. She’d never risk harming a book by throwing it at Sam’s thick skull.
“Funny,” he replied dryly. “I wouldn’t do that to a book.”
Finley blinked. Sometimes she and Sam were uncomfortably alike. “I didn’t know you read.”
He shot her a sour glance. “Emily helps me with the big words.”
Heat flooded her face. Sometimes she deliberately needled Sam, poked at him like a slumbering bear, but it was never her intent to offend him. Not really. “I mean, I didn’t think you enjoyed books.”
He shrugged before making his way to one of the shelves. “Depends on the book. Em likes to read, and she likes it when we can talk about a story. I like making her happy, so I read. Jane Austen’s not exactly my cuppa, but that Dickens bloke is all right enough. No more Shakespeare, though. Not even for her. That’s just rhyming nonsense to me.”
She couldn’t help but grin—and it was all right because he wasn’t looking. “The things we do for love, what?”
Sam pulled a leather-bound book from a shelf by his head, his expression droll. “Like risking your own death? That’s mad.”
“You’re a fine one to talk. If the suit fit you, you and I would be duking it out to see who got to go after him.”
He paused, then turned to face her, certainty etched into his rugged features. His dark gaze was blunt and clear. “No, we wouldn’t.”
Right. Because, if it was Emily who was missing, she wouldn’t even try to stop him from going after her. In fact, when Emily was kidnapped, Finley had known Sam had to take the lead on bringing her home. She hadn’t dreamed of getting in his way, even though Em was her best friend and she was worried sick about her. She played her own part, but let Sam do what he felt was best.
The big lad’s understanding of this made her turn her gaze away, to the shelves of books before them. She didn’t like that her feelings for Griffin were so transparent. It didn’t matter that they shared a bedroom, feelings were so personal. Private. Love made a person terribly vulnerable, and vulnerability was a state Finley despised. That he understood this made her want to punch him, and then perhaps give him a hug for being more of a dear than he had any right. “Why did you bring me here, Sam?”