Free Lust Plague (Steamwork Chronicles) by Cari Silverwood

twelve, while I was away at my aunt’s in another town, my family’s farmhouse was raided—bandits massacred everyone. Frankenstructs did it.”
    No matter how much blood she saw in the course of doing her duty by the air fleet, no matter how many battles and corpses…the blow struck at her heart whenever she recalled the red snake of blood curling in the stream beneath their bridge. Death where fun and laughter should’ve been. Blood on water. Mingzhu, you died too young. Prettier than me, so happy with life, and you died first. Wasn’t right . The guilt ever wrenched at her. Pulled. Plucked. Stuck ice needles in her soul.
    I should’ve been there…could’ve done something … But none of it ever mattered in the now.
    Weary, too wrung out to be angry any longer, she pushed herself up and sat back on her heels, looked Sten in the eye.
    What she’d expected to see, she wasn’t certain. Anger, annoyance, derision maybe? Instead his blue eyes held only compassion. She tucked some stray hair behind her ear, felt the shirt slip down over her bottom, adjusted the front, making sure her breasts didn’t show.
    “I’m sorry.” Sten’s muscled thighs flexed as he shifted position, making his brown trousers stretch. “But how do you know they were all frankenstructs?”
    She frowned. “I don’t. I can only go on what I was told.”
    “Childhood memories, huh? You wouldn’t condemn all men because some of them did something bad. Don’t do the same with us. Maybe some of them were just plain men. Maybe some were frankenstructs like me, ugly, strange-born creations. Do you look at an ugly face and just go, hell, he’s got to be bad?”
    “What? No!” She wasn’t that shallow, was she? “Besides, you’re not ugly.” How did that get past her tongue?
    True, though, he wasn’t ugly, not really, just different. Uneasy, she studied him. And something about him turned her on, no matter how disturbing that fact. But she wasn’t telling him that.
    Damn. He was distracting her again.
    To her shock, he reached out, took her hand, and kissed the back. “I’m sorry. I wish your childhood had been different. I know my kind aren’t totally innocent. Besides, I felt that way about plain humans for a while.”
    He stared off over her shoulder as if seeing something out there, beyond the doors, but she doubted he focused on anything particular. “My line got given double muscling—supposed to make us strong—good soldiers, good fighters. We got bad tempers too. I’m the only one left. They put everyone else down once the rage got too much. Too many people had died. All PME staff and trainers, though, nobody off base. We were kept locked up most of the time once they figured it out.” He flicked his gaze back down to her. “I was lucky. I escaped once. I was whipped by the captain on one of your GAM ships, then returned to the PME. When they recaptured me, one of the higher-up trainers, a woman who’d studied something called Zen, showed me how to meditate, how to think my way past the rage. She got me spared.”
    Despite everything, despite the way he’d hauled her around, curiosity sparked. He didn’t get angry anymore? How true, though. Sten was like a rock under a waterfall. Everything spilled over and past him while he remained serene. Some men would have yelled at her after she’d blown up the gyro. She hadn’t made him chase after her, sure, but he hadn’t done more than call her a few bad names. The zombie situation alone would be enough to unsettle most.
    Just for a moment, she let the way he held her hand get to her, saw how his roughly hewn fingers surrounded hers, his thumb rubbing lightly over the back of her hand. Calmness flowed into her. No . She shook herself, pulled her fingers away. Her imagination was playing tricks.
    Yet…sympathy stirred.
    “They were all killed? Everyone else?”
    “Yes.” The silver wolf pendant swung at the center of a thong about his neck, caught her eye as he