Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key) by Nicole Blanchard, Skeleton Key Page B

pears and mixing them together in the cleaned tin pot. It wasn’t much, but we needed fuel for the day ahead.
    I was halving a pear when I felt Ezra’s presence behind me. Unlike before, my body stilled, but not with the tinge of fear it had before, but with complete feminine awareness.
    It made me scowl at the pear in my hands. “Did you need something?” I asked.
    Instead of answering, he took the hand with the pear and brought it to his lips. I twisted around so he could see the downward turn of my lips.
    “You could have waited. I was almost done.”
    I was so displeased by the turn of events, I didn’t realize the fruit was still in my hands as he nibbled. The knife clattered into the tin bowl as my hand went limp. He bit into the pear and his full lips wrapped around its flesh. I had a sudden, startling urge to taste the pear from his lips.
    “You can let go of my hand now.” I was pleased to find my voice was steady—certainly steadier than my thundering heartbeat. I only hoped he couldn’t feel it racing underneath his palm.
    He didn’t. Instead, he took another bite, that time his lips grazed my fingers. I wrenched my hand from his and went back to peeling the fruit.
    When I was finished, I filled a bowl and shoved it in his direction. “Here, if you’re so hungry.”
    He took the bowl and sat next to me. He didn’t mention the deal with the pears, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up.
    “I think our best chance at getting out of here is to see if anything was left behind before they abandoned this place. Maybe they have some sort of communication or boat they left behind that we can use.”
    I barely heard what he was saying because I was so fascinated by his glistening fingers bringing bits of apple and pears to his lips.
    When I noticed he was looking at me expectantly, I frowned. “What?”
    “Do you want some of mine?” he asked. “You’re staring at it like you’re going to take a bite. Did you not get enough?”
    I glanced back up at his face and noticed his self-satisfied smirk so I scowled in return as I finished my own food. Then, I wiped my hands on my still-damp pants and got to my feet.
    “We better get started, then,” I said.
    I left the cups and tin pot in the farmhouse and we gathered anything of use from the pod. There was a medical kit I wished I’d seen the night before when I was cleaning Ezra’s head wound, an automata that told the time—not that we would have much use for it—and a brass card with a picture of Ezra’s family printed on it.
    His eyes softened at the image, and he pocketed it with a gruff, “Best be going,” before he dove back in the jungle of orchard trees.
    I followed after him with a frown that was quickly becoming an automatic response to being in his presence.
    The lamps that heated the capsule were turned up to full blast, no doubt to stimulate the growth of the various plants, but it was a heck of a thing to tromp through since the chill had burned off.
    Ezra cut a powerful figure though the reaching arms of the trees and brush. Fingers of it clutched at my clothes as I fought my way through. We picked our way through the fields, taking handfuls of sugar snap peas and green beans to feast on when we hadn’t made our way across to the other side by lunch time.
    “How much farther?” I asked when we stopped to take a bit of water from the pack he carried on his back.
    Sweat beaded on his forehead and he’d shed the thick black overcoat he wore like a second skin. “Not too much farther, I hope. These ag-farms were small when they built them at first. Now that we have so many people, they had to build larger ones to support the population.”
    “How many people survived here after the war?” I asked. “How many ports are there like Arliss?”
    Ezra wiped a hand over his brow and took the canteen from me to chug. His throat bobbed as he swallowed and a bead of sweat slid down into the dark tangle of hair at the hollow of his