Steamlust (7 page)

His face had got even redder. It was hard to be angry at a full-grown man who could blush, and very tempting to see how long I could keep him that way.

“Why would I not be pleased to be admired?” I had a good notion what his misconception was, and thanked my stars I’d never had the tendency to blush myself. “I’m not some simpering
damsel who denies having any parts below the waist.”

“No, of course not! But it’s known that your opinion of men is…is not quite that of most women.”

Enough fumbling around the issue. “Plenty of women share my opinion that men are boring and overbearing and a bar to our freedom. That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate them under the right circumstances. Just because I have some appetite for women doesn’t mean I draw the line at men.”

He brightened a good deal. “And what circumstances do you prefer?”

“Well,” I said, to jolt him a bit, “back in Wyoming I made the ranch hands let me tie’em to a fence post, and those who objected at first didn’t seem to mind it much later.” Just one ranch hand, a very young and shy one, but close enough to true.

“And all this time I thought I’d be better off to forget you if I could!” Miklos looked almost angry, until he flashed the smile that always sets off a spark in me. “So all I needed was a fence post to get tied to!” He pretended to look around our cramped space. “But you don’t seem to have one handy, and I didn’t think to bring any of my own.” He spread his arms wide and gripped the ropes connecting the gondola to the balloon. “Would this do, if I promise to consider myself tied?”

This was both game and challenge, I saw, though I wasn’t at all sure how one would judge the winner.

Miss Lily had stood just so, while I worked my way through her opulent delights…but with Miklos spread out at my mercy, all other visions faded. Miss Lily would have understood perfectly.

“We’ll just see how long you can hold that position,” I said, and took time to check our altitude and assess the balloon’s state of inflation. When I finally moved close enough to press against him I could tell through his expensive broadcloth trousers that he was getting to a considerable state of inflation as
well. So, in my way, was I, but it would be easier to keep control of the situation if I didn’t let on.

“Consider your head tied, as well,” I said sternly when he tried to duck his mouth toward me. “I’m the commander of this ship.” Then I stood on tiptoes with my body rubbing against him, set my hands on his shoulders, and touched my lips very briefly to his before running them across his beard. It felt silky and rough both at once. The white streak covered a scar of some sort, more like a burn than a cut; I stroked it so lightly with my tongue that I could feel him shiver.

“Good god, Maddy, this is harder to bear without moving than a whipping would be!”

“Well, I didn’t think to bring my whip, so you’ll just have to put up with whatever I choose to do, but if you fancy something harsher I’ll try to oblige.” I slid my hands inside his jacket and around to his shoulder blades, and gripped hard, which thrust his chest against my breasts. He kept his hold on the ropes but wriggled against me, which I allowed until I was enjoying it very nearly too much for self-control, and leaned back.

“Enough of that! Stay still!” I ran my hands down his back, noting for future reference that he seemed a bit ticklish about the waist, and dug my fingers into his truly fine, firm buttocks. I’d admired those even when I was watching them travel up Ruby Lou’s gilt staircase trailing that saucy French wench.

Miklos gasped at every savage squeeze, and jerked, and his trousers seemed fit to burst, but he held on. I worked one hand between his thighs from behind. His muffled groan sounded like the wail of a steam engine.

With both hands busy, I dropped to my knees and applied my teeth to the situation. Practice with women had made me an expert at buttons. It turned out that trousers and underdrawers had six each, and I needed to switch my grip to his thighs to
keep him steady enough for me get them undone before there wouldn’t be any more point to it.

Just before the final button I glared up at him. “Don’t go thinking I’m kowtowing to you just because I’m down here. One wrong move”—I put some upward pressure on his thighs—“and I can topple you over the edge.”

“You nearly have already,” he gasped. “Maddy, for god’s sake…”

“All in good time,” I said, and stood, and turned to adjust the gas flow. We’d been drifting downward too far. I felt his presence behind me like heat from a burner, even though he hadn’t moved, and at that point I wouldn’t have minded if he’d lurched forward to press his urgent cock against me from behind and let it all go, but he held on.

So it was up to me to turn and come at him, ripping open that last button, grasping the ropes below his hands so I could pull myself upward and mount him. I gripped his hips with my knees, ground my still-clothed crotch against his hardness, and felt my pleasure surge until his rasping cries took me right over the edge with him. Then, at last, he let go, and we both crumpled to the floor of the gondola.

I recovered first, stood up, and looked out over the Bay. “So,” I said, not wanting to assume anything serious about what we’d just enjoyed, “where’s your preference for a landing? I may not be able to steer the
Prairie Lily
like your airships, but the air currents here are complex, and I can do tolerably well by moving from one level to another.”

Miklos stood up, his clothing still in disarray. “Just land anyplace horizontal, and preferably private,” he said, still out of breath. Then, looking down at his open trousers, he added hopefully, “I don’t suppose you can do buttons up the same way they got undone, can you?”

“I can, but I won’t.” Then, as though it were an afterthought, I added, “Not this time, anyway. Now tell me about your dirigible airship.”

“What would you think,” Miklos said, feeling out his words carefully, “if next time happened to be up north in Sonoma? You could get all your answers there, and some of them on the way. And you might even decide to be part of something that’s going to change our world.”

“Miklos, tell me straight out what’s going on. For starters, where did you come from when you nearly hit me?”

He sighed. “Down the coast, traveling mostly at night and early morning. I set down in Golden Gate Park overnight—there was just enough light from the moon and the gaslights along the edge—and was taking advantage of the morning fog to get as far north as I could without being seen. I’d been fetching some materials from Los Angeles for our main base in Sonoma.”

I wasn’t so much doubtful as puzzled. “If this is all such a big thing, and so secret, how can you be telling me all this?”

“It’s about time! Maddy, you might as well know that you’ve been watched by one person or another ever since you came to San Francisco and we saw that we’d have to share the sky with you. I finally persuaded the leaders that you could be trusted; you didn’t tell the professor you’d seen me, and you didn’t tell Ho Ming, and there’s no doubt that we need you. Good pilots are hard to come by. Most of us don’t have half your skill at judging air currents.”

My mind was whirling, but it grabbed on to one detail. “The professor and Ho Ming knew?”

“They knew.” He saw my stormy face and rushed on. “Here’s the thing in a nutshell, even if it won’t make much sense at first. We’re building airships, and some day not too far off the skies will be so filled with them that you and I might wish
they’d never been built at all, but there’s no holding back progress.”

I must have looked interested, because he went on at a steadier pace. “The secrecy is partly because we don’t want our methods copied, but even more because our chief inventors and engineers are Chinamen who left their country before they could be imprisoned or killed for the ‘impiety’ of trying to conquer the sky. My uncle got to know and respect some of them who were also stone workers, digging caves in Sonoma for the storage and aging of his wines. Most places, though, they’re still in danger because of willful ignorance and bigotry against all immigrants from China. We’ll get past that, once we get to selling aircraft to European countries where there’s already considerable interest, but it will take time.”

“Speaking of time,” I said, “we’ll be setting down along the Oakland piers in ten minutes.” And I went about my pilot duties still pondering everything Miklos had told me. And not told me. It was clear enough that he’d flown with me today as a final check on my skills before letting me in on the secret, but I was quite sure my additional skills had come as a very welcome surprise. And just as sure that I wanted to be a part of whatever went on concerning flight.

He had certainly been prepared to find me suitable. Ho Ming had packed a change of clothing for me in the bottom of the ignored lunch hamper, and would bring along the rest of my gear herself. A private railroad car had been reserved to take us, and the
Prairie Lily
in a freight car, to Vallejo, and an airship hidden nearby would take us the rest of the way at night.

The gondola of the dirigible was overwhelmingly beautiful in both its engineering and its artistic design. I went from one wonder to another, not noticing the length of the flight, until Miklos drew me at last to the front window.

“I wanted to show you something, so we’ve taken a roundabout way.” He seemed nearly as nervous as when I’d caught him eyeing my derriere that morning. “You haven’t flown before at night, have you?”

I hadn’t. Now I looked out at a splendor of stars in the night sky, slightly dimmed by a full moon high and serene in the sky.

“
Sonoma
means ‘valley of the moon’ in the language of the Miwok tribe,” Miklos said softly at my shoulder. “But to me the moon is nowhere more beautiful than at the edge of the valley where the mountains rise.” He directed my gaze downward, and I saw that we were flying over a sea of low clouds flowing between a maze of higher mountain peaks, fog to those below but a white glory of reflected moonlight to we who watched from above.

“I…I want you to know, Maddy…” He hesitated. “Since I’ve known you, this moonlight vista always keeps me thinking of you. Not just your lovely short pale hair,” and here he touched my head lightly, “but you, not brazenly gorgeous like the sun, but with a silver glow part mystery, part strength.” He shook his head and turned away a little. “I’m sorry, I’m no poet and don’t generally get so fanciful. I just want you to know that it’s not just the work we can do together, or even the…” He paused, as flustered now as I’d ever seen him.

“The sex,” I filled in for him. “Though that alone would be enough.” I took his hand and gripped it hard. “Don’t worry. I came for more than the work and even the sex, as well. Where we’re going I can’t be sure, but I’ll take a chance on whatever currents are taking us there.”

That was enough for now. That, and a bit of scientific experimentation as to what positions two eager bodies could achieve in an elegant gondola twenty times the size of the one belonging to my dear
Prairie Lily.

M
iranda raced down the darkened hallway as quickly as her skirts and exhaustion would allow. She knew her face was flushed, smudged with ink and dust, her eyes too bright, as she’d run from the basement War Room to arrive in an unladylike fashion. Harbacher waited in the foyer when she topped the stairway, the butler no doubt anticipating her spectacular arrival once word of their visitor reached her.

“Where is he?” She didn’t have time for pleasantries. “The Blue Room?”

“Yes, mum. The captain looked less than pleased.” Harbacher sniffed. “Shall I bring tea?”

Blood pounded with an uneven gait in her ears as it raced through her body. For three days and nights she’d stood before the wall of barometric tubes, circuits and conduits in the War Room, consolidating dates and readings, measuring wind speeds and temperatures. Her hair had long discarded the elaborate coils and braids her maid had created. Since then hairpins had
been shoved this way and that to keep the auburn locks from covering her eyes and distracting her as she shifted through the cipher.

The pulling weight of the portable statistical computation device on her arm reminded her of its presence. She forcibly straightened her shoulders to stop from slipping into the lopsided droop her body naturally adopted. Strange. In her excitement at having finally broken the French code, and determining the perfect opportunity for an attack against their rising forces, Miranda had forgotten she wore it. The bloody thing was so much a part of her she’d long expected to be buried with it secured to her arm.

While she might have wished for a looking glass, her appearance no longer mattered. It wasn’t as if she needed to impress him, the Captain of the Dead. He was here to receive his orders—she was to deliver them with brevity. There was no reason to adjust the neckline of her corset or card her fingers through the wild tangle of hair. Still, she released the bindings holding the device to her arm and handed it to Harbacher. The less machinelike she was, the easier it would be to remember her place and his.

“Tea won’t be necessary, Harbacher. The captain won’t be staying long enough to enjoy our comforts.” Miranda took a step toward the Blue Room, but hesitated when Harbacher didn’t move. “And we are not to be disturbed while I debrief him. Is that understood? This is the matter of utmost confidentiality.”

“Of course, mum.” His disapproving frown spoke volumes. He knew of their history. They all did.

The servants would be all aflap by nightfall, of that Miranda had no doubt. Still, she was following protocol, fulfilling her duty to king and country to the very letter. No one must know
of this final push to drive the French from the skies over English soil if they were to win this war.

Miranda waited until Harbacher retreated to his post off the main hall, before resuming her journey to the room where the captain waited.