Airship Nation (Darkworld Chronicles Book 2)

by Tom DeMarco

  In spite of what she said, she made no move toward him as they swam. They didn’t even touch. After their swim, they dried off in the sun by the water’s edge. Then they moved into the shade. There had not been very much sleep the night before, and Loren dozed off on the spread they had set out. Kelly went back to the pavilion to put together some lunch. Before she came back she put on her white sundress. She wore a white ribbon in her hair, which hadn’t gotten wet, to keep it up.

  They ate their lunch in silence, watching a pair of egrets wading calmly in the water just below them. At the end, Kelly put her arms around her knees and stared off toward the hills in the distance.

  She had said she was going to seduce him, but it was finally Loren who began the process. He came up behind her and began to rub her back and neck. He was wondering if he had ever kissed her. Of course, he had kissed her cheek, he thought, or perhaps not. He wasn’t sure. It was quite possible they had never kissed. She seemed suddenly terribly vulnerable. And Loren thought, How brave she was to have said what she said, not knowing whether she would be rejected or not. He had learned of her bravery before, in the heat of the Bahama Channel battle. He could still see her fighting taht terrible gasmasked figure in the shambles of the deck of the sinking enemy yawl. But this was a different kind of bravery. It wasn’t her life she was risking now, but her pride. She had put it on the line. If he rejected her, she would be injured. He knew something about that.

  She wouldn’t look at him directly, but when he turned her to face him, she was unresisting. He placed her on her back on the spread, staying on his side, propped up on an elbow beside her. Kelly closed her eyes. Loren touched her cheek and the line of her chin with the back of his hand, now moving the backs of his fingers down over her throat and onto her neck. Her flesh above the top of her sundress was cool. He looked down at his own hand resting so softly and intimately on her. He could see her heartbeat in the tiny flutter of her breast, just inside the white fabric of her neckline. When he leaned over her, she offered her lips to be kissed. He kissed her slowly, enfolding her in his arms.

  He thought he knew what was going to happen over the rest of the afternoon. But Kelly was full of surprises. When he began to undo the laced bodice of her dress, she objected in some confusion. She stayed his hand, biting her lip slightly. She said she had nothing on underneath the bodice. He wasn’t sure quite what to make of that, and then all at once he realized she was acting. The combination of eroticism and play was something he had never even considered. He went back to undoing the laces. Again she held his hand to stop him. “But what of my modesty?” she said.

  “Your modesty, young lady, is going to be sacrificed.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “And I think that you will have to be a part of the process.” He placed her two hands on the two halves of her now unfastened top. “When I tell you, you must open these two parts for me. You must. It is my command.”

  “Such exquisite torture, Captain. I fear I shall be unable.”

  “But you must. Or risk the consequences.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Now,” he said. Slowly and with evident reluctance, she pulled the two parts aside to show him. Her eyes were downcast, she was positively blushing. It was a stunning performance. He didn’t want it to end. And then, he had to say:

  “So that’s what you learn as a drama major.”

  She fell back giggling on the spread. “Am I good?”

  “You win the Oscar, or whatever they give for delicious soft porn.”

  “The Wet Teenager Award.”

  “You’re the best wet teenager.”

  “And the wettest.”

  And then she was back into her role, but less exaggeratedly this time. Her seduction was to let him seduce her. She held him back again and again. The sun was low in the west before he managed to divest her of all her clothes. She lifted her hips very slightly for him to slip her white cotton bikini brief down onto her thighs. And Loren thought, That is the most accepting gesture I have ever known. His heart was pounding as they drew slowly, slowly closer to the end.

  Then it was all a bust.

  At the last moment, his body withdrew its sanction. Loren was stunned. He had heard of such things, but thought it was an affliction only of the old. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe what had happened.

  “But, you see, nothing has happened, Loren,” Kelly tossed it off easily. “We’re just not done yet. That’s all. It’s going to take all night, and perhaps part of tomorrow, or maybe all week. We have got enough food for ten days. I am going to seduce you for ten whole days. I am going to tantalize you and tempt you…”

  “But I’m already tantalized and tempted!”

  “I am going to torture you then. And your body will resist me, but it won’t win. I am going to twist it around my little finger. And when I am done, it will be mine. All mine. It will consent, and give itself to me, without reservation. It will give me what I want.”

  “But why is this happening, Kelly? Why…?”

  “Because you have been terribly injured, my darling.”

  “But a man is supposed to be able…”

  “A man is just one flavor of human. And humans can be dreadfully hurt when their love is not cherished. Sonia couldn’t help what she did. She didn’t mean to injure you, but that’s just what she’s done. She has hurt you deeply. You didn’t protect yourself at all from her. You exposed yourself to her in every way, without reservation. And now you’re shy of exposing yourself again.”

  “Why did she do it?”

  “For her own complicated reasons. I think those reasons might have had nothing at all to do with you.”

  “I loved her.”

  “Of course you did.”

  She pulled him down to the water for a swim. Then to dry off, she chased him up and down the meadow wearing nothing in the warm breeze. At the end she caught him, he let her. She took him back into little stateroom and sat him down on the edge of the double bed.

  “I packed you a bag,” she informed him. “You seemed not to be inclined to think of such a practical matters. So I went into your things and picked out what I thought you would need.” She took a pair of his pajamas out of a duffel and put them on him.

  “I did love her, Kelly.”

  “Yes.”

  “I gave her all my love. I didn’t hold anything back.”

  “I know.” Kelly sat her lovely bare body down beside him on the bed. She was looking out the window toward the hills, lost in thought. He waited for her to say something, but then it was clear she wasn’t going to.

  “I loved her,” Loren picked up again, “but now I’m not entirely sure why. In the months since she left, I’ve been going back over it repeatedly. On paper she was the ideal woman for me: a physicist, terribly intelligent, beautiful. I would see the two of us in a mirror and think, why this is a perfect couple. The two reflected images were even exactly the right size for each other. We seemed to be fated to be lovers. Our resumes and physical characteristics would have made us a perfect match in a computer. Only, some of her actions were…”

  “Bizarre!”

  Loren lay back on the bed to regard Kelly. After a moment, he lost the thread of what he had been saying. Sonia seemed suddenly far away. He couldn’t remember her very well. He could recall her features: her thick, nearly black hair, her long fingers with their carefully tended nails, the fine eye-liner she used, her dark rose lips. But he could no longer assemble the features into a full image. There were only the disconnected parts.

  It was hard to think very seriously about another women with Kelly nude before him. With the slanting last rays of the sun coming in through windows, she was becoming all gold. Most of all, her pubic hair was perfect yellow gold in color. He had assumed it would have to be darker than her other hair, but quite the opposite, it was lighter. He found himself staring. She let him gape at her for a moment, then pushed a pillow in his face.

  “Fresh.”r />
  “Kelly, let me look. Please.”

  She regarded him indulgently for a moment. “OK. You can look.” She lay back on the bed for him. “I’ll close my eyes. It’s hard to stare when you’re observed, and I want you to be able to stare.” She closed her eyes, smiling slightly. After a moment, she sighed a deep sigh.

  For a moment he was touched only by the kindness of her thought. And then as he looked over her unprotected loveliness, he became more and more enchanted. She was a perfect vision of giving. Her body was her gift to him, offered without condition. Her arms were lying at her sides, her knees were very slightly apart. There arose from her the scent of her own desire, exuded during their afternoon play. It wasn’t strong, but undeniably there, emanating from the golden fur that his eyes were stuck upon. Without warning, his body became suddenly and urgently awakened. He felt that his excitement would overcome him, that he would come before he could move even the short distance to her. He tried to calm himself just enough to be able to take her in his arms. It took a long time. Before he was in control of himself again, Kelly was asleep.

  Waking up beside Kelly in the cabin bed: He was in her arms in the middle of the night, being caressed. She was running her hands over his bottom. He could feel himself being brought close to the point of climax against her body. Then she calmed him down again and put him back to sleep.

  He woke again. This time she was pressing his fingers against her nipple, pressing herself up against him by arching upward. He simply watched, letting her have her way of him. She took his hand in both of hers and pushed it down along her front, over her belly and into the golden fur, now transformed to silver in the moonlight. She pressed his fingers into her. She seemed to be floating with liquid. Kelly lifted her hips up into his hand, while she guided it back and forth slowly. He sensed that she was close to the edge. But she was tantalizing herself as much as him so she stopped. She lifted his hand to her mouth and tasted one of his fingers, critically. Then, it having passed the test, she led it to his own mouth and let him taste. He licked his fingers of all the glistening wet. When he was done, she put her own fingers into herself and brought more of it for him to taste. Then she calmed him down, and herself as well, and they both slept some more.

  In the first dawn, she aroused him again. He felt helpless in her hands. His body was so confused that it seemed to forget it was being recalcitrant. She guided him into her and rocked him back and forth, toying with the edge of his climax. She was utterly confident now; she knew that she had won. She slowed him down and told him he needed to try not to come. She said to think of straw, just volumes and volumes of dry straw. He did just as he was told. He was letting her control his mind as well as his body. Then she had her hands on his bottom again, pushing him down and into her body. He tried to think of straw, to hold back as she seemed to want. There was her delicious quivering pressure all around him as he slid back and forth in her secret channel. He felt his fluids dribbling into her and then rushing. It seemed to go on and on. Kelly let him be still for a long while after coming, then she started again to rock him on top of her. He knew that this was for her own pleasure. He felt her stiffen underneath him. She stopped for just a moment, then began again. She was rising up to meet him. She opened her mouth to let him hear her soft moan. It was a little prize awarded to him. A few minutes later he could hear the regular breathing that connoted sleep. Loren went to sleep himself, still inside her.

  “How many times do you think we will make love?” he asked her. After nearly a week on the island, he was a little unsure how many times they already had.

  “Oh, very, very many,” she said. “Over our two long lifetimes.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “It seems too good to be true.”

  “I will let you hear my favorite thought about love. It’s this: I will give my love, but I will never take it back. You are my lover at this second, because you are inside me. But you will also be my lover for every other second of my life. When you snap your fingers for me, I will begin undressing for you.”

  “And if you give your love to someone else as well?”

  “Then he will be my lover too for the rest of my life. Along with you, but not instead of you. Am I shameless?” She looked down on him, smiling mischievously. She almost always smiled during lovemaking.

  “Your favorite thought is not shameless. I like it. You, of course, are shameless though. Because you are so horny.”

  “Yes.”

  “Only ‘shameless’ is still not the best word to describe your lovemaking.”

  “What is the best word?”

  “Merry.”

  The previous year in Ithaca, Loren had pored over Edward’s library of books about sex. He had felt the need to learn from the published literature what he was not learning from his own experience. The books had instructed lengthily about the care needed to assure a woman’s climax. But none of that applied to Kelly. She came quickly and easily. She lubricated so suddenly that sometimes it would make her cramp. “Too fast,” she would say. She wasn’t saying it to him, but to her own overly eager loins. When one time he leaned her nude body against the galley bulkhead and began caressing her in that vertical position, her clear juices began spilling over, down the inside of her thigh. Loren slid his fingers in its track all the way down to her knee.

  She passed through phases from first suggestion or touch until final quiver. She seemed to swell almost anywhere he touched her. As he kissed her, her color rose. He would study the changes in her, ever the scientist. However long he could continue teasing and arousing her, she got prettier and prettier all that time. The change at the end was a rosy flush that would descend from her neck and onto the tops of her breasts. He could pause then until her skin was white once more and then begin again to bring back the flush.

  As Kelly got prettier under his touch, Loren began to feel stronger under hers, more virile.

  “May I pick you up and lift you into the air?”

  “Of course.”

  They were standing knee deep in their little pond at the bottom of the hill where the Cornell was resting. He lifted her easily into his arms, up to a sitting position his shoulder, and then with one hand under her bottom and the other in the middle of her back, he pressed her upward until his arms were extended all the way. Kelly relaxed entirely, smiling lazily at the blue sky above her. Loren couldn’t think what to do with her next, so he waded two steps further out and launched her easily into the pond. She came up without a sputter and came back to him, crawling up his front for another throw. He threw her again. When she came back a third time, he lowered her into the water at the pond’s edge, thinking to make love to her there, but no, she said, she had another place in mind, up in the very middle of the meadow where simply everyone could see. Of course there was no everyone to see. But they felt deliciously exposed, rutting in the open field.

  She could be so compliant that it was like making love to a trusting child. It seemed almost illegal. But just as often, it was she who was in control. He had become used to letting her have her way. “May I…” she would begin to ask, and Loren would put his finger on her lips to stop her. “You may. Whatever you can think of, or imagine.”

  On one of their forest walks, they passed through a tiny village with a store. Loren found sealed packages of crackers and a can of sardines for lunch and bottles of Cuban beer from the shelves. In the same store, Kelly found a pretty yellow dress in her size. She tried it on, letting him watch. He never tired of seeing her undressing and dressing. She stowed her jumpsuit in the basket they were carrying, and went on in the dress.

  They stopped by a stream and cuddled on their blanket while the bottles cooled in the water. After lunch, they walked into the forest along a wide path, covered with soft pine needles. They both took their shoes off to continue on the path in their bare feet.

  The path led them to a mature growth of pines on the level. The first branches were so high that th
e vault of the trees was like a natural cathedral. There were chanterelles growing there, at least Kelly thought they might be chanterelles. At the middle of the forest cathedral was a wide spot of sunlight beside a monolithic mossy rock. Kelly rested there against the rock, turning her face up into the sun. She had her eyes closed. Loren sat down in front of her. The yellow dress was very short, cut well above the knee. He fixed his eyes on her thighs just below the hem. She had nothing on under the dress, he knew; her underpants were still in the pocket of his jeans from after their last coupling.

  “A penny for your thoughts, Loren Martine.”

  “That the future of our lives should be like the present,” he said. Kelly leaned back against her rock, eyes closed again. Loren spread the blanket out in the spot of sun at her feet. He undressed himself slowly on the blanket, gazing up at her. Kelly didn’t need to see what he was doing, she could hear. She smiled as she waited.

  6

  THE BATTLE OF DAY 421

  Little by little, the focus of the settlement had moved from the beach and docks up to the heights above the village, the Alturas de Baracoa. There were ten new war pavilions, “moored” there now, hanging in space above the Proctor’s new headquarters. In speed trials, these large flyers had shown capabilities of up to two hundred mph. Each one had room for as many as fifty in crew, but really needed only six. Two of the six were required to handle the two parts of the SHIELA laser focusing mechanism, and the other four to sail the pavilion. It wasn’t at all clear what role an additional dozens of people would play on board.

  Loren, professional worrier, kept going back over all the links that had to operate perfectly for SHIELA and the Hard Body satellites to be able to function. He was haunted by the thought that their ultimate weapon would suddenly be a ultimate non-weapon just at the moment they needed it. Whatever those links were, the various subsystems of SHIELA and the HB satellites, including power supplies, telecommunications, logic circuits, electronic memory, etc., they were helpless to repair them if ever anything went wrong. He suspected that there were components with short life expectancies, and when the first of these failed, the entire system would be out. So he gave a lot of thought to alternate weapons to arm the fleet. To date, the best he had been able to come up with was a mass of projectiles to be dropped on the enemy vessels. For want of anything better, he loaded each pavilion with half a ton of bricks from the brickworks near the village. The extra forty or so people on board, he guessed, could serve as brick throwers if the need arose. A brick falling from, say, five hundred feet, would be a formidable weapon against a fiberglass hull.