Steamlust

by Kristina Wright

  “Good,” Gustav said lightly. “Now, here.” He touched her arm more gently than she’d thought he could, with his warm, flesh and blood hand, and motioned for her to lie, facedown. With as much grace as she could muster, Violet kneeled on the padded leather and slid down until her body was nestled against the curves of the chair.

  “Part your legs, this way,” Gustav murmured, touching her calves very gently. He circled her, making small adjustments to her position, checking that she could reach the levers and handles. Lying prone, with her cheek against the cushion, Violet noticed a curious sensation. Despite her agitation, the chair invited her body to unwind. It supported her, like the body of a lover, she imagined—it was firm, generous, enveloping. Rising to meet her between her legs, with dips and hollows at her breasts, chin and knees, it molded to her shape perfectly.

  The leather warmed and softened under her, and she felt herself melt into the chair—had she ever felt this cared for, this mellow? A fleeting word tickled the back of her thoughts. Was this how it felt, she wondered, to be loved?

  “Ridiculous,” she murmured.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “It fits,” she replied, “very well.”

  “Of course,” Gustav said. “But we need to test the working of it. Here, let me.”

  Violet bit her lip. Gustav’s hand had fallen on her thigh. He dragged her legs apart, not roughly, but as though she were a doll to be posed and adjusted according to his whim.

  “Ready?”

  Violet murmured her assent. Gustav bent down low so that his mouth tickled her ear.

  “Don’t struggle, now. This will be easier if you hold yourself still.”

  He took her left hand and led it to the polished wooden handle.

  “Just very easy, now, pull this back.”

  Violet did as she was told. Underneath her, cogs ground against each other. A pulley creaked. There was a loud sigh, as steam escaped, and an insistent hum as the power ran from the central steampillar and entered the machine. And she felt pressure rise against her pubis, the chair extend and curl upward, as though a large, stiff tongue were pushing against her, digging between her legs. The chair shook and hummed, as though the tongue were singing to her, a song so unbelievably warm and expansive it terrified her.

  She pressed her mouth tightly closed.

  “Good. A little more,” Gustav said, his voice tight. She felt his hand burrow into her drawers, and let out a gasp.

  “Shh,” he said, laying his other, mechanical hand on the small of her back. “I’m just checking.”

  It was enough, she thought, to be lying half undressed in the crepuscular, squalid studio. Enough that she had shared her most shameful and abominable desires with him and found herself trapped in a cage of her own making. That he would now lay his hands on her—

  “Stop,” she said, suddenly. With no little difficulty, she pulled herself upright. Her bodice was awry and her clothes crumpled. Yet her defilement had not made her a mewling wreck, at least. A hot coal burned in her breast. This feeling was familiar. Violet was angry.

  “Sir,” she said. “This has gone far enough. I cannot tolerate you mocking me any longer.”

  Gustav stood, his face a mask.

  “I do not mock,” he said.

  “I came here,” Violet said, standing and pulling at her clothes, trying vainly to cover herself though everything seemed to be slipping. “I came here because I needed something from you.”

  “And I have made it,” Gustav said. “Haven’t I fulfilled the brief?”

  Violet looked down at the chair, which was still buzzing, gently. Its curves suddenly seemed treacherous, its embrace just another cage that sought to trap her.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “How could I have thought you ever would?”

  To her fury, tears rose up to accompany the words, spilling generously from her eyes. She turned her head away.

  Gustav sighed.

  “I believed I was providing you with a machine to service your needs, my lady.”

  “No. More than that.” Violet fixed her eyes on the closed doors of the furnace, behind which burned the engines that kept the buildings running.

  She had never fully understood the exact workings of the city, the giant burning columns that provided the power harnessed from the steam, the railways that crisscrossed the streets, carrying coal and wood, the curious and complicated machinery that converted that power into useful apparatus—she knew only that when she needed something, it appeared.

  Her every wish, dream or fancy, instantly fulfilled—just so long as it was approved by her mother, father, the gentlemen of the court, and the unwritten and unbendable rules of etiquette that governed her everyday life and it seemed, by some unarguable and inexplicable logic, kept the world running smoothly.

  “I needed something to sate my wants,” she said, her voice flat and dim. “A machine that would assuage my frustrations—”

  She bit her lip. “The inner life of a lady, sir, is not as peaceful as you may imagine.”

  Gustav laughed.

  “I do believe you’re admitting it at last.”

  “Sir?”

  He stood and approached, scratching his stubble with his machine-hand. Violet had an inkling that he knew it frightened her. She suspected he enjoyed the shiver that she could not quite suppress.

  “That underneath all that fine lace, you have what everyone else has.”

  Violet narrowed her eyes.

  “Could you stop yourself from being coarse for once? Do you even have it in you?”

  “I’m not talking about your body’s natural appetites.” Gustav nodded at her. “That’s your own imagining, my lady.”

  “I’m talking about…” he laid a hand on her chest, where the shelf of her bosom rose and fell faster than it ought to, “…your heart.”

  His hand was warm. He kept it there. Nestled in the valley of her breasts, she was surprised to find it comforting, rather than threatening. She looked up at him. For once, there was no rusty fire in his eyes, only a deep and quiet warmth.

  “I do not need to love,” she said.

  “Or to be loved? Forgive me, but I do not believe you.”

  She pulled away, but he tugged her back, replaced his hand.

  “It beats,” he said, softly. “I can feel it.”

  “Yes, it beats. Whether I wish it or not.”

  Violet raised her chin.

  “When I lie abed, alone in the darkness, I am at last able to let go of the damned smile I must wear day in and day out, the cursed, cultivated, ladylike mouth that I paint on in the morning and loathe from the moment I wake until the hour I retire. I jam my hand between my legs. I stroke myself. I induce such paroxysms that I could scream.”

  Gustav did not let his eyes drop.

  “And yet it is not enough,” he said. “Is it?”

  Violet stepped forward. She kissed him hard. Hard enough that his stubble scraped her cheek. At first, her tongue darted into his mouth as fast as a flickering flame. Then, as they sank against each other and his warmth flowed into her body, she let it meander a little, over his lips, to taste the salt there, the fire of the whisky.

  He broke away, breathing hard.

  “My lady,” he said, “Violet.”

  “Quiet,” she said. “I am not paying you to talk.”

  “I trust you are not paying me to make love to you, either.”

  Violet held his face in her hands.

  “I have spent my life paying people to do what I wish. I have never wanted for anything. Why should I stop now?”

  “Because what you want can’t be bought.”

  They stood with their faces inches apart, so that their hot breaths met and swirled together. Violet felt again the grip of his metal hand and this time she wanted him with a violence that almost overwhelmed her.

  “What do you want?” she whispered. “What is your price?”

  “Everything,” he said. “Everything you own
.”

  She searched his eyes.

  “You think I’ll give up all that, to soothe the lust in my heart?”

  “Not lust. The one thing you are really afraid to admit.”

  “Which is?”

  “Love,” he said, simply. “To live here, with me. As a free woman.”

  Violet laughed. “It seems a veritable bargain.”

  Gustav didn’t laugh back. Instead, he held onto her with his machine hand and started, with the other, to loosen her corset. The lacing pulled from the eyes with a little ripping sound.

  “Give up your life,” he said, “and you will win me.”

  “My flat?”

  “Abandon it.” He tugged at the laces around her waist. As they came free, she exhaled noisily.

  “Thirty servants. A steamtrap and driver.”

  “Set them free.”

  He pulled the shell of her corset away in two halves, as though he were removing the shell from some sea creature. Underneath, her bare skin was marked with lines where her underclothes had bitten into her skin.

  “A place at court. Invitations to the very best parties.”

  Gustav raised an eyebrow. He took hold of her petticoat and ripped it apart, tearing it from her waist to her knees. Violet shrugged, and stepped out of the ruined skirt. She laughed as though she had breathed in for the very first time.

  “The proceeds of my trust?”

  Gustav paused. “How much?”

  “More than I need.”

  He nodded; traced a line from her chin, down her collarbone, to the gentle curve of her breast, where he circled, as if entranced. Her eyes dropped to the twitching fingers of his metal hand.

  “How did you lose it?” she asked.

  “I was impatient,” he said, lifting his wooden-tipped fingers, as if to surrender. “I wanted to master the world. Be the greatest inventor that ever lived. And I refused to listen to anybody.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  She took the hand and examined it. He held it still, not flexing the spring-loaded joints, not curling the delicate, beaten-tin fingers.

  “I built it myself,” he said.

  “That must have been difficult.”

  “Yes. But now it works. It is part of me,” he said at last. Violet looked up at him, then bent to kiss the worn leather of the machine palm. She drew the hand down, to her drawers, and placed it between her legs, pressing against it through the slit in the cotton.

  “It works?” she said.

  Gustav nodded. He pulled her toward him, crushing the awkward metal of his hybrid hand between them, making her moan.

  “Like any man, my body is weak,” he said. “Only I have been blessed with a hand of my own devising.” He interspersed each sentence with caresses, raining kisses down on her bare neck and shoulders like molten lava. “With it, I can create miracles.”

  The blunt tips of his fingers pressed and pushed at her, the polished wood hard, but curiously supple too, so that it felt he was making love to her with a wondrous mix of urgency and tenderness, the sensation circling, rising and dipping to some intricate pattern of his own creation. Violet felt a scream build in her belly, low and urgent, as though her voice were not her own.

  With his other hand, Gustav had freed his cock from his trousers and pushed her against the couch, lifting her buttocks so they perched on the curve of the headrest.

  His first thrust was almost desperate, rushing her hard and deep so that she cried out involuntarily. At the sound, he lunged again, and bit down hard on his lip.

  “Forgive me,” he started to say.

  “Never,” she replied, and pulled him to her. This was what she had been seeking, she realized, as he sank into her, meeting the rock of her hips with the jut of his own. This unbearable proximity, this suffocating closeness; to be filled with him, to swallow him up: this was the prison she would never wish to leave.

  He ground against her, and his mechanical fingers drummed a fantastic tattoo around her sex, thrumming there on the most sensitive part, the little screw that held it all together, as she thought of it.

  They beat against each other as if locked in a struggle, both reaching, clutching hold, writhing as if climbing the ladder of each other’s body. She felt herself rise and grow furiously dizzy, calling out to him as she did so, slamming against him as if she could join their flesh by violence.

  As the sensations grew ever more urgent, she dug her fingernails into the flesh of his back. He moaned and bit down on her neck. That moment, she wanted to be marked by him, wanted them to both be changed, irrevocably changed. As she milked his cock and wrung a climax out of his heated, struggling body, his mechanical hand worked at her and she felt herself tumble, a wound-up machine gone wild, spun out of control, overtaken by the exquisite and miraculous machinery of the body itself, fueled by blood and spit and desire, attracted irresistibly to this man by some inexplicable force, both damned and redeemed by this fabulous creation, this wonderful cage, this beautiful trap that she found herself, for once, glad to be contained in.

  Their ecstasy split the moment in two, and they collapsed onto the couch, knocking levers and bruising themselves on protruding parts. Violet lay across her incredible machine, overtaken by waves of laughter as Gustav rose and disentangled himself, reached for the bottle and returned to lie with her in glorious, foolish disarray.

  “May we live long and never leave each other,” he said, his dark eyes locked on hers as he took a swig from the open bottle.

  “And cherish our freedom,” she said, taking the bottle from him. “Us penniless outlaws.” She spilled whisky and he leaned forward to lick it from her arm, sending a fresh wave of laughter rippling through her.

  “May we make our own miracles,” she said.

  “And recognize them when we find them,” he said, bending to kiss the whisky from her lips.

  RESCUE MY HEART

  Anya Richards

  The corridor connecting my private lift to the pleasure balloon Ecstatica sways, and Ruiz de Cortez places his hand on mine as though to stop me stumbling. The motion is so familiar no assistance is necessary but I don’t pull away. Indifference will mask that; for me, the contact of skin on skin is both pleasure and pain. The landward breeze blowing across the harbor and through the louvered walls ruffles my skirts and hair but does nothing to cool my fevered skin.

  Glancing sideways at him, I note the changes time has wrought. When he first entered my parlor the familiar stride and proud carriage made my heart stumble. He looks the same now, albeit more prosperous. His flight jacket gleams with gold buckles, and not many can afford supple roebuck breeches or patterned long boots. However, this close, I see additional lines fanning out from the corner of his eye and bracketing his hawkish nose. At his temple a swath of silver threads through the straight, midnight locks, which are secured at his nape with an emerald-green ribbon.

  The captain has aged but, God help me, in ways that make him even more beautiful.

  And he has come to finally collect on a promise I now wish I had cut out my tongue rather than make. But how could I know, ten years ago, he would ask of me something that would destroy what was left of my heart?

  “I cannot ensure I will be able to achieve what you want,” I warn, as we enter the airship proper. “Hardwick may not let her go, nor even allow me to take her from the room. Be that the case, there is nothing I can do.”

  “Better to purchase her outright than steal her,” he replies, slanting me an unfathomable look. “But if you can do neither, I’ll be content with the effort.”

  Had he approached me even three months before there would have been ample opportunity for him to whisk Angelique van Groot away from my city. But then it would have been me, Beatrix Morgan, rather than Griffen Hardwick blocking his way.

  That knowledge and this man, both redolent of unfulfilled dreams, make me inexpressibly sad.

  Pausing out of earshot of the guards, I give Ruiz my hardest stare, and one last chance to c
hange his mind. “Are you sure this is what you want? After this my debt to you is paid.”

  Is it love? I want to ask, but the words stick in my throat.

  The familiar sparkle is missing from his light brown eyes, and I never before saw him so grim. “Yes, your grace. If I had been there to help her bail her brother out of jail, she wouldn’t have fallen into Hardwick’s hands.”

  I turn away, unsure of my ability to completely mask my ragged emotions. “So be it.”

  The guard opens the door and we step into what will no doubt become my greatest nightmare.

  People are scattered around the closed and stuffy room, indulging in myriad sexual acts—some in pairs, others in groups—many employing the mechanical devices still rare in the rest of the colonies. Here in Port Royal, the wickedest city in Christendom, nothing is forbidden and the automated fuckers, suckers, attachments and personal pleasure enhancers are a common sight.

  “Her Grace, the Duchess of Palisadoes, and Captain Ruiz de Cortez,” intones the major domo, and almost everyone stands, except those immobilized on the larger machines, and one woman who has been caught at the moment of climax. As we walk across the room toward our host I am saluted on all sides by erect cocks and nipples and accompanied by the high-pitched cries of the writhing spender.

  Hardwick cannot stand, paralyzed as he is, unable to move anything but one hand and his oversized, balding head. A skull with flesh, sunken eyes and a bony nose, he is the stuff of nightmares and, watching our approach, a small smile tips the purple-hued gash that is his mouth. His lap is lightly covered by a cloth, leaving the rest of the emaciated, vaguely gray form bare. Beneath his feet, as a footstool, Angelique dares not lift her head to acknowledge us, deference to her owner trumping all protocol. Hardwick dips his head toward me, the degree of incline calculated to be within reason and yet still slightly insulting.