The Chief Engineer waited with his arms crossed over his broad chest. He nodded as she stood in front of him. The other men were smiling, not unkindly this time.
‘I can fly,’ she said, looking him in the eye.
‘You can fly,’ he agreed. ‘But when an enemy ’thopter comes at you out of the sun and there’s shrapnel ripping through the bodywork, will you scream and freeze or can you fight?’
And he slapped her hard across the face.
If she hadn’t been so charged with exhilaration she might have shrunk back and burst into tears. But she was burning with pride. She staggered, stared, and then launched herself at him, striking him in the face with her first blow. After that he caught her arms and pinned her out of reach.
She spat at him.
‘That’s the reaction I want,’ he said, his eyes no longer cold. ‘You’ll fly scout until you’re trained on the guns. Cartwright, take her to the Osprey and show her how to strip down the ammunition belts.’
That was a few months ago. Tonight she wore her own flying suit of cream leather cut snugly for a female figure. Tonight she entered the Flight Deck without trepidation. She wasn’t even the only aviatrix in the Royal Ornithopter Brigade any more, two others having followed in her footsteps since she had set the trend – though Alicia Holdstock was getting all kinds of pressure from her family to give up such low-class company and fly scout for the more genteel Volunteer Air Corps.
Charlotte had no problems with the company she kept. The crews, mindful of her status, were more restrained towards her than they might be to one of their own class, though they did not modify their general behaviour at all. She turned a deaf ear to the crudest of their conversation, but she liked their humour and their camaraderie. She liked their professionalism.
Of course it was impossible that she share their whole lives. While they bunked in barracks near the Flight Deck, ready at a moment’s notice, she was isolated at home. She did her best to be ready for action, and wore her flying kit at all times. She didn’t shy away from unpopular or dangerous missions, and the Chief showed her neither favouritism nor hostility.
When she stepped out onto the Flight Deck, she found it silent except for the faint roar of the boilers. The lights were dimmed, the shutters down over the apron. She walked slowly down the ranks of machines, pausing to touch their metal flanks as if they were sleeping horses.
Nobody else was about. They would, she supposed, be asleep at this hour, or if like her they could not they would be entertaining themselves in a public house somewhere, though with restraint. Unlike the V.A.C. who deemed it proper to fuel their pilots on champagne, here the Chief did not permit drinking on the Flight Deck – in fact he wouldn’t let anyone fly whose breath betrayed the smell of alcohol. The pilots grumbled but obeyed.
He was awake tonight though. Her heart bumped a little to see him. He sat at a workbench, lit by a spotlamp, absorbed in his special project – a bulky complex chunk of machinery that people said was supposed to be an entirely new design of phlogiston engine. Most of the time it hid under a tarpaulin as the Flight Deck was too busy for speculative engineering.
‘Chief,’ greeted Charlotte as she got close.
He glanced up at her briefly. He was busy smoothing a perforated brass disc bigger than his spread hand with a file the size of a toothpick. ‘You should be asleep at this hour, Laindon.’
‘I can’t.’
He grunted under his breath, his attention on the machine part.
She folded her arms and paced in front of the bench. ‘I just can’t sleep. I keep worrying – what if I miss the call out? What if I can’t get here in time?’
He sat back then, chewing his lip as he regarded her. ‘You’re not going to fly at your best if you’ve not rested.’
She wondered if he’d seen himself in a mirror recently; there were black shadows under his eyes and lines were beginning to etch themselves deeply into his face. ‘I just wish it would start,’ she complained. ‘It’s the waiting that’s the worst.’
‘No.’ His voice was low. ‘The longer the attack takes, the more likely we are to have our allies in place to help us.’
‘But I can’t wait! I want to fly! I feel sick when I eat, and I can’t sleep, and all the time I’m listening out, and I think if it takes any longer I’m going to go crazy. I mean – this is it. Everything hangs on this! Can’t you send me out on reconnaissance, Chief?’
‘At night? We need to conserve fuel, Laindon. You know that. The sentry systems will warn us in time.’
She spun on her boot heel, breathing hard. ‘I’ve been through the drills so many times. It’s not helping. I’m going blank on things I should know. I find I can’t remember what day it is, or what I’m supposed to be doing –’
‘Laindon!’ He held up his hand, arresting her mid-flight. His eyes held her. ‘It’s all right. Come into my office. I’ve got something there that’ll help.’
What was that? she wondered as she followed him. A bottle of whisky? It didn’t seem likely. The story among the crew was that when he’d been younger he’d had trouble with the bottle, but nowadays he was a hymn-singing teetotal Nonconformist.
But she trusted him. Everyone in the Ornithopter Brigade trusted the Chief, even if he was a swine to work for. As for Charlotte, she would do anything he told her, willingly. He’d let her fly.
Inside the office, Charlotte watched as he adjusted the blinds so that the slats shut out the world. There was a jerky tension to his movements. Whisky, she thought. It has to be. Only when he shot the brass bolt on the door did she feel the first stab of doubt.
‘Chief?’
Then he turned towards her and she saw the intent in his eyes, but she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t react even when he took her shoulders and shoved her up against a wrought-iron pillar and pressed his mouth down on hers in a fierce kiss that ate her breath. Even when he released her bruised lips she had nothing in her lungs to scream with. He grasped the hair at the back of her head without any gentleness and she let out a squeak.
His hard, handsome face was fierce with desire. His eyes burned. He kissed her open mouth again, triumphantly, relishing the softness of her lips and the slipperiness of her tongue. His thighs trapped hers.
‘Yes,’ he whispered as he pulled her head back and kissed her throat. He hadn’t shaved recently and his stubble rasped on her neck. She could feel the threat of teeth in his kisses.
‘No!’ she gasped.
‘Why not, lass?’ he growled. ‘Am I not good enough for you?’ The hand that wasn’t pinning her head moved to the front of her flying suit and worked dextrously at the hooks and eyes holding it closed. She pushed feebly at his hand with her own, but she was weak with shock. He revealed the silk chemise beneath the leather and his hand moved on her breastbone and her left breast, chafing the nipple into reaction. ‘Now don’t tell me a girl of your spirit hasn’t tried some things out with her fiancé already. I’ll bet Lord Atherstone has had a handful of these pretty wee things.’
Her breast seemed tiny in his broad hand, but when he thumbed her nipple it filled with electricity.
‘Please!’
‘Please?’ He laughed. ‘Of course, lass.’
‘Please don’t …’
‘Oh now. Don’t go disappointing me, your ladyship.’ His pelvis pressed against hers and she found it difficult to believe how heavy he was, how hard. His hand worked her breast, more teasing but equally as implacable. ‘You’re no coward.’
She tried to reply but he kissed her words away like he would eat her protests. Then he drew back. His breath was hot on her lips, his grey eyes boring into her brown ones. She didn’t understand why her body was responding to none of her commands, why it was awash with heat and as limp as boiled laundry.
‘Have you ever touched a man’s prick?’
She whimpered.
He abandoned her breasts to fumble at the fly of his trousers, popping the buttons. His lips curved tauntingly. ‘Ha
ve you touched Lord Atherstone’s prick?’
She couldn’t answer. The world made no sense to her any more and the room was spinning away into darkness. The only thing in her world was his hard body and his hard eyes and the hand that was taking hers and guiding it to his crotch as he released his proud erection.
‘Was it like this, then?’ He folded her fingers around an incredibly hot thick length of flesh and she shook from head to foot.
Comparing Lord Atherstone’s slim dart to this thing was like comparing a Skylark Celestial to a gunship.
‘Ah.’ For a moment the fire in his eyes dimmed, as he visibly enjoyed the sensation of her fingers on him. ‘Lass.’ He smiled. ‘You should take a closer look.’
Stepping away, he pushed her to her knees in front of him. She came eye to eye with his flushed and turgid cock.
Charlotte now discovered that men of the lower orders did not shave their body hair. His balls nested, bulging, in dark curls. And his member – well, she had only a prior knowledge of Freddy Atherstone’s to draw upon, but if this was a typical working man’s cock then it was as honed and strengthened by labour as the rest of his body. A spill of clear moisture slicked the swollen glans that thrust from his foreskin.
‘Like it?’ His voice was misleadingly tender. ‘Not too indelicate for you?’
Then he pressed her to his crotch, rubbing her face in his scent, on the stiff pole of his arousal. He wasn’t particularly cruel about it, just very thorough – as if he were marking her. When he’d rubbed every inch of the contours of her face with his prick he stroked back her tumbled fringe with his fingers. ‘Put it in your mouth.’
Charlotte obeyed him. He was the Chief and she was a pilot. He was in control.
She’d done this before. She’d done it with Freddy. When they’d been playing tennis together or dancing, and he was limping with arousal, he liked to shoot his seed into her throat. Freddy tasted yeasty and sour. Chief McGregor, she found, as she wrapped her lips around the plum of his cock-head, tasted of smoke and machine oil and salt. He spoke, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying because of the blood roaring in her ears. He pushed himself deep into her mouth, down to her throat, until he found the point at which she choked, and then he pulled out again. She laved his slit with her tongue, no longer thinking or trying to think.
He groaned. Then with one hand and then the other on her head to guide her, he made use of her mouth while he undid his shirt buttons, shucked off his upper garments and pulled his long-sleeved vest over his head. Only then, with some reluctance, did he draw her to her feet.
Bare-chested, he wasn’t quite as hairy above as below, but still intimidating, sculpted by his work to inexorable muscle. He kissed her lips, then pushed her back to the pillar again.
‘I can taste my prick on your mouth,’ he whispered. ‘And I’m going to make you taste your quim on mine.’
Both hands went to the fastenings down the front of her flying suit. He revealed her swiftly from breast to crotch, the silk of her undergarments springing out between the edges of cream leather. And as he worked, because he was for the moment no longer holding her, Charlotte finally found her strength. As he wrenched the suit off her shoulders and pushed it down to her hips she began to fight back.
It was a strange fight in some ways; she didn’t cry out for help or scream abuse at him. She fought in silence except for gasps and whimpers. She struck at his hands and his chest, but when he picked her up and carried her over to the narrow cot bed, although she twisted wildly in his arms, she didn’t hit at his eyes or his throat or anywhere that might have caused real damage. He threw her down on the bed and grabbed her leg in order to unbuckle the bootstrap. She kicked at his chest and thighs but not his head. She felt a white flame in her own breast, a roaring need for violence, for struggle, for resistance, but not for victory. He smacked her flailing limbs away and pinned her and forced her legs apart. He had to fight for every inch of the silk-clad body he stripped of its protective leather. She thrashed like a wild thing in his grip, but she didn’t grab at any of the machine parts in easy reach to strike him with. She made him sweat and flush and grunt, made him roll her and bear her down and grip her until she cried out in pain. By the time he finally pulled down her long drawers and forced her thighs apart there was a look of fury on his face to match her own. She planted her foot on his chest and nearly managed to pull from his grasp; he responded by heaving her towards him by the ankles until her whole abdomen was clear of the bed, she was upside down with only her shoulders and head on the blanket and her legs in their incongruous thick woollen socks scissoring either side of his head. He took her hips in a bear hug. Then he stooped and thrust his mouth into her fleece.
Charlotte went still. It wasn’t possible to fight with his mouth wet on her sex and his teeth pressed into her flesh. She crossed her heels behind his back and cried in defeat as warm waves of sensation rolled over down her spine and the blood filled her head. Lord Frederick Atherstone had never in all his days tried to do this to her. She’d never imagined that anything could feel so good as that mouth on the pearl of her clitoris, the soft sucking and the long strokes of his tongue and the prickle of his stubble in the wet folds of her sex.
She surrendered. He ate her. And at the last moment, as she was starting to heave and buck in a new and inner struggle, he laid her down on the bed and before she could register the loss of his mouth he was pushing his big cock smooth and hard into her, covering her with his body and thrusting stroke after stroke, until the lightning ignited and suddenly she was coming on his cock, coming hard, as she had never intended to do. And as she parted her lips to cry out, he kissed her and she tasted her own sweet-sour tang, just as he had promised.
She was still dazed and burning when he rolled onto his side and pulled her with him, rolling under her on a bed so narrow there was only room for one. He was still hard. He hadn’t come. He sat her astride him, impaling her anew on his length, and he put one hand on her breastbone to push her up into a sitting position. She wanted to curse him then, and tears burned in her eyes. He couldn’t be ravishing her if she was on top, could he? She looked down on his broad chest, glazed with sweat. She tried to get off him but he grabbed her hips and rammed her down on his cock, deep enough that she saw stars.
‘Bastard!’ she hissed, sinking her nails into his skin.
He bared his teeth. ‘Still not good enough for you?’
He licked his thumb and pushed it between them, where his body joined with hers. He need not have bothered with the extra lubrication; the junction was steaming hot and as slippery as an oil bath. She groaned and twisted on his thumb as he found her pearl and began to rub it. She forgot she was being forced. His hips moved beneath her. His cock stirred her within. She arched her back and pressed against him and opened to that brazen length. He reached beneath her damp chemise to stroke her breasts as he made her come for a second time.
Only when she was wrung out did the Chief Engineer take his own reward. He was not delicate about it. He rolled her off him and manhandled her into position on the bed, on hands and knees, with an urgency in his movements that – despite all his forcefulness – had been lacking before. He knelt up behind her to plough the narrow furrow of her sex. She pressed her hot face to the blanket and let him have his way, his hands tight on her hips, his thighs pummelling hers, his scrotum slapping her puffy lips. His thick cock pistoned in and out and she thought of the movements of mighty steam engines, the slickness of oiled steel, the burning phlogiston fire. His movements quickened and she thought, He’s going to come now. And despite everything somehow she welcomed the thought.
‘Bloody hell, yes,’ he said.
Then he pulled out and took himself in hand and with a grunt sprayed dollops of spunk on her splayed cheeks, one on the small of her back, one that slopped on the crack of her arse and dribbled down to her anus. Heaving for breath, he put his hand on her bottom and massaged his jism into the pucker of that hole. Charlotte, incredu
lous, felt the iris soften and yield. With a push he popped the first joint of his oil-stained thumb into her most intimate orifice, and she felt her legs give way. It wasn’t an orgasm. Could an orgasm begin at the back entrance and flare up the spine like that? It flashed through her limbs like lightning and she collapsed upon the bed, tissues pulsing, head spinning.
He followed her down, covering her body with his. He wasn’t heavy any more. He ran his hand down her side and pressed his lips to the curve of her shoulder.
They were still lying there panting when the klaxon began to blare.
Two months later the war was over. The homeland had held on for long enough. Their colonial allies had came through.
The official victory celebration was held in the Royal Hippodrome, though it spilled out into all the streets and taverns of Victoria City. In the gilt and plush interior the various military and auxiliary companies were paraded and presented before His Imperial Majesty so that all they had done might be publicly acknowledged. Each combatant received the newly struck Cross of Victory. Several members of the Volunteer Air Corps were awarded the Imperial Star – though none of those honours went to the Ornithopter Brigade, who had after all been paid to risk their lives daily.
Charlotte joined her brigade for the fly-past and display, then the presentation of the medals. The engineers in a fit of solidarity wore their brown overalls instead of their Sunday suits for the presentation; the pilots wore their flying kit.
After the rest of the ceremony, which they watched from their reserved box, surrounded by gilded plaster cherubs that the men found risible, there was food laid on and dancing. The brigade broke up as people went to find their families or pillage the buffet tables. Charlotte reluctantly left her companions and presented herself and her medal to her father and mother, who were so proud that for once they almost refrained from scolding her. She loaded a plate and circulated among her peers and drank an incautious amount of champagne until Lord Atherstone took advantage of a lull in the conversation.
Dark Enchantment Page 5
