Carnal Machines

by D. L. King

  Emotions long buried were resurrected. Her body shook as if she had a bad bout of ague. Hell, Marcus Fitzgibbon! Could things get any worse?

  She dared not say a word. He’d recognize her voice in an instant.

  Rising to her feet, Cassie turned to face her tormentor, her nemesis—her love.

  He mustn’t find out who she was, or what she did to survive.

  Cassie took a surreptitious look at the door. With a little luck, she might just make it. Resting her hand on the back of the desk chair, she prepared to make her escape. If he lunged at her, one hard push would send it crashing into him, giving her a precious few additional seconds.

  Her eyes fixed on Marc’s, she sidled sideways in the direction of the exit, earning her a wolfish smile full of menace and dark promises of retribution.

  Marcus slid the panel beside him to the side and pulled a concealed lever.

  The solid double thunk of dead bolts sliding into place made her jump. She imagined that was what the peal of doom sounded like.

  She stared at the door, discombobulated. What in heaven’s name was she going to do now? Never faced with a scenario she couldn’t wiggle her way out of before, her mind went blank for a moment.

  The creak of leather pulled her attention back to Marcus. He rose to his feet and stalked across the Aubusson carpet, his long, lean face grim, with storm-dark gray eyes glaring at her, his large body bridling with rage. Marcus’s longer-than-fashionable hair added to the savagery of his stance. Cassie took an involuntary step back.

  Another foot and he’d loom over her. The manly scent of him would envelop her and the memories would come flooding back: their fanatic lovemaking, when they couldn’t get enough of each other, and their rancorous breakup.

  Cassie looked around, frantic now. No, time, she had no time. Think, think, why couldn’t she think? The window. There was a lone window open, letting in hot dusty air. Though no more than a foot square, it was the road to salvation.

  Cassie fumbled for the reticule attached to her waist filled with photographer’s flash power. She set her thumb on the pumice ball affixed to the clasp. It’d spark and ignite the phosphorescent chemicals, blinding him momentarily.

  Marcus’s eyes followed the movement of her hand. With a snarl, he lunged at her. She shoved the chair at him but he slapped it aside and sent it careening into the wall, where it bounced off the barrier to teeter drunkenly.

  His hand gripped her wrist like a manacle. Before she could react, he ripped her hat and veil off her head. The pain from the steel pins ripping at her scalp was nothing compared to the shock and disillusionment on Marcus’s face.

  “Cassie, why?”

  She lifted her chin proudly. “Why? You tossed me aside and you ask me why, Mr. Fitzgibbon?” What she surmised was regret flashed through his eyes, and he opened his mouth but no words came. “What I do and who I do it with is no longer any concern of yours.”

  The consternation leached from his face and icy fury hardened his features. “Where have you been hiding these last three years? How the hell could you resort to thievery, when you could have come to me if you needed additional funds?” She recognized that obdurate tone; like a dog with a bone, he wouldn’t let go.

  Cassie gave Marcus the cool sardonic smile she knew he hated and felt a glimmer of satisfaction when a flicker of irritation tightened his face.

  In the haughtiest voice she could muster, considering her situation, she drawled as if she weren’t quaking inside, “Sir, I wouldn’t touch a ha’penny of yours, and they’ll be doing the quadrille in hell before I answer any questions. I suggest you turn me over to the Blue Bottles; we wouldn’t want to extend our unhappy reunion.”

  His fist tightened on her wrist. “You’ve been hanging out with the lower classes, my dear, you’ve picked up their verbiage. No need to involve anyone in our domestic difficulties.”

  In a flash, he hooked his foot around her ankle and sent her tumbling back onto a chesterfield. Pinning her with his knee on her stomach, he pulled leather straps from the frame and tethered her arms and legs to the chaise.

  “What on earth…?” Cassie expostulated.

  His lips twisted. “Struggling would be a waste of energy. How did Henley know to contact you to steal from me?”

  Cassie, humiliated by her position, seared him with a fulminating glare but didn’t utter a word of protest. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re blathering about.”

  “Let me spin you a tale. His lordship finds a missive arranging a meeting with her ladyship for delivery of a certain package. He finds out I own this private car, and the elderly groom mistakenly surmises I’m diddling his wife and plots his revenge. His valet overhears him arranging for the theft of the item from my safe. The servant passes this bit of information to her ladyship’s maid, who he is diddling, by the way, and the faithful Abigail passes this on to her mistress—who rushed here to warn me.” Marcus grinned smugly down at her as the sound of a groan slipped from her lips.

  “You’re a fine one to criticize my language. Diddling? Really!” Cassie scoffed.

  “I suspect Lord Henley thought you’d find love letters or some such thing.” Marcus strolled over to the desk, used a letter opener to slide the drawer open and lifted out a box. “Imagine his surprise if you had succeeded and handed him this.” He lifted up a phallus-shaped object for her perusal.

  Cassie frowned. “What on God’s green earth is that?”

  “It was your twenty-fifth birthday present. You weren’t around to receive it. It’s a clockwork cock.”

  Cassie’s mouth dropped open. “You perfected it?” Her first interested reaction gave way to indignation. “That was my idea, and you were giving my present to another woman?”

  Marcus flipped up her skirts, exposing the lower half of her body, and trailed his fingers over her skin. “So contrary. I see you still have a penchant for prancing about bare-assed.” He laid the cool column on her stomach. “Imagine His Lordship’s consternation if he’d realized he’d hired my wife as his cracksman.”

  “I’m no common thief.” Cassie writhed under his touch.

  “I really should send Henley a box of cigars as a gesture of gratitude. After all, he managed to help me get you where I want you. Naked, well almost, and soon to be needing this. You didn’t take any of the toys I made for you, but I think you’ll really like this one.”

  Cassie remembered the exact moment she’d challenged him to furnish her with an inexhaustible phallus. Spent after a bout of lovemaking, he’d called her insatiable, so she’d made her daring suggestion. Being Marcus, he’d set to do just that.

  “Marcus, what’s come over you?” She frowned at him; he really wasn’t acting like himself. Cassie shifted uncomfortably under his all-encompassing gaze. “Let’s talk about this sensibly.”

  “The time for sanity has come and gone. You’ve turned me into a bedlamite.” Marcus sank to his knees and pressed a kiss on her mons, before he lifted his head to stare at her. He was flushed with desire and that lusty smirk, which always set her insides fluttering, spread across his face.

  “Shall we play?”

  Marcus stared into Cassie’s furious, pale-skinned face surrounded by black tendrils escaping from her bun. If it were possible, the sparks from her pansy-blue eyes would incinerate him on the spot. He struggled to temper his elation with the fact that she’d proved to be the royal pain in his arse that had been plaguing him. He pressed his face into her stomach. He didn’t want her to see any hint of neediness.

  He’d never understood why the vivacious Cassandra Devore had taken to him. He was a bookish man, with ink stains on his fingers and linen more often than not. Diagrams and equations crowded his mind to the exclusion of all else, until Cassie.

  She was his miracle; not once had she looked at him blankly when he droned on about his latest invention. Through her, his gray world became a spectrum of brilliant experiences.

  “Let
me go, Marcus, this has gone on long enough. I’m not in the mood for your histrionics.” She heaved up her hips to dislodge him.

  “Why should I? You’re my wife—mine to take.” The minute the words left his mouth, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

  She bristled under him, irritation radiated from her, but his frustrations bogged him down into a mire of confusion. He was at a loss as to how to deal with her. How did one apologize to a wife? Marcus was no good with words. Did he really need them, though? She always said he’d shown her how he felt every time he loved her.

  Maybe, if he showed her with every sinew in his body how he felt, he could convey his remorse and his love. It was illogical and had no basis in fact, but he was a desperate man, and he was out of options.

  “I never imagined you were such a boor. Finally showing your true colors?” Cassie tossed the insult at him as only she could, sweetly scornful and accompanied by curled lips.

  “No one knows me better than you. One misstep and you cut me completely out of your life,” he declared gruffly. “You’ve punished me for my lack of faith long enough.”

  “You have not begun the sentence I’ve imposed on you. You accused me of spreading my legs like a Haymarket whore,” she shrieked.

  Marcus reared back as if she’d punched him. “I never called you a prostitute.”

  “You may as well have.” She pursed her lips in a thin line, diminishing their enticing fullness.

  “God’s blood, Cass, what was I supposed to think? I saw what I believed was incontrovertible proof with my own eyes.” The memory was as fresh as the day it had become etched in his mind. “You were half-naked, with the gadgets I fashioned for our personal pleasure scattered around you, and a strange man’s hand on you shoulders.”

  “He was posing me. I was having an erotic portrait done for you, you cretin. Really, it was all the rage… But you took one look and left the room.”

  “A man can’t think clearly when he’s in a rage, it was either that or bloody commit murder. And I have no desire to swing at Tyburn.”

  “If our toys are so personal, why are you hawking them like a penny peddler to the likes of Lenora Henley?” At the moment, her feathers seemed to be more ruffled over the delivery of her toy, and he gladly latched on to the change of subject.

  “Remember, you’re the one who gave the faulty prototype to Monette Dupliss; she inquired if I’d improved on it.” He paused at her condemning glare. “I needed to conduct trials on the dammed things, didn’t I? She arranged for a few select women, known for their discretion, to…test them for me.”

  “How altruistic; of course there was nothing in it for you. All those women you helped to find pleasure, it was all for science of course. What a Banbury tale,” she spat dismissively at his explanation.

  “Christ Almighty! I’m done talking. There’s no reasoning with you.” He ripped off his morning coat, cravat and celluloid collar. They were strangling him, not to mention the constriction of his member by his trousers.

  He fumbled with the ivory cameo at her throat, undid the row of buttons securing her bodice and parted the heavy material to reveal her torso.

  His brows shot up when he caught sight of the thin black silk chemise. “Black?”

  “I am after all a widow, or I will be as soon as I get my hands on a suitable weapon,” she cooed up into his face with a honeyed threat.

  If he didn’t get her to see things his way, there was going to be hell to pay. Lying on her back as she was, Cassie’s breasts were thrust up prominently by an abbreviated corset that had him gulping like a green gull. “Where did you get this?”

  “Paris. Frenchmen love them; they’re not as narrow-minded as thick-skulled Englishmen.” Her taunt wasn’t lost on him, but he’d learned a very hard lesson and learned it well. He suppressed his questions about how she’d know a Frenchman’s preferences.

  “Well unfortunately, you’re married to an Englishman.” Marcus fiddled with the several levers on the side of the sofa. He’d spent many hours fantasizing what he’d do to her when he got her flat on her back on it.

  A frown creased Cassie’s brow at the sound of grinding gears. Her upper body rose, and her legs, forced to bend at the knees, were splayed by the folding bed, opening her to his avidly hungry eyes. His cock hardened even more. Its weighty fullness strained the buttons on his fly. Marcus grinned at Cassie’s outraged scream.

  She was as beautiful as he remembered. The damp pink flesh glistened between the plump folds. He reached forward reverently and brushed his knuckles over the unfurled bud at the apex of her cleft. Cassie’s husky gasp was music to his ears.

  “Don’t,” Cassie let out in a strangled whimper.

  Marcus eyes widened. “You’re sensitive to the lightest caress. I’d almost believe no one has touched you there these last three years. Is this true Cassie? Tell me.” The beat of his heart increased. He brought his fingers to his nose and inhaled the heady muskiness.

  “Go to hell. You don’t deserve my fidelity, and as far as I’m concerned, you lost the right to question me.” Her jaw jutted out mulishly.

  Stubborn wench.

  Marcus lifted the faux shaft and stifled a smile when he saw curiosity flare beneath the fury in her eyes. “I’ve perfected the mechanics.” He wound the tiny knob and listened to the spring tightening. Rounded bumps rolled up and down the paper-thin, leather-sheathed shaft. “I attached one-sixteenth-inch diameter ball bearings to six chains and affixed them over a rigid hexagonal frame on the inside. Spring-loaded gears move them in a never-ending circle. I have a problem with the casing though. It has to be changed frequently; it stiffens and loses its suppleness when soaked.”

  “You should try a cover made from vulcanized rubber—” Cassie bit off her words, looking angry at herself for proffering the suggestion. But there was a softening in her demeanor, and he grasped it like a lifeline.

  “Of course, the rubber would be waterproof and smooth to the touch. You’ve come up with the perfect solution. Until we’ve solved that thorny problem, I’d like your input on how this particular model works.” He took a leap of faith and rolled the undulating object over her sensitive nipples. He watched them pebble through the lace. Her sensitivity was like an aphrodisiac and his breath hitched in his throat.

  “I’m not one of your inventions, Marcus, to be fiddled with, until you get it right.” She wasn’t talking only about his creation. The low whirring filled the silence in the suddenly too hot room.

  “You’ve always encouraged me in my endeavors, Cassie. Who better to evaluate my finest achievement in the manufacture of ladies comforters, but you, my, uh—muse?” He turned his head, kissed the side of her knee and watched the skin on her inner thigh ripple in response to his caress. She wasn’t indifferent to him—encouraging.

  Her lips twitched. “You’d be ruined if word got out that you even thought of making these.”

  “If I get to watch you dallying with it, I’d say it would be worth it.” His gruff declaration brought a flush to her cheeks.

  Cassie bit her lip and closed her eyes.

  “Tell me you’re not more than a little bit curious, Cass.” He had to get one taste of her, in case she rejected him.

  Marcus bent his head between her elevated legs and delicately speared his tongue into her cleft. Flattening his tongue, he swiped it up and down the damp flesh before curling it around her clitoris and then dipping into her core to lap at her nectar. Savoring what he’d been deprived of for so long, he nibbled on the pulsing tissues and swirled his tongue greedily in her dewy fluids.

  She didn’t give him an answer, but the change in the tempo of her breathing and slight upward shift in the angle of her hips told him what he needed to know. He had her tacit agreement.

  There was nothing clinical about his actions when he brought the humming device down to press it against Cassie’s pretty pussy. With it fitted lengthwise to her slit, the tiny balls rotated over her pearl and the nerve-filled folds of her
labia.

  If her tortured expression was anything to go by, he’d achieved his goal.

  “For heaven’s sake, put it in inside me!” It was a plea sheathed in a demand. Marcus happily complied and slowly eased it into her silken core. When only the dial at its base was visible, he pulled it back in small increments. He fucked her with long, slow strokes. Her soft mewls and his harsh breathing bounced off the walls.

  “Tell me what it feels like, lovey,” Marcus whispered, as he leaned forward and set his lips against her bared neck.

  “Surely, you’re joking,” Cassie sputtered with a mixture of incredulity and disconcertment.

  “I am not. Describe the sensations to me, please.”

  Cassie drew in a deep breath, licked her lips and let out a shuddery laugh. “Well, I feel incredibly full. The flesh within me is on fire, moving in a never-ending spasm around the dildo. The bumps on it soothe and stimulate all at once. I’m coming!”

  Cassie’s back arched off the button-studded sofa. She strained against her bonds and let out a strangled groan. After her drawn-out orgasm, she flopped back on the padding.

  “Take it out, take it out. It’s too much.” She heaved up her hips. “I want you now.”

  Hearing her invitation, he all but ripped out the faux phallus. Fumbling with the bone buttons on his fly, he somehow managed to release himself. His cock bounded free like a thoroughbred springing through the gate.

  He stepped between her thighs, but she was too low to sink into her comfortably. He pumped the lever to raise the platform and again stepped between her parted legs. The moment the crown of his cock made contact with her slit his balls tightened, and his hips bucked. Sliding the tip up and down her slit, he set the pin, gripped her hips and surged forward.

  Heaven; it was pure heaven.

  “Release my hands. I want to hold you.” Heaving her hips up, she forced him deeper.

  He didn’t have to be asked twice. Marcus unbuckled the restraints, leaned in and captured her mouth for a long delayed kiss. She wrapped her arms around him with the same old fervency as she used to.