Giggling, she pushed back enough to see his face. “That’s a different kind of thinking, and you know it.”
“Oh, I do know it. Rest assured.” He pressed against her, already hard, which frustrated Eliza even more.
“Please, Matthew?”
“No, you’ll ruin me. I mustn’t.”
But something in his tone told her he was already halfway to capitulation. His tone, or the way he whimpered when she rose onto her toes, stroking against him.
“I promise if there’s a baby, I will marry you. To protect your reputation.”
Matthew groaned and bent his head. Eliza expected a kiss, but he stopped just short. “But we’d have to wait and see, to know for sure, wouldn’t we?”
“Perhaps a month or so, I suppose.”
He stroked his hands lower, cupping her buttocks and lifting her gently, squeezing, parting her legs with his thigh. “I don’t want to wait and see. Agree to marry me anyway.”
“I’ll agree to think about it.”
“Deal.”
“Now? Please?”
He had her shirt half off before they even reached the tent, and she yanked it free impatiently as he started on her breeches.
“Boots,” she reminded him, sitting down on the pad of silk scraps and flight clothes they’d rested on earlier. He helped her tug her boots off, then toed off his own and resumed his work undressing her until the job was done.
Eliza was slower, but then she was distracted. It had been days since they’d touched one another, and Matthew seemed determined to reacquaint himself with every inch of her.
“I’ve missed this,” he said, kissing the part in question fondly. “And this. Oh, and I’ve particularly missed that. And . . . just roll over, if you would, darling? Oh, sweet gods how I’ve missed this. I mean it’s not exactly hidden in those breeches, but still I much prefer seeing it in its natural state.” He kissed her there too a firm smack of his lips on each cheek, before encouraging her to roll onto her back again.
“Are you quite finished with your reunion?” she asked, smirking.
“Not quite, my love. Here, let me wipe that look off your face.” He cupped her between the legs and pressed a finger inside her, grinding his palm in a circle, and it was Matthew’s turn to smirk while Eliza gasped.
“Use your mouth again, like you did in the barn,” she pleaded, astonished at her own boldness. There wasn’t time to be coy, though. It was now or never. Matthew, however, had plans of his own.
“I need fingers for this,” he explained, edging a second one into her channel. It pulled, as it had the first time, and he frowned when Eliza winced. “All that time on a velocimobile, and it’s still there. Astonishing. To hear the stories the thing’s as fragile as a cobweb. One touch, and bang, it’s gone and you’re marrying the girl.”
“What?”
“Your hymen. Maidenhead, what-have-you. It’s quite terrifyingly intact, and I don’t want to hurt you, so I’m stalling by doing this.”
Really? At a time like this, he wanted to stop and have a conversation about the state of her hymen? “I think it’s supposed to hurt, the first time. I’m not terrified, why should you be?”
“I’m terrified you’ll blame me, regret this and never want to do it again.”
He attempted a third finger, and Eliza grabbed his wrist.
“Ouch.”
“See?”
Look at him all concerned and anxious and trying to be considerate. How could I have ever not loved him? “Matthew, I think I need to have a little talk with Fred.”
He pulled his hand away and sat back on his heels. “He’s entirely at your disposal.”
“I see that.” She sat up and turned herself around, then leaned down and propped herself on her elbows, chin on hands, to face Fred squarely. It was dark, but she could see well enough for this. The trickiest part was not giggling. “Fred, I require your help. Matthew is being awfully reticent. I want him to make mad, passionate love to me, and he wants to have a conversation about anatomy. Do you have any suggestions for me?”
Matthew coughed, and Fred nodded. Eliza bit the inside of her cheek to keep the laughter in as Matthew spoke. “He recommends you try getting in that same position you’re in right now, only facing the other way. Fred’s very single-minded. I’ve learned to be wary of his advice.”
“I’ll be cautious. Fred, I want you to know that whatever happens tonight, I won’t blame you. I’ll still be fond of you, and assuming I survive, I’ll probably invite you over to play again. After all, the first time I went up in Charlotte’s airship I got ten feet up, fell out of the harness and landed on my . . . lawn. That hurt quite a bit, but I gave it another try. And another after that. And look at me now.”
“Oh, he is,” Matthew avowed. “I am.”
“I don’t believe you,” Eliza replied. “I don’t believe you or Fred are sufficiently motivated.”
She gave in to the impulse she’d had when she first bent down, and leaned forward to slip her lips over the tip of Matthew’s penis, sliding her tongue over the tender skin and tasting salt and arousal. He cursed and wrapped his fingers in her hair, and she suspected she had just learned the best way to motivate Fred. She tried taking more into her mouth, but Matthew pulled her away and picked her up, flipping her onto her back and landing on top of her.
“Enough,” he panted, rubbing himself against the crux of her thighs before shifting down again with another curse and planting his mouth against her sex. He drove her high, higher, so close, until she was lifting her hips into his face and clawing at the silk beneath them. When he stopped, she shouted her protest, but he had already moved again, and silenced her with a kiss. Rough at first, then tender as his fingers stole inside her body again. Not playing, this time, she realized. Making sure she was ready.
She was. She shifted, trying to get closer and bending her knees, and he moved himself into position, and—
“Ow! Bloody hell, that hurts!”
“Warned you.”
She was already laughing, gasping against his shoulder at how ridiculous it all was. He stilled his hips and grinned at her, kissing her a few times. Slowly, sweetly, as if time was a commodity they had in abundance. The sharp, startling pain ebbed to a dull sting, and Eliza made herself relax and assess things.
It hurt, yes. But she could see where it wouldn’t always. That part was a nasty shock, but there were pleasant surprises along with it. The heat of Matthew’s cock—she couldn’t think of it as Fred when it was inside her—soothed the ache, filling and stretching her in a way that felt new but absolutely right.
Where their bodies met she felt the sting, but also a sweeter stimulation when he moved even a fraction of an inch. Inside her, outside her, even higher where his coarse hairs teased her clitoris.
“Is it all right now?” He whispered, feathering kisses over her cheekbone and down toward her ear.
“I think so.”
He surged farther into her, a subtle flow of muscles beneath her hands. She’d thought he was already as deep as possible, but she’d been wrong. When he thrust a second time, then a third, she felt herself move by instinct, countering him. Accommodating him. Her body was reconstructing its awareness around him, turning itself into the perfect vessel for this precise activity, this exact moment.
“Ohhh . . .”
“Pain?” He asked, all concern again, his hips slowing. She responded by digging her fingernails into his buttocks.
“If you stop I will kill you.”
“Oh. Good.” And after a few seconds, “So good.”
She started to complain again when he pushed to one elbow, peeling his sweaty upper body away from hers and leaving a chill behind. Then his hand moved between them, finding her clitoris and increasing the pressure there, and she forgot what she was upset about.
“Matthew?�
�
“I want you to come first.”
“Isn’t it cheating to do it like that?”
His laughing, taut belly shaking against his hand sent a shock wave through it into her. “No. Does it feel good?”
She gave him her reply in the form of an orgasm, tightening around him before she quite knew what was happening. It felt too good, like some sacred bliss not meant for mere mortals. Rippling through her, stroking every nerve ending with heat until she couldn’t breathe or think or move. As it ebbed, she felt Matthew’s tempo increase, his cock lengthen and stiffen even more inside her. He cried out her name as he came, spending himself on a final, shuddering thrust.
TWENTY-FOUR
ELIZA DISAPPEARED FROM view almost immediately, the delicate blue flame of the spirit lamp barely illuminating the red of her balloon. Matthew watched anyway, wishing for something better to happen. Something that didn’t involve her having to leave his side and head off into dangers unknown. Or his having to wait here alone, possibly for days, to find out whether she’d made it.
He wanted her safely back, and he wanted her in his bed for as long as she could persuade her to stay there. Until they had to leave or starve. He supposed that was why hotel room service had been invented, to keep honeymooning couples from starving to death. So now he wanted Eliza back safely, in his bed, in a hotel with decent room service. Things were already getting complicated, and he’d only had sex with her the one time. That probably confirmed it had been a mistake, but Matthew didn’t care. He would take her on her terms, scandalous or otherwise. Eliza was worth the complication.
Matthew sighed and looked back at his tent, which looked more blue than green under the waxing moon. He pondered the improbability of flight, the marvel that they’d gotten this far at all. An owl hooted somewhere, and he thought of birds.
Then he thought of wings, and breaking a thing into its parts to start all over again, and the fact that he still had Cantlebury’s toolbox. And the next moment, he set to work.
• • •
ELIZA DIDN’T LIKE Carson City one bit. Her view of the place might have been tempered by the fact that she’d grown accustomed to being greeted by cheering crowds when she arrived in a new town. True, not all the towns she’d been in recently and not all the crowd members were friendly. Some had been aggressively hostile. Eliza no longer cared much about winning, especially not to prove anything to Matthew. She knew what she’d gone through, and felt she had nothing left to prove to anyone about her general competence to take care of herself.
But even so, the absence of even a welcoming banner across the main road struck her as off-putting. The race was important. People, some of them her friends, had been injured or murdered along the way. The least they deserved was some recognition of the event they’d sacrificed so much for.
“It’s as if these people don’t care at all,” she muttered, hiking up the street in the pre-dawn gloom with her bundled aircraft tucked under her arm. A woman on the wooden sidewalk did a double take, then stared at Eliza with a confused expression. There was a similar reaction from the sleepy boy minding the hitching post in front of the hotel, and from the hotel clerk himself. He procured the rally officials, who had been scheduled to leave with the afternoon mail coach, and backed them up as they explained things to Eliza. Beginning with the fact that she could not possibly be Eliza Hardison.
“Who else would I be? I demand that you clock my time and check me in so I can refuel and continue to San Francisco.” It hadn’t occurred to her that her very identity might be challenged. She would proceed without checking in if she could, but she needed that fuel if she was to make it to San Francisco and put a stop to Orm. She was the only one left to do it.
“But . . . the race is cancelled, miss. Because of the explosion. All the racers died. We had a letter,” the official said, with a firm nod that nearly sent his glasses sliding off his nose.
“What explosion?”
“Over the Sierras. The last three got caught in one of those vapor fumes, one of their gas balloons caught fire and the whole thing went up. Fried to a crisp, all three of them, on the spot.”
“And yet,” she pointed out, “here I am. I’m not fried to a crisp, and neither are Mr. Pence or Mr. Cantlebury. Mr. Pence made it as far as the hills just east of here, and Mr. Cantlebury took ill. We dropped him off with the doctor in Belton.”
“But we had a letter!” he repeated.
“From whom?”
“Lord Orm. Owns a big ranch up near where the gases start. Sent it by his own special messenger, and it had the rally committee seal and everything.”
Eliza showed her rigging and balloon to the rally officials and asked again that they provide her fuel and let her sign the official check-in sheet.
“After all, if I’m not who I say I am, the race is cancelled anyway, so it won’t matter. But if I’m telling the truth, and you refuse to let me sign and provide me my fuel, you’ve just compromised the outcome of the rally. And knowingly left two drivers stranded with no way to get to San Francisco or home. In that case, you’ll have the entire committee and my sponsor, Baron Hardison, to answer to. Which option sounds more appealing, gentlemen?”
She had her check-in signed and her fuel tank filled within fifteen minutes, and was back in the air for the final leg of the rally.
• • •
MATTHEW DECIDED TO wait for dawn to test his creation out. It wouldn’t do to spend all night and all his materials on the damn thing, then break an ankle tripping over a rock as he tried to launch it. Besides, it was most likely a death trap, and perhaps the morning light would bring some common sense with it and help him decide against trying it out at all.
He fell asleep waiting, and dreamed an explicit but ultimately frustrating dream of Eliza flying her dirigible clad only in her chemise. He woke to full daylight and a chorus of excessive bird song.
“Oh, shut up,” he sniped at the harmless creatures, who paid him no mind and continued to trill and chirp merrily while he strapped himself in to the contraption.
Matthew suspected they were laughing at him, and he thought if he were a bird he’d probably be laughing too.
The curved framework of his balloon seat was lightweight metal, and it had been easy enough to pry away the wood and wicker, then straighten that piece into a large V shape. Scraps of wood from the rigging, unwound wicker bindings and a few stripped-down tree branches filled out the frame, and he had been able to cover it with silk handily. They’d run out of the wondrous fiber goo while patching Eliza’s balloon, but he had needle and thread aplenty. The dawn light had found him stitching, testing, reinforcing, until the silk was securely in place. Then it was simply a question of attaching the wing to the framework he’d made by knocking down his balloon rigging and reassembling an abbreviated version of it. Taking a cue from Eliza’s ship, he’d used his seat straps to create a harness like a mountain-climber might use, allowing him to run while launching the thing, then sit suspended by the harness, hanging on to a bar in front of him.
The birds might laugh, but Matthew was determined. He didn’t merely want to go after Eliza. He had to, or die trying. It was very simple . . . though of course he hoped it wouldn’t come to death. He sprinted down the hill at top speed, bouncing high a few times and coming down hard, but never quite managing to stay up. By the time he reached the flat before the next drop, his lungs were burning and his legs were jelly. He was hungry, thirsty, exhausted and in no shape for this, he decided.
He tried to pull up before the drop but momentum carried him forward, the wing bucked and he almost lost his grip, and then the hill fell away beneath his feet and Matthew was soaring away on an updraft, screaming at the top of his lungs.
• • •
ELIZA COULD BARELY land in front of San Francisco’s primary government building for all the temperance ladies in the way. They crowded the official timeke
epers, rushing past the barrier of posts and bunting that had been set up around a central grassy square. She didn’t know what they hoped to accomplish, as she must land somewhere, and at the moment it seemed likely she’d wind up landing on one of their heads.
She pulled up and away from the grounds, hoping to give the officials time to clear a space, and that was when she saw the craft moored beside the graceful neoclassical Royal Governor’s office. Wooden hull, a billowing clump of patched and dirty-looking ballonets and white sails. Replace white with black and arm the thing, and it would be unmistakably a pirate ship. As it was, it resembled a slightly disreputable but otherwise unremarkable sky schooner. With a golden poppy painted on its bow.
Drawing her spyglass from its tube on her rigging, Eliza rose higher still and scanned the ship’s decks. She saw unkempt pirates, and even a few filthy, rag-clad opium slaves. Those were working below the main deck, and probably invisible to anyone with a lower vantage point. Unless somebody recognized the craft or was looking for pirates, they’d probably never look closely enough to see the obviously suspicious crew. There was no sign of Orm.
Eliza looped slowly over the green, looking for a bandstand, a stage or other places where authority figures tended to linger. There. She put the skyglass up again and saw the race committee, marked with red and white sashes, seated on a dais and apparently grumbling to one another. They gestured toward the landing square, and up to Eliza’s ship, but she saw no sign of anything being done to clear the area so she might land.
Orm was seated at the end of the row, wearing a gaudy lime green waistcoat and only slightly less gaudy dark green suit with gold piping that matched his gold lapel poppy. As she watched him through the glass, he looked up and gave her a little salute. Then he slipped the poppy free, flicked a switch on the side, and opened it to reveal a hidden compartment containing some kind of brown powder.
Snuff. He pulled one of the poppy petals, which turned out to be a tiny spoon. Then he dosed himself, saluted her again and put the ridiculous contraption back in its place.
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