Mechanical Rose

by Nathalie Gray

  “Why are you here?” she asked while he kissed her neck. “Why work here alone when you could have a roomful of enthusiastic pupils writing down your every word?”

  “Ha! I hardly think my words are worth the paper. Do you not know I am an embarrassment to the Gunns? The rare times I visit with them, I am a topic of conversation more than a member of the family. An oddity. Entertainment. Something amusing to show then to discard.”

  She could not detect anger in his voice, but hers more than made up for his lack of it. They had no idea what genius Leeford Gunn represented otherwise they would have capitalized on him a long time ago. It frustrated and incensed her how the obtuse Gunns would treat him with such little regard and respect. But then again, who was she to judge? Was she not betraying him this very moment?

  “May I?” he asked after he flicked the first button on her sleeve.

  “If I told you how much I would enjoy that, you would think less of me.”

  “Believe me,” he replied while flicking another button that denuded her wrist. He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed the small bone there. “I could never think less of you.”

  She was not so sure. She could see a day where he would.

  “Oh, I completely forgot,” he said. “I wanted to show you something. Come!”

  Eleanor wanted to grind her teeth when he spoiled the intimate moment, but the man’s enthusiasm—and her own curiosity—forced her to follow him as he jogged to a narrow door she had cataloged under “details yet to investigate”. He opened it to reveal a darkened, narrow set of stairs that he took two by two. She followed, the hem of her dress in her hand and silently lamenting that his lips no longer touched her. She missed his mouth already.

  “There!” he called from above where a rectangle of dawn sky had appeared.

  A door led to a balcony that encircled the lighthouse from which, through the old windows, she could see down into the laboratory. For the gas bracket lights, a wavering, amber glow kissed the glass panes at an angle, created whimsical patterns.

  “Is this where you gain your inspiration?” she asked, raising her face to the sky, striped in brown and purple. The sun would rise soon. Bothersome wind whipped at her hair, sent it into her face, but at the same time vivified her.

  Gunn turned, grinning like a loon, and offered his hand. “Sometimes. I figured with your physical abilities, you would not fear heights. Is that not a view? Breathtaking.”

  She was about to reply when he pulled her to him for a long kiss that left her reeling. He was right, breathtaking. He cupped the back of her head with both hands as he covered her face with light, quick kisses before returning to her mouth and burning it under his passionate touch. Divine Graces, the man could kiss!

  He tugged at her lips, licked them side to side, sucked on the bottom one before releasing it and smiling wide. “You taste of berries.”

  “Kiss me.” Eleanor fisted the lapel of his vest and pulled him closer.

  His next kiss evaporated her ability to think. He made it more demanding, deeper, with his tongue and his teeth. He sucked her moan out of her. She fed them to him—moans, sighs, soft mewling sounds deep in her throat. Leeford took them all into him before crushing his mouth for the deepest, most physically and emotionally profound kiss she had ever experienced. He filled her with him. With his heat, his energy and intensity. Eleanor felt rejuvenated. Filled to bursting. Yet she wanted more. So much more.

  The thought of his wearing clothes infuriated and vexed her and so she made quick work of his worn vest, tugged at the brass buttons without looking, yanked it wide when she was done so she could start on the white cotton shirt. Hot skin and a wiry chest rewarded her. Matching her own, a small, circular scar on his upper arm from his assisted selection vaccine felt like a silk button under the pads of her fingers. Likewise, he had chosen not to become a parent. She placed her cold hands against him and sighed into his mouth.

  “Over there,” she murmured, pulled away from him.

  He followed her to the handrail and winced when she leaned back against it. “Violet, it is quite high.”

  “I know.”

  Leeford’s grin turned feral as he advanced and boxed her in between his arms, grabbed the handrail as an anchor before diving for her throat.

  Despite the height—or perhaps because of it—she let her head loll, arched back, let her magnificent lover work his magic. Wind whistled around them, tugged at what loose garment it could find, played in his hair and in hers.

  Hands shaking but still dexterous, he unbuttoned her sleeves up to her shoulders before starting on the ones at her collar, which he did with his eyes focused on her face. His lips gleamed. A trace of her purple lipstick lent an exotic touch to his mouth. He saw that she looked at his mouth and licked it slowly while he opened the bodice of her dress. Each button released her breath.

  “You are…” He shook his head. “There are no words.”

  Eleanor let him undo her bodice down to her waist. He hooked an index finger into her corset, right between her swelling breasts, and waited. Fortunately, she had not worn her “special” corset, the one concealing half a dozen weapons—a slender dagger in the central busk with a tiny decorative hilt sticking out just high enough to be retrieved with ease and discretion, a garrote worked into the lace trim, a tiny silver pistol slipped into the back itself with a matching slit in most of her dresses for fast retrieval, and a set of long and thin pins slid into the bones to be used as lock picks or for other more nefarious designs. A walking armory.

  “Yes?” she asked, trying not to sound too desperate.

  “I would like you to do it.”

  Eleanor grinned. Oh, she could acquiesce to this request!

  With fingers that trembled—a first for her—she unhooked the topmost clasps of her corset in deliberate slowness so he could watch each small release, each breath that swelled her flesh over the black fabric. And he did. When her cleavage deepened, widened, Leeford leaned over so he could place a kiss on each of the red temporary depressions marking her skin. She shivered.

  He retrieved a strand of her hair and tickled her neck with it. “Your hair is so black, it is almost purple.” He brought the tip of it up and grazed her lips with it. “Purple just like your lips. What color are those below, I wonder? Rose? Plum?”

  Her face must have betrayed her shock for he cringed. “I was too forthright. I always seem to do that. Forgive me.”

  “I am not shocked in that sense,” she replied after a deep breath. The man had a way with words. “You just took me by surprise.”

  “I will try not to do that again—”

  Eleanor placed her hand over his mouth. His lips grazed her palm and triggered a slew of urges to knife her in the belly. “Change nothing about your ways. They suit you perfectly. As for my lips, their color is for you to discover.”

  Above her hand, Leeford’s eyes sparkled. He nodded.

  When she unhooked the last clasp on her corset, the sudden release freed her breasts. Leeford grabbed the handrail on either side of her waist and dove for her chest. Hot, his mouth provided a gasp-triggering contrast to the cold dawn wind. She tilted her head and shoulders back in an offering he seemed eager to take with his mouth and long, nimble hands. She moaned when he trapped her nipple in his mouth, rolled the other between fingers. She whimpered when he raised her breasts, pressed them hard against one another so he could suck them in quick succession. And she cried out when Leeford bit the underside of one. Just hard enough to shock.

  “Ah!”

  His dazzling blue eyes rolled up to look into her face, but his wonderful attention never wavered. His mouth never slowed its pleasurable work nor his hands their exploration. She had never had a more intense, perceptive and precise lover. Leeford Gunn may have been a social embarrassment to his family and societal spheres, but if she were a gambler, she would put her ecus on him in any amorous contest. Attentive men in bed were a rarity. Especially those who looked as he did. But t
hen again, his angular features and tall, sleek physique were not en vogue and women probably never paid him a second glance. A pity. For them.

  For the sheer pleasure of it, she squeezed her breasts together then against his hot chest and remained for a long while, enjoying the way their forms espoused, seemed to have been built of the same mold. One positive. One negative. Strange because he was all angles and she all curves.

  “Stay this way,” he murmured in her ear while he wrapped long and sinewy arms around her shoulders and just hugged her. She heard him sigh.

  Unable to contain herself any longer, she snaked her hands inside his undone shirt and underneath his elbows, raked his back downward with curled-in fingers. Muscles twitched. He swallowed hard. She enjoyed watching his prominent Adam’s apple. The urge to lick and bite it overtook her.

  “I want you,” he whispered. “I want you so much.”

  She pulled her face from the crook of his shoulder so she could look up into his eyes. “Take it. It is yours.”

  “This is mine?” he asked, that grin coming back again while he weighed her breast in a gentle hand, thumb over the nipple. She hoped he would squeeze it. She hungered for it.

  “It is.”

  He trapped the nipple, rolled it twice before abandoning her breast to weave his hand down her belly, past the waistband of her dress. His agile hand slid with ease underneath the layers of clothing and brushed against her mons. She was so wet. Long fingers parted her. At the end of his long, narrow nose, his nostrils flared.

  “This is mine as well? Mine to take?”

  “Yours,” she pushed through her teeth. A roll of hips made him tuck his bottom lip behind his teeth and generated fever-like heat to spread through her sex and thighs. Moisture gathered.

  He must have felt it for his hand slipped lower. Found her hard little pearl, which he trapped between two fingers. She all but pushed him down so she could spear herself to him. “What about this?”

  “Yours,” she replied, breathless.

  A moan left her when he slipped a tender, leisurely finger inside her. “And this?”

  “Y-Yours.” She could barely breathe. “Take it.”

  “Take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you mean?”

  “Yes!”

  Leeford chuckled as he rubbed in and out of her. She was wet, throbbing, so ready it hurt. She wanted him inside. Now. Good fortune, she could not take this any longer.

  Eleanor planted a foot on the handrail’s lowest rung, hooked the heel of her boot there and angled her knee outward to give his skilled hand all the room he needed to maneuver.

  “Take me,” she growled under her breath. “With your hand. Please hurry.”

  Instead, he took his hand away, bent to gather the hem of her dress and bunch it up so he could denude her raised leg. First a knee then a thigh, he exposed her leg to the cold wind and his hot stare. In the dawn light, his eyes were the color of blue flames. They flared wide when he discovered the slit in her dress. Good thing she had decided against her pistol.

  “How clever,” he remarked, mocking grin rising again. He looked down, seemed to try to see how the stitching worked, the gears in his brain spinning fast. After a short inspection, he nodded, unhooked the tiny clasp holding the opening together. The dress parted wide over her leg.

  “Well, that is most fascinating! A single little clasp holding it all together.” He crouched so he could take a closer look at it. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

  Eleanor wanted to sigh in relief when it became obvious he held no interest in knowing why her dress had been assembled this way but how. She wanted to kiss him. Not an ounce of jealousy or malice in the man’s body. Such a refreshing departure from most men she knew.

  “Do other women have dresses like this one? I should think it would be perfect for strenuous physical activities. Riding horses and duo-cyclers or even—” He stopped midsentence, kissed her exposed thigh and looked up at her. “Forgive me. I tend to get excited about such things. I think we were saying that this—” He parted her dress wide over her underthings, placed a kiss on her pubic bone. Through the thin cotton, the heat of his mouth warmed her skin. “Is mine to take.”

  “It is,” she replied through her teeth. She wrapped her hand around the back of his head and curled her hips forward. “May I suggest you claim it sooner rather than later?”

  After a quick bark of laughter—he had the most infectious and hearty laugh—Leeford kept her dress open with one hand while he pinched the lace holding her underthings and pulled. The knot gave with a tiny tug that she felt in her sex. She quivered with anticipation.

  Eleanor hurriedly put her foot back down, allowed cool wind to seep in and tickle her flesh while he lowered her underthings down around her ankles then off altogether. He rolled them against his thigh then slid them in his back pocket. Eleanor chuckled. The man never ceased to interest and surprise her.

  “I have thought about this little fruit all night, you know.” With a reverent index finger, he brushed her narrow strip of pubic hair downward. Eleanor’s breath caught in her throat. “I even tried to imagine how it would look. But to see it—”

  “Touch it,” she whispered, eyes closed. “Kiss it.”

  “I would prefer that you present it to me.”

  “Present it?”

  “Yes. Show me how to treat such delicate gift.”

  Her fingers shook with thrill and the strain of not attacking him right then and there. While she kept herself put with a hand around the metal rail, she slipped her other down her belly, past the undone corset and dress until her fingers rested over her mons. With the tip of her index and middle fingers, she parted her sex for him, revealed herself to his ardent gaze, which felt like a physical entity going over her skin, her flesh, at times hot and tender, others pointed like a probing finger. Honey slicked her. She could feel it gathering in her folds.

  Leeford shifted position so he could kneel in front of her and with his knees nudged her feet wider apart. His shirt and vest hung loose but would sometimes allow her a quick peek at his flat and defined front. Not thick with muscles as with some lovers she had known, but athletic and spare. Muscles played under the skin like cords.

  He splayed his hands over her thighs, drew near. “Such a lovely gift. How do we unwrap it? Teach me. Show me.”

  Eleanor’s heart skipped a beat. At least one. She stretched her fingers wider. A slow rotation triggered spasms in her thighs. He rubbed his thumbs in slow, tender circles from insides to hips. Each upward pass helped pull her lips wider apart. Her middle finger shook when it alit on her clitoris. Heat. Exhilaration. His gaze on her. So exposed. He knelt at her feet yet controlled the situation as a conductor would an orchestra.

  “Let me see how one opens it,” Leeford said, licked his lips. “How one tastes it.”

  Trembling from head to toe, she dipped her middle finger inside, collected her essence, rubbed ’round and ’round before she pulled the slender digit out to proffer to him. With eyes half closed, he wrapped his mouth around her finger, sucked on it gently. She felt his tongue pressing up against the pad of her finger.

  Without warning a ring of fire tightened her sex. She was close. So close!

  A wet pop followed her jerking her finger out of his burning-hot mouth so she could rub her flesh in brisk motions that pushed her beyond the edge, into a world of blinding pleasures and feverish images of their imminent coupling. A gasp choked her when Leeford penetrated her with a finger then with two. Bent back over the handrail, she let her head loll as she worked her clitoris while Leeford thrust into her with a cadence that accelerated, doubled, tripled. Something hot touched her denuded pearl. Trapped it. Sucking sounds made her bite her bottom lip. Suns behind her eyelids. Fizzing. Bursting suns of pure white light. Liquid heat seeping from her distended opening.

  “Rosy.”

  “W-What?” So close now.

  “The color of your lips,” he murmured before
licking her. “Rosy.”

  “Ahh!”

  Delirium threatened to make her a screaming madwoman. Ebullience. Dizziness. Marvel. He took her to heights unknown. On a long whimper, Eleanor released.

  Leeford sucked it out of her in long, noisy draws. He planted his hands on her belly, used his thumbs to stretch her sex—she crushed it against his face in her desperation to crest the next wave looming over her. Then it hit. This time, she cried out. In shock, she realized it had been his name.

  Chapter Four

  Leeford’s heart swelled when his name came out like a battle cry. He ate her even more thoroughly, stretched her wide, licked and nibbled and sucked her tender flesh until more juices rewarded his work, soothed his inquietude—did she enjoy his touch? Would she grant him more?—and gave him the best pat on the back a man’s pride could ask. Not only did she enjoy what he did to her, she seemed bent on gifting him with even more of her sweet honey. Already it coated her cleft, his fingers. He spread it around. Plenty. Sweet-smelling. Glistening in the dawn. Her sex tightened around the fingers with which he discovered her, squeezed him hard, milked him with a strength and an energy that surpassed any other woman he had known. Her channel, so tight and wet, felt like a home to him. As if he had searched long and hard and had finally found it. But he had not been searching, had he? Although spending time with Violet was proving to be stimulating for both his mind and body. She fit him so well. Compatible.

  “Take it,” she growled as she abandoned her sex to grab the handrail behind her. “Take me.”

  With boots and all his clothes still on—if barely done up—Leeford stood right between her legs, kept his fingers in her while he tugged at his trousers closure, freed his cock from its constraint.

  She looked down at it, offered him a wolfish grin that did wonders to his inhibitions then growled, “Do it! Take me!”

  “Show me how,” he replied in kind. Where had his self-control gone? “Tell me how you want it.”

  Violet spread her thighs as she took the heel of her boot from over the bottom rung then with a wicked smile, rolled against the handrail, flipped her dress back over a hip to present her curvy backside. With hands he forced to be gentle, he grabbed her on either side, dug the pads of his fingers in.