Mechanical Rose

by Nathalie Gray

  “You have hurt Miss Lily’s feelings,” Max remarked. “You lied to her. I will not forgive you.”

  Lily took his arm and tut-tutted. “All is well, Max.” She leaned her head on his thick arm and smiled. “Good night, Leeford.” Lily blew a kiss at him, set her gaze on Eleanor. The grin disappeared. “I have lost a cousin I never had.” She shrugged. “But I think I have gained a friend. Time will tell. It always does.”

  Eleanor’s heart squeezed. She nodded as the door closed.

  Without a word, Leeford took the key from her and unlocked the door to their room, waited while she trudged past then closed it without a sound. A soft rattle indicated he had tested the lock. Good man.

  Good fortune, she had trouble just standing. “I am so very tired.”

  A knock at the door made both start. Leeford answered, thanked someone then proffered, grinning, a tray filled with victuals. This time, she locked the door. And wedged the clothes valet under the doorknob.

  They fell on the food like ravenous wild men, ate every morsel and drank every drop. Leeford’s glistening lips reminded her how handsome and athletic he looked in only his trousers. The thought, so incongruous with their risky situation, made her smile.

  “Something I said?” he asked as he put everything pell-mell back on the tray.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Bath. Bed. In that order before I fall on my face.” His tight grin did not fool her. The man was dead on his feet.

  She had a quick bath, made sure to leave enough hot water for him and climbed into the crispy bed. As tired as she was, the sight of him coming out of the bathroom, naked and smelling of fresh soap, put a little bit of life back in her weary body. By the embrasure she noticed he had hung their clothes on the hot water heater. So thoughtful. They spooned with the covers tight around them. Behind her, Leeford’s body grew warmer. He had been so very cold. Poor man.

  “Good night,” she whispered.

  He kissed her cheek, her shoulder, her upper arm. “I regret nothing, Eleanor. Do you believe me?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Sweet dreams.”

  She doubted her dreams would be sweet for the foreseeable future. She had almost cost this man his life. More than once. Her allies had turned on her, the Society failed her. Once organized and compartmentalized, her life had disintegrated around her like a sand castle in the surf. Maybe it had begun earlier and she had been too blind to see. Or perhaps her affection for Leeford had precipitated events. She was not sure. All she knew was that she would do anything, anything at all, to protect Leeford Gunn. And may the Divine Graces help those who stood in her way.

  She slept by fits, woke often, would have tossed and turned had she not been afraid to wake Leeford. When she woke again, this time to the sound of labored breathing, her instincts hurriedly aligned, left her dizzy with overconcentration. On the alert, she slipped her hand under her pillow, mouthed a silent curse when she realized she had been too tired to even remember to arm herself. Stupid, deadly mistake in their present situation. But she realized the sounds came from Leeford and had nothing to do with danger. He was dreaming. Or having nightmares, judging by the sound. In the darkness, she felt him twitch. She would have let his sleep take its normal course—he needed the rest, even troubled—had he not begun to grind his teeth. Eleanor placed a gentle hand on his biceps and squeezed. Despite her efforts, he woke with a start.

  “So sorry,” she whispered. “I did not mean to disturb you.”

  He stirred. “Nightmare. Did I wake you?”

  “No.”

  A hot hand landed on her shoulder. He rubbed his thumb there, ’round and ’round. “Can you not sleep? Even a little?”

  “I did.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  Her first reaction was to say no. But she was. Not for herself, for him. She had made her choices early in life, had chosen this dangerous profession knowing the risks and consequences. He had not. “Yes.”

  “I am as well,” he whispered, chuckled. In the gloom, the sound was like velvet against her cheek. “I should never have attended that fair last year. Your Mr. Clarence was right on one point—I had to know my machine had the potential for evil, yet I pursued the research anyway. I had to build it. I had to see it through. That is my greatest weakness. I could not help myself and preferred to see my machine as only a tool. But whisky has that effect. It helps us delude ourselves quite thoroughly.”

  “Do not blame yourself, Leeford,” Eleanor replied, fighting to keep her voice below murmurs. “Spark would have sponsored someone else. Someone who would have continued even after he revealed himself. You refused. As soon as you knew, you stopped. This has profound meaning to me.”

  “Yes, it means that I am a coward.”

  Eleanor rolled to her side so she could find his face in the darkness and cup it in a hand. “You are no coward. We all know Spark’s reputation—rightly earned. Who would refuse him? Name another inventor who would reject Spark’s money and rebuff him in public the way you have. There is a difference between bravado and bravery.”

  After a long silence, she heard him take a deep breath.

  “That nightmare… I was in a scull, rowing,” Leeford began in a voice so subdued she had to pay close attention to hear his words. “Despite all my skill, all my efforts, I kept reaching the shore too late.”

  “It is only a dream. We make our own choices, not the Divine Graces.”

  “I pulled so hard on those oars.” His voice broke.

  Eleanor’s heart followed suit. In shaking arms, she gathered his head and cradled it against her. “Shh.”

  “I was always too late,” he snarled against her skin. He returned her embrace, held her hard. Muscles like iron bands dug in her flesh. He shook. “Each time, you had fallen before I could get to you. And he was there, that bastard, laughing.”

  She could well imagine whom. A man who had shared her bed, even for a short while in her younger years when she had sought pleasures from dark places and darker characters. Until she had realized that natural and conventional lovemaking had stopped pleasing her, that she could no longer stoke her own fire, that small details, which had always attracted and charmed her, were no longer enough to tantalize her. In her early thirties, Eleanor Cleverly had already grown jaded. The realization had had the effect of a cold shower. No more would she let men like Spark desecrate her flesh. No longer would she snub simple delights and instead hunt for extremes and excesses. Decadence had lost its appeal, debauchery its thrill.

  “He is not here,” Eleanor whispered in his ear. Kissed his lobe, his defined jaw. “There is only you and me in this room.”

  “Every time. And he would say, ‘What, Gunn? Did you not care about her enough to take that bullet? It was meant for you, after all, was it not?’ That…argh, there is no word vile enough.”

  “Do not give in to anger. Do not let it eat you inside. You are better than this, than him. Smarter and much more handsome as well.”

  She felt him shake his head. “I am so afraid of losing you, Eleanor. Should something happen to you, it would kill me as well.”

  “I am not dead.”

  She did not voice the last word, the one both knew fit their situation—not dead yet. No small success considering the enemy massing against them. Like poisonous mushrooms, insidious and toxic. Cut one and three will take its place.

  Leeford twisted onto his side, draped an arm across her chest and kept rolling until he lay on top of her, a knee between hers, his elbows on either side of her head. He was much heavier than he looked. His hard chest pressed against her naked breasts. His breath against her mouth heralded a deep, demanding kiss that tasted of desperation, joy, fear, exultation, frenzy, dread. He sucked at her bottom lip, took it into his mouth while his hand captured a breast that he molded with pitiless fingers.

  Rush and her own inner fears fired her body. She arched her pelvis against him. He was hard. With his thigh, he pushed against her sex, worked back an
d forth, hips pumping and curling while his mouth conquered hers. He planted her hands above her head while he worked his way downward.

  Moans left her when Leeford kissed her throat, sucked at it, licked upward. She whimpered when he trapped a nipple between his teeth. His hot breaths against her feverish skin. Then lower on her belly. He abandoned her wrists but she never moved except to part her legs. She had melted for him between her thighs. Even she could smell her stimulation.

  In the darkness she felt him kicking at the sheets and covers, in anger ripping everything off the mattress before shoving a pillow under her backside to elevate her pussy to his hungry mouth. She balled her fists and squeezed them under her back for added pressure. A groan of anticipation left her when Leeford closed his hands over her wrists and kept her there in bonds she would never undo even if she had a key.

  A split second of total silence and stillness. Then his mouth crushed her pussy. She “Ahh-ed” loud and long. He bit the insides of her thighs. Sucked her clitoris hard enough to curl her toes. She undulated without moderation. His name became a whip with which she incited and roused Leeford. In her head, she asked him to fuck her senseless, demanded it, taunted him to the breaking point. Outward, she let him know how to touch her by the brusque roll of hips and mewling sounds deep in her throat. Although he must have already felt her hunger for forcefulness since his fingers found her pussy and worked her harder than he had before. Nimble, precise, skilled. To be finger-fucked by Leeford Gunn had no equal.

  An abyss opened under her. She fell into a black and red gulf, tossed and thrown and lost. Her lips formed his name even if her lungs had already emptied on a long cry.

  Chapter Nine

  Her pussy closed around his fingers as a fist would. Squeezed him, rippled in rings as pleasure ripped through her. Leeford thrust them in and kept them there to feel her flesh make a home for him, her sweet, wet flesh that had left such a luscious taste in his mouth. With his other hand flat against her belly, he felt every wave and ripple, every shudder and spasm in turn tightening then distending, like shivers, frissons, a body-wide fever.

  Eleanor’s voice filled their room and his heart, just as his fingers filled her pussy. She gifted him with her vocal pleasure and he returned it tenfold with powerful thrusts. Honey spilled onto his fingers. He licked it off in greedy abandon, returned to his work. In turn, she begged, demanded, threatened, cajoled for him to do it again, again, harder, deeper, gentler. In softness—with force—she wanted to be fucked and made love to. Leeford acquiesced. In the dark, all he had was her physical responses and the sounds she made. In the darkness, all he had was her. His world was reduced to Eleanor’s sex, to her breasts, and to her mouth, all of which had provided homes to his cock and would again.

  He pulled his fingers out, devoured her to make sure the fire remained high and strong, then when she had begun to writhe beneath him, he knelt between her legs, grabbed her by the crook of the hips and took her. In a long and vigorous penetration, he pushed to the end of her, to the end of himself, retreated. In hiccups and whimpers, she pleaded for him to return. Which he did. Lost himself in her welcoming pussy, her sweet, wet cunt. All his. He abandoned one of her breasts, which he had seized to roll her hard nipple, so he could grab the headboard. With this added anchor, he bucked forward. She cried out, gasped, moaned.

  “Tell me,” he whispered before another push made a spur of her voice. “Tell me how.”

  “Hard,” she snarled. “Make it hard. Hard.”

  The bed rattled and creaked in their furious coupling. In his hand, the headboard grew slick with sweat, but still he pumped. Pounded, took, staked a claim in her. Hammered, thrust, sheathed himself to the hilt.

  After Eleanor crossed her ankles behind him, he raised himself off her, used his pelvis as an anchor so he could free his hand off the mattress, grabbed her knee instead and brought it up high by her shoulder. Her pussy, distended around him, became so tight that he feared coming before it was time. He wanted more from her. He wanted period.

  “Kneel up,” he whispered in her ear. His voice came out like a harsh command. But he knew—somehow—she would not take offense. She trusted him. With her flesh. Perhaps even with her heart. He loved her. Had always. Would always.

  He released her so she could roll to her side, climb to her knees. As if she had known what he wanted, she turned away from him, her back slick with sweat, her thighs sticking to his with her honey. He heard the twin plop of her hands landing against the wall. He could just imagine how she looked, her curvy backside curled up for his taking. Her rosy flesh glistening with pleasure. The way her hair fell in a point between her shoulder blades. He saw it all in his mind’s eye. As though he had always known her.

  Instead of taking her right then and there—his cock was about to explode—he curled a hand into her wet cleft while with the other he seized a breast. She felt tense with expectations. He did not want to disappoint her.

  “I am going to take you,” he murmured with his chin on her shoulder.

  She panted, swallowed. He heard it all, so close.

  “I am going to make you writhe for me, Eleanor. With my cock in you, with my hands on you. But only if you want it.”

  “I…I do. I do!”

  He felt merciless only because he knew her body responded to his with such readiness and with copious amount of honey. No greater proof than that. He knew she would find pleasure at his touch. Her flesh yearned for his and vice versa.

  Her cleft tightened on his hand when he rubbed back and forth from clitoris to anus. A sense of power and ownership gripped him, one he relegated to primeval male instincts over which he had little say.

  Leeford curled his middle finger into her pussy. In passing, her little pearl grazed his knuckle. So hard. “Do you want this?”

  “Yes—ahh…yes!”

  His ring finger joined the first. Around his knuckles, her flesh tightened. Good fortune, he wanted to push her down and spear her to the mattress! He pushed his fingers with a slight twist of the wrist so his pads would rub her sensitive flesh all the way in. She shuddered.

  “And this?”

  Her nipple proved too hard to resist in his hand and he squeezed it, rolled it and tugged a few times to make her gasp.

  “Oh please, yes, I want this. I want it!”

  Where had the awkward man who shunned society gone? He felt victorious and powerful. She was his. All his. Would always be his.

  With his knees, he pushed hers wider. His cock hung between her cheeks. When he pulled his fingers from her she whimpered threats at him that made him smile.

  “Is that right, Eleanor? If I do not take you, you will force me to?”

  He curled his backside out and rubbed her cleft with his member, all the way down to its base. Did it again. And again. He was close to coming but would not let himself. There was still more he wanted to hear from her. So much more.

  “How would you do this?” he taunted by rubbing his glans against her wet cleft. “Mm?”

  Eleanor curled her backside up, which distended her pussy and elevated her breasts. Leeford knew how she would force him to take her. By making him lose his mind. The way she just had.

  He gripped the headboard on either side of her hips. On a long snarl, Leeford fisted his cock and found her drenched entry, which he penetrated with his teeth about to fuse together.

  Her voice turned from whimpered commands to keens. One for each of his thrusts. If the bed had rattled before, it positively smashed against the wall now. Burning, all-consuming, a climax made his lower back, his thighs and cock one big throbbing mess of nerve endings and muscle spasms. He came just as he had pushed deep into her. Instead of retreating, he stayed there, as deep as he could. And waited. Pulsating out the last of his cum, he felt her own orgasm rip through her. She arched back, far back, took her with him and they tumbled backward against the mattress. Spent, joined, elated, sweaty, feverish, exhausted. In love.

  Leeford woke with a start. Light
poked thin rays in between the drapes. He could no longer feel one of his legs. Raising his head, he realized Eleanor and he had fallen asleep still coupled. Sweat and cum made everything sticky. He chuckled as he tried to extirpate his legs from underneath hers. So she snored. He never would have guessed.

  “Eleanor,” he whispered as he pushed hair from her face. “Eleanor. We must get ready.”

  “Mmm,” was her reply.

  “I will wash up first and try to find something to wear. Taking the train in just my trousers would be too strange, even for me.”

  She grinned with her eyes closed as he finally managed to roll her off him and stand. So beautiful she was, relaxed in the messiest bed he had ever seen. The quiet moment of appreciation and discovery was gone a second later. Spark was breathing down their necks. That “society” as well. They had no time.

  After they took turns with the bathroom, he went knocking on Lily and Max’s door, not too sure what to expect and trying not to have expectations in the first place. For an inane reason he could not fathom, that Max answered the door dressed and looking his well turned-out—if gruff—self made Leeford feel a whole lot better. Was Max and Lily’s bed as messy as the one he had shared with Eleanor? Had they…?

  “You better take this,” Max said as he passed his long jacket to Leeford, who took it with a nod of thanks. “What now?”

  “Now Eleanor and I will book passage to anywhere on the next available train.”

  “Miss Lily will not like it.”

  “Where is she?” Leeford asked. He caught himself trying to peek over Max’s wide shoulder. The bed had been made.

  “In the bathroom.”

  He could not help it anymore! “How long have you two been intimate?”

  The blunt question triggered a rare smile to lift Max’s cheekbones. “What does it change, Mr. Gunn?”