Jonathan moved the Musica in cadence with the gyrations of Naomi’s pelvis to keep the device centred properly, rewinding the key to tighten the spring when necessary. He was overcome by her movements and words. He wanted to pull the Musica from her and mount her like a stallion would mount a mare in heat, but he had to remember his mission. He must make sure the Musica could bring Naomi’s passion to a satisfactory conclusion.
Over the next few minutes, she advised him when and where to apply more or less pressure. She was clearly delaying her climax until her every fibre could drink in the pleasure he and his gadget were supplying. Finally, she could delay no longer. She placed her hands over Jonathan’s and forced the device’s central finger inside up to its hilt. The smaller feathered arms were forced too close. They bent crookedly against her body and spun harmlessly out of control.
Naomi didn’t care. She shivered in the final throws of a crushing orgasm. With a cry of rapacious splendour, Naomi shrieked in the joy of her release. Her feet trembled and her toes curled tightly against the balls of her feet. The machine ran down and for a moment, there were no sounds other than Naomi’s post-climactic breathing and the distant tinkle of the courtyard’s tree-chime.
“It appears my Musica will need a few adjustments, a few alterations to perfect - ”
“Be still,” Naomi said. “I just want to hear the beating of my heart for a moment.” She grabbed one of Jonathan’s hands and placed it over the fleece-covered mound that the Musica had just pleasured. “I’ve never experienced anything quite like that, Jonathan. It was wonderful, but I’m not sure it provides quite the effect you might have hoped for.”
“How so?” he questioned while unable to avoid the effect of his bare hand against Naomi’s warm flesh. Her mound seemed to pulsate.
“Well, as thrilling as it was, it created the secondary desire to have the real thing, a stallion’s cock to follow up the pleasure of the musical machine. In other words, it has set me afire for your weapon of flesh and blood, Jonathan, of which I’d very much like to taste and feel inside me.”
Jonathan patted Naomi’s pubis and considered her offer. “You are so aflame that you would have me now?”
“Have you ever seen a woman more ready to continue on the path you’ve set? My breasts are stiff with want. My torso is alive with the thrill of your creation, and now here lies the bounty of your patient attention. I trust I can be more than a mechanical experiment. I want you to fuck me, Jonathan. Then I might tell you of a few suggestions I have for your device as well.”
Jonathan put the Musica aside and disrobed while Naomi admired his lean, muscled extremities in the candlelight. He climbed onto the bed with the woman who was now more than his subject. Her eyes sparkled with the image of what was to come.
“This is more than a way of thanking you for the experience you’ve provided me, Jonathan. I want to discover what is possible, artistically and physically. I want your body as well as your mind.”
Naomi brushed the back of her hand beneath the curve of Jonathan’s chin and kissed him. His return kiss was reserved at first, but her naked body beckoned to him. They made a handsome couple. She tongued his mouth gently, lowered her head and tongued his nipples, feeling them harden. She then took his hand and placed it against the valley between her breasts. “Close to my heart,” she said.
He leaned into her and nibbled at her lips with more interest. Suddenly, Jonathan’s defences were gone. It was as if a child was thinking inside of him - all the scars and failures of a lifetime set free with Naomi’s beautiful body next to his. A warm open-mouthed kiss followed and they were off to the races.
Imitating the Musica’s method, Jonathan lay upon Naomi in the missionary position, but when she sensed he was approaching climax, she bade him change their posturing. She straddled him, lifting his cock from his belly and rubbed it against her pubic hair. She wetted her hand with her mouth, lubricating him further, and fitted him inside her slowly, like molasses flowing out of its bottle on a cold morning. She enveloped him with a soft moaning exhalation. He held her face between his hands like an unexpected prize. Her breasts dangled majestically in the candle glow.
He cemented his hands to her waist. She began to rock on him, slowly at first, then picking up the pace. Naomi became lost within the realm of eroticism. She let herself fly as only a woman can, her arms up and her hands rifling through her hair in ecstasy. Jonathan moved with her instinctively, letting their motion stoke the fire inside them.
Without breaking their connection, he rolled her onto her back once more, ready to take control as she began to lose hers, her legs widening for him, spreading her thighs in total surrender, limbs akimbo in the hazy light, so he could view the furry target he’d struck. His cock slipped deeper. Incongruous to the image of a woman who could turn the heads of polite society in New Orleans, or London for that matter, Naomi gave a small cry like the chirp of a little bird. She was not forbidden fruit. Jonathan had been allowed to ripen her, and future possibilities aroused him with the taut, testicle-tightening ache of want.
Passion crashed over them, seized them, and took them away. Naomi’s breasts danced with a life of their own as the couple vibrated, giggled, and finally trembled in the throes of unmitigated lust. With his manhood buried to its hilt inside her, Jonathan lay tender siege to her undulating globes, kneading them with his hands and taunting their tips. She hissed as heat pooled in her hot spots. “Keep touching me, Jonathan.”
She extolled his virtues as they made love. Her cries of pleasure, her elegant body quivering under his weight, the husky sound of her quickened breathing, all these images lodged in Jonathan’s mind, creating a logjam of delights. A casual eye might have mistaken the couple for some mythical crablike creature with two heads, four legs and arms in a sexual battle with itself.
Eventually, they relaxed in each other’s arms. “Maybe we could play our instruments together one day,” Jonathan whispered.
“I want you to play for me, certainly. Would you be willing to play the way I do?”
“I no longer have anything to hide, Naomi.”
“I thought I might be the only person in the world to ever play without the trappings of clothes. You also need a few refinements to the Musica and you have a willing subject. In the meantime, I want to play you.”
Jonathan’s withered penis lolled on his thigh. Naomi took hold and quickly resurrected it. “My heartbeat longs to create a phonetic interlude for two.” She ran her mouth up and down the shaft as if playing a tune on his instrument of pleasure, as if it were a skin flute. Then her lips encircled the organ and began the up and down motion that ended in a burst of exaltation for both of them. Naomi’s mouth filled with Jonathan’s issue. In the phantom light from the street lamp, she reflected a glow that seemed to light from within as much as without. She then kissed Jonathan’s organ as it receded in her warm palm like a dying warrior. “There’s something I want you to see,” she suddenly said. She hoped out of bed before he could respond. “Get dressed.” She commanded.
By way of carriage, the couple left the safety of their courtyard to a place along the Mississippi River. On foot, Naomi led Jonathan to a clearing along the shoreline beyond the lights of the city. In the middle of a circle of people, a silky black woman swayed and flowed to the beat of African drums, her slithery, naked body bursting with vitality. The display gave off a sense of imminent adventure.
“The rhythm just crawls along the ground, up your legs, and into your soul, doesn’t it?” Naomi said to Jonathan.
“Yes, I suppose it does.” It was impossible not to get into the rhythm of the drumbeat. He felt it as much as he heard it. He almost expected all the Africans to take off their clothes, bite the head off a live chicken, and bay at the moon for he knew such activities took place.
“This music is so different from what we make,” Naomi said, “yet it has its pla
ce, just as your new invention will bring a new sensuality to so many that appreciate all the variations life has to offer. Most women would love to be as uninhibited as our merry-makers here. They just need to be shown the way.”
An old woman handed cups of red wine to the couple assuring them it wasn’t blood. Naomi laughed and said to Jonathan, “Do you know why people clink their wine glasses?”
“So the royalty could see if anyone at the party had a dagger hidden up their sleeve?” Jonathan offered.
“No. It’s so that you can experience all five senses. You can see the liquid. You can smell its aroma. You can touch the glass and taste the drink, and you can hear the clink. All that’s missing is music. Even more appropriate since we both play.” Her cup clinked against his. “Voilà. Sounds are the most important sense tonight.” She smiled charmingly and leaned back on the ground. “If music be the stuff of love, play on.”
***
Creating music can bring forth a plethora of emotions: sadness, melancholy, triumph. But perhaps the best emotion is sensual in nature, music that expresses sensuality and eroticism. For Naomi and Jonathan, a mutual bond that began with a sweet melody from a cello was formed. They gave up one of the bungalows and began to play their instruments together - in the raw, of course. With Naomi’s help, Jonathan perfected the Musica with bendable adapters and a longer running spring. He no longer visited Madame Frazzetta’s or any other brothel except to replace parts on the Musica purchased by the women employed there. He also serviced the equipment owned by any number of women around town, including many blue-bloods.
Naomi and Jonathan were kindred spirits. They shared cuisine, sex, and stories along with their music. They became better musicians and lovers as a result of their collaboration. They studied the effect of the music on one another, and it always proved arousing. Jonathan was never sure whether he was most thrilled by the way Naomi’s legs spread open to welcome him, or when she hummed the tune of an old Negro spiritual while his ball sac was firmly inside her mouth. It was a conundrum he was blessed to have. With each other’s music in their heads, they fucked and sucked like there is no tomorrow because one day, they would be right.
As the turn of the century neared, Jonathan still listened to the rhythms of the Vieux Carre and was inspired by the city’s sensual pulse, an aid to the creation of more pleasurable devices. Naomi suggested some sort of suspended cradle in which a naked woman might sit as a man was positioned below. The cradle would be attached to an overhead rotating fan. She dubbed the creation: The French Quarter Spin.
A number of Jonathan’s inventions were successful, but none as much as the Musica. Many years later, surrounded by their own hopes and desires, Jonathan and Naomi died fulfilled, carried away on the tinkling chimes of ghost music and by the hundreds of women who attended both final processions through the streets of the French Quarter led by a brass band.
Boson’s Mate
By Nikko Lee
Captain Beckett stepped through the hatch and came belt buckle to eyeball with a grey-haired man in mining cart fashioned into a mechanised chair.
“You’ve come to the wrong place if you’re looking for cordial or tea. For fancy entertainment, you’ll want to try Bethany’s on the proper decks.”
The old man’s legs ended in bronze capped stumps mid-thigh. Beckett wagered that the old man hadn’t lost them tending the bar. Mining the quantal coal and stoking the furnaces that kept the orbiting station in operation took a toll paid in flesh and bone. Not on the fancies ten decks up but on the wrench monkeys who were born into a profession that would eventually kill them. Cave-ins and furnace blasts that didn’t kill left a trail of carnage. Beckett had seen it all and experienced worse.
“If you are looking for a fight,” the chaired man motioned towards three soot-covered men who eyed Beckett over their drinks. “We don’t hold to rank down here, Captain.”
The Rusty Tool wasn’t the type of place a royally commissioned officer frequented while in dock. The cargo bay converted into a bar had a couple of tables bolted to the galvanised plate floor and a glow line strung around the bulkhead. Located two dozen decks below the docks and three above the furnaces, the air was choked with quantal coal dust. The pings of metal contracting and expanding was a constant reminder of the churning furnaces below.
“Got any Armstrong ale?” Beckett pulled off his standard issue white glove to reveal an obsidian hand trimmed in copper ligaments. “Unless you bandy me too swank for it.”
The old man gave a hearty laugh and slapped his left stump. “Right you are then, one Armstrong. Once a wrench monkey always a wrench monkey. The name’s O’Grady.”
This was one of the few places that Beckett’s mechanical hand granted him access instead of making him stand out like a spotted toad at a fox con. Half the men and woman in the bar were missing parts. The ones that couldn’t afford replacements were left with stumps.
“Here you go.” O’Grady placed a tankard of black sludge on Beckett’s table. “That’s some shiny fixings. Doc Jay’s work? I hear he can rebuild a man from practically stem to stern.”
Beckett nodded. A chance to get a long overdue check-up from Doc Jay was the only reason he’d signed up for Her Majesty’s show of force among the lesser civilized outreaches. It wasn’t his first time working for the fancies. A royal commission meant Beckett could earn enough shill to replace each piece of flesh he’d sacrificed to the mines and furnace rooms before making it onto a proper solar clipper. As long as he kept on a straight tack and his mouth shut.
O’Grady let out a whistle between the last two teeth still left in his mouth. “Haven’t seen anything that pretty in half a deca. Must have cost an arm and a leg.”
While O’Grady laughed at his own joke, a lithe young man saunter into the bar. Dressed in pale blue, even the grime seemed to part for him. Eyes of iridescent orchid, a shifting colour somewhere between purple and blue. The royals were said to have eyes like that, a by-product of the soul crystals that powered their engineered bodies. Implants like those cost a fancies’ fortune for nothing more than looks.
“Get out of here, Boson.” O’Grady nearly took the boy out at the knees with his cart chair. Boson pivoted just in time to avoid the collision. “You ain’t going to bother my customers to buy you no drinks. And I ain’t given you no tab.”
“But I’m thirsty.” Boson barely looked at the regulars but scanned the bar.
When the boy focused on Beckett, the few part of Beckett’s body that were still flesh and blood clenched. Boson was too good for this place and too good for Beckett, but the Captain’s bars on Beckett’s shoulder might be enough to convince the boy to share a drink with him. Maybe more. The decency constables tended to overlook what went on below the merchant decks as long as it kept the wrench monkeys working.
“Why do you have to be such an old putter?” Boson’s smile could melt titanium. Smooth and sweet, just like the rest of him. “I’m sure someone wouldn’t mind sharing a drink in exchange for a little friendly conversation.”
Long blond hair fell over Boson’s face as he zeroed in on Beckett’s shoulder brass.
“What’s your poison?” Beckett invited the boy to sit with him.
“Cryptic cordial.”
“We don’t serve that here,” O’Grady followed close behind Boson. “Only you would whore for a drink that’s worth more than a wrench monkey earns in a month.”
“Very well,” Bosons sighed. “Pale ice.”
“Fine, but keep it clean.” O’Grady rolled back towards the bar. “I don’t want the decency constables having a say about what goes on under my roof. Her Majesty doesn’t look fondly on your kind.”
“Oh, posh.”
“She banished Her one and only heir for being a dallier.” O’Grady returned with a tall glass of shimmering liquid. “Don’t you think you’ll get any special t
reatment from Her decency constables.”
“Long live the Queen.” Boson raised his glass.
“Monarchist sucks.” O’Grady spat on the floor. “Just cause they are immortal they think they can claim the entire galaxy. And frigging decency constables telling us what’s proper and what’s not. Don’t see any of them stoking the furnaces.”
Beckett avoided politics and the decency constables. As long as he kept his head down and his predilections to himself, he retained his employ and his life. Decency was the law of the land, and there wasn’t much that Her Majesty approved of.
“Where do you side?” Boson addressed Beckett once O’Grady had left. “Monarchist or Republican?”
“Doesn’t matter what side one man’s on.”
“Every revolution starts with one man. All it takes is a single spark to ignite a fire.”
“And the ones that get burned are always the ones thinking things are going to change.” Beckett’s mother and father had talked like Boson before they were crushed under the royal army’s mech infantry. “I stay out of politics.”
“Smart man.” Boson extended his hand. “Higgs Boson. And you are?”
“Captain Riley Beckett.”
When their hands met, Beckett felt a surge of electricity course up his flesh arm and rattle around his bone and metal ribcage. The flicker jolted his already unstable quantal core.
“I think you are just the man I was looking for.” Boson pulled his hand back. “Maybe I’m just the man you are looking for.”
“What kind of man do you think I’m looking for?” Beckett asked.
“Someone discrete.”
Boson’s eyes promised all manner of indiscreet acts.
“I’ve got an hour to kill.” Beckett finished his drink.
Boson led Beckett from the squalor of the labourer’s deck to the slightly less crowded and noisy living spaces. Rooms little bigger than a coffin capsule were the cheapest accommodations available to the wrench monkeys. Beckett had spent most of his life as a ship hand with little more than elbow room, often hot-boxing the space when shill was tight.
Valves & Vixens Page 9