Valves & Vixens Read online




  Title Page

  VALVES & VIXENS

  Steampunk Erotica

  Edited by

  Nicole Gestalt

  Foreword by Professor Elemental

  Publisher Information

  Valves & Vixens

  published in 2014 by House of Erotica

  an imprint of Andrews UK Limited

  www.houseoferoticabooks.com

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright © House of Erotica 2014

  The rights of the authors have been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Foreword

  By Professor Elemental

  This book is rude. Awfully rude in fact. I’d shut it now before someone sees you reading it. Honestly, I had to close the curtains, turn off the lights and use the dust sheets to cover the portrait of my Great Aunt Fanny, so that she didn’t stare at me while I was reading it.

  In truth, I only agreed to write this forward under the assumption that was a book of instructions on how to make a robotic fox using brass pipes- I had no idea that I would subjected to this sort of filth. I was barely half way through reading the first story before I was forced to stop what I was doing and take a few deep breaths. When that didn’t work, I was forced to strip naked and dive head first into the local pond for a brisk November swim, just to try and clear my head and reduce my shame. Still, I was unaccountably distressed. After I had towelled myself off thoroughly, Geoffery brought me my usual lunch (2 large melons and a banana, with a generous garnish of cream), but even that suddenly looked less appetising than usual.

  I carried on reading that afternoon, unable to draw my eyes away from the saucy goings on within. But after reading every story in detail (Some of them twice. Out loud), I was stunned. I was also slightly sleepy.

  Perhaps everybody was prey to these carnal desires? What base instincts had I unlocked? That afternoon, did Missus Miggins really leer suggestively, as she passed me my two cherry buns for tea? When I gave Bob the gardener a cheery wave from my bicycle, did he really return it with a filthy wink? Dear God, I even found myself staring at Sadie Bell’s exposed ankle at supper time. I fear that I have become a monster.

  So, I implore you, please, don’t read this book. It is rude. Close it now. That’s it.

  And whatever you do, don’t turn the next page.

  Introduction

  Steampunk is different things to many people but the one thing it has in common with everyone is escapism. By writing in this genre authors are asking questions of themselves and of their readers, everyone has to in some degree push back their own conceptions and readily jump into the authors visions.

  When I put out the submission call for this anthology I had no idea I would get such a wide range of stories. I had hoped to get some non-traditional pieces and indeed I am thankful and wonderfully surprised that I did. Within these pages you will be transported around the world in a series of stories that explore many different elements of steampunk.

  Since this is also an erotic anthology there are of course many different facets of erotica on show, from spanking (in Regina Kammer’s One Cheek or Two?) all the way to multiple partners (such as in Jim Lee’s Coming Aboard the Greatest of Great Ships). There is also varying degrees of heat levels from the sweet (in Crysta K. Coburns’ The Waiting Future) all the way up.

  The beauty of anthologies is you can find a number of authors in one place and I was honoured to have so many authors send me submissions. Please don’t hesitate to have a look at the authors biographies at the back of the book, and if you find an author you enjoy go and say so – authors thrive on positive feedback!

  I would like to thank the eminent Professor Elemental for his foreword. For those who don’t know him he is your typical time travelling multi-trouser wearing professor whose butler just so happens to be an Orangutan. To learn more about Professor Elemental please check him out here: http://www.professorelemental.com/.

  Nicole Gestalt

  April 2014

  Coming Aboard the Greatest of the Great Ships

  By Jim Lee

  Chapter 1

  Rachel Morris’ blue eyes widened, her dainty mouth puckered with bewildered amusement. “Really, Cassie?” she said and gestured at the outfit laid out so carefully across the other woman’s canopy bed. The semi-sheer black silk gloves she’d just removed swayed disapprovingly between her fingers. “This is what you propose to wear to the social and spiritual event of the season - if not of our very lives to date?”

  “Indeed,” Cassandra Webb replied with a calm smile. Then she paused to await her best friend’s all-too-predictable reaction.

  “A riding habit,” Rachel muttered - her evident wonderment mixed liberally with equally open dismay.

  She was a sweet girl, really - a loyal comrade and, whenever Cassandra could lure her into exploring certain life experiences less-exploratory eras would’ve certainly found shockingly unsuitable at the very least, a most pleasant and responsive lover. But Rachel clung inexplicably to a reverent conventionality better suited to one of those earlier times - to periods pre-dating the World Drought and most especially prior to the advent of the steam-driven, barrier-shattering version of Salvation offered by the Great Cloud Ships.

  In short: Rachel could be something of a pill.

  “This is a formal affair - you do realise that, my girl?”

  Cassandra nodded benignly.

  The nostrils of her friend pulsed with frustration, not to say exasperation.

  Rachel’s head turned, her eyes lifted to peer worshipfully upward through the curtained window of Cassandra’s boudoir. An appreciative and unconsciously lustful gasp escaped her lips as she beheld the provocatively shaped underside of the massive device looming amid the thin cloud deck presently above Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and adjoining environs.

  CSS Aquarius - a full mile long from bow to stern and as much as one-fifth of a mile wide - the pride of the nearby Homestead Iron Works and a truly breathtaking sight!

  “This evening,” Rachel recited with genuine awe in her voice. “It is to be our High Honour and Most-Tender Joy - not to mention our Sacred Duty as mere humble Ground Folk - to Greet and Entertain and, should circumstances allow us to be so fortunate, to Provide all manner of Most-Attentive Service to the Great Ship’s Highly-Respected Officers and most particularly the So-Rightly-Venerated Engineers - in an appropriate and proper manner!”

  The pious blonde closed eyes that had gone abruptly dreamy and her full bosom heaved, ripe with emotion - and alive with desires she dared not voice, except while cloaked in ritually approved euphemisms.

  “Indeed,” Cassandra repeated with unforced conviction. And then she continued - for she was not so shy nor of so retiring a nature as her friend. “But what, I ask you, could conceivably be more appropriate than donning my finest riding clothes for such an occasion? Oh, let us be utterly frank and open here, dear Rachel! I admit - without shame or hesitation - that I have a great and abiding expectation that tonight I shall find myself ridden - quite well and most vigorously, one should hope - by one or more of the So-Worthy Individuals you have just mentioned!”

  The sca
ndalised expression on Rachel’s face was predictable - and Cassandra thought, profoundly silly. Didn’t she understand their world of 1887 at all?

  The World Drought, which called forth so much unexpected change, had by now plagued the planet for a full century and more.

  The Sky Machines had appeared somewhat later - in their grandparents’ time. At first they were another bizarre curiosity - one that made the experimental hot air balloons they quickly displaced in the public imagination seem quite ordinary by comparison. Yet they very soon proved practical instruments of high-speed and long-distance transportation for both people and freight, at once complementing and competing effectively with those other two mighty innovations of the modern era: The ocean-spanning steamships and the thunderous, onrushing rail-roads that now criss-crossed the surface of virtually every nation worth mentioning.

  Between those three stream-propelled miracles of technological science, the world was now a much smaller and more interconnected place.

  A better place too, Cassandra reflected with a lick of full and sensuous lips. These days the world was more peaceful, more liveable for the greater proportion of humanity - even at least somewhat more just.

  To a very large degree, all that was owed to the men - the bold, wondrously exotic and notoriously, shamelessly lusty Men of the Sky Machines - such as the ones that she and her friend were about to encounter!

  Stirred by these thoughts, Cassandra took a slow deep breath.

  Her bust - less prodigious than her friend’s yet by no means inadequate - heaved upward against the loose outer garment she’d thrown on when Rachel appeared a full hour early at her door. Her nipples hardened; her mouth went dry as the desert that so much of Earth would be without the Great Ships’ intervention. Conversely, other regions of her anatomy grew moist as one of the clouds that Sky Machines like the Aquarius infused with precious, moisture-fixing substances.

  Unobserved by Rachel, she undid the sash of her dressing gown.

  The wispy fabric slid from her shoulders and down her curves, reached the floor with the faintest of soft rustling sounds. Now clad in nothing but her skimpiest corset, her most colourfully striped silk stockings with lace-trimmed garters and a pair of silvery ballet slippers, Cassandra eased closer to her thoroughly distracted friend.

  Shortly thereafter, she continued musing to herself, the startling insight that Cloud Ships might be used to mitigate the Great Dryness that threatened nations and indeed whole continents had made its appearance. And finally - almost as soon as this new use convinced all who mattered that the ever-larger Sky Vessels amounted to a vital necessity - the new system ran afoul of one of its own organising principles.

  The great twin furnaces that produced the required steam had to be fed enormous quantities of coal. This work was of its nature hot and hard, dirty and physically taxing in the extreme. Additionally, the arrays of adjustable rotors that allowed the vast ships to rise into the clouds and there move about or hover at will, the complex piston-like equipment that injected the various weather altering substances that were tried into suitable clouds and the elaborate pipe systems connecting it all had to be maintained at all times and costs. All these systems and more necessitated large numbers of seemingly unskilled aboard the Great Cloud Ships - unglamorous jobs in marked contrast to the dashing Officers and most especially the gloriously mysterious technical challenges facing those new Culture Heroes of the Steam Age, the Engineers.

  Employing a motley - and allegedly disposable - mix of inmates from debtor prisons, recently paroled outright criminals, poverty-stricken immigrants from ‘inferior’ races and/or nations, free but desperately poor non-white men and outright slaves in these often brutish yet absolutely vital jobs had seemed logical.

  Though largely unschooled and undeniably grimy, these workers were no fools - nor were they willing martyrs. Very soon, they came to resent their lowly and unappreciated status. The best and brightest of the lot did far more than work to exhaustion for the benefit of the Cloud Ships and their wealthy owners - they watched and learned, until they knew as much or more about the ships than the original operators. They plotted, they quietly organised -and they cultivated often surprising allies wherever possible.

  At last they were ready.

  The Righteous Uprisings swept one Cloud Ship after another.

  Those Engineers and other Ship Officers who had the decency - or at least sufficient wit to immediately grasp the new circumstances as well as a desire to continue living - joined the mutiny and thereby survived. Others were killed in a brief but intense spasm of raw violence and replaced by formerly downtrodden, untitled underlings. To the astonishment and yes - the fearful consternation - of many Ground Folk and in particular those in traditional positions of wealth and power, the ragged New Order quickly stabilised and settled into place. They kept the ships functioning as before and even notably better in many cases. The natural leaders among these rebels - men such as the legendary Denmark Vesey, and his equally brilliant, though much younger protégé Nat Turner - found themselves suddenly blessed with near-Godlike influence.

  And in concert with the land-borne allies that now emerged, they used their power well - at least for the most part.

  By 1825, the World Drought and the great Cloud-Seeding Ships that - for a price - now kept whole nations from abject ruin had turned the politics and social structures of the entire planet upside down. The Cloud Service and its mighty Ships became a virtual law onto itself - a de facto super-nation without borders or limits.

  From that point onward, a multinational and, yes, defiantly multiracial alliance of the formerly beaten down, the scorned, the neglected and the marginalised enforced their ideas of freedom and justice by the simply ruthless expedient of withholding their services from the non-compliant.

  Defiant regions - several slave-holding states of the American South provided especially vivid examples - paid dearly for their obdurate stances.

  By contrast, more receptive areas flourished - or at the very least suffered far less.

  And now, more than fifty years later, as Cassandra reminded herself, the changes still came rapidly. It was a fresh new world of endless possibility and passionately rebellious young people like her were only too-eager to be part of it all.

  Now she lifted a hand and played multiple fingertips across her golden-haired friend’s cheek.

  Rachel continued staring up and outward, her only immediate response to this contact a slight but undeniable quiver of excitement.

  “Cassie,” she whispered desperately, “please - ?”

  “Please what?” Cassandra whispered back teasingly.

  Her hand drew back then swept forward again, gliding under Rachel’s slightly upturned chin. Her fingers bent up then back and the very tips lightly caressed the opposite side of the blonde’s flawless face.

  “Please rip the very fabric away from your big round breasts, perhaps? And then lift, squeeze the undersides of both as I sink my teeth into one of those perfectly round and deep-pink areola?”

  “Oh - Cassie,” Rachel whimpered and trembled more intensely. “You are such a wanton - such a shameless, brazen creature!”

  “Indeed.” Cassandra grinned triumphantly. “I am a true Daughter of Our Age, am I not? And you are so glad of it - admit it now!”

  The blonde closed her eyes tightly, revealing lids darkened in keeping with the fashion of the moment’s nod to ancient Egypt.

  “Kohl,” Cassandra murmured the word, pronouncing it exactly like the coal that was so vital to the modern world - and particularly to the Great Ships, the greatest of which had been constructed just two years previously in the massive iron works mere miles from where they now stood and which now, at last, was paying a return visit to the place of its construction.

  She tightened her grip around the underside of Rachel’s chin, the thumb digging into the
nearer portion of the blonde’s soft cheek and her other fingers working deeper into the flesh of the other side. Staring hotly, her long black hair lustrous in the muted sunlight that passed through the lace curtains, Cassandra turned her slightly taller friend’s head with slow determination.

  She brought Rachel’s submissively puckered lips to her wide-open mouth and kissed fiercely, grinding one mouth against the other. The blonde opened to her questing tongue and Cassandra’s other hand shot upward, took a mass of faintly curled, golden hair by the roots.

  She wrenched the other young woman’s suddenly-avid lips a few millimetres back from her wriggling tongue and chuckled, amused by the instant power she had - as usual - achieved so easily over her friend.

  “Put the gloves back on,” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Cassandra insisted and gave her fistful of blonde tresses a sudden twist. “At least the one,” she amended decisively, “the one for your good right hand.”

  “Okay.” Rachel’s eyes blinked open and she fumbled with the silk gloves, finally pulling the specified one on while letting the other tumble unceremoniously to the carpeted floor between Cassandra’s slipper-clad feet.

  The brunette tossed her shimmering hair delightedly and tightened her grip on the back of her friend’s skull.

  “Now,” she said with a tone of absolute yet matter-of-fact authority, “fuck me with that gloved hand!”

  “Cassie? By God, girl! I don’t think - ”

  “Simply do it - or I won’t allow you to taste of me when I lick your nether regions to orgasm!”

  Sobbing, Rachel Morris did as she was told - as she pretty much always did, and not merely when it was Cassandra Webb doing the telling. She probed and penetrated then fisted her friend’s deep and pliable notch with cresting passion and quickening gasps that matched - and at least twice exceeded - those of the woman on the receiving end of these blatantly erotic attentions.