Valves & Vixens Read online

  Her black silk glove and the hand within it were soaking wet and excess pleasure-fluids coursed down Cassandra’s inner thighs, moistening her gartered stockings and dripping on the carpet by the time passions final level was achieved.

  Cassandra tossed her head up and back. A wave of black hair swirled and jumped then lashed back down against her back. She quivered all over, a screech of ecstasy shooting from her contorted lips as she climaxed strongly.

  She released the blonde’s hair, blinked and staggered backward - retreating three uncertain steps from Rachel’s still-thrusting fingers. Her nostrils flared, her lungs fiercely sucking up extra oxygen. Her mouth twisted again and she shook her head, gulped one more mouthful of air.

  “That will do,” she said with understated savagery. “Now, get yourself stark naked for me - and be quick about it!”

  Rachel’s brown taffeta gown, high-necked white blouse and equally high-necked chemise, a petticoat or two, bright white stockings and matching garter-belt with stays, a pair of side-buckled shoes and white cotton drawers all disappeared - flying off in a frenzy of sexually charged activity.

  Only a fashionably skimpy whalebone corset remained when Rachel turned to meet her friend and periodic lover’s darkly passionate eyes again.

  Cassandra, having had far less to remove, looked back at her - utterly undressed but for an even more diminutive corset.

  “I know,” she said mildly. “You need help with that - as I do with this one.”

  She opened wide her arms and Rachel melted against her. They kissed and licked and fondled one another. In due course, both women became fully nude.

  Then Rachel descended - to rest on her back upon the floor of Cassandra’s bedroom for the tenth or eleventh time in less than that many months. Her legs parted as Cassandra settled on top of her, facing in the precisely opposite direction. Widespread fingers and marginally cupped palms clutched the outsides of her dark-haired friend’s thighs.

  By contrast, Cassandra’s palms lay flat on the carpet, though the thumbs of each rested snug against the sides of the blonde’s hips. Two tongues emerged - each wriggling organ quite familiar yet still truly thrilling to the other young woman. And now they loved and enjoyed each other, mouth-to-groin and groin-to-mouth with a heart-warming mutuality of passion and satisfaction.

  Cassandra rolled off her friend and both took a moment to catch their breath.

  “By God,” Rachel admitted in the sweat-slick, panting aftermath, “you do make one moist between the legs!”

  Cassandra Webb smiled languidly in response. “As do you,” she said and caressed the sole of the blonde’s left foot.

  Chapter 2

  “You even brought the riding crop,” Rachel noted with an astonished grin.

  For once she had determined not to criticise her friend’s outlandish choices, but still...

  “Out of mere curiosity, Cassie - is that for you to use on someone else, or to be used on you by another?”

  “Indeed - why not both, perhaps?” Cassandra suggested, smirking. “Is there a rule that one might not ride and be ridden in turn, on the self-same evening?”

  “Not that I’ve heard,” her friend admitted.

  Then the chauffeur of the horse-drawn cab they had employed for the evening opened the door - the new technologies were making inroads everywhere, but steam-driven horsepower had not utterly displaced the real thing everywhere, Cassandra observed.

  Somehow, she considered further, that was a reassuring thing.

  In any case, the driver stepped back with a dignified flourish followed by a smart click of the heels. Likewise, the uniformed doormen showed them great respect and deference upon their presenting of the engraved invitations.

  And why not? They were there to do important - even vital work. Social ritual had its place in any age and this one was no different - even if Cassandra affected a mocking attitude to the more straight-laced and pious aspects now afoot. And if their task also promised to be exciting and, one dared hope, highly pleasurable - what was the harm in that?

  Tribute in a great many forms simply had to be paid to the unlikely yet undeniably genuine Steam-Fortified Saviours of the Modern World!

  Such a thing was right and proper in ways no outmoded notions of morality - sexual or otherwise - could in any way hope to effectively address. She simply could not see why so many things must be viewed by so many with such acutely humourless Social Correctness.

  “Shall we?” Cassandra asked her friend rhetorically and, her dark eyes bright with eagerness, she slapped the shaft of her crop into her cupped palm for emphasis.

  Rachel nodded and they stepped together into the great reception hall of the Mayor’s mansion.

  Chapter 3

  Wide-eyed, Rachel caught her good friend’s attention and directed it across the way with a nod. “That is her - our Beloved Hostess?”

  “Most assuredly,” was Cassandra’s reply. “Abigail Brant - the first female Mayor of Pittsburgh! She was a Bloomer Girl from way back - at the forefront of Dress Reform. And a supporter of Labor Rights; a Suffragette; Anti-Slavery from Day One, too - and a devotee of the Free Love Movement, of course.” Cassandra paused for an approving sigh then nodded to herself without taking her eyes from her, one of the few non-Sky Dwellers that she truly admired. “In short, Mayor Brant is the living embodiment of many of our best Ground Folk - the ones who stood in Solidarity with the Cloud Workers and thereby remade the world into what we are fortunate enough to inhabit today!”

  “And the man beside her?” Rachel indicated the brown-skinned individual in the neatly tailored but only modestly ornamented, charcoal grey uniform. “That must be - ”

  Cassandra nodded, boldly led the way across the crowded room.

  Chapter 4

  Mariano Valdez, Captain of the Cloud Service Ship Aquarius, had been introduced to a succession of Pittsburgh’s loveliest young women that evening. It was anyone’s guess why he chose Rachel Morris as the focus of his part of the social ritual aspect of the night. Perhaps he had a soft spot in his heart for dewy-eyed blondes with large breasts who quivered with genuine excitement when in the presence of a man of Valdez’s stature. Perhaps he truly appreciated her fervent wonder at him, and of how well she balanced the outwardly demure and the barely hidden passions simmering below the surface.

  Or perhaps Valdez was simply a horny Latin in his early 50s who wanted to end the night naked and between the thighs of a bosomy blonde a bit less than half his age.

  Cassandra watched Rachel engage the Captain with copious amounts of cheerful if meaningless chatter and stand beaming at his side as they endured the interminable and pompous and self-serving invocation that Pennington Brace, the infamously supercilious local Bishop of the Church of the Sky Lords Unified, delivered.

  Of course Rachel, the wide-eyed True Believer, ate up every overdone pronouncement - to Cassandra’s not-overly-secret mortification. And the bored if not scornful looks on the faces of all the Sky Machine Officers present, from Valdez on down, reassured the amusedly sceptical brunette that they were not taken in by such shallow and commonplace adulation.

  Still, Valdez was polite and outwardly correct to all - including to the awestruck blonde.

  The outwardly mismatched couple of the evening danced three times and shared plates of good food, a glass or two of equally fine wine and more talk that gradually assumed a more personal - if no less mannered - nature.

  Valdez and Rachel made their exit as soon as was possible without risking anyone’s embarrassment or hurt feelings. They retired upstairs for the expected “private conversation” - one that, as all those in attendance knew was likely to feature a minimum of actual words and a maximum of other sorts of mutually satisfying interaction.

  In their case, these interactions continued almost till dawn, as a proudly glowing Rachel was
to report to her friend in detail - albeit an indirect and euphemism-laden form of detail - the following day.

  Cassandra knew absolutely no disappointment over these developments. She had felt a degree of secret trepidation at how her well-meaning but frankly rather shallow and uncritical, even innocent, friend would react when faced with the raw reality behind all the idealised words that was the stock and trade of the New Faith that Rachel professed.

  It was a relief when she saw the compelling responsibilities of friendship properly discharged. Leaving Cassandra feeling free to address her own - no less compelling yet far less problematical desires. She quickly contrived to be introduced to the Great Ship’s Chief Engineer - one London Fowler - and his First Assistant, a tall and muscular individual with the intriguingly exotic name of Yoruba Tarr.

  As the two most responsible for the cloud-seeding work aboard their vessel, they were second to none in her admiration and interest.

  As a young child, Fowler had been a slave in the last days of the allegedly Great State of Alabama’s hopeless resistance to the winds of change. His thick accent and lack of formal education was belied by a straightforward if crudely expressed intelligence.

  Tarr was another matter entirely: younger and darker, a truly black black man with an improbable Roman nose, a neatly trimmed chin beard and a cultured manner that went well with his absolutely mysterious yet beguilingly musical accent.

  Cassandra told herself that these two gentlemen’s racial heritage had nothing to do with how strongly she felt drawn to their side. It was 1887, after all - and the world was as never before!

  Even so, her heart pounded frantically when she accompanied them into the mayoral mansion’s moonlit garden - and not merely because she seemed likely to be soon experiencing the erotic attentions of two men - both physically and socially impressive, and both strangers to her - in a single night.

  The three of them strolled the grounds unhurriedly - not touching but engaged in good, quiet small talk. They discussed the Great Ship, current news and the lush vegetation around them. Personal items came up next, though in a nature and unforced manner all around.

  With delight, Cassandra realised that she truly liked - not just admired or felt dutifully grateful to, but actually and honestly liked both of these respected and - she finally admitted it to herself - profoundly, exotically desirable individuals.

  The three of them stopped as one near one of the garden’s outer walls.

  Cassandra stood between the men - now not merely fabled Engineers to her, but vividly distinct persons that she wished to share something wonderful with.

  At random, she turned her head to the left. She raised a hand, lightly caressed the older man’s neck.

  Their eyes locked, London Fowler and Cassandra eased together. They kissed slowly, softly that first time.

  Cassandra turned with a sigh, more than happy to accept the man’s strong arms around her corseted wasp waist as she faced Yoruba Tarr.

  The younger, darker man smiled in welcome and waited, let her bring her mildly parted lips to his. Even slower and softer but progressively wetter kisses passed between them as the other Engineer’s callused yet startlingly gentle hands moved over her torso.

  “Oh, fuck!” she gasped at last and trembled for a moment in abject terror, lest one or both of her potential partners should be appalled at her unladylike language.

  But London merely chuckled in her ear and Yoruba beamed a broad, toothy grin that only served to emphasize his astonishingly dark blackness.

  The show of gallantry that followed was most certainly to their own benefit, Cassandra knew. Even so, she was vaguely touched at the respectful way both men assisted her in settling upon her knees between them.

  Their members were of good size, but not alarmingly so.

  She clutched both and her gloved fists worked steadily, her head turned effortlessly - this way and that, going back and forth, nodding in and out around one mass of jutting manhood after the other. She periodically glanced up at whichever gentleman she was pleasuring at that moment and flexed her lips occasionally.

  Neither man showed any inclination to rush her - nor did either demand any more attention than she chose to lavish on him at any one time.

  Cassandra brought one to a most satisfactory finish then the other, as well.

  At the time, the order of these climaxes was of no import to any of them and she continued kneeling between them for a moment afterwards - licking her lips and holding the Engineers’ softening drive-shafts.

  Both men murmured their respective thanks. She felt more than doubly touched - and glad for her bold choices as they assisted her to her feet.

  The men put their private parts away. Yoruba returned her forgotten riding crop to her hand with a lopsided smile that for some unexplained reason made Cassandra’s heartbeat skip.

  “How might we return the favour?” the younger Engineer asked.

  “And where would you like it done?” London added, caressing one breast through her clothing with just enough force to make Cassandra wince delightedly.

  “If I might - uh, if it were permitted - ” she began then halted, suddenly hesitant to express her most compelling desire.

  “What?” Yoruba asked.

  “Spit it out, gal,” the more-senior Engineer said.

  Yoruba’s brilliant grin returned full force and his big blunt fingertips brushed back the long canary yellow scarf that was tied around her black top hat. That ornamental item out of the way, he stroked the side of her face. “Would you care for a tour of the Aquarius?”

  Their eyes met and Cassandra astonished herself by blushing. “Only - only if permitted - ” she repeated, rendered abruptly and - to her, at least - inexplicably shy.

  “Why would I offer it otherwise?” the younger man said with tolerant bemusement.

  “Well, then - let us be off!”

  The horse-drawn cab’s chauffeur frowned when he saw just one of his charges return - and she in company with not one but two uniformed and most definitely non-white Cloud Ship Officers. But he held his tongue and though it took some time to venture the several miles to the outlying town of Homestead, he brought the three of them safely to the massive open field alongside the even vaster Iron Works where the Aquarius had been assembled.

  The giant vessel was even more impressive to Cassandra close-up - which upon reflection was only logical but nonetheless true. The vast machine stretched to the very edge of her moonlight-aided vision in both directions and its uppermost superstructure towered above her at least as tall as a two-story building.

  Not quite all of the Great Ship’s complement had been granted leave to attend the formal reception - or in the enlisted personnel’s case, visit such public establishments as they might choose for their relaxation and amusement. Accordingly, a pair of large-muscled enlisted men stood guard against intruders at the base of the single, extra-wide and elongated gangplank.

  Both men were white and the idiotic prejudices that still lingered, not matter how out of fashion they now were, in more Ground Dwelling quarters than not, caused Cassandra to feel an unwelcome moment of apprehension as her ebony escorts walked her toward their goal.

  “Top of the evening, Chief Engineer Fowler!” the one standing to the right said with a distinct Irish accent. “Same to you, Assistant Chief Engineer Yor - ” He began to add, though Yoruba cut him off with a snort.

  “Respectful formality from you, O’Keefe? What’s next - Venesky here going to greet us another screeching, off-key Czech folk tune?”

  The other guard grinned and shook his head; O’Keefe made a face.

  “Just thinking I might be about tryin’ somethin’ new - and maybe build you and London up a bit in the pretty one’s eyes, in the doing. I know you both - poor misbegotten Officers and all that you be - could do with gettin�
�� all such help as chanced your way, in that regards!”

  London Fowler and the East European man laughed; Yoruba Tarr merely cracked a thin smile.

  “You’re a fine and generous man, Mister O’Keefe.”

  “And don’t you doubt that I know it,” O’Keefe replied with an utterly straight face before extending his arm in a sweeping arc and executing a humorously stately half-bow to welcome Cassandra aboard.

  Chapter 5

  Cassandra looked to her right then to her left, taking in the row of sturdy columns along the starboard side of Aquarius. Each ended in steam-driven rotors as broad across as a man was tall. These were fed by steam-circulating pipes running up and down each column’s sides. The force of the flowing steam set the rotor blades spinning via an elaborate system of gears. Regulating the amount of steam-flow adjusted the speed of the rotors. Deployed in their current resting position, the rotor blades sat parallel to the ship’s main deck but each could be tilted to front or back and sideways at a maximum 45-degree angle as required by means of a hand cranked mechanism positioned on the column roughly at chest level. These were what provided motive power to the craft - enabling it to move forward or back, to turn in any direction or even hover like a gigantic bird of prey riding an especially fortunate updraught.

  “Fifty of them on this side of ship,” Yoruba explained. “Another fifty spaced identically along our port side.”

  “And each set of fifty supplied with steam from the massive coal-fired generators arranged to either side of the ship’s ass-end,” his less-refined superior added.

  “Impressive isn’t it?” a third voice asked a moment before its owner stepped from the shadows, a wry grin on her face.

  Cassandra’s mouth dropped open.

  The woman’s nicely balanced if very modestly proportioned chest was encased in a less elaborate variation of the recently popular Zouave jacket. Otherwise, her attire was quite similar to the dress uniforms worn by the Engineers.