Steampunk Desires: An Erotic Romance (The Complete Collection) (14 page)

Harriet watched with rapt attention as the needle on the gauge moved to the right in jerky movements. This particular gauge was much more sensitive and had twice the range of the ones she had had installed on the propulsion deck; while those registered only gross trends in output and peaked at roughly the energy required to drive one of the airship’s motors, this one could show the amount of energy collected with fine precision and peaked at double the output. If she watched very closely, she could even see their heartbeats on it. She moved closer to a switch on the strip chart, resting her hand on it in anticipation.

As the needle approached forty-five percent, Albert could wait no longer and pressed his member into Elle, his cock throbbing in delight. The PCA amplified his throbbing into something that Elle could feel quite well, and her vagina contracted sympathetically in response. Albert began to stroke in and out of Elle, his testes feeling heavy. The pull of her vagina against his shaft, sliding over it and caressing all of its sensitive areas soon overwhelmed him. With a quiet groan, he emptied himself inside of her as her body arched against the bed, climaxing with him.

Harriet flicked the switch, and the strip chart began to stream paper through it quickly, taking many readings a second to give her finer detail on the energy output. She was careful not to disturb her test subjects; she needed to see what happened to their energy during the afterglow.

The needle on the gauge had reached almost one hundred percent, and Harriet watched with surprise as it stayed there. She glanced over at Albert and Elle, who were cuddling together, both looking blissful. Interesting, Harriet thought as she scratched notes on a piece of parchment. Ordinarily she’d use the chalkboard, but she had to remain quiet. The energy output began to taper off, and Harriet finally decided to interrupt.

“Focus on the feelings you just felt,” she said quickly. The needle dropped to zero. Curses! She’d distracted them. She watched the needle, hoping that as they thought through it, their energy level would return, but she wasn’t holding her breath — well, she actually was, but she didn’t realize it. The needle showed no movement, and at length she shook her head. “All right, you’re dismissed. Have Edwin send me another couple,” she said as she collected her parchment and the long scroll of paper from the strip chart and left the room, leaving the two to clean themselves up.

She took her things back to the pod in the lab and unrolled the scroll from the strip chart on the lab table, poring over it in detail. There were fine oscillations during the high point of the afterglow, and she engaged her magnifying glasses to get a better look. Taking a pair of calipers from a drawer under the table, she carefully identified two of the peaks and measured the distance between them, scribbling her findings on the chalkboard behind her. She calculated the frequency.

“Hmm…” she said aloud. “Interesting.”

She frowned, looking at her notes, and then re-measured the interval. She frowned again, then wrote the frequency on the board in big characters and circled it. To the right, she began calculating the dimensions of an improved post-coital phosphorescence accumulator, drawing a blown-up version of it and labeling the dimensions for later reference. The existing model had performed beautifully, but these ripples were of a different frequency than the oscillations produced during climax. If she could tune the accumulator better, she might get more output.

She finished her calculations and returned her attentions to the strip chart, but no sooner had she started looking at it than she heard a clink behind her and whirled. Giles stood there with a tea service.

“Afternoon tea, madam?” he asked.

“Giles, you know better than to inter–” she began, then stopped. Was it 4:00 already? She’d missed elevenses, then, and lunch, too. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day: she had too many projects she wanted to work on at once. There was her current project, harvesting energy from the afterglow. There was research to be done on the effect of frequency of climaxing on the energy produced per orgasm. There was additional research to be done on the time taken to reach orgasm versus the total energy output. There was a thought she’d had about making the ports accessible to the passengers: in exchange for letting her collect their energy, the cruise line would give them a discount on their tickets. There was the issue of the location of the coition transducer: she’d long had a hunch that there might be other sweet spots in the body besides the lower genitalia that could resonate energy. And if she ever finished all of that work, she could always continue the asymptotic push for a better resonator.

“Yes, that sounds lovely,” she said abruptly. She could use some tea.

“Not in the lab!” she cried incredulously as Giles made to place the service on the workbench. “Giles, what’s gotten into you?” she berated. Giles hastily recollected the service and took it to one of the observation rooms that Harriet had reconfigured into an office and dormitory. She sat at a small table in a low chair. The door was to her left and behind her. Her office desk sat to her right and somewhat behind her. The bed, a double bed that might as well have been a king-sized bed to someone of her size, sat in front of her and off to her right, supported by a simple brass headboard and footboard. The table, present specifically for teatime, sat in front of her, and it was on this table that Giles served her tea, two lumps of sugar, and a slice of lemon, just as she liked it, along with a scone, a bite-sized sandwich, and a little cake.

The one time a day that Harriet would slow down and relax was teatime. In truth, she took her tea time very seriously, and she had even brought her own tea service, preferring the pieces she’d collected to even the best ones provided by the cruise line. She rested in her low chair, taking the sandwich between her thumb, index, and middle fingers and chewing it reflectively. It had been a productive day, in spite of the interruptions and false starts, she thought.

She brought the tea to her lips and could smell its warm, inviting aroma intermingling with the lemon. She paused, inhaling the vapors with her eyes closed before sipping it…it was perfect. Giles could make an excellent cup of tea, she thought appreciatively.

She sighed, setting the tea down and taking up the scone. She smiled: the scone was still warm: such a nice gesture. She cut open the scone and spread it with clotted cream, a delicacy anywhere but the mainland, and marmalade. The flavor complemented the tea, making the experience all the better, and she chewed the scone slowly, savoring the flavor before it was gone.

She sighed again contentedly as Giles entered to pour a second cup of tea, disappearing as silently as he’d appeared. Such good manners, Harriet thought as she reached for the cake, a small, round treat with a tiny dollop of strawberry jam in the middle. It, too, was excellent, the light, buttery taste of the bread accentuating the sweetness of the jam. As she took another sip of tea, it left a lingering taste of the jam in her mouth. She focused on the lingering flavor, holding onto it as long as it would persist.

At last, all that was left was her half-empty cup of tea, which she sipped with patient indulgence. When finished, she closed her eyes and took a light nap in her chair. When she awoke a few minutes later, her table was cleared, and Giles was nowhere to be seen.

She had to hold onto this one, she thought as she roused herself to continue her work.

She returned to work with the vigor that comes from a light meal and a light nap: she felt refreshed, energized, and readier than ever to tackle remaking the PCPA. She took some parchment with her to the lab so that she could copy down its new dimensions, and having done so, returned to the machine shop. Her work went uninterrupted, and two hours later, she had a new unit built and installed. Now she needed her test subjects back.

“Giles!” she called. He appeared promptly.

“Yes, madam? Do you need Albert and Elle again?”

She paused, impressed at his ability to anticipate her needs, then answered him, “Yes, Giles, right away.”

“Yes, madam.” He disappeared, and she made her way hastily to the observation room. Giles had already remade the bed and replaced the paper in the strip chart recorder. She put the power collection apparatus — she hated the term “brass sock” — on the bed and took her seat at the desk.

No sooner had her short legs bent and her weight redistributed itself onto her buttocks than the door opened and Albert and Elle walked in.

“Ah, good,” Harriet said. “You two, fuck right now.”

Elle’s jaw dropped slightly, and Albert sucked in his breath. The two exchanged glances.

“Hallo! You two. Yes, you, the only other two in here, get on the bed, and you, female-person: put the PCA in your vagina. You, male-person: put your dick inside and thrust vigorously.” She inserted her finger into a loosely closed fist, inserting and removing it. The other two’s expressions intensified.

Harriet sighed and got up from her chair, walked purposefully over to the two, and took Elle by the hand as if leading a small, stupid child. She escorted her to the bed and handed her the PCA, its cord already plugged in. As Elle began to get past her astonishment and to insert the brass sock, Harriet returned to Albert, took him to the bed, and gingerly poked his cock with her stubby finger. Having made contact, she shuddered, grimaced, and wiped her finger on his leg before returning to her desk. She sat facing them, an eager, expectant, but clinical look on her face as she leaned forward. The other two held up their hands helplessly for each other’s benefit, expressing a mutual bafflement at Harriet’s audacity.

“Argh!” Harriet groaned, “Would you two please fuck already? I have remade the post-coital phosphorescence accumulator, and I’m anxious to see how well it works!”

At last, the two on the bed seemed to understand, and Albert glanced at Elle, who smiled in anticipation. This time, he lay on his back, and she lowered her sex to his face. As her sex came within his reach, he reached up with his tongue to make the first caress of it, fondling her labia and eliciting a gasp from her. She, meanwhile, had found his cock and had teased it to life with her hot breath. As it grew, she took it into her mouth, her tongue sliding teasingly over the head and swirling around the shaft as his cock pushed deeper into her mouth. She held her breath and relaxed her tongue. His cock slid easily into her throat, and he groaned in pleasure as she swallowed him.

Not to be outdone, as soon as he could clear his head from the lust-induced haze, he spread his tongue out and opened his mouth wide. With a sucking noise, he pulled one of her vaginal lips into his mouth and began to suck on it, to lick it on the inside, to tease it with his teeth, and she shuddered, collapsing momentarily on his chest. He snickered.

“No fair!” she whined, taking his cock out of her mouth.

“All’s fair in love and foreplay,” he retorted before blowing a raspberry on her clitoris.

She gasped and fell down on him again. It had worked, Albert noted: her vagina was now slick with lust, and he greedily lapped it up like a dog after meat scraps.

“Oh, you!” Elle grunted under her breath, but she was not going to be bested this time.

She and Albert had set up a bit of a wager after their last escapade: if she could bring him to orgasm before he got her off, he had to let her call the shots next time. It was something they’d picked up from Scarlett and Clarence, and it was really exciting to Elle. If he got her off first, she had to be still while he gave her five orgasms back-to-back. While he had done it with many of the other women in the
Rapturion
’s crew, she had been a virgin when she joined the ship only days before, and she had not yet experienced it. He’d been after her to give it a shot, but she’d been nervous and hesitant. Either way, it was a win-win for both of them, but still they fought to win the wager.

With a seductive flick of her tongue across the bottom of his shaft, she distracted him enough to gain the upper hand. Albert, normally a master of delaying his orgasm, was caught off-guard and locked in a paroxysm of bliss as her fingers nimbly stroked his nipples. He had only himself to blame for her knowing that they were one of his sensitive areas: he’d used hers very effectively on their first interaction, and she had wondered if it worked both ways. It surely did, and with the twin stimulation of her tongue and lips on his member and her fingers stroking his nipples, he shuddered in violent pre-climactic throes.

“Oh, no. No, no, nono,” he babbled as his seed burst forth onto her face, ending his soliloquy with an incoherent moan. Elle, with an empathetic surge of arousal, gasped as her own climax seized her, and her limbs went rigid, her back arched, and her own groan of pleasure chorused with his. The two rested, breathing hard as they sank into the sheets.