The rear depot doors had been fully cranked back, and the steam voltaic engine opened up to the maximum grinding speed of six knots. Sunlight flooded in through the overhead turret hatch as the vehicle growled out under the open sky.
Claire barely registered the meaning of Henry’s words or the changing of the light, for the rumbling vibrations of the landship motor had penetrated up through her metal seat and turned her lower body into orgasmic jelly.
Her nostrils widened, the metal walls dimmed to a blur, and the pearls jiggled like living creatures against her clit. Every sexual place in her body trembled with delight. She shut her eyes, clamped her mouth shut, and seconds later, came—nerves quivering, whimpering at the explosive release. All around her vanished in a seething wall of white.
Luckily, the cacophony of the engine disguised her noises. By the time Delilah cruised to a shuddering halt inside the depot, she was quivering yet again, despite sitting, most of the time, with her bottom an inch above the metal.
“You go first,” Theo told Henry, and the man clambered up the ladder and could be heard jumping down outside. “Was that nice?” he whispered to Claire.
“Did you do that deliberately?” she whispered back, trying not to sound like a harpy.
No answer.
Fuming, she had a foot on the first rung of the ladder when Theo slid his hand under her dress and up the back of her thigh.
“Like a hand?” he said softly, as his fingers continued on, gliding along her wet folds, until two of them slipped up inside.
Impaled, she paused, her inner muscles tightening around his fingers. “Oh.” She couldn’t move. Mmm.
By moving his hand back, while still inside her, he reeled her to him. If she’d stayed still, his fingers would have come out. She didn’t want that. She let herself step from the ladder and be shuffled back until her body met the hard muscles of his chest. Despite the residual of her anger, the way he surrounded her made her yearn to sink into his warmth and let the rich scent of cologne and man soak into every pore in her skin.
Theo put his arm across under her breasts and held her to him. “I love seeing you aroused, though no, it didn’t occur to me that riding in Delilah would make you come. It wasn’t supposed to.” He brushed his lips along her neck, delighted when the little hairs stood up in goose bumps and pinkness suffused her skin. “I’ll make sure to write it into my memory under things to be repeated.”
He raised his voice. “Henry, go on back to your work. We’ll be here awhile!”
“Yessir!”
“Won’t he think—” she said weakly.
“Shh. Never mind Henry. I employ him, and I assure you he won’t mind if we stay and examine Delilah a bit longer…or even if I sit you down on one of these seats and make you have a dozen orgasms.”
“But, he’ll know what we’re doing,” she said, mouselike, trembling.
He laughed and nuzzled into her hair, enjoying the simple perfume of soap and woman. Her subjugation…it stirred him far more than any of the bored aristocratic ladies who’d volunteered in the past. He could have taken her right then and there, bent her over the seat, but no, not yet. She didn’t have everything sorted out in her head. He’d push her boundaries and truly see where she wanted to go.
“Perhaps, but he’s not here. Why are you angry?”
When she didn’t answer immediately, he removed his fingers, brought his hand around to the front of her thigh, then slid them back in, making her wriggle. This time his thumb could reach her clit, and he tapped it once.
“Ooh.” Her breath caught. “You know,” she said grumpily, “it’s hard to think when you do that.”
“Then I’ll stop.” And he did, only to have her press her mound up against his hand. “Uh-uh. You complained. Sit still.” Pleasingly, she did, though her thighs trembled. “Now, what’s bothering you?”
She swallowed. “This, it’s not punishment exactly, is it? I mean, I feel like you’re just showing me off as your newest toy. Your sexual plaything.”
“You’re not a toy, Claire. I don’t want to demean you. But your sexuality, it’s part of you. You’re a woman with a body that makes me dream up new things to do to it every time I see you, whether naked”—he gently curled his fingers inside her—“or clothed.”
“Everyone will think…bad things. This isn’t what well-bred men and women do in public. It’s because I’m a frankenstruct, isn’t it?”
“Ahh, it’s society’s expectations that anger you then. You do realize you’ve lumped me in with the poorly bred?” He grunted. “Look. My sexual tastes are well known. I’ve had women in my bed before, some of them aristocrats. I treated them the same way. Will anyone here think the worst of you? No. I’ve always found it simpler to have staff about me who don’t have any problems with such things.
“Besides, I’m taking great care not to let anyone really know what is happening here. Right now, it’s me and you and whatever I decide to do to you.”
The heartbeat under his forearm sped up.