Steamlust by Kristina Wright Read Free Book Online

lever. “Hold on tight,” he murmured.
    Taking her hands in his, he guided them to a metal strut above her head then he rested over her. He held her steady while the engines roared and the Daedalus rose to its full height, bursting through the ramshackle covering above them.
    Only then did she realize that Dominic had incorporated a glass panel above their heads, and she was bathed in moonlight. In the gloom of the old moorings, the panels were not visible.
Now they were. She was in ecstasy. With her eyelids lowered she felt every swift movement the machine made, how it emulated the leap and stride of the insects that had inspired it, as it made its way across the marshland. It rose and fell as it gained the measure of the uneven landscape beneath it, the pod acting like a massive spirit level just as she had dreamed. All the while Dominic held her tightly, staring down at her face as she took in the intensity of what they were sharing and what had passed between them. Pleasure spiraled through her. From her core, where she still throbbed in the aftermath of her release, it radiated through every part of her.
    She stared up into his eyes, adoring him for his brazen cheek. “I can scarcely believe this,” she whispered.
    “It is magnificent. Your talent for design is like a beacon showing the way to the future.”
    It wasn’t what she meant, but she went with his flow. “You made it happen.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “I get to share a little of the credit?”
    Humility was not something she was used to him showing, and it made her heart swell. “A little. Come now, Dominic, it’s yours as much as it is mine.”
    He fixed her in a glance. “And you? Say you will be mine.”
    “Perhaps.” Nina smiled and rolled her hips against his, delighted when she felt him harden again.
    “Nina Ashford, you will be mine,” he stated gruffly.
    He claimed her mouth, not waiting for her to reply, but Nina didn’t care, because this time she didn’t want to disagree with Dominic Bartleby. He’d built her machine to win her back, but her heart was already his.

FOG, FLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT
    Sacchi Green

    F og lay heavy on the city, muffling sound, blurring those few gaslights still lit, slowing life like a pocket watch in need of winding. To tell the truth, though, San Francisco even in winter is generally lively enough to make up for some dreary days, and this one had a hint of spring to it. In the past two years I’d learned to read the weather patterns of San Francisco Bay as well as ever I’d known those of Wyoming; this was a low fog that would burn off within the hour.
    A hundred feet up I saw I’d been right. Above that dense, narrow layer, a nimbus of thinning mist glowed pale gold, and by two hundred feet it gave way to sunlight bright enough in the east to make me yank tinted goggles down across my eyes. Rising through dimness into light, from earthbound cloud into limitless freedom, always gave me a thrill keener than any other—except sex, and even then such peak encounters had been few. The only time I would have gladly traded for had been the day back in Wyoming when Miss Lily had first shown me
the delights two women could draw from each other’s bodies.
    That had been in this very wicker gondola beneath this same hot air balloon, patched with fancy silk sheets from her elegant whorehouse. I’d had a considerable variety of girls since then, and a man or two—though the one of those that most sparked my fancy didn’t seem to see me that way—but none could hold a candle to the joy of flying.
    But my sky today was not limitless. On the fogbound earth Ho Ming and her crew waited for the signal to draw me back to the launching platform. I cut off the flow of coal gas to the burner, the air in the ballooning envelope of silk above being quite hot enough to keep at this altitude for some time. It was merely a tethered test ascent, the first since the Prairie Lily had been unfurled from winter storage; the view