Like a Wisp of Steam by Thomas Roche (best reads of all time txt) 📕

into me, and then relaxed as we nuzzled together, caught up in the final throes of our pleasure. We could not be certain of what would happen next, but in this moment we were content. I wondered silently if we would ever be able to repeat this experiment.

I no longer knew if I could contain these urges. I no longer knew myself. My thoughts were something powerful and unstable, like the fulminate we had discovered. Because in the flask such things are safe, but release them and you risk a reaction that cannot be undone.

Steam and Iron, Musk and Flesh

Kaysee Renee Robichaud

There was nothing more romantic than floating half a mile over the rooftops of a steam-belching, budding metropolis like Fort Detroit, under the brilliant white illumination of a nearly full moon. The skyship drifted on the currents, its three enormous balloons glowing like holiday ornaments with the emerald discharge of the sizeable boiler engine. Sure, the cauldron's brackish fluids were spilling over the skyship's filigreed railing, and the primary emergency whistle wailed the soft beginnings of a soon-to-be-shrill warning, but Trista Pirrup paid little mind because lovely Cecilia's full lips were gently pressuring that sweet place where shoulder meets neck.

"Oh, CeeCee..."

Her lips and tongue moved up along the carotid artery, tickling and teasing and sending shivers of delight through Trista's nerves. Such sweet sensations ... As they moved through her, Trista felt a sudden guilt at the realization that she should be reciprocating in some fashion. She should be ...

What exactly?

Her brain was overloading with emotional cues; her limbs felt awkward and overlarge. Trista allowed her hands, bound up in tightly sewn lambskin gloves, to caress Cecilia's back in heated circles, drawing what she hoped were curves of passionate fire through the girl's dress. The act felt foolish only one second after she had begun.

Beautiful Cecilia's hair was golden and wavy, her button nose slightly raised and her eyes a deep blue. Her face was narrow as a fawn's, making her wide eyes enormous. Her bosom was small, tightly bound beneath the hard buttons and soft fabric of her cream-colored dress. Beneath the hem of her ankle-length overskirt and crinoline underskirt, her long legs and tiny feet were bound up in stockings and tight boots.

She practically defined "dainty" and this only made her somehow more gorgeous.

Were she not being kissed in the place that raised the heat of every breath, Trista would certainly feel (as she often did) outclassed. Curly red hair and round face, eyes the color of dun pudding, broad almost mannish shoulders, a nearly obscene curve to her hips, and a pair of cantaloupes on her chest that could not be bound up into a properly unassuming size no matter how tight the corset she tried to wear ... There was a rough kind of prettiness to her, she supposed, but nothing that such a refined woman as Cecilia should find attractive. Certainly not...

But there she was, kissing Trista's throat. It seemed nothing less than an impossible dream!

Kisses.

And tantalizing touches. Cecilia's silk-clad fingers rubbed at her breasts through the lambskin flight jack, slow sensual circles that trailed down to Trista's hips. There, they urged her to lean over, and reached around to the tiny curve of her bottom, observing the arc through sensuous stroke. Cecilia took a firm hold as she moved from nuzzling Trista's throat to giving her a full kiss on the lips.

Trista made a startled squeak; Cecilia's slender tongue found its way into her mouth, and more slow circles followed.

No dance of tongues, this was a kind of lovemaking, and it set the top of Trista's head into the stratosphere.

Lambskin-clad hands caressed Cecilia's breasts, and the girl moaned softly, her beautiful eyes closing at the sensation.

The kiss broke, and Cecilia stared into Trista's eyes with a hunger. "Such a deliciously filthy engineer you are," she said, making the words into a lover's poem, before a nearly feral, frenzied expression filled her face, and she came in for still more kisses.

The pair of shrill whistles might have been Trista's internal thermometers sounding off extreme temperatures, so it seemed only natural that Cecilia should spread her jack, should open her shirt, should bare her corset and skin. It seemed only right to undo Cecilia's blouse, one slow button at a time, each release eliciting still more passion from the boundless well inside that delicate-seeming woman. Not so delicate at all. Her teeth ran along Trista's shoulder, while those silk gloves unfastened the corset, and when it fell free, Trista sucked in fresh air as though she had never really breathed before. Tonight, the cool autumn air was flavored with honey and musk, an earthy perfume to be certain.

Cecilia pulled Trista's hand along her leg, under the skirts, slow and strong and guiding her up and up. Kisses did not distract from the pleasure of touching garters and then the bare skin beyond. The lambskin gloves would be soft on that skin, Trista thought, but that was not enough for Cecilia.

Further up, to the crux, to a golden warmth as yet unknown, hidden beneath a gauzy veil of lace, easily shoved aside.

Cecilia plunged two of Trista's fingers inside her slick sex, shaking and gasping and then moaning the first sibilant syllable of Trista's name....

And Trista moved her fingers slowly, in and out, using her thumb to pressure the sweet place, slow rubbing—still more circles! Love was a circle!—and taking delight in Cecilia's spasms at her touch. Now it was Cecilia, earthy and dominant to this point, who was at a loss to control her limbs. The golden-haired girl now gazed into Trista's face with a kind of naïve wonder and begged for more, faster, and it was Trista who held the power to acquiesce or deny. Trista, who leaned in to kiss as she played below, Trista who—

Trilling whistles penetrated the clouds in her head, puncturing the pleasant, passion-induced miasma.

Oh, thought Trista, dear.

The buildings were no longer below them, but towering around. All three