Valves & Vixens, Volume 2 Read online

  “I can’t remember it, if we have. Push us backwards.”

  The chair ran into the side of the car. As it did so Gillian managed to grab hold of part of the engine to keep them in place.

  Something on her corset caught on his waistcoat, locking them together.

  “Oh, this is ridiculous!” He exploded.

  “Shut up and kiss me,” she hissed, pulling his head back until she could get their mouths together.

  She began rocking her hips back and forth as much as she could as his hands impotently squeezed her waist, barely even denting the thick leather of her corset.

  He managed to breath through his nose this time, inhaling deeply, smelling the mingled scents of castor oil, grease, forged metal and her. The smell made his cock, securely and tightly lodged inside her, throb a little more.

  She breathed in the clean, slightly spicy, salty scent of him, her nose numbed to the engineering scents but eager for the smell of one of her men. She kept one hand on the engine to anchor them, the other tangled in his short hair as she held his head bent sharply backwards.

  He tried to thrust up into her, making her bounce slightly. When she gasped in encouragement, he continued, more energetically, his face growing flushed from the exertion. She timed the rocking of her hips to increase the length of his stroke.

  It did not take long for them to be panting more from arousal than from effort, Owen’s body beginning to drive his hips to more energetic thrusting despite complaints from his lungs.

  Gillian broke their contorted kiss, rolling her head back past the vertical as she pulled his head against her breasts where they were thrust above her corset.

  His arms tightened around her, pulling them harder together, as his thrusts became so hard he was forced to grunt explosively on each one, the sound muffled against her bulging flesh.

  His grunting suddenly escalated in pace and volume, reaching a crescendo just as she felt his entire body rear up, quiver, then jerk several times.

  When Gillian felt his arms relax, she tenderly brushed hair off his sweaty forehead before trying to stand up.

  A sudden tug bought her movement to a premature halt.

  She looked down between them, then laughed softly. “Ballocks, I forgot about that.”

  ***

  “Here’s the problem,” Owen said.

  After separating and restoring their clothing, Gillian had found a space to sit on the edge of the chassis. Owen was leaning forwards on his chair, his elbows resting on his knees.

  “You know I don’t think steam engines can respond quickly enough. They’re also wasteful. Too much steam gets vented, even in my condenser systems. We need some way to store the power they produce, so we can use it more efficiently.”

  Gillian listened patiently. She disagreed, but saying “no” had never helped friends make breakthroughs.

  “I like your double boiler system, one for quick heating and one for storage, but it’s only a short-term solution. It’s not a fix. We all know Ashton’s solution of a giant flywheel with double gearing wouldn’t work, it would be impracticably heavy.”

  Gillian raised an eyebrow, but stayed silent. They all knew Ashton’s suggestion had been sarcastic.

  “You suggested compressed air. I like it, but you know and I know it wouldn’t work well enough. But now Planté has rechargeable electric cells!”

  He began to sketch shapes in the air in front of him.

  “Look! Small steam engine - quick to heat, quick to respond, high speed but low torque, runs a small electrical generator. Generator runs directly into a battery of Planté cells. Battery drives an electric motor. They’re small! I’ve seen the specifications of some of the electric cars demonstrated in Europe! They’re the future!” He jabbed a finger at Gillian for emphasis. She ignored it.

  “Steam engines can make continuous power from coal, charcoal, coalite, alcohol, whale oil, anything! Batteries can absorb their output, electric motors to drive the wheels! You can run the steam engine, turn it off, run it again... You can drive off without waiting for it to heat! You can even run an igniter off the batteries!”

  He stared at Gillian, his face the anguished mask of one seeking validation, then froze in shock as he recognised on her face the startled expression of someone who has, despite all their trepidations, encountered a good idea.

  “You like it,” he whispered, a trace of awe in his voice.

  She made as if to speak, hesitated, cleared her throat, thought for a second, hesitated again, then frowned.

  Owen almost forbore to breathe.

  “Can we test the capacity of the batteries?” She asked at last.

  Owen blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “Can we test their capacity? Can we know when they are almost full, or uselessly almost empty? Electricity does work like that, does it not? Could we have a... a dip stick for a battery?”

  Owen opened and closed his mouth several times, then seemed to crumple upon himself.

  Gillian leaned forwards to pat him on the shoulder. “What am I about to say to you, my darling Owen?”

  “When you find the problem, you have found the first step to a solution,” he said automatically.

  She patted his shoulder again, stood up, then bent to kiss his hair. “Run your tests.”

  Owen glumly pulled himself back in front of the engine as Gillian walked quietly away to leave him in peace.

  ***

  Half an hour later, Gillian, unable to concentrate, decided to play tea lady. Owen, stoking the boiler, took a mug gratefully.

  Ashton was still ensconced in the drafting room - a long, thin space occupying the far end of the workshop. It had been intended as an office, so its wall had a large window into the workshop. As a drafting room, the window let through more noise than was desirable.

  The three desks, facing the window, were adjustable in height and angle by means of small crank handles. By accident of history and habit not design, Gillian used the first, Ashton the middle, Owen the last.

  Ashton was calculating how to cut a series of gears with the help of a slide rule, a well-thumbed book of tables, and a waste basket.

  He shot Gillian an amused look as she strode towards him, before his gaze settled gratefully on the tea.

  One of Gillian’s eyebrows lifted when she glimpsed his expression. “Pray tell, Mr Wallace, what has you so amused?”

  “I could not possibly make any comment in front of a lady, Ms Ledwich.”

  Gillian stopped in shock, too far away for Ashton to reach his mug of tea. “A lady! Mr Wallace, you should have told me we had visitors! I’m not properly dressed!”

  “I see nothing whatsoever amiss about your dress, Ms Ledwich,” Ashton said gallantly.

  “Because, Mr Wallace, you are a man who is merely in training to be a gentleman. I will die for lack of female company.” She passed him his mug.

  Ashton made an expansive gesture with his right hand, twirling his pencil like an orchestral conductor his baton. “Should you see fit to bring another woman into our small circle, neither I nor, I am sure, my colleague Mr Hunter, will offer the slightest objection.” He drank with every sign of enthusiasm before putting the mug on the windowsill, his desk being angled too far from the horizontal.

  “I may object should I be forced to share either of my gentlemen with any new dollymop, no matter how talented she is with her hands.”

  “Oh! Do you admit I am a gentleman, or have you been hiding someone from me?”

  Gillian showed her teeth in what might have been a smile. “The only man I am hiding anything from is my father. Gears, Mr Wallace?”

  “I am trying to devise a continuously variable gearbox that would let a flywheel work, since Owen’s flights of fancies made me suggest the blasted thing in the first
place.”

  Gillian laughed. “Let me know if you meet with any success! Weren’t you going to insulate the second boiler?”

  Ashton’s gaze flicked briefly towards the window, through which the chassis, and indeed Owen on his chair, was clearly visible. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Gillian raised an eyebrow. “You could have joined us.”

  Ashton coloured slightly. “Please! A gentleman, I am told, does not intrude.”

  “A gentleman might if he had a standing invitation.”

  Ashton coughed. “I could not cut in upon a friend’s dance.”

  “Very droll.” Gillian casually put her own mug on the windowsill.

  With a sudden jerk, she pulled Ashton’s chair away from the table, spinning it so she could drop neatly onto his lap, side-saddle.

  Ashton’s attempt at seriousness cracked. Through his grin, he asked, “I’m not complaining, mind, but what do I have to thank for this sudden burst of passion?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “Ms Ledwich, this is the age of reason!”

  Gillian conceded the point. “You left me all alone in the workshop all morning, leaving me worrying about what two such handsome young men could possibly get up to out there, surrounded by pretty young girls in their summer dresses.”

  Ashton hooted with laughter. “Pretty young girls? We are in the factory district of Brisbane, not the parks of Melbourne! The prettiest woman outside those doors is older than my mother and selling tea from a cart. The prettiest women inside are all hiding from the sun and are far too sensible to let the likes of us get close enough to say hello!”

  “The correct answer, Mr Wallace, was ‘the prettiest woman inside was waiting for us back at the workshop.’”

  “Ah, now, that is an empirical question that requires much more extensive investigation before I could possibly commit to an answer.”

  “Think very carefully, Mr Wallace.”

  “Although, I believe I could use my limited available information to say, as a rough answer, that I would not be able to find a prettier woman than you in all of Brisbane.”

  “A ‘rough answer’?”

  “I will have to refine it with more work. I may need to collect more information.”

  “For someone so skilled with metal, you can be astonishingly bad with women, Ashton my darling.”

  “What could possibly connect those two skills? Find me an engineer who can talk like a politician and I, madam, will find you a perpetual motion machine!”

  “Begin work, Mr Wallace! I have been trying to make two such men, and hope for success some time this century.”

  “You must introduce me to these men some time.”

  Gillian made a sound indicative of exasperation before seizing his head with both hands, twisting as far as her corset would allow, then pushed her mouth forcefully against his.

  He returned her kiss with enthusiasm.

  When they separated, a little while later, Gillian was struck by a sudden, gnawing wonder.

  “Ashton, my Ashton,” she said. “I never dreamed I would find two men so confident in themselves they wouldn’t mind me having the both of them, but where did I find two men so confident I could kiss them with the taste of the other still on my lips?”

  Ashton coloured instantly. “I assure you, I can only taste your lips.”

  “Were you watching us?”

  Ashon’s cheeks became a redder shade of pink. “Certainly not!”

  “Then how do you know you can only taste me, if you don’t know what I was doing with Owen?”

  Red became crimson. “I can taste you, and only you!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I know what you taste like...”

  “How do you I know I don’t sometimes kiss you with Owen’s spend still on my tongue?”

  “I, I, I don’t, I mean...”

  “How do you know what Owen tastes like, to separate my taste from his!”

  “I don’t! It was a deduction!”

  Gillian seized his lapels. “Liar! You’re hiding something from me! Out with it!”

  “No! I’m not hiding anything! Truly!”

  “Liar!”

  She thumped her fist against his leather waistcoat as she bounced on his lap for emphasis.

  The chair, a light contraption comfortable for one occupant who did not wish to relax, lost its hold upon balance.

  They crashed to the ground beside each other, between the desks and the wall, Gillian spilling off his lap. She recovered first, throwing herself atop his body to keep him pinned down.

  “Well? How do you know what Owen tastes like?”

  “Ouch,” Ashton ventured, feeling the back of his head gingerly.

  “Don’t try to distract me! I bruised my hip, do you hear me complaining? Tell me how you know what Owen tastes like!”

  “I don’t, I swear!”

  “You lie! You’re blushing like a furnace!”

  “This is hardly a topic to not make me blush!”

  “Pshaw, sir! How do you know?”

  “I only meant I couldn’t taste anything other than you! I assure you, I had no interest in private matters between you!”

  “Why not?”

  Ashton stared at her in evident surprise. “They were private?”

  “Aren’t you interested?”

  Ashton’s fading colour re-intensified.

  “Surely you’re not embarrassed about what we were doing while you were not disturbing us?”

  She wriggled her hips atop his. “I know at least part of you is interested.”

  Ashton tried to sink through the bricks underneath him, with conspicuous lack of success.

  Gillian, clearly enjoying herself, pressed on. “If you two decided to explore your obvious attraction for each other, I would be begging to hear every precise detail.”

  Heat radiated from Ashton’s face.

  Gillian froze in mid peroration, staring at him in surprise. “I was right! I thought I was joking, but I was right! You are hiding something from me!”

  “No!”

  Gillian seized his ears. “What are you hiding from me?!”

  “Ouch! I assure you...”

  “If my two men have rolled in the hay with each other, I demand to know about it!”

  “We haven’t!”

  “You were both scholarship boys to a strict boarding school, once. Do not think for one moment I do not believe the salacious rumours told about boarding schools!”

  Ashton, remembering he had hands of his own, used one to push an accusatory pointing finger between their faces. “You were in the same position as us, at your ‘finishing school’! Do you expect me to deny all those rumours?”

  “Absolutely not, you may believe all of them.”

  Ashton’s face adopted a heady mixture of emotions, chief among them shock, disbelief and a wild surge of salacious interest.

  Gillian’s face, on the other hand, became wistful with memory. “There were already solid couples by the second year. Few of us did not take the opportunity to at least investigate the possibilities. It would have been foolish not to.”

  Ashton was staring at her with a mouth open from surprise and base desires.

  Gillian, half lost in memory, rubbed her hips against his again, forcing from him a strangled gasp.

  “Did you investigate many possibilities?” He managed.

  “Of course! I had to know for sure. We are living in a new world made potent by science, and science tells us to confirm our results!”

  Gillian pointed her own accusatory finger at Ashton. “Science also tells us to be persistent in our questions and to not be sidetracked by in-consequentialities, Mr Wallace!
I have been honest with you, it is about time you were honest with me! It is gross hypocrisy to entertain shameless thoughts about myself with another woman, but be horrified by suggestions of you with another man, so out with it!”

  “I cannot tell you!”

  “Aha, a confession!” Without needing to look, Gillian slipped a small parcel from a pocket high on Ashton’s vest. She held it in front of his eyes. “Tell me, and you may get to use this.”

  “Madam, that is blackmail!”

  “Sir, it is bribery. It is also a threat, extending far into the future.”

  Ashton’s scarlet face managed to blanch.

  “We promised to have no secrets between us three,” Gillian said with determination. “You two have been keeping one from me.” Her eyes narrowed. “It was you two, was it not?”

  Ashton avoided her eyes, until Gillian used both ears to pull his head back towards her.

  “It was you two, was it not?”

  Ashton laughed with a sarcastic note in his voice. “I do not know what your experience was like in your boarding school, full of young women, but young men do not suffer that sort of deviance. There were boys known to be mandrakes, and boys suspected to be mandrakes. They did not last long. They were bullied until they were removed from the school for being ‘unsuitable’.”

  Gillian refused to feel repentant. “That’s a terrible thing to deny. You missed out on so much.”

  Ashton avoided this obvious bait. “All Owen and I were interested in was girls. We were among the first to find out how to scale the walls, therefore the first to explore the pubs, get thrown out of pubs, and get our faces slapped by girls within two minutes of meeting them. Neither of us were very good at talking to women back then.”

  “My sweet Ashton, you were not very good at talking to women when I met you.”

  “See how much we learned in three years?”

  “I know full well you learned a great many things in three years, so you must have learned at least enough to progress beyond being slapped.”

  Ashton grinned, suddenly more confident. “We didn’t learn how to talk, we learned who to talk to.”

  Gillian arched an eyebrow.

  “Escapees from your school.”