Dark Enchantment (7 page)

Then he pressed her to his crotch, rubbing her face in his scent, on the stiff pole of his arousal. He wasn’t particularly cruel about it, just very thorough – as if he were marking her. When he’d rubbed every inch of the contours of her face with his prick he stroked back her tumbled fringe with his fingers. ‘Put it in your mouth.’

Charlotte obeyed him. He was the Chief and she was a pilot. He was in control.

She’d done this before. She’d done it with Freddy. When they’d been playing tennis together or dancing, and he was limping with arousal, he liked to shoot his seed into her throat. Freddy tasted yeasty and sour. Chief McGregor, she found, as she wrapped her lips around the plum of his cock-head, tasted of smoke and machine oil and salt. He spoke, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying because of the blood roaring in her ears. He pushed himself deep into her mouth, down to her throat, until he found the point at which she choked, and then he pulled out again. She laved his slit with her tongue, no longer thinking or trying to think.

He groaned. Then with one hand and then the other on her head to guide her, he made use of her mouth while he undid his shirt buttons, shucked off his upper garments and pulled his long-sleeved vest over his head. Only then, with some reluctance, did he draw her to her feet.

Bare-chested, he wasn’t quite as hairy above as below, but still intimidating, sculpted by his work to inexorable muscle. He kissed her lips, then pushed her back to the pillar again.

‘I can taste my prick on your mouth,’ he whispered. ‘And I’m going to make you taste your quim on mine.’

Both hands went to the fastenings down the front of her flying suit. He revealed her swiftly from breast to crotch, the silk of her undergarments springing out between the edges of cream leather. And as he worked, because he was for the moment no longer holding her, Charlotte finally found her strength. As he wrenched the suit off her shoulders and pushed it down to her hips she began to fight back.

It was a strange fight in some ways; she didn’t cry out for help or scream abuse at him. She fought in silence except for gasps and whimpers. She struck at his hands and his chest, but when he picked her up and carried her over to the narrow cot bed, although she twisted wildly in his arms, she didn’t hit at his eyes or his throat or anywhere that might have caused real damage. He threw her down on the bed and grabbed her leg in order to unbuckle the bootstrap. She kicked at his chest and thighs but not his head. She felt a white flame in her own breast, a roaring need for violence, for struggle, for resistance, but not for victory. He smacked her flailing limbs away and pinned her and forced her legs apart. He had to fight for every inch of the silk-clad body he stripped of its protective leather. She thrashed like a wild thing in his grip, but she didn’t grab
at
any of the machine parts in easy reach to strike him with. She made him sweat and flush and grunt, made him roll her and bear her down and grip her until she cried out in pain. By the time he finally pulled down her long drawers and forced her thighs apart there was a look of fury on his face to match her own. She planted her foot on his chest and nearly managed to pull from his grasp; he responded by heaving her towards him by the ankles until her whole abdomen was clear of the bed, she was upside down with only her shoulders and head on the blanket and her legs in their incongruous thick woollen socks scissoring either side of his head. He took her hips in a bear hug. Then he stooped and thrust his mouth into her fleece.

Charlotte went still. It wasn’t possible to fight with his mouth wet on her sex and his teeth pressed into her flesh. She crossed her heels behind his back and cried in defeat as warm waves of sensation rolled over down her spine and the blood filled her head. Lord Frederick Atherstone had never in all his days tried to do this to her. She’d never imagined that anything could feel so good as that mouth on the pearl of her clitoris, the soft sucking and the long strokes of his tongue and the prickle of his stubble in the wet folds of her sex.

She surrendered. He ate her. And at the last moment, as she was starting to heave and buck in a new and inner struggle, he laid her down on the bed and before she could register the loss of his mouth he was pushing his big cock smooth and hard into her, covering her with his body and thrusting stroke after stroke, until the lightning ignited and suddenly she was coming on his cock, coming hard, as she had never intended to do. And as she parted her lips to cry out, he kissed her and she tasted her own sweet-sour tang, just as he had promised.

She was still dazed and burning when he rolled onto his side and pulled her with him, rolling under her on a bed so narrow there was only room for one. He was still hard. He hadn’t come. He sat her astride him, impaling her anew on his length, and he put one hand on her breastbone to push her up into a sitting position. She wanted to curse him then, and tears burned in her eyes. He couldn’t be ravishing her if she was on top, could he? She looked down on his broad chest, glazed with sweat. She tried to get off him but he grabbed her hips and rammed her down on his cock, deep enough that she saw stars.

‘Bastard!’ she hissed, sinking her nails into his skin.

He bared his teeth. ‘Still not good enough for you?’

He licked his thumb and pushed it between them, where his body joined with hers. He need not have bothered with the extra lubrication; the junction was steaming hot and as slippery as an oil bath. She groaned and twisted on his thumb as he found her pearl and began to rub it. She forgot she was being forced. His hips moved beneath her. His cock stirred her within. She arched her back and pressed against him and opened to that brazen length. He reached beneath her damp chemise to stroke her breasts as he made her come for a second time.

Only when she was wrung out did the Chief Engineer take his own reward. He was not delicate about it. He rolled her off him and manhandled her into position on the bed, on hands and knees, with an urgency in his movements that – despite all his forcefulness – had been lacking before. He knelt up behind her to plough the narrow furrow of her sex. She pressed her hot face to the blanket and let him have his way, his hands tight on her hips, his thighs pummelling hers, his scrotum slapping her puffy lips. His thick cock pistoned in and out and she thought of the movements of mighty steam
engines,
the slickness of oiled steel, the burning phlogiston fire. His movements quickened and she thought, He’s going to come now. And despite everything somehow she welcomed the thought.

‘Bloody hell, yes,’ he said.

Then he pulled out and took himself in hand and with a grunt sprayed dollops of spunk on her splayed cheeks, one on the small of her back, one that slopped on the crack of her arse and dribbled down to her anus. Heaving for breath, he put his hand on her bottom and massaged his jism into the pucker of that hole. Charlotte, incredulous, felt the iris soften and yield. With a push he popped the first joint of his oil-stained thumb into her most intimate orifice, and she felt her legs give way. It wasn’t an orgasm. Could an orgasm begin at the back entrance and flare up the spine like that? It flashed through her limbs like lightning and she collapsed upon the bed, tissues pulsing, head spinning.

He followed her down, covering her body with his. He wasn’t heavy any more. He ran his hand down her side and pressed his lips to the curve of her shoulder.

They were still lying there panting when the klaxon began to blare.

Two months later the war was over. The homeland had held on for long enough. Their colonial allies had came through.

The official victory celebration was held in the Royal Hippodrome, though it spilled out into all the streets and taverns of Victoria City. In the gilt and plush interior the various military and auxiliary companies were paraded and presented before His Imperial Majesty so that all they had done might be publicly acknowledged. Each combatant received the newly struck Cross of Victory. Several members of the Volunteer Air Corps were awarded the Imperial Star – though none of those
honours
went to the Ornithopter Brigade, who had after all been
paid
to risk their lives daily.

Charlotte joined her brigade for the fly-past and display, then the presentation of the medals. The engineers in a fit of solidarity wore their brown overalls instead of their Sunday suits for the presentation; the pilots wore their flying kit.

After the rest of the ceremony, which they watched from their reserved box, surrounded by gilded plaster cherubs that the men found risible, there was food laid on and dancing. The brigade broke up as people went to find their families or pillage the buffet tables. Charlotte reluctantly left her companions and presented herself and her medal to her father and mother, who were so proud that for once they almost refrained from scolding her. She loaded a plate and circulated among her peers and drank an incautious amount of champagne until Lord Atherstone took advantage of a lull in the conversation.

‘Charlotte, darling, would you care to dance?’ The orchestra was just warming to a polka.

‘Of course, Freddy.’ She put down her glass and offered him her hand.

He hesitated. ‘You’ll want to go and change, of course.’

The smile faded from Charlotte’s lips as she looked down at her brand-new flying suit. She was rather proud of it. ‘Will I?’

‘Well, it would look rather ridiculous, wouldn’t it?’ He swept his sandy fringe off his brow.

‘Ridiculous?’ She took a step away from him.

They had the attention of their little circle now.

‘I mean, for dancing, darling. You’d look rather foolish waltzing like that.’

‘Would I?’

He was getting flustered. ‘Well, it isn’t really
you
.’

‘No.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘On the contrary, I think it
is
me.’

Turning on her heel, she stalked away. He didn’t try to stop her, and she was pleased. Only when she passed a mirror in the corridor outside did she pause, and then it was momentarily, to look at herself. She touched her face. She had a scar now where a piece of flying glass had laid her left cheek open to the bone. She was rather proud of it when she wore her flying suit; it was reminiscent of the duelling scars that men of her grandfather’s generation wore. But when she changed back into a dress it became all of a sudden a horrible blemish. And there were other scars: a pink weal across her collarbone; a burn mark down her right forearm from when she’d brought her ornithopter successfully home even when in flames. They did not look good in the low-cut short-sleeved dancing dresses fashionable at the moment.

Charlotte felt suddenly queasy. She couldn’t look at herself any longer.

She set off through the crowds. She patrolled the veranda over the lakeside and the ballroom, the public dining area on the terrace and the champagne fountain. Everywhere people were singing and stuffing their bellies and getting as drunk as possible. An unusual mixing of the social classes was visible, and other behaviour that would have been unthinkable at any normal time was sparking off in darkened corners, as alcohol and relief went to people’s heads and they gave way to celebratory practices that ranged from the risqué to the positively debauched. Charlotte blinked in surprise and hurried on. She saw several groups of her old flying comrades, but avoided them all. Only when she checked inside the Aviators’ Chapel did she admit to herself that she was looking for Chief McGregor, but he wasn’t there.

I need to speak to him, she told herself. This is my last chance. I need to … say goodbye.

He’d been with the ornithopter ground crew at the awards and the parade of course. She hadn’t seen him since the ceremony finished and they all split up.

In all these last weeks he’d said nothing to her about what had passed between them in his office. His demeanour had been exactly as before. Not a word or a glance had betrayed that any such incident might have taken place. And on her side she’d never told anyone.

She found him when she returned to the private box that had been allocated to them among the cherubs on the third tier of the hippodrome. On the main floor below, the party was in full swing, but when she opened the door she found him sitting on the floor with his back to the balcony, invisible from below, facing the disordered ranks of chairs. His knees were bent up, his arms propped on them, and a large brown bottle swung from one hand.

‘Chief?’ Charlotte glanced around quickly. There was no one else in sight.

‘Laindon.’ He looked melancholy, she thought. He was down to shirtsleeves and his braces had been slipped from his shoulders to pool on either side of him.

‘You’re on your own?’

‘Oh, I’ve had years of practice drinking on my own. Don’t you worry.’ Then he noticed the expression on her face and softened, adding, ‘It’s ginger beer. I’ve been really pushing the boat out.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Bloody ecstatic. Can’t you tell? Three-quarters of the pilots who came through my Deck are dead – but at least it’s over.’ He waved the bottle in her direction. ‘Care for some?’

She came forwards to take the bottle from him, then sat on
one
of the chairs to drink. It fizzed on her tongue and burned in her throat; it was ginger beer just as he’d said.

‘Believe me now?’ he said with a small smile.

‘Thanks, Chief.’

‘There’s no reason to call me that now.’

Charlotte felt a pang. ‘I’d rather.’ Then, because she felt foolish perched higher up than him, she sat down at his side, her back to the balcony wall. He took another sip from the bottle.

‘I suppose things will have to go back to the way they used to be now,’ she said.

‘No. Things never go back after a war. Things move on. Your people are going to find that out sooner or later.’

‘My people?’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment.

‘What are you going to do now it’s over?’ she ventured.

‘Me? I’ll be leaving. There’s always work for an engineer anywhere he chooses to go. And I want to travel. I want to go overseas. I want to fly again.’