Queen of the Sky Frontier - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Eden let the door close behind her, leaving her alone in the small room with Gray. Months ago, in this very room, they had shared an intimate moment. She wondered if he remembered it. She didn't remember the flocked wallpaper being quite so garishly red, and the bedspread was quite hideous, but she'd been distracted with other things at the time.

He stepped close and put his arm around her, tipped her chin up with his metal hand. "Let us not restrain ourselves, O' Queen of Pirates." He leaned in for a kiss and she put her hand over his mouth.

"Is this what you came for? This is your 'urgent business'? I thought you said you had information." She liked the way he smelled. After months of corsairs she was easily beguiled by a man who smelled of something besides sweat and gunpowder.

He let her go. "Ah, well. All business then."

"I didn't say that," she said. "I just want to know what your information is worth before I reward you for it." She unbuckled her swordbelt and hung it on a peg, sat down on the narrow bed. "You came all this way, now talk."

Gray sat heavily on the hassock, scratched his chin. "Just the two of us, without your shadow?" He glanced at the door to the outer room where Zenobia and the other pirates waited.

"I need Zenobia to keep an eye on them," Eden said. "I don't want them deciding something foolish while I'm gone."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you having troubles with them? I thought you were the undisputed Queen of the Sky."

Eden rolled her eyes. "Oh God, that damned dime novel tripe. Department X certainly made me sound like a monster, didn't they?" She referred to the government office that kept frightening events secret by making them into unbelievable dime novels.

"Well, they did make you out to be taller, and they exaggerated the scar quite a bit," Gray said. He took out his hip flask and took a drink, offered it to her, put it away when she shook her head. "But seriously. Are you having trouble controlling them?"

"Some," she said. "They are a fractious lot at the best of times. The truth is I'm losing men to Black, and more to Hood. Black is making more noise, even if he's less effective, and Hood is promising action. It's difficult to hold these people to a purpose that's not immediately gratifying."

"Do you still have more men than Black?" he asked.

"I do, but I can't trust all of them. Some joined after Dire's death, from her camp, and might be here to spy on me for Black. My two advantages are that Black is not much liked, and that I still hold the coding device. They need it." She flicked a glance at Gray, wondering if he knew there was no coding device, just an experimental boy with a mind for codes. She had never known if he knew the truth or not.

"Yes, and thank you for that," Gray said. "You've been careful to use it so that no one can tell. My story that it was destroyed when Dire's ship went down has not been questioned."

She shrugged. "So far it's been easy to stay in the background. Black is making so much more noise than we are. He's attracting a better class of privateers."

"So I see," Gray said. "Nice ship by the by."

"Indeed," Eden smiled. "So, tell me what you came here to tell me. Flattery aside, I know you didn't come all this way in defiance of your superiors just for a chance at a screw."

Gray puffed air through his cheeks. "Well, bad news, or worse?"

"Start with bad, I suppose," Eden said.

"We've finished sorting through all of Constantine's false requisitions and deceptive business dealings prior to his courts-martial," Gray said.

"He's not going to wriggle off the hook is he?" Eden said. "I don't want to regret not killing him personally."

Gray scoffed. "Him? He didn't just cross anyone, dear. He crossed MacKenzie. That's the man his own soldiers call "The Punisher". You can't find a more honest bastard in the entire service." He shook his head. "No, he's not getting away. Unfortunately, we can't account for all Constantine's misappropriated guns."

"You mean artillery," Eden said.

"I mean," Gray said. "Some of them no doubt went down with the pirate fleet. More were found in warehouses in Vercruz. But he paid for more than we found, or can be accounted for by the battle." He shook his head. "Black may have a store of shiny new artillery pieces tucked away, and we can't say how many."

"Well," Eden said. "That would explain how he keeps drawing new recruits when no one can stand him." She sighed. "That's bad news. Tell me the worse."

"I have some information on Hood," Gray said. "You won't like it."

"Captain Hood," Eden said. "I've been hearing his name entirely too much lately. I know he was a Confederate Air Corps captain, and he's holed up somewhere in Montana, supposedly. Tell me more."

"I can tell you this," Gray said. "Five brand-new battleships were constructed in Calais and shipped overseas to a private buyer. It was supposed to be someone in Canada, but I tracked down the supposed purchaser and found they didn't exist. The ownership is a maze of false companies and people who aren't real. The ships themselves left Halifax and traveled West two weeks ago. They were spotted over Maine and put in at Ottawa for resupply. Now. . ." He waved his hands.

"What kind of ships were these?" Eden said.

"New design by a French firm with a Dutch designer. Called the Drekkar class. From what I know, they are based somewhat on the old Somerset designs - the big ones the Brits could never get to fly right during the war." Gray shook his head. "I'm not an expert on ships."

"The Confederacy was in line to buy three Somerset's," Eden said. "They waited three years during the war for the shipbuilders to work the problems out of the design, but they never did. So far as I know, only one was even built." She frowned, closed her eyes. "I only saw a partial schematic. Four gun decks, between six and eight guns per deck on a side. Somewhere between fifty and sixty-four guns in total. They kept changing the number as they worked on the weight problems. They had trouble keeping buoyancy with more than fifteen shells per gun, and that wasn't good enough. The frame was supposed to have stress-cracking problems as well. It was just too big." She blinked and shook her head. "I'm not sure how worried I should be about that."

"If they got a design that big to work properly. . ." Gray said.

"Then we all have to worry." She frowned. "I can't think how Hood would be able to pay for something like that."

"He has a backer, or more than one," Gray said. "Even if he had the money, hiding it that well was the work of clerks and robber barons, not corsairs. If Hood actually received those ships, then someone bought them for him."

"And then there's the question of what he wants them for," Eden said.

"Kill you and Black?" Gray said. "With those ships he could crush any pirate fleet that flies. He could become the supreme power in the West. Dire's old dream."

"Maybe," Eden said. She tossed her braids back over her shoulder and he smiled at her. "What?"

"You look a lot different than the little girl who tried to talk me into taking her West last summer," he said. "Not what I would have expected, at the time."

Eden chuckled. "I remember when you tried to seduce me that time. I was so offended. Would you have taken me along if I'd been a good tumble?" She leaned back and gave him a flirtatious look.

"Oh well," he stood and crossed to her. He was really so very good looking, and he looked even better close up. His blonde hair was just a bit shaggy, the slightest stubble growing on his strong jaw. "I was concerned for your safety, Miss Kane. I didn't know you were so versatile." He leaned over her, very close, hands braced on the bed, and she kissed him, pushed up to meet his mouth.

Until this moment she wasn't sure if she really intended to screw him, but now she mentally shrugged and pulled him down atop her. Why not? He was pretty, and she was a pirate - she could do what she liked.

He shrugged off his jacket without taking his mouth from hers, even as she kicked out of her boots. She sprung his collar loose and started on his shirt as he pulled her own jacket off her slim shoulders. His artificial hand was so rigid against her skin as he slid his hands down, worked on her own buttons.

When she got his shirt open she sighed happily into his mouth, ran her hands over the smooth planes of his torso, feeling the play of muscle under his surprisingly soft skin. He was scarred here and there, moreso where the leather cuff of his metal arm covered his skin. Trails of scar tissue like whiptrails spread out from it like flames, and she wondered for the hundredth time how he'd lost it.

Her shirt was open, his mouth on her neck, down over her collarbones. She moaned as his fingers rolled and squeezed her small nipples. He kissed down between her breasts, paused to nibble on each one, and then down over her belly. His hands slipped under the waist of her breeches and she arched up so he could slide them down and off her legs.

He ran his artificial hand up her thighs, over her belly, and she felt the tingle of electricity from the fingertips, like a slight stickiness. She sighed and opened her legs, stretched her arms over her head as he slid his tongue into her pussy and licked deeply with a rough tongue. His metal fingers touched her left nipple and a spark jumped, making her twitch and bite her lip.

He licked her and she moaned, wriggling shamelessly to rub against his clever tongue. His metal hand roamed here and there, tingling and giving her little jolts that made her gasp and shiver under him. She was close, shuddering, and she put a hand in his hair, held him to his purpose as she ground on his mouth. He drew his hand down and touched the thumb to her swollen button, gave her a little shock and she suddenly hunched halfway up, pleasure hitting her like a fist. He tongued her right through it, his spread-open hand sending a thrumming current through her belly that made her spasms almost unbearably powerful.

He kissed his way up her body as she lay pliant and dewy-eyed in the afterglow. She rubbed her thighs against his lean flanks, and then his cock sank into her hot and hard, spreading her open and she made a guttural sound, bit her lip and nodded.

Gray drew back, wet from her, and then thrust in to the limit, throbbing inside her. Eden crooned and gripped his shoulders - one flesh, one metal - as he began to stroke inside her. He was stronger than he looked, and gave her a very satisfying thump when he pushed all the way inside. He slipped his metal thumb into her mouth and she sucked on it, giggled at the flickering shock that danced on her tongue.

He fucked her with long strokes, angling his hips to hit all sorts of interesting places inside her with his cock. She groaned and held onto him, nuzzled up under his chin. "Sally said you were clever, Ulysses."

"Really?" he said, kissing her, their quick breath mixing. "What else does she say about me?"

"Shut up," Eden growled. "Harder. I'm close."

He grinned and hiked her legs higher, drove into her with a will as she clutched the sheets and growled. Her climax hit her again and she bit her lips and snarled as he fucked her right through it. He bowed his head and panted for breath, sweat sheening his neck.

"Close?" she said, gasping. He nodded wordlessly and she pushed him back. "Let me taste you."

He leaned back until he slipped from her and she rounded easily, perched on all fours and lunged down to catch his cock in her mouth. He groaned through his teeth as she swept down on it, worked her tongue against the hot flesh as she sucked him. He pushed against her, hips flexing uncontrollably and she let him slip deeper with a liquid moan. He stroked in and out of her mouth a few more times and then she felt him harden and throb against her tongue.

She grabbed him at the base and squeezed as he came in her mouth, his hot seed spilling over her tongue. Her hand stroked as she sucked it out of him, swallowed it down. She drew back with a string of sticky stuff stretched between his cock and her lower lip, licked it away with her tongue and squeezed him in her fist until he staggered and a last drop fell from the tip of his shaft. She caught it on her tongue and let him go, and he almost fell.

He caught himself on the bedpost, sagged against the bed. "You've been practicing," he said.

"Well, it almost behooves a pirate lady to suck like a Parisian whore, don't you think?" Eden flopped on her belly and brushed her hair from her face. She smirked as Gray tried to regain his composure. "You'd not have come here of all you had was a tidbit of info. You could have sent that by a courier."

He laughed a little. "You are too clever for your own good," he said. "It's going to get you into trouble."

"You think it hasn't already? You're not paying attention," she said.

He chuckled. "I came because I know someone who may know more about what Hood is about. Come with me and I'll introduce you."

"Who and where?" Eden said.

"Antonina Faust," he said. "On the Princess of Texas."

Eden laughed. "The sky-brothel? You're not joking?"

He shook his head. "Not joking. The Princess shouldn't be far from here right now. If anyone has heard more news about Hood, it will be Antonina."

"And you know her?" Eden said, sitting up.

Gray smiled. "We go back a long way, she and I. I think she'll like you."

"Really?" Eden looked up as she heard a crash from the outer room. Frowning, she drew her pistol from her belt where it hung and crossed naked to the door. She opened it and looked out, expecting trouble.

Instead she saw Zenobia in all her glorious nakedness braced on all fours on the couch while Captain Malik fucked her from behind, his black skin making even Zenobia's tawny flesh look pale. The table was tipped over and the hookah lay broken on the floor.

Eden sighed and leaned her pistol back on her shoulder. "And where the hell are the rest?" she said.

Zenobia grunted and tossed her wild mane, grinned with her pointed teeth. "Headed back to El Dorado," she snorted. She backed hard against Malik and he grinned, pawed at her flanks. "You want some of this when I'm done ratoncita?"

Eden snorted as Malik waggled his eyebrows at her in what was meant to be invitation. "Maybe," she said. "Hurry it up, we're heading out soon."

"Back to El Dorado?" Zenobia growled and ground against Malik, her face flushed.

"No doubt of it," Eden said, tossing her gun on the couch and stepping in close enough to slap Malik's hard black ass. "We just have a stop to make along the way."

Continued in Chapter 10

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