REGENCY: Loved by the Duke (Historical Billionaire Military Romance) (19th Century Victorian Short Stories) (64 page)

Chapter 6

By the end of her first week onboard, Nya found she was unable to focus on anything that was important to her.  She had always thought the stories of how sailors at sea could be ravenous when they came in to port were preposterous.  But now, with the possibility of sex firmly on her mind, she had begun to realize that there was more truth to such things than she had thought possible.  And with plenty of time to herself she felt as if she were slowly being consumed by her biology.

Sex had not always been easily within her reach and she had leapt at willing partners when the opportunities had come.  But no one had simply offered her sex as casually as if they were offering her tea before.  It was an experience that she had not been entirely prepared for.

And it had kept her up nights, like tonight.

She sat upright in her bunk just like she had for the whole night, trying to focus on how best to fix her current array of problems with the call box.  But her mind had kept drifting to what Dane had said to her in the dining area three nights prior.  Her thoughts were locked on it the same way iron particles clung to a magnet dragged through sand.

Had he been serious about his offer?

Though Nya wasn’t given over to religion, she prayed to God that he was serious about sharing himself with her.  Liberal as the attitude towards sex tended to be on this boat she found it hard to believe that the owner of the Carver Group would be willing to couple with her at all.  Not when there were more sophisticated women aboard.  Even if she slept with him only once or even at all, she found herself tempted by it.

Nya had given in to the desires of the flesh plenty of times before in her past.  But the differences then compared to now were drastically different.  She had
cared
for the people she had bedded in the past.  There had been an emotional connection.  That had always seemed important.

But, she reflected, if it had been such a crucial thing why hadn’t any of those relationships lasted? 

It was a good question and it was one that she couldn’t answer.

Maybe there was something to the whole idea that she hadn’t really noticed?  In the days after her initial embarrassment she had seen doctors Inira and Yao going on about their work.  They had carried on as if they had exchanged nothing more than a passing ‘hello’.  If there was any tension between them she hadn’t seen it.  And she had been quick to notice that the work in their labs, while she didn’t fully understand it, had taken some considerable leaps and bounds.  She’d seen the pace at which they had been working.  And after their coupling, their work seemed to have progressed via a quantum leap.

It was that kind of success that she was in need of just now.

When she’d returned to her cabin, the work that she had done seemed menial by comparison.  And it was not something that she felt at all proud of.  She had two weeks still to complete her work, but she hadn’t even gotten so far as to get her call box wet outside of a testing tank yet.  Part of her current string of problems was that she couldn’t perfect the damn water-tight seals.

She looked across her cabin at her desk where her current prototype sat.  The box’s was only about a third completed.  It had a skeleton, but its guts and brains were missing.  The dimensions were much as she had intended them to be.  On the whole, the device was the side of a bread box.  Its four walls were of industrial plastic, capable of withstanding certain amounts of pressure at various depths of the water… if she could just figure out how to protect the electronics within. 

Its innards were, at a glance, a jumble of electronics that – obviously – if exposed to water would short out and render the entire device useless.  And it was those damn water seals that she couldn’t figure out and more, she needed a redundancy system in case the system was breached in the real thing and water got inside. 

The Carver Group wouldn’t accept her work if she couldn’t find a means to back it up somehow.  One line of defense; the overall case for a system like this, wasn’t enough.  That there would be some water seepage seemed inevitable.  What she needed was a means to waterproof the electronics inside the box as well when that happened.  Like finding a way to waterproof a message in a bottle after the bottle had been thrown out to sea.  But the only means she had devised to that end made the entire thing too heavy, too bulky.  And enough so that the device might decouple from the hull it was attached to and sink, making it into litter at the bottom of the ocean.

Shit.

She sighed and leaned her head against the bulkhead of her cabin.  She stared blankly at the ceiling, watching the way the overhead light there flickered.  No solutions were coming to her and she had to get her apparatus ready for its first dip in the real sea within the next two days if she wanted to stay on schedule. 

She thought of Dane and what he had said.  Not about his offer of sex, but how sex could clear her mind and give her focus.

The idea of unabashed sex seemed strange.  But the fear of failure and professional ridicule and shame were downright terrifying.  Sex could be kept a secret and easily dismissed here, she’d seen proof enough of that for herself.  But scientific failure was something that would follow her all the way back to shore. 

She knew which she preferred.

“When all else fails, fresh tactics,” she said to herself.

Resigned, she got up and left her cabin.

When she arrived she saw light from under his door, the telltale sign that he was there and just as she usually did, he was burning the midnight oil.  She was pleased that he was at least awake, given that it was close to 1 AM.  She knocked on his door and waited patiently there, hoping that her sudden appearance there wouldn’t be an inconvenience if he were too deeply in the throes of his work.

When the door opened she saw him.  He was dressed in nothing but a pair of raggedy old jeans and she saw that he had more tattoos on his chest and belly.  Once again, he reminded her more of some kind of a punk rocker than a scientist and billionaire.

“Nya,” he said with a pleasant tone, “good evening.”

“Hi,” she said, suddenly feeling a pang of nervousness that hadn’t been there before.  Her mind and mouth both searched for something to say.  “I was wondering…”

She didn’t need to finish.  All Dane did was smile and he stepped aside, allowing her room to enter.  He knew why she was here.

She stepped inside. 

Chapter 7

The door had barely closed when she turned around and found him upon her as if he were some wild beast that had been starved before its next meal.  His mouth met hers as if they had been connected by invisible strings suddenly pulled taught and drawn together.  His beard from several days of not shaving tickled her, but she relished it.  And pleasant as that sensation was, it didn’t compare to his tongue as it slipped over his lips and into her mouth.

Her arms wrapped around his neck and she held him close, excitement rising up inside of her.  There
was
something to be said for this kind of encounter.  There was no need for the getting-to-know-you stage of a relationship.  The end goal was firmly on her mind as it must have been his.  And each, she felt, was eager to get at it.

Her arms tightened and he responded by encircling his arms around her larger waist.  It was only a moment before he slipped his hands flatly inside the waistband of her jeans.  His fingers snaked their way down, grabbing her ass cheeks and squeezing them tightly. 

She moaned under his touch as he used the new leverage to grind his pelvis against hers.  The sensation made her damp in her panties and she felt herself yearning for more.  She wanted the old sensations of sex… warm flesh pressed against warm flesh… the sweat… the taste… the smell…

Dane seemed attuned to her desires and removed his hands from inside of her jeans and brought them to the hem of her shirt.  In a single fluid movement he removed the garment.  The ease with which he did so impressed her. 

But he took hold of the bridge of her bra between her massive breasts and yanked so hard that the fabric tore with an audible snap.  Her bra ruined, he yanked it free from her torso and fell to his knees like a priest at prayer before the idol of a goddess.  He buried his face in the valley between her breasts, cupping them both with his hands.  His tongue inscribed a primal language upon her skin in invisible ink as his hands massaged her bosom.  The combination of his touch and tongue sent earthquakes down her spine, threatening to topple her where she stood.

Dane, however, offered her support that she was lacking.  The firmness of his hands upon her breasts spoke a silent message: stay standing.  Though she trembled in doing so, she stayed upright.  The aftershocks of his mouth as it worked on her threatened to collapse her, like a house of cards suddenly troubled by a slight gust of wind.

His hands abandoned her breasts and his mouth took over their duties.  He took one of her large dark nipples into his mouth and the sensation of his teeth as they gentle nibbled on her set fire to her skin. 

His fingers traveled down and unfastened her jeans.  With speed that spoke of pent up lust he pulled her jeans and panties down in the same motion.  His left hand found her free breast, his fingers tracing her areolas and pinching her nipple, making it hard.  His right hand shot between her legs and two of his fingers slipped inside of her. 

This time there was no denying the quaking of her legs.  As if she was held up by nothing but toothpicks she felt herself give way under her own weight as she fell to her knees.  Dane’s mouth reclaimed hers, but his hands stayed where they were, pleasing her both inside and out.

His tongue went wild inside her mouth, probing every corner.  Her tongue played lightly at his, she tried to pry her way into his mouth but like a stubborn sentinel he refused to give her that much leeway.  His tongue barred, tackled, fended off, and held her tongue in place as if he were trying to keep her from learning some deep and private secret.

His fingers thrust in and out of her like mad.  She had owned a vibrator once that hadn’t felt half this good.  His technique was practiced, but somehow it felt savage… primal… like he was indeed venting his scientific frustrations sexually.  She found the experience more than a little agreeable.

“God!” she moaned between kisses.  She managed another quick breath before uttering, “Take your pants off.”

“You do it,” he whispered back, “my hands are busy.”

She obeyed, her fingers fondling the zipper and clasp of his ragged shorts.  She pulled them down and found that he wasn’t wearing any underwear.  Somehow she found this as amusing as she did arousing.  Thinking that this was perfectly in sync with the kind of character she had imagined him to be.  His cock was already hard and ready for her. 

She gently began to stroke it, her fingers moved slowly as if mapping him via touch alone.  She felt the veins of his dick becoming harder, throbbing with anticipation.  The crown of his cock was perfectly shaped, the tension he was already feeling called to her. 

“Harder,” he murmured.  “Harder.”

She complied, wrapping both hands around his shaft and pumping him.  It was like no other sensation that she had felt before.  Her past lovers had all had techniques that she had found interesting, but the simultaneous stimulation of her mouth, breasts, hands, and vagina… she’d never experienced its’ like before. 

He seemed to relish this control over her, she noticed.  And though it felt like hours later – though perhaps it was only several minutes – he freed his mouth from hers and withdrew his hands from her body.  Her senses cried out from the loss, noticing the lack of energy that he’d generated from her at once and silently she demanded that they return.

Dane laid on the floor before her, his cock upright and ready.  “Get on.”  She began to mount him but before she could complete the movement he stopped her.  “No, no… turn around.”

She felt a second rush of excitement and flashed him a toothy grin.  She turned her back on him and slowly mounted him.  She remained upright on her feet and inch by inch she claimed him.  He slid inside of her as if their mutual organs had been custom made to fit together.  His hands reached out and took hers, giving her some support though she still felt as if she were half suspended in mid-air.  The weakness she’d felt in her legs from before was nothing compared to now.  But the feeling of pleasure drove her to remain on her feet.  With her legs like springs she began to lightly bob on him.

This sensation too was unfamiliar to her.  Perhaps it was the gentle rocking of the boat on the ocean waves, but she felt as if the tides of her own body were swirling within her like a typhoon.  Dane clenched his fingers around hers and the feeling was both painful and pleasurable.  She became aware of everything around her as their bodies fell into an unpracticed yet perfectly synchronized rhythm. 

Every sound that the boat made presented itself to her as if she was hearing it for the first time.  The constantly present but overlooked thrum of the engines, the sound of a buzzer as someone was summoned on an intercom, footsteps as they passed in the hall, even the sound of water as it lapped against the hull through the bulkhead were easily noticeable.  And that she was able to take notice of it all filled her with a sense of wonder as to how she could not have noticed these things before.

There was an inherent beauty in them.

“On your knees,” Dane said after what felt a long time.

Though she didn’t acknowledge it aloud, she was grateful for the change in position.  Her knees felt sore and stiff, unaccustomed as they were to such a repetitive motion.  Her hands freed she slowly inched forward, her legs relieved of their delightful burden and she came to rest on all fours.

Dane scrambled behind her, seemingly filled with a reserve of energy.  She found that admirable as well and as his hands found her waist he again slid inside of her.  The sensation was different this time.  She felt him probing to new areas of her body, stirring her, making the typhoon that had already been growing inside of her into a hurricane.  It was as if he was some primitive god of the sea and she was the ocean that he could bend to his will.

He reached out and took hold of her hair, bunching it in his fist and pulling back on it just enough to give her some small measure of pain, but not enough to make her cry out.  She found that that too was something that no lover had ever done for her.

“Yes,” he said as he began to thrust deeper and deeper within her.  “Yes.”

With her head tilted back lightly upon her shoulders she began to lose her sense of time.  Other senses followed.  Her vision became blurry, her ears began to ring, and the sounds that had been as numerous as the cells in her body seemed to diminish.  All that mattered was the feelings that she had inside of her and so long as they remained she was content.