Like a Wisp of Steam (6 page)

As though you'd notice
, Amelia thought wryly, glancing at the tall, rather absurdly muscular young man who trailed along after Edward, following him step for step. The fellow wore nothing but a sort of abbreviated toga, and had the blank white eyes of an Adonis-model chimera.

Times were changing indeed, Amelia reflected. Not so long ago, a respectable businessman would never have dared avail himself of such a toy—not in the light of day, certainly. Not five years ago, Roxby would have been hounded out of London as a godless sodomite.

"Thank you, dear Edward." Some inner demon of perversity forced her chin up, and she said, loudly, "I wonder if the rest of the room is in agreement." She was speaking directly to the daguerrographer's black-jacketed back, and she had the pleasure of seeing him twitch.

Perhaps he really is in love with me
, she thought.
Well,
why not? I'm not a hag quite yet, and he's not a poorly-made
 
man. Or perhaps I just feel sorry for him because of the
stammer
. She shrugged the thought off, setting herself down in a chair so the daguerrographer's assistants could chatter over her and apply powders to her face. Mary Ann stood beside her, watching the process with great interest. The powders were meant to eliminate the glare of reflected light from her face in the final images, but Amelia was unused to makeup in such quantity, and its application now made her uncomfortable.

The studio was swarming with chimerae of every make and model. Amelia distracted herself by watching them. They were here for the daguerrographs, of course, to lend the right fantastical air. Many of them, unsurprisingly, were based on characters from her own books. They had been licensed and turned out by major chimera breeding firms for some time now, as toys for very rich children. The Plum-Pudding Prince waddled by, the Queen of Cheese close on his heels. Black-robed witches slouched muttering in corners; several not-quite identical versions of Master Christopher Pug stood gathered silently together, smoking their pipes with a curiously morose air. The sun-drenched upper reaches of the studio swarmed with fairies. It always amazed Amelia how quickly she had grown used to these creatures, even bored by them. The first time she had seen Mr. Tenniel's illustrations to her very first book,
that
had brought a delicious amazement that even today lingered.

Finally preparations were at an end, and Amelia was escorted to a strange kind of artificial forest growing in one corner of the room, with plaster trees and pasteboard grass.

The rough artificial moss pricked the too-soft soles of her bare feet.

Then, finally, the daguerrographer came over to smile and offer his hand. "Muh, muh, Miss Lessington," he said, and swallowed hard with a pained expression. "I'm so suh-sorry, you will p-please f-forgive me." He turned from Amelia, as though meeting her eyes was painful.

"Not at all, Mr. Dodgson," she said gently, reaching for his hand and clasping it for a moment. Mary Ann eyed her knowingly and got a glare.
I only feel sorry for the poor man.

He's embarrassed...

"Cuh-confounded nuh-nuh-nuisance. Thuh, the s-s-stammer, you know. It will p-pass, I ass-ss-
assure
you."

Edward, standing off to the side, shot Amelia a wry, not unsympathetic glance. Gossip had it that Dodgson's stammer had worsened considerably since he had been turned out of his mathematician's post at Oxford, forced to take up the daguerrography that until then had been only an idle pastime for him. There had been some kind of scandal, apparently, something involving an older woman.

"Here, sir!" Dodgson said suddenly, so loudly and clearly that both Amelia and Mary Ann started. The daguerrographer was striding towards the Plum-Pudding Prince, who had snuck over to a table of refreshments and was cramming his spherical face with cream buns. "You show appalling muh-manners! No, d-don't blush and hide your uh-eye, your eyes at me, sir! I'll over-l-look it once, but don't tuh-try my patience again! I'll report this insolence to your f-firm, see if I won't!"

"You're a harsh taskmaster, Mr. Dodgson," Amelia observed. "I should give you my chimera for a week or so,"

she added, giving Mary Ann a thin smile. "An impudent creature in her own right. But you'd have her sorted out in good order, I don't doubt!"

"He has a way with them, no question," Roxby hastened to agree. "Ah, but the creatures are little more than children, after all. It's our duty to discipline them. The 'Natural Man's Burden,' as our Miss Felicia Blake would have it."

Dodgson bowed slightly. "Ruh-right you are, sir. Buh-but enough of these unpleasantries. L-let's to work, eh?"

He whistled piercingly and the air suddenly filled with the whisper of beating wings.

"This," he added wryly, "I suh-suspect, will put my duh-disciplinarian skills to a ruh-real t-test."

Fairies descended in a cloud around Amelia. "Hello," she said nervously, standing absolutely still. Her greatest literary successes had been with stories of fairies, but confronted with them in the chimerical flesh, they made her uneasy, much as flocks of birds did. Each was no larger than her hand, a naked, androgynous creature with sugarfloss hair and large, impudent eyes. They were pretty little things, but unlike most chimerae, they were quick-moving and could be unpredictable. The air rang with their chatter.

"Ooo, lookit '
er
! Pipe, the grand lady lost 'er shoes! Don't she got funny toes, then!"

"Shut your gob, Peablossom! She's loverly, she is! That's a real lady, there. Ooo, I'd love ter give her a great big kiss, so I would!"

"I'm
goin'
ter giver 'er a kiss! There! I done it! Right on the lips, I kissed 'er!"

"Greedy! I want one meself!"

Dodgson had retreated behind his engine, operating it with dramatic flourishes and quick, precise movements of his hands. It lunged forward and back, lights snapping, clouds of steam rising from it. "Lovely, yes," he said, his voice muffled by the black cloth draped over his head to help him focus the shots. "Ah good. Yes, yes."

Fairies crowded squabbling on Amelia's shoulders and in her hair. One massaged her nipple through the thin material of her dress until it stood up like a thumb, at which point the fairy mounted it, rubbing its minute sex against it with hilarious squeals of pleasure. Amelia received innumerable tiny kisses and was pinched and tickled mercilessly on every inch of exposed skin. She had to stand still for every moment of it. After a time her nervousness evaporated, replaced by the teasing sexual heat she had felt earlier.

She knew the daguerrographs would come out well. They would show Miss Amelia Lessington, noted author of fairy stories, smiling and laughing rapturously, at play with her creations. It would undoubtedly help sales, which would please Edward and her publishers, and eventually herself.

And I'll walk out of here today with stiffened-up tits and a
sopping quim
. She glared at Mary Ann, who was laughing and applauding the spectacle of her mistress's torment.

Later, indeed. Very much so
.

* * * *

"Good afternoon, mum. Come in, then, don't stop in the doorway."

Amelia regarded with some surprise the young woman who answered her knock. The girl was several years her junior, and might well have been the youngest daughter of Ma Cullen, the old bawd who normally ran the house. Her suit was cheap but well-tailored, her manner brisk but entirely sympathetic as she bustled Amelia in for tea and a chat. Mary Ann was pleased to be given an entire plateful of crystallized lemon peel. Within perhaps fifteen minutes Amelia's still full cup was taken from her and she was ushered into an acceptably clean upstairs room.

"Here I am taking my boots off again," she observed.

"I hope he's lovely," was Mary Ann's only comment, but it was fervently made. When the door opened moments later, her eyes widened. Still munching lemon, she whispered, "Oh."

The chimera was a Raphael model, a dark-skinned boy of nineteen with an obscene mouth and obsidian eyes. The clout of purple cloth hung on his narrow waist barely hid a sizable erection. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind himself. Raphaels rarely smiled, but this one cocked his head and made a soft, yearning sound that made Amelia's bones itch.

"Like him?" she asked Mary Ann. She herself certainly approved, and she did tend to be somewhat particular. She was pleased that she wouldn't be disappointed this afternoon.

"Mmn. He
is
lovely."

"Have him, then. I'll join you shortly. I don't want to rush but there's no point in letting him cool down meantime."

As she removed the last of her clothes she watched Mary Ann go to work. The chimera simply trotted up to the Raphael and stripped away his loincloth. A moment later, without undressing herself, she began sucking his formidable prick.

"Try his bollocks."

"Mmn?"

"His bollocks," Amelia said, pointing at them. "See what lovely great dangling eggs he's got? Like ripe fruits they are.

See if you can get one in your mouth. Give it a good suck."

"What,
all
of it?" Mary Ann asked dubiously. But she applied herself willingly to the challenge, and soon the Raphael was gasping, bracing himself against her shoulders.

Amelia liked that. Male chimerae were often a bit on the dull side, and it excited her to see the Raphael react so strongly to her servant's ministrations. It also bode well for the rest of the session.

"Lick it while you suck it. And grab his arse; squeeze it with your nails. Yes, that's right, dig them in, hard as you can."

Amelia's experience in such matters was practical; it came entirely from visits to ladies' pleasure-houses such as this one. Perhaps that was the reason she was so particular—unlike many a respectably married woman, she was familiar with possibilities of the body, and understood exactly what delights could be hers for the asking. She had been called on by gentlemen since she was fifteen, and had had many suitors, but marriage had eluded her, or she it. It was a lack in some eyes, but not one she felt a need to dwell on. Her stories had given her a career, respect, and money, and those things afforded her between them everything else she might desire.

She dropped the last item of her clothing to the ground and padded naked over to the pair of grappling chimerae. As Mary Ann continued to tongue and suck the Raphael's balls, Amelia took his cheeks between her hands, pulled his face to hers and kissed him deeply. She bit his lower lip in her teeth and tugged sharply at it.

The Raphael gasped, moved his hands from Mary Ann's shoulders to Amelia's. He had some typical male aggression bred into him, an urge to dominate; but there was passivity there as well, in consideration of customers who might require it. It was one reason Amelia had chosen this model, and a good thing, too. Had she requested a Herakles or a David, she might not have been able to deflect those grasping hands as easily as she did. After the afternoon she had just endured, she herself had no interest in being passive.

"Lie down," she told the Raphael, not unkindly. "On the bed there, go on. Spit-spot."

The chimera pouted at her, then at Mary Ann, who was still busily at work on his balls. Finally, reluctantly, he broke away and went to the bed. A moment later, Amelia joined him.

"I'm going to enjoy this," she told Mary Ann. She spat into her palm and swiftly lubricated the Raphael's cock. He spread his long legs for her, sliding his hands under his arse and pushing his middle upward, making his phallus a more appealing target.

Amelia climbed onto the Raphael. Slowly, gingerly, hissing, she impaled herself.

Oh God. Oh sweet lord Jesus, that's good, it is
. It was: the grind of the rough-silky thatch of pubic hair and bone on her clitoris, the painful but delicious sensation of being filled.

Chills wracked her body as she rode the Raphael. He lay with both hands under his arse, smiling beatifically at her as he was fucked.

Mary Ann came up behind Amelia, kneeling in the little space between her and the Raphael's legs. She put her arms around her mistress and nipped her bare shoulders, squeezed her nipples and twisted them like dials. She still hadn't removed her own clothes, probably out of sheer laziness. She couldn't have known how oddly pleasurable the roughness and softness of her dress made her embrace to Amelia.

"Harder. More, do it like that." Amelia forced herself to keep her hands away from the itch on her breasts, concentrating on making the sensation spice the pleasure of fucking the chimera's prick. She set her own hands on the Raphael's chest, dug her nails into the smooth skin.

Mary Ann's small fingers stroked and tickled and scratched her breasts and belly and sides. Her mouth with its tongue and small hard teeth bit and sucked at her shoulders and the nape of her neck. It was heaven and it was maddening. The delicacy of it drove Amelia on, jerking herself back and forth on the Raphael, as though he were a steed she was riding to some unguessable destination.

She felt the orgasm approaching, like a light-filled cloud she could barely see. Sobs wracked her as she fell forward, her hair falling into the Raphael's face, making them seem, for a moment, one merged ecstatic creature.

* * * *

"It's ruh-really appalling, isn't it? About Huh-her Majesty, I mean..."

Amelia, enjoying the smooth motion of the boat, managed a properly concerned frown, and a brief nod that managed to convey agreement without encouraging further chatter. She understood that Dodgson was only making polite conversation, but lately the royal death at Buckingham Palace was all
anyone
talked about. It had become rather tiresome.

And the afternoon was lovely, a sunny July day, absolute perfection. She was glad now that she had accepted the daguerrographer's hesitant invitation to join him on an outing, though it had taken her nearly a week of shilly-shallying to make up her mind.

"Did she
really
choke on a chicken-bone?" Mary Ann inquired, munching an apple. The chimera had accompanied them on the picnic at Dodgson's suggestion, to lend the afternoon a certain air of propriety. Remembering the afternoon with the Raphael, Amelia had to smile. Mary Ann was not quite the ideal chaperone, she thought, if in fact that was what Dodgson had in mind. Well, perhaps she'd give her servant a chance to demonstrate that to their earnest, gentlemanly host. A bit later, perhaps.