Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“Dexter, you’re here! I think you may have been right after all, are you amazed to hear me admit it? It was ghastly!” she nearly shouted, all decorum forgotten as she pushed the hatch up and muscled her way from the sub’s cabin, visibly eager to abandon ship. “The longer you stay in the damn thing, the smaller it gets. Somehow being alone in there was even worse than having a copilot, but I refused to let myself panic and give up. It also took me a bit to get the hang of the controls,” she admitted, leaping from the bobbing lip of the hatch to the pool’s broad edge, “and then I decided to practice with the periscope, just to test my resolve I suppose, but then —”

Dexter snatched her from the ledge by the waist and hauled her down in front of him, barely letting her feet graze the ground before he spoke.

“Get out.”

It took both Charlotte and the technician a moment to realize he was talking to the young man.

“Sir?”

“Get. Out.” Low. Fierce. Not to be ignored.

The midshipman hesitated, his hands still on the rim of the hatch he had leaned over to close. Then, with an alacrity that might have been amusing in any other circumstance, he vacated the stony little chamber to leave them alone.

Charlotte was clearly far from pleased. “Dexter, what the hell do you think you’re—”

He kissed her. Not because he wanted to silence her, or because he thought much could come of it, or to make any greater point about the future of their marriage. He felt big and clumsy, an ox without words to express what he could barely identify even to himself. And she was alive, and not being violated by a Frenchman.

Mine .

His lips forced hers open with no subtlety or seduction. It almost wasn’t about sex, that kiss. Relief, yes. Possession, quite possibly. His arms folded her closer, wrapping around her at the shoulders and buttocks, lifting her higher. He ignored her effort to push him away, the tapping of her hand against his shoulder. She didn’t tap him very hard, or very many times, before she seemed to resign herself and clasped her hands behind his neck.

By the time he let go, setting her on the floor and separating his mouth from hers abruptly, she was trembling nearly as badly as he was. Her mouth looked swollen, her cheeks were pink. The dark blue coverall she wore fit closely enough to reveal her ragged breathing. It revealed entirely too much, Dexter felt, as the trousers were tailored enough to show the curves of her ass and thighs to perfection.

He thought of the young midshipman watching her clamber in and out of the submersible, and had to dig his fingernails into his own palms to restrain himself from grabbing her and kissing her again.

Finally, into the shocked silence, he cleared his throat and said, “I expected you back a bit sooner.”

After a few unsuccessful attempts to reply, Charlotte rallied a little. “I see.”

He tried a smile, although it felt horribly forced and he suspected it was more of a rictus. “I’m pleased you’re not dead. Why is there no radio on that blasted thing again?”

She laughed, but there seemed to be no pleasure in it. “You have a peculiar way of demonstrating that you’re pleased about things, and there is no radio because silence is the key to stealth, remember?”

“Oh.” He closed his eyes against the irritation in hers, and tried to slow his breath. So he didn’t notice her approach, until he felt a touch tracking down the side of his face, soft as breath. He looked then, and saw that she was studying his face with the keen observation of a scientist watching a critical phase of an experiment.

When the fingertip passed over his lips, Charlotte’s eyes changed. Darkened. She stared at his lips and then, so quickly he almost thought he might have imagined it, licked her own.

Without thinking, Dexter took her finger between his teeth. Not biting, not nipping. Just securing it there. He expected her to yank it away, and his heart flipped over in his chest when she didn’t.

“You were concerned for me?”

He had to let go of her finger to answer. “Yes.” Out of his mind with concern, not to put too fine a point on it. “And later, we are going to reevaluate.”

“Going to . . . oh.”

“Ahem . ”

The very pointed throat-clearing jolted them both, and they jumped away from each other, turning to face the interloper.

Mr. Murcheson and the station’s captain were standing in the doorway, the former looking amused and the latter scowling.

“Pardon the interruption,” Murcheson mugged. “Admiral Neeley is planning an evacuation drill this afternoon, and you’ll want some time to pack and so forth if you’re still planning to take the evening train to Paris. I believe it’s time we were off. If you’re quite through with everything you were involved in here, for the day?”

“Quite,” Dexter assured him, rolling his eyes at the older man’s wicked smile.

The young midshipman was standing in the corridor, looking abashed, and Dexter gave him a stiff nod in passing. He grasped Charlotte’s hand firmly when they moved off down the hall, not letting her escape his side until she reminded him she still had to change back into her street clothes.

A STEAMRAIL COACH, BOUND FOR PARIS, FRANCE

“IT WAS BUILT for a larger person, that sub. It was the same when I used to try to drive my father’s steam car,” Charlotte grumbled, staring out at the passing scenic blur. The private steamrail coach was luxuriously fitted, but the ride was still tedious after the initial interest died off. They had already dined, then toured the saloon car and found nobody of interest there. There was not much to do, although Charlotte had spent a few minutes idly prodding at the curio box without any success. And now, with dusk falling, even the scenery was fading from view.

“You couldn’t reach the pedals?”

She shot him a haughty glare. “It was not built to accommodate my unique specifications. Even though it was a relatively small car, because Father wanted my mother and me to learn to drive it, the controls weren’t designed for a small person. It’s almost as though the manufacturers can’t really quite believe there are short people who might want to drive things. Sometimes it even happens when I’m having something custom-made. They have to do it over because they make it too big the first time even though I’ve told them . . .”

“Well, you are very tiny.”

“You never did that,” Charlotte pointed out. “All the things you’ve made for me, you never ignored the specifications like that.”

Dexter smiled and shrugged. “I’m empirical. I confess I never really considered how very small a woman those measurements implied. I took the numbers at their face value. It’s a weakness of mine.”

The opposite of Reginald, Charlotte supposed. Reginald, who took no numbers at face value. To whom all symbols represented something other than the thing they first appeared to represent.

“Not a weakness. An inclination, rather.”

“A tendency.”

“Exactly. Mister Woolly Bear.”

His eyebrow pricked up at the teasing tone. “Have you solved your puzzle box yet, dumpling?”

She gave him a little frown, a pretty pout of displeasure suitable for the Lady Hardison of shipboard life. Whether for the reminder about the box, or the implication that she was dumpling-shaped, she would never let Dexter know.

“I have not.”

“Would you like me to show—”

“I would not, thank you, snookums. I’ll get it.”

“I’m sure you will, my little cinnamon scone. In the meantime, about that reevaluation?”

In the silence following his question, Charlotte heard the rhythmic clatter of the wheels on the rails, the huffing tension of the steam engine that propelled them, and the beating of his own heart. She felt turned to stone, her eyes trained obediently out the window and her expression giving nothing away. She waited long enough to speak that her response, when it finally came, seemed to take Dexter by surprise.