Short Story: Zeppelin Dreams
“Zeppelin Dreams” was the second short story I ever wrote as O. M. Grey. Written back in the late autumn of 2010, this poignant piece shows how fantasies can give us hope but ultimately destroy us.
This story, as well as eleven other short stories, angsty poetry, and relationship essays can be found in my collection Caught in the Cogs: An Eclectic Collection.
It does contain adult content.
I hope you enjoy it.
-_Q
She lay on the floor, a zeppelin between her legs. That was what the ladies called it at tea parties, an inside joke, as in “My last zeppelin ride was quite the adventure.” It was code for sex, mostly, but it also referred to the machines doctors used to relieve a lady’s hysteria. Ever since a psychiatrist had first helped her ease her own hysteria with a zeppelin, she kept one around. They had greatly improved over the past twenty-years; the clockwork driven machine now lasted much longer. Lilah’s was the latest style of zeppelin, shaped more or less like its namesake. It was not for insertion, after all, just clitoral stimulation. Handy little gadgets, they were. Especially when one did not want to go through all the trouble of coitus. After twenty-five years of marriage, it was mostly just a mess to clean up. Her husband showed even less interested in sex than she did, if that was possible. And it must be, for if they ever made love, she went to him.
But she tired of that.
She wanted to be taken, dominated. She wanted to be longed for, desired.
She had rarely used her zeppelin of late. Her interest in such carnal delights had waned considerably over the past few years. That is, until she met him.
“Joshua.” His name passed through her lips in an after sigh as her hips rested back against the floor and her muscles relaxed. She could already feel a soreness in the back of her throat where she had screamed his name, moments earlier, into her handkerchief. She looked around, eyes wide, ensuring she was still alone in the darkened attic. Her husband had gone for his daily walk, so it had been the perfect opportunity to ride her zeppelin. Still, a servant could hear her, so she was careful not to be too loud, just in case.
The iron vibrator, cool against her heated thighs, slid out of her hands. As she lay there catching her breath, images of him on that night invaded her thoughts. She tried to push them out, but he haunted her. All these weeks later, she could still feel his nearness. The single kiss he had placed on her neck had kept her heated for days. His warm breath, body pressed close, the volumes left unsaid had sustained her, allowed her to go on, counting every moment until she could see him again. Longing to see his lips, wet with Scotch, and aching to taste them.
She had held on to every detail and used the lingering ardor when she pleasured herself. The unrequited desire between them to fueled her fantasies.
“Stop it.” She chided herself, knowing it was wrong. She pushed him from her thoughts once again, but he returned. Her every thought was consumed with him, perhaps because it was wrong.
She wanted more. More of him.
More. More. More.
More than he could give. More than she could give. The more attention he showed her, the more she wanted. The less attention he showed her, the more she wanted. It would never be enough. Not until their desire destroyed them both.
Her passion had become an obsession.
She sat up and pulled her skirts down over her knees in shame. From desire to shame. Back and forth. Neither was ever far behind.
The silence of the early morning echoed her own emptiness. Middle-aged and aging further everyday. This entire business was far beneath her. She smoothed her skirts with trembling hands and sat up straight, feigning dignity for a moment before those hands covered her face. She wept. Her tears wet her cheeks and her palms, and she shook with her silent sobs. She longed to wilt into obscurity, fade from this world. Dissolve into a thin mist. Be as invisible as she felt.
She shrank back against the wall and hugged her knees close, willing herself to disappear into nothingness. Willing the pain to stop. Willing the desire to end. It had to end. She knew this in her fractured soul. Her very sanity was at stake.
What if her husband discovered her in such a position? Or the housekeeper?
Fear replaced the pain, as she pictured the look on her husband’s face. His astonishment confirming her pathos. His disappointment illuminating her worthlessness. She would be mortified beyond repair.
Yet her lust for Joshua engulfed her, again and again. She tried to keep it at bay. She tried to busy herself with needlepoint or reading or anything else, but the all-consuming need would not die. It overpowered her. Then she would return to the dark attic to take care of her needs. Alone.
She quite literally could not control herself.
The morning light, now well past dawn, filtered in from the solitary attic window at the opposite side of the room. After her eyes adjusted to the light, they caught sight of her hands resting on her knees. They were not the smooth, pale hands of her youth. They were her mother’s hands, perhaps even her grandmother’s. Thin skin hung too loosely over her fragile bones, and she swore even its brightness had faded over the years. Just as the rosiness in her cheeks had waned, except when she blushed from her own foolishness. Her shame colored her cheeks like that a rosy maid. It was less becoming on a woman her age.
Her thoughts retuned to Joshua, and she ran her withering hands down her body, trying to remember what it was like to be cherished by a lover, imagining him touching her. Her breasts, thought still full and relatively firm, were not what they had once been. They never would be again. Her hips and thighs, shapely, supple, and still quaking slightly from her phantom lover, were not those of a young woman. But they were not those of an old woman yet either.
By the time she caught her wits, her hands were again traveling up her inner thighs.
Back and forth.
“Stop it!” Her words sounded hollow in the empty room. After pulling her skirts down again, she tried to stand, but when she had risen halfway, the grief overcame her again and she collapsed back into herself against the wall. She muffled her agony by clamping her hands over her mouth. Reality, unforgiving and harsh, revealed her cell. The limbo of middle-age imprisoned her, for she would never be what she had once been. She would just continue to age, continue to become less and less appealing. A past full of promise and unrealized dreams haunted her. Her future…mediocrity, then death.
As images of Joshua returned, Lilah forcibly pushed them out, replacing them with that of her loving husband. She had been married at eighteen to a man twelve years her senior. She had been a maid, of course, and her husband was a good man. He had been a good father and provider, too. After three children and nearly twenty-five years of marriage, she certainly had thought the days of anyone yearning to touch her were long past.
Then Joshua came into her life, and now his lips haunted her every waking thought. They had only met a few times, but they had an indescribable connection between them that extended past basic lust. It was intellectual and soulful in addition to sexual desire, quite the dangerous mix. During the last soiree, he had found a way to get her alone. They had just been talking, enjoying the other’s company as they had in the past. Innocent. Just conversation. A meeting of minds and wits.
Until that night.
He had led her to a remote garden and embraced her there to say goodnight. Nothing else was spoken. No words of longing or love, just an embrace and a single kiss on her cheek.
Then another on her neck.
They said farewell and parted. Simple. Brief. Yet it was this restrained embrace that changed everything between them.
His kiss on her neck still burned her skin. She still felt the building heat between them on that cold evening, even all those long nights later.
“Joshua,” she breathed. His face once again filled her thoughts, replacing everything else in her world. She caressed every angle of it with her mind. Dark eyes. Dark hair extending down into long sideburns along a strong jaw. His bottom lip fuller than the top, begging to be tasted and licked and sucked between her own.
This was the last time she would ever feel desired, and the realization of that weighed heavy on her. At forty-three, she knew society would soon consider her an old crone. No one would see her anymore, not even Joshua. She would fade. Disappear. A single drop of rain in a storm. Invisible.
Only the faintest hint of her former beauty remained. But Joshua had seen it that night. She desperately held onto that, knowing he did feel something for her. Then her slipping mind went invariably back to his fevered kiss, to the torment of hope. Madness.
She looked to the light coming through the window and wiped the tears away and vowed that she would indulge in just a few more moments of the fantasy. When she thought of him, she felt like a young woman again. She felt beautiful and appealing for the first time in so very many years. She took far too much pleasure in getting lost in that feeling, slipping into the memory of ecstasy, bathing in the rain of desire. Even though it was only her fancy, just a fantasy, she held on to it as if it were her last breath of life.
“Joshua,” she whispered again, this time through her shameful tears, which were as unrelenting as her memory of that night. If he knew she was so distraught over a few shared moments, he would surely be done with her, as well he should be. Silly old woman.
“Enough foolishness for one morning,” she said to the empty attic, determined to pull herself together.
She set herself to rights, standing up and straightening her skirts. After tending to her mussed hair, she hid her zeppelin among some old boxes and left her secret behind.
The brightness of her bedchamber hurt her eyes, and she already longed for the darkness when she could be with him, if only in her delusions. She picked up her needlepoint and sat, like she did every day, on the settee near the front window across from the old grandfather clock. If someone came in, she would look busy with the needlepoint in her hands, like she had something else to do. Something other than just pining away.
She watched out the window, looking for any sign of his next communication. Searching the streets for just a glimpse of his face. Rushing below to see if a letter had come at every knock on the door.
She watched the grandfather clock’s pendulum swing back and forth. Back and forth.
She went from a rush of desire to feeling embarrassed and foolish in the span of a few moments. Then back again to desire. Back and forth. Her memory of the sensation of his closeness chased every other thought away. She could still feel his hands on her hips, his lips on her neck. Brushed. Just once.
Then goodbye.
She knew he was her last chance before age overcame her, so she clung to him too tightly. The few words of longing he had spoken in his letters she translated into volumes.
But that was just the beginning of her feelings. If she had not known better, she would call it love. But she was too old to be quite that foolish. This was not love. This was far more intense and dangerous than love.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
Would the next message ever come?
He had claimed to feel a deep connection between them as well. He had told her in the letters that had followed that night, frequently at first. But the frequency of the letters decreased as the days passed. The few messages he did send lately were only in response to her own, and they were without words of longing. She feared she had already lost him. More than anything, even more than her husband finding out, she feared that Joshua’s passion for her had cooled. This terrified her.
By the end of the second week, his letters had lessened to the point of becoming nonexistent. She tried desperately not to contact him. Not to seek him out. But she failed every time.
She was a fool.
She had been too fervent. Too suffocating. Too obvious. It was not becoming of a lady, especially one of her age. and he had grown tired of her.
Yet, she could not let go.
“Ow!” She pulled her pricked finger to her lips and tasted the blood there. Her silly daydreams had once again injured her. A red dot of blood marred the floral pattern on which she had been working. She threw the needlepoint down in disgust and rose, pacing the floor. Back and forth in front of the window. Looking out every time she passed it to see if he was coming down the street, just seconds after the last look. Those seconds lasted lifetimes.
As she sucked on her injured finger, she thought of how every contact with him gave her a few more minutes of sanity. When she could talk with him or when she received a new letter or when they met briefly on the street and exchanged a secret glance, she believed again. She believed in the romance. She believed in the desire. After so long of feeling unseen, how could she not believe?
She drank in the attention and reveled in his seduction, imagining most of his desire for her, no doubt. Transferring her intense feelings for him, to him. Believing that he felt the same. But he was not free to do so. And neither was she.
“Foolish old woman.” Her breath fogged the window as she breathed the words, shocked to find herself absently gazing out of the window. How long had she been there? And so foolish to remain there. She knew he would not come. She had given him too much of herself, as always.
He had given too little…but then, it could never be enough to satiate her need for him. Plus, they could never be together. He was a decade younger if he was a day, and his young, bonny wife surely kept him most satisfied.
Intellectually she knew this, but she could not help dancing in front of the looking glass, in nothing more than her corset and pantaloons. Sometimes even without the pantaloons, when the house was dark and her husband asleep. Just the light of a nearby gaslight cast a soft glow across the room, softening the lines on her skin that had become too harsh with age. At least too harsh in her eyes.
Still she waited every day for the slightest communication or acknowledgment from him, and when she got it, however small the morsel, it was wonderful for a few moments. She felt satiated again, briefly, and she danced in front of the looking glass once more. But the hunger for more soon crept back in, more voracious than before.
Still, she thought of his lips.
Still, she thought of his hands on her waist.
Still, she thought of the embrace, full of unspoken desire.
But it had to end. Back to innocence. The way they had been before.
She had to be strong. She had to back off and wait, which, for her, meant that she had to forget him. It was never possible for her to linger in limbo for long.
Still, she waited. Still, she dreamed.
All the rest of the day and deep into the night she waited for him. She hardly ate. She hardly slept. She just waited.
The sound of her heart thumped, hollow and cold beneath her corset. The tick-tock tick-tock of the grandfather clock echoed her heart in a chaotic rhythm. The chaos began to work its way into her nerves and mix with the growing madness therein.
Just before dawn, she went to the looking glass to reprimand herself for being such a fool, just like she did every morning. She studied the lines on her face in her reflection.
At least it was still dark, for the dim glow of the candle light softened the lines on her face if she turned just right. With a little stretch of her imagination, she could look as young as she felt when she thought of him. And at the thought of him, the embarrassment was once again replaced with desire.
And so it was thus.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
Shame and lust.
The torment of true passion.
Nothing could satiate such intense desire except giving into it, she decided at last. She must have him or go mad. She would risk everything for one night with him, just a few hours. She would give up her marriage, her life, her very soul.
She would go to him tonight. He would likely think her the fool she was, but she prayed that he did not see that truth. She prayed that he would only see her desire.
That evening, she donned her cloak and slipped out into the darkness. Three weeks to the day from the brief moments they shared on that moonlight night in the garden. Three tormented, wondrous weeks.
But tonight it would end. Either her fears would be confirmed and she would be broken, or he would take her in his arms and she would finally taste his lips.
She pulled the hood of her velvet cloak far over her face as she stepped into the night, hiding her shame in its shadows. She hailed a hansom once she was far enough from her place, for she did not want to be recognized. Social ridicule on top of this most certain humiliation she could not bear.
“Kensington,” she said to the driver and climbed inside.
The journey, but just a few miles, seemed to take an eternity. And she fought with herself the entire way, vacillating back and forth, back and forth in her nervous anticipation.
Upon arrival just a block from Joshua’s home, she asked the driver to wait. She stepped out onto the cobblestone street and looked around beneath the shadow of her hood until she caught sight of a young boy cuddled up in an alley.
“Boy,” Lilah said, but the child was asleep. She placed her black-gloved hand on his shoulder and shook him gently. “Boy. Wake up!” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
The boy awoke and sleepy-eyed looked up at her.
“All-righ’, gov?” he said.
“Would you like to earn a shilling, young man?” The question did more to wake the child than her shaking had. In an instant, his eyes were bright and she had his full attention.
“Yes, mum. Please, mum!”
“Very well.” She took a coin from her reticule and placed it along with a note in his small hand. “You see that door there? The red one?”
“Yes, mum.”
“Go knock on that door. When the butler answers, give this letter to him and tell him that it is to be placed directly into Mr. Godfrey’s hand. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mum. I’ll be quick, mum!”
“Wait. Repeat that, please.”
“This letter is for Mr. Godfrey and is to be placed in his hands directly.”
“Good boy. Now run along.”
As she watched the boy dash toward Joshua’s house, her stomach became heavy with fear. It was done. There was no turning back now.
The door opened, and she pulled her hood more tightly around her face, peering out from a small hole near the top. Silly, really. As she would never be recognized from this distance. When she saw the butler nod and the boy skip off with his easy earnings, she climbed back in the carriage to wait.
She would give Joshua ten minutes, she told herself, determined to save some dignity. But she knew the truth. She would wait all night if she must, just to be sure. But he came in just over five.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he climbed into the hansom and sat opposite her, sounding rather cross.
“I had to see you, Joshua.” She swallowed hard, knowing this entire business was too bold. Knowing she had crossed a line with this stunt, but part of her did not care. Seeing him again, this close, was worth it all.
His face twisted, as if his inner struggle matched her own.
She held her breath, waiting for the words that would save her or destroy her.
“Oh, Lilah. Curse you! I had been trying to put you out of my mind for the sake of my sanity and my marriage, but I could not.”
Lilah caught her breath. A rush of joy and fear and excitement swept through her very core. She felt nauseous and wondrous at the same time. Then her stomach felt suddenly light, because all the weight that had been filling her with dread, actually all the weight of her body, had settled most determinately between her hips. She felt herself swell for him, moisten for him.
“I have been consumed by you.” Lilah’s breath started coming fast and shallow, constrained by her corset. Her eyes fixed on his lips. Those lips. She had memorized every curve. She had imagined tasting them a thousand times, running her tongue along the fullness of his bottom lip. Now she was so close.
“Driver, Hyde Park,” Joshua called out of the window.
The carriage started to move.
“What about your wife?”
“She is asleep.”
“That is not what I meant.” The words sounded more like whispers, gasping whispers as her breath came faster and faster. Her eyes fixed on his lips, watching them form the words.
Joshua slid into the seat next to her.
“I know. What about your husband?” He did not speak the words, but rather breathed them.
His closeness robbed her of the ability to answer the question or to speak at all. The world fell away, and the only thing she saw in that darkened carriage was the passing gaslights reflect against the moistness of his lips.
The carriage swayed back and forth, back and forth as it clattered over the cobblestones. The rocking of the carriage further served to heighten her desire for him.
She must kiss him or die.
Joshua quickly closed the distance between them, but it was not fast enough for Lilah.
She met him halfway.
Their mouths came together and she tasted him at last. He tasted of honey and wildflowers, of desire incarnate. She drank him in and sucked on his lower lip, taking it between her teeth for but a moment before devouring him again. It was never soft or tender or caressing. It was ravenous from the start.
His hand moved to cradle her jaw.
A flood of desire washed over them both. His lips tasted of it.
His hand burned her face.
She took a desperate breath and kissed him even more deeply. Their eager tongues twisted together, eager for more, more, more. She had not been kissed like this in so long, so it felt completely new. His desire for her filled her nagging emptiness, but then the void just got bigger, needing more, more, more.
The heat of his mouth did nothing to satiate her need. It heightened it. All her blood rushed southward, making her pelvis feel heavier and her head light. Her hips responded by tilting, causing an arch in her back. This small movement sent Joshua into a fever, for he threw his arms around her and pressed pressed his body tightly against hers.
Weeks of building hunger would be satiated, finally. Tonight.
She tugged at his ascot, gasping for breath and cursing the need to breath. She could not bear even one moment apart from his earnest lips.
After assisting her with the removal of his ascot, Joshua put one hand on her side while the other, placed firmly in the small of her back, held her pressed tightly to him. She felt as if they would devour each other body and soul, and she did not care. For they could not be close enough without becoming one. She longed to crawl inside his skin, be consumed by him.
Then he slowed down, pulling his mouth away from hers.
A soft cry from the depth of her soul escaped her empty lips, suddenly cold without his to warm them. She looked into his eyes searching for a reason, and they smiled back at her.
“I want to savor this,” he whispered into her ear then kissed her softly, barely brushing his lips across hers. It brought back the memory of his lips brushing her neck on that night. She had replayed every moment of that night in her mind so often that it was impossible to ever chase it from her thoughts completely.
His hand moved up her bodice and cupped her full, surging breast. He kissed her neck again, much in the way he did on their night, as if he had replayed every move as well. But tonight, that same kiss burned even hotter on her flesh, and she hungered desperately for more, more, more.
And he did not stop there. He kissed the length of her collarbone. Tiny, soft kisses. Each one drove her to madness. Each one made her catch her breath and sent quivers down her body. When his lips reached the top of her breasts, an ample amount pressed up out of her corset, her gasps turned to a soft moan.
Embarrassed, she blushed. But he smiled wide, looking up at her for a moment before meeting her lips once again, hungrier than before. With his body against hers again, he eased her back against the hansom seat in a partially reclined position. Now she felt his firm excitement pressing through her skirts and it drove her mad.
His kisses once again found their way down her decolletage and continued to the swell of her breasts. She helped him pull down one side of her dress, enabling him access to her hardened nipple. She gasped as his tongue swirled around it. He took it gently between his teeth and then sucked slowly as he withdrew, then rimmed it once again with his tongue.
Her hands, trembling, began unbuttoning his shirt. He pulled its tail out of his trousers and started unbuttoning it from the bottom up, helping her. When he met her quaking hands, he took them in his own and brought them up to his lips. His eyes locked with hers, as the carriage clattered down the cobblestone streets in the darkened carriage, rocking back and forth, back and forth.
Then something broke. They collided simultaneously into each other. Mouth, tongues, arms intertwined. She felt the heat inside spread throughout her pelvis again, moistening her lower lips. She felt them swell between her legs, ready for him. Hungry for him.
And he was ready for her. Without breaking from the passionate kiss, he parted her legs with his body then reached one hand up under her skirts and found the wetness within.
His cheeks pulled back from their kiss in his delight for a just a moment before enveloping her mouth again in a deeper kiss.
He slid his finger up into her wet darkness then withdrew to encircle her clitoris, applying slight pressure. She squirmed and moaned into his open mouth, which just made him smile again. This time, he did not come back in for another kiss, instead he pulled back from her and disappeared beneath her skirts. As his finger, then two, found her hungry opening, his tongue tasted her swollen clitoris. Round and round. In and out. Her hips swayed in time, back and forth, back and forth.
She writhed in pleasure, trying to push him away, as the intensity was so great. She had not felt such pleasure before, but it was him. It was her Joshua, so she let herself go and gave into it. His tongue licked and flicked and swirled around her clitoris as his fingers slid in and out of her more and more rapidly, curling up as he withdrew to stimulate that special place inside. She grabbed a fistful of hair as she cried out in her pleasure.
Her orgasm exploded from her, drenching his chin and hands. Yet he did not stop. His tongue moved faster and faster, alternating pressure. His fingers slowed, but did not stop. He ran his other hand down her thigh, raking it gently with his fingernails, pulling the stockings down. He abandoned her clitoris to nibble down the inside of her thighs, which proved to be even more effective than the clitoral stimulation, for she came again when his teeth reached the back of her knee.
His mouth, wet with her joy, covered hers. The taste of her own excitement made her climax again. She arched her body against his and held him desperately to her as she cried out in her ecstasy. Her entire body was on fire.
He pulled back from her, and the look on his face was one of pure delight.
She breathlessly grappled towards him with flailing hands, ripping off her gloves as she sat up, then reached for his trousers. She unbuttoned them and took his engorged penis in her bare hands. She stroked its shaft while she looked deeply into his dark eyes, reveling in the sensation of the silky soft skin of his manhood in her grasp. Then leaning forward, she took his erection into her mouth, encircling it with her swirling tongue.
Joshua moaned deep in his throat.
Lilah licked all the way down and around it, ensuring that it was well lubricated, and then hungrily stroked his cock with her wet, warm mouth. She clasped her hands around his shaft while she worked it with her mouth so that every part of it was covered in her heat and motion.
Joshua moaned again, and she had to be careful that her teeth did not nick him as she smiled. She wanted to bring him just as he had brought her to orgasm. She wanted to feel his hot semen exploding into her mouth, filling her with his delicious agony.
But he had other plans.
“Come here,” he said, lifting her up and placing her back on the rocking carriage seat.
She lifted her skirts and spread her legs, welcoming him inside.
He knelt in front of her and brushed the tip of himself up and down her wet vulva, teasing her. Lilah moaned and reached for him, trying to pull him inside of her. She had waited so long; she could not wait another moment. Yet he teased until she begged him.
“Please,” she whined. “Please, my love.”
With this, he plunged inside her, filling her up. The ecstasy of their union shot up her torso and filled her, mind and body, with pleasure. He pumped into her, the rocking of the carriage back and forth, back and forth, heightening her stimulation. As he continued to thrust deeper and deeper into her, his mouth again closed over hers, swallowing her cries of pleasure. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, vowing to never let him go. As her excitement mounted, her narrow walls tightened around him. She felt his ridged head glide across the special spot inside, moving in and out, in and out and over it at a perfect pace. She clasped to him more tightly, pressing into him as he drove into her.
Tormented desire washed over her in waves, and when she could no longer contain herself, she cried out, screaming in delight and digging her nails into his shoulders. Still he did not stop, but he slowed down as her orgasm waned. Exaggerated slow movements enabled her to feel every delicious inch of him. She relaxed for a moment, catching her breath and enjoying the delightful sensation of him, swollen inside her.
Slowly, the pressure built again, and she opened herself to him even more, if that were possible. She kissed him hungrily, pressing herself against him, bathing in his desire. Meeting each slow, deliberate thrust with the rhythm of her hips. Their kisses stopped, but their love mounted. As he moved inside her, he looked into her very soul and she looked into his. Never before had she shared such a moment of truth with anyone.
The scent of sex and sweat mingled with the dank carriage interior. His musk filled her nostrils as his tongue filled her mouth and his undulating passion filled the rest of her. The only sound was the clattering of the carriage wheels upon the cobblestones and the beating of their hearts.
Without taking his eyes off of her, he began moving faster and faster again. He grabbed onto her hips and crashed into her. Each thrust more determined, striving to go deeper than the last.
Waves of their mingled passion washed over Lilah. She held onto the carriage seat to steady herself, and he held onto her. Together their passion turned to anguish and then back to passion again. Back and forth, back and forth with the sway of the carriage. The pressure rose and her eyes saw her salvation in his. Together, their desire erupted as one.
He collapsed against her, spent. She squeezed him to her with her arms and her legs, encircling him with her love.
And the carriage rocked back and forth, back and forth.
She closed her eyes and nuzzled her face against his neck, kissing it as he had kissed hers. For that moment, she lay against him. Warm. Content. Fulfilled. The rocking of the carriage back and forth, back and forth soothed her.
Then she was cold as if the London night forced its way between their hot bodies. When she opened her eyes, she was alone in her darkened attic.
The zeppelin fell from her forgotten hands and slid down her thigh as a tear slid down her blushing cheek.
-_Q
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed “Zeppelin Dreams.” It, along with many other stories, articles, and poetry, is available in my collection Caught in the Cogs: An Eclectic Collection.
Plus, every Friday, look for new FREE fiction as I serialize my teen Steampunk romance The Zombies of Mesmer. Find more of my work on this blog, in several publications, and on Amazon.
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