Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  Ivy kneeled next to them, a soothing hand on Neil’s chest. “Dear Neil!” Neil supposed everyone was “dear” to her. “Harley didn’t do anything to me. Or, rather, he did, but…Oh, bother!”

  Harley panted down on him with the effort involved in tossing him about. “I was pleasuring her, you dolt. Right, Ivy?”

  “Right.” She was smiling!

  “Don’t you know the difference between harming someone and pleasuring them? Ivy was merely taken by surprise because she’s never experienced an orgasm before. Tell him I’m right, Ivy.”

  “Harley’s right,” Ivy said mildly. “It was quite unexpected.”

  “You out-and-out bastard!” Neil roared. “How dare you put your greasy hands on my woman?” This was an incompetent argument, Neil knew, since they had both met Ivy at approximately the same time, had spent equal time with her, and, well, the choice was up to her. Besides, the three of them were engaged in a common venture—finding Whit Gentry’s murderer. Neil was loathe to admit it, but when they weren’t tussling the three of them worked very well together.

  Harley murmured, “She enjoyed it about as much as you enjoyed being frigged.” He gave a slight but distinct lunge of the hips then, lewdly gyrating his firm erection against Neil’s. Ivy gasped at Harley’s bold statement, but she leaned closer on her elbow so she could rub Neil’s chest. “You enjoyed that last night, didn’t you? You didn’t protest when I oiled up your prick and stroked you off, did you? I didn’t hear one peep of protest.” Again he lunged his hips into Neil’s, holding him there rigidly with his sinewy power.

  “He liked it?” Ivy asked timidly, now stroking Neil’s temple soothingly. Both her hands were on his person, and she didn’t seem repelled by Harley’s bold speech.

  Harley said, “Oh, he liked it so much he was humping my fist with lust.”

  Neil twisted and bucked to show he hadn’t liked being frigged by Harley. “Who wouldn’t hump, you complete and utter chowderhead? Any red-blooded man in his right senses responds to anyone who wants to touch his prick. I’m no invert!”

  “Oh yeah?” snarled Harley. “You didn’t try to lay me out as flat as a board last night. You were too occupied squirting your delicious load all over my chest.”

  By scrabbling on his back like a crab, Neil was able to crawl backward until he hit a cabinet. As he crawdadded, he snarled, “It was just a reaction, you big old ape-man.”

  Harley still held him immobile between his mighty thighs, but now Neil was sitting up against a stack of pots. Harley stroked Neil’s face with the backs of his fingers, and when Neil wrenched his head away, Harley held tight to his chin. “What about now, Deputy Tempest? Your prick is up like a rod jammed into the cleft of my ass. You can’t admit you like being touched by another man. But it’s obvious you enjoy the hell out of it.”

  Ivy was squished into the cabinet next to Neil. She whispered with shining eyes, “Kiss him, Harley.”

  Harley obliged the woman, crushing his sensual lips to Neil’s. Neil compressed his lips at first, but the insistent lapping of Harley’s tongue and the encouraging stroking of Ivy’s warm palm against his chest loosened him up. He could hardly have resisted, being straddled into immobility like this, and when Ivy’s hand slipped beneath his cravat and over the naked skin of his pectoral, Neil gave up resistance.

  Opening his lips, he allowed Harley to slide his tongue between them. Harley lapped like a cat at a bowl of milk and even loosened his grip on Neil’s wrists. By the time Neil squirmed one arm free, he didn’t feel like belting Harley anymore. He was enclosed in the embrace of his two newfound friends, relaxing into their caresses. Ivy added her mouth to the mix, sucking his neck languidly where Harley had sucked last night. When Harley backed away from the kiss and Ivy’s mouth took over, Neil hardly noticed.

  He was only vaguely aware that Harley warmed his crotch with his heated face, he was so wrapped up in Ivy’s ardent kisses. She diddled his nipple as she plied his mouth with her luscious, plump lips. Harley mouthed his cockhead through his pants, exhaling a hot steam that toasted Neil to the core. When Harley’s adept fingers moved to unbutton his pants, Neil discovered his own fingers weaving into the mass of thick black curls that covered Harley’s skull. Neil knew his cock was out in the air, choked by Harley’s familiar and talented fingers, but he kept telling himself it was all right, because the beauteous Ivy peppered his mouth with her kisses, and her bare shoulder felt like an alabaster statue under his hand.

  But when Harley sank his blistering mouth down around Neil’s pulsing penis, Neil gasped into Ivy’s mouth. He felt her withdraw slightly with a smile, and her fingers joined his in petting Harley’s skull with encouragement.

  Ivy taunted him. “Does he do that well?”

  Already Neil twitched and jumped, pumping his hips into Harley’s warm shoulders. The mouth suckled like an eager calf at the teat, suctioning his prick expertly into its broiling depths. Though he had shot his load not twenty-four hours earlier, already he felt the jism surging up the length of his cock, and just a few more swirls of that slimy, fat tongue would bring him off. “Oh, God,” he whispered, his voice strangled. “Yes.” Squeezing the handful of satiny curls in his fist, he humped the sucking mouth and opened his eyes to Ivy’s.

  She smiled brightly, obviously taking vast amusement and possibly even excitement at watching that virile brute of a man skillfully sucking his prick. She pinched Neil’s nipple with a child’s delight. “Are you going to orgasm in his mouth?”

  Neil felt helpless at the hands of these two seductive teases. As the twining, lapping tongue brought him closer and closer to the brink of losing it, he choked out, “Yes.”

  Ivy’s eyes grew wider, the pupils so black they nearly engulfed her irises. “And will you discharge your heavy load down his throat?”

  Harley was grunting around his prick like a barnyard pig at a trough, the vibrations resonating down the length of Neil’s cock. “Great balls of fire.” That was the last thing Neil remembered before he blasted an enormous rush of semen into the hot, greedy mouth.

  Harley guzzled and choked, making great gulps in his efforts to swallow the massive load. Neil’s cock pulsed and spurted wave after wave of blissful jism into the hot mouth. Ivy flung herself against Neil’s chest, and he gripped her shoulder so strongly he noticed later, shamefully, he’d left fingernail marks there.

  “Oh, Neil,” she said in amazement when he finally shoved Harley’s shoulder to detach him.

  Neil didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t want to look at the man who had just suckled him to the heights of orgasm nor the woman who had witnessed it. Instead he clasped Ivy to him and kissed her hungrily, over and over, until he heard Harley striding across the kitchen floor and fiddling with something photographic.

  “Ah.” Neil sat up against the cabinet and grinned at Ivy, as though they had just taken a Sunday carriage ride together.

  For her part, she gave him one last chaste kiss, rose, and poured some champagne into a flute.

  “Neil,” said Harley, businesslike, his back turned to Neil as he fussed with something. “You’ve got to take a look at these new plates of Gentry’s eyeballs.”

  “Yes!” cried Ivy. “We think you’ve got the wrong man. Shortridge can’t have killed Gentry. For one, he’s much too wallpapered and distraught over his wife.”

  As Neil struggled to his feet, Harley turned to him. “Yes. That, and I have consistently developed photographs of a fellow wearing a derby.”

  Neil buttoned his pants. “More derbies? He also wasn’t wearing his Cow Palace ring. Said he’d lost it during a shindig at the Bucket of Blood. He was knocked out that night by a shoe-polishing contraption and doesn’t recall a thing. And, Ivy, what was Shortridge saying about that bison skull wearing earrings?”

  “He claimed he found a skull wearing earrings outside his front door, but I had the impression it was more in his imagination. More of a dream or fantasy.”

  Harley snorted. “Hallucin
ation, more like. Along the lines of your friend Caleb’s vision.”

  Neil frowned. “Caleb’s no friend of mine!” However, he gingerly took the photographic plate from Harley and held it up to the kitchen window. Yes, there was the damned derby again. A reflection in Whit Gentry’s eyeball.

  “We must hold a séance tonight,” said Harley.

  Ivy asked, “Do you know how to do that?”

  Harley nodded. “I’ve participated in them before. But we need to get Caleb out here to help.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Neil told them it was impossible for Caleb to make it to Vancouver House by nightfall from his remote camping spot. Regardless, they sent a couple of boys onto the prairie to find him. But when Harley chimed in that they would need another body to make a “circle,” they were stuck tracking down Ezekiel Vipham. After all, he was the believer in the spirit world, and Harley thought Zeke’s enthusiasm would help the “manifestations.”

  Was Ivy a believer? She thought she was. Her father’s faith in mystical spiritualism had fed her belief in the afterlife, and she had witnessed spirits herself on several occasions. Some of Simon’s beliefs were dubious and had had undesirable outcomes, such as when he imagined there would be a Second Coming and made the entire family live in a tent in an unpopulated valley for a month. Ivy secretly thought that incident had caused the consumption that had eventually killed her mother.

  But overall, Simon’s beliefs were happy and hopeful ones. The mystical things Ivy had seen since arriving in Laramie City had only confirmed her suspicions that this town, or the people living here, was an “intersection point” where important spiritual waves all met. Neil was obviously a conductor of these vibrations, what with all the garbage being flung at his head. With three believers and a conductor at the same table, they should be able to rustle up some answers.

  So now, at twilight, they all sat around the dining room table. Harley had asked Ivy to clear the table of everything except the tablecloth, notepaper sheets, lead pencils, a couple of lit candles, and a glass of water.

  “What’s the glass of water for?” Zeke asked excitedly.

  Neil sneered. “So the unseen powers have something to pour on your head.”

  “Where’s the whiskey you promised me?” Rodney Shortridge bellowed.

  It had been Ivy’s idea to take Shortridge out of lockup in the Union Pacific complex where Neil had his office. After what he’d said about the skull with the earrings, she suspected he might have some powers of his own, even if they were only fueled by bug juice. “Yes, Rodney. It’s right here.” Ivy grabbed the bottle from the sideboard and poured the former cattle rancher a tumbler full.

  He chugged it with gusto then looked around bright-eyed, expecting more. “Where are the musicians?”

  Neil frowned. “Musicians?”

  “Yes,” said Shortridge. “Isn’t this supposed to be some kind of a fandango? Where are the guitar players, the fiddles?”

  Harley snorted, taking his place at the head of the table. He reached one hand out to Ivy and one to Shortridge. “Yes, Mr. Shortridge. We let you out of lockup so you could attend a party. Now, everyone join hands.”

  Ivy giggled to see the distaste on Neil’s face when compelled to hold hands with both Shortridge and Zeke. “Shouldn’t we turn out the lamps, Harley?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no need for darkness. This way, no one accuses anyone of trickery.”

  “Yes,” said Ivy. “I’ve heard about those ‘mystics’ who use pulleys and wires.”

  Harley’s warm smile heartened her. “No pulleys and wires here. You can check under the table.”

  Neil yanked his hand away from Shortridge’s as though it were a turd. “What’s the point of all this spook hunting?”

  “You have to hold his hand,” said Harley, “or the circle will be broken.”

  With the utmost disgust, Neil touched his fingertips to Shortridge’s again, and Harley continued in a new, resonant voice, rich with British tones, calling out to some unseen spirit.

  “We need help. Can we obtain it? The spirit which encourages us to pray now will drive evil far from us and bring close the helpful spirits who may answer our petitions . . .”

  Instantly, the table began to vibrate. The surface of the water in the glass rippled with a distant thunder as though a train was approaching. Although the sun had set, the room seemed to become gradually lighter.

  At first Ivy thought it might be Neil’s jittery, angry knees wobbling the table. So she looked under the table and saw that Neil was rooted to the spot, immobile, perhaps in fear at what was happening.

  “Do you feel that?” Zeke cried. “The spiritual vibrations are moving the table!”

  Neil and Shortridge started laughing at Zeke but stopped cold when Zeke shouted in a high wavering tone, “My mother is here! I feel her presence, standing by my side!”

  Harley even seemed surprised by this, as Mrs. Vipham was not the spirit they were trying to contact. He shared a quizzical look with Ivy. But the table itself began to elevate, lifting Zeke and Neil’s side a good five inches off the floor. Oddly, the pencils and glass of water didn’t move, as though stuck to the cloth with glue.

  Zeke leaped to his feet, crying at the ceiling, “Ma, I can feel you! You are happy on the other side.”

  Suddenly a hail of rapping was showered upon the tabletop, as though a dozen tiny fists knocked on the wood. Neil was the first to break the circle, also leaping to his feet and staring down at the offending table. Only Ivy, Harley, and Shortridge continued holding hands as the rapping continued. As the table rose to such a height Ivy could only see Zeke’s and Neil’s bulging eyeballs over the edge of it, now there came an all-encompassing whistling. It engulfed the room, although the shutters didn’t rustle one bit. Ivy wondered if one of those tornadoes she’d heard about was approaching, and she looked fearfully to Harley. Zeke whooped with glee.

  “Harley!” said Ivy. “Is this a storm?”

  Harley looked a little fearful. “Not unless the storm is Zeke’s mother.”

  “How can this be?” Neil shouted. He gripped the edge of the table but couldn’t pull it down from its suspended position. So he tore around to the lower side and bounced his ass on its surface. It didn’t budge an inch. In his intense frustration he even grabbed a carving knife from the sideboard and waved it beneath the upraised table legs to ensure there were no hidden wires.

  Meanwhile, a religious fervor came over Zeke’s face as he gestured to the heavens. “I’m so glad you’re happy on the other side, Ma! What? Who is over there with you?” Zeke’s face abruptly fell to one of crushed anger. “Ernest? That greengrocer from Downer’s Grove?” He shot daggers of accusation at Harley. “You half-baked charlatan! Where’s my father? Why is my mother on the other side with a vegetable seller from our hometown?”

  Ivy surprised herself by answering for Harley. “Zeke, be quiet and listen to your mother! If she’s trying to tell us something, you’re making it impossible—”

  “Ma!” Zeke shook a fist at the ceiling. “How could you do this to me, Ma?”

  But things took an even stranger turn then.

  The feeble notes of a musical instrument floated over their heads. The table heaved with one last violent motion, tossing Neil to the floor before settling on the ground in the normal manner of a table.

  Everyone stared at the motionless table, but Zeke shouted, “Hey! That’s my harmonica!”

  Indeed, incredibly enough, a harmonica dipped and bobbed in the air toward them, emitting distant melodic strains. It bounced as though directed by a cosmic puppeteer, and Neil bounded toward it, swishing the carving knife in the air above it to cleave the invisible string that held it.

  “Are you familiar with that tune?” Harley asked Zeke.

  Zeke shook his head vigorously. “No, can’t say that I—”

  It was Shortridge’s turn to leap to his feet and make an ass of himself. “I know this song!” he shrieked. The harmon
ica came closer, played as though by a tentative child just learning the instrument. “That’s a song my wife used to play! O, Minerva, what are you trying to tell me?”

  Harley asked, “Your wife played the harmonica? No, no, don’t try to grab it! Let us see what happens.”

  The harmonica glided straight to Shortridge. Shortridge stared at the shiny instrument with bulging eyes, hands shaped into eagle’s claws. “O, Minerva,” he intoned. “What are you telling me from the other side?”

  Neil interrupted the intense moment. “This is just magic—all smoke and mirrors!” He pointed accusingly at Harley. “You’ve learned some flapdoodle magic in your travels and are using it to torment this poor man!”

  Ivy surprised herself by shouting, “Shut up, Neil! You’ve seen for yourself there are no strings, no mirrors, no smoke! Poor Rodney’s dead wife is trying to communicate with us from beyond the veil, and you’re ruining it all.”

  But then Shortridge’s eyeballs started rolling back into his skull. It sounded as though he whispered, “Oh, cinnamon! Where are you going to run to?” before collapsing entirely. He fell like a bag of bones, his chin hitting the table’s edge, his ass missing his chair, winding up as a puddle on the floor.

  * * * *

  Neil had no intention of leaping to help Shortridge. Shortridge had brought this all on himself by first getting wallpapered and second falling under Captain Park’s spell and believing in this hogwash. No doubt he was hallucinating under the effects of both when he’d started babbling about hiding some cinnamon.

  The harmonica, however—that Neil couldn’t explain. The moment Shortridge had swooned the harmonica had gently settled itself onto the table directly in front of his body, ceasing to play its tune. It was almost as if whoever had been playing it had left the room. The rapping of tiny fists stopped completely, and an eerie calm entered the room. However, the otherworldly light that had engulfed the dining room continued, oddly vibrating the very air.