Levi enjoyed her bawdy, profane way of speaking. “Things are different in the Far West. Social conventions are much looser.”
Liberty said, “I wonder why The Pleasure of Woman doesn’t discuss ways to please a man? You’d think that would be the foremost thing on their minds, over there in India. Not many cultures really place any value on a woman’s pleasure.”
“But aren’t you glad they did?” Levi grinned and nodded to a couple of soldiers he vaguely knew from the fort.
Liberty said, “Garrett. Have you heard from Paddy lately? Have you made any progress in figuring out the prophecy about the cold water?”
“No,” said Levi. “But he’s seen the ghost of Caeser Moxus, the dead Indian chief. Apparently Shady and Moses are out there somewhere with Brave Buffalo’s tribe, fooling them into thinking they’re being attacked by evil spirits.”
Liberty paused, her mouth open in amusement. “Really, Garrett? Great Caeser’s ghost! You honestly saw Caeser’s ghost?”
“Pshaw,” said Garrett modestly. “He told me he didn’t know anything about a white woman but Brave Buffalo will die soon if this flimflam wakan man keeps mistreating him. We need to find Caleb Poindexter.”
Levi added, “But we can’t leave you until we find out what this whole water thing’s about.”
He held open the door of C. Chang, Proprietor. Liberty went first, followed by Levi. The shop was imbued with an overwhelming aroma of incense and dust, and his eyes had to adjust to the dim light. Jars of resinous amber, powdered safflower, and turd-like ginseng slowly came into focus. Counters displayed neat pyramids of peach pits, seeds, and piles of the whiskey-root cactus that was gathered locally.
Levi jumped when something moved inside a jar, and he bumped up against a dried monkey from Inner Africa. Its human hands were stretched out in its death throes, and he took Liberty by the elbow to steer her away.
“Private O’Rourke!” the proprietor piped up, startling them. He was a shriveled, robed fellow who suddenly popped up from behind the counter like a jack-in-the-box. “I see you have come here for more brain salve!”
Levi stood at attention, amused. “Brain salve? Your brain isn’t sharp enough?”
“No, no,” Garrett protested. “Not salve for the brain. Salve made out of brains.”
“Oh, eyew,” said Liberty, recoiling from Garrett. She knocked up against a stuffed rattlesnake, its mouth wide open in an angry hiss.
Garrett explained. “It’s made from bison brains. It’s for my—my—” He tried to point to his back, where Levi had noted some raised welts, probably from a lash.
“Is good for removing marks!” declared C. Chang, Proprietor.
Levi lightly quipped, “And that’s better than salve for your brain? Listen here, my good fellow. We’re looking for sandalwood. What form do you have it in?”
“I have paste and oil!” C. Chang vanished again, into the darkness behind his counter.
Levi shouted, “And bottled lime juice, if you have it!”
That’s when he noticed Garrett staring fixedly at a gentleman who had already been in the shop when they entered. About fifty years of age, he was unremarkable in his dark blue walking suit, waistcoat, and beaver hat. The only thing that made him stand out was his enormous moustache flecked with salt and pepper, as though he were trying to hide bad dental work. Still, he looked a cut above the usual rowdies and loafers that traveled with the Hell on Wheels towns, and Levi wondered why Garrett seemed so fixated on him. The gentleman, when he caught sight of them, lowered his face beneath his top hat brim and fiddled with some dried rat or other.
“Miss Hudson!” Chang cried, having appeared again to hand her a jar. “Your sister marries Marshal Tempest. I make prick tea for Marshal Tempest!”
This time, both Levi and Garrett chortled openly. Liberty didn’t seem to think it was so funny, though, as she snatched the jar from Chang and advised the riceman, “You really shouldn’t go running about revealing medical secrets to the public at large.”
“Secret?” Chang asked innocently. “What secret?”
Louder, Levi said, “Do you have the lime juice?”
Outside in the street, Levi leaned close to Liberty’s ear. “What medical secret are you afraid of being revealed?”
The shell of her ear rose with color. “I made a pessary from acacia gum that he sold to me. It covers the mouth of the womb to prevent pregnancy.”
“Ah,” said Levi. “Very intelligent.” That was good to know. If the lady ever even stooped to marrying him—when had that idea first struck him?—it would not be wise to have a child right away. Not with his postmaster’s pay. But her father would probably never hear of allowing Liberty to marry him anyway. She was probably destined for one of the sons—or one of the brothers—of Freund and Brothers.
He had just professed his love for her, but he had been suspecting that Liberty Hudson, suffragist from Hyde Park, New York, was just toying with him. The Far West was a new, scintillating experience for her or any woman. She was cutting loose, spreading her wings, kicking up a fandango. And how more dramatically to prove to her father she was a liberated woman than to take up with an Indian agent and an army private? And both at the same time?
However, Levi didn’t mind being toyed with. Not if the puppet master were Liberty Hudson. He would go along for the ride, as far as she’d let him ride her.
“Who was that fellow you were staring at in the pharmacy?” Liberty asked Garrett.
Garrett frowned. “I wish I knew. When I—my spirit—was flying around the town observing things such as Rusty Pipes tossing out some water—the water was steaming, so I knew it wasn’t the water we were looking for—I saw that gentleman and your father talking in the Frontier Hotel. I want to believe he’s a former college friend of Simon’s, as I think they were discussing Amherst. Did your father attend Amherst?”
“He did!” cried Liberty.
Levi said, “It was probably just one of those things. Mundane things you saw that have no importance. Remember, you also saw Henry Zuckerkorn spanking a prairie flower.”
“True,” Garrett admitted.
And that was the last they discussed of the heavily mustached gentleman. For the moment, anyway.
Chapter Twelve
Liberty stood with her arms held out from her sides, wearing only her chemise. She had stepped out of her drawers in the back room but left on her stockings and slippers out of modesty.
Now she felt like a statue, there for the men’s perusal.
When she had suggested shaving her labia, it had seemed like such a bold and courageous thing, something a subscriber to the weekly Revolution women’s newspaper would do. But now, standing here by the washtub clad only in her chemise, she felt the full critical inspection of the men’s eyes. After all, they could still wear their pants, even though Garrett was shirtless, in what she was starting to suspect was his favorite mode.
“I feel as though I’m at the doctor’s,” she complained. “Or an artist’s model, waiting for you to sketch me. Oh son of a gun! What is that?”
Garrett turned to her from the kitchen counter, where he’d evidently been sharpening a knife. Shrugging, he brandished it so that it glinted in the lamplight. “A knife? Oh, don’t worry. God, no. I’m actually sharpening this stone, see?”
Levi stood behind her with soothing hands on her shoulders. “He’s done this many times before.”
Garrett grinned playfully. “I used to shave my pappy’s head after he started going blind.”
“But,” protested Liberty, “this is not a head!”
Garrett placed the knife on the counter and came forward with a smooth stone with a sharp edge, like a flint. “Don’t worry,” he said in his resonant, rich drawl. “We’re men. We’ve done this a thousand times.”
Levi pressed her into a chair. “You have to trust us, Liberty. Especially if we’re going to protect you from this cold water.”
Liberty pointed at the washtub. “Maybe that
is the cold water I’m supposed to beware of. Besides, isn’t this sandalwood and lime juice concoction supposed to remove the hair without a sharpened stone?”
“Let’s try it on your leg,” Levi suggested. Sitting in a chair next to her, he placed one of her feet in his lap and removed the slipper. Liberty smiled with the pleasure of wiggling her toes against the erection that tented his pants. When he leaned forward to roll down her stocking, she captured a portion of his cockhead between her agile toes.
She said, “This is the twenty-second day, only in reverse. ‘He should rub her rib cage with his toes.’ Didn’t you fellows wish for the book to be reversed?”
Garrett pulled up the third chair and lifted her naked foot from Levi’s crotch. “That was your idea,” he reminded her. She was distracted when he placed her foot in his own lap, smack over his bulging erection. Now she wiggled her toes against his enormous member as he applied some of the sandalwood paste to a small area of her calf.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s right. It was. Well, men wish for that kind of thing, anyway. I’ve got another wonderful idea while we wait for this paste to work.” She reached out for the table. She had placed her toy box there when she’d come out of the bedroom—the one she had swore to slide far under her bed and never open again—and now opened it.
The look on the men’s faces was priceless when she revealed the toy. “Where’d you get a dildo,” asked Levi, “in Dakota Territory?”
“Is that what it’s called? I brought this from home.” Lewdly, she replaced her other foot in Levi’s crotch so they could plainly see up her chemise. “It’s supposed to help with female disorders. And there’s a lot of disorder in my house.” She grinned. “It’s supposed to assist in reaching a climax, but I never…” Shy now because she didn’t want to admit she’d never climaxed before Levi had licked her, she positioned the dildo through the slit in her drawers.
But Garrett tossed aside her foot and got to his knees, zealously removing her hand from the implement and taking control of it himself. He nudged it against her outer petals, and she angled her hips to give him better leverage.
“You’ve played with these toys before?” she asked Garrett.
“Not quite this shape.” Liberty’s was an ivory thingamajig she’d picked up during the New York convention. She suspected it was from Africa, the way it was carved with tiny elephants, or maybe India. “But we used to make our own, fashioned from oak.” He pulled her chemise up to reveal her bare knees and easily found her pussy’s opening, inserting the dildo an inch. He used the tiny shaking movements Liberty herself often used, and it was liberating to open herself up to another man again. To allow herself to be vulnerable enough to trust a man to penetrate her. “My wife used to enjoy playing with her trinket, as she called it.”
“I suppose every woman has a different name for it,” Liberty said. “You’re a very good carpenter.”
“Wait. Wife? What’s this?” said Levi.
Garrett shrugged. “I had a wife.”
Liberty asked, “Did you have children, too?”
“No, we were never able to. Apparently I’m a very safe fellow, for nothing ever happened.”
“That’s so sad. I’m so sorry. But maybe it was your wife’s ‘fault,’ too, did you ever think about that?”
“We thought about that. She did have some female problems. Disorders, as you said.”
“Wait,” Levi said again. Now getting to his knees, he shoved Garrett aside and took control of the dildo himself. Liberty felt vulnerably feminine, that the two men should fight over her like that. That Levi wanted to be in control of affairs made her proud. She was worth fighting over.
He positioned himself between her thighs, his free hand clamped around the back of her neck, his thumb rubbing her there, like he had done in her father’s study. He reamed her slowly with the dildo, opening her up, spreading her. He asked modestly, “Is it true that you never climaxed before today?”
“It’s true,” she admitted. She speared her fingers through his thick head of hair and rubbed him like a cat.
“Why didn’t you? You’re obviously capable.”
“I was afraid. I had heard so many things about it. Women would call it the ‘little death.’ I couldn’t find anyone who had actually experienced it, so many of the stories were probably myths.”
“Well. You didn’t die.”
He was excruciatingly handsome when he grinned like that. Just gazing into his stately, beautiful face was a pleasure, and Liberty’s thumb outlined his shapely lower lip. Behind him, Garrett had returned to his chair, grabbing one of her feet and placing it against his cock. She squirmed her toes against the enormous head of it, eliciting one of the devilish glances that she loved so about him.
She said, “No. In fact, it was so enjoyable I’d like to repeat it. Over. And over. You have a very good technique. I think I could easily become addicted to repeating that many times.”
“There are other ways to achieve that, you know.”
Liberty lifted an eyebrow at him. “Oh, yes? Perhaps you could demonstrate.”
Without warning, Levi slid the dildo out of her and grabbed her about the hips. She assisted him in whatever he was trying to do, following his lead to get off the chair and to her knees between Garrett’s thighs.
She was unsure what Levi wanted, so he lifted her hand and placed it on Garrett’s cock. Hunching over her from behind, he murmured in her ear, “Pleasure him.” He squeezed her hand that held the hulking cock. “Bring him to orgasm. Massage that giant tool. Feel how big it is in your fist.”
She was quick to unsheathe the enormous appendage from the crimson drawers. It filled her fist like a tree branch, and she stroked it as though milking a cow. It stood up tall, proud, and purplish, the intriguing vein bulging with seed.
Levi murmured in her ear, “Suck that milky jism right out of that strapping penis, Liberty. Swallow the salty, delicious seed. Slather that giant, dark limb with your tongue.”
Levi’s bawdy talk riled Liberty. This was something she did have experience with. Apparently it was something Frenchmen always wanted, for she had done it quite a bit to Alain Broussard. So, confident in her abilities, she sank her mouth down over the taut crown. Garrett inhaled with a hiss and caressed the back of her head. This was not going to be easy. She had gotten a sore jaw from sucking on Alain, and his cock wasn’t half this mammoth.
Behind her, Levi yanked her drawers down to her knees. He nudged her ivory toy at the entrance to her channel. When he brought his other hand around her front and fiddled with her clitoris, her entire pussy clenched with wanting the object inside her.
But she couldn’t talk with her mouth full to tell him to insert it, now. But the adept way he was fingering her let her know she would come soon, with or without him manipulating the dildo. So she wiggled her hips to let him know she wanted more, thankful that he clairvoyantly understood and slid the thing inside her a couple of inches.
“Isn’t that delicious?” he murmured. “Cup that big, bulging ball sac while you suck that big tool.” Liberty did as instructed, aroused by the passion in his demands. It was evident by his zeal that he wished he were the one sucking on the big appendage, and the thought of him doing just that sent waves of sensuality into her pussy.
She swallowed another inch, then another inch, fluttering her tongue about the veined underside of the prick. Her fingertips just barely met around the heft of it, and it was a new pleasure to be speared at both ends by two different men. Levi’s fingering of her engorged clitoris was rousing her to lusty heights, urging her to relax her throat muscles to swallow more of Garrett’s cock. She was afraid she would come much too soon this time, so she wiggled her hips, hoping Levi would get the message to slow down.
But he reamed her with the ivory implement even more enthusiastically, encouraging her, “Suck it, Liberty. Suck that beautiful, big member. Take that entire dusky prick into your mouth so you can feel him discharge down your throat.”
Liberty was taken by surprise, then, when Garrett started choking on his own moans and clasped her head to his crotch more firmly. Suddenly she, too, was choking on a deluge of semen that rushed down her throat, and she struggled to swallow it.
Levi must’ve been able to tell Garrett was coming, for he now impaled her rapidly with the ivory tool while his dancing fingers against her button whetted her sexual fever. The fluid that flooded her pelvis reached the saturation point, and the dam broke. Waves of ecstasy raced through her pussy, clenching the dildo inside her until she was huffing for air. Still Garrett came, gush after gush of salty seed filling her mouth, and, at last, she had to detach just to breathe.
Gasping like a beached fish, she clasped Garrett about the hips as Levi slowed his toying with her clitoris. She twitched and jumped at every pang of rapture that clutched her pussy, rubbing her ass against Levi’s stiff cock with pleasure. Pleasure that she and Garrett had found release but Levi hadn’t. It was a childish, teasing, and mischievous thing to make Levi wait for his own release. Then again, men were childish. She smiled and collapsed against Garrett’s lean abdomen. It was an easy thing to tease men into coming back for more.
“Land’s sake,” Garrett sighed, limply stroking her head. His prick pulsated against his sinewy hip.
Liberty wiped her nose with the back of her hand as her hips sank to the floor. Levi jiggled the dildo around inside of her. Its fullness made her twitch and shiver, as though she were still climaxing around it.
“You’re some pumpkins,” Garrett said.
Liberty smiled weakly. She liked being called a pumpkin, for some reason. It was a very comforting, affectionate thing to say.
“As for you,” Garrett drawled. “You’re just a fucking dog.”
Levi cradled Liberty between his thighs. “Hey. If I was such a fucking dog, wouldn’t I have looked for my own satisfaction?”
“That’s true.” Garrett grinned, devilish. “You’re going to get a horrible swelling, a pox of the balls, if you don’t come every twelve hours.”
Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 11