As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) (17 page)

* * * *

“Would you mind heating some water? I need to clean up,” Helen asked as she sat in one of Marcus’s kitchen chairs, unbuttoning her right boot.

“Of course.” Marcus began building a fire in the stove, putting in last week’s newspaper and some dried kindling. As he performed these mundane chores, there was a hint of a smile which occasionally pulled at his lips and a faint blush of embarrassment in his cheeks. “Helen, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Helen took the time to remove both boots and socks before answering. “I pretty much figured that you’d have some questions.” She put her face in her hands and rested her elbows on the kitchen table. “I don’t suppose you would be really kind and just pretend that nothing happened?”

Once the fire was lit, Marcus went to the kitchen table and sat down facing his friend. Excitement literally glowed in Marcus’s eyes. “Who is he? My God, how long has this been going on, Helen? You’ve got to tell me everything!” He took Helen by the wrists and pulled her hands away from her face. “I promise, I’ll never tell a soul a single word of what happened, but you’ve got to let me know what you’ve been doing.” He sighed theatrically. “My life is such a bore! Now I know why you aren’t in any hurry to get married to Gregg Neilson! You’ve got someone much better in the shadows!”

“Can we not talk about it?”

Always practical regarding financial matters, Marcus frowned for a moment and said, “Of course, I don’t know what his money situation is like. The man’s devilishly handsome, and Lord knows he’s”—he blushed crimson at the lurid thought and evocative memories still fresh in his mind—“a man of truly heroic dimensions, but money is something that only a foolish person doesn’t take into consideration when thinking about men.”

“Can we
please
not talk about it?”

Marcus shook his head. “Sorry. I just witnessed something I never in a hundred million years ever dreamed I’d see. When it was happening, I was asking myself whether it was a dream and if I was just imagining it all. Nope. Not a dream. There you were with a wickedly handsome man, bent over a packing crate, making love like there was no tomorrow.” Marcus leaned closer and asked in a whisper, “Does he always hold your arms behind your back like that? It seemed so…aggressive.” He spoke the word “aggressive” in a tone that implied he wouldn’t mind experiencing such “aggressive” behavior personally. And the sooner the better.

Helen put her face in her hands again and muttered miserably, “I’m to blame for all this. I know it’s all my fault.” She raised her head, looked her best friend straight in the eyes, and said with more sincerity than she’d ever used before, “Will you please just drop it?”

“No.” Marcus got up to inspect the fire beneath the boiler. “I’m sorry, but my eyes work perfectly well, and I can’t just pretend that nothing happened.” He returned to his chair. “Better take that dress off so that we can clean it.” A blush colored his cheeks. “You’ve got”—the next word stymied his efforts at appearing calm—“
stains
…on your dress. All the way up to the collar.” She blushed crimson. “You’ve even got some of…
it
…in your hair.” His eyes widened with almost adolescent adoration despite his embarrassment. “I’ve got some experience, but nothing compared to him. I didn’t know that a man could make
it
go so far.”

Helen tilted her head back on her shoulders to stare at the ceiling and mumbled, “This is all my fault. I can’t believe I’m even talking about this.”

Marcus poured steaming hot water into a washbasin then placed the basin on the homemade kitchen table. From a cupboard he extracted two washcloths and tossed them onto the table in front of Helen and said, “Let’s get that dress cleaned.”

The enthusiasm that Marcus was showing disappointed Helen, but she knew that the woman she was really disappointed with was herself. She had succumbed to Jared’s erotic magnetism once again, unable to resist his ostentatious virility, his dangerous way of making her simultaneously feel vulnerable and protected, helpless against his lust and yet in control of all that was being done to her—and doing it in a way that she could touch but couldn’t grasp, could tacitly sense but could not physically see.

Helen unbuttoned her dress and shimmied it over her shoulders and then past the sweeping curve of her hips. She hadn’t seen all that Jared had done to it before, so when she put the dress facedown on the table and saw the four long lines of dried semen stains that ran from the waistline to the shoulders, she closed her eyes for a moment and shivered. The white, flaky lines were stark evidence of her own intemperate behavior, evidence of libidinous guilt that she had to own up to.

Across the surface of her mind she thought about the thin trickle of sperm that Gregg released when she masturbated him to satiation, and thinking of it now almost made her laugh. In comparison to Jared, Gregg was a pathetic joke. He was, perhaps, a man by name and reputation…but a boy when defined by and compared to the tall, black-clad gunfighter that had taken control of Helen’s desires and held them in his hand like a conjurer.

Helen’s underpants had been left behind Carver’s Mining Supplies. Jared had now, on two separate occasions separated only by a few days, ripped off her drawers twice in his sexual haste.

That man can be such a barbarian, Helen thought. I should have said something to stop him. It wasn’t right that he did that to me, especially not with Marcus standing right there watching him.

Dressed now in only a thin, cotton camisole that came down just to the tops of her thighs, Helen put a washcloth into the bowl of warm water and then began rubbing the cloth against the stains on her dress.

“I’ll do that,” Marcus said. “You just wash yourself.”

Another flush went through Helen. She touched her bottom and the inside of her left thigh with exploratory fingers and found more dried and flaky evidence of intemperance. As she began washing herself with a wet cloth, she felt Marcus’s eyes on her.

“How long has this been going on?” Marcus asked in a voice not much louder than a whisper even though he was in his own home and alone with Helen.

“I didn’t plan for it to happen,” Helen said and then began her explanation of how on the night that Gregg had forced her to work late at the bank she had been accosted by a gang of hooligans and how Jared had come to her rescue.

“I had heard that some men were shot and killed that night, but that happens so often in Whitetail Creek these days that I didn’t really pay it no never-mind.” He inspected the cleaning work he had done on Helen’s dress, apparently decided it was unsatisfactory, and then re-dampened the washcloth and resumed rubbing the stains. In a manner that suggested he was desperately curious despite the casualness of his tone, he asked, “Did he kiss you…you know, down
there
…that first time you were with him? The same way he did to you behind the supply store?”

“Marcus, do we have to get into specifics?”

“Please, I need to know.”

“Yes, he did.”

“How does it feel?”

“Marcus!”

The young man turned doe-like eyes toward Helen. “I’ve got to know. I’m not some innocent virgin, you know. I’ve done it with two different men.”

Helen’s brow furrowed. The information surprised her. “Really? With who?”

“Once with Billy Bartlett and a couple times with Walter Nurley.”

“You did it with Billy Bartlett? I thought you hated him.”

Marcus shrugged his slender shoulders, paying considerably more attention to the dress that he was cleaning now that he was the topic of discussion. “At the time, I thought I loved him. I didn’t learn to hate him until afterward.”

Helen nodded her sympathy. She had heard that story, in one variation or another, many times before and from many different women. This was the first time she’d heard it from a man.

“Okay, now I’ve given you my secret, you’ve got to share one with me,” Marcus said. “What’s it feel like when he does that? Have you ever let Gregg kiss you like that?”

“Gregg’s never asked to. But to answer your question, it feels…” She closed her eyes for a moment as luscious memories, evocative and sensual, slithered across the surface of her consciousness. Jared was wickedly skilled with his tongue.

Breathless, Marcus prodded, “Well?”

“It felt funny at first, and not really pleasant. But I think maybe that’s because no man had ever kissed me that way before and I didn’t really know what Jared was doing, so I didn’t know how to react. Then, after maybe ten or fifteen seconds, it felt…” She searched for a suitable word for the sensations that Jared had caused, and finally settled with, “Divine.”

“Divine?” Marcus’s eyes were round. “Oh, dear…divine, you say.” He scrubbed Helen’s dress vigorously, needing to divert his attention. After a rather lengthy silence, Marcus whispered, “I’ve never experienced divine. I’ve wanted to, but I haven’t. When I gave my virginity to Billy Bartlett, it didn’t even hurt. You know how we’re always hearing stories about how it will hurt the first time? Well, it didn’t. It felt good, but that’s it. Not great and certainly not divine. And when I did it with Walter, it felt kind of okay, I suppose. But those men have nothing compared to your man. I mean…you know…” The conversation was getting into incredibly intimate territory, even for Marcus, who previously had never considered any subject unworthy of gossip. “In terms of the size of their thing.”

Helen had finished cleaning herself. It seemed incredibly odd to her that between her and Marcus, it was she who was the sexually experienced one, the one who knew more about the mysteries of lovemaking. Until this very minute, Helen had always looked to Marcus for advice on men. Now that Jared was in her life, it was Helen who had taken the lead.

“Your man’s thing is so very big,” Marcus continued, unwilling to make eye contact with Helen. “Does it hurt when he has it in you? He’s so big…so big and powerful…”

A shudder went through Marcus as his words drifted away. It was quite clear to Helen that Marcus was envious of her relationship with Jared—whatever that
relationship
was—and possibly even jealous.

“It doesn’t hurt. In fact, it feels wonderful. Jared can be something of a madman,” Helen explained, “but as far as madmen go, he’s the greatest of them all.”

Helen noticed that Marcus’s cock, even through his drawers and trousers, was now visibly erect.

Now I
know
he’s envious of me, Helen thought.

* * * *

Jared eased the back bedroom window up soundlessly then slipped his foot inside. He was a big man, but a limber and fit one. Despite his size and the fact that he was carrying a canvas bag stuffed with recently purchased goods, his entrance into Marcus’s house was done as silently as a stalking cat.

He heard the sounds of a casual conversation in the other room. Pausing at the bedroom door, he looked out into the home’s kitchen area and saw Marcus and Helen at a small table. They were cleaning Helen’s dress, and Jared smiled. He knew why the dress needed cleaning. While Marcus was fully dressed, Helen wore only a camisole that contained the extravagant mounds of her breasts but hardly came down far enough to cover her bottom. Though he had satisfied himself thoroughly with Helen earlier—as evidenced by the need to clean her dress—when Helen began rubbing at a stain on the skirt of her dress, her heavy breasts began swaying inside the camisole, and the sight was of such shocking sensuality that Jared’s penis almost instantly began to respond, twitching and growing to the visual stimuli.

No woman has ever excited me so thoroughly.
I can’t get my fill of her, thought Jared, rather perplexed that it was Helen Miller who bewitched him. There had been many women before her, women more lovely to the eyes, more slender, more experienced and skilled in the ways of the flesh. But none of them entranced him the way Helen did.

Marcus asked Helen, “Does it hurt when he has it in you? He’s so big…so big and powerful…”

Jared smiled to himself in the darkness. When he had trapped Helen behind the supply store, she had kept a death grip on Marcus’s wrist. The young man had to be forced to stay…at first. But later, when Jared had bent Helen over the packing crate, he had noticed how Marcus watched unblinkingly as his erection disappeared and reappeared between Helen’s buns as he thrust into her pussy. He had even moved a little to get a better view of his erection thrusting into Helen’s cunt. He might deny that it had excited him to watch Helen having sex…but his denial would be a lie.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Helen explained to Marcus. “Jared can be something of a madman, but as far as madmen goes, he’s the greatest of them all.”

Helen resumed rubbing the skirt of her dress. As Jared watched her breasts quivering and trembling inside the camisole, he felt a slow, inexorable addiction working its way through his senses. He couldn’t get enough of the voluptuous, auburn-haired beauty who was, at that very moment, washing away his semen stains from her dress. She looked up at Marcus then and said something, but seeing her in profile was so striking to his masculine senses that Jared couldn’t hear the words. It mattered not. He could see Helen in profile, her nose small and straight and perfect, her lips full and lush and sensual, her emerald-green eyes like priceless jewels that were infinitely rare.