Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)

The panic almost overwhelmed her when the train jolted to a stop. All the bodies crammed into the corridor lurched forward as one unit, the brass screw tearing her face. Surely they weren’t at the station yet! Outside, the horns of the band blared away merrily as though nothing was amiss. Men grunted out in pain.

“We’re goners!”

“Shit!”

“Get your foot out of my pocket!”

“You damned jackass!”

“Lunkhead!”

Steam hissed, but the big whistle didn’t scream as it should have if they were in the station. Had they hit something on the tracks? Liberty had no hope of moving the slightest inch—besides, where would she go? She was suffocating with her face between the lamp and the funky shoulder of a man who had apparently bathed in soot.

Then, suddenly, she was free.

She stumbled, falling, but fresh air surrounded her. Twisting in midair, she fell backward, looking up at the ceiling of a first-class compartment. She steeled herself, prepared to land on something extremely pointy, painful, or metal. She was pleasantly shocked when she fell on something warm and comfortable, with only a slight “oomph” of air expressed from her lungs.

Dizzy and panting, she looked up. And found herself clutching the greatcoat lapels of the fellow with the dazzling eyes.

In the midst of this tumult, he looked as calm as an unmuddied lake. The corners of his mouth turned up in a slightly bemused smile, as though he had not pulled her from the corridor. Oh no, she had just
fallen
into his lap! He still wore his Stetson at a rakish angle, but his necktie was slightly loosened in all the activity, revealing a powerful, full throat.

In that rich orator’s voice, he said, “The train stopped because some pickled residents fell onto the tracks.”

They merely panted at each other, Liberty intensely aware that her looped skirt exposed her petticoat at the ankles. Oddly, it didn’t bother her. Her breasts heaved, her camisole almost displayed in the U-shaped neckline of her walking costume.

Maybe it was because the other inhabitants of the compartment were equally festive and distracted, hanging out the window, all in a mishmash. Suddenly Liberty yanked her torso upright as she clutched his lapels, and she planted a brazen kiss on him.

He responded ardently, his large, soothing hands surrounding her waist. At first the kiss was dry and abrupt, full of the surprise of the moment. But when Liberty released his lapels to twine her hands around his hot, strong neck, their lips parted. She sucked on his deliciously full lower lip with abandon, snorting puffs of air against the side of his face. She inhaled fully his musky scent of dried grass, reveling in the warmth of his chest against the bare shelf of her bosom.

His hands snaked up her back, clutching her to him as though she were his lover. When she heard him sigh, felt the adept skill of his nipping at her lip, she impulsively ran her palms higher, over the slight stubble of his well-formed face. She delighted in the sculpted feel of his cheekbones under her fingers, and she dared to lick the inside of his upper lip, smooth as a wet seashell.

When she suddenly became aware that she was baldly squirming on top of a very insistent and well-hung cock, she had to break away. Her head fell back, and she panted boldly at the ceiling with her eyes squeezed shut in happiness. Just to have this utterly delicious man between her hands—nearly between her thighs—was the apex of rapture. Probably the one thing she’d been futilely dreaming to do, here in the Far West. And here he was. And her train hadn’t even arrived in the Far West yet.

She licked the tip of his pointed nose. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw his dilated with desire, his lower lip slack with surprise. All her memories of being a sensuous woman, powerful with the force of sex, came flooding back to her. Liberty had thought her gift might be dead after years of disuse, but the dazed, wobbly look in this handsome stranger’s eyes told her she still had the skill.

The train lurched and started with a hiss of steam. Steam curled in the open window between the various limbs dangling and waving there, slithering about the wide brim of this glorious man’s hat. Sinking her fingers into his fine, luscious mane of deep brunet hair, Liberty knocked the hat askew and plastered an openmouthed kiss to his lips. Spreading her thighs, when she wiggled her hips she knew the dampness seeping from her pussy was making a wet spot on the back of her skirt, and she didn’t care.

As their tongues twined, Liberty made a little jump. She now straddled this exquisite stranger, her legs tangled in her skirts, her knee wedged against someone’s portmanteau. She fully felt the glory of his burgeoning cock as she blatantly humped him—this stranger she already knew she was in love with. They kissed with unabashed lust now, the handsome dog gripping her skull in his fingers, her long, curly black hair coming untwined from its bun and covering his stately face like a curtain. His groans reverberated deep in his chest, and she imagined she could even feel his bursting cockhead between the layers of their clothing.

And then the train was truly at Laramie City station. The smokestack puked sparks and wood smoke, stinging Liberty’s eyes when she whipped her head around to look out the window. People waved flags in the window, and a couple of prairie flowers of the town leaned their bulging bosoms in, just inches from Liberty’s face. Some of her fellow passengers were already disembarking out the window, one hitting her in the shoulder with his boot.

The reality of her situation struck her then. Sitting upright with her hands against the stranger’s shoulders, she stared at him, wild eyed. He must have been too stunned to even muster that enigmatic half-smile, and he looked like a man who had just been well-fucked, satisfied and yet thoroughly confused. She vaguely noticed he had a small, unusual tattoo on his collarbone, but she was distracted by the wisps of hair sneaking over his loosened necktie.

“Son of a gun,” Liberty whispered, shocked. What had she just done?

He tightened his grip on her shoulders and said dazedly, “Wait. Who are you?”

In her panic, she said the first thing that came into her head. “Ivy,” she panted. “Ivy Hudson.”

She lurched for the door, which wasn’t nearly as jammed with passengers now. She just barely remembered to whisk her carpetbag from the floor, where it had been stomped on. She only turned back for the briefest second, probably because she wanted one final, lasting impression of this man she knew she’d never see again.

And she felt herself smile then, too.

Yes. She was in love with him.

He smiled now, too, that mysterious lifting at the edges of his luscious mouth. Liberty knew he hid some pain and knew he had come to Laramie on a new and challenging mission.

But embarrassment forced her body to lurch down the corridor, shoving rowdy citizens out of her way, purposefully banging them with her carpetbag. “Excuse me. Let me by. I’m in a hurry.”

How could she be in love with a man whose name she didn’t even know? She’d been carried away by the excitement of her new, adventurous life. Laramie City held a thousand people now, and she could easily get lost in the tumult. This beautiful man’s mission was probably farther west, for all she knew. This was the end of the line, after all, Hell on Wheels. Most of the passengers on this train were not staying here long.

Once on the platform, Liberty shoved aside clamoring, “roostered” citizens with abandon. She decided this must be the main street, First Street, and she headed directly for the first hotel, where the proprietor could tell her how to find her father’s house. By that time, hopefully the crowds would have hidden her tracks from the stunning, glittering eyes of that exquisite stranger.

And…how could she have given him her sister’s name?

Levi Colter arrived at Fort Sanders to find the place deserted.

Literally deserted. True, there was a soldier sleeping in the guardhouse next to the usual hangdog Brulé Sioux drinking tarantula juice out of chipped mugs, a pile of sunflower seed shells at their feet.

The soldier woke up a little when Levi asked to see Shadrack Barnhart, Indian Agent. He even sat up straight in his chair as he replied, “Why, I ain’t seen Shady in over a month.”

Levi fixed the private with his famous stare. “He’s out on the reservations, then?” Indian agents were supposed to spend some or most of their time actually
with
Indians, dispensing annuities. They would restrain the crowds of traders who wanted to cheat Indians and sell them illegal tarantula juice. An agent was supposed to teach Indians how to farm in the wind and sand with, say, a handheld hoe to crack the ice and plant tomatoes in zero temperatures. All this for the salary of a postmaster.

The soldier wiped drool from the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t expect so. His office is empty.”

“Empty? What do you mean, empty?”

“I mean his knapsack is gone, horse, tent, all his trappings. Gone over a month ago.”

“But he would take a tent and a horse onto the reservation,” Levi insisted.

The private shook his head and drooled some more. “No, sir. Even the photograph of his mother is gone. Why would he take his ma onto the reservation?”

Levi got directions to Shadrack’s quarters and proceeded across the vivid green grass of the parade ground. There were supposed to be six companies housed at the fort to protect Union Pacific tracklayers and grading crews, but only the occasional soldier or mountain man sharpening a knife came into view. Maybe they were all out protecting the railroad men. It was as silent as the grave—a shrub even tumbled by.

Levi did pass one odd sight. A fellow leaned against Shadrack’s quarters, a headdress of eagle quills and ermine skins covering his face. A couple of small bison skulls hung from thongs over his shoulders, and his bison robe was adorned with pictorial representations of hunting. That wasn’t the odd thing. He was clearly a white man with luminous white skin, his silvery ringlets looking to have been dressed in Paris. He seemed to be purposefully hiding his face from Levi, but Levi was irritated, so he breezed on by and entered the rooms.

The private was right. These rooms looked like a cyclone had blown through, as though Shadrack had left in a hurry. The bedroll had been torn off the bed frame and papers ripped from the walls, leaving only nails behind. A coffeepot even lay on its side on the floor, the puddle of liquid long dried.

Levi sat at the work table to examine the few papers left there in the light from the small window. “Well, this is balled up.” Was Shadrack some kind of chiseler?

He studied lists of supplies that Shadrack was supposed to have distributed to the Sioux. But in between the endless analyses of jelly, raisins, and stockings, images of that unique woman from the train yesterday kept poking their way into Levi’s brain.

She was a stunner, of that there was no doubt. Levi had been so shocked when she had first slapped her voluptuous body up against his in the car’s corridor, their faces just inches from each other. Her silken eyebrows of the darkest Egyptian night framed almond-shaped mahogany eyes. Her eyes simply brimmed with fresh excitement and a desire for adventure. Her beautifully tapered nose came to a perfect point, with indentations as though a sculptor had pressed his fingers there. And when she smiled—which happened instantly, the second her eyes locked onto his!—she revealed perfectly creased dimples.

Her face simply blotted out the crowd of roostered roughnecks milling about them. It had taken Levi many long moments to even note that her shapely and sunbrowned bosom was pressing against his clammy chest, that’s how taken he was with her angelic face. He had muttered something stupid—what was it, anyway? Something about the oiled thugs?—and she was suddenly gone. But her impression had lingered as though they’d been courting for months, as though her very spirit had carved a furrow in his heart.

Levi forced himself to look at the pages before him. All right, something about wheelbarrows, neckties, and tea cozies.
Tea cozies? Why in hell would Indians want tea cozies?
Levi started to daydream again about his second encounter with the Egyptian stunner, Ivy Hudson. It didn’t behoove him to dream about their run-in in the first-class compartment while he was scanning a ledger, because his cock would expand and elongate down his thigh. He had already spent a good part of last night at the Frontier Hotel in Laramie City frigging himself silly, but it hadn’t helped. And if anyone other than an Indian or a private entered the room, he’d have to stand, and his erection would look plumb silly, and—

Hell
. An authoritative fellow wearing fancy Cheyenne-leg chaps and an army cap entered the room, spurs jangling. The smell of fresh sweat swept into the room with him, as though he’d just ridden to the fort, and Levi was compelled to stand, clutching his greatcoat in front of his gun belt.

“You Levi Colter, the new Indian agent?”

“I am.”

This fellow was unbelievably handsome, as though he should’ve stayed put in England and become a lord just on sheer looks alone. He shook Levi’s hand. “Neil Tempest, head of security for the fort.” He glanced skeptically around the room, nostrils vaguely flaring with distaste. Tempest’s accent was actually more Australian. Levi wondered if he was one of those former convicts who had come through San Francisco and raised so much hell there, so he had to tread carefully. “I see Shady hasn’t returned since I was last out here a few weeks ago. I was sort of suspecting he wouldn’t. He was well-known for nicking supplies meant for Indians and selling them to settlers. He managed to amass himself a tiny fortune of twenty-five thousand dollars, so I heard.”