Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (6 page)

It felt almost natural when Garrett got behind her and bent at the knees, encircled her hips in his long, strong arms, and carried her to the roof. It was exhilarating to be held up like this by such a solid tree of a man. His face was jammed against her back so firmly she could feel his hot cheekbone through her calico gown. He didn’t wobble or wiggle in the slightest as he lifted her, and she easily yanked out the object, which appeared to be a pair of tongs.

“I’ve got it,” she said breathlessly.

Her body twisted and turned as he let her down, and she had to lift the tongs so as not to bash him in the head. His closely shorn skull raked against her bare breastbone, instantly stiffening her nipples. When his sharply sculpted cheekbone slid against her neck, the creaminess of his skin made her lose all reason. As he set her gently on the ground, she stayed on tiptoes, the better to wedge the toe of her slipper into his boot top.

Their faces met. He panted so heavily she was afraid she’d been too weighty for him, and she decided to eat less bread. Then she knew he didn’t pant from the exertion of lifting her. No, the corners of his eyelids were wilted with lust.

She felt as though she clung to an immobile pillar, he was so muscular. One second she was searching his expressive, fervent eyes—the next second he was pressing her against the schoolhouse, voraciously kissing her.

Garrett lifted her up the wall and burrowed his strong hips into her. He had her pinned against the wooden boards so firmly she was light as air, and it was easy to lift her other slipper and wedge it in his boot. The metal tongs thudded to the ground. He moaned in the pit of his throat as she nibbled and licked his succulent lips. The scent of his fresh sweat aroused Liberty so, the lips of her sex expanded and nearly clenched from wanting him.

She felt his long donkey’s prick prodding her shivering pussy. Her pussy seemed to have a mind of its own for measuring and sensing, as her core instantly discerned that Garrett was possessed of a cockhead as big as her fist. Her pussy responded to this normally shocking tidbit by fluttering strongly, the entire inner canal of her sex clutching for that juicy appendage.

It was admirable that he restrained himself from fucking her right up against the wall. He did not hump her fully clothed, as she had done to the man on the train with shameful abandon. He merely pinned her to the wall with his powerful hips and kissed her hungrily yet respectfully. It was obvious he was holding back his lust. Garrett O’Rourke could have strangled a wild boar barehanded, but he cradled Liberty’s ass as though he weighed baby chicks.

She ran her palms over the coarse, cropped hair that covered his skull, something new and enticing. When he briefly pulled back a fraction of an inch to whisper, “Miss Libby…” against her mouth, she knew she had lost him.

He pulled away completely, wiping his face with his hand as though to rid it of shame. He regarded her wide-eyed, as though he’d never seen her before in his life. He raised his hands in surrender, whispering humbly, “I’m sorry.”

She giggled, to rid herself both of awkwardness and also of lust. “It’s quite all right,” she said lightly, to smooth over the moment.
At least I know who
you
are. That other man, I didn’t even know his name.
“It’s my fault. I’ve been lacking manners ever since I came out West. It must be all this”—she waved her hand to include the entire town—“hobnobbing about with roostered slobs who don’t have manners enough to carry guts to a bear.”

Garrett shook his head and placed his hand on his chest. “No. It’s my fault. I took advantage of both our joys. You were excited about the school, and I was excited about the—”

“Yes!” cried Liberty, glad for an excuse to change the subject. She bent to retrieve the tongs and looked at them remotely, as though they were her entire focus of interest. Certainly not Garrett’s giant cock tenting out the crotch of his red drawers as he unsuccessfully tried to stuff it beneath his army coat. No, the tongs were decidedly more interesting.

“Yes, that thing,” Garrett said weakly, reaching out a hand to accept the tongs. He turned them this way and that, frowning.

Liberty said, “I’m sure I’ve seen tongs like that around this town. I think it’s a railroad thing. Something they use to lay the railroad ties.”

“Yes, it’s got markings on it. It says
UP
.” That stood for Union Pacific.

“My father does a lot of work with the railroad, selling them lumber and ties. Can I borrow those tongs? I can show them to him, ask him what the numbers mean.”

Garrett had finally relaxed enough to smile shyly as he returned the tongs to her. “That would be helpful.”

“But how do I find you? Send someone to the fort?”

“I’ve been granted leave, so I don’t rightly have a fixed address right now.”

Liberty gasped. “You could stay here—in the schoolhouse! No, don’t protest, I insist. You’ve already promised to build desks and chairs, so you have more right to sleep here than any other old squatter.”

Garrett shrugged, still smiling. “That would be nice. Until we leave on our mission.”

“Well. You have to figure out where you’re going, first. And these tongs might help. You know, I’m sure my father would donate lumber for you to build furniture with. I’ll ask him tonight, when I tell him about the schoolhouse and everything else.”

The smile dropped off Garrett’s face then, as though something had just occurred to him. “Who
is
your father, may I ask?”

He was probably worried about some irate bruiser chasing him down for kissing his daughter. He didn’t need to worry about Simon Hudson. Simon was a follower of Spiritualism, a cohort of Alcott and Emerson who would be meditating next to a lake if there weren’t oodles of money to be made selling railroad ties. Simon had forced the entire family to live in a tent for a month once because he thought the world was coming to an end.

Liberty touched Garrett’s arm almost timidly. “Don’t worry. My father is Simon Hudson. He’s the biggest lumber merchant around, so I’m sure he can spare the wood to build the furniture.”

Garrett’s expression changed completely then. It was such a thorough transformation it was almost as though another being suddenly inhabited his body. He tensed, and his eyes grew wide with fear. “So you’re…Libby Hudson?”

“Yes.” Liberty shrugged. “Libby, Liberty, whatever people wish.”

“I just remembered something I have to do.”

And Garrett O’Rourke turned tail and literally ran from the schoolyard.

“Wait. Garrett! Will I meet you back here, say, tomorrow?”

This sudden appointment was so urgent, Garrett barely had the manners to toss over his shoulder, “Yes, certainly! Tomorrow will be fine!”

Liberty was left standing alone, holding a pair of railroad tongs.

Liberty had been calling out to Garrett from the schoolyard like a…well, like a schoolgirl with a crush, embarrassing herself by chasing a man who didn’t want her. Standing there stupidly with a pair of tongs in her hand.

What was she, a hussy? So now she had lost not one but two men. And the week wasn’t even over yet.

Fearful that her feminine passions would get the best of her, Liberty trudged back to Vancouver House, hoping her father would be home. Simon was a restless person and didn’t spend much time there, but at least she could put down the stupid tongs somewhere.

Garrett O’Rourke was probably thoroughly mortified he had kissed her. Perhaps if she had resisted a bit more, he would respect her. It was just her damned passion that had led her to fall so easily into the kiss. She’d already been primed for it with her constant reminiscences of the swashbuckling stranger on the train. She was more determined than ever to put her toy back in its box, to see what happened if she didn’t play with it for a week or so.

Liberty wished there were some fellow suffragists here in town to discuss things like this with. How did any of them know what happened during hysterical paroxysm, if none of them had ever experienced it? Liberty knew that eventually curiosity would kill her more than the paroxysm would, and she would have to find out for herself.

She cheered up when she saw her sister’s horse hitched in front of Vancouver House. Out here, women didn’t have to ride sidesaddle, and Ivy had been riding twenty miles back to her fiancé’s ranch every night when she finished sending telegrams for the town. Liberty hadn’t spent much time gossiping with Ivy since she’d arrived, as Ivy obviously spent most of her time with Marshal Neil Tempest.

And there was a second man, the exotic Captain Harland Park, who oversaw the building of the Cactus Club among other things, who seemed to constantly be with them. Captain Park also rode every night back to Serendipity Ranch. Perhaps he was investing in Serendipity. Liberty might even have chased after Captain Park herself if it wasn’t so obvious he was smitten with Ivy.

Neither man was at Vancouver House, and Liberty was glad. If she couldn’t talk to Ivy about this dilemma, who could she talk to? She wondered if Ivy had experienced this paroxysm.

She found Ivy up in her bedroom packing a few things into a carpetbag. Liberty collapsed on Ivy’s bed like an empty sack.

Ivy giggled. She moved to the dressing table where she had apparently been sipping from a glass of claret, and started handing it to Liberty.

She stopped, for she must have remembered that Liberty was a temperance advocate. But today Liberty’s high ideals suddenly didn’t seem so important to her, for she snapped, “Oh, just hand it over!” She chugged as Ivy laughed openly at her. Unused to strong liquor, Liberty choked, and some of the wine nearly came out of her nose.

Ivy said, “Temperance has a way of vanishing once one arrives in the Far West.”

“I’ll say,” Liberty agreed heatedly. She sat dejectedly, cradling the empty glass between her knees, staring dully at the wall. “I have now met
two
men I would like to court.”

Ivy abruptly froze, a half-folded blouse in her hands. “
Two
men? I haven’t even heard of
one
.”

“I know,” Liberty nearly sobbed. “Because I didn’t know his name. Still don’t. I met him on the train. And just now I made the acquaintance of a Private Garrett O’Rourke, but he ran from me almost in tears. Probably in shock, because I was such a slut that I kissed him.”

Ivy was still frozen like a statue when Liberty stood and breezed past her toward the claret bottle. She sloshed some liquor into her glass, drank half of it without snorting, and whined, “Garrett said he’d help build furniture for my new school. I’m in love with the man from the train, but now I think I’m in love with Garrett, too.”

Ivy’s mouth finally moved. “Well, at least you know the second fellow’s name
.
”

Whisking past her sister again, Liberty plopped down on the mattress. Slumped over, she stared blankly into thin air. Only half of her mouth chuckled at her sister’s joke. “Yes. There is that.”

Ivy sat next to her on the bed, deadly serious. “Well, this isn’t like you at all! Have you ever even been in love? How do you know you’re in love with the train fellow without even knowing his name?”

“I’ve never been in love, and that’s how I know I am now. Remember that Alain Broussard fellow I was so hot about?” Liberty turned her screwed-up, whiny face to her sister.

Ivy wrinkled her nose with distaste. “That awful French fellow who wrote you that horribly sentimental poetry?”

Liberty sighed limply. “That’s the one.”

“Every time you’d say something, he’d sniff, ‘I doubt that very much!’ As though he didn’t believe in you. As though he had no respect for anything you said or did.”

“Yes. That’s him.”

“He wore those enormous lace collars that made him look like Gainsborough’s
Blue Boy
and always elbowed other men with this incredibly knowing look when he said, ‘Côte d’Azur, Côte d’Azur! The women, the women!’ As though he had a hundred women waiting for him in the Côte d’Azur, just lounging around on—”

Liberty slapped Ivy’s shoulder with the back of her hand.
“Enough!”

“Well, he was quite handsome,” Ivy said soberly.

“I thought I was in love with him. Comparing the way I felt about Alain and putting it next to the way I feel about the train fellow, well…there’s just no comparison.” Regaining her old strength and enthusiasm, Liberty pivoted on the mattress to face her sister. “Ivy, there was a world of difference! I must have just imagined I was in love with Alain, you see?”

“Or maybe you were just young and immature? You didn’t know what true love was yet.”

“That could be it. But suddenly, with the train fellow, I felt alive for the first time in my
life!
I wanted to possess him, to eat him, to
absorb
him into my
soul
. Does this make any sense?”

Ivy smiled like a cat. “Yes. It does. And you felt the same for this Private O’Rourke?”

Liberty tilted her head thoughtfully. “Yes. Well, nearly the same. It’s very hard to describe. I’d say with the train fellow it was more of a romantic love, the sort that makes you go absolutely insane, incapable of functioning until you can be in his arms again, do you know what I mean?”