Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (20 page)

“So you’d say it wasn’t there two weeks ago?”

“I couldn’t say. But I’m not a drinking man.”

Garrett tipped his planter’s hat to the engine driver and waved an arm for Levi to climb up on the rocks. “Bring the shovel.” Together they descended into the darkened hollow.

“I don’t truck with any departed bodies,” Garrett stated. Since the war, dead humans had given him the creeps, so he graciously allowed the rightful Indian agent to dig and reveal the body. “I’ll be able to tell you if it’s Caeser Moxus or not.”

Luckily, Levi apparently had no such compunctions, and he struck the shovel into the soil around where it looked the head might be. “No point in robbing the grave,” he opined. “Might as well leave him here, since it appears to be well-watered and respected.”

Garrett pointed out, “His tribe will want to bury him properly. You know those scaffolds they place them on, high enough so the critters don’t get them.”

“They also bury well-known people in secret hiding spots. And we can’t very well drag him around with us while we’re looking for Shady.” Squatting, Levi crumbled the clay from the corpse’s face. “Here you go. Is this Caeser?”

Garrett bent over only close enough to identify the face. Half his forehead had a caved-in look that could have been created by the railroad tongs. “Yes. That’s Caeser Moxus.”

Levi regarded the chief. “Just as we were told.”

Feeling creepily like a body snatcher, Garrett watched as Levi removed a necklace from the chief, for purposes of identifying it to his tribesmen. He was glad when Levi crunched it up and put it in his own pocket.

“What you doing down there?” yelled the engine driver. “Whose body is that?”

“Don’t worry.” Levi waved up at the fellow. “I’m the agent from Fort Sanders.” Quieter, he said to Garrett, “Would you like to say a prayer? Something in Lakota?”

Garrett closed his eyes and became still within. He strove to recall the words used at the last Sioux funeral he’d been to.
“Ate Wankantanka, Mitawa ki…”
he started out.
My Father, Great Spirit. Who sends the wind and the white snow from the north, to make your creation clean and pure. Father, make me clean and pure within my heart, that I may be accepted in your sight and judgment.

He was surprised the Lakota words came back to him so easily. It had been three months since he’d attended a Sioux funeral. He was the unofficial interpreter at the fort, the official fellow being a bastard from Yankton who didn’t know beans about Indians.

As he spoke the Lakota words, a vision came to him. Out of the blue, he saw a white man’s hand shoving a bag full of what he knew to be hollow eagles’ quills into a recess in a cliff’s face, sort of a small natural stone cave. He didn’t know how he knew the bag was full of quills, and he didn’t know who the white fellow was.

“You have added another day to my life, for which I give you thanks with all my heart. Amen.” The image of the hand and bag was gone, and there was no point in telling his partner about it, since he had no idea what it meant.

Except that Garrett knew that eagles’ quills, in the hands of white men, usually contained gold.

* * * *

Garrett held Levi in his arms, his silken head cradled in the crook of his arm. Levi’s hand strayed absentmindedly across Garrett’s chest, and he was probably thinking about the mission ahead of them—to find Shady, following the map Caleb had drawn for them.

They were spooning together under their buffalo robes because it was cold. Simple enough. But feeling Levi’s naked haunch against his hip was making Garrett hot. When Levi brushed his fingertips against Garrett’s nipple, his cock stiffened, jerking the buffalo robe in the light from the campfire.

Garrett tried to change the subject. “When you wed Miss Liberty, we probably won’t see each other anymore.”

Levi’s response was instantaneous. He popped his head up to glare righteously at Garrett. “Not at all! I still have to work at the fort, you know. I’ll have to distribute future annuities to Indians, even if Shady didn’t.” He laid his head back on Garrett’s chest and resumed his remote stroking.

“But where will you live with Liberty?”

“I don’t know.”

Garrett knew it was Levi’s destiny to marry Liberty. Paddy had told him so. But the idea that he’d have to remove himself from their vicinity—the idea that he’d never again be able to do something as simple as hold them in his arms and kiss them—filled his stomach with doom and dread. Garrett didn’t
want
to sever relations with them. Levi and Liberty brought an affection and security to his life he hadn’t felt since before the war.

As if he now wanted to change the subject, Levi’s hand drifted over Garrett’s abdomen, quickly meeting up with his bulging cockhead. Levi cupped it as he peppered Garrett’s exposed throat with small, gentle kisses. “I’m not going to stop knowing you,” Levi said.

Knowing you
. There was a big difference between knowing someone and continuing to make love with them. Perhaps Garrett became insecure then and wanted to cement his hold over Levi. But he reached out to the satchel that he’d placed near his head, withdrawing a tin of bear grease. Bear grease was useful for many things such as greasing saddles and hair, but now Garrett took a big palmful of it, sensuously applying it to Levi’s cock. Levi flung the buffalo robe back and unfurled his spine, stretching slowly and sinuously as Garrett massaged his prick.

The cock gleamed erotically in the moonlight, and as Garrett pumped, he realized he was jealous of Liberty. She would get to share Levi’s bed, to make intimate decisions about their mutual future. Garrett would be tossed back to his cook’s kitchen at the fort, making giant cauldrons of chile con carne for apathetic and bored soldiers, listening to their belches and brawls as he tried to sleep at night. Alone.

Garrett released the cock and got to his knees. Displaying his backside to his partner, he handed him the bear grease tin. The meaning was promptly evident to Levi, who eagerly kneeled behind Garrett, smoothing a finger full of grease against his anus.

“You sure you want this?” Levi hunched over his partner, his erection bobbing between Garrett’s thighs, brushing his ball sac. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” Garrett scoffed. He knew the implication, the roundabout taunt about Levi’s prick size, would rile him.

It worked. Levi positioned his cockhead against the anal ring and pushed. Garrett breathed, trying to relax. He had never been impaled by anything other than the ivory dildo, which was considerably narrower than the penis now spearing him. When Levi grabbed his erect tool and stroked it lovingly, Garrett did relax. Maybe this was part of
The Pleasure of Woman
book that he hadn’t read. Some method two men used to control each other’s reflexes and responses.

It was working. Garrett relaxed his backside as he concentrated on the hand frigging him, and the cock slid inside him until it almost reached that sensitive spot—the spot Levi had reached with the dildo before.

“I want you to fuck me, Levi.”

Levi murmured into his ear, “I want to fuck you. God, I want to fuck you. You’re an absolutely delicious thoroughbred, Garrett. I’m going to screw you until you cry out in ecstasy. I want to watch your seed shoot across the grass.”

Levi’s nasty talk aroused Garrett to greater heights. He raised one knee and placed his foot flat on the buffalo robe to give Levi better access, hunching over submissively, squeezing his own ball sac for lack of anything else to hang onto. It was a thin line between pain and pleasure. The fist pumping his meat brought waves of desire into his pelvis, filling his balls with thrilling lust. Gooseflesh rose on the globes of his ass as Levi fell into a humping rhythm, sighing and shivering with rapture as he fucked him.

“That’s right,” Garrett encouraged him. “That’s good, Levi. Keep screwing me. Shove that big prick right up my ass. Plunge that fat, well-hung cock inside me. I want to feel you explode inside of me—
Ah!
”

It came unexpectedly fast. Levi’s cockhead hit the sensitive spot far up inside his rectum, triggering a massive ejaculation. So Levi got his wish, as a shining arc of Garrett’s jism shot several feet across the grass.

Garrett gasped and clutched the hand that frigged his cock. Levi’s cock pulsed wildly inside his channel as he came deep inside Garrett. Garrett reveled in the submissive sensation of being fucked, being the receptacle for such a delicious, massive load of semen. Levi clutched his chest to him, gasping rhythmically as he stabbed Garrett’s ass with his jerking prick.

At last they fell down onto the buffalo robes, limp hands splayed across their stomachs, sighing at the starry bowl above them. The fire was fading into extinction, the charred wood crumbling as it hissed and collapsed upon itself.

Levi pulled a robe up over them. It was odd that he gently kissed Garrett’s face. Garrett shivered, wondering if this were Levi’s swan song, his final act of love before committing only to Liberty. Of course they would continue to “know” each other. They had to work together at the fort. But would Levi turn aside his head in shame every time he had to come to Garrett’s kitchen for his daily bowl of stew?

Garrett sank into such a deep, all-encompassing sleep that he had no visions at all. His spirit didn’t soar over the surrounding countryside. In fact, when he woke, his last memory was of Levi nuzzling his face into Garrett’s underarm. Garrett wrapped his arms around his lover, trying to think only of the moment and not of the desolate future.

They crested the ridge of the Laramie Mountains. It protected the valley where Caleb’s map indicated they’d find Brave Buffalo’s people. Levi held a glass to his eye to get a better view of the cook fires and tipis. About fifty tipis were spread across the green carpet below, people milling around in the smoky mist of this early morning hour.

“We should find Shady’s camp,” said Levi, as they had already discussed. “Shady’s not liable to be hanging around the people he’s terrorizing.”

“We could find the crooked
wakan
man first,” Garrett suggested.

That was a new idea and entirely possible, but Levi was skeptical. “And do what? Torture him into telling us where Shady is hiding? No, his camp’s got to be up here somewhere, within quick riding distance of the encampment. No sense in riding in there to shake everyone up.”

Garrett added, “They probably wouldn’t believe you that their
wakan
fellow is in cahoots with Shady anyway.”

So they circled the valley, passing under fantastic rock formations where a giant hand had stacked up boulders as big as ten men. They rode under a cloud of spotted orange-brown butterflies. They must have disturbed them, and the butterflies gave away their position when the gathering rose as one and fluttered overhead. But Levi had to wonder if Caleb’s spirit infused them, so he followed the path they seemed to indicate, bringing them lower and closer to the Indian encampment.

As he rode, Levi’s mind wandered back to Garrett and the intimacy they’d enjoyed last night. He didn’t want to give up Garrett, and he knew Liberty didn’t want to either. Didn’t Liberty’s sister Ivy savor an unusual relationship with both Marshal Tempest and that Captain Park who had translated the erotic manual? He would have to ask Liberty about it.

Perhaps he would have to accept Simon Hudson’s largesse if he wanted to build Liberty a proper house. He didn’t want her living in the schoolhouse, as so many schoolmarms did. Or he could go back into journalism like his friend Henry Morton Stanley. But a newspaper might send him to the Ottoman Empire to be imprisoned, like Henry. He could be of no use to Liberty if he was languishing in Istanbul eating bugs and wondering where his expedition had gone.

Perhaps he could go back to the
Tribune
in Chicago and write for them about the ever-changing and wild Western frontier. But eventually they’d send him somewhere else. Journalism was not conducive to raising a family.

A family!
Why was this thought suddenly crossing Levi’s mind? Well, that’s the way his thoughts were trending lately, since bumping into the stunning and brazen Miss Hudson on the train. It occurred to him she wasn’t the sort to want children, with all of her talk about pessaries and family limitation. She didn’t seem the sort to take kindly to “involuntary motherhood,” the talk of all the suffragists. But for the first time in his life, Levi found himself yearning for a child.

Oh, this was ridiculous! He didn’t even have enough grubstake to build Liberty a proper house. He was content with her covering her womb with acacia gum, for now.

Ahead of him, Garrett had stopped. Levi rode abreast as Garrett whispered, “What in the hell…”

Levi looked where Garrett was looking. On a bare knoll below them, he could make out a couple human shapes engaged in some activity. Thinking they may have stumbled across a romantic tryst, Levi raised his glass.

This was no romantic tryst. Levi could tell by the foxes’ tails attached to his heels that one figure was the
wakan
fellow they sought. On the ground next to him lay his ceremonial pipe dressed with a fan of eagles’ feathers.

“That’s Shady,” Garrett breathed.