Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  Oh, it was far more heavenly than Ivy remembered. She instantly swooned so mightily that she had to cling to Harley to prevent from toppling over.

  She feasted on the beautifully shaped lips, luxuriating in how slowly and sumptuously he kissed her, almost as though he was drugged. Ivy’s hand moved to cradle his skull behind the ear, circling her thumb about the edge of the scar at the juncture of his jaw. His body moved slightly, sinuously, on the stool below her, unfurling himself in preparation for deepening the kiss.

  They smacked and chewed each other’s lips as Ivy sighed into his mouth. Hot puffs from her nostrils steamed against the side of his face as another fat drip of juice rolled down her inner thigh. She pressed her pelvic bone against his powerful forearm, gyrating her hips the better to feel her pussy lips rub slimily against each other. Masturbating herself against his brawny arm sent heated waves racing down her spine that flooded her entire pelvis with lust.

  Ivy opened her mouth and slipped the tip of her tongue against the inside of his upper lip. He tickled her tongue with his as he twisted on his stool. He slid his free hand up her waist, massaging her rib cage. His aroused groans resonated against her mouth as they nibbled each other’s lips.

  Ivy satisfied an urge by threading her fingers through his satiny hair. It was so luxuriant to plunge her hand into that lustrous mane, and she flinched with surprise when his hand slid up to cup her breast. She gasped into his mouth but didn’t stop rotating her pubic mound against his forearm. Her pussy was a churning vortex of mushy desire.

  Neither one of her lovers had been so virile. At the time of course she’d imagined them the pinnacle of male vigor, but the man now embracing her beat them all hollow with the potency he exuded. His bulging penis twitched and jumped, and Ivy wanted nothing more than to clutch the pulsating length of it in her palm. She wanted to arouse him to greater heights, to see and feel what such a man was capable of when inflamed beyond restraint.

  But when his thumb hooked the border of her bodice and swept down to flick against her nipple, all plans went out the window. Ivy gasped loudly, and both her hands leaped to grab his skull. She drew her face away from his, gazing at him like a stunned deer. Arrogantly, with the utmost confidence, he continued to thumb her nipple, his dark eyes sparkling.

  Ivy clamped her thighs about his arm, rubbing the nub of her clitoris against his elbow. She attacked him again with a voracious sucking kiss, barely noticing when the house’s front door slammed shut.

  Two sets of boots sounded in the hallway just outside the bathroom.

  “Ivy! Captain Park!”

  It was Neil Tempest—the cattleman whose very name had just roused the couple into an erotic frenzy.

  Ivy’s eyes slid shut. “Damnation,” she whispered against Harley’s mouth.

  Chapter Seven

  Neil was instantly suspicious when Ivy emerged from the bathroom.

  “Ivy,” he breathed in astonishment.

  Her rounded face shone with moisture, and she panted so rapidly that naturally his eyes fell to her uplifted bosom. The ample globes shivered with her heartbeat, heaving with her panting. Her royal blue satin bodice was damp in several places, and most damning of all, spots of what looked like shaving cream dotted her throat and hands.

  Neil cleared his throat. “Ivy,” he started again. “Where is Captain Park?”

  Ivy clearly felt guilty about something, the way she nervously tossed her head in the direction of the closed bathroom door. “Oh, ah. In there. He just…Were you able to find that rancher’s widow?”

  Neil exhaled. Of course she’d never give him a straight answer, seeing as how she was obviously dabbing it up with that beefy engineer. “It was quite a job. It’s never pleasant telling a wife, or anyone for that matter, that someone is dead. Especially not when they were knocked out by a hooker’s bathtub.”

  “Now, the tub isn’t what killed him, Neil,” said Ivy, heading for the study. “He was strangled with that cord we found.”

  Neil followed. “Yes, and Captain Park took those items of evidence. I need them back. Now, I need to find that insignia that we saw on Gentry’s forehead. I just know I’ve seen it somewhere, here in your father’s papers.”

  “Let me help,” said Ivy. “I recall the imprint. It looked like a C with a tail on it.”

  “Right.” Neil pulled another chair up to Simon Hudson’s desk so they could sit side by side. The bathroom door closed, and Neil caught a glimpse of that brute Harley Park swaggering down the hall, clad in a fresh suit. Neil wanted to call out to him, to have the glove and drawstring returned to him, but he didn’t want to interrupt his solitude with Ivy. He was quite nuts upon this woman.

  But he did have to question how long his eyes lingered upon the backside of Captain Park. He was a veritable athletic wrestler of a man, beautifully proportioned for the strongest feats of mountaineering and sword fighting. Jealousy burned Neil’s stomach like acid thinking of the damp spots on Ivy’s bodice. That brute had obviously been pawing her, but as Neil watched the muscular globes of Harley’s ass as he strolled manfully down the hall, Neil could see where Ivy wouldn’t complain.

  Sure, Harley was a swell he-man, a worldly lady-killer. With his upper-drawer British accent, his damned eighteen languages, and his peach pit chomping, Neil doubted there’d be a judy left in town for him to dab it up with. Not that courting was part of his plan, anyway. He had enough on his hands dealing with the lawlessness in Laramie to go knocking up a lark.

  But as he sat here side by side with this prime article of womanhood, Neil began to get a bit mushy and sentimental. It certainly was nice to patter with a judy again.

  “So,” he ventured as they flipped through stacks of papers. “This ‘valves and ledgers’ fellow Prahl that you threw over. He was quite flush, I presume. Well-off.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You don’t mind…I mean to say, you’re not afraid of being left alone, without a man to care for you?”

  Ivy’s fingers on the papers paused. She looked at a distant spot on a far wall. “Yes, of course I’m afraid. I’m an old spinster, Neil. I’m thirty-one!” She lowered her eyes to the stack of papers. “But when I looked into the future and saw this endless boredom stretching out before me, I knew I had to act. Father won’t send me home. You know how he is. He barely paid attention to us girls when he was living with us in Hyde Park. Why should he care now? He’s only bluffing that he’ll send me back home. He’ll soon forget I’m here.”

  Neil smiled warmly at her. “I’d hardly call you ‘old,’ Ivy. You look as fresh as a girl at her first ball.” Flattering her made him uncomfortable, so he quickly added, “You won’t regret staying here. It’s not so bad here. We have fandangos—well, mostly men, of course, but some dress up as women to make up for it—and if you’re the telegraph operator you’ll be at the forefront of all the gossip. Once the train comes into town—May tenth, your father estimates—why, there’ll be no end of socializing and civilization to keep you occu—ho, what’s this?”

  As though it were a dripping turd, Neil took the offending paper between thumb and forefinger and held it up to the lamplight. There it was! The insignia on the dead man’s forehead was nothing less than a brand—the emblem of the Cow Palace, the ranch belonging to Rodney Shortridge! A capital C intertwined with a P had made the odd signature on poor Whit Gentry’s forehead.

  “I recognize this brand!” Neil rattled the paper in midair as Ivy scooted her chair so close her thigh touched his. The electricity sparked between them suddenly rendered the branded paper unimportant as Neil breathed in Ivy’s pine scent. His cock again was up like a hammer, swelling uncomfortably inside his pants just inches from her silk-clad thigh.

  Just as Neil gasped in surprise, an object that seemed to come from the bookcase to his right slammed against his head. His hand flew up, too late to protect himself. “What in the name of hell?”

  “What was that?” boomed Harley, standing in the doorway with a bunch of b
lack and silver implements in his hands.

  “You saw that?” Neil demanded.

  “I should say I did!” Setting down the implements, Harley strode to the opposite wall, squatting down to search for the object while Ivy said, “What is this letter? It’s signed…Well, I can’t read this terrible penmanship.”

  Neil knew he’d have a knot on his temple tomorrow. These damned flying objects. Rubbing his head, he tried to focus on the letter. “I don’t think the letter itself is important. Mr. Shortridge seems to be trying to ask your father, I suppose, to enquire into…”

  It really wasn’t clear what the illiterate Admiral Lushington was trying to say. Neil attempted to read it aloud.

  My fellow Mr. Hudson,

  I have latly been approwchd by some sinister karakters about sellig my ranch. They said it goes throo railroad land. Can you chek with the railroad and see if this is tru?

  The rest of the note made Neil’s head swim, it was so illegible. Ivy was now leaning so closely into him her bosom brushed his upper arm, and when he turned to her their mouths were only inches apart. “This Shortridge cove is a well-known lush, constantly floored over at the Bucket of Blood. It should be easy enough to find him and discover his whereabouts at the time of Gentry’s murder.” Neil was annoyed that he had to turn to Harley and ask, “What time would you say that was?” Harley was obviously the only one with a pocket watch.

  “Forty minutes after four, when Zeke came running into Chang’s,” Harley replied. Still squatting against the darkened wall, he appeared to be reading a book. Now unfurling his tall, imposing frame, he gestured at Neil with the book and chuckled. “This is what hit you in the head. This is the page it was open to.” Coming forward, he handed Neil the book with a forefinger pointed at a passage.

  The book was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Neil read aloud. “‘Haven’t you, too, done the same thing? You might have led a decent life, a life of the spirit, a life of understanding, but you’ll end up in the Hay Market. You won’t be able to bear it, and if you remain alone, you’ll go mad like me. You are even now almost out of your mind. So we must go together along the same road. Let us go!’”

  Neil slammed the book onto the desk. “What blather!” he cried. “What could this possibly have to do with anything?”

  Harley returned to his equipment, where he withdrew a large tripod from a box and extended the legs. “Oh, so a book just happened to fly across the room, hit you in the head as if to get your attention, then fall open to a specific page? Can’t say as I’ve seen that happen too often.”

  “Things have been hitting me lately,” Neil protested feebly.

  “I think it’s remarkable,” said Ivy. She had now taken up the book and read, “‘I have only you now. Let’s go together. I’ve come to you. We’re both damned, so let’s go together!’” She sighed in apparent amazement. “Why, it’s obvious what this means.”

  It was the height of irritation when Ivy shared low, heated glances of understanding with Harley. Not wanting to appear ignorant, Neil asked mildly, “Yes? What do you think the meaning is?”

  Ivy replied, “It says it right here! ‘We’ve only one goal before us.’ And here. ‘I need you, and that’s why I’ve come to you.’ It obviously means the three of us!”

  Harley was now attaching a camera to the tripod, its lens aimed directly at Neil and Ivy. “The Hay Market is where people gathered to sell things in St. Petersburg in Russia. The girl in the book, Sonia, was an egg seller, if I recall correctly. He wants to save her from a life of poverty.”

  Neil played along. “All right. If I’m this narrator, and Ivy is obviously Sonia, then where do you fit into the picture?”

  Harley shrugged. “I don’t. Unless I’m the detective who captures the narrator.”

  “For doing what?”

  “Murder. Neil, can you gather more lamps?”

  Ivy asked brightly, “Are you going to take our photograph? Oh, how fun.”

  “I’m going to try, if we can get more light in here. I’d like both of you on that settee.”

  So with a raging erection, Neil stormed down the hall to Zeke’s office. He angrily grabbed his two lamps and returned to Hudson’s study.

  Harley passed him in the hallway. “I’m going to coat a plate. Get prepared.”

  Ivy was over at the sideboard pouring herself some ruby-colored liquor. “Would you like some claret?”

  “No thank you. I’m not much of a drinking man. I’ve seen drink turn men into cyclone hurricanes.”

  Neil sat next to Ivy on the settee as close as propriety would allow, wondering if he should allow his bulging erection to be displayed in the photograph. Since he hadn’t had time to return to his office to collect his frock coat, he still only wore the waistcoat, and it could barely cover his full crotch, depending on how he chose to sit.

  He squirmed uncomfortably. He’d never been photographed before. He looked at Ivy sideways. “May I ask. Would you be amenable to courting? I know it’s recently that you lost your fiancé, so I hope it’s not untoward—”

  He heard the laughter in her voice. “But I didn’t care for that man anyway. So it should make no difference if I left him yesterday or six months ago.”

  Neil hoped this was an affirmative response, but they continued to just sit there in silence, side by side, staring straight ahead as though mummies.

  Finally Ivy said in a low, seductive voice, “I should like that, Neil.”

  A warm, syrupy feeling flowed outward from the pit of his stomach. Neil had not felt such a happy sensation in months, if not years. Or ever. But this flood of emotions surged once more into his cock, lengthening it against his thigh, and he tugged on his waistcoat in a futile attempt to hide it. “That’s good,” he said feebly.

  “How do you suppose,” Ivy continued, “the imprint got on Gentry’s forehead? It was much smaller than a cattle brand.”

  Neil was relieved they had something else to discuss. “I was thinking on that. Men out here, I’ve noticed, have been known to make rings in the shape of their ranch brands. I’ve never noticed Shortridge wear one, but maybe that’s because he’s usually floored at some saloon.”

  “Yes.” Ivy giggled. “Difficult to tell when he’s facedown in the dirt.”

  “Yes,” Harley agreed, emerging into the study holding a square plate gingerly between the fingers of both hands. He fiddled around with the camera, sliding out a drawer of some kind where he placed the plate. “I was wondering. Does this Shortridge fellow sound like the type who’d be capable of strangling someone? From the sounds of it, he has a hard time getting out the door, much less down the street. And it takes a lot of power to strangle someone.”

  Harley moved to the couch, where he took Neil by the arm. “I want you standing behind the couch. Let’s move it away from the wall.”

  Ivy rose while the men scooted the couch forward. Neil said, “I agree. Shortridge has been very distraught since the death of his wife. He was never this wallpapered before that happened. Couldn’t be, to build a ranch like that. It’s tough out here in the winter. Men can’t be strewn about singing songs about gourds if they’re running a ranch.”

  Seating herself again, Ivy asked the men behind her, “Could anyone else at the Cow Palace have a ring like that?”

  “He does have a foreman—”

  Neil’s sentence clogged his throat when Harley put his hands upon him. Harley first placed his hands on Neil’s shoulders, positioning him where he wanted him to stand. But when Harley’s palm moved ever so lightly to his hip just inches from his erection, Neil held his breath.

  “Here,” said Harley. “Stand off to the side so we can see you from the thighs up.”

  The couch wouldn’t begin to cover his erect cock. As Neil strove to conjure up the most recent corpse’s image in the hope it would deflate his cock, the solid, erotic heat of the engineer next to him prevented this from success.

  “I don’t think we really want the photograph to show
…” Neil mumbled.

  Harley’s voice came, humid and seductive, right behind his ear. “Oh, yes, we want to show,” he asserted.

  And, amazingly, Harley’s broad, talented palm slid over to boldly grasp and squeeze his stiffened penis!

  Neil gasped, relieved that Ivy was facing the camera obediently. What sort of inverted poof was this world traveler? Was this something they ran around doing in India? Yet Neil didn’t have the presence of mind to elbow the fellow away, and of course the sensation of having his bulging prick fondled sent rushes of lewd hunger through his limbs.

  Harley muttered in his ear, “This is exactly what we want to show.” He squeezed the entire stiff pizzle in his hand again, even making circular motions against the underside of the shaft with his thumb before releasing him and returning to his camera.

  Neil was left gasping, little clear bubbles swimming before his eyes. That was it—it must be some Far Eastern thing. Harley seemed schooled in those arts, and his fiery eyes—and his peach pits—betrayed that he had interest and perhaps experience in the sort of “Italian fashion” Neil had been schooled in when hobbled in New South Wales.

  Great balls of fire! Would Harley be dredging up all those perverted, lewd, yet scintillating memories? Neil had to stay far away from this lecherous cove, especially if Harley intended on competing with him for Ivy’s hand.

  “Shortridge has a ranch foreman?” Ivy asked innocently, ignorant of the entire provocative scene that had just played out behind her back. “Might he wear a ring like that?”

  “We can’t move,” Neil advised breathlessly.

  “Nonsense,” said Ivy. Louder, she called to Harley, “This is the new sort of camera, is it not? I had my photograph made in Hyde Park with one like this.”

  “Yes,” said Harley. “You need only hold still for a few seconds. Starting…now.”

  Neil literally held his breath when Harley withdrew a slide to expose the plate. What did Harley intend to use this piece of pornography for? It would be useful as blackmail. With a sudden fright, Neil realized Harley could use it against him to win Ivy’s hand, threatening to literally expose her to the offending image if Neil didn’t back down.