by Robin Gideon
Jared picked her hand up, kissed the back of it, and replied, “Hell, it wouldn’t have been any fun at all if you weren’t there.” He pulled on her hand, forcing Helen to stand and walk around the table. She sat on his lap. “Tell me more about your brother. Just how much does it cost to keep him at that fancy sanitarium?”
Helen hemmed and hawed before giving Jared the answer. His expression didn’t change at all. “That’s not as bad as I had thought it would be,” he said finally. He looked away, thinking over everything that Helen had said to him, thinking, too, how very nice it was to feel her buns on his thighs, her breasts so close to his face, hidden only by a very undersized robe. “Seems there ought to be a way of making a profit somehow. Do you know what it is Gregg’s got going at his bank?”
“You mean the reason he wanted to hire you? No, he never told me. But he’s got something devious up his nasty, little sleeve.”
“How so?”
“He’s buying up land near the old Peck’s Flats, but it isn’t really very good property. I know that Gregg and Jerome are always looking to make a profit, but why buy land that smart folks shy away from?”
Jared tried to think about what Helen had just said, but what was of greater interest to him was what happened when she shifted her weight and her buns slid over his suddenly reawakening cock.
“Buying up worthless land?” he replied, trying to ignore his libido—at least for the moment. “Apparently Gregg wants a lot more land, too, because it was to have been my job to convince some folks to sell, and sell fast.”
“Gregg never does anything unless his father tells him to.”
Helen was looking away, her thoughts apparently far away on the fiancé she despised, which allowed Jared the opportunity to look at her profile. Her throat seemed particularly kissable, the flesh as soft to the touch as the feathers of a dove. And lower, the exquisite swells of her breasts were lush and extravagant and so enticing…
“Oh, my!” Helen said, shifting her weight. After a second of deliberation, as she moved her hips in just the right way to feel the growing bulge beneath her bottom, she added breathless, “Again? Jared, can’t you ever get enough?”
“Apparently not.” He paused for a moment to consider his words then added for clarity, “At least, not of you.”
He took another sip of whiskey before setting his cup on the table. Then he eased his left hand inside Helen’s robe, his palm caressing the nearest plump breast as he eased it out of the robe as though for inspection. With his fingertip he circled the nipple several times before pinching it tenderly. Within seconds Helen’s nipple was visibly tighter, more erect. She began to squirm a little on his lap. Helen had her left arm around his shoulders, and she used her right to stroke his hair.
“I love it when you touch me,” she whispered, speaking words that not long ago she never really thought she’d ever say with honesty. “I feel”—she searched for the right word, and after several seconds added—“precious.”
Jared lowered his head enough to catch the exposed nipple between his lips. He sucked softly upon the nipple, using his lips and tongue to gently persuade a response rather than to force one. Helen moaned softly, watching Jared as he opened his mouth wider to take more of her delicate flesh between his lips, sucking more intently, more insistently. When he put a hand to her knee, she spread her legs slightly, unconsciously opening herself, availing herself to the man’s lustful wishes.
The hand was powerful, though that power did not stop the fingertips from making swirling patterns on the inside of Helen’s thigh with astonishing delicacy. She squirmed a little more, her breathing escalating swiftly as emotions she thought were unnecessary again this evening returned with her fluttering heartbeat. She slipped her arm from Jared’s shoulders to hug his face more firmly against her breast.
“Again?” She spoke the single word with a certain sense of awe. Her lover’s sexual energy was amazing.
By the time Jared’s fingertips finally finished their leisurely journey up Helen’s naked leg, at last reaching the juncture of her thighs, the delicate lips of her pussy were slick with the lubricating honey of her passion. Helen’s slit was swollen, tingling, her clit engorged with anticipation. Jared’s middle finger slipped smoothly between pink lips, drawing a quavering sigh from Helen. When he rubbed her clit with the tip of a slippery finger, she sighed even louder.
Helen used the tip of her tongue to moisten her mouth. Looking down at Jared as he sucked on her breast, she whispered, “I’ll fuck you anywhere, anytime, any way you want. All you have to do is ask.” She smiled. “Actually, you don’t even have to ask. Just do it. Take me. Take me soft as silk or ravish me like a madman. Just do it.”
The admission shocked her to the core and incited in Jared behavior that she craved. He pushed her off his lap and within seconds had his pants unbuttoned and pushed down to his thighs to expose the ostentatious erection she had learned to adore. As Jared sat in the straight-backed kitchen chair, Helen straddled his lean hips and lowered herself slowly and sensually on his upraised hardness.
With her thighs upon Jared and his body joined with hers, Helen looked into her lover’s eyes and whispered, “When I’ve got your cock inside me, I feel complete. I feel like I’m in heaven.”
It scared her a little when she realized she was only exaggerating a little bit.
Chapter Twelve
Gregg Neilson eased back on the reins, and the big sorrel gelding stopped the carriage fifty yards from the front gate to Helen Miller’s home. To the east, the sun was just coming up over the horizon, a big, yellow ball of color smiling brightly on what might prove to be a very dark day for some of the fine citizens of Whitetail Creek. Something that might have been a smile pulled at the corners of Gregg’s mouth.
Gregg understood that Helen had no idea at all how valuable her property could be once the right landscaping was done. She held onto the land because it had been in her family, and now it was almost all that was left of her family. Emotion, not cold logic, kept her anchored to the land and the drafty, old shack of a house. Gregg had been taught by his father that emotion was a weakness that must be avoided.
It won’t be long before her land is mine, Gregg thought. Then I can tell my goddamned father to shut his stinking mouth.
But even as the vengeful thought registered in his consciousness, Gregg knew that he would never find the courage to tell Jerome to shut up. Gregg was too frightened of his father. He knew from experience what happened to people who stood up to Jerome. How many times, when Gregg had been a child—and even later when he was a young man—had he felt the lash of his father’s black, leather belt? He got his whippings across the back and shoulders, or across the buttocks. Most of the time, anyway. On one particularly memorable occasion, Jerome took his belt to Gregg’s face. And he did that for just looking angrily at him.
So Gregg learned to keep his opinions to himself even when he was insulted, and his hatred would grow and fester and become more acidic with each nasty comment, with every withering glance, with every aspersion to his manliness.
“Come on, boy,” Gregg said, flicking the reins lightly against the gelding’s back. “Let’s go see if my pretty fiancée is ready for work.”
He hadn’t quite reached the front porch when the door opened and Helen stepped out, looking as fresh and lovely as ever in her gray skirt of lightweight wool with the white, cotton blouse and the matching gray jacket. She would have been lovelier had she not had a countenance that held such unguarded suspicion in it that Gregg had no doubt in his mind, despite the decidedly self-flattering image of himself he maintained, that there wasn’t a thing about seeing him unexpectedly on that morning that appealed to Helen.
“Good morning, darling lady!” Gregg announced theatrically, taking off his hat and issuing a pretend bow while never actually getting up out of the seat of his two-person, Coriman-designed carriage. “Your chariot has arrived to take you upon your journey!”
Though ca
ught off guard initially, Helen quickly regained her wits and asked, “Gregg Neilson, what on earth do you think you’re doing here at this time of the morning? You know I’ve got a perfectly fine mare and carriage to get me to work at your old bank every morning by eight.”
“That’s right, you do. I know that you’re a very independent woman, and I respect that. But I am, after all, your fiancé, and I don’t get to see you away from the bank nearly as much as I’d like.” He smiled, hoping it seemed a sincere expression that carried not a whit of mischief or menace in it, and was rather pleased with his success. But then, Gregg was regularly pleased with himself. “So please, come to my carriage and let me take you to the bank. And on the way we can discuss our upcoming marriage and other things of notable interest.”
Helen, still standing on the porch of her home, put her hands on her hips and looked around, as though she expected people, now in hiding, to suddenly jump up and make their presence known while shouting “surprise!”
But there was no one hiding anywhere near Helen’s house, and the only surprise for her was the arrival of Gregg Neilson at her home at sunrise.
“You’ve really shocked me this time,” Helen muttered after a moment, stepping off the porch as she moved slowly toward her fiancé’s carriage. She looked at him, and with a smile that was only slightly strained, added more loudly, “I never expected something like this from you.”
In a low, ambiguous tone, Gregg replied, “Give me a chance and I’ll show you a lot more surprises.”
He couldn’t say for certain, but he thought a shiver had gone through Helen at his comment. Was it a shiver of anticipation, or fear? Or, perhaps, a combination of both emotions? Gregg strongly suspected that Helen’s seemingly unending delays in setting a date for their wedding were motivated by a fear of sex. The thought made him grin. Gregg had no intentions of remaining faithful to his matrimonial vows, though he did intend to fuck Helen regularly and in whatever fashion his whims of the moment dictated. He was tired to the bone of Helen’s prissy attitude toward sex…but the minute she said “I do” then Gregg could do with her whatever the hell he wanted to in their matrimonial bed, and there wasn’t a damn thing she or anyone else could say or do to stop him.
Helen stepped up into the carriage and sat beside Gregg. She muttered, “A gentleman would have helped me into the carriage.”
Gregg looked at her and thought, You cunt, once you’re my wife I’ll slap you silly if you ever talk to me in that tone of voice.
“Hee-yah!” Gregg called out, slapping the reins more firmly than necessary to the gelding’s back. The horse flinched and then put his shoulders to the harness, turning the carriage around to head back to Whitetail Creek. “So tell me, Helen, what’s on your gentle mind on this fine morning?” As he smiled at her, he thought, Not that I give a shit.
* * * *
Three hours later, Gregg was standing outside the homestead of Amanda Nichols. Amanda, a widow in her very early thirties, shared her homestead with Samantha Murchison, a spinster not quite thirty. Samantha had declined one too many marriage offers and, in consequence, had been summarily booted out of her home by her father, who could find no good reason why any woman wouldn’t want to be married once attaining the age of sixteen. It mattered little to him if the intended groom was penniless, shiftless, and utterly without the means of supporting a family, much less a wife. What mattered to Samantha’s father was that he himself was no longer obligated to feed, clothe, and shelter a daughter. Samantha’s father was nothing if not a practical man when it came to matters of money.
“Listen to me carefully, Amanda,” Gregg said, his tone patrician and condescending. “I’m offering you eight hundred dollars for your land and buildings. Sign the papers and the money is yours.”
Amanda glanced nervously at the men standing behind Gregg. They were gunmen. That much was obvious about their bearing and demeanor. And they were vile human beings. That much was obvious in the way they looked at Amanda and Samantha, undressing them with their eyes, ravaging them visually. Had Amanda been able to accurately read the minds of the men standing behind Gregg she would have fainted dead away in fear and revulsion.
“Last month you offered one thousand.”
Gregg could hear the undercurrent of fear in Amanda’s tone. It triggered in his brain sensors that responded favorably to fear, to weakness, to increased profits. These were the narcotics that intoxicated Gregg Neilson. In a flash he wondered whether Amanda’s fear of him, combined with her need for money, would compel her to her knees. Gregg had experienced only a few fellatios in his life. It was a fact which caused no small amount of consternation to him during his moments of self-reflection. All the oral sex he had ever received had been administered professionally, with more tactile stimulation provided by the hand than the mouth, and always with a steady eye on the profit to be made at the culmination of the occasion.
Could Amanda be coerced to her knees? wondered Gregg. And if she could, could he pretend that she was there willingly? That might make the occasion significantly more entertaining for him. Particularly if she didn’t cry when on her knees. There had been a young prostitute in Fargo who had cried the entire time she sucked him. It rankled Gregg’s nerves that her whimpering dissatisfaction with her station in life had disrupted the pleasure he was experiencing. The fact that she was crying, and should probably be shown some measure of sympathy, never quite entered into Gregg’s thought processes. The question of why she was crying was of even less significance to him and, in fact, never even entered into that part of his brain relegated to serious thoughts.
Gregg Neilson was a man who had never lost a minute’s sleep worrying about the people who might be displeased with his behavior.
Not one minute.
To Amanda, he said, “That was last month. You decided to be obstinate, and in consequence the price for your property has gone down. Delay some more and it will go down even farther.”
Amanda shook her head slowly. “No. You can’t do that.”
Gregg tossed his head back and uttered a short, obscene laugh. Then his face transformed into a savage scowl as he asked, “Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can or can’t do?” His lip curled in an ugly sneer of unalloyed contempt. “Be smart. Take the eight hundred. Make me wait to buy your property, and you’ll get even less.”
Without giving her time for a response, he turned on his heel and kicked his foot up into the stirrup of his saddle. With some effort he pulled himself up onto the palomino. Never once did he meet eyes with Amanda or Samantha. He did take a moment to look at Tookie Smithers, the man he had hired to take Jared’s place, and said, “Come with me. We’ll give this cunt twenty-four hours to think about it.”
* * * *
Gregg reined over his palomino, and with a tilting of his head indicated he wanted to speak privately to Tookie Smithers. Though by no means an intelligent or crafty man, Tookie was still bright enough to understand that ingratiating himself to a man like Gregg Neilson might be a very profitable professional move to make. He reined his own horse closer to the banker’s.
“Do you know who Helen Miller is?” Gregg asked, keeping his voice low enough that the other riders couldn’t hear.
Tookie nodded. “She’s your gal.”
Gregg showed no indication that he’d even heard what his latest hired gunman had said. He asked, “Do you know where she lives?”
Tookie nodded. “Got a place outside town a couple miles. Nice, little place.”
What an idiot! That drafty old shack disgusts me! thought Gregg as he stared into the yellowed and slightly bloodshot eyes of the man he had just employed to be his hired muscle. A whole host of insults danced on the tip of his tongue, but Gregg kept them all silent. Tookie’s presence was repulsive, but for the time being, quite necessary.
“Yes, that’s the one,” Gregg said once he’d regained thorough control over his senses. “I want you to ride there right now. Take the men with you. Don’t be seen go
ing there, if it can at all be helped. Once you’re there, I want you to burn the house and the barn to the ground.”
Tookie’s eyes widened. “But Mr. Neilson, she’s your—”
“Quiet!” Gregg snapped. “I want the house and barn completely demolished. Nothing can be left standing.”
Tookie was shaking his head slowly. “Mr. Neilson, what’s you want to burn down your own lady’s house for?” Tookie was by no means bright, and he was a man easily confused. This behavior on the part of his employer made no sense to him at all.
“My reasons are good enough for me.” The thought of having to explain himself and his actions to a man like Tookie was appalling to Gregg. “If you want to keep putting Neilson gold in your pockets, you’ll have to learn to do what you’re told and not ask stupid questions.” Gregg paused a moment to look at the other three men in the group. There wasn’t a man in the group who didn’t need a bath and a shave, but Gregg knew that they were killers who didn’t really mind who they killed so long as they got paid afterward—and that was all that truly mattered to Gregg. To Tookie, Gregg said, “She’s got a horse in that small barn of hers. A horse and a carriage. Burn the horse inside the barn. I want nothing left.”
Tookie’s brows pushed together in confusion. “I could sell the horse and—”
“Just do like you’ve been told,” Gregg said through teeth clenched in anger, his voice rising sufficiently to draw the attention of the other three gunmen in Tookie’s gang. To them, Gregg said, “Mind your own goddamned business. When I want you to know something, I’ll come out and tell you straight to your face. Until that happens, keep your eyes open and your mouths shut.”
