Cold Steel and Hot Lead [How the West Was Done 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  Now Rudy appeared from behind the wide beefiness of Captain Park, and he beckoned, too.

  “All right, Allie,” said Montreal Jed from the corner of his mouth. “You’d best go behind that curtain now, or I’m going to piss in my pants.”

  Alameda giggled, relieving the tension in the air. Jeremiah released her so she could walk solemnly to the black curtain, nodding soberly to Rudy then briefly taking Derrick’s hand.

  Her heart swelled with an overabundance of love for him. It actually hurt her chest to view his beauty—delicious, dark, his intelligent eyes glimmering with compassion and devotion. She had never doubted for one moment her decision to wed Senator Derrick Spiro. It had been a very long time since Derrick had cut the ribbons of her corset in the kitchen of the Cactus Club. Alameda didn’t feel she was even slightly the same gal who had displayed her bare breasts so brazenly to the senator she had thought was married.

  In the past year, Rudy had taught her trick riding, roping, and shooting. They had alpine skied all the way to Cheyenne and back. And Derrick had organized a men’s baseball team—they were all present now, though in their best Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. Percy’s prophecy that Bob Freund would die in a bizarre baseball accident had come true several months before. Tragically, a fly ball had conked him on the head in the seventh inning of a game against the Cheyenne team.

  In Alameda’s position as justice of the peace, she even merited her own assistant, Jeremiah Franklin. That is, when he wasn’t busy assisting Senator Spiro or “Doctor” Rudolph Dunraven, or entertaining Liberty’s schoolchildren with his “little people” puppet theater.

  Derrick orated in his beautifully rich voice now, so that Henry Zuckerkorn and all the big guns from Washington could hear. He displayed Alameda as though she were a magician’s assistant, about to be cut in half. “A year ago I proposed that every woman of the age of twenty-one years residing in this Territory may, at every election to be held, cast her vote.”

  Normally this was where the crowd, particularly the suffragist women, burst into cheers. Today, however, the mood was sedate. Not even the usual roostered rowdies that were part and parcel of every Far West town were hollering slogans today. Even those gentlemen stood respectfully in orderly rows outside, holding their flasks and bottles quietly in their folded hands.

  Derrick continued in his lovely, flowery way. “The Federal Constitution says we, the people. It does not say we, the white male citizens but we, the whole people who formed the Union. And we formed it for the whole people, women as well as men.”

  Derrick gestured at her, and Rudy lifted the black curtain. This was her cue to enter the voting booth. She had been inside many of them in her time but had never been able to cast a vote herself, of course. She knew she was going to vote a straight party ticket—reelecting Marshal Neil Tempest, for example—so she sat and listened to Derrick speak, breathing in the glory of the moment.

  “It is a sheer mockery to lecture women about their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the ballot. For any state to make sex a qualification to vote will always result in the disenfranchisement of one entire half of the people. The blessings of liberty will always be withheld from women.”

  It always made Alameda shiver with delight and love to hear Derrick speechify. She suspected her sister Liberty—who, after all, had attended the National Women’s Rights Convention in New York in 1860—of being half in love with Derrick herself. Alameda knew she was being silly, that Liberty’s eyes only gleamed with the righteousness of women’s suffrage.

  Then again, Alameda had noticed a sort of celebrity effect. Was it her imagination that Derrick’s skin shone even more luminously when he entered a crowd of adoring women? When she was in a poor mood, whether from the heat, hunger, or women’s disorders, it sometimes irritated her the way women fawned over him. Such a big gun, a high muckety-muck cutting a figure! The way women threw themselves at him was a caution!

  Alameda had even traveled to Omaha with Derrick. He had given a speech there that was followed by a night of revelry that Alameda had never imagined in her wildest dreams—or nightmares. Those suffragists were practicing freedom for more than the vote, and as the wife of a politician, Alameda had to keep up with them. But it sure got her in a lather whenever she left Derrick’s side for a few moments to return and find one of these slatterns melting all over her husband’s waistcoat.

  She had gotten somewhat accustomed to it by now. She had so much work of her own to do, traveling about accepting criminals’ pleas, passing sentences on such crimes as stagecoach robbing or a man swearing in the presence of a woman, things the judge in Yankton did not want to deal with. She thought she might let Derrick go to his next convention alone—she trusted him.

  However, when Rudy was Derrick’s traveling companion, there apparently was an even bigger sensation abroad. Another senator’s wife had told Alameda about the scene in Chicago last summer. “Those two beautiful boys were lucky to escape with their hides,” she kept on saying, looking rather hot and bothered herself. It was just a fact, Alameda supposed, of a politician’s life. Derrick would forever be inspiring women in their ideals and the needs of their nether regions.

  So she sat at her polling table, eyes closed, breathing in peace. Derrick continued, “For women, this government has no just powers derived from consent of the governed. For women, this government isn’t a democracy. It isn’t a republic. It is an odious aristocracy, the most hateful aristocracy on the face of the globe.”

  This would be a good time to emerge. Placing her ballot in the envelope, Alameda stood and pulled aside the curtain. Tom Cudahy, now owner of the Elkhorn Livery, was there to accept her ballot. Normally the justice of the peace would have been collecting ballots, but it was decided Tom would do the honors today.

  Derrick continued, “Webster defines a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. Are women persons? I hardly believe any of our opponents would say they are not!”

  He had taken Alameda by the arm by now while Tom Cudahy made a big show of sliding the ballot into a black box and journalists made photographs. At first many women of the Suffrage Association—Temperance the former trapeze artist being the loudest of them all—burst into cheers. They were swiftly followed by Alameda’s closest friends, then the bold and somewhat bawdy women from Washington. “Independence is happiness!” they chanted.

  They cheered and roared, and Derrick held up Alameda’s hand as though she were the one who had just won an election. Her husband adored “working the crowds” like this, stumping for votes, winning. He was the slickest, most earnest and effective politician Wyoming had ever seen. To be truthful, his rousing speechmaking and his sheer power of personality and influence made Alameda randy, too.

  Derrick tried to bellow louder, but probably only the people in their immediate vicinity could hear him by now, the merriment and applause was so overwhelming. Some children who had climbed onto the second-story rotunda were raining paper streamers down onto the floor. “Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no state has a right to make any law that shall curtail their privileges.”

  The crowd seemed to be pressing in. Alameda noticed that Rudy, Levi Colter, and Harley made a protective circle around her, Derrick, and Montreal Jed.

  In fact, Jeremiah, his chest pressed against Alameda’s, said nervously, “I do believe this is my cue to light out for Tibbles House.” Tibbles House was what they’d named the new home they’d built on Garfield Street, after their muse, The Phenomenal Percy Tibbles. Being of a nervous disposition even after recovering from his Saint Vitus’s Dance, Montreal Jed liked to stay home, invent new plays, and build new props for his little people.

  Alameda and her family moved as one knot, shuffling their feet inch by inch toward the door. She shook hundreds of hands and tried to answer Henry Zuckerkorn’s questions.

  “Do you have any encouraging statements for the women of the other states who might soo
n hope to follow in Wyoming’s footsteps?”

  She reported like a trained parrot, “Passage of this landmark law will make Wyoming famous as the ‘Equality State’! My husband has also passed laws giving married women the right to own property and to serve on juries. My sister Liberty was honored with being one of the first women to serve on that jury six months ago.” Alameda had to jump to see over heads around her. “Liberty? Do you care to say anything to Mr. Zuckerkorn?”

  “Hi, Henry!” Liberty waved. “Spanked any hookers dressed as schoolgirls lately?”

  “What does she mean?” Alameda asked Mr. Zuckerkorn, but he had suddenly vanished into the crowd.

  People were trying to shove past them, to get in line for the voting booth. Neil Tempest had already darted in there after Alameda had emerged, to vote for himself.

  Derrick murmured in her ear, “I want to fuck the stuffing out of the first woman voter in America.”

  She whispered back, “That makes you hot, doesn’t it?”

  “You know it does.”

  Once they cleared the door and were out in the warm, grass-scented air of the street, they shook a hundred more hands. There were soirees and fandangos to attend, the biggest party being at Simon Hudson’s Vancouver House later on. For now, they made a grand exit in their flag-festooned carriage. Derrick and Alameda sat on the seat near the driver while Rudy and Jeremiah piled inside.

  Derrick could not resist this opportunity, as crowds swarmed the wheels of his carriage, to call out, “I’ll say that woman is always right! For thirty-four years I’ve been a women’s-rights man. Women shall help make the laws! That whiplash, the ballot, is in the hands of women now!”

  Alameda clutched her husband’s arm close to her breast. She had never felt prouder in her life. Bringing down the Cinnabar Murderer of Kittie Wells had only propelled Derrick’s career onto an even faster trajectory. That he had decided to settle in Laramie and not Cheyenne had made him even more beloved. Women from everywhere in the Far West wrote him encouraging letters, and it was not unusual to find a pair of drawers in the post. This irritated Alameda when in the miasma of a woman’s hysteria, but usually she took it in stride.

  Once past the main throng and safely underway down the quiet of Garfield Street, they smooched. “I love you, Senator Spiro.” How wonderful it was to be able to say that! When she first came to Laramie what seemed like hundreds of years ago now, her only thought had been to escape from Ralph Ellis and other adulterous cads like him. She had never dreamed she would find someone—two men—who embodied her every ideal.

  “I love you, my duck.” Derrick nuzzled her nose with his. “We have dozens of parties to attend, but first I’d like to attend to you.”

  Alameda’s entire body was abuzz with excitement as she removed her dour-colored walking suit in her dressing room. Several politicians had greeted them on their front porch, so Montreal Jed wasn’t able to retire to his puppet room, having to entertain them for half an hour. The services of “Resurrection Rudy” were also called upon by the wives of a couple of politicians, so he had to step aside with them into his physician’s offices on the first floor.

  What a madhouse! In fact, Derrick had been stopped from following Alameda upstairs by another well-wishing woman supporter. She suspiciously resembled a prairie flower with her colorful lip rouge, but then so many modern, liberated women these days were looking more colorful than ever. Derrick introduced her as Victoria Russell of Cheyenne. Alameda had shaken so many hands that day, it barely registered on her conscious mind. She was becoming accustomed to Derrick’s time being doled out in small quantities. It was all for the improvement of womankind.

  Having already laid out her evening attire, Alameda was just adjusting her corset in the mirror when Derrick finally entered, carrying a tray with champagne glasses and a box. “There’s my darling,” Alameda called happily. She shamelessly guzzled the champagne then looked at the box Derrick had placed on her vanity. “What’s that?”

  “That,” Derrick said with importance as he unknotted his necktie, “is something I’ve been waiting a year for.”

  “Ooh,” said Alameda, but Derrick slapped her hand away from the box.

  He continued flinging items of clothing onto a chair with abandon until he was shirtless. He had become even more athletic and muscular, if such a thing was possible, even more dashing and luscious with a bit more age. He said dramatically, “That woman I introduced you to downstairs?”

  Alameda nodded. “Miss Russell.”

  Derrick laid a fresh day shirt over the chair but didn’t move to put it on. “I sent her a telegram a very long time ago, back when we first met, in fact. I asked her to get ahold of this apparatus I’d seen demonstrated in Cheyenne. Apparently she was unable to find another one or to let go of her own. So she just delivered this new one.” He stepped up meaningfully to the box and lifted it before her eyes. “I wanted to use it on you.”

  Alameda’s eyes moistened with excitement. Whatever could it be? “Open it. Open it!”

  When Derrick lifted the lid, Alameda was slightly disappointed. It was just a long metal cone maybe seven inches long, and there was a key for winding it up. Whatever “it” did.

  “I know, I know.” Derrick nodded. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Wiggling an eyebrow, he took the item and the key from the box. “Turn around and lean forward on your vanity.”

  Alameda did as instructed, pleased with the way her abundant breasts spilled from the corset. She had ordered more of the swan-bill corsets from Paris, even against her husband’s protestations that they would cause another asthmatic fit. That hadn’t happened once, not since Rudy had laid his hands on her, hands full of animal magnetism. And since she had stepped into her impractical heeled slippers, she knew her sloping ass, full and rounded, was displayed to Derrick.

  “I assume it’s a dildo,” she said smoothly.

  “Yes. But a very different kind of dildo.” Alameda heard him winding up the thing with the key. With that twinkle in his lovely umber eyes, the beautiful silken sprinkling of hair across his well-developed chest, she knew he was the most desirable man in Laramie. He removed the key, and the dildo whirred. Cradling her in his arms, he first touched it to her thigh, where the buzzing sent her into a paroxysm of ticklishness.

  “Ooh!” She shivered and bucked so violently Derrick nearly lost his grip on her. “Derrick! That thing is sending me over the edge!”

  “And I’ve only touched your thigh through the linen.” Now he found the slit in her drawers and plunged the whirring dildo between her thighs, quickly finding the exact right spot on her button.

  She made entirely different sounds now. “Ah.” His bare chest against her back was soothing, but the buzzing apparatus was already coaxing orgasmic waves down her abdomen. When he wiggled the vibrating metal against her clitoris, it was almost—she hesitated to think it was equally—as good as if he’d been diddling her with his fingertips or the talented tip of his tongue.

  He bit her shoulder. “That good?”

  She allowed her head to hang loosely. “Ah. Perfect. That’s a wonderful toy.” She tensed a bit now. “Did Miss Russell demonstrate this to you?”

  The dildo even faltered a bit, as though echoing his emotions. “Oh, ah. Not this particular model. This one is brand new. She must’ve searched high and low for it.”

  Alameda laughed. That was a long-ago bachelor Derrick who used to know Miss Russell at the Dodge Hotel in Cheyenne. She recalled the telegram now, the one she’d asked her sister Ivy about. He’d sent Miss Russell the telegram to request the apparatus for her, for his belle, Alameda. She needed to put it out of her mind. “Higher up. More to the side.”

  Derrick expertly did as he was told, and now his firm cock pressed against her tailbone. “I’ve been waiting years to do this.”

  Alameda’s voice was as drugged as her brain seemed to be. “To use a wind-up dildo?”

  “Vibrator. No. To fuck the first woman voter in America.
”

  “Oh, yes,” purred Alameda. “That would be the biggest aphrodisiac for you. To fuck a voter. No! Why did you stop?”

  The vibrator had apparently already wound down, and Alameda wiggled her hips back and forth eagerly as he rewound it. “I recall this drawback to this vibrator. It doesn’t last too long before you—ah.”

  When he reapplied the buzzing tool to her clitoris, she took a little jump to accommodate his erect cock. It slid in easily nearly to her womb, filling her with his plump, juicy girth. She felt him shudder with the sheer pleasure of seating his rather massive prick inside of her. In fact, he must have been so distracted he forgot to massage her with the vibrator, so Alameda assertively grabbed it from him and applied it herself. Gooseflesh ran up and down her legs at the result, and she began making humping, gyrating movements that seemed to drive Derrick loco.

  Derrick was known to be well-hung—Rudy said so all the time, and he would know better than Alameda. But Alameda was proud of the way her pussy could accommodate him with no problem, even when standing in this vulnerable position, wide open to him. He was buried to the hilt inside of her. She often liked to orgasm with his cock buried immobile in her muff, filling and stretching her. She knew he found it unbearably exquisite to feel her cunt clamp down around him, spasm after spasm of orgasmic frenzy clutching at his cock, and not be allowed to move. Particularly if it was Rudy’s mouth or fingers toying with her clitoris, bringing on the orgasm.

  He didn’t stand immobile now. Swiveling his hips with intolerable precision, he fucked her all out, so thoroughly on fire a fine tremor ran up his thighs. His balls slapped against her fingers as she wielded the vibrator. She moved the buzzing vibrator so his slapping ball sac would get an unexpected massage, and she was pleased to see him hiss in air, his fat prick shuddering inside her.