Romance: Pummel Me: A Boxing Romance

by Courtney Clein

  Before I knew what was happening he pulled out his pistol and aimed it at me. He pulled the trigger and I thought for sure I was dead. My father jumped in front of me just in time to take the bullet to the chest. He collapsed back in to me and I caught him, lowering him to the ground. Dimitrius grabbed the executioner’s sword and launched himself at Johnathan. Jonathan was reloading his weapon, preparing to kill us. Dimitrius could have easily killed him, but instead did the right thing and disarmed him by chopping off his hand. Jonathan fell to the ground and cowered like a little child as the guards surrounded him and had him arrested. Finally, justice had been done; but at what cost. My father looked up in to my eyes and smiled at me. He reached up and caressed my cheek, like he had done so many times when I was little. I tried to fight the tears, but they flowed from my eyes and fell on to his face.

  “Do not be sad, Helena. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better father to you.”

  “You were a great father.” I said, choking on my sadness. “Please, please don’t leave me. I’m not ready.”

  “Yes, you are, darling.” He grimaced in pain as blood began to seep heavily from his wound. “You have him.” He said as Dimitrius came and knelt down beside me. “Take care of my daughter.”

  “I will.” Dimitrius said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  My father smiled at us.

  “I feel as though I finally did something right.” He said. “You two remind me of your mother and I when we first fell in love. Don’t ever let this feeling change.” He said to the both of us. “What you have is real. The world may try to beat it out of you, but don’t ever forget it.”

  I could tell he was fading away as his words became less coherent. I watched as the life faded from his eyes.

  “I love you, father.” I said as tears ran down my face.

  I tucked my head in to Dimitrius’ shoulder and cried as the crowd before me watched everything.

  Dimitrius and I left Sunhaven and never looked back. My mother decided she would travel with us and she sold everything we owned except for one ship. With the money we gained Dimitrius and I were able to never worry about paying for our lives ever again. We sailed back to the isle where we had our little cottage and bought a bigger plot of land. We grew our own crops and traded them with civilizations all over the world. My mother decided to settle with us and lived her days as a grandmother, taking care of our two children and the homestead, when Dimitrius and I would sail on merchant expeditions. Stories about our glory days had begun to spread across the world, and some of them were so outlandish that I couldn’t help but laugh. We never told our children of their fathers past, but we often times heard them talk wonders of the Captain Pirate named Fox. Whether or not he admitted it, Dimitrius took pride in hearing his children tell stories of his hidden life. After being freed from death, I saw the world in a different light. I used to think the world was nothing but a bad place, but after escaping death and finding love, I knew it wasn’t so. There was a lot of good in the world, and the ability to see it is what brought more of it to me. I used to believe that walking in on Johnathan that day was the worst thing to ever happen to me, but now I understand that it was the best. Without that happening to me, I would have never met Captain Fox… Dimitrius… the love of my life and the father of my children. I would have never seen the world. I would have never faced my fears and I would have never become the person I am today. Sitting here as an old wife and mother, while my children are out discovering their lives and carrying on the Fox name, really gives me time to reflect. Reflecting on my past while I lay here, hand in hand with Dimitrius, really allows me to see that everything happens for a reason. I had found love in the most unlikely of places and our love had overcome the odds. As I lay my head on to his chest, listening to his heart beat and the slow sound of his breathing, I couldn’t be happier.

  Roughrider

  Chloe Martel

  Roughrider

  Copyright 2016 by Chloe Martel

  First electronic publication: June 2016

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to person, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: Due to mature subject matter, such as explicit sexual situations and coarse language, this story is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older, and all acts of a sexual nature are consensual.

  Roughrider

  Chapter 1

  Alma Abrams rode Roach into town, which comprised a long dusty road, a post office, a newspaper office, three hotels, four general stores, a meat market, bars, brothels, three restaurants and two boarding houses; there was a deputy sheriff, two constables, three doctors, a justice of the peace; and two lawyers. There was even a telephone and telegraph service. Calico, the Mojave’s silver-producing star, with over five-hundred silver mines—this was where the wanderer Alma Abrams would make her home.

  She rode to the closest tavern, outside of which a dirt-encrusted man sat, his head lolling on his chest. Roach let out a soft neigh. Alma stroked her mane. “Easy, girl,” she muttered, and Roach quieted. “You, my good man,” she said, trotting over to the man and gazing down at him.

  “What sort of evil excuse of a man bothers a working man . . . arg!” He looked up under the rim of his hat, and his expression changed in a moment from one of hatred to one of complete shock. Alma knew what the man saw and what he had expected to see. He had expected to see a man, like him, covered in dirt and with a tough body worn by decades of hard labor. Instead, what he saw was a woman of twenty-four, with smooth, white skin, wide blue eyes, golden hair tied back in a bun, wearing trousers which hugged her tight figure and a shirt – a man’s shirt – which showed the tops of her pert breasts. Alma allowed him one of her smiles. A smile is just one weapon in a woman’s arsenal, after all.

  “Excuse me,” the man breathed. He climbed to his feet and dusted down his clothes. “I didn’t mean to speak with such haste. Neither did I mean to imply any sort of . . . of . . . Excuse me, miss, but what is a woman like you doing in Calico?”

  “I seek a room,” she said. “Surely a man as distinguished as yourself would know the best room in the town?”

  Alma was not surprised when the man blushed and then puffed his chest up. Men, she had learned, were gluttons for flattery. Even when the flattery was obviously absurd, even when it was completely dissociated with the reality of the situation, they were gluttons for it. This man did not look distinguished, but that did not stop her cool calm flattery from reaching his ears and having its effect.

  “There’s Beryl’s hotel at the end of the road, there.” He pointed to the far end of the town to a two-story building whose blue paint chipped and flaked in the setting sunlight. “Be careful, mind, miss. All hotels round here serve a double purpose, you see, as, err . . . How do I say it, miss? Err . . .”

  “Brothels?” Alma offered.

  The man was so shocked to hear Alma – clearly an angel – utter such a dirty word that he took a step back. His blush deepened, and then he nodded quickly. “Yes,” he muttered.

  “Very well, then,” she said, and led Roach toward Beryl’s.

  Alma did not have to look back to know that the man was watching her. If he stopped to think for a second, he would realize it was completely unnecessary to ask a local where the hotels were. Calico was a small town of around one-thousand inhabitants. It would not be a tall order to find the hotel for herself. But the man wouldn’t think; he would do exactly as Alma
wanted him to. He would go into the tavern and tell the miners about the arrival of a golden-haired woman wearing trousers and riding a horse, unaccompanied by a husband, seeking lodging. And the miners would whisper fiercely, and soon the owners of the Silver King Mining Corporation would hear of it. Alma’s plan would be set in motion.

  She tethered Roach to the post and walked into the hotel. A barrel-chested woman stood behind a desk. She had thick, strong hands and thick, strong legs and a thick, strong head. She grimaced when Alma approached the desk. “Is your husband here already?” she said.

  “I am afraid I am a widow.” That wasn’t strictly true, but the Lord knew that people – women especially – treated widows better than lone travelling women. Wanton women, Alma thought with a bitter taste in her mouth. But she did not let her internal monologue show on her exterior. She liked to think of herself as a master of the exterior. Her mind could run in the opposite direction to her face and nobody would know but her. She could grin during an execution and scream in terror during a proposal of marriage.

  “So you are alone?” Beryl grunted.

  “Alone.” Alma nodded. “Just like so many lost souls in the great Mojave.”

  “Oh, you’re a poet, are you?”

  Alma smiled. “I am merely trying to befriend the owner of Calico’s finest hotel.”

  As Alma said this, a half-dressed woman stumbled from a nearby door, followed by two men. The half-dressed woman kissed one of the men fully on the mouth whilst the other explored under what little clothing she wore with a meaty hand. Alma pretended not to notice. This seemed to impress Beryl. She smiled as though to say: “Ah, so you’re not a fussy one.”

  “I’ve got spare room,” Beryl said. “It’s nasty, but it’s cheap.”

  “Cheap and nasty have never been a problem for me. And you have a place to stable my horse?”

  Beryl nodded. “We can take care of that, too.”

  “Very good.”

  Alma encountered two more whores as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. One said nothing, only looked at the ground in a vain attempt to hide the blooming bruises that painted her eyes. The other – a toothless crone, her prime a tiny dot somewhere in the vague past – grinned a gummy grin. “New competition, eh?”

  Alma found she had had enough of playacting. She looked up and down the hallway. When she saw that she and the crone were alone, she approached the woman so she stood over her, looking down at her. “I hate you, ma’am,” she said, “for no other reason than you amuse yourself with saying unintelligent and cruel things to a woman whom you have never met. I just thought you should know that.”

  She turned on her heels and walked toward her door. Behind her, the woman grumbled something, but Alma ignored her. Her spirit was restored; she had allowed her mask to slip for a moment. One must indulge one’s true nature every so often lest one go insane, she thought.

  Chapter 2

  Alma woke to a knock at her door. She rolled over and buried her head in the paper-thin pillow (as much as one could bury one’s head in something paper-thin) but the knock came again. “What!” she called.

  “Excuse me, miss,” a voice replied. “I have a tray of breakfast, miss. If you do not want it now . . .”

  “I’ll take it,” she said, leaning up and rubbing her head, her arms, her legs. Everything ached, but everything always ached when she slept in places like this. “Come on!” she snapped, when the door did not open.

  The man who entered was tall, muscular, and black-skinned. His skin was so black it was like the night’s sky. He wore a shirt which seemed molded to his body, showing his muscular chest, biceps and triceps. His neck was thick with muscle. His legs showed their muscle through his britches. His eyes were a brown so dark they, too, were black. His hair was jet-black. Alma gulped. He was a handsome man. She so rarely met handsome men.

  “You can bring it here,” she said, extending her bare arms. She wore only her nightclothes.

  The man stared steadfastly at the ground, as though that would change the fact that a man whose father may well have been a slave was in a half-dressed white woman’s bedroom. “It’s okay,” she said, once she’d taken the tray. “You needn’t look so frightened. I’m not going to hurt you. A big man like you frightened of a rake-thin woman like me!”

  The man’s lower lip trembled. “Ma’am,” he muttered, and then made to leave the room.

  “Wait,” Alma said. “Sit with me, if you will.”

  It was a request, but it did not have the tone of a request. The man pulled the one chair – a wooden, creaky thing – across the floorboards to the side of the bed. He still gazed down. Alma started on her food, a simple meal of bread and water with a side of some kind of miscellaneous meat. “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Solomon Crawford, miss,” he said, still gazing down. The floor, it seemed, was far more interesting than Alma.

  “I am Alma Abrams. I have been called a whore, a thief, a liar, a killer, a seducer. I am yet to deny any of those titles. So, Solomon Crawford, how does it feel to sit in the presence of a whore, a thief, a liar, a killer, and a seducer?”

  “I do not know, miss,” he said.

  “I am bantering with you,” Alma laughed. “You needn’t look so frightened. I am not a dragon, in truth.”

  As Alma ate, she studied the curve of the man’s neck. The way his neck muscles connected to his shoulder muscles fascinated her. It was all sinew, tight skin and bulging muscle. It was like a mountain range, peaking and dipping. She could have stared at those muscles all morning.

  Then Beryl tumbled into the room. “Solomon!” she growled. “Up and out with you! I don’t pay you to bother lady folk!”

  For a big man, Solomon moved remarkably fast. He was gone, out of the door, in a flash. Beryl stood in the doorway, watching Alma. “That was a strange scene,” she commented after a silence.

  Alma finished her food and placed her tray on the bedside table. “Was it?” she asked, a note of innocence in her voice. “I merely wanted to converse as I ate. I do not think there is anything strange about that.”

  “A negro and a woman with skin whiter than snow, sitting alone—and her half-dressed for all that. You don’t see anything strange with that?”

  “Perhaps our concepts of strange differ marginally, my good woman.”

  “Hmph!” Beryl exclaimed, gesticulating wildly. Then she let her shoulders sag. “Whatever the case may be, I have a message from Wallace Saville.”

  Alma knew who Wallace Saville was. He was the son of Abraham Saville, one of the owners of the Silver King Mining Corporation. But it would not be prudent to let this great barrel of a woman know that she had done her research before arriving, so she waited as though ignorant.

  Beryl went on: “He’s the son of the owner of the . . . But why he would want to meet with you, I’ve no idea. He did not ask for you by name, you should know. He asked for a meeting with the ‘attractive woman on horseback’.” Beryl swallowed after these words, as though they left a nasty taste in her mouth. “You’ll find him in the two-story building with Silver King above the door. Best not to keep him waiting.”

  “Thank you, my beautiful, darling, glorious woman!” Alma laughed as she sprung out of bed.

  Beryl tried to hide the effect these words had on her, but it was clear she was pleased. That was, after all, one of Alma’s most important talents: pleasing people. If you can please somebody, they will do anything for you.

  She was counting on that.

  Chapter 3

  She was led into a well-furnished office which was dominated by an arrogant desk, the kind of desk arrogant men sat behind when they wanted to tell the world just how important – nay, arrogant – they were. The man who sat behind the desk certainly had an arrogant aura about him. Despite the blazing heat of the Mojave in June, he wore his suit buttoned so tightly it appeared to be suffocating him. His hat was pulled low over his head. He wore a thick brown beard. Sweat flecked his cheeks so that h
e looked like he was crying. He was thin and tall. His eyes, Alma saw, were green. She had always liked men with green eyes. It reminded her of nature. But a woman on a mission does not let something as foolish as eye color determine her course.

  “May I sit?” she said, and then sat before Wallace Saville had a chance to say yes or no. Her action had the desired effect. He flinched.

  “Of course,” he said, about five seconds too late.

  “May I inquire,” Alma went on, ignoring his half-open mouth, his half-formed words, “why, sir, you have summoned me? Are we acquaintances? I am extremely sorry if we have met, but I do not recall you.”

  “I think you would remember me if we met,” he said, a little forcefully, his self-image rocking too much for him to handle. Here was a man women remembered!

  “Would I?” Alma waved her hand casually. If you say so. “So we have not met, then?”

  “We have not,” Wallace Saville said.

  “Then . . . ?”

  “I heard from one of my employees that there was a woman in town who was not a whore, not the owner of a hotel or bar, and not a wife. I admit I am intrigued. I wish to know why you are here. It cannot be for the culture.”

  “I am addicted to heat,” Alma said. She wiped sweat from her forehead. “The heat sings to me. It is simply the most positively beautiful thing on this earth.”

  “You are being facetious,” he growled.

  “You’ve caught me, sir.” Alma held up her hands in a gesture of defeat.

  “I do not have time for foolishness. I am—”

  “I have heard about you, Mr. Saville. I have heard that your father refuses to give you the power you deserve, though you are the smarter, more industrious, more energetic man. I have heard that you occupy your days in idleness while your father oversees most everything! Ah, that seems extremely nonsensical to me, but what does a prestigious man like you care for the opinion of a lonesome widow?”