Page 36 of A Good Prospect

Tamasin held up both her hands. “Look, muchachos. I’m sitting right here! Listen, Ophir, niño. I agreed to wear Sal’s necklace because…” She craned her neck so she looked directly in Sal’s eyes as he perched behind her on the tub’s lip. The warmth between them was so palpable, Tamasin had to wipe the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. Sal even lifted a hand and brushed a curl of hair from where it was plastered to her cheek. “I like Sal.” One could almost say she loved Sal, if she knew what love was. Her heart literally surged in her chest when she saw him, and not five minutes passed, even when engaged in mindful work such as cooking, that she didn’t imagine him, or wonder what he was doing at the moment. Was that love? Tamasin didn’t know. She had loved her brother, but that was a different sort of love. “But I like you too, Ophir.”

That statement clouded Sal’s eyes again, although Ophir’s hands on his knees stilled and he perked up. “Wait a minute,” Sal said. “You like us both…equally? In the same way?”

Tamasin nodded and shrugged apologetically.

Ophir reached out a dripping arm and put his hand on Sal’s knee. “Hold on there, Sal. You have to understand this innocent girl. She doesn’t know what romantic love is! She’s confused, is all. She likes us both equally because we’re equally as kind to her.” He returned to scrubbing his feet now. The bath water was a sort of murky green, Tamasin was glad no one was coming to the door with fresh hot water. “I say the contest is back on, compañero. And do you even know what romantic love is? Have you ever actually been in love? How old are you, anyway? Over thirty years of age, I’d venture to guess. And the farthest you’ve gotten with these ranchero’s daughters is a quick fuck behind the stables. Nothing too romantic.”

At this, Sal stood indignantly. Tamasin was shocked and aroused to the core to see his erection proudly bulging out the lap of his calzoneras. “I’m thirty and five, and I’ve not been in love with any of these Californio women because I’m always out on the range, and I was drunk for about ten years! Besides. They are much too quiet and retiring for me. I like a gal with a little vitality.” He looked fondly at Tamasin. “Like Tamasin.”

Why did they persist in discussing her as though she wasn’t even sitting there? She cried, “I’m not confused! I do like both of you equally! What is wrong with that?”

Now Ophir stood, unfurling his compact muscular body like a creature emerging from a lagoon. “Because it’s illegal to marry more than one man, little duckling.” He stroked his stomach absent-mindedly, as though he wasn’t aware that his impressive phallus was at Tamasin’s eye level, and he was nearly braining her as it engorged and elongated even further than she thought was possible.

Now she was confused, and she stood to go pick up her mortar from the table. Taking Ophir by the arm, she wordlessly instructed him to lean his naked butt against a sideboard. Which he did, quite blatantly, leaning back on his palms, unconcerned that his penis was so stiff the crown grazed his navel now. He couldn’t have known what she planned on doing, but he was certainly relaxed about any eventuality. “Does it matter, though?” she asked lightly, dipping her fingers in the manteca. “You two are partners, compañeros. I’ll be around both of you no matter what.”

But Salvador would not be soothed. “I’m not sharing you with this arrogant pendejo!”

Ophir rolled his eyes, and Tamasin paused with her buttered fingers poised above Ophir’s admirable pectoral. “Salvador!” Already she resembled a scolding wife, as Niall always termed her whenever she dared to take exception to something he did, which was often. She hadn’t thought it would happen so soon with Sal. “You two are always together!” She stood nearly between Ophir’s outspread thighs, but she had to, to apply the poultice, flinching at the burning heat of his chest. The butter instantly melted, sending a gleaming ribbon toward his erect, beaded nipple. “How can I avoid one of you, if you’re always together? You sleep next to each other, you…touch each other.”

“That’s true, Sal.” Ophir squiggled one expressive eyebrow. What was true, that they touched each other? Tamasin was getting quite light-headed, her pussy so squishy a drip of juice rolled down her inner thigh. She spread more butter on Ophir’s bruised chest, but she was so weak she nearly pitched forward into him.

Perhaps noting this, Sal came so close he almost stood on the toes of her slippers. He breathed heavily with what she assumed was anger, but the heat from his distended penis gave her the idea he panted for other reasons. His dangling fingers were just inches from Ophir’s erection, which now twitched excitedly. Tamasin realized that she, too, panted, and her oily thumb now mindlessly diddled Ophir’s stiff nipple. “What is true, compañero?” Sal asked quietly. “That we’re always together, or that it stimulates Tamasin to watch us touch?”

“Yes,” Tamasin breathed instantly, without forethought. “Kiss him, Sal. Don’t fight. You upset me when you fight.” She realized she was being manipulative, but it was for everyone’s advantage, was it not? If she had to force these two bullheaded males into necking in order to stop fighting, well, those were the drudgeries of being a wife, she supposed. Rattling Sal by the arm, she urged childishly, “Kiss Ophir and show me that you’re not angry with each other.”

Sal had that heavy-lidded look of arousal she had seen when Ophir had frigged him in the mountains, and Ophir’s look was distinctly challenging and sly, his curvaceous lower lip jutting out. All on a sudden, Sal lunged for his compañero, and Tamasin fell back a couple of steps in awe.

Gripping Ophir’s jaw in both palms, Sal pinioned one of the powerful naked thighs between both of his, and laid an open-mouthed kiss on his partner. Oh Lordy, it was a sight to see, and Tamasin had to lean weakly against the sideboard, forgetting her hand was greasy. She slid off the sideboard and banged her hip against the edge, but managed to right herself in time to see the two men tasting each other as though they gorged on delicious sweet corn wafers. It was astounding the way men kissed each other with giant cow’s tongues intertwining, their jaws working, the muscles of their throats swirling as they gulped at each other.

Sal slapped a palm to Ophir’s lubricious chest and slid it downward, hard. It must have hurt Ophir to have those bruises pressed in that manner, but when Sal’s fingers reached the stiff nipple, he pinched it, and Ophir gasped into his mouth, while the massive erection that laid up against his abdomen jumped, so shiny Tamasin could see it pulsating.