Page 40 of A Good Prospect

“Good.” Softening a bit, Sal stepped closer and caressed her face in his hand. He always enjoyed feeling the glassy smoothness of her braided bun under his palm, and he tilted her face up to kiss her.

Ay dios, she smelled like powdery flowers mingled with wood smoke. It never failed to engorge his cock when he gently sucked on her full lips like this—but kissing was all they had been doing since that day at Las Oliveras when Ophir had brought her to orgasm with his mouth. Sal had instructed four bedrooms to be included in this house, but the downstairs one belonged to Knut Frostad, alleged attorney at law. That worthy so shook in his shoes when any of the trio so much as sent each other a warm glance, all lust had been tamped down the past week Tamasin had been here. They all worked so hard and fell into their beds unconscious at night before they reached the mattress, that so far it hadn’t been a topic on anyone’s minds. The only time he saw Ophir, for example, was when Ophir was repairing the iron shoe in the stamp mill, pelted with handfuls of hot crushed ore. In the mill, they had to scream so loudly to be heard over the earsplitting banging of the iron shafts, it was not worth trying to talk. Sal had requested a door be installed between his bedroom and Tamasin’s, but that door had been untouched.

There was also the fear of what Tyke had warned them of, having witnessed the men engaged in “poofy” activities. Sal couldn’t imagine how Knut would react if he were to happen upon them stroking each other’s cocks. Knut might even run at railroad speed to Hornitos and join up with The League, simply to avoid ever having to view such a scene again.

Now Sal would have to return to the office building with an erection that could break a plate, so he backed away from Tamasin and smiled at her. “Now, wear that holster and take this hammer out of your pocket. Whatever do you use it for?” He placed the hammer on the table.

“I use it all the time!” she protested. “I hammer nails I don’t see seated correctly, I hammer acorns to make bárbaro mush, and I am about to hammer your head if you don’t stop bossing me around!”

Sal grinned from ear to ear. Tamasin was a sprightly woman, and very difficult to order about. That was beginning to seem like a good thing.

* * * *

The meeting with Ophir, Knut, Jules, Henri, Hector, various Sonoran jefes, and the engineers of the office had gone on so long and taken so many convoluted turns, it was past midnight when Sal staggered out of the building. Holding his whale oil lantern up high since it was a moonless night, he found himself stumbling through an acre of snoozing prospectors lounging on their Indian blankets, their weapons and tools under their heads, animals tethered close at hand, some hobbled against horse thieves.

Ay dios, Sal thought as he navigated the front steps of his new house. Whatever will I do with all these Sonorans? So many men had reported for defensive duty at the mill, and so far, he only had tents enough to sleep his own thirty Sonorans.

Sal’s stomach growled as he stood in the foyer, pivoting about, undecided where to head—stairs or kitchen? The acidy roiling of his stomach made up his mind instantly, and he sprinted to the kitchen. There was an old-fashioned ice box there that contained no ice, of course, but since it was iron, it kept things cooler than the barbecue fieriness of the rest of the house.

He saw a few of the oranges Tamasin had earlier been peeling, but the room was enveloped by blackness when he reached for the fruit. Damned lantern, out of fuel. He grabbed the orange and managed to place the useless lantern on the table. Feeling along the walls, he made his way back in the direction of the stairs that led to the upper story. He gasped in shock when his hand hit something even hotter than the wall and definitely not fashioned out of wood. The orange dropped to the floor and rolled, and now Sal was afraid of stepping on it and taking a tumble. His hand went to his holster, but Ophir was laughing.

“Run out of whale oil? Mine got blown out by the roasting wind.” Ophir shoved on past him, and Sal could hear him fumbling around, presumably in the drawers of the wooden table in the center of the room. “’We spend our midday sweat or midnight oil—”

“We tire the night in thought, the day in toil,” Sal finished for him.

The phosphorous match between Ophir’s fingers flared into life, illuminating his striking face, dark and polished in the hot oven of the kitchen as though hewn out of obsidian. He smiled at Sal brightly. They had been reading the same book from Captain Dearborn’s library, evidently.

Ophir held the match to the lantern wick and the room was lit sufficiently for Sal to find the orange on the floor. “Who did Hector put on night watch at the mill?” He casually peeled the orange, dropping the pitted pieces of skin onto the table. They sprayed at him with an acidy citrus that swelled pleasantly inside his nostrils. But when he glanced up again at Ophir, the blacksmith was reaching over his neck to yank his shirt off. Sal’s fingers on the orange stilled.

“Ah!” Ophir sighed in satisfaction to peel the clammy linen from his muscular back, and he flexed his pectorals to display how good it felt. After unbuckling his gun belt and dropping it on the table, his eyes flickered with interest at Sal’s orange. He bent over the icebox to retrieve one himself, saying, “He went to wake up those Rivera brothers, get them to stand guard.”

Sal decided to at least rip off his heavy leather vest and deposit his gun belt next to Ophir’s, and the relief was instantaneous, leading him to imitate Ophir and peel his shirt off, as well. “Are you sleeping with your revolver?”

Ophir leaned his butt against the stove, fingering his orange with disinterest. “I’m putting it inside my bed,” he affirmed. He placed the orange on the stovetop and grinned. He was probably too hot to eat. When he put his hands on his hips every muscle in his torso glimmered with a bulging intensity. Sal had been dreaming of Ophir’s body equally as much as he had been dreaming of Tamasin’s, but everyone had been too beat at the end of the day to move a muscle, sleeping in a sopor as though they’d taken hypnotics. “But I don’t look forward to the heat of that bedroom, with only one window.” All of the kitchen windows that constituted two entire walls of the room were open to the hot wind.

“Sí,” Sal agreed languidly. “We might as well just sleep here in the kitchen.”

All on a sudden without forethought, Sal tossed the remaining segments of the orange to the table and lunged for Ophir. Ophir responded ardently, flinging his arms about Sal’s shoulders and gripping him tightly. Sal pressed Ophir into the iron stovetop with his pelvis, raising his booted foot so that its heel rested at the back of Ophir’s knee—luckily they did not wear the oversized jangly spurs, as they had not ridden anywhere that day.

Fairly mounting Ophir in his zest, Sal gyrated his erection against Ophir’s and sucked up his partner’s luscious lower lip. It was heavenly to feel Ophir’s slickly muscled chest against his, hairless and solid as the quartz ore he pulverized every day. Ophir inched one palm down Sal’s back, massaging and squeezing every tensely painful sinew that had been pummeled by the uncustomary mining work. As they panted against each other’s mouths, a drip of sweat flicking off the tip of Sal’s nose, Ophir worked his hand lower until he gripped Sal’s haunch in his claw, urging Sal to ride him.

Their calzoneras were so strained by their erections, the friction of their brass buttons against each other nearly created sparks. Something would combust soon if they continued to rut fully clothed, and Sal knew from unfortunate experience how unpleasant it was to climax inside of the heated leather leggings. So there was no forethought, no sentence spelled out in his brain, that told him to do what he did next. Sal suddenly found himself kneeling before Ophir and nibbling at the delicious bulge that now rode up near his hip.

“Ah!” Ophir gasped, lifting a boot to wedge the heel on a stove handle, indicating his willingness to be toyed with.

Sal bit and chewed at the leather-clad erection, drooling so ardently he knew that later on Ophir would have an embarrassing wet spot on his calzoneras to explain away. Sal’s left hand nimbly unknotted the red silk sash and unbuttoned the broadfall, vastly rewarded when his fist closed around the pulsating phallus, so hefty it was like a limb. This time, instead of diving right onto it like a ravenous feral dog, he parted his lips to taste the knob of the prick, darting his tongue out to snake around the underside. This time, he would make Ophir beg for it.

The taut crown was hot and tight underneath his tongue. Taking up the massive balls that more than filled his entire palm and massaging them, Sal yanked the calzoneras down past Ophir’s knees, enabling Ophir to spread his thighs farther apart. Ophir’s fingers dug into Sal’s naked shoulders and he humped the air as Sal played the teasing game with him. Sal sucked on the full crown while squiggling his tongue against the underside, then retreated to bestow tiny flicking motions around the tip. When Ophir started huffing his frustrated lust in a series of arousing “ah!” cries and swiveling his hips in attempts to jab his cock down Sal’s throat, Sal gave a bit more.

He suddenly swallowed as much as was possible without gagging, giving it three or four good sucks before he relented and backed off. This time Ophir did utter a frustrated “Good God!” and gripped the back of Sal’s head to urge his cock down his throat, but Sal persisted in applying his flicking tongue to the underside of the phallus. Now he lunged forward to gently suck one of the balls as though it were an egg that might break, tickling the squishy globe with his tongue-tip.

Ophir grabbed a handful of Sal’s hair and yanked his head away. Sal looked up innocently to see Ophir glaring down at him. “Suck on me, Sal,” he said menacingly.

Without guile, Sal murmured, “I don’t want you to shove me away again—”

“I won’t shove!” Ophir snarled as he shoved Sal’s head toward his groin, spearing his penis down Sal’s throat. “Oh!” Ophir’s instant groan resonated so fully down his body, Sal could feel the vibration in the cock he struggled to swallow. Sal found that if he relaxed his throat muscles, he could take another inch without choking.

He tried to think of prior woman—hookers, maybe all of them hookers—who had sucked on him. Did they have such large mouths and throats, to stuff all of that meat down there without choking? Well, some women, of course, strangled and choked on his tool, but just the sensation of having a warm suctioning mouth clamped around him had been enough to bring him off immediately.