am a lover of women, a Barcelonese! We are famous lovers the world over! I have just never married because a soldier travels the length and breadth of the country. And with Frémont we set out to find the Arkansas River and wound up in Oregon.”
Milo stood tall and patted his friend reassuringly on the arm. “Don’t panic, Reynaldo. She’s asking because she actually likes being with two men who are making love. Look at her! Beautiful shining eyes, lovely floating breasts, and she’s hot for both of us. Why are you protesting so much?” He turned to Tallulah, who looked serene, as though she were the one who’d just been satisfied. “My sweet, are you appalled at our behavior? Speak up—be truthful now. Don’t hold back for fear of injuring our feelings.”
Tallulah got lightly to her feet, bending to grab Milo’s red pantaloons from where they were still gathered about his ankles, in a pile of fringed leggings. Milo had barely noticed he still stood naked. It had never bothered him in the slightest. She pulled them softly to his hips, fondling his prick, still at half-mast as she stuffed it inside. She licked his lips lightly. “I am the opposite of appalled, Reynaldo. I wish I had known to engage in this sort of play before.” She stiffened a bit suddenly, though, and pulled back a few inches. “But you had better never. Ever. Toy with another woman or man. Or I will cook your damned geese.”
Milo pulled up his leggings and knotted one about his upper thigh. “Yes, Reynaldo. She doesn’t like that. Be warned. She’s had bad experiences with unfaithful shit sacks, so treat her like the gem she is.”
Reynaldo regarded Tallulah soberly. “Consider me duly warned. Unfaithfulness between men and women is a most loathsome thing.”
Tallulah stuck out her lower lip. “Good. I do like your choice of lover already, Milo.”
“Then kiss him, Tillie.”
Milo shocked even himself with his words. He hadn’t planned on saying that. Really, he hadn’t! What was he thinking? But fire entered both his lovers’ eyes, and they certainly didn’t hesitate long before wrapping their arms around each other and smooching. Loudly and sloppily, too.
It occurred to Milo why he had commanded Tallulah to kiss Reynaldo. He wanted to gauge his own reaction. Already since meeting her, he’d become far more carried away than he’d ever imagined he would become. This frightened him at the same time it intrigued him. If he watched another man kissing her without becoming enraged with jealousy, that was a good thing. It would mean that Tallulah Crabtree hadn’t infected his heart with her poisonous spirit. Her weak feminine perfume hadn’t saturated his soul yet. He hadn’t fallen so far in love with her that he was doomed to another eternity wandering halfway in hell because a weak woman he’d given his heart to—and their child—had been butchered on the Oregon Trail by Indians.
It worked. Milo felt nothing but a tingling arousal watching the couple suck on each other’s mouths. Even when Reynaldo raised a hand and touched Tallulah’s shoulder that was bared above the Californio cap sleeve, bringing gooseflesh to her skin with a touch of his thumb, Milo was stimulated to the core. No green-headed monster of envy came roaring from him, forcing him to smash Reynaldo’s nose into the tabletop then bash him with the bottle of forty-rod.
But he did want to break it up. Reynaldo was right. They had to get back to the Blue Wing Inn.
It was a walk of only yards back to the bodega. Reynaldo walked ahead, allowing the couple to walk abreast. Milo took her as if they strolled down a pleasant New York avenue of cafes, not a dusty, wide avenue lined with begging Diggers who thought that pants were optional attire. The plaza was ornamented by one carronade, a flagpole apathetically flying the red, white, and green banner of the Republic of Mexico, and the bare bones of slaughtered beeves. In the springtime it was probably a
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