By Moonlight Wrought (Bt Moonlight Wrought) (8 page)

         “Yes, yes.  You can be such a good
boy...sometimes.  Let Busy handle himself, Dirk.”

         “What about this?” the patron asked,
pointing to his shirt.  Malchor looked at him momentarily then spoke.

         “You pay for the drink and then get out,”
he said, thrusting his thumb in the direction of the door.  Melissa chuckled. 
“This is a nice place, and we don’t like rudeness here.  So leave now, or I let
Dirk show you the street.”  He held his palms open and shrugged, cocking his
head as if saying:  “That’s all.”  The man threw a silver coin onto the counter
and stormed out, cursing.  Malchor turned to Dirk, not angry or rattled in the
least.  “So, Dirk, who is pretty girl?”

         “Malchor, this is Melissa from
Stoneheim.  She works with me at the store.”  Malchor shook her hand lightly
and smiled, holding onto her hand with both of his, his hands both warm and
soft.

         “Hello.  It is so nice to meet a friend
to Dirk—especially one so pretty.  He seldom has friends.”  Malchor kissed both
her cheeks, though Melissa had to lean forward and bend over ever so slightly
so Malchor could easily touch his lips to her face. 

         “Malchor,” Dirk sighed with
embarrassment.

         “I’ve known Dirk since he was a little
orphan, like Busy.  He would run in here to get away from the bully boys.” 
Malchor released Melissa’s hands and reached high to grasp Dirk’s fiercely
blushing face, his hulking shoulders slumped forward.  “So now he chases the
bullies off.  And look at him, no longer a little fat boy, but instead big and
strong like the ox.  And the ladies...they just love him.  I’m sure you know
this too, Melissa.”  Malchor smiled proudly as if over his own son, casting her
an obvious wink.  “It was nice to meet you, dear.  You come back and we’ll get
to know each other very well.”  Malchor left, patting Dirk on the back,
returning from whence he had come.  Dirk brightened, smiled shyly at Malchor’s
affection then introduced Melissa to all the regulars and they drank for
several hours before walking to Dirk’s room.

         Melissa’s slight attraction to Dirk was
growing:  while he was handsome and strapping, it was his honest integrity that
drew her to him and her time with Dirk showed her it was not an act, but an
integral part of his psyche.  And while he was no genius, his knowledge of that
vast confusing—to her—city made her seem brilliant and resourceful in her eyes.

         While Dirk felt the same warmth towards
Melissa, the two just had not told each other anything of their desires,
keeping their relationship platonic.  Melissa wanted fewer complications in her
life and Dirk, though he liked Melissa, had trouble trusting women.  Though
Dirk thought Melissa was pretty, in fact possessing one of the most beautiful
faces he had ever seen, he liked her because she was nice, honest, and simple. 
They talked about the most mundane things, and neither thought the other was
stupid or dumb, like others sometimes thought each of them to be.

         Dirk followed her in the door to his
room, shutting it behind them and subsequently leaving them in darkness.  He
stumbled over to the dresser, which he had gotten from Bessemer’s—the store he
worked in—naturally, while trying to light his lantern.  When he reached up to
grasp the lamp, his hand met something; something warm, soft, round...  He
jerked his arm back and felt himself immediately flush and turn red, glad there
was no light to illuminate his embarrassment.  Dirk could hear Melissa breathing. 
He, however, was not.  Finally, he spoke softly, timidly, “Excuse me.  I’m
trying to find the lantern.”

         “Oh,” Melissa said plainly and backed
away, the normal volume of her voice seeming extremely loud there in the dark. 
Dirk found the lantern, along with his flint and steel.  He fumbled but managed
to light it, keeping it dim, still slightly embarrassed.  He did not want his
first real friend to think that he was like every other man, hoping only to bed
her.  Though, Dirk admitted to himself, it might be nice for the first time to
make love to someone he actually cared for.  But his lust was not important
enough to lose Melissa as a friend.

         “Here it is,” he finally said, meaning
his room.

         “It’s nice,” Melissa answered with
politeness, not even looking around.  She sat down upon the bed and took her
boots off, while Dirk sat in a chair at the table, watching her.  Melissa lay
back on the bed then noticed his stare.  She blushed, and then laughed,
covering her face with her hands as she curled up facing away from him.  Soon
she rolled back toward Dirk.

         “Why are you watching me with that funny
look on your face?” she asked.  Dirk hadn’t realized he had been making any
funny faces.  Melissa stopped laughing, sat up, and looked at him.  Dirk had no
idea what she wanted.  “Do you like me?” she asked.

         “Yeah, I guess so.”  Then he thought
about it.  “Of course I do,” he said finally, realizing that the question was
as straight and simple as she was.

         “Am I pretty?” Melissa asked.  Dirk
nodded his head several times, then managed a “yes.”  They were looking into
each other’s eyes, their gazes fixed.  Melissa was breathing heavily:  she
wanted him:  his strong body, his soft manner, his handsome face.  She liked
him; really liked him.  He wasn’t the first man she had ever thought she desired,
but unlike almost every man she had known, he did not seem interested. 

         She had a desire for him; a burning deep
inside that could not be quenched with thought or words.  She wanted him close,
and instinctively, automatically, without thought or emotion, Melissa
unbuttoned her shirt.  Dirk watched.  Her mind paralyzed with shame, her body
continued to move, shrugging off her coarse shirt so that it slid down her
back.  Then she shimmied out of her pants.  Dirk watched:  the world, his
heart, his breathing all stopped.  Melissa lay naked on the bed. 

         Dirk walked over.  And though surprised
at his own lack of embarrassment, he stumbled awkwardly in anticipation. He
quickly undressed in front of her. They lay on their sides, face to face, and
though Dirk had no plan, no thoughts on what to do or how to do it, he
instinctively reached out and set a hand gently upon her hip.  Melissa leaned
forward, finally unlocking her gaze from his, closed her eyes and kissed him. 

         Dirk had bumped into Melissa several
times while working or even fighting together.  She was strong, tough and
uncompromising.  He had wondered, occasionally, what she felt like.  He
marveled that moment that no matter how rough and tough a woman was, she could
still have silky skin and lips so soft that it raised the hairs all over his
body.  So he slid his hand off her hip, around to her back and pulled her close
to him, chest to chest, and as Melissa threw her leg over his, they kissed. 
And they kissed more.  And longer, neither feeling the need to do anything
else; ever.  To spend eternity in that moment would have sufficed for each.

         Melissa enjoyed and flourished on his
attention and the way that he made her feel physically and emotionally.  It was
attention Melissa had longed for; attention from someone special, someone she
hoped she had found.  Or maybe, someone she wanted to pretend she had found,
desperately needing loved and cared for, hidden and protected from her past. 

         Dirk had been with few women, but enough
to know that Melissa was perhaps as inexperienced as he.  And unlike the others
whom he had loved, Melissa never asked him to do anything, she was happy just
being close to him.  The extent of her aggressiveness was to touch and kiss him
constantly, passionately, her femininity in that most personal moment so
contrasted her normally proud and unflinching nature that Dirk thought it funny. 
Though not a man of the world, Dirk’s half-a-dozen times with a woman had shown
him that Melissa derived her pleasure not from the flesh, but from something he
could not understand and had yet to experience:  her heart.  Where the women
Dirk had lain with lusted, Melissa loved:  her warmth as unexpected as it was
moving.

         When they had finished, each was embarrassed
and guilty, though neither knew why.  Maybe it was the spontaneous eruption of
that bout of lovemaking.  Maybe, to Melissa, she was afraid she had lost all
his respect by coming on so strong and clear.  To Dirk, sweet innocent Dirk,
there was the hope that he had not taken advantage of Melissa, but also the
worry that he had. 

         This non communication and subsequent
silence led the new lovers to believe that each was unhappy with the other, or
at least their performance.  Both dressed silently and went back to the
Grizzly
Bar
, though no mention of it had been made between them.  Both wanted to
remain together despite their embarrassment and they walked there side by side,
neither seeming to lead; neither seeming to follow. 

         Nearly an hour had passed before they
finally got around to discussing their act in broad generalities, hushed tones,
innuendoes and guilty looks.  “Well…what a night, huh?” Melissa murmured while
looking down the bar away from Dirk.

         “Yeah,” he replied.

         “I’ve enjoyed it,” she added.

         “Oh yeah,” he agreed, though not wanting
to sound as enthused as he had.  “I mean, it was enjoyable.  I…I like being
with you…I liked being with you…um…even more tonight. Not that I don’t like
being with you other nights…”

         “Yeah…I liked being with you tonight,
too.  As much as ever.”

         “Not more?” he asked, finally able to
look at her, noticing then for the first time as he studied her, Melissa still
looking away, the tiny hairs that he had made stand up upon her taut flesh when
he would gently stroke her.  She looked at him, her face worried for a moment. 
Then she smiled and nodded.

         “More,” she said, blushing for only a
moment before punching his arm.  “Gods, Dirk!  Lighten up.”  Just when he
thought the night had been imagined, Melissa back to her old all-work self, she
grinned, leaned in and kissed him briefly, heavily, before pulling away and
looking down at the bar.

         “Beer!” he called and the barman
delivered them drinks and they stayed together late into the night, their
bodies touching ever so closely, but touching almost always.  They returned to
work together the next day friends as before; no less but maybe a little more.

         Mrs. Pembroke, widowed mother of three,
followed her eleven year old son Willy to the warehouse from which her daughter
Darcy had never returned.  As the two approached, they saw a group of watchmen
holding a crowd at bay in the alley next to the building.  Mrs. Pembroke broke
into a run, leaving Willy jogging slowly behind.  The matron pressed through
the crowd and up to one of the lawmen.

         “Stay back, ma’am,” he said with little
emotion.

         “What is it?  What’s going on?” she
asked, trying to push past him.

         “I told you to stay back,” he warned, grabbing
and restraining the mother.

         “My daughter never came home.  They were all
playing in there last night!” she said, pointing at the old, dilapidated
building.  The crowd mumbled.

         “It’s nothing like that,” he said, “just
a dead vagrant.  Gorgrin, get the constable,” he said to one of the other men
who quickly, if not begrudgingly, did as ordered.

         Constable Mason had not witnessed many
scenes as bloody as this one, but such ferocity was becoming more frequent.  He
watched the blanket-draped body lifted into the back of the wagon that then
lumbered off down the alley away from the crowd.  Gorgrin informed the
constable that he was needed and also what he had overheard Mrs. Pembroke say. 
Though his beard showed gray and his belly a slight paunch, Mason was still
tall and broad, a commanding figure, especially when fixing his gray eyes on
someone in the cold confident stare for which he was known; a glare which made
those upon whom it was fixed feel like confessing everything they had ever done
wrong or illegal since the time of their birth.  This intimidating nature was
one of the most important traits the constable of the rough Dock District
needed to keep the respect of his rowdy citizens.

         Mason followed Gorgrin back to Mrs.
Pembroke.  “We’ve found no children, ma’am,” he said.  “You say that they were
in there?”  He looked to the warehouse with an indicative nod.

         “Yes, but all the other children came
home.  I came down here to tan her hide for sneaking out of the house last
night, but when I saw the crowd I became afraid,” she said, clinging weakly and
faintly to the lawman.  Constable Mason ordered half-a-dozen of his men to
search the structure again, leaving only one to hold the crowd, and one to
direct the street sweepers in cleaning the grisly scene.

         “All right people, let’s go home,” he
commanded.  A few citizens lingered still, but dispersed when threatened with
jail sentences for disobedience.  Mason then led Mrs. Pembroke through the
alley-side doorway of the warehouse and into a small room filled with crates
and seemingly worthless junk.  They waited there for the return of the watchmen
and finally after a quarter of an Andrelian hour, the militiamen started to
return, their findings negative.