Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

“If you’ll just let me expla—”

Neil didn’t let Harley explain. He dealt him a powerful uppercut to his jaw, which flung the buffoon backward into the counter. “Yeah!” Neil bellowed victoriously. “You try brawling with a penal colony inmate. See how far your instruments and calculations get you then!”

Propping himself on the counter, Harley raised only his fiery, murderous black eyes. His nostrils flared in a manner that normally would have been attractive but now meant certain doom. “You don’t understand a damned thing, you yokel,” he snarled.

“Neil!” Ivy shrieked. “Lay off Harley! You don’t need to protect me against him. I’m perfectly capable of—”

The bullish captain came at Neil so suddenly he was taken completely by surprise. Next thing he knew, he was lifted in the air by the brawny shoulders and slammed against the wall, the breath squished out of him in one resounding
“ooph!”

When he recovered enough to make a grab for Harley, the engineer darted around to his side and cracked both arms behind his back, like Neil had just done to Rodney Shortridge to put the bracelets on him. Pain speared through Neil’s shoulder at the audible pop, and since he had no free arms to balance himself with, Harley was able to fling him face-first onto the counter.

Harley pinned him there with one broad fist around his neck as though about to decapitate a pheasant. He kept Neil’s hips still by pressing his own to his backside. The rush of combat heightened all senses, and Neil was disgusted at himself for getting hot at the feel of the large, stiff cock jammed into the crack of his ass. With his wrists locked together at the small of his back, all he could do was huff and puff, inhaling photography chemicals with every snort.

Squirming only rubbed Harley’s jutting erection more victoriously against his ass. With a sense of impending disaster, Neil was flooded with memories of being in a very similar position not twenty-four hours ago, in the same kitchen, with the same man. Last night, he’d been flipped over so their hips were glued together. Harley’s frigging technique was so adept Neil had, embarrassingly, shot his load much too soon, betraying how aroused he was with another man’s fist around his cock.

Neil had tossed all night long with conflicting emotions about this incident. Then, today Ivy had been miffed with him for no reason Neil could discern. But since he was certain it had something to do with the irritating Harley Park, Neil had entered the kitchen swinging. And now he was pasted facedown in a puddle of chemicals.

Of course he’d be pinned like this. Harley was brawnier, wider, more fit for wrestling. Neil, wiry and quick as a flash, had always had this problem when brawling in Australia. Once pinned by any baboon, his fate was sealed. He couldn’t buck this brute off.

“Harley! Dear!” Ivy cried. What was this “dear” business? She had called him “dear Neil” only yesterday, and suddenly this pumped-up braggart was “dear” as well? “Don’t smash his face into those chemicals.”

Harley snarled, “Just teaching him who’s got the upper hand here. I boxed in India and know all the moves.”

However, he
could
dart his right boot out backward and bash Harley in the kneecap.

Harley went down like a sack of potatoes. Neil leaped upon him like a swooping hawk, slamming his entire body against the burly fallen man. He wouldn’t strike a man when he was down, but if they were both rolling on the floor anything was fair game, and now he landed another punch smack against that annoyingly handsome scar. It was satisfying to connect like that, but Harley rolled nimbly away, so Neil’s next punch only painfully connected with the wooden floorboards.

Once again, the brute was atop him, but Harley didn’t punch. He straddled Neil, rendering all his kicks feeble and ineffective. He clasped both Neil’s wrists in one wide palm and nailed his hands to the floor above his head. All Neil could do was spit, but suddenly all the fight was gone from him. And spitting would not look terribly manly.

Ivy kneeled next to them, a soothing hand on Neil’s chest. “Dear Neil!” Neil supposed
everyone
was “dear” to her. “Harley didn’t
do
anything to me. Or, rather, he
did
, but…Oh, bother!”

Harley panted down on him with the effort involved in tossing him about. “I was pleasuring her, you dolt. Right, Ivy?”

“Right.” She was smiling!

“Don’t you know the difference between harming someone and pleasuring them? Ivy was merely taken by surprise because she’s never experienced an orgasm before. Tell him I’m right, Ivy.”

“Harley’s right,” Ivy said mildly. “It was quite unexpected.”

“You out-and-out bastard!” Neil roared. “How dare you put your greasy hands on my woman?” This was an incompetent argument, Neil knew, since they had both met Ivy at approximately the same time, had spent equal time with her, and, well, the choice was up to her. Besides, the three of them were engaged in a common venture—finding Whit Gentry’s murderer. Neil was loathe to admit it, but when they weren’t tussling the three of them worked very well together.

Harley murmured, “She enjoyed it about as much as you enjoyed being frigged.” He gave a slight but distinct lunge of the hips then, lewdly gyrating his firm erection against Neil’s. Ivy gasped at Harley’s bold statement, but she leaned closer on her elbow so she could rub Neil’s chest. “You enjoyed that last night, didn’t you? You didn’t protest when I oiled up your prick and stroked you off, did you? I didn’t hear one peep of protest.” Again he lunged his hips into Neil’s, holding him there rigidly with his sinewy power.

“He liked it?” Ivy asked timidly, now stroking Neil’s temple soothingly. Both her hands were on his person, and she didn’t seem repelled by Harley’s bold speech.

Harley said, “Oh, he liked it so much he was humping my fist with lust.”

Neil twisted and bucked to show he
hadn’t
liked being frigged by Harley. “Who wouldn’t hump, you complete and utter chowderhead? Any red-blooded man in his right senses responds to anyone who wants to touch his prick. I’m no invert!”

“Oh
yeah?
” snarled Harley. “You didn’t try to lay me out as flat as a board last night. You were too occupied squirting your delicious load all over my chest.”

By scrabbling on his back like a crab, Neil was able to crawl backward until he hit a cabinet. As he crawdadded, he snarled, “It was just a
reaction
, you big old ape-man.”

Harley still held him immobile between his mighty thighs, but now Neil was sitting up against a stack of pots. Harley stroked Neil’s face with the backs of his fingers, and when Neil wrenched his head away, Harley held tight to his chin. “What about now, Deputy Tempest? Your prick is up like a rod jammed into the cleft of my ass. You can’t admit you like being touched by another man. But it’s obvious you enjoy the hell out of it.”

Ivy was squished into the cabinet next to Neil. She whispered with shining eyes, “Kiss him, Harley.”

Harley obliged the woman, crushing his sensual lips to Neil’s. Neil compressed his lips at first, but the insistent lapping of Harley’s tongue and the encouraging stroking of Ivy’s warm palm against his chest loosened him up. He could hardly have resisted, being straddled into immobility like this, and when Ivy’s hand slipped beneath his cravat and over the naked skin of his pectoral, Neil gave up resistance.

Opening his lips, he allowed Harley to slide his tongue between them. Harley lapped like a cat at a bowl of milk and even loosened his grip on Neil’s wrists. By the time Neil squirmed one arm free, he didn’t feel like belting Harley anymore. He was enclosed in the embrace of his two newfound friends, relaxing into their caresses. Ivy added her mouth to the mix, sucking his neck languidly where Harley had sucked last night. When Harley backed away from the kiss and Ivy’s mouth took over, Neil hardly noticed.

He was only vaguely aware that Harley warmed his crotch with his heated face, he was so wrapped up in Ivy’s ardent kisses. She diddled his nipple as she plied his mouth with her luscious, plump lips. Harley mouthed his cockhead through his pants, exhaling a hot steam that toasted Neil to the core. When Harley’s adept fingers moved to unbutton his pants, Neil discovered his own fingers weaving into the mass of thick black curls that covered Harley’s skull. Neil knew his cock was out in the air, choked by Harley’s familiar and talented fingers, but he kept telling himself it was all right, because the beauteous Ivy peppered his mouth with her kisses, and her bare shoulder felt like an alabaster statue under his hand.

But when Harley sank his blistering mouth down around Neil’s pulsing penis, Neil gasped into Ivy’s mouth. He felt her withdraw slightly with a smile, and her fingers joined his in petting Harley’s skull with encouragement.

Ivy taunted him. “Does he do that well?”

Already Neil twitched and jumped, pumping his hips into Harley’s warm shoulders. The mouth suckled like an eager calf at the teat, suctioning his prick expertly into its broiling depths. Though he had shot his load not twenty-four hours earlier, already he felt the jism surging up the length of his cock, and just a few more swirls of that slimy, fat tongue would bring him off. “Oh, God,” he whispered, his voice strangled. “Yes.” Squeezing the handful of satiny curls in his fist, he humped the sucking mouth and opened his eyes to Ivy’s.

She smiled brightly, obviously taking vast amusement and possibly even excitement at watching that virile brute of a man skillfully sucking his prick. She pinched Neil’s nipple with a child’s delight. “Are you going to orgasm in his mouth?”

Neil felt helpless at the hands of these two seductive teases. As the twining, lapping tongue brought him closer and closer to the brink of losing it, he choked out, “Yes.”

Ivy’s eyes grew wider, the pupils so black they nearly engulfed her irises. “And will you discharge your heavy load down his throat?”

Harley was grunting around his prick like a barnyard pig at a trough, the vibrations resonating down the length of Neil’s cock. “Great balls of fire.” That was the last thing Neil remembered before he blasted an enormous rush of semen into the hot, greedy mouth.

Harley guzzled and choked, making great gulps in his efforts to swallow the massive load. Neil’s cock pulsed and spurted wave after wave of blissful jism into the hot mouth. Ivy flung herself against Neil’s chest, and he gripped her shoulder so strongly he noticed later, shamefully, he’d left fingernail marks there.

“Oh, Neil,” she said in amazement when he finally shoved Harley’s shoulder to detach him.

Neil didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t want to look at the man who had just suckled him to the heights of orgasm nor the woman who had witnessed it. Instead he clasped Ivy to him and kissed her hungrily, over and over, until he heard Harley striding across the kitchen floor and fiddling with something photographic.

“Ah.” Neil sat up against the cabinet and grinned at Ivy, as though they had just taken a Sunday carriage ride together.

For her part, she gave him one last chaste kiss, rose, and poured some champagne into a flute.

“Neil,” said Harley, businesslike, his back turned to Neil as he fussed with something. “You’ve got to take a look at these new plates of Gentry’s eyeballs.”

“Yes!” cried Ivy. “We think you’ve got the wrong man. Shortridge can’t have killed Gentry. For one, he’s much too wallpapered and distraught over his wife.”

As Neil struggled to his feet, Harley turned to him. “Yes. That, and I have consistently developed photographs of a fellow wearing a derby.”

Neil buttoned his pants. “More derbies? He also wasn’t wearing his Cow Palace ring. Said he’d lost it during a shindig at the Bucket of Blood. He was knocked out that night by a shoe-polishing contraption and doesn’t recall a thing. And, Ivy, what was Shortridge saying about that bison skull wearing earrings?”

“He claimed he found a skull wearing earrings outside his front door, but I had the impression it was more in his imagination. More of a dream or fantasy.”

Harley snorted. “Hallucination, more like. Along the lines of your friend Caleb’s vision.”

Neil frowned. “Caleb’s no friend of mine!” However, he gingerly took the photographic plate from Harley and held it up to the kitchen window. Yes, there was the damned derby again. A reflection in Whit Gentry’s eyeball.

“We must hold a séance tonight,” said Harley.

Ivy asked, “Do you know how to do that?”

Harley nodded. “I’ve participated in them before. But we need to get Caleb out here to help.”

Neil told them it was impossible for Caleb to make it to Vancouver House by nightfall from his remote camping spot. Regardless, they sent a couple of boys onto the prairie to find him. But when Harley chimed in that they would need another body to make a “circle,” they were stuck tracking down Ezekiel Vipham. After all, he was the believer in the spirit world, and Harley thought Zeke’s enthusiasm would help the “manifestations.”

Was Ivy a believer? She thought she was. Her father’s faith in mystical spiritualism had fed her belief in the afterlife, and she had witnessed spirits herself on several occasions. Some of Simon’s beliefs were dubious and had had undesirable outcomes, such as when he imagined there would be a Second Coming and made the entire family live in a tent in an unpopulated valley for a month. Ivy secretly thought that incident had caused the consumption that had eventually killed her mother.