Parker smiled at me as their hands moved over my most intimate of places. “And you thought you weren’t ready.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARY
I soaked in a tub filled with steaming water in the washroom, eyes closed. The scent of rose came from the bars of soap and oils tucked into a copper basket hooked on the side of the copper tub. Copper. Most likely pulled from my father’s mine.
The brothel was quiet this early in the morning; all the patrons had been satisfied and sent on their way, all the women sleeping off their night of work. It was the perfect time to ease all of my new aches and pains. Not pains, but I was definitely sore. I couldn’t help the grin that stretched across my face remembering exactly how I got that way.
“It was that good?”
I opened my eyes to see Chloe standing in the doorway. She wore just a simple white shift and a shawl about her shoulders. She grinned at me and waggled her eyebrows.
“It was… better than good.” I tried to think of an appropriate adjective, but there was none. I doubted my childhood tutor could think of a word appropriate for how a woman feels after being fucked by two men.
Chloe came in and closed the door behind her, careful to let the door latch as quietly as possible.
“I am amazed your men let you out from beneath them.”
I grabbed a bar of soap, played with it, let it slip through my fingers. “They stirred, of course.”
“Of course,” she giggled, moving to sit on a short stool, her knees tucked up to her chest. Her red hair was plaited into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder, a simple blue ribbon at the bottom.
“But they understood my interest in a bath.”
“I bet they did. You have all the luck. Not one beautiful cowboy, but two. And Shooter Sullivan, in bed.” She sighed then. “I bet his weapon is mighty powerful.”
I rolled my eyes at her innuendo.
“That other man, Benson? I have more reason why you shouldn’t have married him.”
At the mention of his name, I shifted, the water sloshing toward the edge of the tub. “Oh?”
“One of my men last night is his foreman.” Chloe walked over to the tub, leaned forward and put her hand by her mouth as if to tell me a secret. “The mine, there’s no copper. The vein’s run dry.”
My eyes widened. “Dry?”
I couldn’t believe it. The man spent money as if it came from a well and he just pumped it up out of the ground. If his mine was dry, he certainly wasn’t behaving as if he were in trouble.
She bit her lip, then nodded. “Enough about that little shit. Tell me everything about last night.”
I poked a bubble on the water’s surface. “What?”
“Mary Millard,” she started, then giggled again. “I mean, Mary Su
llivan, you were a virgin last night and your first time was with two men. I’ve never even been with two men and I’m a two-bit whore in Butte.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You are much more than a two-bit whore,” I admonished.
“And as I said before, I’ve never been with two men.” She leaned forward, full of eagerness on her flushed cheeks. “I want to know all the details.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, for I have no other experience for comparison.”
Chloe was contemplative. “True. Then I shall ask you questions that you must answer.”
I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to share. It was one thing for me to peek into other people’s sexual escapades, another for me to delve into mine, even as minimal as they were.
“First of all, you are no longer a virgin, correct?”