“Emily?” He tapped her shoulder and the woman turned around.
“Name’s not Emily, sugar,” the gal said. “You must be looking for a young, pretty little thing that just took off upstairs in search of a room.”
Dear God, his eyes must’ve played a few too many tricks on him. The first woman he spotted with long red hair, he called his Emily without paying any mind to the way the woman dressed. He stared at her blankly.
The woman snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Is that the one you want?”
He shook his head for a second, maybe from shock. No, he was definitely in shock if he took one look at this gal and thought of Emily. This one had beautiful ruby hair but she was at least forty-five, a used-up whore with wrinkles in all the right places. She had a nice smile though and big breasts.
Clay liked whores with a good chest and nice facial expressions. He knew from experience those who smiled and laughed a lot had one hell of a good time in bed. He focused on her breasts. Her tits looked mighty nice pushed up high above her collar and for a second, he forgot about Emily, just a second and only because he was first and always…a horny man.
“What did you say? She went upstairs?”
“Sure did, sugar. She’s with our barkeep. She’s in real good hands with him,” she said with a wicked smile. “He’s got what every gal her age needs, a lot in the breeches and the stamina to make a trained whore into a very appreciative woman.”
The whore’s words were like a knife to the gut. Clay took the wooden stairs two at a time as he went upstairs to find her. He looked back downstairs over the saloon and realized the locals were paying him far too much attention.
“Emily?” he whispered as he walked down the hallway. “Emily!” He made the effort to raise his voice a notch and snapped out her name a time or two more. The last thing he wanted to do was cause alarm in a town where he’d prefer to go unnoticed as much as possible.
He walked to the end of the hall and spotted her reflection in the mirror. She stood in front of a made-up blonde woman, a real busty whore with a painted on smile. Her hair was piled on top of her head and she was working to pin it tighter so it would stay there.
“So your fellows bought Percy’s place?” she asked.
“Yes,” Emily replied. “Only they ain’t my fellows. See, that’s how come your boss said for me to talk to you. He said you’d teach me how to make them my fellas.”
The woman turned around to face her and Clay ducked out of sight. “Honey, he ain’t my boss. He works the bar here. I pretty much work for myself. I’m the only one. I’ve been here long enough to be used up by every good cowboy in the country so I get some privileges.”
“Oh,” Emily said with a loud gulp.
Clay stretched his neck to watch them and swapped out vantage points. Sometimes, he spied through the door and other times, he watched them in the mirror opposite them. He tried to control his breathing so they wouldn’t hear him.
“All right then. What are you here for exactly? You gotta be specific. Do you want me to tell you what your men are going to do to you or do you want to bring one of them over here so I can show you how it’s done. You can watch me with one or two of them and see for yourself.”
Emily stared at her in disbelief. “You mean you’d fuck them in front of me?”
“I’ll fuck anything in front of anyone for a price, sweetie.”
At least the woman was an honest whore, if nothing else.
“I don’t know if I could watch you,” Emily stood a little straighter and then continued, “I mean, I don’t know if I could stand it to see you with them.”
The whore held out her hands and looked at her fingernails. “So what, you want me to get a cowboy downstairs to let you watch?”
“Yeah, that’s what I had in mind,” Emily said. “If I watch you with one of your customers, do you think I’ll see everything I need to see?”
“Honey,” the whore touched her cheek, “what is it exactly that you want to see? Do you want to see a man’s dick or do you want to see the way a woman is supposed to react when she has one in front of her? Do you want to watch me suck cock or are you afraid you won’t do something right, act sexy enough for your cowboys?”
“Maybe that’s it,” she admitted before she sat down on the edge of the whore’s bed.
Clay had to smile to himself as he watched her look around nervously, smooth her palms over the coverlet where she sat and then immediately stand up again. Since he knew how Emily felt about sleeping in a bed where whores had played, the whole scene tickled him plumb too death.
“You’re afraid if you don’t learn from me that one day, one or all of them will end up here with me or one of the girls, right?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t stand it if I did it wrong the first time and they came up here afterwards.”
The whore laughed. “Yeah, well you’re not alone, sugar. Every woman in this town calls me a lowdown whore and half of them have good reason.”
“But you are a whore,” Emily told her innocently.
“This ain’t news to me, sweetie,” she said with a wide grin. “The thing is, whore or not, no woman wants to wear the title.”
“Oh,” Emily responded. “I figured you expected it.”
“Yeah, I guess. Thing is, I know people—women especially—talk behind my back and when it’s really ugly, I prefer it that way. See, if I heard it to my face, I guess a lot of women here would end up committing suicide ‘cause I wouldn’t take it lying down. You know?”
“Oh,” she said. “No, I don’t.”
The whore sighed. “Here’s the thing. These women out there beyond the saloon, they say all sorts of nasty things behind my back. Thing is if they dared say some of it to my face, I’d tell them lots of goodies about their men. Things like what their husbands say to me when I’m sucking cock or the way they pull my hair when they drive their dicks to the back of my throat. I’d let them have a good idea of what kind of sex drives their men into my bed and why they keep coming back for more.
“So you see,” she continued. “It’s better if I don’t know everything that’s said because I don’t like this retaliation business. It don’t pay well in the end and when a woman has a man to use for revenge, she can go for the heart and rip it out nine times out of ten.”
Clay watched Emily, really studied her. She digested the lesson from the wise, or rather… the used.
“Listen sugar, go on back down there and love on your cowboys. Try it by yourself. Tell ‘em what you’ve told me. If you can’t get it right the first time, then come on back up here and we’ll talk. I’ll let you watch me with one of your cowboys or one of mine. How’s that?”
“I guess it sounds good,” she said.
“But not good enough.” Clay stepped out where both of them could see him and he did it without thinking. He was as horny as a man in search of pussy for the very first time. And now his woman and her new friend had his undivided attention.
Clay’s cock pressed against his breeches. He inched inside the whore’s room and cautiously closed the door.
“Speak of the devil,” the whore said. “I imagine by the look on his face and show of his excitement, he’s yours?”
Emily and Clay exchanged a heated stare.
“Well, Emily. Am I?”
“Uh, I…I…”
The whore nodded her head with each ‘I’ waiting for her to go on, actually anticipating the words Emily couldn’t bring herself to say.
“You what, honey?” the whore asked.
“I…it doesn’t matter one way or the other.”
Clay grinned. “Don’t care either way, do you, Emily?”
She shook her head. “Why would I care? You don’t set down roots without yanking ‘em right back up.”
The blonde started for the door. “I’m gonna take a few hours for myself. If you two want my room for a bit, I’ll just—”