"What Was Mine" 8
I wiped down with a coarse towel then handed it to Suelanne. She discreetly ran it between her thighs then reached behind to mop up the seed I’d spilled on her plump cheeks. She was flushed red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from shyness or excitement. She buttoned her dress back up, fixed the hair I’d dishevelled, then came to me and grabbed my neck, bending my face down to hers. Her lips parted, and her tongue darted surprisingly into my mouth. I understood then something I’d missed earlier: Suelanne, young as she was, was not inexperienced. How many men had preceded me? There were plenty about.
Her lips disengaged with a moist smack. She smiled at me lasciviously. “We’ll do more once you’ve had your duel, gunslinger.”“You’re gonna fuck a corpse?”She barked a laugh. “Nobody’s getting the drop on you, Mr. Gunniver.”“My name’s Stad.”Her eyes melted into mine. “Nobody’s getting the drop on you, Stad.” She kissed me again, and her right hand caressed my cock. “See you soon.”She went to the door, unlocked it, waved goodbye, and exited. The guard who’d been waiting outside came in with a sour look on his face. I was still naked, and the funk of sex was heavy in the air. “Don’t be so proud of yourself,” he said. “We’ve all been in that one.”“Yeah? How many of you have made her come?”He didn’t have an answer.I told the guard two things on the walk back to my room: that I’d be ready to face Head Warden Peyd by five this afternoon, and that I wanted to ask some more questions of Wrangler Byson. The guard plainly didn’t like the idea of being my messenger boy, but he nodded nonetheless. He left and locked the door with an angry rattle of his keys before stomping away.I sat on my cot then eased myself back onto the pillow, locking my hands behind my head. A good fuck was good to clear the head, and I got to thinking about my plan. It wasn’t cheating, as I saw it. From my perspective, Peyd was stacking the deck in his favour just by insisting on a sabre duel: he knew my reputation, and he knew that maybe no man in this prison could drop me in a fair gunfight. It was only natural for me to want every advantage I could wrangle, so to speak.Somebody knocked at the door about forty-five minutes later. It was a solid, masculine knock, so it wasn’t Suelanne coming by for a second helping. “Yeah?”“You wanted to speak with me, Mr. Gunniver?” It was Byson.“Yeah, come on in.”The door opened, and the guard glared at me over Byson’s shoulders as the big man barrelled in. The guard shut us in, giving us the privacy I needed. Byson looked at me with an open, pleasant expression. “You have more questions about how the cells work?”“Is that what you call those beasts? Cells?”Byson shrugged. “What else are they?”I sat up and put my feet on the floor. “What do you do when the prisoner’s sentence is up?” Byson frowned at me with confusion. “I mean, not everybody’s a life sentence, right?”His face brightened. “Oh! We have a special food that triggers expulsion. It’s similar to ipecac. The animals just start puking and shitting until the prisoner comes out, splat!” He chuckled.I frowned at him. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”His laughter dried up instantly. “I didn’t mean anything—““Relax, Byson. I didn’t invite you over to rough you up. It’s not your fault I spent two years in some animal’s belly. What I need is for you to mix up some of that ipecac, but in a smaller dose. Just enough for a man, you understand?”“Is this about your duel with the Head Warden?”“Yeah.”“Are you looking to cheat? I don’t want to get involved with—““You don’t like Peyd any more than any of the other men around here. He treats you all like servants and thinks he’s some sort of special, even though he must have screwed up in a major way to get sent here.”Byson looked side to side conspiratorially. “Rumor around the camp is—“I raised a hand. “Don’t really care. I figure he fought or fucked the wrong person. That’s how most things play out. Do you want to help or not?”Byson swallowed. “Are…are you going to kill him?”I smiled. “Truth be told, Wrangler, I haven’t made up my mind.”
