How I wish you could see the potential - the potential of you and me.

It's in a book that's elegantly bound, but in a language that you can't read.

You gotta spend some time, love - you gotta spend some time with me.

And I know that you'll find, love, I will possess your heart.

                        -Death Cab for Cutie- 

Chapter 25 

Billy held the lady's arm tightly as he stepped out of the saloon, and a cool night breeze rustled through her skirts.  Though it was only a half moon, it glowed brightly enough to illuminate the dusty wooden planks of the walkway and the rutted road beyond it.  His thick heels clomped heavily on the uneven pine boards as he led her toward the road.

"Not much to see in Colorado City," he offered weakly.  Though usually confident among the fairer sex, he felt a strange amount of discomfort with the woman on his arm.  What was her blasted name, anyway?  She stopped suddenly and looked at him, her eyes blue flames in the moonlight.   As he returned her gaze he felt a strange sensation in the back of his mind, like plucking guitar strings. 

"Drusilla," she said, as though she'd managed to crawl inside his head and sift through his thoughts. "But you may call me Dru, if you wish."

"Dru," he repeated, childlike.  "We could amble by the stable, I ‘spose.  My cayuse could use a stretch."

"You intend to invite your horse on our walk?"  The displeasure in her tone was matched by her expression, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with the desperate urge not to displease her, as the strange guitar string sensation continued to tug on his mind.

"No, ma'am," he mumbled, as awkward as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

He had a reputation with the ladies, goddammit, and this gal had turned him into a smitten schoolboy with no more than a look.  "You talk a lot like my old boss, John Tunstall.  You from England ... Dru?"

"I am, William," she lilted.  She traced chilled fingertips up his arm, and a shiver flashed down his spine, from brain to cock, quick as lightning.

"You're mighty cold, ma'am."  He shrugged out of his fringed leather jacket and held it out to her.  She looked at him and blinked uncomprehendingly.

"It's on the dirty side," he stammered, "but I reckon it'll keep you warm."

"Warm."  A curious smile slid across her face before she slid the jacket over her thin arms.  She looked at him, her smile growing.  "Very gallant of you, my William.  I'm not used to fine treatment from such a gentleman."

She reached out to him, and he flinched involuntarily.  What the Sam Hill was the matter with him?  When she twisted her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer, he met her halfway, leaning down for a kiss.  Her lips were so soft but as cold as Granite Peak in January. 

"The stable," she mumbled against his mouth.

"Stable?" he asked stupidly, feeling like the only thing under his hat was hair.

"Let's walk to the stable, William."  She spoke slowly to him as if he were a wool-headed boy.  He cursed his ineptitude as he led her toward the dilapidated wooden structure a few yards down the road.

"But not to see your horse," she continued. "I'd like to get to know you a little better.  It's private inside, isn't it?"

Was she saying what it sounded like?  Was she offering herself to him with so little effort?

"The bit-house crowd won't likely stir ‘til noon and even then, they're not liable to muck out the horse stalls."  He opened the stable door, and it groaned in protest.  A waft of stale air and horse dung assaulted them.  Billy paused.

"Maybe we oughta rethink this.  Stable's not the freshest place for gettin' friendly, I reckon."  A lady that talked so fine wouldn't cotton to a locale as foul as this, would she?

"On the contrary.  The Christ child was born in a stable.  Seems fitting you'd be born in one as well, my William."

Every now and then she sounded crazy enough to eat the devil with horns on, but he didn't falter.  Having a screw loose might not be a drawback, by his figuring.  It would likely turn a female into a real hellcat in bed.

"Is there a loft?"  Her hand snaked up his shoulder and toyed with the hair on the nape of his neck.  His cock twitched enthusiastically in response.

"Yonder," he dipped his head toward the shoddy ‘ladder' at the end of the structure.  It was a ladder only by the loosest definition of the word, as it consisted of old boards nailed crosswise to the center support beam.

Dru flashed to the ladder and was up it before he'd made it halfway across the dark enclosure.  People don't move lightning-fast like that.  It's inhuman.  He had to be seeing things, his senses muddled by the mescal he'd been drinking earlier.  Billy shook his head as he followed her up the ladder.

Though the loft wasn't roomy, it would do for what he had in mind.  A few bales of hay from last season were piled in the corner beneath a small window which he opened with a bit of shoulder persuasion.  When he turned around, she was sitting on a hay bale, ramrod straight, but looking so regal on her throne of dried grass that he couldn't resist grinning at the sight.

The queer little bundle she'd been lugging under her arm turned out to be a dolly which she'd placed in on the floor facing her: a curious audience of one. 

"Yes," Dru said to the dolly as though the porcelain lump was a living child.  "But if you're not very quiet, no cake for you."

She might be crazier than a shithouse rat, but when she turned to gift him with a sultry smile, he moved to sit beside her all the same.  He wrapped his arm about her cold waist and pulled her close.

Finding his own mind through the strange sensations pulling at the back of his head, he asked, "What's a lady like yourself doin' in these parts?"

"Making my Prince," she replied inexplicably.  Her slim hands removed his hat almost reverently, and she placed it on the hay bale beside her before giving his hair a ruffle.

"But, I mean to say ..."

She silenced him by placing her cold lips to his mouth.  The tugging sensations in his mind were quickly drowned out by the louder urgings from his groin.  Slipping his hands boldly up her sides so that he was just brushing her bosom, he pulled her close until she was flush up against him.  He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into the icy cavern of her mouth.  When she gave a purr in response, he moved his thumbs against her breasts in insistent circles. 

She slid a hand under his shirt, and he gasped as she scratched her nails across his abdomen, surely drawing blood.   A wildcat, was she?  He could play that way, too, and he gave her boob a tight squeeze.  She bit his bottom lip, hard, and a faint coppery taste washed over his tongue.

Dru pulled away from his mouth, her hands and attention focused on his gun belt, which she unbuckled frantically.  Damn him for a fool if she wasn't the hottest to trot filly he'd had the pleasure to ... pleasure.

"Whoa," he soothed, reaching out to still her scrabbling fingers.  "Don't need to be out of the gate so suddenlike."

Concentration interrupted, she glared up at him and let go a feral snarl.  Hellcat.  So be it then.

He leaned back against the bale as she whipped his belt off, his revolvers dropping to the floor with a thud.  No sooner had his guns left his hips than he was filled with a familiar vulnerable feeling that he always felt when his pistols weren't strapped to his sides.  Dru didn't miss a beat, though, and tore at the buttons on the fly of his trousers, her fingernails scraping savagely against his cock through the fabric.  Gritting his teeth like he could bite the sights off a six-gun, he reached out to run his fingers through her dark, tangled locks.  She batted his hand away without a glance.

Damned peculiar, even for a female.

Dru tugged his erect cock out of his trousers with a cackle, as though she'd just withdrawn the winning prize at the carnival.  She had a way about her, something animalistic, that made a man feel like a stallion.  Not daring to touch her after his last attempt, he reckoned the wisest path would be to simply lean back and see what happened next.

When she ran her icy fingertips down the length of his cock, it was soothing and terrifying at the same time.  He half expected her nails to dig into his sensitive flesh at any moment, but he had to admit to himself that the danger only fueled his lust.  Unable to listen to the voice of reason in his big brain, he instead heeded the urges of the little one and cupped her face in his hands.

She winced.  Winced.  As if he would lay a cruel hand on her.  He had a reputation, true, but he'd never been unkind to a woman.

"Not going to hurt you, Dru," he soothed.  "I'm not that sort of fellow."  He leaned up and placed a tender kiss on her dark red, cold lips; she allowed it, her fingers continuing to tease and dance along the length of his shaft.

When she pulled away she gave him a questioning look.  "No punishments?"

He shook his head.

She gave his cock a little squeeze. "Pain purifies.  The more it hurts, the better girl I am, Angel said," she said, as inexplicable as ever.

"Folks'll tell you, I'm no angel.  More of a devil.  But I won't hurt you, Dru."  Being with her was like trying to walk straight through the center of a blizzard; he could only blindly feel his way.

She gripped his cock at that, her hand an icy, steel vice.  Santa Madre de Dios. The pleasure-pain of it caused his eyes to roll back in his head.

"If you won't hurt me, should I hurt you then, my William?  No knives but there are other things that slice and open so deliciously ..."  Her honeyed words seeped through his mind, which was buzzing with strange sensations.  His head nodded, controlled by those strange invisible guitar strings or by his lust, he couldn't tell, nor could he give a happy god-damn.

When she let go of his cock, he felt the loss of it like his own breath, and he reached for her, needy as a child.  She hiked her skirts up with both hands, and he caught only the briefest glimpse of her muff before her damned skirts covered it again as she centered herself over him.  He held her about the waist, and she guided his cock toward her sweet spot, sitting down fast as a jackrabbit and impaling herself on him completely.  Her cunny was as tight as it was cold, and he shivered, his body responding with a strange concoction of desire and revulsion.

She raised her hips, then slammed back onto his cock with such force that the floorboards groaned in protest.  Fuck if this woman wouldn't break his dick clean off.  He had to grin.  There were worse ways for a fellow to lose his penis, he reckoned.  And it was bound to be one hell of a ride.

As though responding to his thoughts, she gave a rumbling growl and twisted her hips sharply.  She flexed her inner walls, strangling his helpless cock and bringing tears to his eyes.

When he began to fumble with the buttons on her bodice, she pushed his hands aside with a growl.  Not breaking eye contact with him for a moment, she tore open the front of her dress, scattering buttons across the floorboards.  With a quicksilver swipe of her fingernail, she ripped through the center of her chemise as though it were made of tissue paper.  Her snow-white skin matched her icy temperature, and her full, ivory breasts seemed to illuminate the loft as they bounced deliciously along with her thrusting movements.

She wrenched her hips in a way that brought a bright stab of pain from his cock.  In one fluid movement she tore open the front of his shirt and scraped her fingertips across his nipples, beads of blood rising up to cross his chest in trails.  When she dipped her fingertips in his blood, he half expected her to dab it in lines down her cheeks, adorning herself in war paint, Apache style.  Instead, she brought her index finger daintily to her lips, sliding it carefully past her teeth for a taste - a girl sampling the icing on her birthday cake.

"A birthday celebration!  A party for William."  Her voice rang like a schoolyard chant, coming from his ears but also from inside his head.  He was dimly aware that he hadn't said a damned thing about birthdays, but she'd crawled inside his head without invitation yet again.

"A final birth day."  She wriggled on his cock like a fish on a line, then leaned over to lick at the blood trail she'd left on his chest.  "And my gift.  Eternal youth, William.  Forever Billy the Kid.   No wasting away like your mother.  No getting older.  No fear of death, of posses, or the noose."

"I ... how did you ...?"  .

"Do you want it, William?" she asked, raising her hips up so that only the tip of his cock remained gripped within her chilly channel.

"Yes!  God, yes."  All his pride had skinned out for parts unknown.  He could feel a runner of drool slip down his chin, but he couldn't even muster the will to wipe it from his face.  "Dru, please," he begged.

She slammed back down, hitting his pubic bone so hard that he gave out a shout.  Once she was fully impaled on his cock, she caught his cheek in one cold hand and forced him to meet her gaze.  Her blue eyes flickered with something bright, something yellow; twin moons seemed to rise in them and grow until they swallowed her face whole.  Strange bumps and ridges appeared, transforming her beautiful face to that of a monster.  Her teeth became elongated and sharp as knives - his hellcat taking physical form.  When he reached out to touch, she smacked his hand away. 

This couldn't be real.  It must be the mescal he'd had earlier.  Had to be the mescal.  Because if it wasn't, the voice of sanity screamed inside his head, he was fucking a demon.

She watched him with those strange, animal eyes, and he felt something inside him quake, his cock twitching inside her cool vice.  Despite the almost unbearable desire to look away, he refused to break her gaze.  Billy the Fucking Kid had more sand than that.

Her fingernail was still dark with his blood when she held it up to her ivory breast and dug a line in her skin, just above her nipple.  A small creek of blood welled up immediately, and a rivulet trailed down to her nipple, where it began to steadily drip drip drip onto his chest.

"Drink, my Prince."  Weaving her hands through his hair, she pulled his head to her breast.

His squeamishness drowned out by passion, he began to suckle at her nipple, as desperately hungry as a child.  When she tugged his head up slightly, so that his lips were directly on her weeping wound, he was long past resistance.  Her strangely chilled blood dripped into his mouth, and he drank willingly, gratefully.

"Good boy, good William," she murmured, pushing him back into the hay roughly while keeping his cock buried within her.  She leaned down and bit his neck, hard.  Something crunched.  As a bolt of pain shot through him, his hips bucked upwards.  Dru held on for the ride.

He could feel her lapping up his blood, drinking like a goddamned cougar at a creek, but when she squeezed her sugared walls around his dick, he found he was unable to get bothered about what she was up to where his neck was concerned.

And goddamned if she wasn't right.  A little pain brought the pleasure of it to a new place all together.  Though her mouth never left his throat, she continued slamming against him, steady as a heartbeat.  Bah-bam, bah-bam.   Her thrusting hips and his beating heart speeding up, synced perfectly, pounding out a kind of life force

She picked up her pace, pumping away at his hips like a steam engine, just as he felt his heartbeat begin to stutter, failing to quite keep up with her galloping pace.  And the whole while, she continued to suck on his throat, the throbbing pain of it inflating his lust beyond his imaginings.

Just as Billy's climax was building, he could feel the room begin to pitch and sway, as if the stable itself had joined their primitive dance of blood and sex. 

Was this what dying was like?  Was he about to take the big jump?

Her mouth still busily drinking from his throat, she twisted her hips again, viciously, and he let out a cry, his voice sounding weak and distant to his ears.  Her pussy tightened and spasmed in delicious waves, first up the length of his cock and then back down again. 

Yes.  Oh, yes.  If this was death, let it come.  Let him come.  Let him die with this, with this most heavenly fuck.  As her cold walls clamped around his cock, he burst into her with, not a shout, but a whimper.

When his orgasm finished, his cock gave a final twitch and his heart twitched too, falteringly.  Its earlier frantic rabbit-beats now coming farther and farther apart.

Like embers from a dying campfire, his vision began to darken, from the outside edges inwards.  When his heart gave a final thump, tired and emptied at last, the room went completely black.

The last thought to blow across his mind was gratitude that he hadn't undressed completely, allowing him the dignity to at least die with his boots on.

~*~

Morning light crept around the edges of the hotel curtain, waking Buffy slowly.  She and William were entwined around one another like vines.  He was on his side with his leg cradled by hers, and her nose was buried in his curls.  She had to smile at how cherubic he appeared in slumber, his mouth slightly open and his lower lip pouting out.  His morning erection, pressing insistently against her thigh, belied his angelic expression, however.

Just as she was reaching out to slide her hand down the length of his cock, a loud knock sounded at the door, jerking William awake with a start.  He sat up in bed, his eyes wide.

"Your knock-up call, Mr. Pratt," an officious voice called from behind the door.

"Thank you," William replied loudly before lowering his voice and turning to her. "Today is ...  Oh, dear god.  Our train."

He reached over to where his pocket watch lay on the bedside table and flicked it open.  "Six thirty," he said.

"What time does the train leave?" she asked.

"Ah, eight o'clock," he replied distractedly, as he bit his bottom lip.  "But we've to leave from New Jersey, which is easily an hour from here."

"So we have thirty minutes to get ready, pack, get breakfast and get a cab?  No time at all for love-making."

He nodded, but his blue eyes glazed over, her practical and prompt husband seeming downright wicked and tempting and nothing at all like the man she'd thought him to be - prior to last night.

He kissed her forehead tenderly, then slid from the warmth of their bed.   She followed his lead and went to stand beside him, in front of their trunks.

Reaching boldly into her trunk, he fished out her black satin chemise set.  When he handed it to her with a hopeful raised brow, she couldn't help but grin and nod.  While she slipped into her bloomers, he put on his own linen underthings.  Buffy handed him his chocolate brown suit, then ruffled his curls, wordlessly telling him that she preferred this suit because it complimented his hair.

Having this kind of silent ‘discussion' with him felt terribly intimate - as though it was a kind of communion between man and wife - a small little machine of two which worked seamlessly, wordlessly.  It was, quite simply, a miraculous thing, and she felt absolutely filled to the brim with gratitude for the beauty of it.

While she pinned her hair up, William dashed out for a shave and to arrange for a carriage to take them to the ferry.  By the time he returned, she had just finished packing, having crammed a band box with hair accessories. 

"That's a lovely gown," he said, stopping to look at her strangely.

"Thanks," she replied.  She'd put on a green and white striped gown that she'd not worn before.  "Is something wrong?"

"Not at all," he murmured.  "It's just that ... it's same gown that you wore at the beginning of our sea voyage."  He gave her a smile, but it looked forced, and she felt a small blade of fear skate across the back of her neck.

"A good omen then," she insisted, and he seemed reassured.

"Ready, love?" he asked.

She nodded and slipped into his arms.  They were still kissing when the porter knocked on the door a few moments later.

~*~

They arrived at the station in New Jersey with fifteen minutes to spare.  The platform was a sea of pressed passengers and weary porters.  William guided them through the process expertly, his well-worn tour book held under one arm while she kept her hand tucked under the other.

Once he'd foisted their luggage onto a porter, William led her toward the front of the train.  The locomotive was massive, black and vaguely bullet-shaped.  It was carried by an impressive row of black wheels and a confusing assortment of rods and pipes. The large spout at the front of the engine wuffed out little puffs of steam clouds intermittently.

Pennsylvania Central Railroad was painted on the exterior of the somewhat battered looking passenger car before them.

"It's a Pullman car, naturally," William said, as though that might hold some meaning for her.  She didn't have the foggiest notion of the significance of his statement, so she nodded politely as he guided her up the steps.

Fortunately, the interior was a striking contrast to its worn exterior.  The car had an open floor plan and was startlingly lavish, with a thick carpet and an aisle trimmed with gleaming brass.  The windows were wide, accented with little cloth shades.  Just above them, paintings of idyllic country scenes were featured on the wood paneling.  Their seats were upholstered in purple crushed velvet.  It seemed less like a train car and more like the kind of olde tyme parlor that you might find in the Gilded Age Main Street at Disneyland. 

She grinned and squeezed her husband's arm.  "Very posh, William," she said, giving herself a mental pat on the back for using the Britishism of ‘posh.'

They settled into their seats across from two men who wore identical walrus mustaches on their upper lips.  The gentlemen turned out to be brothers, Reuben and Levi Shotwell,  returning to Chicago from a business trip.  The Shotwell brothers nodded over their newspapers as William made polite introductions.  Since the pair would be sitting across from them for the next day and a half, she hoped they wouldn't be the talky kind of travelers, but just leave her and William alone.

Once she was seated, Buffy leaned out to the window to watch passengers saying their goodbyes and staff busily tossing cargo and luggage in various directions. 

Just as the commotion began to settle down, a strange sound filled the air, slowly at first, but rising both in pitch and volume.  Woo-wooo! The tone shifted almost musically as the volume rose to deafening decibels. 

Woooooo-woo!  It screamed insistently. 

"What the fuck?" she said to William, a little louder than expected.  Reuben and Levi visibly straightened, their eyes wide and newspapers half-dropped to their generous laps.

William blinked at her, remaining startlingly placid considering the audio assault they were experiencing.  

Woooo!  

"That's a ... oh shit," she winced, realizing at once that not only was the sound simply the whistle of a steam train, but that she'd just dropped two curse words in as many sentences.  So much for worrying about their traveling companions pestering them with conversation.  The Walrus-faced brothers were looking at her as though she'd just sprouted horns and was handing out autographed nude photos of herself.

She turned and gave William an apologetic smile.

"Train whistle," he said, simply.

"Yeah, got it.  A little late, but I got there."

The train lurched forward and she had to brace her feet on the floor to prevent herself from tumbling to the floor, or worse, in a Walrus man's lap. 

"We're off, then."  William reached down and squeezed her hand.  "To the Wild West."

"Bad times are behind us," she replied, returning his grin.  Feeling a sudden wave of superstitious dread, she touched her hand to the wood-paneled wall of the train car and knocked. Hard.

--------------------------------------

Notes!

Fun fact:   Billy the Kid probably never saw a tumbleweed, that iconic symbol of the wild west.   Salsola tragus (Russian thistle) came to the continent from Russia around 1874 in shipments of flaxseed to South Dakota.  The weeds hadn’t made it to Billy’s stomping ground of New Mexico by the time he was shot in 1881.  The idea of tumbleweeds being new just delighted me and I thought you might find it interesting too. J