#charles smith

The tavern isn't so crowded tonight. It's a sad, raggedy bunch nonetheless. They lean over eachother's shoulders and slump onto the rickety wooden tables. They groan about their frigid wives and the curdled joys of drink and sing songs to the same effect.

You polish glasses, you serve drinks, you boot men out of the tavern with a sharp word, and your hand braced on the shotgun holstered in the leather belt of your skirt. You'll take it, though. All the perverted glances and hushed innuendo made crystal clear by the drink you've fed them. You'll take it, because it means freedom for the next few weeks. With your husband gone on some wild goose chase for gold bars with a no-good lot. It means a bed all to yourself, a night uninterrupted by his affections. A peace that comes squashed into a shotgun round.

Adusting the tie in your hair, you do up another button on your blouse as a hulking figure shadows the doorway. The sun is setting, framing him in a marigold glow, outlining him in light. You can make out a big man, hair so black that it is almost blue where the light hits it. The sillouhette of a strong, curving nose. He pauses before entering, and when he steps into the Tavern, you see a shotgun strapped to the thick muscle of his thigh. He approaches the bar, and you shrink back at the sheer presence of him. He looms over the bar, imposing. Up close, his face is not so brutal as you'd imagined in the seconds before. His eyes are brown, like coffee, like earth. His skin is dark too. A vicious scar cuts through his cheek, a vine on the tallest of trees.

"Miss." He nods briefly; a bow is slung over his shoulders.

"It's ma'am." You say without thinking.

"I'm sorry." He says, his voice low and yet—it carries. It sifts through the stench of alcohol and slats of rotting wooden walls. "Ma'am."

"What'll you have?"

"Beer, if you've got it."

"What kind of establishment would this be if I didn't?"

He doesn't laugh, only looks at you with those dark eyes of his. You pour him the beer and set it down in front of him. He looks down into the foam, and you admire the fringe of his lashes, silken against his cheekbones.

"What's your occupation, Mister?"

"I'm a labourer, ma'am." He takes a sip of his beer.

"That's a lie, Mister."

He almost smiles, almost.

"That so?"

" No labourer would have hair so long, nor a bow so fine. Nor pay so much for beer." You murmur, looking at the carved thing.

"I made the bow." He says, and a hint of amusement glints in his eyes.

"I could turn you in, you know."

"You could." He says peacefully, taking another sip.

"And if I did?"

"I reckon that I couldn't do much about it." He says, angling his head at the shotgun.

"You could kill me." You offer.

"Wouldn't kill my hostess."

"Good. I wouldn't turn in a patron unless he misbehaves."

"I won't. I'm thirsty, is all."

"Aren't we all." You remark dryly and bring up a cloth to wipe the sticky surface of the wooden bar.

"Seems a rough crowd." He says.

"No rougher than usual, Mister…?"

"Smith. Charles Smith."

You raise a brow.

"My name's Smith too." You say, "Or my husband's."

"It's a common name."

"I know. Figured that when I married him."

"Ain't here, though. Is he?" Charles cocks his head.

"He's chasing gold that doesn't exist."

"Leavin' you alone?"

"I'm hardly defenceless," You smile.

The evening passes with little trouble apart from a scuffle at the makeshift poker table and the near-shooting of one of the patrons. It is late night when they begin to file out of the tavern.

"Mr Smith." You say softly, as he turns on his heel. "I have whiskey and cigars upstairs."

"Whiskey." He says, as if he has misunderstood your words. The bone beads of his necklace gleam in the candlelight.

"And cigars. No use if my husband isn't here to smoke them."

"And whiskey ain't much use at all." He says, and you flinch at your own misstep.

"Aren't you tired?" You say. "Mr Smith."

"That ain't nothing new." He shrugs.

"I am too." You say, and keep yourself from clutching his sleeve. "Real tired."

Without a word, he turns to you, boots at your heels. There is silence after this, save the shuffle of your cloth shoes and the thump of his boots up the rotten stairs. Once you reach the top, you light a singular candle and let it light your way to the bedroom. It stopped looking like your husband's a long while ago. It's covered in a quilt you made of faded floral scraps. The room smells like your cheap bottled scent. Rummaging in the wardrobe for a dusty bottle. Open it by slamming your neck against the wooden dresser.

You take a sip of the whiskey, fixing your mouth around the bottle. It burns, sizzling a path down the gravel of your throat. You hold it out to him; he closes his hand around the neck of the bottle and brings it to his full mouth.

"Is this decent?" He says, his face unforgiving.

"Leaving your wife to fend for herself in a tavern full of drunks ain't too decent either."

"No."Another slug of whiskey; you watch the ball in his throat move as he swallows it. "It ain't."

"I lied." You say, watching him, the candle reflected in his eyes. "I don't have cigars."

Charles nods slowly. You take the opportunity to observe him in the low light; it is difficult to make out how old he is. His face is weathered, scarred. But his hair is thick and dark, long. His forearms are thick with muscle and sinew, but the skin stretched tight over them is smooth, only interrupted by a ridged scar. It is indecent, this documenting of his body. Even more indecent are his eyes roving down the length of your throat, the curves of your breasts under the homespun blouse. His hands come down to your hands, and you clench them into fists, wanting to conceal the chewed-up nubs of your nails and your own scarred hands, ruined from picking shards of broken glass and learning your husband's rusted weapon.

He sets the bottle down on the dresser, and when you turn towards him, your hands are already fisting themselves in the collar of his shirt, bringing your face to his so your breaths mingle, soured with alcohol.

"Mr Smith." You say, mouth already pressed to his, the flats of your teeth scraping each other.

"Mrs Smith." He mumbles, and for a moment you pretend this is a moment like any other, a soft place to rest, bound together. Although you do not know him, could not say with any certainty what kind of man he is, you wish for what you cannot have. He loosens the tie from your hair, and it falls around your face, clouding your view of him. Reducing your eyes to only glimpses of his skin, sweat coagulating on his clavicle, the flutter of his lashes framing dark eyes.

You push at the collar of his shirt, slipping your hand beneath it to stroke the bone and muscle below. His heart slams against your palm, and he drags his mouth to your jugular. Let this last longer than a night; even when you ride away, let me be an arrow in your quiver, the blade of your axe.

He fits his mouth against the bridge of your nose, murmuring foolishness that sounds unpractised on his tongue. Are you sure? You want me? Be sure.

Somehow you are divested of your skirt and blouse, all falling in a heap at your feet. You feel a wild thing, the skin of a woman all peeled away, and the screeching, wailing beast in your chest is free. His mouth has found its way to the hinge of your jaw, sucking at the point of it.

Clumsily, you claw his shirt off his broad shoulders and back. Your nails dig into the ball of his bicep, biting into the hard muscle there. He grunts as you do, pulling you closer, always closer. His arms band across your back till you are flush to each other, cracked porcelain mended with gold.

His hair has come loose from its cord, strands dripping down his temples and brushing your face. You twist your fingers through the soft hair. Sweat beads at his temples and you draw yourself up to the tips of your toes to kiss it away, tasting salt and dust.

Charles sighs and pulls himself away from you as if peeling himself away. Sweat soaks through your chemise, and his. You lay your hand on his cheek, the ridges of a scar and the scrape of his stubble against your palm.

"Are you alright?" Your voice is a little breathless, chapped from kissing him.

"I am." He says, breathing deeply. His chest, pumping from exertion, is warm. "Are you?"

Drawing back a moment, you slip the chemise off your shoulders, revealing bare breasts and nipples peaking under his gaze. There's a flare in his eyes as you remove all your undergarments. You take his hand and press it between your legs. A strangled noise escapes him, and you watch the beat of his pulse in his throat.

"Feel." You murmur. It parts under his touch, sticky with want, an open wound for him to lodge himself in.

Then, you touch the thick bone of his wrist, the slightest of pushes. When he pulls away, a gossamer string of wetness stretches taut and breaks. He is still, just watching you. A hunter tracking the movements of a fanged thing. The only movement in his body is the rise and fall of his chest.

You lie back, spreading your legs a little; the pooling liquid between your legs makes a tacky, pulling noise as you sink your fingers into yourself. He moves his hand down his belly, past his navel and palms himself in his breeches. He's a large man, and that much is obvious from the hard ridge of his cock against his thigh.

Charles hardens still, under his own touch, grinding the heel of his palm against himself. The veins in his forearm strain with the restraint of it. You rub your own fingers against the peaked bud between your legs. For a minute, you want to beckon him forward, tell him to ready you for himself and use you as he pleases. But you have not fallen so far yet, and there is something suspended about this; the anticipation skittering up your spine is delicious, and you will taste it a little while longer. You lift your hips from the bed, making an unwilling animal noise in your throat. He responds in kind, reaching into his breeches and taking the heavy shaft of his cock out. You watch as he curls a hand around it, your mouth waters and a stream of fluid dribbles down the shaft. You give in.

"Charles." You whisper. "Come here."

He approaches you, taking your ankle in his hand to spread you further open, hooking your leg around his hip. His brow knits as he lowers himself into the cradle of your thighs. He's so wide that your hips ache when you lock your legs around him. His cock presses against the opening of your cunt crudely as he leans down to kiss you. He cradles your head when you kiss him with equal ferocity.

Charles does this for some time, presses the head of his cock just into you, and then back out. Kissing and caressing your body with a gentleness so natural to him, he is extracting the marrow from your bones, pulp from your lungs. You feel yourself a skinned, vulnerable thing, pelt stripped and softened. Madly, you think of yourself in a next life, the fur on the collar of a coat, strips of soft leather braided and constructed into a belt for guns. Your head mounted on the wall, eyes unseeing. It would not be such a bad fate, to be hunted and all parts made use of, and the rest of you, unfeeling and beautiful for all of eternity. You've only ever been hunted, and spat out when it is discovered that your flesh has corroded.

Abruptly, he pulls you from this sordid fantasy. His eyes are soft in his weathered face; a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. His face, god, his face. You know that when this ends, you cannot forget it.

"How do you want me?" You say, and the speed at which you are willing to contort yourself to his liking makes a sick thread of revulsion slice through you.

"Turn over." And what should be a crude demand turns carressing on his tongue, softened in the rasp of his voice. Revulsion for your own festering desire turns glowing with heat. Instead of the clotting blood on a wound, you are melting wax turned moldable by heat.

He steadies you as you roll over, smoothing his hand down your back. The fine hair lining your body prickles, skin mottling with goosebumps wherever he touches you.

"Are you cold?" He says, as your spine judders from his touch.

"A little." You lie, only to get him to come and warm you. If he sees through it, he does not tell you. He braces one knee on your sagging mattress and fits himself against your spine. Charles stills a moment, his chest expanding against your shoulder blades. His breath stirs the hair at your nape. He drags his mouth against your nape, pressing a kiss to each knob of your vertebra, hands braced beside your head.

"I want you so much." He murmurs into your hair. "Can you tell?"

With that, he sheathes himself inside of you. All the vulgar secrets collected behind your molars spill out. This is pre-ordained, or perhaps pre-meditated. You've long forgotten the difference. Perhaps an unseen force has driven your hand, put the advertisement for men to mine gold in your husband's eyeline, put on an act better than any showgirl of a resentful wife keeping a stiff upper lip and braving the man's world of business. Perhaps this same force has guided your hand pouring Charles a drink, guided your hand into his collar, guided his cock inside of you. All these thoughts are far too complex for your fat tongue, so all you can really express is;

" I can tell. Oh. I want you so much. Please, please." Leave a wound inside of me that will never close.

"It's been so long." His voice cracks, seething emotion behind it. "I need it so badly. I'm sorry."

What is it he needs? You wonder as he ruts into you with the force of a man starved.

It? You?

Charles's body crushes yours into the mattress as he approaches his climax. His cock twitches and kicks inside of you. It seems in the brief hours you have known each other, you have become attuned to his body. His hand laces with yours and he is so big. You could never feel anything but consumed by him. He bands his arm across your chest, and what would be a rough movement only cradles your chin in his elbow, cheek to his bicep. His hand tangles in your hair, grasping sweaty handfuls as you whine and beg him to rip you in half.

Then, your neck is twisted back, and there is no escaping his tongue licking into your mouth, spit smearing across your face and cheek. Tendrils of his hair stick to your cheek, his hand locked around your aching jaw. His balls draw up tight against your ass, making a crude noise. The old bed creaks. Charles pulls out, and you hear him groan. He lifts himself onto his knees, releasing you from under him and just as he is about to spill himself in the cleft of your ass—

"In my mouth." You say breathlessly. "Come in my mouth."

Scrabbling up the bed, you turn, and he eases his cock into your mouth.

"Okay. Okay." Given a moment of respite, he regains his composure. "Slowly. I don't want to hurt—"

Charles clutches at your hair and then loosens as you ease pressure. You'll be gentle with him; you suspect not many people have been. His hips stutter as he fucks your throat and his hand comes down to stroke the bulge stemming your garbled speech. He tucks your hair away and spills down your throat in an endless spurt of heat. You reach back and grasp his heavy balls in your hand, gently massaging the last drops of his release out. Charles makes a low, desperate noise.

His face glistens with sweat when you look back up at him, his cheekbones and hair soaked with it. There's a fine tremble in his body. His cock, now softening, is glossy with spit and come. He cradles your head and leans down to kiss your hairline.

You lie together after, tangled like trees grown from two seeds planted in the same shallow earth. Twisted around each other, your hand tangled somewhere in his dark hair, the other stroking his stone-like face, wiping sweat from it with a newly forged tenderness. His eyes are shut; only the slight unevenness of his breaths tells you he is awake. His hair is fanned over the pillow, knitting itself with yours till the strands are indiscernible from one another. A macabre dream begins to bleed into your spare consciousness, a river of fire blanketing you, turning you both to stone. Suspended, embedded inside a rock. His arms around you, fingers splayed over the indents in your lower back, your fossilised hands cradling his face for an infinite amount of years. Maybe nobody will find you; maybe they will, and you will be recalled not for all the failures of your indecent lives but for this cold comfort.

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