The Obedient Servant [Going for the Gold 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (14 page)

Reynaldo was the first to move, hoisting his own mug on high. “Hear, hear! President Stephens of the California Republic!”

Immediately a sea of upraised mugs was offered, along with a hail of toasts.

“Here’s to you!”

“To the republic!”

“Here’s another nail in your coffin.”

“Here’s all the hair off your head.”

Tallulah even toasted with her customer’s whiskey mug. “To President Stefanski!” She had heard Vallejo address Milo that way, and she preferred it to the bland “Stephens.”

However, once the toasts petered out, men good-naturedly knocked Milo from the bar and carried him out the door on a bed made of their palms. His arms and legs flailed and he was laughing from ear to ear, but Tallulah knew how an exuberant crowd could easily get out of hand. Whisking the flag from where it was draped over an ale keg, she pressed on after him after instructing the bodyguards to mind the bar.

Origin, of course, was hot on her heels. “This is the most exciting moment in the history of California!”

“I have to say,” Tallulah admitted, “that I agree with you. This is very invigorating!”

“The flag, the flag!” Origin insisted.

Tallulah handed him the folded cloth and he shook it out. The crowd had stood Milo atop a wooden crate so he could loom head and shoulders above them, and Cowie and Grigsby took the other corners of the flag to attach it to a reata while Milo orated.

“There is now no alternative but to die under protest together at the hands of our enemies, or fly to meet the foe!”

“Wait!” shrieked Origin, just as Cowie and Grigsby had attached the flag with halyards. “There’s something wrong. There’s an
I
missing.”

Indeed, Todd had painted CALIFORNIA REPUBLC on the flag. So Tallulah told Origin where to find the bowl of Venetian Red paint under the bar, and he tore back down the block. Milo squatted on his crate and she was able to put a hand on his knee and say in his ear, “I am very proud of you. You are the most powerful, virile man I’ve ever known.”

Milo looked straight ahead, because to gaze into her eyes would have displayed their intimacy to everyone. But he could not keep the smile from his face. “This is a glorious day indeed for Californians. But I frankly can’t wait for it to be over. I need to have you in my mouth.”

Tallulah wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, but it had her all aquiver. Men shoved her aside to make political exhortations to Milo, Origin returned with the paint, and in the hubbub she was again jostled to the back of the crowd. The mission bells were rung, guns were fired, and many, many liquor barrels were tapped.

But she thought about Milo’s comment all throughout that long, exhausting day. And found out what he meant that night.

Milo sat at General Vallejo’s piano, tinkling away at a composition by the Polish composer Oginski. It was a lovely little piece with sweet high notes yet a thunderous passage and a very showy cadenza toward the end. Of course he hadn’t played any piano in years, a decade maybe, but it was true what they said. Once a composition is learned, you really never forgot how to play.

Some lovely Californio señoritas in their embroidered rebozos were admiring his playing, and even some ranchers’ wives dared come over and drape themselves on Vallejo’s piano. Ten years ago, before marrying Elizabeth, he would have welcomed this attention. Milosz Stefanski was the big gun of Sonoma today, the President of the Republic, the leader of the Osos—or, as some were laughing, the leader of the Pigs.

Tonight he was proud to acknowledge that the female attention meant nothing to him. He only craved the attention of one female, the bountiful innkeeper, Señorita Crabtree.

She had not been hanging over him all day, as some of these belles had been. In fact, she seemed to have barely glanced his way. Once he had secured the roostered men in the
calabozo
guarded over by nine cannon, seen Vallejo and his family off to Sutter’s Fort, and dispatched his proclamation to Commodore Stockton, of course he had confabbed with his “cabinet.” Tallulah and the women, both Yankee and Californio, cooked a repast fit for a fandango, which they all ate in the courtyard at long tables. Afterward they had repaired to Casa Grande, Milo only allowing his cabinet and their women to attend for fear of damage to the comandante’s furniture.

It must be nearing midnight by now, yet the exuberance of the day hadn’t worn off for most people. Even the half-caste daughters of Captain Richardson with their demure mantillas over their heads were fluttering their eyelashes at Milo—and their father had protested the rebellion. Yes, Milo was the big frog of the moment, cutting quite the figure in the British military coat with the tails, pounding away on Vallejo’s ivories. He was some pumpkins, all right, but he kept a close eye on Tallulah. Many cabinet members of the new republic were making hot eyes at her, especially that Thomas Cowie with his floppy hair falling over his brow. Cowie kept flipping his hair back arrogantly and seemed to be making jokes that Tallulah laughed at. Milo was planning to assign Cowie to some really heinous task.

Angelica Richardson had sat down next to Milo on the piano bench, rubbing the shelf of her bosom against his bicep. True, his prick expanded against his thigh when Angelica did that. What reasonable man’s wouldn’t? But he was boring holes into Cowie’s idiotic blue turban with the menace of his gaze when Reynaldo sat down on the piano bench, too, flanking him, pressing his thigh against Milo’s.

“It’s time to wind this fandango down,” Reynaldo suggested. “Plenty to do tomorrow. I don’t want to risk the smallest thing in Casa Grande being disturbed, so I’m going to boot everyone then retire to the barracks myself.”

Milo’s fingers moved into an adagio on the keys. “All right. Only you’re not going to any barracks. You’re staying here with me.” The rubbing of Angelica’s bosom stopped abruptly, and Milo felt her hold her breath. “Say, what task can we give to Cowie tomorrow? We need more gunpowder, don’t we? I heard that a Mose Carson out at Fitch Ranch has a keg or two of powder.”

Reynaldo grinned wearily. “Mose is Kit’s brother. That’d be a good task to send him out on. He’s certainly useless here in Sonoma. On the way to Fitch Ranch he could at least keep his eyes skinned for any Spaniard playing monte or dancing a fandango. Take Fowler with him. Fowler asked Tallulah to dance the
el jarabe
dance three times.”

“Three times?” Milo nearly shouted, and his fingers stilled on the keys. Quieter, he repeated, “Three times?”

Reynaldo was quick to add, “She only acquiesced once. But that’s enough to send him to Fitch Ranch, don’t you agree?”

“Completely,” Milo said fiercely. “Yes, let us get rid of these guests.” Swiftly he turned to Angelica and kissed her hand apathetically. “
Me tengo que ir.”
I must be going.

He pushed back from the bench, following Reynaldo to the front of the parlor where Cowie was helping Tallulah on with her rebozo—as if a woman needed help to drape a lacey two-ounce shawl about her shoulders. Grasping the tomfool dough-head by the shoulder with an eagle’s talon, Milo spun Cowie aside as though he were an inconsequential chicken in the road and addressed Tallulah only.

“I need your assistance. Don’t go.”

She smiled pleasantly. “Anything you need. Captain,” she added devilishly.

Cowie started to say, “I was just going to walk Miss Crabtree back to her—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Milo snapped, finally addressing the volunteer rebel. “Go to the barracks and get some sleep, for I need you and Fowler on an important mission tomorrow.”

The word “mission” did it, for Cowie grabbed Fowler and a couple of other republicans and headed out the door. Milo steered Tallulah down the long parlor and into the hallway that let off onto several bedrooms.

“Ah, I see.” Tallulah’s eyes sparkled. “You need my ‘assistance.’ Are you sure you aren’t too tired for my ‘assistance’? You’ve had a long day, Mr. President.”

Milo chuckled. “No, not that. I honestly need—I’ve asked one of your Diggers to boil and carry water for this bathtub. Look. Vallejo has this absolutely fantastic tub.” He pressed back a door, which swung to reveal the white enameled tub standing in the middle of a large, tiled room. Even Milo’s bathtub at Virgin Groves upriver was only a silver tin tub, brought painstakingly up the Sacramento in a sloop.

Milo was pleased with the wide smile that appeared on her face. “Oh, my! Francisca certainly could’ve told me about this after that time I was knocked into the mud by some brawlers.” She swiftly corrected herself. “But then we have the creek to bathe in, so I can see why she didn’t offer her tub. Would you like me to keep after the Diggers to continue filling it while you bathe?”

“Yes, that’s the idea. And tell Corporal Vargas to enter when he’s done shooing all the guests away.”

As they spoke, the Digger squaw arrived with another bucket full of steaming water. The still night was imbued with the daytime’s sunrays that had heated the ground, but one of the beauties of adobe buildings was that they stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. Milo lit another oil lamp while the squaw poured the steaming water into the tub. He caught Tallulah by the wrist as she was leaving.

“You come back, too,” he insisted.

She nodded and vanished, and Milo at last luxuriated in the pleasure of peeling the redcoat’s jacket, which after all was a tad snug, from his aching shoulders. He had stored his mountaineer rig and other kit in his room at the Blue Wing, figuring he could take over one of the bedrooms in the guest quarters here. Now he sat before a dressing table and yanked off the tall, heeled boots someone had probably stolen off a dead Spanish soldier. By the time he got down to the red pantaloons he was practically flinging the clothing about, he was so eager to step into the tub. The red scarf that made his head cloth was tossed so hurriedly it draped over an Oriental room screen.

Ah
. The water
was
scalding. Gripping both edges of the tub, Milo lowered himself, taking particular care when his balls hit the water’s surface. But he soon eased into it, stretching out his long legs and letting his head loll over the edge. Soon his mind was an absolute blank, a monumental feat in a man so accustomed to worrying and pondering over every nuance of life, every bug that crossed his path.

In fact, he must’ve dozed off. His head snapped to attention, eyes wide.
Damn
. Scooting down, he dunked his head underwater, rising to grab the soap bar he’d placed on a stool. He soaped his hair, luxuriating in the feel of the soapy bubbles, the tallow scent reminding him of his first meeting on the river with Reynaldo. When he’d soaped up that asshole and that long, thick cock so bursting with seed the corporal had splashed ejaculate on a rock six feet away.

Soon, of course, his prick engorged, the purplish, shiny head bobbing to the water’s surface amid the soap bubbles. The squaw pushed the door open with two more buckets of steaming water, Reynaldo close on her heels.

Milo indicated for her to put the buckets on the floor, and he leaned back into the water to rinse the soap from his hair. His long locks floated about his face like seaweed, and he was quite refreshed when he sat up and blinked at his friend, spitting out water.

Milo tossed his head. “Get over here.” He was not normally a shy or hesitant man, but the day’s events had pumped his self-esteem to almost unmanageable proportions. “Take out your prick. I want to admire it.”

“My, my,” said Reynaldo, although he did as he was instructed. Slowly, though, stepping to the edge of the tub, fondling the plump bulge in his pantaloons salaciously, like the Far Eastern seraglio girls Milo had seen perform in New York. “You’re quite full of your own arrogance today, aren’t you?”

“I’d like my mouth full of
you
,” Milo said. But he had other plans for the corporal tonight, so he contented himself with watching Reynaldo squeeze himself. “I saw the change you made to my proclamation before I sent it off to Stockton.”

“Did you like it?”

Milo tilted his head. “I liked that you were thinking about being an obedient servant.”

“But you were the one who had just finished being my submissive servant.” Reynaldo withdrew his prick, massaging it lewdly in his fist with his thumb. His other hand lifted his loose sailor’s shirt over his head, and he was blinded under the tent of it when the door again pushed open and Tallulah peeked her head in.

Milo grinned to realize Reynaldo couldn’t see her. But the obstinate corporal kept talking, his voice muffled beneath the sailor’s shirt. “You were leaning on that table with your ass in the air, dying to be taken.
Sí,
hermano
. You had your
feet spread apart and your sweet ass wiggling in the air, begging to be fucked by a virile stud like me.”

Although all of what Reynaldo said was true, Milo could barely contain his laughter. Tallulah was tiptoeing around Reynaldo’s side, a mischievous glint in her eye. She perched on the edge of the tub while Milo said casually, “Well, you’re right. You caught me. I usually like to be the aggressor, but that one time, I was begging to be dominated.”

“And believe you me. You’ve got the juiciest ass I’ve ever seen on a fellow. Your ass is impeccably delicious. Makes a fellow hard as a steel rod. Makes a fellow want to take a bite—” Reynaldo stopped stone cold, his sailor’s shirt dangling from his fingertips. It dropped to the tiled floor, but the only other movement in the bathroom was Reynaldo’s cock bobbing up and down stiffly, like a disapproving finger waggling at Tallulah.