Noble Metals Read online

  My hands shook as I drew my room key out of my pocket. I unlocked open the door and gestured for him to go ahead. Then I walked past him and lit the kerosene lamp. “There’s an electric light in here. I’m not fond of it, since it blinks and dims all the time, but you’re welcome to it.”

  “The kerosene is fine,” he said in that cognac-smooth voice.

  I pulled open a bureau drawer to find the few things I’d take with me to wherever I’d be sleeping tonight. “I’ll leave the key here on the bureau. Beatrice asks that you’re out by quarter past nine in the morning, and—”

  The door clicked shut. I turned around.

  From across the tiny room, in the faintly flickering light, our eyes met.

  The stranger grinned. “Am I safe in assuming that paying your surcharge doesn’t preclude a night’s company?”

  “I . . . what?” I shook my head. “I mean, why would you pay extra for—”

  “Merely keeping up appearances, my lad.” He set the wooden box on the floor and toed it up against the wall, then eased his pack off his shoulders and draped his jacket over it. My mind and heart were both racing, but our eyes met, and something in me stilled. There was nothing threatening or menacing in his slight smile, and when he took a step toward me, I didn’t draw back.

  “The walls in every city have ears,” he said, “and there are loose lips between this town and the Yukon that can be heard all the way to Chicago. Three dollars is a small price to pay for a little discretion, don’t you think?” The three faces downstairs flashed through my mind again, but vanished when his long fingers went to the first button on his waistcoat. “I assure you, I have every intention of using the services I paid extra not to use.” One eyebrow rose, as did the corner of his mouth. “Assuming that’s all right with you?”

  I cleared my throat. “Um, of course. Certainly.” I started unbuttoning my shirt, but paused. “What about going with you? To Dawson City?”

  The man eyed me, and his fingers stopped on a button. An odd smile—midway between puzzled and amused—pulled at his slim lips, and he lowered his hands, tugging at his waistcoat as if he’d meant to straighten it, not remove it. “You’re already being paid extra, but you still want to bargain?”

  “I don’t think you realize how badly I want out of this town.”

  Folding his arms loosely across his partially unbuttoned waistcoat, he tilted his head. “You’ll go for half the wages the men on the pier would require?”

  “Yes. And split the cost of a mech.”

  He pursed his lips. “You can afford a ticket to Ketchikan?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Your own provisions?”

  “And then some.”

  It took all I had not to squirm under the weight of his stare—his long, scrutinizing pauses were unnerving.

  “You can afford a ticket and provisions,” he said after a moment, “but you can’t go back to Montana?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t say it was money keeping me from going home.”

  “I see.” Then he gave a sharp nod. “Very well. I’ll hire you.”

  Excitement and relief swelled beneath my breastbone. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll acquire our provisions tomorrow morning and leave on the next boat to Ketchikan.” He smiled thinly and resumed unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Now, about tonight’s arrangement . . .”

  I was so thrilled about my good fortune, I couldn’t even figure out what to do next until, in a smooth, mesmerizing motion, he pushed the first button through its keeper. As he unfastened the next one, I realized I needed to do the same and reached for the next button of my shirt.

  My work was, in its best moments, passionless, my body going through the motions like the provision-laden spidery brass mechs that marched through the streets outside on their way to Dawson City. But I’d wanted him from the start, and the fact that he’d just made himself my ticket to the Yukon made me want him even more. Made me want to enjoy him.

  Piece by piece, he removed his silk and wool, and with each finely tailored layer, he stripped away my ability to think. He was the most beautiful thing that had come through Seattle in the last year, with shoulders cut from marble and a smooth chest and stomach above narrow hips. Sparse, dark hair fanned out from the middle of his chest, simply begging my fingers to run through it, and a thin strip below his navel guided my eyes below his belt a moment before his hands began unfastening his trousers.

  My own hands were clumsy. What is wrong with you, Robert? No john had ever had this effect on me, rendering me so useless that I had only managed to remove my shirt and boots by the time he was completely, gloriously naked. But then, he was my long-sought-after escape from this place—I supposed that warranted some unusual infatuation.

  Stroking himself slowly, he whispered, “Get on your knees.”

  An all-too-familiar dread constricted my throat. Few things made me want to gag more than sucking unwashed men who spent all their money on brothels and not a penny on baths.

  I swallowed hard and knelt in front of him. He’d paid for this. I wouldn’t deny him. His hand left his cock and rested in my hair as I dutifully took him between my lips. To my surprise, he smelled lightly of soap—he’d been to Smith’s for a bath, I could tell by the scent—and a spine-tingling masculine muskiness. His skin was vaguely salty, and he was almost too thick for my jaw to accommodate. I shivered and took him as deep as I could.

  I’d never experienced such a thing myself—I always gave, never received—but men rarely complained, and his groans of approval made my own trousers almost too tight to bear.

  Never before had I craved someone like this. I’d only known a man’s touch when there was money exchanged, but this time, the money didn’t matter. I wanted him to be satisfied with what I did because I wanted to please him.

  This was unprecedented. But I couldn’t question it. I was too occupied with giving him the sum total of everything I knew, every way I’d learned to make a man—

  “Wait, stop,” he whispered hoarsely. When I looked up, he nodded toward my bed. “Turn around.”

  I jumped to my feet and unfastened my trousers. The man obviously wasn’t new to this, because he knew exactly what purpose the white bottle beside my bed served. He reached for it and poured some of the slippery, clear liquid into his palm as I stripped off the rest of my clothes.

  Per his command, I got on my knees on the bed, and my nameless john knelt behind me. He pressed a cool, slicked finger against my entrance, and I closed my eyes as it slipped into me. These days, I didn’t require much help to relax enough for a man to fuck me, but he took his time anyway, easing me open with one finger, two, a third. Even after I’d relaxed, he didn’t stop. Much as I wanted to beg for his cock, I bit my tongue. He’d paid for his pleasure, not mine. And besides, his fingers—slippery and gentle—created a degree of pleasure I’d never experienced before. My breath kept catching in my throat as his fingers eased in and out. Sometimes he’d part them to stretch my entrance, other times they simply moved. In and out, in and out, until I was a breath away from begging him to fuck me.

  He withdrew his fingers completely, and I moaned in both protest and anticipation. As he reached for the white bottle again, I shivered, sucking in a sharp hiss of breath through gritted teeth.

  The bottle clinked on the bedside table, and the mattress shifted behind me.

  I closed my eyes as he pressed himself against me. Even after he’d fingered me until I thought I’d lose my mind, he was in no hurry to force himself inside me. He slid the head of his cock into me, then pulled out, and I whimpered softly at the absence of him. A second later, he pressed in again, and this time he pushed deeper, and I leaned back to take even more of him. To take all of him. I was used to some painful friction while my body accepted a hurried man, and more often than not, by the time I started to enjoy it, he’d be done. Not this time, though. I had never taken a man’s cock after being so deliciously prepared for it, and every strok
e was pure ecstasy.

  I couldn’t stop myself from rocking in time with his thrusts, silently begging him for more. Some patrons didn’t like that, refusing to relinquish even the most minuscule amount of control, but he simply moaned and thrust harder.

  Then he shifted, leaning over me and resting his hands on the mattress beside mine. He kissed the side of my neck, and I pulled in a ragged breath, which I promptly lost when he thrust deep and hard into me.

  His chin was coarse against the back of my shoulder, unlike the soft warmth of his lips and breath. “Tell me your name.”

  Surely he’d heard it downstairs, but what he asked for, he received. I found enough air to whisper, “Robert.”

  “Robert,” he growled, and my name had never sounded so filthy. “Mmm, I love what you’re doing, Robert.”

  I shivered and tried to remember what I was doing. Fortunately, my body kept moving of its own accord, meeting him thrust for thrust until tears stung my eyes.

  “Do you like that, Robert?”

  Moaning, I let my head fall forward, so lost in desire, I couldn’t focus on anything except enjoying what he did, on the way he slid so easily in and out of me, and breathed on me, and promised with every stroke a climax to end all climaxes.

  I wavered between holding back and letting go, falling apart a little more every time his cock met that eye-watering spot.

  Shifting my weight onto one trembling arm, I reached down and closed my fingers around my painfully hard cock. I gasped, tensed, and a second later, he too gasped. With a low, guttural growl, he thrust even harder. Hot tears ran down my cheeks as he drove me to that promised climax, and my eyes rolled back as I spent into my palm.

  Just as my vision began to clear and his strokes became uncomfortably intense, he groaned, forced himself all the way inside me, and shuddered. He was buried to the hilt, not an inch of my backside absent the heat of his flesh, and every twitch and tremor resonated through me.

  Panting, he kissed the side of my neck. “You’re worth easily twice what you charge, Robert.”

  “I don’t know.” I licked my lips. “I think I should be paying you.” I’d never been so satisfied in my life, and how strange that such satisfaction came from a patron who’d paid for the right to do as he pleased to my body all night. A patron who’d paid extra so no one would know. And no one had to know. I wouldn’t say a word to anyone unless it was to him, and those words would be “please, please, do it all again.”

  And before long, he did do it all again.

  The next morning, I watched from my bed as he buckled his belt over his trousers. My body ached from making sure he’d gotten his money’s worth last night, though truth be told, I was still certain I should have been paying him.

  As I buttoned my shirt, I said, “You never did tell me your name.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned down to pull on his boots. “John.”

  I laughed. “You and every man who comes through this room.”

  That gave him pause, and he chuckled. “My mother must have known what kind of man I’d be one day.” He glanced at me. “Didn’t think to use a false name, though. I’ll have to remember that next time.”

  Next time. Jealousy flared in my chest, but I quickly doused it. He was no different than any man who’d paid me for an evening’s company. Or rather, he wouldn’t be once we’d returned from Dawson City. And I was no more to him than I was to any of them. A whore, a night’s entertainment.

  “Well, I doubt anyone in this town would think twice. Men bed in the same rooms and tents all the time for lack of vacancy elsewhere.”

  “They don’t generally bed down together in brothels, though,” he said dryly.

  “Generally, no.”

  “No matter.” He pulled the cuff of his trousers over his laced boot. “But I do appreciate the discretion.” Remembering his “colleagues of sorts” who’d come into the bar last night, I gave a quiet sound of acknowledgment.

  I leaned down and found my own trousers on the floor. “You said last night you weren’t looking for gold. What did you mean? Why else would you go to a gold field?”

  He smiled. “I’m searching for platinum.”

  “In a gold field?”

  “Yes.” He pulled a brass pocket watch from his breast pocket. “And it’s nearly nine, so we shouldn’t wait.” As he stood, he nodded toward the bed as if to indicate everything we’d done. “And to be clear, you’re traveling with me from here on out, but no one is to know about this.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Understood. Of course.” I paused. “Do you think you’re the first man on that trail who’s bedded me for a fee?”

  “Absolutely not. But I’d just as soon not have word of last night’s arrangement getting back home.”

  “Wife?”

  “Employer.” He watched his fingers buttoning his waistcoat. “I don’t need them to know what kind of ‘immoral conduct’ I engage in.”

  I nodded. That was no surprise. The men who paid me nearly always demanded total secrecy and discretion.

  And if it meant a ticket out of this town and up to the gold fields in the Klondike, I would gladly keep any secret John asked me to.

  “You’re sure about this?” Beatrice eyed John warily as he waited for me on the other side of the cardroom.

  I nodded and hoisted my pack onto my shoulders.

  She scowled, eyes shifting toward me. “He don’t look like he’d be worth a damn against robbers. Or bears.”

  “We’ll be fine.” I glanced at John. “I’d better go. Take care, Beatrice.”

  “You too, darlin’.”

  I adjusted my pack, and then followed John out of the saloon and into the rush of men, mechs, and horses. As we made our way through the thick crowd, I stole a few glances at John as Beatrice’s voice echoed in my head. Maybe she was right. Faced with a grizzly bear or some determined robbers, John might not be the best ally, but the outfitters down by the piers sold plenty of weapons that would do us just fine. No one went north without a rifle. If we were attacked by something a rifle couldn’t stop, no amount of brute strength was going to do us any good anyhow.

  And though I wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, I was thrilled I wasn’t traveling with a giant brute who could best a grizzly. In the past few months, I’d whored myself to plenty of prospectors, but most who were willing to pay for my services weren’t men I wanted to work for out on the trail.

  John, however, didn’t strike me as dangerous, and he had a gentle hand. Maybe he wouldn’t break a grizzly’s neck, but he probably wouldn’t break mine either. A man my size—or in my profession—couldn’t be too careful about whom he traveled with.

  Down by the waterfront, crowds and congestion gave the appearance of utter chaos, but as we slowly made our way through the outfitters and—once we had our provisions—to the pier, it became clear there was order here. Amidst all the shouting and shuffling, the men working the dock were surprisingly efficient. People moved from outfitter to outfitter, piling provisions on flatbed carts.

  Once they had everything, then they acquired a mech, a spidery brass machine that would carry the ton or more of gear over the rugged terrain. When I’d first arrived last year, mechs were issued first, and the result was such disorder, more mechs wound up crashing into each other or buildings before they made it anywhere near the boat to Ketchikan. Since mechs had become the last item a team purchased before boarding the boat, there’d been considerably fewer problems. It was even better after the mech manufacturers had taken over warehouses directly across the street from the pier, so a team needed only to buy their machine, load it, and move it right to the ship instead of trawling through six congested blocks.

  I watched an empty mech limp past us. The valves on the front-mounted engine coughed little puffs of steam out the top, and the whole thing rattled as one leg landed badly with every step. I couldn’t tell if the leg was bent or if one of its joints was damaged, but something was definitel
y wrong.

  John sneered at it. “That’s what’ll carry our provisions?” He shook his head. “Almost makes you wonder if a horse and sled would make more sense.”

  “Except the horses don’t come with spare parts and repair kits.” I gestured at the machine. “So far, I’ve not heard of anyone having to shoot a mech.”

  John clapped my shoulder. “Good point. Very good point.”

  We watched the mech for a moment longer. Two men—one on either side of its front end—guided it, keeping it straight when its damaged leg tried to pull it off course.

  John scowled. “Well, let’s make sure we bring enough tools and spare parts, shall we?”

  I nodded. “Good idea. Do you think you can fix it if it breaks?”

  He chuckled, eyes sparkling. “Fix it? Given the time and parts, I could improve it.” He nodded sharply at the defective mech. “Better legs. Better efficiency. Maybe even modify the damned thing so it could safely carry itself and a couple of passengers.”

  The idea of riding a mech instead of walking beside it was definitely appealing. “How much time would that take?”

  “Sadly, more than I have.” He turned to our cart of provisions. “We’ll just have to settle for a mech as its manufacturer made it unless I find the opportunity to correct some of its flaws.”

  “So we will.”

  We maneuvered our overflowing cart to the mech warehouses. John went in to inspect our mech while I waited outside with our provisions. He left his pack with me but kept the locked box with him. I had to admit, I was curious about its contents. I was curious about a lot of things relating to this stranger, but I supposed I’d learn more eventually. If the stories from other men were to be believed, we’d have plenty of idle time between here and Ketchikan, not to mention Dawson City.