Been asleep at least that long, he thought. And the tiny Betty lamp on the small table flickered low, its wick floating in oil the only light in that tiny room.
The arm she laid her head upon had gone to sleep, filled with painful pinpricks: he knew he had to move it. Inch by inch Titus dragged himself from beneath her, then slipped out from beneath the rumpled blankets she had pulled over them both—spilling onto the clay floor. Landing on his knees and one hand beside the bed, his head thumping like wind-driven waves slapping against the hull of Zane’s flatboat, Titus tried to remember some shred of what had happened since swallowing that first spruce beer. There was a piece of the night here, and there.
When he cocked his head around to see for sure, finding the length of her bare thigh and a portion of one naked breast peeking from beneath the greasy blanket—he was sure he had humped her. No … maybe she had humped him.
That would’ve been a first, he started to snort, yet it made not just his head, but his whole body, hurt. Then he recalled a pale vision of sitting with the four carousing boatmen in that stinking, noisy tippling house, their table wet from spilled ale and rye. Two more women were there, one bouncing animatedly atop Ovatt’s lap, and the other laughing as she stood directly behind Kingsbury, her partially exposed breasts secured on either side of his head like a wool muffler while he fondled her flesh and she rubbed his belly. She was a big one, that woman, and older than the others who plied their trade in the Kangaroo.
A voice or two came clear as he dragged his knees up and slowly squatted beside the bed. Titus remembered how the others had poked their fun at him while the skinny woman ran her hands over him, exploring more and more boldly as the night got older and older, kissing on his neck, pushing his curly brown hair back from his ear to breathe huskily in it—tickling, teasing, taunting him until he figured he just couldn’t take it no more and stumbled back here with her.
Now she was snoring lightly. And when he looked at her face, he recalled how Kingsbury, Ovatt, and especially Zane had all winked at him again and again throughout the evening, as if they were privy to something he had yet to learn.
Maybe he would eventually find out why she was called Mincemeat.
From the disheveled end of the bed he carefully yanked one of the striped wool blankets so he wouldn’t disturb her, then draped it over his bare shoulders with a shudder. Scooting along on his knees, his head sagging heavy as a chunk of rain-soaked granite between his shoulders, Titus inched over to the table and peered down into the small tin where floated a feeble stump of wick in what his nose told him was bacon grease. It saturated the tiny room with the rank odor of cooking pork. What with supper last night, and all those meals the crew ate on the river—so much pig meat he sensed his stomach revolting, about to heave at the stench.
He dragged himself away, gasping for breath to keep from losing his stomach on the floor, sliding on his bare legs over to the fire pit beneath that sheet-iron chimney, and blew on the coals. Finding plenty of life in them, Titus began to lay bark chips and slivers of kindling on the glowing embers until he had a warming fire stoked once again. It did not take long for it to knock the chill from the log-and-chink lean-to constructed at the back of Mathilda’s alehouse and road inn.
In the corner sat a short three-legged stool supporting a copper kettle. What caught his eye was the handle of an iron ladle poking over the lip of the kettle. Ladling out some of the liquid in the kettle, he took a cautious sniff. Water. He drank his fill, dipper after dipper, nearly emptying the kettle before he got himself sated. His mouth was no longer so dry, but his eyes still hurt with a hot, gritty pain. Maybeso he could sleep some more now that he had taken care of his thirst.
But then he was reminded of the immense pressure in his groin. In searching under the low bed he found a copper chamber pot and dragged it over to a far corner. With his back to the bed and the fire, he pulled the blanket apart, rose upon his knees, and relieved himself. From a wooden bucket with a rope handle he took a handful of red cedar shavings and tossed them into the chamber pot so the small, closed room would not reek so badly with the stench of his urine.
That business seen to, Titus kneed his way across the pounded clay floor, reaching the side of the bed, where he crawled back under a second wool blanket. He had no more got himself settled and let out a contented sigh than he jerked in surprise, feeling her hand tickle across the flat of his belly, her fingers descending to encircle his limp flesh. Startled, he lay there, partly frightened, partly hypnotized with sensing his flesh grow and harden as quickly as it did.
“You be a good boy now and give me another one of your rides, river rat.”
“M-my name’s Titus,” he said cautiously. “Told you last night I wasn’t no riverman like the rest of them. Don’t you go and call me a river rat.”
“Awright, Titus,” she purred, sliding her body up against his once more. “You’re just a boy long, long way from home, ain’t you?”
“Ain’t no boy.”
“Awright,” she agreed. “So tell me where you’re headed.”
“Always aimed to make it here to Louisville.”
She kept on kneading him, saying, “Ain’t all that much work round here. Might find work for the army down there to Fort Knox.”
“Don’t know what I’ll do,” he replied, one of his hands moving as if on its own accord to find her thigh, climbing to stroke the curve of her buttock. It felt good beneath his touch. Almost immediately he grew curious about her breasts. Dragging the blanket back from her shoulder, Titus looked down at them.
“Go ’head. Kiss ’em,” she said in a husky whisper. “They want you to kiss ’em, Titus.”
Not at all sure how it should be done, he planted a chaste peck on each one.
“No,” she instructed, reaching up with her free hand to force his head down onto a breast. “Open your mouth. Lick ’em. Suck on ’em too. That’s the way you can make ’em feel good.”
Obediently, he did as she asked. Finding that not only did she respond with a growing murmur in the back of her throat, but he found himself becoming inflamed with hunger the more he fondled, kissed, sucked, and licked on her. And through it all she pressed his face down into that pliant fleshiness of her.
“Don’t be selfish, now, Titus,” she finally said. “The other’n wants some attention too.”
He let her shove his face over to the other breast, where he continued his enjoyment of her damp skin. While he was, there came a couple of times when he thought he just might explode, so fiery was the stimulation she was giving him between his legs. Then he put his head between her breasts, licking down, down, down to her belly.
As she arched her back, he continued to kiss back and forth across her flat, smooth belly, from one sharp hipbone, licking the groin to the other hip.
“Do this,” she said huskily, taking one of his hands now and pushing it down upon the soft hairiness of her thigh. Moving it up and down twice in a heated flurry, the woman finally positioned his fingers on the inside of her leg.
“C’mon up with your hand to where you’ll find me getting wet.”
“W-wet?” he asked, more than a little concerned. Perhaps there was something wrong—maybe even her getting her monthly visit like Amy finally did. Scared that maybeso what he was doing was making the woman bleed.
“It’s awright, Titus. Just what happens to a woman. Feel it—how warm I got for you awready. How wet I am for you to climb up on me now.”
“Now?”
She shook her head. “We can wait a bit. Just touch me all over down there and see just how wet you’re making me. This be the best way for a young’un like you to learn all ’bout a woman.”
As he began to explore with his fingers, climbing higher and higher until he reached her warmth and wetness, hearing her groan low and feral, the woman dragged his head back down against her flesh: tangling her fingers within his hair as she pulled his face back to her breasts once more, rubbing him there with an urgent need. His fingers continued to explore her, studying the rise and fall of the contours of her body, afraid at first with its newness when he discovered her skin grew all the more moist the more he probed along that parting of her flesh between her thighs.
“There,” she whispered. “Right there. Put your fingers in.” Then without ceremony she reached down and roughly guided his hand against her flesh, positioning him, easing his fingers within her with a groan. Gripping his wrist with a trembling lock, the woman moved his fingers back and forth within her as her hips began to rock
